(Over at Cavs: The Blog today giving my interpretation of the movie Lebron recently signed to star in, Fantasy Basketball Camp.)

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how I write numbers.

This started late yesterday afternoon when I signed the document to your right, and took a good look at my interpretation of “22″.

What is that all about.

I’ve always known that I can swing both ways on my twos, but at worst, I thought it was a swing that took place maybe month-by-month, if not year-by-year. Never, ever, ever have I seen myself do this in an execution of a “22″.

If you have time, I’d love to see your “22″ – can you please write a “22″ and then like scan it into your computer and make a poster of it, and put that poster for sale on Amazon. Let me know when it’s up and I’ll buy one.

Also, do you think this means I’m a bad person.

(I made it to the new domain…adjust your RSS feed accordingly.)

Okay, so in response to GOt’s backlash, these are all the proposed topics for the next ten blog posts, as submitted by you.

Since these were all so wonderful, I decided I’m going to cover every single one. There were twelve sets of submissions overall, so each set will get its own post. This will begin on Monday, and then nobody will ever be allowed to complain again.

These are listed in no particular order, although I’ve saved GOt’s for last, so that I can explain to him why exactly he doesn’t like what I write anymore.

This goes on…for awhile:

From T, who is apparently a picture of Derek Fisher:
1) Artest being hilarious, charming and an all around athlete.
2) Odom enjoying his candies. Mention the texture of the candies. Thnx.
3) Kobe striving to match the orange roundie status of Jordan. Mention the texture. Thx.
4) Gasol’s awesome bed-hair and slacked jawed look as he blocks the f outta guys while representin’ all European centers. Texture optional. Thx.
5) And OPERA, an old art form which rarely gets covered in blogs. Can you write about Opera and how it pertains to Belting Out Tweets. Mention the 3 Tenors if possible.

From @NDEddieMac:
1) Skree?

From @robgokeemusic:
1) What happened to your wife, Kellie Simpson?

From Wish:
1) Will the 2009-2010 Cavs be better than the 2008-2009 Cavs?
2) Who would win in a fight between @alexiskn and Becky?
3) Which is the best of the Great Lakes?
4) Best synonym to use for the word, “fight”
5) If you could have a half human/half animal body, which animal would you want your other half to be and would you want it to be the top half or the bottom half?

From the already-mentioned @alexiskn – I’ve adjusted into list format:
1) A lot more about robots.
2) You being half robot.
3) Car chases.
4) Also maybe avocados.

From TVBrain:
1. Friendster
2. The Commodore 64.
3. Will CB radios replace AM/FM radios?
4. Do you want to be a model, or just look like one?
5. Draw Skippy
6. How quickly can you flip a laser disc?
7. Why did so many people laugh at Clint Eastwood’s racist comments in Gran Torino?
8. What’s your favorite Rihanna song?
9. Wasn’t it funny when they did a medley of “We Are The World” and that completely forgettable song at the end of the MJ Memorial? Do you agree that it was a nod to how irrelevant he had been for the past 20 years?
10. Kadestyle

From joe:
1) why DC pro sports are so bad
2) “The Princess Bride”
3) Which celebrities you’ve met. Who’s cool, who’s a jerk.
4) The landmark Supreme court ruling in Bethel v. Fraser
5) Where LeBron is going in 2010 (just kidding)
6) I want you to take a look at Major League Gaming. It’s an awesome league where 10-20 year olds make six figures for playing Halo 3 professionally. Plus, Gilbert Arenas owns the most successful team in the league.
7) The future of twitter and online marketing through social networking. I think there could be some good posts on that.
8) The girl who broke your heart
9) your favorite places to get hamburgers
10) “The Shawshank Redemption”

From @iamboney:
1) Your thoughts on Charlie Villenueva and his infatuation with his straight razor.
2) Butterfly paperclips.
3) Why do Actors/Directors/Producers get tired of creating movies like Batman Begins/Dark Knight when both movies were hits, and popular?
4) When driving down the street, on a regular day like today, do you ever just do laughing? And then when you stop doing laughing, do you do laughing about the laughing you were doing just a minute ago?
5) Why do cats get hairballs but dogs don’t?
6) Is the guy who invented the copy machine that can also staple your papers a millionaire? Why/Why not?
7) What happened to ESPN?
8) Would you still be my friend if you knew that I surf craigslist for prostitutes?
9) Are you my friend now?
10) If you got hit in the eye by a football like Stu Scott, would you attempt to keep your eye even though it freaks everyone out or would you wear an eye patch and talk like a pirate?

