Monday, October 15, 2007
Daily Dude I Want to Hit: Cate Blanchett
DOB: May 14, 1969
Occupation: thespian, specializing in portraying virgin and/or elven queens
Hometown: Ivanhoe, Australia
Current residence: Sydney, Australia
Why I Want to Hit that Hotness: I really didn't pay much heed to poor critical reviews when I decided last week that seeing Elizabeth: The Golden Age on opening night was absolutely imperative. Any movie that involves Clive Owen looking all hot and unshaven, the epic struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism that had Europe all in a tizzy during the 16th century, naval battles, and fiery bitches riding around in full armor shouting things like, "Let them come with the armies of hell! They shall not pass!" pretty much falls into my must-see-ASAP category. So I went to see this movie with KatieScarlett on Friday night.
While the original Elizabeth was better, and while approximately 100% of the romantic scenes should have been replaced with scenes featuring Clive Owen sending kamikaze flame ships into the Spanish armada, I have to say that Cate Blanchett is the dope shit when it comes to acting with queenly authority. She's very good at marching around in crazy outfits and even crazier wigs with a regal bearing, and I would hate to be anyone incurring her displeasure. Being that I was PMSing, extremely sleep-deprived, unusually stressed, and hadn't had sex in over a week when I watched this movie, I was fully relating to Elizabeth's problems: overworked, underappreciated, and sexually frustrated. At one point I was getting a little misty-eyed because I could relate so seriously to Cate Blanchett's portrayal of the terrible burden borne by powerful, independent, intimidating, sexually frustrated women whose bitchy Catholic cousins are trying to assassinate them. Okay, none of my cousins have ever tried to pull a Mary Stuart and do me in, nor have I ever worried about charging them with treason and beheading them at the Tower of London, but still. It's as tough being a woman with a commanding presence now as it was in the 16th century. Dudes are threatened by you and thus it makes getting reliable, quality ass more difficult, and you end up with all sorts of responsibilities, and you have to look all hot and sexy while doing all of it. It can be completely exhausting. Then, just when you think that you chopped off your would-be throne-usurping cousin's head and everything is going to be back to normal, some effeminate, tyrannical religious zealot in Spain sends his army to blow your heretical Protestant asses into oblivion.
Cate Blanchett does a good job of getting her fucking act together and making lots of rousing speeches, reminding me that when faced with grave adversity, the true bitches don't run away with their tails between their legs. They execute their enemies, put on fly wigs, stand up straight, and rally their fighting seamen with oratory along the lines of, "Englishmen! That fleet bears in its bowels the horrors of the Inquisition! Stand and fight!" Then they hand the Spaniards a humiliating defeat, break out the mead and the mutton, and party like a rock star while establishing England as the world's greatest naval superpower for the next two centuries. That's some fierceness right there.
Anyway, Elizabeth: The Golden Age may not have achieved its potential for historical epic awesomeness, but I could still watch Cate Blanchett march around getting her order-barking on and having implied lesbian tension with her slutty lady-in-waiting Bess all day long. That is the royal hotness.
Labels: Daily Dude I Want to Hit, epic geekery, History Channel, movies
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Daily Dude I Want to Hit: the Matawan Creek shark
DOB: 1915?
Occupation: eating motherfuckers, especially children
Hometown: the Atlantic Ocean
Current residence: Lost to history; probably a storage facility in Manhattan
Why I Want to Hit that Hotness: Last night I watched a show on the History Channel called "Shark Attack 1916" about some hot shark that was biting people up and down the Jersey shore. Basically, there was a big heat wave and in the cities there were huge epidemics of "infantile paralysis" (AKA sexy poliovirus) in 1916, and all the people flocked to New Jersey to cool off at the beach. On the morning of July 1st, some college dude went swimming at Beach Haven with his dog, and didn't pay any attention when all the people started screaming that he was being followed by a large dorsal fin. The shark bit him, severed his femoral artery, and he died on the manager's desk of his hotel. Considering an arterial wound like his results in copious amounts of blood squirting everywhere, I bet the hotel manager was pissed as hell when he saw what his office looked like. People responded idiotically, saying that sharks don't bite people and suggesting that it was a freak accident involving a "large fish." The director of the Natural History Museum insisted that sharks don't have the jaw strength to actually bite anyone's leg off. The director of the Philadelphia Aquarium insisted that the shark "had come in to attack the dog and snapped the man in passing." I think not. The shark didn't go anywhere near the dog, and any shark that chooses to chomp on a frat boy versus a sweet, lovable pooch is a capital fellow in my book.
