Kids show predicts end of mankind

I've been meaning to post this for awhile now, but it took me some time (another way of saying "awhile") to find the clip.

Those of you in my immediate demographic will remember Talk Soup, a show that played clips of various talk shows---then in their hey day---and then tore into them hilariously. The show fell into the doldrums during a five year stretch after its host (and only on-air personality) left, but was miraculously reborn (not unlike Jean Gray from X-Men, or Jesus from the New Testament) when a Rose Bowl ring-wearing Seattleite named Joel McHale stepped in.

The new reincarnation, called The Soup, ruthlessly chides the absurd world of reality TV, celebrity gossip, and just generally the vacuous self-import people on TV give themselves.

While it may not fit into any of those above categories, a few months ago, McHale derided this underproduced kids show called "Gina D's" that included a bizarre song and dance number that manages to unite the creative space between Nostradamus and Barney the Dinosaur. With her voice creepily enhanced by that weird Cher-"Believe" underwater effect, Gina D tells her youthful progeny that:

"There's a land of all dinosaurs/
spread around American shores/
waiting for the day and planning their way/
to rule all the world."

I'm sorry, what? First, there's a secret land of dinosaurs hidden somewhere among the coastline of the U.S.: the most populated part of the country? And second, these maniacal reptiles are working together to devise a plot to rise up and take over the entire planet? This is like the DinoBots teaming up with Cobra Command, for god's sakes. But does Gina D offer unilateral progressive bargaining arbitration with the dinosaur aggressors, or a campaign of preemptive special forces strikes to incapacitate their fragile clam-shell communication network? No, she just keeps fucking singing in that tin-can aqua-voice.

Later in the clip, other Soup staples such as Mankini and Running Prostitute wander around the set. All in all, it's pretty damn funny. If you think otherwise, you're wrong. Dead wrong.

More "Soup" clips can be found on the show's YouTube channel. New ones air and re-air Tuesday's at 8:30am and 9:00pm, Wednesdays at 1:00pm, and Thursdays at 6:30pm. Send me a check, Joel.

"Sweet!"

You're gonna thank me for this one.

You probably (didn't) read my post on American Gladiators a few months ago, but this is an excellent follow-up to it (with much thanks to Mr. Chris, Esq.). In the previous post, there's a shot of Gladiator Malibu giving a sick arm pump after nailing some douchebag with the tennis ball cannon in The Assault. Thankfully, somebody with too much time managed to actually find a clip of Malibu being interviewed by one of the "floor reporters" after a nasty hit he took during the Human Cannonball. You will not be disappointed by this clip.

Malibu speaking.

It's pretty obvious that his lines were written by the same stoned dudes who wrote the script for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. And I'll note, dorkingly, that Malibu probably wouldn't come out from a day of "cosmic rays" with the deep beach tan he's prominently displaying to all the girls in the audience with hot pink tank tops and cut-off jean shorts.

And for all us mid->late 20-something males out there, you'll be "shitting the bed" with joy to hear that ESPN Classic purchased the rights to American Gladiators, and is currently showing it every weeknight at 7pm and weekends at 9am and 10am.

Back to my day off.

BIBLE FIGHT!

While searching for a video of the dancing robot for the dancing robot post (it's always good to start out a post with redundancy), I naturally started out with the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim's website. Something on it caught me eye; it was a game called BIBLE FIGHT.

It's pretty simple. You choose your favorite biblical character (choice of Noah, Moses, Mary, Jesus, Eve, and Satan, plus one secret character) and your opponent from the same list, then you fight Street Fighter II style. There may be no Blanka electricity or Ryu's "shoryuken!", but Noah's "Two of Everything Stampede" and Jesus' "Cross Smash" are noble replacements.

(ABOVE) Me as Jesus putting the hurt on Noah with a sick overheard Cross Smash.

Everyone from the pope on down to my atheist friends should enjoy this game. Also, if you're able to beat Satan in the Arcade option, let me know who the secret character is. I'm guessing it's either God or the game programmer's avatar from Second Life.

