Nephew Video: Incredible Hi-Five, Nose Pick PLUS!

BONUSBONUSBONUS Text convo with Dana Senior yesterday:

Dana: Maybe I just saw Paris Hilton

Me: ¿Qué?!

Dana: At taping of Letterman. Girl is HOMELY

Me: LOLZ 4 REAL

Baltimore: More Than Drugs!

True, it's mostly drugs. But it's also duckpin bowling!

So that's what we did for our work holiday party. But first, we got on a bus with a bunch of beer.

If you haven't been on a bus with condensation on the windows since you were a kid, you'd be surprised to find that the urge to write on them is still overwhelming.

I decided that it should be more adult-like window graffiti, though.


(It says "cocaine/crack".)

And of course, it's still awesome to be metal.


Duckpin bowling involves smaller balls, smaller pins, and three tries per frame.


Aside from that, it's pretty much like normal bowling, although the proprietors think for some reason that having "rental" on the instep of a bowling shoe is going to keep somebody from stealing it. I would argue that it increases the shoes' awesomeness.


Remember my new name? Sure you do! Also, I was totally winning until the end.


Bowling, like all games, brings out the juvenile posing gene.


The bowling alley was so awesome that it had converted one lane into a locker room/smoking area.


Something about starting to drink at six that makes people sleepy. I think it's the rufis.

Murph was sleepy from the beginning, though. He worked in what he called the "morning." I'm checking on it.

In other news, these two people are very photogenic.

This one is too, only in his own special way:


BONUSBONUSBONUS People always want to be on here. Guess what! You can be, if you see me when I have my camera!

Also, Evan does an impression of someone.

The Internet is a Boundless World of Bliss and Whimsy

First of all, let's all agree that we would trade freedom for good internet access. Agreed? Good. Second, Dave "I'm too metal for Metallica" Mustaine was recently interviewed by Bankrate.com. True story.


Why was I trolling Bankrate.com, you ask? Good question! I am getting old, and old people put money in "banks" instead of "sock drawers." An old person told me that.

Feel Like Getting Angry?

Just go to Passive Aggressive Notes, where I recently submitted a picture from work,

and read the comments.

(Plus! I apparently work in a soul-sucking place.



Which is ironic, since I always thought of the thousands of office buildings surrounding where I work as the soul-suckers. I was wrong.)

An Open Letter to a Failure

Dear Failure,

Nice going! You saw my pretty bike, all locked up, and decided that you could score some sweet loot if you somehow got it off the post. Thank god you had your hacksaw handy!


Oh, wait...tougher than you thought? Did you kick the pretty bike because it made you mad? The real bummer is that you could've gotten everything off the bike with an Allen wrench, which is much smaller and less theify than a hacksaw.

When I find you, I will likely take a hacksaw to your arm. And then leave halfway through.

Toodles,

The dude whose bike you mangled

20 Degrees Outside, Postponing Leaving the House

ME: Is it cold up there too? ("there" is 18th street, approx 600 yards from my door -ed)

TEEBZ: Yeah come on by

ME: But the cold...so very cold

TEEBZ: I am going for a 100 mile bike ride tomorrow

ME: Just make sure you forward your funeral arrangements to me tonight. Your memory will be honored probably

TEEBZ: I want my body thrown from a plane over shark-infested waters, rigged with an auto-parachute then when I am just about to land in the water the dynamite on my chest explodes and I am blown into tiny pieces so as to spite the sharks

I'm Going to Start Calling Everyone I Hate "Lord Mayor"

In reviewing my dad's exhaustive genealogical research, I found out that my great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great Grandfather was the mayor of London. His title? Lord Mayor. In other words, my family was a big deal in the mid-14th century.

We're pretty much all broke commoners these days.

Maybe we weren't really a big deal to start with. It turns out that the plague arrived in London right before he became mayor, and I'm guessing that it must be pretty easy to be the mayor of a town where everybody's dead or dying.

So maybe "Lord Mayor" was a euphemism for something much less important. Like how people call people "boss" when they really mean "I think I'm better than you."

