Is anyone else wondering if EVIL was the inspiration for this story?

Evil
Even though I've lived in New York for most of my life, I seldom witness anything out of the ordinary. For example, I've never seen a celebrity. And I'm not talking about Madonna or DeNiro... I haven't so much as been in the same bagel shop as Regis Philbin. Two summers ago, I ran the Central Park reservoir anywhere from 3 to 5 times a week, usually in the middle of the day. I figure the odds were against me NOT running into Howard Stern, but hey, it didn't happen.

It's sunny today, so I was at the Great Lawn, tanning, and generally minding my own business when two chicks, who were about 20 feet to my immediate left, dropped their bikini tops. WHAT? Is today Nudist Pride Day or something? Am I being disrespectful by wearing shorts? Let me tell you... these two chicks were smokin'. The blonde girl had breasts like right out of an x-rated Anime film. If she had a nickname, it would be The Girl With The Perkist Tits in Manhattan. The other girl was a redhead (no "firecrotch" comments from the gallery, please) and had great nipples in her own right. They started rubbing lotion on their boobs and it was at this point that I had to turn over and lie on my stomach, if only out of respect for the little kids who were also sharing the Great Lawn.

Evil
There's a site that takes long-ass URLs and gives you back a short URL for easier use. I think that's pretty cool. For example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/
international/worldspecial/14CND-IRAQ.html?hp

becomes: http://tinyurl.com/gxha

HOW DOES THAT WORK? Since I know there are at least three computer science majors out there, I thought this might be an interesting thing to think about. According to the site, the short redirection links never expire, so they are not recycled. To be honest, I don't really expect Big Head or Mr. Shoulders to come up with an explaination, but Ken is Japanese, so Ken... don't disappoint!

(Unrelated...) By the way, X-TIAN: that girl's official nickname is "No Incidental Contact Girl." Missing the "No" part makes a big difference. It's like the time that I had knee problems and told my Crazy White Friend that the doctor had prescribed "inflammatories" (as opposed to anti-inflammatories). Needless to say, she laughed at me for being a clown.

(Unrelated still...) Lastly, here is picture #2 from the "Bad Parenting Photos" series.

I am still confused about Manolo and Ken hanging out together driving around in a Camry with underbelly neon. Who wore the pattern black mess shirt tight sh*t?

Did the Incidental Contact Girl get married? Is that why you guys were in Portland? Damn, Mr. Shoulders still has not gotten within 10 ft of her.

Evil
Hey Manolo! Congrats on getting laid in your car. Was it as good for you as it was for him?

Two posts for the price of one...

Smells like sex and candy

About a month ago, I started to write my first post on the site but my computer crashed. Being the lazy bastard that I am, I took it as a sign and went to watch TV or something. Besides, I was still upset that Manolo and Scarface were both taken as user names. How am I supposed to represent the Dirty South if I don't have the appropiate user name? How can I? YOU TELL ME....

As many of you know, if you are not in NYC, you need a car to get anywhere. That meant I had to put some money down for some wheels. I went to the store to look at some Escalades and Beamers but alas, I am not rolling in the dough like Evil who is selling enterprise software left and right. I had to settle for a 1998 Ford Explorer which is doing an okay job of taking me around. (By the way, I don't want to hear from anybody how I am supporting terrorists because I spend $45 a week on gas...if you are going to blame somebody, blame Detroit for holding back the engine that runs on water.)

Anyways, being this my first car ever, I am having all sorts of first-time experiences which I am truly cherishing. You know, checking the transmission fluid, changing the oil, rotating the tires, risking rollovers by turning too quickly, having sex in the back of the car, etc. Did you know that the funk from such an adventure, even after thoroughly cleansing the car over and over again, lasts for almost 2 weeks? That is a crazy amount of time...

Notes from Portland
In other news, I spent July 4th weekend up in Portland, Oregon for my friend's wedding. Did you know who was there? None other than the Japanese wunderkid (1/4 of Team Rachel) exhibiting a Lobster red tan from his stay in San Diego. The fact that he is not a Hertz express member meant I and the rest of the party had to hold his golf clubs and wait like an hour for him to get this very stylish 2Fast 2 Furious Camry LE with Neon lights in the bottom. After that brief delay, we were styling and ready to take the city by storm.