The shark wasn't done, however. It moved up the coast to Spring Lake and bit another guy's legs off on July 6th. He died on the beach. After this attack, shark hysteria kicked into full swing. Some beaches erected these metal nets on the beaches to keep sharks out, and everyone decided to do their swimming in fresh water. For example, the brackish stream emptying into Raritan Bay known as Matawan Creek. Bad move, because this shark wasn't fucking around. Then, on July 12th, a cantankerous local seaman reported that he saw a shark swimming into the Matawan Creek, but nobody believed him. The shark proceeded to completely eat some kid swimming in the creek a full 16 miles inland from the sea, and then ate a dude trying to recover the kid's body. This is my kind of shark: eating both obnoxious children and their defenders. Then the shark swam another half-mile upstream and bit yet another kid's leg off. Ha! Stupid kids!
At this point, everyone was completely freaked out since they didn't believe sharks would get into fresh water. They started stringing nets all over Matawan Creek, and even dynamiting the creek to kill the offending shark. At this point, however, the shark was like, "Get bent," and swam back to the ocean. It was unfortunately captured and killed by a taxidermist/circus lion tamer (seriously), who found a bunch of human remains and a boy's shin bone in its gut. The shark was a 7.5 foot young great white, and although there are theories suggesting that other types of sharks may have committed the attack, I choose to believe that this great white was indeed the culprit. For one thing, the shark biting everyone seemed to be a known epicure of human legs, and this one had a stomach full of legs. For another, although some so-called "scientists" say that all this man-eating is implausible even for a "rogue shark", Jaws 3-D and Jaws 4: The Revenge taught me that great white sharks will pursue a family all the way to Florida and the Bahamas in order to claim vengeance against (sexy drunk) Chief Brody's kin. I like to think that if this shark hadn't been caught, it would have bitten kept on swimming up to Coney Island and chowed kids like competitive eaters devour Nathan's famous hot dogs. What a hot fucking shark.
As an interesting epilogue, the dude who killed the shark stuffed it himself (he was a taxidermist by trade, after all), and hung it as a curiosity in his Harlem shop. Unfortunately, it was eventually lost and its whereabouts are unknown. If it ever resurfaces from the depths of history, I'm totally buying it and giving it a place of honor on my wall next to the deer head. It deserves it, for both helping to cull the population of children in New Jersey, and for causing terror just by existing and going about its business. Like I said before, what a hot fucking shark.
Labels: Daily Dude I Want to Hit, destroy all children, History Channel, seamen, sexy delicious animals
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Grandpa Ben would be proud
My Aunt Jesus once told me that my Grandpa Ben was rolling over in his grave in consternation about the content of my website. I have always doubted that, considering not even the cabalistic intrigue of the "Unsolved Mysteries" episode he was watching in his girlfriend's Puyallup double-wide on the night his soul journeyed up to Valhalla (or wherever the guys go who happen to die in a La-Z-Boy listening to the soothing gravelly sound of Robert Stack's voice rather than by being slain in glory on the battlefield) was sufficient to revive him. I think, though, that if he were to be resurrected and shown how to use the internet (which didn't exist when he died in 1991, and his ass did NOT use Prodigy) and waited for him to read my website through his one good eye, he'd at least be proud of my reminding the world of this unimpeachable fact:
NORWEGIANS HAVE BEEN KICKING DANISH ASS SINCE THE 11TH CENTURY AND CONTINUE TO DO SO TODAY!