From Trey Kerby, of the Blowtorch:
1) The difference between cyborgs and robots
2) Shape-shifters
3) Binder clips
4) How come a person can run forever when they’re drunk
5) Vin Diesel
6) Will Smith’s rap music
7) The song “Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell”
8) Six Flags theme parks
9) Pants
10) Trey Kerby’s The Blowtorch

From Kingsley:
1) Jason Kidd getting a boatload of money
2) Your interactions with Los Angeles Dodgers fans
3) The movie The Girlfriend Experience
4) The movie Funny People
5) Northeast Ohio’s truly most powerful attorney
6) Woody Allen, in general
7) The Awesomeness that will be Inglorious Basterds
8) The movie My Giant
9) Andre the Giant
10) What exactly you think the movie My Dinner with Andre is about

From David, via email:
1) lightning hits the grave of steve mcnair and his crazy girlfriend, epic battle
results in the skies above Memphis (just cause Memphis is never the site of
these battles, it’s always Tokyo or Gotham)
2) Which famous martial artists would you beat in a fight and why?
3) why hope? (that one is fairly open to interpretation, but maybe a little to
positive and or trite)
4) how to be more like indiana jones on a daily basis. not just like go on a
trip. every day. you may replace indi with bruce willis. if you must.
5) the word cliche
6) the secret art of actoring
7) ok now im out of ideas, you might have noticed when it started getting lame on
#6
8) anyway just thought id thank for the book
9) though i was waiting for more explosions and adventure at the end
10) was the absence of said happenings a super-subtle hint at a sequel? hmmm

From GOt himself, via Facebook:
1) Colonel T
2) A day in the life of Brian Spaeth.
3) The last thing that made you cry. (Surgery doesn’t count)
4) Walk us through your process for writing.
5) The stalker.
6) Tell a secret.
7) If you were rich, aside from a house and cars for yourself and family, what be some things you’d like to do/buy with your money?
8) Tell us about your big brother scheme.

And so…it occurs to me that you, GOt, don’t have a problem with my content at all. As noted in the post in question, you feel you’ve “outgrown the blog”.

Based on what you want me to write about, I think this may be true, since you want me to write some kind of lifestyle column detailing my personal and family life. So, you grew up. There’s nothing wrong with that, but why does that mean the blog has to grow up with you?

Are you that guy who wondered why we never get to see Charlie Brown in college? Who wants to see Superman have kids? Do you wonder why they don’t make a Lincoln Town Car Hot Wheels?

Look – 95% of my high school friends on Facebook post pictures of their kids, marriages, and other such topics. I’m thinking up extensive Saved by the Bell reboots, and asking a girl I only know through the internet to take pictures of her feet next to customized, handwritten messages about Bell Biv Devoe.

Who has the problem here?

All of us. That’s who. That’s why we’ve been drawn here. Together. Embrace our differences – racism is dead.

WHO’S YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT AND WHY?

(This is @kelliesimpson, my first Internet Wife.)

I don’t know if stuff like this goes on in like Second Life or those other online community games, but as all this social networking gets more real world, ie people are online who they are offline, I’m convinced there’s money to be made somewhere in the concept of Internet Married.

Whether it be a venue for heavy flirting as it is now (I’m Internet Engaged to at least 5 girls), or an actual non-legal but formal arrangement wherein you can only be internet married to one person at a time, there’s just something there.

For example, let’s say InternetMarried.com had like a lot of traffic, and the gist of it is that two people (who met on Twitter or wherever) decide they want to get Internet Married. It’s submitted to the community for a judgment, and then like some kind of something is issued.

(Naturally, you have an offshoot site called Internet Divorced.)

So like someone go run with that and get rich off of it. I think the real money would come when a real marriage came out of it, and then you started doing talk shows and writing books, pretending you’re some kind of relationship expert.

Oh – another idea I have is called Nuclear Internet, which is like the regular internet, but nuclear, and everything has like plutonium dripping everywhere. I don’t even think you need to issue judgments or have a central website for this, so like you could get started like immediately.

Thoughts on all of the above?

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here – it’s available in paperback, or iPhone/Kindle for only 1.99.)

(I had a typo doing a search for the explosion in this creation to your right, and typed out “oxplosion”. I’ll let you decide what one of those might be.)

I know some of the more vocal of you hate all the Twitter/social networking stuff when I bring it up, but I firmly believe it’s an essential representation of the next phase of the net, and the net as a whole is too large a part of how the world functions and communicates to just blow off as stuff for nerds.

Being the proponent of it that I am, old sports blog friend MC Bias wanted to take issue with me about the whole thing, since he feels it’s some kind of trendy fad for Generation Y on down.

He posted Part 1 of our IM chat yesterday. Today he’s posted Part 2, in which I lay out a very plausible scenario for what might be called Private Cleveland-Tokyo Party 2020.

If you’re at all interested in this stuff and where I think it’s headed, I recommend going over to look at it. (You may remember that I called “online video” a year before YouTube existed.)

Wow, today is so serious on the Fake Action Dot Com Website, isn’t it? That’s okay, because I’m building up to my full summary of Saved By the Bell Begins, which is the greatest movie not yet made, after Brad Radby’s The Exploders.