On our way to the hotel, we decided to grab some food which mainly ended up consisting of 8 pints of beer from this local microbrewery. After this, we checked into the hotel where we promptly proceeded to see what porn movies were available. We debated the merits of Asian Gonzo and Throbbing Threesomes, and failing to reach an agreement, we went on to watch one of the Williams sister in her semifinal match.

Not being overly excited by tennis, I fell asleep and woke up a couple of hours later (with my shirt untucked and pants unbuckled ???) finally ready to take the city by storm (it actually reminded me of the little TV break Xtian, Little Big Head and I took about a year ago before we wrecked havoc in Miami and got chased off by the Russian Mafia).

Anyways, our main activities consisted of eating food and having informal symposiums which involved jugs of cheap Chilean wine (Gato Negro) bought at Rite Aid. We debated again such topics as the hotel's selection of porn and Xtian's all-encompassing Metrosexuality. We also debated how Japanboy should have responded to the hippie that yelled at him for unknowingly trying to crash a Blues Festival whose entry fee consisted of $5 and 2 cans of food.

By the way, on this trip I found out that JapanBoy is a closet Metrosexual himself. He had enough fancy gels and moisturizers in that bag of his to mummify David Beckham himself...Metrosexuals of the world unite...

LXG

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is getting killed in the reviews. Did anyone realize that Elvis Mitchell reads comic books. He made an allusion to issue 2 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (vol 2), the scene where Mr. Hyde rapes and kills the Invisible Man which I thought was pretty grim. Obviously, stuff like that can't be in the movie. Grow up Elvis, this is meant to be for kids. Roger Ebert in his review pointed out that there are no streets in Venice, which is true and will now prevent me from enjoying the movie. Thanks.

I like James Robinson, he wrote my favorite comic of the late 90's, Starman for DC Comics. I like Steven Norrington, he did Blade, an underrated movie. I like placing blame. Its what I do best. So I am going to blame Don Murphy and the ego of Sean Connery for this travesty of a movie.

Addendum
NY Times continues to dump on LXG and they give the Comic Book props while doing so.

Read that HERE.

Here is what I was going to write today.

"Is everyone else as blown away as I am by the revelation that Britney and Justin had sex? Not that I don't think that Britney is a dirty girl, but I always thought Justin was gay. I think I took a straw poll with my family and we had it going 8 to 1. The only decenting vote being my brother, the Bumpasaurus, Pacey Witter. Read into that what you will. Who is taking bets that the next revelation in "W" Magazine will be something about X-tina and the Ringling Bros. Circus?

BTW, i am going to shoot myself. Apparently, Ashton Krutcher is being considered for the role of Clark Kent. God, I'm sick of that guy. Dude, trucker hats are over..."

Whlie on the subject I'd like to point out that the first nude scene i ever saw in a movie was Demi Moore in "About Last Night"...i was like 9. Bump was there too...he was like 4.

But I digress, I think "The Hose" is getting a little too vicious. Don't you? I don't know Britney, Justin or Ashton. They seem like nice people that I just dislike irrationally because they are more famous than me. That's just wrong. I am going to work on doing better. I am going to avoid making generalizations and not considering other sides of the story when shooting my mouth off. While on the subject. i would like to say that EVIL was out of line yesterday making fun of the gross little fat boy. It's not his fault he looks like that. I blame the parents. They should be strung up and beaten for being bad parents and bad people.

Evil

Yo, it's write-your-own caption time! Email me your submissions or post them to this site! Here are my entries:

"Hey, don't feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for my mom's vagina."

"Does this singlet make my ass look big?"

"If I'm so fat, then why does X-TIAN call me Mini-me?"

I am pretty glad that Charlies Angels: Full Throttle is not as big as the studios had hoped. At a 120MM (USD) price tag i think it needed to generate a lot more money than it has to this point to merit a third, increasingly annoying sequal. I imagine that price excludes marketing, which had to be expensive for this friggin movie. I mean jeez is there anywhere aside from my toilet bowl that I have not seen Drew Barrymore telling me about girl power, and being friends with Lucy Lui, and about how great Demi Moore looks and giggling incesantly, (shut up! shut up! shut up!) ugh...

Too bad about The Hulk, though, I thought it was a noble, if somewhat flawed effort. Hey Avi Arad, Here is some free advice. Focus on making a good spiderman sequal as opposed to rushing what will probably be a bad Punisher film to the big screen.

Right now, I am at work...not wearing pants.

Evil
Please buy me something. In exchange, I will refrain from posting a picture of myself not wearing pants. I think that's fair. Thanks all!

Evil

How come the Japanese come over every July 4th and kick some American ass in the international hot dog eating contest? Where's the pride?

Full Article

By the way... although the international hot dog eating contest is held at Coney Island, it isn't the only such competition. I hear that the international sausage eating contest is held at Fire Island on June 10th each year (Judy Garland's birthday). Haven't found any official links on the web, so I'm not entirely sure it's the real thing. Hey, X-TIAN, can you verify?

Template for a Paulista's first conversation with X-Tian

I might stop talking to people and just walk around with copies of this dialogue, with a special Independance day theme...


Note: A Paulista is anyone from Sao Paulo.
Paulista: Oui, todo bem
X-Tian: Todo bem. Desculpe, Voce fala ingles
Paulista: A little, some
X-Tian: Great I am sorry, my portuguese is pretty bad. I thought my spanish would be more helpful
Paulista: No probelm I understand. I thought you were brazilian for a second
X-Tian: No, my family is ecuadorian But I grew up in the US. So its a common mistake...
Paulista: Ah I see. Where in the states?
X-Tian: I grew up on the east coast. Lived in NJ and NY Now i live in Berkeley, in...um...california...northern california
Paulista: Close to LA or San Diego?
X-Tian: No, not really...um....no
Paulista: I have been to San Diego and Orlando. I love disney world. Don't you love Disney?
X-Tian: I have only been once...odd because my parents live so close. I don't really know San Diego
Paulista: Only been to Disney once? Why? its so great.
X-Tian: Ok
Paulista: .....
X-Tian: .....
Paulista: Were you in NY for 9-11? Is everything ok now? How horrible
X-Tian: Yes I was; and yes I suppose it was. I am sure the city is umm...fine now...I have not visited in a while. New Yorkers are a tough lot.
Paulista: How does it feel to have an imperialist for a president? Who do you guys think you are?
X-Tian: It feels the same I suppose as before. I was not down for the war. I did not vote for Bush. I voted for Ralph Nader and until I think bettter on it I am supporting Howard D--
Paulista: ...I mean do you think its ok to just go and invade another country
X-Tian: No, not really no.
Paulista: But all americans agr---
X-Tian: I guess. I don't read a lot of polling data. There were a lot of protests....
Paulista:....
X-Tian:.....
Paulista: ...nice meeting you
X-Tian: ..um...pracer...

Evil
Falling apart. FA Index fell and fell hard. Like Christopher Reeve at an equestrian exhibition. Nothing to say today (falling apart... what do you want from me???), so just read this IM session from yesterday...

X-TIAN: dude
X-TIAN: my future roommates are wack

EVIL: who?
EVIL: why

X-TIAN: they are putting 0 effort into looking at a place
X-TIAN: i hate them all

EVIL: what do you expect

X-TIAN: i am going to show up and not have an apartment

EVIL: no one puts in any effort unless they really need to
EVIL: also
EVIL: remember that you are all bschool students
EVIL: everyone is working on a high level

X-TIAN: everyone will be out on their ass 8/1

EVIL: you need to find some undergrads to do the work
EVIL: why dont you just room with 2 undergrad chicks
EVIL: that would be the way to handle it

X-TIAN: right
X-TIAN: hhm

EVIL: "welcome to my apartment... meet my roommates... this is tricia, she's a music performance undergrad. this here is allison. she's a history undergrad."
EVIL: (under your breath) "they are both sluts"

X-TIAN: "allison strips for money"
X-TIAN: "tricia was abused by her dad, whenever she is not getting drunk and hooking up with bikers she is giving me blow jobs"

EVIL: "whenever i talk about Net Present Value, it makes allison wet"

X-TIAN: "i dont ever penetrate tricia because she got syphillus"

EVIL: HAHHA

Dumb American Move of the...um...day? week? Month?
So my breakfast scenario is pretty straight forward. I show up to work and go find a pao de quiejo and a cappuchino (cheese bread and cappuchino for y'all not in the know). I will digress for a moment and share that breakfast is called "cafe da manha" or morning coffee, which is odd because in spanish you can get away with a colloquiel "cafe" but people call it "desayuno" which literary translates to "break fast", which seems a little classier if you ask me. I am not sure why. Anywho, love me the pao de quiejo because it makes me think fo pan de yuca (yuca bread? Who knows how to say yuca in english...) which my moms and grandmoms are all about make...But I digress (yet again). Anywho, yesterday afternoon when I went out for my late afternoon coffee (not to be confused with my breakfast coffee, or my mid mornning coffee or my afterlunch coffee) and i saw someone eating what i would call, a "butter roll, hot" if I were in a deli somewhere on the upper east side! So I resolve to have one for breakfast the next day, because these are the types of things I have to plan out way in advance. What's the word for butter? "mantieja" What's the word for hot? "Quenta" Got it good.

So this morning i find the vendor

Me: Oui
Her: bom dia, todo bem ?
Me: uhhh...sim..um...todo bem
Her:...
me:...
me: ummm.....um cappuchino com um pao com mantieja
Her:... Pao de Quiejo
me: no (i should say nao, because no actually means of in portuguese or something and the nasally no or nao, means the negative, and at this point I am almost crying, and she is looking at me wierd), esse
Her: Esta
me: no (see above...on the verge of tears)
Her: ah, pao frances?
Me: sim... ISSO
what? oh it is french bread, I couldn't say pao frances? what am i stupid? I'm stupid! I am now beating myself about the head in anger.
Her: Quenta?
Me (thumbs up...i'm thru talking...everybody's getting thumbs for the rest of the day)

Ugh, all that for a freaking coffee. There are far too many possible permutations for a conversation, you can't even properly prepare to order a friggin cup of coffee, someone asks you if you want creme, you say yeah sure and they friggin put cool whip on it like a bunch of MOMOs. Stop the madness! Its too much to bear. This is how much thought I have to put into anything. I am going batty. I wish people spoke english or at least spanish like the rest of friggin LA, who are these maniacs. Here's another quick example. Someone accused me of speaking Portu-nol, I corrected him and said it was more like Espan-uese. It was worth a good laugh. Then what? Beats me! I can barely friggin communicate. We started at each other in awkward silence.

Evil
MAN GRIPES THAT ACTING EMPLOYED IS PRACTICALLY A FULL TIME JOB

New York, NY -- Thomas Chang, a 27-year old casualty of the dot-com fallout, was overheard complaining that "acting employed is practically a full time job." With an obvious weariness in his voice, he added, "Man, I'm pretty sure I'm getting burned out. I don't know how much longer I can keep up this pace."

Full article

food arbitrage
I just pulled a George Soros/Ralphie May. I just went to a Churrascaria for lunch and ate 20lbs of beef. Someone may need to transfer that into Kilos for the folks in Latin America. While on the subject I also downed 2-3 passion fruit Caipirinhas (shut up! shut up! shut up!) ANyway, the whole thing ran me about 30 reals (approximately 10 bucks USD)

Excuse me, i have to go purge then take a nap under the desk.

Evil

Ralphie May (above), from "Last Comic Standing." Estimated weight: 550 pounds Ruben Studdard (right), from "American Idol." Estimated weight: 350 pounds

I had a pretty big plate of pasta for dinner last night and being that it was a warm summer evening and also because I had an 18-pound watermelon chilling in the fridge, I could hardly help but be pretty jazzed about it all. (+5 on the FA Index!) I sliced up half the watermelon and brought it to my bed --in TWO plates-- to eat because at this point in my life, I can't be bothered to eat sitting up. One plate in and I knew I was in trouble but I resolved to be tough and finished off the second plate anyway. And besides, I didn't want to walk back to the fridge. It's much easier to drop plates at the foot of one's bed and fall asleep with the lights on, all the while wondering why watermelon tastes so good but has to hurt so bad.

I'm not sure if being overly stuffed had anything to do with this, but I had a really bad dream. I was in my old high school building and rushing around trying to find room 189 for biology class, but for the life of me, I couldn't find it and it was pissing me off. At the peak of my frustration, I run right into both Ruben Studdard and Ralphie May in the hallway and without any explanation at all, they turn around and put their asses in my direction and made an ass sandwich with me in the middle. At one point, Ruben was shouting "Back that truck up!!!" as he leaned in with all his weight.

Luckily, I managed to wake up before dying.

Log Cabin

I just read that one of the more prominent gay, republican groups is called "the Log Cabin Republicans". This is funny to me because I am 12.

NO DADDY NO!

I went to watch The Hulk on sunday and have some thoughts. My first, as I walked out of the theater, is what would have happened if the 4 year old Bruce had tried to do anything during that scene with his parents? Would he still be carrying around the repressed guilt and rage? Dunno... ANYWAY, on to other thoughts. Overall, I must say I liked it. Ang Lee did an interesting job filming what was a tough movie to make and the CGI Hulk that ILM put together was sufficiently realistic in his movements and his facial expressions. Although, like with all CGI animation I get creeped looking at their eyes. They look kind of empty don't they? Also, they don't always seem to be looking at the right place. CREE-PEE. Anywho, there were some awesome touches, like the split panel scenes, that was designed to resemble a comic book, the gamma irridated poodle also rock quite hard, as did Nick Nolte and his overe the top, BAD DAD, David Banner. The casting of VICTIM MOMMY BANNER was also interesting because she looked a lot like Jennifer Connoley, and kind of threw a whole creepy mother love, greek tragedy thing into the mix for me. I'm not sure that was intentional or not. Also, how awesome in Jennifer Connoley. I can stare at her for hours.

There was also bad. Firstly and most importantly, the first 30 minutes or so moved about as smoothly as me trying to drive stick shift. That is to say, not at all. The first 30 minutes blew. It was kind of like Ang just said, "let's just pump through the background and into the hulk smask as quickly as possible". I had a hard time guaging the Hulk's weight. When he was doing his Hulk Jumps, I kept expecting more ground to break under him. At times it looked like he did not have any weight. That bugged. Also, at one point BAD DADDY Banner reveals himself to be some sort of anarchist type, except that came out like 2 hours into the movie and did not seem terribly consistent with everything else he said. Also, why were they allowed in a room together? Who thought that the Army would let that happen...no way...

I would have handled it differently. To address pacing, I would have opened the movie with both Banners in capitvity. The opening line would have been a therapist saying something like "Tell me about your father" and we could pan to reveal Bruce all captured Hannibal Lecter style and telling his story. The story would the be intercut with Bad Daddy, delivering an oral manifesto to his therapist talking about whatever and what not. Each telling the story from their own perspective. We would have all been spared the clunkiness of the openning scenes and one or two awkward lines that made me flinch. All the events could have gone down the same way, but told in flash back and glossing over some stuff. At the end of session, BAD DADDY would reveal himself and then go after his son. The last 20 minutes of the movie stay exactly the same. What would this do
(1) hopefully improve pacing, especially early on
(2) set up Bad Daddy's motivation minute one, as opposed to retro-fitting
(3) kind of give you a bit of tension that certain parts of the movie lack
(4) Set up a sequal, because all familiar with the Hulk mythology know, that the split personality stuff is what makes banner and the hulk separate. The sequal would then be about the merger of the personalities or the emergence of the third personality. As it is, in the movie, this whole idea is touched on only once, when Banner looks int eh mirror and the hulk looks back and tries to choke him.

Anyway, I liked it. Flawed but good. Ang Lee rocks.

Best Comic Book Movies EVER!!
While thinking about the Hulk I started wondering where it fit in relation to other movies in the genre. Here is a list I came up with. Anyone got a better one?

(1) Spiderman - Just perfectly executed. A movie for everyone. Four year old Isaiah Abreu's favorite flick! Occasional wack CGI be damned.
(2) Road To Perdition - I probably should not rate this this highly, just because i never read the comic. But still, it was really pretty and the photographer scenes really added a cool "splash panel" comic book effect.
(3) X2 - Best open 35 minutes of any movie on this list. Period. On point characterization, and no need for too much exposition
(4) Unbreakable - Not based on a comic book per se, so it gets dinged down to the 4 spot as a result. Pacing issues aside, its an awesome homage to the genre
(5) Superman 2- Not a great film, but perfectly executed and true to the mythology. The only time, there was a credible threat to Superman, which is always cool.
(6) Batman - Tim Burton brought the Dark Knight to Life in a way no one thought possible. The fore father to the modern comic book movie.
(7) Blade - Disco blood sprinklers, nuff said.
(8) X-men - "We're the future Charles, not them." Best Line reading ever! Of course, the worst line reading ever is also in this movie, thanks Halle...
(9) Hulk- Yah! Hulk makes the list, I could stare and Jennifer Connely for ever.
(10) From Hell - Very cool, flick set in Victorian England. Try your best to ignore the crappy accents.

Anyone got a better List? Let's hear it.


LXG
Message to the crew at Fox, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be LEG not LXG. Do X's really equal ticket sales? is this porn? If you need a compressed title, i would have suggested, "League..."