As usual, something's rotten in the state of Denmark, or in this case, on a boat produced in the state of Denmark. Apparently the Sea Stallion, this replica Viking ship sailing from Denmark to Scotland to study "the seamanship of early Norsemen" got stalled in the North Sea due to calm weather conditions. Presumably the seamanship of early Norsemen was superior to the seamanship of extant Norsemen, especially Danish museum curators and history professors on summer break from the University of Copenhagen. They actually quit because of calm seas. I had no idea that Horse Latitudes existed up there, but apparently on either side of the equator isn't the only place you can experience a ship-stopping lack of wind. Since they were a bunch of unseaworthy wimps, the Danes running things decided to call for a tow to Scotland rather than just crack open a seal bladder full of gammeldansk and pass the time reading some Hans Christian Andersen or something while they waited for the breeze to pick up. I mean, jeez, it probably would have only taken a few days. It's not like they were subsisting on weevils and getting scorbutic.
In addition to their intolerance for pleasant, leisurely sailing conditions and their distaste for doing any actual rowing, Captain Carsten Fvid said that supposedly a couple sissy boys on the ship were also cold. Welcome to Scand-rock, bitches! Did you think you were going on a breadfruit mission to Tahiti or something and forget your Helly Hansen parkas? Some Vikings you are! Throw on a damn reindeer skin, nut up, and quit your bitching, you pussies! If the toughness of your modern sailors is any indication, it's no wonder Grendel busted into your Danish mead hall and went bowling with your ancestors' decapitated skulls without breaking a sweat. You all would have been wiped out if Beowulf didn't show up in the nick of time to save you with some clutch Goth barbarian asskickery.
This kind of quitting on a calm sea bullshit never would happen if Sig "The Hotness" Hansen was skippering the Sea Stallion instead of this Carsten Fvid jackass:
Unlike Carsten "The Boy Who Cried Hypothermia" Fvig, Sig wouldn't have allowed a little lack of wind or some nipply temperatures stop him from barking at the crew to man the oars and row that shit all the way to the North Pole. He'd just stoically zip up his Northwestern jacket and fire up a Marlboro with a contemptuous smirk on his face, holler at the crew to put their backs into it, and try to plot a course that would enable him to swing by the Bering Sea and fill the Sea Stallion's tanks with Red Gold. In fact, he probably wouldn't even have to get the crybaby Danish crew to row. Sig's presence probably generates such blistering heat that a hurricane would spontaneously form and provide the much-needed wind to blow him all the way to New York, much less Scotland. That's how Norwegian seamen do it. Leif Erikson (who was also Norwegian in spite of being born in Iceland...his father was Erik the Red, a Norwegian explorer, outlaw, and all around barbarian pimp who is singlehandedly credited with providing the genetic basis for the redheaded phenotype commonly observed in Ireland) did just that when he discovered North America and settled there with his hot wife Thorgunna around the time the original Sea Stallion was sinking to the bottom of the fjord at Roskilde in the mid 10-00's. Why did the Sea Stallion sink, you ask? Because the pussified Danes at the helm couldn't hold off a fierce fleet of bloodthirsty Norwegians, that's why! They didn't have cannons or gunpowder then, but I'm sure the turn-of-the-millenium Norwegian navy managed to find an effective way for bringing the hammer of Thor down upon those pathetic second-class Vikings. When will the History Channel make an hour-long "Viking Tech" show so that I can watch this sublime moment in my cultural history reenacted in low-budget CGI?
My grandfather might not be proud of my many drunken or depraved exploits (although he'd probably understand; when he died we took a stack of nudey mags as tall as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree out of his house), but he'd be beaming with nationalistic pride at my Norwegian smack talking. Grandpa Ben had a clever bit of verse for belittling all of his Scandinavian rivals, such as "ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds, chased by one Norwegian." I can't remember what he said about those fruitcakes from Denmark, but I know that he'd like ALL of what I just said. It would almost be enough to mitigate the sting of the Danes' electing a Prime Minister named Rasmussen (a move I'm pretty sure the Danish people conspired as a nation to make solely to besmirch my family name and piss me off). Here's to you, Grandpa Ben! If your surviving heirs hadn't thrown away your (completely rank from ten years of constant wear) Sons of Norway baseball cap after you passed on to the halls of Odin, I'd put it on and tip it to pay honor to our people's mighty history.
SKOAL! Stolt a bli Norsk!