Play BIBLE FIGHT, and tell your friends you found it here---as if you have any friends besides me.

oh me, oh my

I hate writing about real stuff that happens to me in reality because who really cares what's going on in my little corner of the world? I mean, I just completed Gran Turismo on the hardest setting (reference anyone?), but why should you care? Actually that would be pretty spectacular from my point of view.

Anyway, I spent about 4 hours at Kaiser Permanente on Tuesday getting two sets of X-rays and visiting the orthopedist twice as well. Though I did gain the ability to see through walls from the seven x-rays I had done, that wasn't the point of my visit to the ole' HMO joint.

(ABOVE) My non-adamantium skeleton and its unintelligent design

You see, I went skiing in Vail back in February during which I fell...over and over and over again. The biggest fall was also pretty much my last, and the one that I think landed me in the situation I'm in now. I chose the words "fall" and "landed" very carefully, because during the Minturn Mile run I hit the third of a set of three man-sized moguls a bit crooked and ended up sailing through the air into the side of a hill, landing on my right shoulder.

I'd be lying if I said that a spill I took during my first run at Whitetail a week earlier in Pennsylvania wasn't the instigator of all of this shoulder trouble, but that'd be a pretty fucking pathetic story to tell at bars...as I found out the other night.

I still blame my inadvertent hang-time out in the backcountry in Vail for wildly exacerbating the injury, though. My friend Eric was there, he'd back me up on that spill. In fact, I can still remember him laughing hysterically when it happened, followed by the compensatory "uhh...are you alright dude?" Of course, as a guy, having "dude" and "you alright?" in the same sentence mandates a response of "fuck you dude, I'm fine."

According to those ability-enhancing x-rays, however, my shoulder doesn't think so. I've either got a fractured glenoid (the cup that holds the ball of the humerus) or a slightly torn rotator cuff (the thing that helps my curve ball hang instead of drop). If it's a fracture there's a chance that there's a few bits of bone hilariously floating around in my shoulder causing me pain, in which case I'd need arthroscopic surgery to reunite them with my savings account. No matter what it is, I need an MRI, which is cool but not cheap. With an MRI I'd also get to enjoy a "magnetic shit" injection, as I call it, directly into my shoulder. Since I love needles so much, I may as well plan on hyperventilating and passing out that day, in addition to driving to fucking Fairfax. Maybe I'll take advantage of the situation and pick up some delicious suburbs-only fare like Noodles & Company while I'm at it.

The really fun part is that I got to wait 2.5 weeks before I could see the orthopedist, and I get to wait another 4 weeks to see her again (assuming I can fit in and afford an MRI in the meantime).

Now, I'm not ragging on MRIs, they're pretty cool shit. From what I've read on CNN.com's tech section, they can see into the future to predict how shitty your life is about to get. They also excel at making you feel like you're stuck in a really expensive trashcan for an extended period of time. Pretty amazing stuff.

Anyway, no matter what happens, I'm on pins and needles about finally being able to join in on conversations when people talk about broken bones, because I never have before (KNOCK ON WOOD !!! /.... LOL!!!LLOL!!1LO!O/!!7O11!L!L). I can also join those supermacho conversations about sports injuries, which in most cases, are probably more underpinned by acute office-related atrophy than Dan Cortese-esque extreme sports accidents.

Whatever happens, I wish god had given me an adamantium skeleton instead of this intelligently-designed bullshit.

Still not sure why I care, but...

It's like almost midnight, and the stupid Warriors/Jazz game is only at half-time. This comment is weird for two reasons.

1. I don't really like basketball, especially the NBA.
2. I've never even been to Oakland/SanFran nor Utah (or "ni...ni..." for you Spanish-speakers)

So why should I care so much about whether or not a team from a town I've never been to that I've admittedly never heard of until the playoffs wins or not? That's a horrendous sentence, I'm sorry. But not as sorry as you were when you clicked on that Hammer Bros. link in the Pop Quiz #2 post, sweet jesus.

