Josh Reynolds

Ok, so I didn't link on every single link, but I clicked on enough to realize that I wasn't missing anything.

Last night was the MTV Video Music Awards where, I am sad to say, Johnny Cash did not win Video of the Year for "Hurt". If you haven't seen this go here.

My friend and roomate Tyler's band was suppose to play at VMA afterparty and we were on the list so I decided to go because I might get to see some celebs and also there was free booze. Ahem. So when we got there it was a total mob scene with everyone dressed to the nines and we had to wait in the "list line" right next to the most obnoxious security guard. We wait there for about an hour and then Tyler comes up with his Talent badge around his neck and waits with us. So we wait some more and finally a security guard comes up and says it's going to be at least two hours before they let anyone in because it's full. This was odd since Tyler had just been in there and said that it was totally empty. So, Tyler decides to throw some weight around as the artist and we make it past several security checkpoints until we get to the entrance and they won't let all of us (4 people) in because Tyler only gets 2 people he can let in. So after waiting for this long Tyler goes in with one of us and says "I don't know what to do." So, I buy a 40oz and some microwave popcorn and Phyllis and I go home. Not the party experience I was hoping for.

To counteract boredom today I decided that I would go to Instapundit and click on every link in his blogroll. Every single one. Does life get more exciting?

Being a southerner I am always on alert for southern tinged news and today was chock full. First there was all the moonshine talk. I've never had moonshine for a few reasons. The first is that it's never been offered to me, and the second is that I have an unreasonable(or maybe not) fear of going blind from drinking alcohol. However, I am sure that if I see someone drink some 'shine and they aren't sightless moments afterwards, I'd probably give it whirl.

And closer to home: this story about a smelly city worker. Hot on the heels of the nude biker rally held in my hometown this year, Murfreesboro is not hitting 1.000 on the nation's cultural radar. But has it ever? There is the world's largest cedar bucket there, but how long can you ride on that accomplishment?

Remember Scandal? The band with the hits "Goodbye to You" and "The Warrior"? Lead singer Patty Smyth has fallen out of the public spotlight but I found a very important essay by her which you can read here. I must say that I was hooked in by the first paragraph and I believe you will be too.

I've mostly tried to avoid the spotlight since my headlining days with Scandal, but it's time to for me to call on my celebrity to make people realize a horrible heartbreaking truth -- Don Rickles isn't funny, he's just mean.

I have recently gotten back in touch with two friends I enjoy very much and they both have blogs! Well, Maddy's isn't really a blog, but she has some stuff on a website. Good enough for me. Natalie has a blogspot blog that's pretty funny and I can't wait until she starts linking to stuff because I'm sure it will be hysterical.

Via the Blacktable comes this interesting link about airbrushing. It's really quite creepy when you run the mouse over the model's face. Try it.

The Laci Peterson case was the cause of me saying for the only time I can remember: "She really seemed like she was a nice person." What caused this very Mary Lou Reynolds(my mother) like exclamation to come out of my mouth is still unknown to me. However, I still think she looks like a nice person.

These links of some art work near the SF bay waterfront and the Modesto Bee article here make some fascinating viewing. The artwork is really cool. A cult seems farfetched to me, but, hey, maybe.

Since scouting was a bust I've been spending time at work today indulging in my trip around the world obsession. The trip around the world combines two of my favorite things :Travel and extremism. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. I think I would like to take a year and see the world. I don't want to wait until I'm too old etc.... However, this takes some money and unfortunately this is a resource I'm a little(ok, a lot) short of. However, I am going to take a glass half full viewpoint about this and figure that at least right now I am paying off my credit card bills and thus working towards my goal if only a little bit.

I have to go. I must. There are too many things to see to be stuck in this closet with financial analysts all day. Or even stuck in NYC. The pyramids, New Zealand, Moscow, Nepal, there is just too much that I have to see.

I am forced to admit after quite a bit of time on google that scouting is boring.

On August 21, 1912, Arthur R. Eldred of Oceanside, New York achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. He was the first person to earn the award.


Today, let's talk scouting. I was a cub scout at one time but it was really pretty boring as our cubmaster or den mother or whatever you called them was pretty lazy. So we would just go and shoot basketball during scout meetings all the time. Not what I wanted out of the scout experience. I wanted to do all those awesome things they talked about in the scout handbook and in Boy's Life like the Boy Scout jamboree(well, it sounded fun at the time)and building tree houses and such. After a few years of not much going on with scouting I got out of it and turned to more reading in my room by myself which I pretty much would have preferred to do the entire time I was in the cub scouts anyway.

There is NO WAY that this can be real. Those crazy pinkos!

Via Gothamist I have found the disturbing news that Johnny Depp is to play that merry prankster Willy Wonka(we're not to the bad part yet, but here it is) in Tim Burton's adaptation. Why anyone who isn't drunker than a cootie brown would give Tim Burton money to do another adaptation is beyond me. Is it because Planet of the Apes was so good and made alot of money? Well, that's clearly not the case. Did you see Planet of the Apes? I did and what a piece of....