NORWEGIANS HAVE BEEN KICKING DANISH ASS SINCE THE 11TH CENTURY AND CONTINUE TO DO SO TODAY!
As usual, something's rotten in the state of Denmark, or in this case, on a boat produced in the state of Denmark. Apparently the Sea Stallion, this replica Viking ship sailing from Denmark to Scotland to study "the seamanship of early Norsemen" got stalled in the North Sea due to calm weather conditions. Presumably the seamanship of early Norsemen was superior to the seamanship of extant Norsemen, especially Danish museum curators and history professors on summer break from the University of Copenhagen. They actually quit because of calm seas. I had no idea that Horse Latitudes existed up there, but apparently on either side of the equator isn't the only place you can experience a ship-stopping lack of wind. Since they were a bunch of unseaworthy wimps, the Danes running things decided to call for a tow to Scotland rather than just crack open a seal bladder full of gammeldansk and pass the time reading some Hans Christian Andersen or something while they waited for the breeze to pick up. I mean, jeez, it probably would have only taken a few days. It's not like they were subsisting on weevils and getting scorbutic.
In addition to their intolerance for pleasant, leisurely sailing conditions and their distaste for doing any actual rowing, Captain Carsten Fvid said that supposedly a couple sissy boys on the ship were also cold. Welcome to Scand-rock, bitches! Did you think you were going on a breadfruit mission to Tahiti or something and forget your Helly Hansen parkas? Some Vikings you are! Throw on a damn reindeer skin, nut up, and quit your bitching, you pussies! If the toughness of your modern sailors is any indication, it's no wonder Grendel busted into your Danish mead hall and went bowling with your ancestors' decapitated skulls without breaking a sweat. You all would have been wiped out if Beowulf didn't show up in the nick of time to save you with some clutch Goth barbarian asskickery.
This kind of quitting on a calm sea bullshit never would happen if Sig "The Hotness" Hansen was skippering the Sea Stallion instead of this Carsten Fvid jackass:
Unlike Carsten "The Boy Who Cried Hypothermia" Fvig, Sig wouldn't have allowed a little lack of wind or some nipply temperatures stop him from barking at the crew to man the oars and row that shit all the way to the North Pole. He'd just stoically zip up his Northwestern jacket and fire up a Marlboro with a contemptuous smirk on his face, holler at the crew to put their backs into it, and try to plot a course that would enable him to swing by the Bering Sea and fill the Sea Stallion's tanks with Red Gold. In fact, he probably wouldn't even have to get the crybaby Danish crew to row. Sig's presence probably generates such blistering heat that a hurricane would spontaneously form and provide the much-needed wind to blow him all the way to New York, much less Scotland. That's how Norwegian seamen do it. Leif Erikson (who was also Norwegian in spite of being born in Iceland...his father was Erik the Red, a Norwegian explorer, outlaw, and all around barbarian pimp who is singlehandedly credited with providing the genetic basis for the redheaded phenotype commonly observed in Ireland) did just that when he discovered North America and settled there with his hot wife Thorgunna around the time the original Sea Stallion was sinking to the bottom of the fjord at Roskilde in the mid 10-00's. Why did the Sea Stallion sink, you ask? Because the pussified Danes at the helm couldn't hold off a fierce fleet of bloodthirsty Norwegians, that's why! They didn't have cannons or gunpowder then, but I'm sure the turn-of-the-millenium Norwegian navy managed to find an effective way for bringing the hammer of Thor down upon those pathetic second-class Vikings. When will the History Channel make an hour-long "Viking Tech" show so that I can watch this sublime moment in my cultural history reenacted in low-budget CGI?
My grandfather might not be proud of my many drunken or depraved exploits (although he'd probably understand; when he died we took a stack of nudey mags as tall as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree out of his house), but he'd be beaming with nationalistic pride at my Norwegian smack talking. Grandpa Ben had a clever bit of verse for belittling all of his Scandinavian rivals, such as "ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds, chased by one Norwegian." I can't remember what he said about those fruitcakes from Denmark, but I know that he'd like ALL of what I just said. It would almost be enough to mitigate the sting of the Danes' electing a Prime Minister named Rasmussen (a move I'm pretty sure the Danish people conspired as a nation to make solely to besmirch my family name and piss me off). Here's to you, Grandpa Ben! If your surviving heirs hadn't thrown away your (completely rank from ten years of constant wear) Sons of Norway baseball cap after you passed on to the halls of Odin, I'd put it on and tip it to pay honor to our people's mighty history.
