Two Johns...

John Updike

John Upside-Downdike

Way To Go, Hawks!...

The Marmaduke Movie Will Be Out Soon!!!!!...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm talking fucking Marmaduke, ya'll!
Marma-to-the-fucking-duke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He on a surfboard, for Pete's sake!
And look!
He's wearing fucking sunglasses!

Goddamn, it's gonna be so fucking good.

My New Rule Of Thumb...

If you preach frequently about the evils of homosexuality
and you write books about how it's a "disease"
and you endorse programs to try and "cure" it
and you look like this guy,
I'm just gonna go ahead and assume you're gay.
Y'know, for the sake of expediency.

Obnoculars...

15 seconds of stupidity, coming up!

Documentary Film Of The Day: Note By Note: The Making Of Steinway L1037...

I used to love it on Mister Rogers or Sesame Street when they'd show assembly lines where things like candy were being made. I once got to tour the Andersen window plant to see an assembly line in person. I have this thing for watching shit get made. That's one reason I thought this movie was cool as hell - an assembly line in super slo-mo! I also happen to love piano music. It might be my favorite instrument. I'm a big fan of people like Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson and Fats, both Waller and Domino.

This movie follows the year-long process of making a Steinway grand piano. I like how it was shot and how they interspersed famous pianists visiting Steinway to select the right piano for their performances. It was also cool to see how diverse the Steinway employees are.

The film's website provides a lot of great additional information, including how to order copies. Check it out HERE.

Netflix it HERE.

Edited to add: Welcome to all my visitors from Crooks & Liars! There are some lame attempts at political humor below.

A Culinary Question...

Why do people eat ducks and geese, but not swans?

The Eighties Were Clearly The Golden Years For Suburban Chicago Car Dealership Commercials...

I know all you non-Chicagoans won't have the same appreciation for this post as my fellow natives will, but I'm posting it anyway.

Howard Pontiac:



Harry Schmerler Ford:



Al Piemonte Ford:



Bob Rohrman Honda:



Celozzi-Ettleson Chevrolet:



Long Chevrolet:



Fencl-Tufo Chevrolet:

Happy You-Know-What!...

Love Is...

Last Night's Celebrity Jeopardy Was Harder Than Usual...

I'm Fucked...

Remember a while back when I did that unflattering post about Senator Mitch McConnell's wonky face? Well, according to my blog's StatCounter, someone appears to have e-mailed the post to someone in the U.S. Senate:

I fear it's just a matter of time before the Senator catches wind of this (if he hasn't already) and sics an army of pitchfork-wielding, poorly-spelled sign-toting teabaggers on me.

Combating Boredom...

Occasionally, when I'm driving, I'll slap on a goofy face in the hopes that maybe someone else on the road will catch a glimpse and get a laugh out of it.


And when I say occasionally, I mean pretty much all the time.

The Thing About Mitch McConnell...

Something's always seemed a little "off" to me about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and I finally figured out what it was. Is it me or does he have the biggest gap between his nose and his almost nonexistent upper lip that you've ever fucking seen? I mean, you could park a fucking Ford Festiva on his philtrum:

Granted, Ford Festivas are small as cars go, but you get my point. Now, I know it's pretty juvenile to make fun of a person's physical attributes. After all, apart from radical reconstructive surgery, there's not much he can really do about it. However, I find him to be a bit of a douche, so I did it anyway. He also kind of reminds me of this guy:

You Know How I Love Shit Like This...

Documentary Film Of The Day: Second Skin...

I really liked this movie about people who are into online role-playing games like World Of Warcraft and EverQuest. I was surprised by how much my online experience had in common with the people in the film despite the fact that I've never played these games. The movie is pretty balanced. It portrays the positive social aspects of online gaming as well as the destructive addictive ones. Like other geek-centric docs like Darkon, The King Of Kong, and Trekkies, the nerd quotient in this movie is extremely high - something that suits me just fine.

Netflix it or watch instantly HERE.

Making Movies Doesn't Have To Be Hard...

Listen up, all you fat-cat Hollywood executives. I have something to tell you that you probably don't want to hear. It is something I've determined based on a lifetime spent observing the world of cinema. Are you sitting down? Good. Here it comes...

You are losing money.

Now, you're probably wondering what business a poor schmuck from Michigan has telling you, a guy who washes his balls with Dom Perignon, how to make money. I don't blame you. I just figure you might benefit from a fresh perspective. You all seem to think you need to pay others a lot of money to do unnecessary things like create special effects or write screenplays in order for people to want to see your movies. That is money you could keep in your pockets. Instead, you are flushing it down the toilet. You can make blockbusters without all that shit. How, you ask? Follow this simple recipe:

Take Christopher Walken,

Willem Dafoe,

Nick Nolte,

and Gary Busey.

Lock them in a cabin full of power tools and intoxicants
and let the camera roll.
Call it Four Guys Doing A Bunch Of Fucked-Up Shit.
Then, sit back and watch as it climbs to the
top of the box office charts.

Seriously, you would be hard-pressed to convince me
this film wouldn't shatter
any and all opening weekend records.

Is There Anything This Guy Can't Do?...

First, he creates what is widely accepted as the most consistently funny blog found on the internet today - a blog that has been named Road & Track's Blog Of The Year seven years running.