What are your thoughts on my thoughts? Would you like to attend something like the Private Cleveland-Tokyo Party 2020?

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here – it’s available in paperback, or iPhone/Kindle for only 1.99.)

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about different ways to attack other countries, and I came upon the idea of giant water missiles.

Like you could hover them over the grid and be like really threatening with them, and all the countries would be scared because you’re just like, “Yeah, you guys are our enemies and you’re gonna be drenched.”

Just a thought.

All my sports blog friends – please don’t take offense to the following at all – it’s not a condemnation on the work you do. It’s simply what TOO MUCH INFO has ultimately resulted in for me.

Those of you who try to talk sports with me in various venues may be finding that it’s increasingly difficult to determine whether or not I have any idea whether or not I know what I’m talking about.

The cold, hard, harsh, viral truth of this tempest is because I probably don’t. I have, as of lasterday, dropped the last of the sports pages/blogs/sites from my feed reader. The only thing I do is go to NBA DOT COM to see when the big game is on.

(If you must know – that last one was Henry Abbot’s TrueHoop. It’s not a reflection on Henry – he’s a great writer and I like him tremendously. And I do still have Trey Kerby’s the Blowtorch on there, because if you look close, he’s not actually writing about sports.)

Somewhere I just found I was enjoying the games more, the less I read about them.

Now that I’m riding totally knowledge/analysis free and instead spending my time talking to girls on Twitter, it’s amazing. When it really hit me was when I found out Jason Terry was Sixth Man of the Year from the ABC broadcast. Like, a full day or so after it was announced, even.

I love trophies.

Anyone else experimented with living a life of under-saturation in the Age of Over-saturation? What’s your experience or thoughts on this in general?

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

(Y’know what’s weird? This little piece of Photoshop work I did in 30 seconds is actually kind of cool, and I bet people would think it was real el arte, if marketed correctly.

Like, wouldn’t you want a series of these hanging side by side in your office? “el kobe arte”, “el dwight arte”, “el shaq arte”, etc? It could be like all fake pretentious and stuff.)

I know some of you hate Twitter, and how I talk about Twitter, and how Twitter has stolen much of my attention, but here’s one time when Twitter just wasn’t enough.

Yesterday my fingers made this happen at some point:

3 jobs I would be horrible at: Cop, Teacher, Lawyer.

Being that this is a true statement, and one that I feel a raw, savage need to expand on, I will do so here. Think of it as a Twitter spin-off.

Now, many of you may think, “You just wouldn’t want to do them – if it was your job, you would.” This isn’t true – I’m incapable of doing things I don’t want to. Ask anyone I’ve ever worked for – given a task I can’t find some way to make myself in favor of, I quit.

That said, I can be creative in terms of finding ways to sway my own interest, so it’s not like I’m a perpetual quitter.

Way, way back in history, I spent a week doing basement waterproofing. Being that I wasn’t qualified to use any of the tools, my job was to carry buckets of broken cement from the basement to the truck. This was easily up there with “broken face” and “95mph car-rolled-over-three-times accident” in terms of awful things I’ve had to endure in my life.

I got through it by just moaning, “OH…THESE ROCKS ARE SO HEAVY…OH MAN…” at intermittent moments throughout the day, much to the annoyance of my white trash pot-smoking co-workers who all had cousins and/or wives in jail. (This was the main topic of conversation for the entire week.)

The moments between saying my mantra was filled with recalling and/or imagining how they would react when I said it. It usually involved swearing or smoking cigarettes or talking about the time they got shot and/or stabbed by their own sibling.

Anyway – I’ll try and keep these short:

1) Cop: I’d think every crime was hilarious, I’d let everyone go, I’d never want to wear my hat, and I’d shoot inanimate objects in random places for fun. I’d also be open to any and all forms of corruption. I’d have a gross misunderstanding of whether I was allowed to pull over girls just to flirt with them.

2) Teacher: I’d never stick to the lesson plan, I’d spend most of the day just hanging out with the kids instead of teaching, and I’d have a gross misunderstanding of whether I was allowed to flirt with the female students who were over 18 (or 16, depending) already. Nobody would ever get in trouble for anything, and my main concern would be whether or not I was considered the coolest teacher in school.

3) Lawyer: I’m a horrible negotiator, and I’d spend 90% of the time in court finding ways to scream, “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!!” I’d have a gross misunderstanding of whether I was allowed to flirt with the female jurors, and once again, corruption would reign.

Now, I suppose pretending I have these “gross misunderstandings” is incorrect – I’d really just do whatever I wanted. But again, I would never have these jobs in the first place, so this isn’t necessarily a worry.

Cavs by four million today.

What are your three jobs you could never do, and why?

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

Due to increasingly being tagged in this over on my Facesbook, and in honor of the 250th post on BTAA, here is my official “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Brian Spaeth”.