I'm exhausted from working a 12-hour day, so I'll conclude by saying that the world should all work in the same time zone even though it would mean those wacky arabs and asians working in perpetual darkness just so that I could catch the end of this game instead of finding out tomorrow morning that the Warriors blew the game with their a) missed free throws b) sloppy ball-handling or c) awesome haircuts. That is, of course, if my computer is able to load ESPN.com's usual video and advertisement orgasm. I blame the lingering ghost of Kenny Mayne's smugness for that, by the way.

Anyway...uhh...Go Warriors!

UPDATE: GOD DAMNIT!.

Gross

Let this be a lesson on checking your work. So I just found out that some of you who clicked on the Hammer Bros. link in the Pop Quiz #2 post were treated to a nice image of a hairy-old-man threesome. Actually I'm not even sure there were three of them; I just saw fat, hair, penises, and that was enough to close the IE window like I just touched a hot stove.

The link is now fixed and will route you away from www.thewarpzone.co.uk, the perpetrator of the above-given male-on-male crime. The site must be playing really hilarious games with its links. I'm sure as shit laughing my ass off here at work as security is hustling their way up to my cubicle with guns drawn and a red "sex offender" sack to throw me into.

Again, my apologies, I really hope none of you get fired.

PLAYOFFS !?!

I rarely write anything about sports...in fact I never do...nor do I ever really think about sports, especially when it comes to the million-dollar baby league known as the NBA. But, I found 8-seed Golden State's 4-2 series upset over the 1-seed Mavericks, a first in NBA history, compelling enough to root for the Warriors and watch about three quarters and half of overtime during last night's game, even though it means not seeing any Mark Cuban highlights for the next 9 months.

Maybe I like Golden State because they don't have any big names and therefore no expectations nor outrageous egos, or maybe I just like rooting for the underdog. I saw Baron Davis do the Five Good Minutes segment on PTI last week and he convinced me that they're the team to root for. Also, every time I hear Stephen Jackson's name uttered by the announcers I giggle because that Ball State sportscaster somehow managed to say "Stephen Jackson's Stephen" during his historically awful segment.

Watching them play last night was actually entertaining. They have the energy of a Final Four college team and their ability to pass the ball (entertainingly) has clearly made a difference in the playoffs. I'm not too knowledgeable about basketball strategies, but on offence their penetration near the board was lacking, and they were often spread way to far across the court with random picks thrown here and there, which probably resulted in the poor penetration. I think the wild passing may have confused the Jazz but not enough obviously.

The real letdown came when Mickael Pietrus missed two free throws with like 20 seconds left that would've won the game for the Warriors. After that the Jazz took over and won in OT convincingly. Oh well.

And for my own entertainment, here's Jim Mora yelling about the "PLAYOFFS!?!"

Bumps

I'm a proud if not confused fan of the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup. I'm maybe not so into the weird import japanime, but rather the reruns of Futurama and Family Guy, as well as the forcibly odd Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, and Home Movies shows.

Adult Swim has these strange little animated segments before each show starts that are called "bumps." Maybe they're called that because they usually have some weird electronic music bumping in the background, or because they're so short (like 10 seconds) they're just a bump in the programming. Whatever the purpose, they quickly succeed at making you feel like you're a depthless, suited yes-man talking to an impenetrably pretentious art school kid living in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn. I'd also describe them as if you were watching a hybrid of a Aphex Twin, Beastie Boys, and Black Hole Sun-era Soundgarden music video.

Words are meaningless for describing video, so here's one I found absolutely hilarious for some weird reason. Maybe I was just really tired. It's this goofy looking giant robot dancing with a bunch of bikini-clad women to a ridiculous techno beat, but then something goes horribly wrong for no reason. Make sure you turn the sound on, and enjoy it if you can.

Click here for the video, or on the above picture.

Congrats

Congrats to my good friend Nate K and his wife on their marriage this past weekend. It was loads of fun and I wish them all the luck in the world (minus the luck I horde for myself). While it's obviously quite exciting on its own, this marriage will also help to serve as a good litmus test for the other three Nate's I know.

