Oh yeah, I went to Lake Tahoe for x-mas. It is absolutely gorgeous there as you can see. I went with Jason, Balki, and Ezra. Here’s the trip in notable quotes:

“You are a bottle of jack away from closing that deal.”

“You need to start having sex with strangers.”

“I am a serial monogamist.”

“No matter what, Dan would tell you that he would have hit that.”

“Did you do that skiing?”

“I feel like every time I take a trip with you I lose a year off my life.”

“This place smells like strippers.”

“I want to see the crutches work their magic.”

“So, are you into guys or girls?”

“It looks like Montbleu only brought out the starters.”

“In chinatown they call that a ‘rucky nickel’”

“I don’t see myself staying away past six am.”

A more coherent write-up another time.

Writer’s strike? Who gives a fuck, American Gladiators is back on!

After the injury I watched a ton of American Gladiators on ESPN Classic and wondered why a show like that ever went off the air. Cheesy pro-wrestling theatrics? Check. Injury lawsuit waiting to happen? Check. What else do you need?

And now it’s back! If they could get rid of all the talking, the show would be awesome or as Wil Weaton suggested, take a drink every time Hulk Hogan says “brother”. The events themselves aren’t terrible, though I’m still trying to figure out how the Eliminator is so fucking difficult now. Is climbing a cargo net really that difficult?

There is one nice thing about all the talking though, you get to hear people say the most ridiculous things possible. In the first episode, my favorite line was from one of the female contestants before the Eliminator. She said “I’m all prayed up.” I guess it really strikes me as funny because she honestly meant it and the only other time I’ve heard “prayed up” is when people ask me if I want to go to church with them. “No thanks, I’m all prayed up.” Tonight’s episode had another gem from a female contestant before the rings event, “My momma is here and she told me to make her get wet.” Yeah. Right. Not creepy. It’s already in the DVR list.

Where is Bay Ridge? It’s an hour subway ride into Brooklyn, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you all I can say is “far from me”. It also happens to be where I spent NYE, hanging out with CC and Sarah.

We had a nice dinner and a million drinks at the Pearl Room before hitting a couple random bars for the afterhours business. All in all, it was a good time for all. It’s odd going out to the other burroughs. When I’m out there it feels just like being out at my favorite bars in Texas. A lot of locals, so many that they don’t even know each other. It’s a comfortable feeling, being surrounded by a group of people that feel at home. I don’t feel like I get that often in Manhattan. It was a nice feeing for NYE.

The train to and from was brutal. At 5:30 in the morning, it’s more like an hour and a half. Which means I made it home just in time for dawn.

Yeah, it was a long day, but I had a good time. And now I’m doing what everyone does on New Years Day. A whole lot of nothing. I was awake to catch dusk though.

Happy New Year and all that business.

Lake Tahoe trip complete. How do you celebrate x-mas at DFW airport?

With jager shots and dos equis, of course. More on the trip and my knee status later.

One of my friends recorded my set from Caroline’s on his camera and posted it to youtube for your viewing pleasure. Take a look for yourself.

Well, I managed to make it through the comedy show. First off, thanks to the people that made it out to the show, I sincerely appreciate it.

Overall I felt like my set went well, but the show on the whole was a complete disaster. The MC never showed, so not only did the show start late, but it basically ran without a host the entire time, which is negative for a lot of reasons. Usually the MC is the established comedian that can get the audience laughing. I didn’t have that luxury. And unfortunately the woman who went before me had a terrible, terrible set. Oh well, there will definitely be a next time.

The post-show party was where the fun began though, Rudy’s, the fantastic dive bar, followed by absurd antics at Sing Sing. Yeah, because it totally makes sense to go to a kareoke bar after you’ve gone through a million pitchers of beer. Fantastic.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. The downtime with the leg left me a lot of free time to check out a bunch of bands that I’ve been meaning to over the past few months. And to top it off there are some other random music notes.

• I’ve been crazy obsessed with Ladytron lately, which is really funny because I recently read a list of music to find from my work hard drive at NI and Ladytron was on the list
• Cansei De Ser Sexy - I admire any group that can come up with lyrics like “Let’s make love and listen to Death From Above”. Death from Above was awesome too in a totally different way, you should check them out (you may recognize their song “Romantic Rights” as the theme song to Human Giant, the best thing MTV has given us since Head Banger’s Ball).
• I’m not exactly sure what to make of them, but I’m really liking “I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You” by the Black Kids. If nothing else their band name is funny.
• Keeping with the dancing thread, Los Campesinos “You! Me! Dancing!” (unofficial link). Wow, I’m totally gay for cheesy dance music. Awesome. I blame the percocet.
• Unless you were really paying attention, you probably didn’t know that Portishead (yeah, that’s right) played a live show last weekend at the ATP festival. Now that would be amazing to see. They’re playing a couple other one-off shows, but I still have my fingers crossed that they’ll start playing more. Look on youtube for videos from the show, including a bunch of new songs.
• Sarah turned me on to Blockhead, beating John in the Morning on KEXP to the punch. After listening to the cd on Sarah’s recommendation I heard John in the Morning play one of the songs last week.
• Another Sarah recommendation, 24 Hour Party People, a (for all practical purposes) true account of Factory Records and the Manchester music scene in the late 70s through the 80s, following bands like Joy Division/New Order and a bunch of other bands (or at least songs) that you’ll recognize. Totally worth watching.
• I watched Hostel again over the weekend. I thought the movie was pretty good, but I’m still amazed at their choice for music during the sex scene with the Slovakian girls. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about because you were…distracted, the song is “How Do” by the Sneaker Pimps. That song predates the movie by about 10 years. It’s really too bad the Sneaker Pimps got rid of the girl, which if I remember correctly they did because they were tired of her getting all the press. To her credit, she was both hot and has a sexy voice. She’s always going to win over the nerdy guys who play all the instruments, write all the songs, and arrive having eaten.

I can’t wait until I can walk so I can start going to the rock shows again. Oh yeah, and my knee still hurts.

As few of you remember, I took a stand-up comedy class earlier this year that ended with a performance at Caroline’s on Broadway. It’s happening again.

The details:
Where: Caroline’s on Broadway (Broadway between 49th and 50th)
When: Saturday Dec. 15th. Doors at 3:30pm.
How much: $10 cover and 2 drink minimum (I know it’s a bit steep, that’s just how it works until I get famous)
Why: I will either be funny or give you material to make fun of me with for the rest of my life. Plus you will have an excuse to get your drink on before the sun goes down on Saturday.

I know the five of you that read this regularly are nowhere near New York, but if you happen to be come watch me perform.

Movie Reviews - In my semi-conscious state, I’ve been watching a boatload of TV and movies.

All In - fantastically bad. Finally a movie about poker! And the main character is a girl! And her nickname is Ace! How cute is that?!? Story so full of holes I can’t even begin to question it. If they weren’t ruining poker, they were making amazingly inaccurate statements about medicine.

Shopgirl - This movie is based on a novel that Steve Martin wrote. He also stars in the movie with Claire Danes and she is his love interest. There is a scene where Claire Danes is naked lying on his bed. It’s like the episode of My So-Called Life you always hoped for. The movie itself is alright.

Twins - I only caught the end of this, but this movie totally reminds me of how unnecessary it was to have a solid plot in the late 80s. Genetically engineered twins separated at birth? That’s a good start, but how are we going to tie it all together in the end. Oh, right, with a stolen jet engine that some thugs are trying to sell on the black market. Now we’ve got a story. And don’t even get me started on the fact that anyone selling a prototype jet engine on the black market probably wouldn’t sell the actual prototype, but rather the plans for such a device. I also love reading the reviews on imdb, check this one:

“Twins is a hilarious film and one of DeVito and Schwarzenegger’s best films of all. Schwarzenegger is the kind of actor that can act in serious movies and funny movies. He certainly proves he can do that in this movie. And DeVito is just perfect for his role. From start to finish, Twins is a hilarious movie that makes your sides ache with laughter”

You’d think he was getting a kickback from the studio. My sides are aching.

Fight Club - Still awesome. Simply a fucking good movie. If you haven’t watched it you should. And if you didn’t like it, you probably don’t like me.

Back to the Future - For a pepsi commercial, it’s really good.

Back to the Future III - I’m still torn on whether this is worse than Part II or not. It is definitely not my favorite movie; though that didn’t keep me from watching the whole thing.

Second Sight - It’s always good to see Balki Bartakomos getting other acting gigs. This movie is terrible, though it is a good commercial for goobers, which are delicious.

The Roost - this is a shitty horror film that I only watched because it shares the name of my neighborhood cocktail bar by my house in Austin. This movie doesn’t even compare to an awesome karaoke 7 days a week bar.

Blade - that ‘bloodbath’ opening scene is still awesome. I love that song (Confusion - New Order).

50 First Dates - Oh Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler, you might just turn into Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan if you don’t look out.

The Replacements - I’m a sucker for Keanu Reeves movies and football movies. Throw in a drunk English soccer player with a gambling problem as the kicker and you’ve got a winner. I guess they couldn’t get Sandra Bullock, so they went with the look-a-like, Brooke Langton http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0486728/

Happy Gilmore - Still one of Adam Sandler’s best movies

Spies Like Us - classic.