1) I don’t want anyone to know anything about me.
2) I like to be an enigma.
3) I keep secrets about myself.
4) I have a bad shoulder tattoo.
5) One time, I didn’t tell anyone anything about myself.
6) I have been known to be private.
7) I have a twin sister.
8) My twin sister won’t tell you anything about me.
9) I wrote my entire family into the first and only novel I will ever write.
10) You can get $3 off that book through Monday with this promo code: JGPTR476
11) I make a wonderful chicken dish.
12) I use Twitter.
13) My Twitter feed is becoming more useful than my blog at generating humor.
14) I had to walk a horse around in the background of CSI:NY once, and Gary Senise told me I looked scared of the horse.
15) Gary Senise can see inside my soul with regard to horses.
16) I don’t like telling people things about me.
17) I don’t like you telling people things about me.
18) I like telling things about you, as long as it doesn’t involve me.
19) I don’t want anyone to know I am yoked.
20) I once had to kiss a girl on the set of Las Vegas, and I screwed up twice on purpose because her boyfriend was there.
21) Scoop Jackson is my favorite writer at ESPN, and I don’t think he gets a fair shake.
22) I ended Gilbert Arenas’s career. (Not on purpose.)
23) I once told a tall girl we needed to reproduce for the advancement of mankind.
24) I don’t want attention drawn to me that I did not initiate in some fashion.
25) All of this said, I love being the center of attention.

Really, my book has everything you could possibly want to know about me, plus it’s all fictionalized. Why haven’t you bought it yet?

So let’s start getting those sports blogger interviews out of the closet.

Up today is Cleveland Frowns – they write a blog about an alternate reality where all sports teams are named after facial expressions.

First though – this guy in the picture is like in his 30s – why are you dressing up like french fries? PP thinks he looks delicious, btw.

1) Your logo seems to be some kind of rocket, with a frowning football inside.

Why don’t you change the name of your site to Cleveland Browns Smiling Guys and have a picture of a boot, with a smaller boot inside of the first boot?

We get a lot of questions about the logo. It’s supposed to represent a toilet with a frowning pile of crap inside of it. The eyes of the poo represent the watchful eyes of the Cleveland Fan, who continues to care, despite the steaming heaps that are continually piled on us by our local teams and others.

If our logo had a boot in it, it would be kicking Chief Wahoo and/or Browns owner Randy Lerner hard in the pants. You might be on to something. Maybe we’ll change things up one day.

2) For this next question, pretend I don’t hate dogs. The New Browns feel like a cloned dog to me. It looks and smells and even acts like my dog, but I just can’t connect with it. Will this ever end? Do you feel the same way at all or is it just me?

Yes, we feel something similar about the New Browns, maybe even worse because we like dogs and even a cloned one would probably make us feel better than these Browns do.

As for when it might ever end, we think that at least one but probably both of two different things has to happen.

First, it truly makes us sick that Randy Lerner owns these Browns and it’s hard for us to believe that the Browns could ever have any sustained success under his ownership. An NFL franchise is a most precious thing, especially here in Northeast Ohio, the cradle of professional football, but Randy Lerner doesn’t seem to care much for American football or the City of Cleveland.

He inherited the team from his father, a billionaire New York transplant who helped Art Modell move the team out of town, and seems to be far more interested in the English Premier League Aston Villa soccer club that he owns. We’re not sure that Randy spends more than a whole month in Cleveland in any given year, and wonder if his father ever did.

Why do people who care so little about something that so many millions of others care so deeply about get to own that thing? It’s one of the most fundamentally f*cked up things in our world. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Browns are so awful under such circumstances, and we’re not sure why we should expect anything different until those circumstances change. We wonder if eminent domain proceedings might work here.

As for the second thing, anyone who believes in the most basic principles of karmic justice might come to think that no major Cleveland sports team will win a Championship until the Indians stop using Chief Wahoo as a mascot/logo.

If the Red Sox were cursed for trading a guy for whom things worked out awfully well for, and if the Cubs are cursed for not letting a guy bring a goat into the stands at Wrigley Field even though the guy got rich and famous for it, then why wouldn’t all Cleveland teams be cursed for their town’s support of a Sambo-caricature created by white people to represent a politically powerless race of people who white people basically killed off.

We won’t say much more here because we know that folks tend to get irritated by this topic and we’ve written plenty about it over at Frowns, but Curse or no Curse — and how could we ever really know? — it would be awfully nice to have one less thing to worry about in supporting the Browns/Indians/Cavs. It will be an incredible clash between LeBron and the Curse in June. Also, we don’t mind the team name “Indians.” In fact, we like it. It’s the Wahoo cartoon that’s the problem.

This was a trick question. The answer was anything under two sentences or less OMG.
3) I have a stack of Post-It Notes that are different shades of purple. Respond.