Josh:So...Cootie Brown?

Dad: You're going to have to wait until you get to heaven and ask your papaw, because I have no idea.

Josh: Oh.

Everyone else: How dissapointing!

Well, I'd say that blogging will be light today, but it's always light for me so that would be pointless. But here's why: I got drunker than a cootie brown last night! Whoa nelly! From shots of tequila to drunk dialing, this night had it ALL.

I have always wondered who Cootie Brown was and I have a phone call in to my father who introduced me to the phrase. Can't find much on the internet about it so I'll have to wait for the news from him. It always sounded faintly rascist to me, but perhaps I'm just being overly sensitive.

I have meant to ask him for years so I'm pretty excited...aren't you?

I keep scouring the net for interesting things to talk about and I just am not having alot of luck today. I mean, there's the rampaging bride, the are these animal rights activists guilty of domestic terrorism debate, and of course, Scott Weiland who can't not fuck up to save his life, but I just don't have a whole lot to comment on about this. Ok, yeah I do. Domestic terrorism scares me as a legal term. I'm going to post something bigger about this soon.

I wish that I could say that I held the same concern for the beautiful people as the creator of For Better Or For Worse demonstrates into today's strip.

Let's talk blackout, shall we? So, I'm standing at the urinal and the power just goes out. So like many other urinators in New York I hiked up my trousers and headed back into the office where everyone was looking around blankly. My boss set up his walkman and we played it through a speaker where we learned that the power was not only out in NYC but also in Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, etc.... I got scared. As we evacuated the building and got out onto the street you could feel the underlying panic/concern in the crowd. I for one was very frightened. We all started moving up Broadway and it was very strange to see SO MANY people on the streets. I managed to see about six people that I knew on the streets and that was a nice feeling. A co-worker and I headed uptown until I ran into Carlos. There we went to Pianos and drank beers on the fire escape and just took in the Lower East Side with no power. Plenty of people were out drinking and eating on the sidewalks. The traffic was awful but it was the first time that I've seen cars piled up like that and no one was honking.

I can only give thanks that I wasn't in the subway when the blackout happened as I can only imagine the feeling as the train stops abruptly and it goes pitch black. I guess they got people of fairly quickly and a larger friend of mine was helping the old and infirm off the train and onto the platforms. ABC news wanted him to talk to Ted Koppel live on the phone but they ran out of time. How cool would that have been?!

They restored power around where I work today so I am here recording interviews. The trains aren't running so I had to take a bus to work. I didn't know which bus to take and I asked this older gentlman and he said he didn't know but he offered to let me borrow one of his bikes! I was actually pretty touched by that. It's nice to know your neighbors are decent people.

I've got sort of a long Beetle Bailey post coming but I have to wait for some links. I know you're waiting with baited breath.


Well, there it is, but I'll have to add the strip link later. Again, The City Paper comic strip column is well worth a look.

Beetle Bailey catches alot of flak for being an old comic that doesn't really do too much. It doesn't push any boundaries, the jokes are stale, etc.... I can' really argue with either of the above arguments, but I do think Mort Walker(or his writers) really do try and keep the strip at least a little fresh. Certainly for the old guard kind of strip it is they do a fantastic job. Two years ago Mort Walker had a contest posted on his website to name his new character which would be the computer guy at Camp Swampy. Predictably the character was named the not very imaginative "Gizmo" but when was the last time Hagar the Horrible or B.C. added a new character? Walker has experimented with introducing new characters before to varying degrees of success. A few years ago he introduced a love interest for Sgt. Snorkel named Louise Lugg who not only looked like a female version of Sarge, but also had an anthropomorhic cat to be in opposition to Snorkel's Otto. Sgt. Lugg and Bella the cat were pretty major players for a few years as she tried to snare the food loving Sarge(shades of Jughead anyone?) but I suppose the jokes had really run out of steam and she's rarely seen anymore. Otto, Sarge's talking dog that dresses up in army clothing, has been enjoying a renaissance of sorts in the strip lately. Usually Otto just bites Beetle or eats Sarge's food or some such gag, but check out this strip and you'll see...well, I don't know what, but it sure is weird in Beetle Bailey.

This guy has a theory that all strips evolve into having talking animals eventually and this column in the Baltimore weekly is genius. You wouldn't believe how jealous I am that I didn't think of it.

I was perusing Aint-it-cool-news today and found the depressing news that Garfield will be made into a feature film starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Bill Murray, and this other guy who's name I can't remember, but is always connected to projects like this that always fail.

The CGI Garfield is sure to offend on some level, and I can only think that the reason that this idea is even in development is that the studio thinks it can jump on the comic book movie bandwagon.

Garfield=Howard the Duck for the 00's

The Texas Prison Museum Gift Shop.

Horror implied.

Prison blogging

Prison Drama

I heard this guy on NPR once and the book sounds fascinating. From what he said on NPR it's best to pretend to keep kosher in prison as the kosher meals are usually of higher quality than the other food. This is the only factoid that I came away with from that interview.

In keeping with my latest blogging theme: On this day in history in 1934 the first prisoners came to Alcatraz. Today's theme? PRISON.

Let's do something fun to start with! Here at the Bureau of Prisons website you can search for prisoners by name. It's like Classmates.com...but with the criminal element.

Andrew Sullivan is a big deal in the blogging world. Too bad he writes like he wants a job at Successories.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

AH-NULD!: I interrupt my break to say simply: Yay! A pro-gay, pro-choice, hard-ass Republican! An Eagle has landed. Now let him soar.
- 9:10:51 PM

"Now let him soar."? Give me a freakin' break.

My brother has caught the blogging bug. Check it out. I was going to look for articles of introvert/extrovert siblings but they were kind of hard to find.

Good for her...but that hair!

There is much talk about bringing the olympics to New York, and that got me wondering, with all the strife there, will Afghanistan be sending anyone to the olympics? Apparently there were some people at the BBC who also were wondering and wrote this article. Note the waist of the body builder. It looks freaky, doesn't it?

And finally, for all your historical subway map, phantom station, subway obsession, needs this is the ultimate site.

Subway performers.

I wish I could find an article about my favorite subway peformer who is a guy who's lower body is this felt, stuffed, fake horse. He wears a cowboy hat and sings "La Bamba" while making himself and the horse dance. He usually appears to be extremely intoxicated.

Bernhard Goetz is still in the news.

I think I can understand why his mayoral run didn't have the impact he had hoped.

Today is the anniversary of a terrible subway accident in New York. Today's theme: the subway!

The cheery colors and writing at the site I linked too above seem a little at odds with it's subject matter don't you think?

I could barely stand to look at this. Very disturbing.

This is very interesting:

Bikini Atoll art

You knew it was coming:

Cartoons about Nuclear Weapons

Here is a interesting Weird Al/Atomic bomb connection.

How nuts is the atomic bomb? To think that ultimate death toll of Hiroshima is something above 200,000 people is very difficult to comprehend. Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and so today will be atomic bomb themed both serious and not.


From the Exploratorium which looks like they have some great stuff online I found this.

Very interesting stories here.

One interesting thing about living in NY is how much New York-centric political and celebrity news you get. I think that it may be possible that Lizzie Grubman and Paris Hilton may have stayed totally off my radar had I stayed in Seattle. As it is, there is absolutely no way to ignore news about them here. Not having really set foot outside of New York in the past year I can't really gauge the cultural impact of these two quasi celebrities.

My interest in local politics used to be close to nil when I lived in Seattle (beyond looking at the voter's pamphlet and laughing at Charlie Chong or whoever else was being a nutcase that year) but now I follow local events farily closely. Mayor Bloomberg is so high profile that you can't avoid news about him. He is very, very, charmless when you see him on TV. That being said, I don't think he's a bad politician and I think that for the most part he's done a pretty good job as mayor. People can complain about the smoking ban, but he worked it very
shrewdly posing it as a workplace health issue. Of course, the cabaret laws are still in effect and I would prefer to see those abolished, but for the most part I think "Mayor Mike" is doing an ok job.

Some of the more Tenneeseecentric among you may enjoy this and this.

And in the oops dept:

From the Google News page this morning:


Top Stories Auto-generated 3 minutes ago


New Zealand Herald
Indonesia Stock Prices Plung After Hotel Blast


UPDATE: It's 11:27 EST and the typo still isn't fixed.

Two things many people who write blogs hate: PETA and the French. I was going to write a long post about this rebutting arguments and so forth but after I thought about it awhile I just got too worked up and decided against it.

I don't hate the French and while PETA can sure make some bad decisions, I don't hate them either. That's the short format.

Thank you. Good night.

Well Gigli turned up 8th on the top ten list this week and looks to be dropping off soon. Looks like this will likely be Bennifer's last movie together, although we'll see how Jersey Girl does when it comes out.

"They're terrific together," director Kevin Smith has told the press. "You can really sense their chemistry onscreen."

Hmmm.

If she married Optimus Prime this world would be a better place. Would she be Goveg.com Prime?

This has been one of my favorite strips for a long time. I discovered the books when I was a freshman in college and I worked in the Women's Union as a nighttime security/escort. No one ever called so I read the books in there and they had three Dykes to Watch Out For Collections. Allison Bechdel is extremely talented.

Homosexual undercurrents in Garfield? Maybe.

I am all over Gigli. This movie looks awful awful awful. I haven't seen it yet so I can't say for sure but if the reviews are any indication "America's Royalty" may have an Ishtar level flop. I think it might do okay though just due to the starpower it has. I predict a mid 10 opening and a steep drop thereafter.