Shawshank Redemption - so good. It also makes it easy to pass 3 hours of your day without noticing.

Mallrats - This movie probably has the worst plot of all of the Kevin Smith movies, but I like it the most. Just so quotable, it ends with Suzanne by Weezer, and Shannon Dougherty is in it. What’s not to like?

Revenge of the Nerds - I can’t say enough good things about this movie. It still holds up today. I do like how they were able to win the carnival by using naked pictures that they had secretly taken of the cool sorority. The Lamda Lamda Lamda music performance definitely makes the movie great. It still cracks me up how much the 120 Days song “Come out come down fade out” reminds me of this song. Especially since they were such douchebags the two times I’ve seen them live.

Revenge of the Nerds II - I love that at the beginning of the movie Booger packs a bag of condoms to take to Miami with him. Half of them are already open. I guess you have little concern when your name is Booger. You can tell this movie is good because it ends with a high five.

Revenge of the Nerd III - I like to see the third in a series, particularly when the second one sucked so much. It’s an easy way to determine which actors from the first movie are completely washed up. This movie is terrible. Under no circumstances should you subject yourself to it. My favorite moment is when they replaced Gilbert with a different actor at the end of the movie. And it was a fat guy at that. I guess Anthony Edwards is too famous to be doing cameos in Revenge of the Nerds movies.

Roads - I watched this entire movie, but it didn’t make much impact on me. I guess there was some kind of supernatural aspect to it, that I didn’t expect from the cable guide description and when it ended I thought there was at least another 30 minutes left in the movie.

2 Fast 2 Furious - To this day I still haven’t seen the original fast and the furious. But I have seen 2 and 3 a million times. Tonight 2 Fast is on USA. I like watching these movies on regular cable because I love to see the way they cut out bad words and such. This movie is full of bad hand gestures, like flipping off and the jerking off motion. Someone went in and digitally fixed the flipping off so it was just a fist in the air. I want to meet the kid who does stuff like that for a living. It must be hard to describe on your resume. This movie also features one of the cheesiest torture techniques I think I’ve ever witnessed in a “legitimate” movie. The bad guy puts a rat on someone’s stomach, puts a metal pail over the rat and the uses a blowtorch on the pail, which somehow convinces the rat that it needs to chew its way out. It seems like the pail would just burn the man severely before the rat really started doing its thing. Maybe I don’t know that much about rats though. Either way, watch this movie, you’ll like it, but be ashamed that you do.

Selena - Oh Selena, she was so ghetto fabulous and would have been a huge star if she hadn’t been killed by Yolanda, who mannerisms resemble my mother’s. I’ve probably seen this movie 15 times, but this is the first time I caught it on a movie channel. They definitely cut out a lot of Tejano music action to make the movie fit into 2hrs with commercials. And damn Jennifer Lopez does bear a striking resemblance to Selena. I still remember the time my mom asked me if I wanted to meet Selena. I really didn’t know who Selena was at the time and I had no desire to fall for another “spending time together” trick, so I passed.

I’ve been watching a lot of tv. Soon I’ll have movie reviews for the majority of movies that I’ve watched in the past couple weeks. Be prepared to read my thoughts on great movies such as Revenge of the Nerds and Revenge of the Nerds 2. For now, here’s the worst things to watch:

1. Documentaries about surgical mishaps - This mainly comes from MSNBC. Usually this kind of shit just really annoys me because it seems like they are destroying a doctor’s life because some super-risky procedure didn’t work and the victim’s family just happens to have enough money to sue everyone in sight. Now they just make more more paranoid, so I have thoughts like “what if my leg hurts so bad because someone dropped a Junior Mint in it?”
2. Addiction documentaries featuring people who were so addicted to percocet that they have to take methodone to get clean.
3. Soccer - for obvious reasons.
4. Las Vegas (the tv show) - I’m going to have to pass on the blogger event in Vegas next weekend. I think it would be a little wrong of me to miss 2 weeks of work and then go on vacation the week I get back. Plus I probably wouldn’t be much fun because once I sit down somewhere, I’m not moving again.
5. Anything on WGN - What the fuck happened to WGN? It used to be a relatively decent network that showed generic re-runs, like USA and TBS. Now all they have is America’s Funniest Home Videos and America’s Funniest Pets. These are easily the worst two shows on television. I have no idea who is keeping these shows on the air. Who thinks it is a good idea to send in their video? How much longer will it be funny to watch a dad get hit in the crotch by his child? WGN should really just go for the gold and pick up Kids Say the Darndest Things and complete the annoying TV trifecta.