Post-It Notes are useful, and purple ones are more likely to stand out amidst clutter. We recommend to anyone with access to a stack of Post-It Notes write in black marker “Check Frowns” on as many of them as you have computers and affix one each to the side of each computer’s screen.

I’m still reading answer #2 OMG AGAIN x2.

By the way, even thought I couldn’t disagree more about Chief Wahoo, I will still say go check out Cleveland Frowns if you like – they seem to be a nice group of peoples.

(The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.

I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.

I’m as excited about the election as anyone.

I wouldn’t paint myself as a political junkie – to be honest, I’ve never even voted. But look – how could you not be into all this “flying cars vs. airplanes” stuff?

The country hasn’t been this divided since The Civil War, and that was like, a long time ago or whatever.

Plus, for the first time in I don’t know how many years, we’ve got two over-60 white males running for President of These United States of America. This is historic stuff, and I’m not going to exclude myself due to apathy and ignorance again. Not this time.

Now, whom exactly will I vote for? At this point, I’m sure you know it’s going to be whichever candidate is more pro-airplane.

While the current Democratic President has done a phenomenal job in all arenas – the economy is back, foreign relations are wide-open, racism is all but extinct, he’s cured sickness – there’s one thing about him that I can’t really vibe with, and that’s his stance on airplane ride safety.

I swear to you, this has nothing to with my brother’s position with ARMTA. Remember, we haven’t even spoken in over a decade and a half, furthermore.

It’s just that with the number of airplane rides I take, airplane ride safety is of the utmost importance. Even if I’m not a rider on a given airplane ride, I might be thinking about it, and the last thing I want to do is think about a fiery, crashy, airplaney, airplane ride crash.

There’s nothing sadder than a broken airplane wing, and if there’s a bunch of dead airplane riders all over it and/or around it, it’s even worse.

Here’s a quote our current President gave last week, referencing his proposed 46% cutback of ARMTA funding:

“We haven’t had a major airplane ride crash in the seven years I’ve been in office. Frankly, I think airplane ride crashes are extinct, and with the potential to see flying cars within the next two to four years, we may be approaching the day when people don’t take airplane rides at all.”

You can see my fears in every single word of that statement, except for “airplane ride”, provided its taken on its own and out of context. I need not remind you – the liberal hippie running for President on the left shares his view.

Summing up, in conclusion, not only is the Democratic Nominee ready to make airplane rides more dangerous, he’s also ready to usher in a world without any airplane rides at all.

I think you know where I’m leaning, and that’s with a no-nonsense, pro-airplane President. Namely, Republican Nominee Peter Ovaire. Oh, and he’s also a big-time war hero, and nobody even knows why. That’s how much he’s respected!

In conclusion again, Peter Ovaire’s my man, and he’s got my first-ever vote.

Brad Radby’s Foreward, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 31

So I was in the grocering store and noticed one of my favorite things – a new logo.

This one was for Sunkist, America’s most repected orange soda. (I had to check – yes, they still make Orange Crush.)

I don’t drink soda, so this could’ve happened years ago, although I have like a brain that makes new logos jump forward and highlight themselves in stores, so I doubt it.

(More checking – yes, this just happened last week.)

Now, because I’m weird, I checked to see if Sunkist had a Facebook group, and indeed it does.

Several people have left comments regarding the new logo, and that kind of passion for orange soda is amazing.

Check this out:

Skyler Hopf (Des Moines, IA) wrote
at 1:48am on November 18th, 2008
i hate the new design…its just not the same. but i still put it down just cuz its better than liquid gold, better than liquid platinum even.

Hate is such a strong word. I don’t like it either – it looks like a 1920s logo filtered through 2004. In any case, I need specifics, so I sent the following message to Skylar:

Hey man – my mom designed that new logo. I showed her your message and she’s pretty upset, but also curious how she could’ve done it better. Do you have any specifics on what you hate, or did you just think the old one should’ve been left alone?

No worries – let me know your thoughts, though. Thanks,

Brian

I know what you’re asking – “Hey, what’s wrong with you that you’re emailing some stranger at 4:30 in the morning, pretending your mom designed the Sunkist logo? Not only that, but you’re demanding some sort of justification for this person not liking your mom’s logo.”

The answer is, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I really don’t.

(And Knicks fans…the Cavs lead the NBA in scoring. Not sure what more D’Antoni can offer, especially when LeBron is talking about defense being what really makes the Cavs a winner.)

Sorry, but I’ll be back Wednesday.

I’m having a creative outburst that must run its course. This has only happened twice before, and each time it turned into things that I still consider the best things I’ve ever written.

The Twilight sequels are greenlit, because the thing made a ton of money this weekend. (No, I didn’t see it.)

The best is how the production company sent an email to fansites, and tried to make it like it was a personal thank you note from the two stars. Here is one response to said email.