Pop Quiz #2

A couple months ago I put up a pop quiz that was sorta about work, and inspiration struck me on a 40-minute Metro ride back from Silver Spring to do another. So here's another:

1. You're at a full-day meeting in-town but out of the office on Tuesday; everyone expects you not to come back until tomorrow. The meeting, miraculously (and unrealistically) ends at noon instead. What do you do?

a) Put a call into the office to tell your staff that you're on your way back in and look forward to the unexpected chance to get some work done today.
b) Grab a nice, long lunch and slowly meander your way back to work.
c) Blow off work for the rest of the day since nobody's expecting you and go home and relax.
d) Take the rest of the month off.

The answer depends on who you're talking to when you tell the story. If you're talking to your boss' boss, it's a). If you're talking with your boss, it's b). If you're with your co-workers, it's c), and if you're talking open-endedly in an electronic public forum to a bunch of friends it's d).


2. That really annoying but really friendly guy down the hall has taken yet another 20 minutes of your valuable web-surfing time away from you with his pointless banter. How do you refer to him behind his back?

a) a "maybe-too-friendly" guy
b) a weener
c) a weirdo
d) a freak
e) a fucking dick-sucking douchebag motherfucker

The answer depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to your boss' boss, it's a). If you're talking to the hot blond with the sweet rack, it's b) (chicks love dorky 80's throwback colloquialisms). If you're with your boss, it's c). If you're with your co-workers, it's d), and if you're drunk in a bar bathroom muttering to yourself as you piss all over the seat it's e).


3. If you had your choice, which Nintendo (NES) villain would you like to see go on a rampage through your building?

a) the Hammer Bros. from Super Mario Brothers
b) King Hippo from Mike Tyson's Punchout!
c) The Amazon from Pro Wrestling
d) Death himself from Paperboy
e) Metal Man from Megaman 2
f) Giant Gay Free-style-walking Alien Mutant Boy from Contra

The obvious answer might be f) for comedic value alone, but don't underestimate the carnage a pair of armored, vulturine turtles can muster when they start lobbing hundreds of hammers through the air in a confined space.


4. When sitting in a 1.5-hour meeting beginning at 8:30am on Monday, what unrelated topic will your mind wander to first?

a) the chick on the Metro with the sweet rack
b) the boiling revenge you desire to be visited upon the enormously obese woman on the Metro who squeezed you out of the spot from which you could see the chick with the sweet rack
c) if any bagels will be left in the cafeteria by the time the meeting ends
d) trying to remember what you did last weekend, even though it ended only 12 hours earlier
e) wondering why you wore brown socks with black pants, then mentally dropping it, but then readdressing it 5 seconds later when you notice it again

You'll inevitably thoroughly cover all of these topics within the span of about 20 seconds, leaving you with nothing to think about but how bored you are for the following hour and a half. So there's no real answer to this, just pain and suffering.


5. Somebody you barely know tries to start a conversation with you at about 100 decibels in an elevator with 6 other people in it. How do you respond to their declarative/interrogative/imperative/exclamatory remark/question/suggestion/observation?

a) "Uh-huh."
b) "Oh yeah?"
c) "Mmm."
d) "Huh."
e) "Heh."
f) [faint nod]
g) [deafening silence]

All the ground rules of common etiquette and interpersonal interaction are thrown out the window upon entering an elevator, it's like sitting in a shiny coat closet with 8 strangers for 30 seconds. With that in mind, the nature, subject matter, and tone of the person's statement is completely immaterial, so you can get by with any of these answers as long as you make no eye contact whatsoever and just keep staring infatuatedly at the numbers counting the floors you pass. Though personally, in a crowded elevator, I prefer the most nonverbal affirmation of existence possible so as not to imply amicability or even familiarity (nor encouragement) with the loser who's trying to start a 15-second conversation because he wonders how what you think of the difference between the first and last two weeks of April's weather compares to his/her own judgment of it. Answer g) is by far preferable if you can realistically pretend the person never even walked onto the elevator, but f) is usually the safer option.

(ABOVE) "At Cass Screw Machine Products, You're One In A Million!"