I also designed another t-shirt, for some reason.

A Trip to the Báhn Mì Shop

The high temperature today is around 28 degrees. In other news, the heat in our house doesn't really "work." So best idea: go to different Pho restaurant, where they have heat and soup.

Different Pho (50) was okay, but 75 is still better, as everybody knows.

Good thing is that Pho 50 is right next to a Báhn Mì shop. Since I recently learned from the Washington Post that Báhn Mì is "in" for 2008, while panini is "out," it was a no-brainer: go get some in-sandwiches! Up yours, panini! I never liked you anyways!

The good thing about the shop was that it had all sorts of great sundries. Here's a smattering:

1. Shrimp Snacks: A Vietnamese sandwich shop is not a Vietnamese sandwich shop without shrimp-flavored snack treats. These particular ones are Bar-B-Que flavor, which means that it's basically like a cookout in a bag, shellfish-style.


2. While you're at it, how about some baked squid-flavored Pringles? I don't know if they're actually Pringles, but they should be.


3. The Vietnamese sandwich shop is your one-stop shop for all your vegetarian food needs! Just two tablespoons in the aquarium once a day, and your vegetarian will grow a healthy and luxurious coat!


4. Need dessert? Sure you do. Man cannot live on sandwiches and fried sea-creature snacks alone. Man requires green pie. I do not care if it's by the slice or the whole. Give it.


Final review: sandwiches not as good as the place in San Francisco from where I transported five sandwiches with me on the plane back home, but still good.

BONUSBONUSBONUS If we didn't have a fireplace I may very well have died by now.


DOUBLEBONUSBONUS Another old comic (that's right, sometimes I used pseudonyms):

Every Time I Think I've Found the Purpose of The Internet,

Something else comes along and proves that I'm way off base. Like a live-action re-enactment of Garfield comic strips, followed by music montages.


Thanques, Sistr!

Pencil Got You on the Run?

Nobody really responded to the call for t-shirt ideas, so I had to come up with my own. To do so, I once again dipped into the font of comic strips I drew in college. This is one of the earliest, and still one of my favorites:

All yours for $19. MADE IN THE USA, people.

If I sell 2 (including myself), consider this a regular feature.

DeffoReview of Things: Hockey Edition

I saw my Canadian friend yesterday (she was picking up Canada-related signage, natch), and decided that it was time to include some more Canada-related phlogging here.

The only Canadian thing I can think of is hockey, a sport that I haven't watched since I was a sophomore in high school and my girlfriend's family was from Detroit. Which means that I watched some Red Wings' games while surrounded by mustachioed uncles drinking canned beer. With that in mind, here is the DeffoReview of Things: Hockey Edition!

Seems obvious to start off with the Stanley-Cupping Edmonton Oilers! Esa Tikkanen, who has the most enforcey-type name in the NHL, is doing some great enforcing for his team.



I'm sure The Great One is happy to have you on his side, Esa!

Brett Hull!


Also, how proud are you Phlyers fans of your little Eric Lindros? I'm pretty sure he hasn't killed anybody this season.


Coach Gordon would love to have you on his team, Eric!

Finally, the best thing about hockey is this guy, who reminds us that helmets are for lady boys. AND HIS NAME IS CRAIG MACTAVISH


Nobody else named Craig Mactavish has ever done anything tough, ever. So this one should be proud of himself.


BONUSBONUSBONUS Finally got to see my roommate's band, Cloak/Dagger, play a show this weekend. They are the first band I've seen in a decade wherein no band members wore facial hair.

BREAKING: Philip Seymour Hoffman Plays Conflicted Intellectual

And he does it well. The Savages is good; I recommend it.


In other news, Senior has been found out. She'd better watch herself.

BONUSBONUSBONUS Heck's Kitchen has taken my poorly thought-out idea and begun making lots of different products that people might actually like to buy. So what, you say? So I need better ideas, so I win. Please feel free to include them in the comments.

Oh, and our work holiday party is going to include a party bus and duckpin bowling (they have a snack bar!) in Baltimore. Feel free to hold your collective breaths.