#

What a class act Kristen and Rob are. That was a very heartfelt thank you. Congratulations to Summit for taking a chance on this project and keeping the spirit of the book. The fans of the series gave you a big reward for that this weekend. I look forward to the sequels and hope that they don’t take forever to make it to the big screen like the Harry Potter films. Everyone involved in the making of Twilight did a wonderful job!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU. (BTW it is NOT only teen girls that are attracted to this story.)

Comment by A Twilight mom — November 22, 2008 @ 3:42 pm

Now, that says “A Twilight mom”, which means that’s a full grown woman who thinks Rob Pattinson and Kristin Stewart were sitting around together somewhere Sunday, and said, “Hey, let’s write up a little note and send it to our fans. And let’s write it like a pr agent would, so it’s sounds fake.”

If you haven’t gathered, I’m a fan of Ayn Rand, and yeah, I read a lot of Objectivist sites. Here’s what they think about the auto mess, and I agree completely. Read it a few times before you call me a maniac.

Finally, I know she’s a fake Converse ad and I’m way behind on this, but this is really my ideal woman in every way. I’d like to meet the actress and then marry her, and I’ll be sad if she’s not really a pain in the butt.

Please leave thy comments – I’m on the computer, and will be checking in.

(“Four Secrets to Always Having a Job” might be the worst title to an article like ever – how about “Four Secrets to Getting Rich in Time to Quit Your Job in the Next 30 Minutes”? Where’s that one?

NOTE: As you know, I don’t have like a real job – I’m just looking out for those who might.)

***SPOILERS if you haven’t watched Heroes this week yet.***

My brother wrote a lengthy post aboot the two episodes of Heroes from this week, and I have to agree with everything he said.

Here is a piece.

Over the course of these two episodes I must have said to myself “Why didn’t he/she just…” about 30 times. Why can’t Future Peter just go back in time and kill Sylar before he got his powers? Why didn’t Sylar rip the door off its hinges with his mind? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It’s odd to say this, considering this a show about superheroes, but Heroes isn’t realistic enough.

Yeah, I mean they just don’t seem to think this stuff through – to me it feels like they have a list of “cool moments” they want onscreen, and put no thought into how they actually work.

The other problem I have is that it seems as if the template for the show is, “Find out about horrible thing that’s going to happen in future, attempt to stop said thing by tying strings all over apartment, finally stop thing, thus resetting the future into something different.”

There’s no weight to anything, because it feels like they can roll out the, “Yeah well the future changed, so that’s all different now. Oh, but this stuff is still the same, because we like giving Peter a scar on his face.”

I’ll still watch if I’m around or there’s nothing else to do, but I won’t seek out a time to do so again.

On a nice tangent though, it’s always nice to see my brother update his website – as far back as 1997, he’s been doing regular updates every 8-4 months. Like clockwork!

I went for a run just now, and something happened I’m completely lost on.

First, to set this up – I’m a completely normal looking person. Those of you who have met me can vouch for this.

I’m just like, a person. I’m not nine feet tall, nor am I four feet tall. (Six foot three, to be precise.)

I don’t have a mohawk or face-piercings, or face tattoos, or like anything that could be considered outside the norm.

On said run, I was wearing the following: gray t-shirt, black running pants, New Balance shoes. Have iPod and keys in hand.

So I’m stopped at a stoplight, waiting for the walk signal. (You’ll actually get ticketed for jaywalking in LA.)

I’m not doing the “run in place” thing or anything weird – I’m just standing there.

I look over, and these two guys in a pick-up are looking at me. Like, staring – and the one guy turns to the other one, says something, and they both shake their heads.

And they keep looking, clearly irritated by me in some way. Now, this is one of those weird intersections where it’s not simply north-south, but all kinds of diagonals, so lights are long.

I’m right there, so I wave for them to put down their window, and I ask what the problem is.

To be clear, this was not confrontational; it wasn’t, “YOU GOT A PROBLEM, BUDDY?!”

I’m paraphrasing here, but it was basically, “Hey, I’m not trying to be weird or anything, but why are you looking at me like I’m a freak? I’m not trying to start anything – I’m seriously just curious.”

They just like laughed, and the one says, “Just go on your run, pal.”

I have no idea what this was about and never will – so strange. Were they anti-health and fitness? Did they hate New Balance? The color gray?

SO THEN I WENT HOME AND CUT MYSELF.

The latest update to the Vegetable Trivia Game is full of confusion and contradictions, so let’s get to it, with explanations afterward:

I Could Never Be Your Woman, Eastern Promises, There Will Be Blood, Grease 2, Scarface, Wolf (1994), Dangerous Minds, What Lies Beneath, Gangs of New York, Carlito’s Way, Daylight, A Perfect Murder, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, A History of Violence, Shoot ‘Em Up, Beowulf, Matchstick Men, The Love Guru

Congrats go out to The Love Guru for cracking the bottom five, and to There Will Be Blood for making the top twenty.