SKOAL! Stolt a bli Norsk!
Labels: Aunt Jesus, Deadliest Catch, epic geekery, family matters, History Channel, PWT, Razzification, seamen
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Protest
I fucking hate Valentine's Day. Even when I was in love and in a relationship I hated Valentine's Day. There's so much pressure to get crappy cards and presents and candy and all sorts of bullshit if you're in a relationship, and so much pressure to feel bad about yourself if you happen to be single. Valentine's Day should be renamed "Single People Pity Party Day", because I was at a bar tonight and the waitress could not stop trying to shove Guiness, Heineken, and mixed drinks involving lots of rum and splashes of fruit juice down our throats with this extraordinarily, obviously accomodating air. I was at this bar because it was my friend RefractometerThief's birthday, her husband is India on business, and she wanted to down some Heinies, not because I wanted to drown my sorrows. Besides, it snowed today, and that seemed like a good enough excuse to leave work early and consume beer. However, between the waitress, the sappy-ass bar soundtrack comprised solely of Celine Dion and Barry Manilow (what, no Lionel Richie? COME ON!), and people saying shit like "Do you have a Valentine...besides J-Sexy?", it's impossible not to notice that motherfuckers are expecting me and every other single person in sight to lament their non-coupled status.
I'm not going to feel sorry for myself in spite of the Coogan's waitress and society at large's best efforts, and I'm doing the most loser thing possible on V-Day: sitting around by the phone, semi-drunk alone, waiting for my mom to call with my uncle's latest colon report. My uncle, a self-proclaimed "mean S.O.B." and retired Boeing machinist by trade (his CB handle is "Toolmaker") finally caved to medical pressure and let them stick a scope up his ass a few months ago. He's survived a host of serious fucking problems: prostate cancer (twice), having a valve put at the base of his weiner to regulate his urine flow, a stroke, subsequent brain surgery, bacterial meningitis, and hearing loss in one ear. He still has the nuts to spend much of the Christmas holiday bitching about the pussy liberals who say negative shit about George W. Bush and who don't drink MacNaughton's. Well, when he finally conceded to his many doctors' requests to get an eyeful of his colon, they realized that he had over FIFTY polyps in it. They biopsied a few representative polyps, and the pathologist was promptly like, "Why doesn't he have colon cancer yet?" My uncle thus decided to have his ENTIRE COLON removed, and the entryway to his large intestine attached directly to his asshole. This is a major fucking surgery, and it will mean that he has to make major lifestyle changes to accommodate his new need to shit fifteen times a day. He's having all sorts of post-surgical complications, including renal failure, severe dehydration from the issues with his plumbing, and "reactions" to his medication, so I'm waiting for my mom to call and give me the update. There could not be a lamer way to spend Valentine's Day, but I've gone all-out to ensure that my Valentine's Day is as pathetic as possible.
In addition to waiting for my mom's call with the colon report, I am watching a show on the History Channel called "Siberian Apocalypse" about the mysterious explosion in the Tunguska Forest during the early part of the 20th century. According to the channel guide, it was supposed to be a show about the St. Valentine's Day massacre and Al Capone's involvement in the same, but I guess the History Channel figured that anyone home watching the History Channel on V-Day would rather hear about the Tunguska Blast of 1909. Apart from several other vague and relatively uninformative History and Discovery Channel shows about this incident, the main information I have about it was when Dan Aykroyd cited it as a historical paranormal incident in the sublime film Ghostbusters. Thus I can add "excited about History Channel show regarding an incident nobody really cares about" along with "sitting by myself", "waiting by the phone for my mom to call about bowels", and "drinking beer alone" to my list of Valentine's Day loserishness. But rather than indulge in self-pity, I'm going to revel in my bachelor status.
If I had a boyfriend, I'd probably have to spend all day shopping for some piece of shit watch or tie or whatever to give him and then fight for a table in some restaurant, neglecting my dogs and the Heineken in my fridge in the process. And why? Because some dumbass in the third century couldn't keep his Jesus love to himself and wound up on the business end of a Roman archer firing squad, and the church decided to strike back by making up his holiday on the same day that the pagans celebrated Zeus/Jupiter doing it with Hera/Juno. What a pointless fucking obligation. I'm not going to let the early Christians or Hallmark convince me to celebrate this bullshit by feeling sorry for myself. If I was going to sit around feeling lonely and desperate because Russell Stover, the DeBeers family, and the greeting card industry think I should, I wouldn't be able to chat it up with la madre and watch the (awesome) History Channel. I could not be more excited about spending my V-day in this way, because doing your basal alone behavior and enjoying it is the best protest against this stupid fucking holiday. I hope that every single person is doing their equivalent and loving it right now too. Fuck Valentine's Day!
I'm not going to feel sorry for myself in spite of the Coogan's waitress and society at large's best efforts, and I'm doing the most loser thing possible on V-Day: sitting around by the phone, semi-drunk alone, waiting for my mom to call with my uncle's latest colon report. My uncle, a self-proclaimed "mean S.O.B." and retired Boeing machinist by trade (his CB handle is "Toolmaker") finally caved to medical pressure and let them stick a scope up his ass a few months ago. He's survived a host of serious fucking problems: prostate cancer (twice), having a valve put at the base of his weiner to regulate his urine flow, a stroke, subsequent brain surgery, bacterial meningitis, and hearing loss in one ear. He still has the nuts to spend much of the Christmas holiday bitching about the pussy liberals who say negative shit about George W. Bush and who don't drink MacNaughton's. Well, when he finally conceded to his many doctors' requests to get an eyeful of his colon, they realized that he had over FIFTY polyps in it. They biopsied a few representative polyps, and the pathologist was promptly like, "Why doesn't he have colon cancer yet?" My uncle thus decided to have his ENTIRE COLON removed, and the entryway to his large intestine attached directly to his asshole. This is a major fucking surgery, and it will mean that he has to make major lifestyle changes to accommodate his new need to shit fifteen times a day. He's having all sorts of post-surgical complications, including renal failure, severe dehydration from the issues with his plumbing, and "reactions" to his medication, so I'm waiting for my mom to call and give me the update. There could not be a lamer way to spend Valentine's Day, but I've gone all-out to ensure that my Valentine's Day is as pathetic as possible.
In addition to waiting for my mom's call with the colon report, I am watching a show on the History Channel called "Siberian Apocalypse" about the mysterious explosion in the Tunguska Forest during the early part of the 20th century. According to the channel guide, it was supposed to be a show about the St. Valentine's Day massacre and Al Capone's involvement in the same, but I guess the History Channel figured that anyone home watching the History Channel on V-Day would rather hear about the Tunguska Blast of 1909. Apart from several other vague and relatively uninformative History and Discovery Channel shows about this incident, the main information I have about it was when Dan Aykroyd cited it as a historical paranormal incident in the sublime film Ghostbusters. Thus I can add "excited about History Channel show regarding an incident nobody really cares about" along with "sitting by myself", "waiting by the phone for my mom to call about bowels", and "drinking beer alone" to my list of Valentine's Day loserishness. But rather than indulge in self-pity, I'm going to revel in my bachelor status.
If I had a boyfriend, I'd probably have to spend all day shopping for some piece of shit watch or tie or whatever to give him and then fight for a table in some restaurant, neglecting my dogs and the Heineken in my fridge in the process. And why? Because some dumbass in the third century couldn't keep his Jesus love to himself and wound up on the business end of a Roman archer firing squad, and the church decided to strike back by making up his holiday on the same day that the pagans celebrated Zeus/Jupiter doing it with Hera/Juno. What a pointless fucking obligation. I'm not going to let the early Christians or Hallmark convince me to celebrate this bullshit by feeling sorry for myself. If I was going to sit around feeling lonely and desperate because Russell Stover, the DeBeers family, and the greeting card industry think I should, I wouldn't be able to chat it up with la madre and watch the (awesome) History Channel. I could not be more excited about spending my V-day in this way, because doing your basal alone behavior and enjoying it is the best protest against this stupid fucking holiday. I hope that every single person is doing their equivalent and loving it right now too. Fuck Valentine's Day!
Labels: History Channel, ranting, Razzification, scathing indictments
Friday, November 17, 2006
I hate musicals, but I LOVE the History Channel
In an attempt to mitigate the psychological scarring that witnessing tonight performance of Guys and Dolls, I'm drinking a Heineken and watching "Engineering an Empire: Carthage", which is all about how clever Hannibal was in terms of designing projectile weapons, strategically arranging mobile infantry battalions, and using vinegar to bore war elephant-sized tunnels through the Alps. I thought I recognied the host from somewhere, and it suddenly hit me.
Holy shit! "Engineering an Empire" is hosted by none other than the guy who played the title role in RoboCop! I guess that portraying a resurrected biomechanical police officer from the future and doing faux battle with the bipedal and dangerously malfunctioning ED-209 law enforcement droid qualifies you to discuss the great achievements in military engineering from the ancient world. Fucking awesome.
Holy shit! "Engineering an Empire" is hosted by none other than the guy who played the title role in RoboCop! I guess that portraying a resurrected biomechanical police officer from the future and doing faux battle with the bipedal and dangerously malfunctioning ED-209 law enforcement droid qualifies you to discuss the great achievements in military engineering from the ancient world. Fucking awesome.
Labels: epic geekery, History Channel, RoboCop, TV
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Stalking the Q-List
There is this blog called Gawker that has a section called "Gawker Stalker," where people lurking around Manhattan can report celebrity sightings along the lines of "Last night Chloe Sevigny was wearing some hideous outfit, sneering boredly, and blowing lines in the bathroom at Nobu, then she didn't tip the coat check girl" or "George Clooney took some whorish old bimbo to a benefit at Lincoln Center and shot his mouth off about politics" and other cut-rate gossip that isn't entertaining and frankly doesn't hold a candle to Perez Hilton.
I could never report anything to the Gawker Stalker, because I only ever see celebrities that nobody cares about in New York. Once I saw Stockard Channing having brunch at the table over at the Good World Bar and Grill. Another time LL Cool Jew and I saw Chris Matthews gasping into his cell phone after what must have been a vigorous jog, judging by his sweatiness and shortness of breath, at the 72nd street entrance to Central Park. Once I saw Gloria Steinem downtown, but that was no biggie since she was the number one alumnae whose pussy Smith College liked to regularly lick with various awards and trusteeships, and I'd always see her and her corduroy-collared jean jackets skulking around campus back in my college days. That same day, I caught a glimpse of Susan Sarandon and Billy Bob Thornton, but they were in a tent doing nothing remarkable. Probably the most exciting celebrity sighting was when LL Cool Jew, Rack, FalloniusMonk, Wmania, and myself bumped into Chris Noth, Mr. Big from "Sex and the City" and Detective Mike Logan from "Law and Order", randomly trying to get buzzed into some Upper East Side apartment. My New York celebrity sightings are nothing to blog about, because they are typically tame and uneventful.
Today's celebrity sighting was equally mundane, but I got all excited about it anyway. I had just finished the miserable experience of scouring various Ricky's stores for a costume that could be manipulated into a Lil' Kim outfit. Since everyone else in New York was also getting last-minute costumes, the process of locating a slutty purple leotard capable of being recut with minimal effort and an affordable purple wig in a large crowd of children and excitable teenagers to the aggravating tune of multiple Avril Lavigne and JoJo songs was about as close to hell as I can envision. When I finally left the store and got some Tasti-D-Lite to calm down, I was frazzled and trying to get back to the subway as quickly as possible.
Thus I didn't notice the man in the History Channel baseball cap standing on the corner of 72nd and Columbus Avenue, and bumped into him. As I looked up to say, "Excuse me," I stopped in shock. I was looking at none other than former NBC nightly news correspondent, sexpot journalist of the '91 Gulf War nicknamed the "Scud Stud", and current host of "History's Mysteries," ARTHUR KENT!