Have You Seen This Woman?

So Senior


got a new job and won't tell anybody where she's working.


She's acting like she has pride or something. Screw that. Let's find her! Here is what we know:

1. She says it's on L St NW in Washington, DC. (She may be lying)
2. She says she's working lunches (probably true, may mean that it's a lunch-only, caters to people with real jobs crowd)
3. They serve Michelob Light (this should narrow it down a bit)
4. One of her co-workers asked recently, "Are you SERIOUSLY saying that you don't like Nickelback?!?" (place must be awesome)

Will add more clues as they come along. Please feel free to post your own knowledge in the comments. This way we should be crashing her lunch shift by the end of the month.

Superevil Times

To get ready for our trip to Medieval Times, I decided that it would be prudent to wear my most appropriate t-shirt, in case I was called on to join in the tournament proceedings. Spoiler Alert: I wasn't.


Riding in a van with a dozen other people: always makes one feel like one is in high school. When the destination is a birthday party for your friend, it makes the feeling even more prominent.


Especially when you have coupons.


The only disappointing thing about Medieval Times is that you can't enter through the drawbridge. This is made up for by the fact that there are archers in the turrets waiting for approaching enemies.

(While it looks like I'm posing here, I'm actually looking across the parking lot to the Golden Corral Buffet restaurant, where an ambulance was carting off what could only have been the third coronary victim of the evening. I still wanted to go.)


So when I said that I was going to root for the red and yellow knight, that was before I realized that we would be assigned a knight to root for because stupid monarchies always want to be in control. Anyway, our group was split between the blue (me and Ana's knight, the awesome one) and the yellow (boring loser) knights. Hence our blue crowns.

I can only surmise that the light streams in this picture are faerie trails unseeable by the human eye.


While the princess is being wowed by boring girl stuff like pony tricks, everybody gets their meal. You eat with your hands, but you already knew that because you saw Cable Guy. What you didn't know was that they had plastic:


as well as garlic bread and Campbell's soup. Although I guess it's not surprising that Campbell's was around then, because that company is an American institution.


It's also good to know that they had wet naps back then, because otherwise their tunics would be really greasy.


I also said that my favorite wench would be the one with the choicest grog or mead. But they only had enormous goblets of beer, and we had a serf, not a wench. His name was Chris.


Paul decided that he would both root for and fall in love with the blue knight.


The blue knight recognized this and threw him a flower, totally on purpose.


So when the fights started, the yellow people were all cheering for their knight, who promptly kicked his opponent in the junk (they didn't say what it was called back then), which was considered dishonorable even then.

I don't have a video, but Murph promptly screamed "The yellow knight fights with no honor! His color befits him!"

If you are interested in going to Medieval Times, I would highly recommend taking Murph with you.


Our knight was the winning knight, obvs. If you have the sound on, at the end I call out Chick-fil-A Waldorf, who was there for their Christmas party. For some reason I had decided that they were rooting for the red and black knight.

(You'll also hear calls to "chop his head off!" and "there can be only one!" from our table. The cinematography is unfortunately not too good. Cuz of all the excitement.)

In other news, there was this scary shit involving an oracle, who was all enveloped in fog.


In the end, ironically, the red and yellow knight ultimately came back (there was some goings-on involving treason and some squires fighting each other) to win the competition. Which was weird because he was the first loser. But anyway, I totally called it so I was happy.

Afterward, Joe got knighted.


And the king signed his old, non-knighted crown. I'm pretty sure Joe is going to use it in some sort of forgery scheme.


Then they took a picture together.


One of the unforseen consequences of going to Medieval Times is that when you take your 40-ounce goblet to the bar afterward to show off, they fill it up with beer, even when you tell them to just give you a little bit. This is not necessarily a negative consequence, but it's a consequence nonetheless.


And then everybody wants to wear the crowns.


BONUSBONUSBONUS: Andy noticed that my check card wasn't signed so he signed it for me:


If you can't read it, it says "Awesome McAwesome." That is my new legal name.

Also, Katie gave us posters for Christmas. This one is of Ana's boyfriend: