vox

QotD: [this is so good]

What's the best thing since sliced bread?

Andre Torrez.

SoCal

positives:

1. Amazing weather. I totally forgot how good I had it growing up. Being able to run, swim, and bike outdoors, year-round would be incredible
2. Beautiful land wherever there aren't houses or construction of new houses.
3. Real Mexican food.

negatives

1. Expensive. I would have to be ready to buy a 1.2-1.5 million dollar place to live in something similar to my Oregon home.
2. Driving. It's all traffic and assholes. My god I forgot how everyone in SoCal thinks they are more important than anyone else and must get ahead by crossing four lanes back and forth. Everywhere I look, I see assholes driving.
3. All the showboating. Any stretch of the 405 looks like a German car dealership lot with all the expensive rides. Everyone's got fake boobs and lips. Everyone's dieting and tanning. It's all about keeping up appearances.

QotD: Top 5 in '06 - Movies & DVDs

What are your top 5 movies/DVDs of 2006?

It's been a fairly forgetful year for movies, at least for me. The films I wanted to see where few and far between and I only saw maybe 2 or 3 in a theater all year (we have got to get a steady babysitter and remedy this). Here are all that I remember (in no particular order):

• Clerks 2: I wish Kevin Smith could grow up and do something funny and human like 40 year old virgin, but he can still write funny scripts. Clerks 2 gets on my list because the climax scene was a wonderful example of absurdist comedy.
• Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore proves he can be funny and interesting and makes a boring downer of a presentation feel great. Nice upbeat "we can do this!" ending instead of what you usually get in a lefty movie (which usually end with "well, the whole system sucks and I have no solution but please think of one").
• Talledega Nights: I would put this up there with Dumb and Dumber as a movie that does stupid so well, it leaps to the other end of the spectrum and reaches brilliance. I'll see anything with Wil Farrel in it, but he has produced a lot of junk in the last couple years. I was fully expecting this to crash and burn but I had a blast. That just happened.
• Little Miss Sunshine was only ho-hum for me. I'll put it on this list because I can't recall anything better. The cast was amazing but I was disappointed that I only laughed twice in two hours (once when the nurse yells KAREN, and the other time when the biker dude gives the family a standing ovation on stage). It was well-acted and touching in many places but the ending could have been much funnier and I think the smart members of the family could have had a lot more funny lines.
  

Is that it? I honestly can't think of anything else. I guess I spent the first the first three months of the year catching up on 2005 Oscar picks, and don't recall much from this year. I have a stack of good 2006 movies from Netflix I need to watch (wordplay, brick, etc) so maybe this list will grow.

The D on the SNL

Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny

Tenacious D

I love Tenacious D, all the way back to their days doing open mic night at comedy clubs in LA (I used to collect bootleg recordings of their Key Largo shows). Back then, their shtick was delusions of grandeur -- every time they said they were the greatest band on earth, people would laugh. Their songs about tearing it up on the road were also funny, since they never left the LA comedy circuit. I wasn't the biggest fan of their studio album because it strayed from their acoustic roots and the joke of the road songs was lost when they actually started touring.

I'm sure the new movie is funny -- they're still comic geniuses when it comes to skits and live shows, but man did they suck on SNL the other night. First off, Kickapoo. Kickapoo is a funny song when you include all the profanity, the comic violence, and the comic sex. Also, it's got fucking Meatloaf in it! When you play it live without any swearing and without Meatloaf, you don't get a comic version of rock opera that you get on the CD, you get crap.

Second song was The Metal. The Metal is amusing on the album, and they tried to do a comedy bit on stage with it. If you've ever seen Tenacious D live, you know their stage skits are unbelievably funny. Every show, they do something outrageous, usually involving simulated anal sex or blow jobs or money shots, so when they do a skit on TV, it's kind of ho-hum due to censors. Performance-wise, it kind of sucks live because JB can't do the heavy metal scream on command.

Overall, the appearance was lame. The backup musicians didn't match the album's quality, both songs had their lyrics cleaned up, and the whole joke of the D was completely lost and out of context because they weren't hosting (so people would be comfortable laughing at them) and they weren't in their movie (where the songs fit). If you had never heard of them and you turned on SNL to see them for the first time, what would you think? Who is this crappy band and why is that chubby movie star singing?

Jack Black is a great comedian and a fairly big movie star (well-deserved, to boot), but movie stars and lame musical performances are kind of synonymous (see also: Bruce Willis, Jim Belushi, any song by Eddie Murphy that isn't Party All The Time). The bigger a movie star Jack Black becomes, the more dangerous lame musical performances are to his career.

Keep the D pure, keep the D funny, and keep the D profane. Hopefully JB and KG learn a lesson from this gig: don't do network tv appearances as Tenacious D any more. Keep it on Cable where you can say "cock" a million times in a song.

QotD: Top 5 in '06 - Music

What are your top 5 CDs/albums of 2006? 
Submitted by eliz. s.

No particular order and I'm too lazy to look them up on amazon:

• Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins: Rabbit Furcoat (You Are What You Love is a perfect song in every way)
• The Raconteurs: Broken Boy Soldiers (just plain nice rock music)
• The Long Winters: Putting the Days to Bed (ditto)
• JT: Futuresex/Lovesounds (hey, fuck you, it's good)
• Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere (sorry, I'm getting less cool as I get older)
  

Colbert cleans off his TiVo

Tivo-colbert

perfect comfort

At Costco the other day, I bought some "microfiber lounge pants" because the title made me laugh (they're sweatpants! but nicer!) and I do love wearing fleece head to toe. So I got home, put them on, and oh my god they're amazing.

If Jesus wore pants (and I don't think he would what with the sandals and the toga/tunic thing he's got going on), they'd be microfiber lounge pants.

My Wii Code

My wii code is:

0270 4040 7459 3970

Wii: Best thing ever

Here's the evidence to back up my title:

Wiiboxing

QotD: ROFL

What comedian makes you pee your pants laughing?
Submitted by pookieb.

Lately, it's Demetri Martin (whose album I could not download for free on the internets and had to actually pay for at the iTunes store -- though I like supporting good comedy, it was kind of odd since so many free comedy albums are out there).

I guess best comedian of all time would be Bill Hicks. Fuck...if he only lived. I remember him being really crazy and edgy back in '91 but you listen to it now and it practically predicts our present day politics.

I would have loved to see Hicks live through Bush II. My god, the material he could have come up with.