I managed to beg his forgiveness for running into him, but he kept giving me shifty looks. I think he thought I was weird, with my bag overflowing with fake purple hair and my dumbfounded stare as I shoveled butter pecan fudge Tasti-D-Lite with Oreos into my mouth. I felt awkward and I didn't want to seem like a stalker, so I hastened my clip and hustled into the subway station.
The whole way home, I kept thinking of shit I should have said to him when I had the chance. I should have said that I love "History's Mysteries" or that I thought he was hot when I was 11 and writing supportive letters to Operation Desert Storm servicemen in Mrs. Fjetland's 7th grade class. I should have at least asked him why in the name of God and Christ he was wearing a History Channel baseball cap, which in my view was a pretty effing nerdy fashion statement. As usual, I see a not-very-famous celebrity, and yet am still so awestruck by their presence that I fail to capitalize on the opportunity. Way to go, Razzy. At least I got my Lil' Kim costume.
I could never report anything to the Gawker Stalker, because I only ever see celebrities that nobody cares about in New York. Once I saw Stockard Channing having brunch at the table over at the Good World Bar and Grill. Another time LL Cool Jew and I saw Chris Matthews gasping into his cell phone after what must have been a vigorous jog, judging by his sweatiness and shortness of breath, at the 72nd street entrance to Central Park. Once I saw Gloria Steinem downtown, but that was no biggie since she was the number one alumnae whose pussy Smith College liked to regularly lick with various awards and trusteeships, and I'd always see her and her corduroy-collared jean jackets skulking around campus back in my college days. That same day, I caught a glimpse of Susan Sarandon and Billy Bob Thornton, but they were in a tent doing nothing remarkable. Probably the most exciting celebrity sighting was when LL Cool Jew, Rack, FalloniusMonk, Wmania, and myself bumped into Chris Noth, Mr. Big from "Sex and the City" and Detective Mike Logan from "Law and Order", randomly trying to get buzzed into some Upper East Side apartment. My New York celebrity sightings are nothing to blog about, because they are typically tame and uneventful.
Today's celebrity sighting was equally mundane, but I got all excited about it anyway. I had just finished the miserable experience of scouring various Ricky's stores for a costume that could be manipulated into a Lil' Kim outfit. Since everyone else in New York was also getting last-minute costumes, the process of locating a slutty purple leotard capable of being recut with minimal effort and an affordable purple wig in a large crowd of children and excitable teenagers to the aggravating tune of multiple Avril Lavigne and JoJo songs was about as close to hell as I can envision. When I finally left the store and got some Tasti-D-Lite to calm down, I was frazzled and trying to get back to the subway as quickly as possible.
Thus I didn't notice the man in the History Channel baseball cap standing on the corner of 72nd and Columbus Avenue, and bumped into him. As I looked up to say, "Excuse me," I stopped in shock. I was looking at none other than former NBC nightly news correspondent, sexpot journalist of the '91 Gulf War nicknamed the "Scud Stud", and current host of "History's Mysteries," ARTHUR KENT!
I managed to beg his forgiveness for running into him, but he kept giving me shifty looks. I think he thought I was weird, with my bag overflowing with fake purple hair and my dumbfounded stare as I shoveled butter pecan fudge Tasti-D-Lite with Oreos into my mouth. I felt awkward and I didn't want to seem like a stalker, so I hastened my clip and hustled into the subway station.
The whole way home, I kept thinking of shit I should have said to him when I had the chance. I should have said that I love "History's Mysteries" or that I thought he was hot when I was 11 and writing supportive letters to Operation Desert Storm servicemen in Mrs. Fjetland's 7th grade class. I should have at least asked him why in the name of God and Christ he was wearing a History Channel baseball cap, which in my view was a pretty effing nerdy fashion statement. As usual, I see a not-very-famous celebrity, and yet am still so awestruck by their presence that I fail to capitalize on the opportunity. Way to go, Razzy. At least I got my Lil' Kim costume.
Labels: celebrities, epic geekery, Halloween, History Channel
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