Then, not satisfied with his success, he decides to conquer the recording industry with chart-toppers like "Colder Than Ice" and "Red Fro Love" and, in the process, teaches a nation to love again.

And to top it all off, he maintains what is undoubtedly the most impressive pelt of chest hair since Hasselhoff.

Grant Miller, ladies and gentlemen. A true renaissance man.

Norman U. Oldpoop...

Happy Easter To All My Christian Readers!...

At MY Tea Parties...

...we never:

• have hour-long debates about whether the president is, in fact, a rat-fucking commie or a pig-fucking commie.
• take turns reciting verses from Glenn Beck's Big Book Of Patriotic Poetry.
• dress up like Thomas Jefferson and sodomize an effigy of Nancy Pelosi with a semi-automatic shotgun.
• describe our fantasies of Sarah Palin licking Dick Cheney's fuzzy nipples.

No. We just sit around, eat a bucket of psilocybin mushrooms, drink invisible tea, and converse with inanimate stuffed bears.

You know, like real Americans.

HGTV Lies...

As some of you know, I work in the residential design business. I also watch my fair share of HGTV real estate-related reality programming - shows like My First Place, House Hunters, and Property Virgins. I watch them so frequently that I've memorized Sandra Rinomato's entire collection of ass-hugging pant-suits. I've noticed that a lot of the things the prospective home buyers are looking for on these shows do not reflect what I've seen in my practice. I'd like to take a minute and dispel a few of the myths being perpetrated by these shows:

• Double or "Dual" Sinks: Nothing seems to get people more giddy on these shows than having two sinks in their master bathroom. I suspect there may be some collusion going on between HGTV and sink manufacturers to increase sales. The truth is most people I work with nowadays choose to forgo bathroom sinks entirely and rinse their toothbrushes in the toilet.
• The "Open Concept": This is another popular wish-list topper. People seem to want spaces to flow into one another and have as few interior walls as possible. Bullshit. Everyone I talk to is looking for as closed-off and confining a floor plan as possible. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, know that cramped, dark, uninviting spaces without adequate ventilation are super-hot right now.
• Hardwood Floors: Anytime someone encounters carpeting on these shows they invariably ask if there is hardwood floor beneath it. If the answer is no, they tend to weep uncontrollably. I honestly don't know where they get these people. No one wants hardwood where I live. They all want trampoline floors.
• Granite Countertops: I actually saw an episode where a guy spontaneously ejaculated upon seeing granite countertops in one of the kitchens, despite the fact that the home he was touring had no roof and was infested with fruit flies. If you're remodeling your kitchen and you want to be on the cutting edge, mud countertops are the wave of the future. They're inexpensive and don't require constant clean-up.
  

It Was Just As Glenn Beck Prophesied...

I know. I was as surprised as anyone.

After watching Congress vote to enact sweeping health care reform the night before, I was awoken this morning to the sound of a squadron of Commu-Nazi soldiers breaking down my front door. They grabbed me out of bed, threw me in the backseat of an electric car, and took me to the nearest abortion clinic. It didn't matter how much I tried to explain that I was a man and thus unable to conceive a child. When they finally determined that I wasn't pregnant, they figured they had me there and might as well remove something, so they took out my pancreas and sold it to an ACORN employee for a pack of menthol cigarettes.

Just like Glenn and his "Chalkboard of Freedom" said they would.

Shit I Love...

1. Laughing my ass off. I have three different laughs. My favorite (and the least common) is uncontrollable laughter; the side-splitting kind where I have trouble breathing and my eyes tear up. Those of you who have watched my dorky videos are familiar with it. It's hard to know what will trigger it. Usually something really juvenile. The second laugh is my normal laugh. This is the most common laugh. I laugh like this throughout the day at various things I see or hear or read. The third is my least favorite - the courtesy laugh. When someone makes the effort and they're not a jerk and the situation calls for it, I'll reluctantly use it. I try to keep it to a minimum.
2. Watching Movies. I know I talk a lot about documentaries and they do dominate my Netflix queue, but I also watch a bunch of great narrative films, too. My list continues to grow. Every time I watch something, I think of ten more movies I still want to see. I don't really care when, where, or by whom the film was made. I like all sorts of stuff. I try to watch a movie I haven't seen every day.
3. Jeopardy! Most of you know about this. It is a six-day-a-week ritual and has been for most of my adult life. It's a show that lends itself to being played at home. As much as I'd love to be on the show, I know from my at-home experience that there would be at least a question or two that I would completely bomb and give some embarrassingly stupid answer for. As much as I love the show, the day Trebek announces his retirement will not be a sad one for me.
4. Downhill Skiing. Yesterday was my last day of skiing for the season. It happened to be the big St. Patty's/Mardi Gras/Hurry Up And Have A Party Before All The Snow Melts Party. It was a beautiful sunny day. I saw a few yahoos skiing in shorts. Even with a mass of extremely drunk people, there wasn't a single accident. I think it was a first. It was a good season with a lot of early snow that carried us through an extended dry spell. I love the combination of speed, motion, and winter weather when it comes to skiing. I'm glad I get to do it as much as I do.
   

Pure Video Magic...

I grabbed this off a Facebook post. There truly is no end to the amount of cringe-worthy videos available on the internet. This may be old, but I'd never seen it.