There Will Be Blood is everything I hate in a movie – long, based in the past, no basic “hero vs villain” happenings. I loved it, though – even moreso the second time through.

The Love Guru was really that bad – it wasn’t just bad because it was a high-profile bomb. It was a weird looking guy making fart and penis jokes. That’s it. And it was 86 minutes – 4 for end credits, plus two useless musical parodies at 2-3 minutes each.

You’re looking at roughly 77 minutes of story, mostly consisting of Mike Myers making the aforementioned fart and penis jokes. And just one other note – it was edited terribly. Like strikingly bad.

The Lord of the Rings movies (#181, #221, #222) – many of you will think these would/should be higher…I liked the books a lot, and the movies were good, but they kinda all blend together, like the Bourne movies.

Plus they’re super long, which I didn’t hold against the movie that tells you there’s blood on the way. I’m not a huge fantasy fan, either.

But the real kicker here is I have no idea if I’ve actually seen these movies or not.

Which one is “the movie”? The theatrical version? The director’s cut? The extended director’s cut? The special edition theatrical cut? The double-special theatrical extreme director’s cut?

If I ever direct a movie, there’s be one cut, and that’ll be “the movie”. I’m promising you that today.

I Could Never Be Your Woman (#439) stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd, and was directed by the woman who did Clueless (#150), which I really liked. I knew going in this movie was poorly reviewed, but I thought it couldn’t be that bad – with those people involved, it had to be at least watchable, right?

No, but Michelle Pfeiffer is still super hot, no matter how old she is.

I think we’ve all been in a situation like the following: you tell a really tasteless racist joke, and then see someone nearby looking all sad.

“I’m a racist,” they mutter.

“Oh, man – hey, I didn’t know. I was just kidding around.”

It’s an awful feeling, and you realize that “How many racists does it take to screw in a light bulb?” isn’t even that funny.

I may have mentioned this on the old site, but I found myself in just such a situation with a cutter once. One would think I’d learned, but I did it again over the weekend – I insulted a cutter.

The details are unimportant – it was short and unsweet. What’s important is this – I can no longer apologize for finding cutting funny. It just is.

Thing is, I can’t deduce how exactly one starts doing it, and that puts it in the category of incomprehensible things that automatically become funny.

With say, anorexia or bulimia, I understand how it starts. Need to lose weight –> stop eating or throw up food before it digests.

It’s not smart, but there’s an a-b-c-d logic to it.

(For the record, I’ve dated a bulimic girl.

It was awesome; I don’t know why, but it was – something about watching her eat two feet of Subway, then go into the bathroom for 15 minutes made her so hot.)

Anyway, back to cutting. I understand that it masks emotional pain by forcing you to concentrate on physical pain. But how does it start?

Like, if you Google “ways to make me not depressed”, does “cut yourself” show up right after “change what is making you depressed”?

(No – this is actually the first result…and somehow I think linking to that isn’t going to help curb my tendency to offend depressed people.)

I’m gonna stop now. If any of you happen to be a cutter, please let me know how and why you started.

This is the end of the post.

UPDATE: Vince Young, Tennessee Titans quarterback and the NFL’s most likely cutter, sucks because he isn’t good, not because of the pressures of being a “black quarterback”.

Have all “white quarterbacks” led lives free from stresses of any kind? What about all the “Asian quarterbacks” – wait – they’re good at math, right? Didn’t we get past this like 15 years ago?

UPDATE 2: MLB’s most likely cutter – A-Rod.

The NBA’s? Steve Francis, duh. (Is he still in the NBA? Seriously, I’m asking.) Tracy McGrady, a close second.

Oh, and Garnett does it every now and then – not because he’s depressed, but because he just really likes it.

(So glad I didn’t bother to search out that game lasterday…Browns-Steelers, I will watch online tonight.)

Here it is:

I’ve been reading for about a week now….STOP TAKING COLD SHOWERS! Are you crazy???? :)
(haven’t showed it to your Dad yet…afraid he might think you’ve totally flipped out!

That is, for those of you without the skills of deduction, from my mom.

(Yeah, it could’ve been from my dad’s mistress, but we don’t really get along, and I can’t remember the last time she emailed me.)

Cold shower #2 was just taken – here are more things I’ve noticed, and you know how I like things:

1) The mirror in the bathroom doesn’t steam up.
2) You start to dry instantly, and the entire drying process is faster than after a warm shower.
3) This is by no means easy. While it’s somewhat empowering, you want to be done. Beyond the 1-minute “stand there with clenched fists and feel powerful” phase, you get down to business and get finished.
4) You’re not cold when the shower is over. In fact, as soon you turn the water off, you feel this rush of warmth and energy.

Overall, I feel like this is not only good mentally, but it’s saving me a lot of time, due to numbers 1-3 above.

NOTE: My old friend Jordi’s website, The Serious Tip, turned two today – congratulations!

He also was wondering what, if any, sports blogs I read anymore. This is the list, direct from my RSS reader:

Blog Maverick – Mark Cuban’s blog. I don’t know if this even counts as sports – in fact, just now, I moved it over to “Tech/General Blogs”.

(That link goes to his post about why John McCain not knowing about computers is frightening. I completely agree.)

Deadspin – I don’t really “read” it – just skim the headlines in case there’s something interesting, which often there is.

The Big Lead – Only for the links/round-up posts.

True Hoop – As a (somewhat disenchanted) NBA fan, of course. Plus Henry writes about things that aren’t written about elsewhere.

Brian Windhorst’s Beacon Journal Blog – Cavs insight. Brian is also a good guy.

That’s all there is for me anymore. I figure anything significant that happens in sports or on sports blogs, I will catch wind of through those and ESPN DOT COM.

I also check other places now and then just for the hell of it, but most of my regular reading is entertainment/film stuff, and personal blogs of people I know or find interesting.

There are certain things I put into screenplays that are there purely because I want to do and/or see them.

For example, you’ll see several things in WSM? that are just wish fulfillment, such as me getting oiled up and lifting weights in the desert.

You can’t do this in real life, because 1) you’ll be called a freak, and 2) you’re just not allowed.

Seriously – try going to a state park with a weight set and screaming out some reps. They’ll kick you out. Get a camera and a permit, though? You’re good to go.

Anyway, I may have talked about this on the old site at some point, but a dream is to have the following set-up in my house one day:

So even though this is the first page of something I’m working on, I like totally want that whole set-up, right down to the 50 degree showers every morning, but minus the Chin Meyers.

One of these days, I’m gonna work up the courage to start taking the cold showers. I’m not sure why, although according to this, it’s good for you.

As for the fake-empty white room, I have no idea about that, either. In fact, I don’t know why I do anything.

What I do know, is the power went off on the entire street today, possibly because of this.

This non-power-having period instigated one thing – an entire street-full of Armenians TALKING REALLY LOUDLY IN PORTUGUESE.

Now, because I don’t speak their language, I decided it’s Armenian New Year, they cut the power, and they’re all turning into werewolves tonight, at which point they’re coming to kill my roommate.

UPDATE: It works, although it seems like there’s a space between the character name/dialog, which shouldn’t be there. Probably a bug. I will use this a lot regardless.

I don’t know if any of the rest of you are screenwriters, but John August (who writes like, big boy movies) led the development of a WordPress plug-in that will let you format script pages into your posts.

You can find it here, and I’m going to test it…now. (This is from one of the web series I’m working on.)

You can’t see it if it’s in an RSS reader, so you’ll need to open this thingie in a browser, so they say.

By the way, my new roommate watched WSM? last night, and then pretty much watched it again right after (with my commentary).

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like it as much as he did. He, specifically, as an individual, is the exact target audience.

Really, it was fun to see someone who has never had any exposure to me or the old website so totally, completely, 100% “get it”.

(Sweet, sweet, sweet ACLs.)

Okay, so I need to share this story about these Armenians that are all in this building I’m living in.

I think they’re Armenian – I really have no idea. They barely speak English, and my assumption is no more than 4 of them have been past the end of the street since 1978.

So like I said, I’ve been here about a week now, and for the first three days these people would just look me up and down. Like, literally stare.

Finally, I was like, “HELLO.” This was the big ice-breaker, because the next day one of them also said, “HELLO”.

When we became friends was the next day, when the other sub-letter was moving his stuff in. He’s a music engineer/producer named Kevin. He’s also black.

Two of the gypsies/Armenians pulled me aside and asked me more or less if he was going to rob and then kill them. This is not an exaggeration. This is what they said, and they added that they were “very scared.”

I knew where they were going with this, but needed to ask anyway – why would Kevin rob and then kill you, when it would make so much more sense to kill and THEN rob you, in case you fought back during the robbery portion?

They then went into a long explanation, in very ominous tones, about how Kevin’s skin was darker than ours, and that they could talk to me about this because, “You are one of us. Your skin is light.”

I pretended to think this over pretty hard, and told them that in addition to being 1/4 black, I was also a little afraid now, too…afraid that I had no idea people were this backwards here in the future.

They put me at ease – this is where the one really sold herself as a good person. She said her son had a black friend once, and that he, against all odds, appeared to be a good person.

She told me how she sat him down one day, and told him that, “You must have white heart, but outside, the black skin. Inside, white heart.” And then she smiled like, “Aren’t I wonderful to be able to be so understanding?”

Keep in mind, I’d been slowly backing away from them for about two minutes, so I was a good ten feet distant at this point. As I finally turned to leave, the gypsies implored me not to tell the “dark-skinned person” what they had said.

I assured them that 1) his name is Kevin, and 2) he could probably smell their fear, and would be over tonight when he went out robbing and killing.