Lonnie Hammargren is on crack (and that's probably why I'll end up voting for him)

I got a VERY interesting piece of junk mail today. It was an audio CD called Songs of Nevada, by Dr. Lonnie Hammargren, aka, "Nevada's Unknown Balladeer." You can listen to it by clicking here. As if his Nevada-themed renditions of "Ring of Fire" and "You are my Sunshine" weren't enough, his accomplishments listed on the back of the mailer, without a doubt, seal the deal. See the whole thing here.

Here were a couple of my favorite accomplishments:

Honorary Consul to Belize

Knighted for charity work five times: Greece, Italy, London, Russia, Malta

Archeoastronomer

Amazon Explorer

Member of Screen Actors Guild - 15 years:

Ronald Reagan was previous President (WTF??)

Inventor of Karaoke guitar trademark

Video producer – “Las Vegas Live”

Video Producer – Travel logs: “Tahiti” and “New Guinea”

and one that's not on the website but is on the mailer: Astronaut Applicant.

Wow. You get my vote for originality alone, Dr. Hammargren!

BETCH

Yesterday at the tall girl store, this sales lady goes, "It's even harder for you to find clothes since you're so teeny on top and so big on the bottom." I felt like Kelly in the Shoes video. I was like, "Oh. By the way betch, FU*K YOU!!!"

A Series of Fortunate Events

That's cool. Saturday, I won tickets on the radio to see Five for Fighting perform. Later that night, Brian got 3 awards for his graphic design work at an awards show we went to. Even later that night, the night club where the show was held opened its doors to the public and we ran into Shannon, who happened to be there with some of her college friends. What a lucky day! :-)

Carrot Top is my boyfriend

So Carrot Top was surprisingly good! His delivery was one of an ultra-experienced comic. His prop thingies were really clever, and there were tons of penis & sodomy jokes! What more could a girl with a 12-year-old-boy's sense of humor ask for? A sprinkle of A.D.H.D. maybe? Sure enough, it was in there.

The show worked really well in its own theater. It wasn't just props & costumes anymore. He's now incorporated music, Blue Man Group-type audience participation and a wide screen projector into the act. It all works really well with his routine. And the music, along with his A.D.H.D., makes the show really high-energy.

It was only slightly offputting that the act seemed tailored for middle America, with its NASCAR, country music, and redneck jokes. But I wonder if those were just easy targets, and that's why they were a big part of the show. I don't know, all I know is that fu*ker is buff, and I don't care that he has freaky painted-on eyebrows, a pale face, and an orange spray-tanned body, cuz he was funny as fu*k!

Freaky eyebrows

Friday night we're going to see Carrot Top. I know, it's super-dorky. We're just going cuz we got free tickets. I'll let you know if it was worth the price of admission. :-)

How Great Is YouTube?

A couple posts back, Sweet Coalminer left me a link for the this video (now my #1 favorite song):

Kelly "Shoes"


I became curious, so I did some searching on the internet and found the mastermind behind the video. Here are two more of his bizarrely hilarious videos:

Cunningham Muffins


Love Letters


So what's the funniest internet video you've seen lately?

Nerdy AND overpriced

Saw this at the convention this weekend. Apparently they're going for big bucks. It's an R2D2 beanie hat! HA, what a clever idea!

Nerd Convention 2006

This weekend, we were in San Diego for our third year of Comic-Con. We saw a couple pretty cool presentations.

First, we caught the tail end of the Superman 2 Director's Cut presentation. I guess the director of the first Superman started filming the second one, and then for whatever reason they ended up changing out directors in the middle of it. So now they're releasing a DVD of the movie w/ the first director's unused footage. They showed a few clips of it, and it looked pretty cool. It was kinda weird seeing Margot Kidder & Christopher Reeves in NEW material. Kinda like how Tupac keeps releasing albums, even though he's dead. WEIRD!

Then we saw the Battlestar Galactica panel, with Lucy Lawless, Edward James Olmos, a couple of other people from the cast, and the creators of the show. They gave some hints about what was going to happen in season 3. We're still on season 1, so that kinda sucked for us. But it whet our appetites for the rest of the series.

Then we caught the tail end of some new Star Wars video game Q & A with George Lucas' press agent. Talk about some angry nerds!

By far the largest and funniest presentation was for Snakes on a Plane, w/ Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson was funny as hell on the panel. One kid asked if he would ever consider working with up-and-coming directors, and he said sure, if they could write the right check, he'd work with anyone. Or if they had a fine sister or a fine momma. Then he interrogated the kid about whether his momma or his sister were fine. It was hilarious. Then he kept calling the snakes motherf*ckers, which was equally hilarious.

One cool tidbit they revealed was that Samuel L. Jackson had it written in his contract that he would get no closer than 20 feet to any real snakes, so you're going to see a lot of CGI in this movie. Apparently, the previews for this movie intentionally don't show very much of the film, and the makers are not having critics screen the film before its release. They say it's cuz they don't want to give too much away (yeah right), but then they went ahead and showed us about 10 minutes of footage from the movie. Yeah, the movie looks horrible. Don't buy into the marketing.

We also got to see a preview for the new Tenacious D movie, Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, which looks a hell of a lot better than Snakes on a Plane. I think it's a rock musical, at least the entire preview was in that format. Anyway, yeah, it looks mad funny. I'm definitely seeing it.

Another cool presentation we saw was w/ Robert Smigel, who does the Saturday TV Funhouse cartoons on Saturday Night Live and who also does the voice of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. He showed some of the cartoons that were too hot for TV. A couple were about Michael Jackson molesting little boys. He also ran around as Triumph, which was kinda cool. I wish I would have gotten a picture, but I didn't. Oh well...

Here are some pics we took w/ the digital camera and some David took w/ his phone. We planned on going for a second day to see some panels about Lost and Veronica Mars, but online registration was down and we didn't want to battle the registration lines, so we just went to the beach instead. And Ikea. Don't be jealous. :-)

Working is so hard...

We're leaving tonight for Comic-Con in San Diego. See ya'll in a couple days.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOVEBUG!!

My sweetie-pie turns 29 today. Awe.

"I'd have to go up on you!"

A friend of mine sent me this photo today. It's from a few years ago in Sacramento, when a bunch of us law students met Ron Jeremy at a screening of his documentary. He stunk like the worst B.O. you could imagine, and made a tall joke that's now the title of this blogpost.

The funniest part about this experience though was when my other friend subtly substituted himself in for Ron Jeremy in the photo.


HA!

Bootyhead Chamber

I was reaading about these cell phone booths they're talking about putting in movie theaters, restaurants, and other public places where it's considered rude to use your cell phone. It seems like a good idea in theory. I just wonder if anyone will actually use them. Other than for sex, drug-use, and to piss in, I mean.

People are so weird

Saturday night we met a couple of Brian's childhood friends for a birthday party at the Crown & Anchor. This guy shows up, some friend of a friend of a friend, and, no lie, he looks just like a pirate. He had a head rag and this little skinny mustache that was curled up at the ends, and a pointy goatie.

The first thing I thought was, "Wow, he must've just gotten off of work at a show on the Strip or something." But then I asked him what the pirate thing was all about and he said it was on purpose, just cuz.

Wow. So, like, instead of cross-dressing, this guy gets his kicks by dressing up as a pirate. Just like the guy in Dodgeball. Is this a common thing? Is there a psychological diagnosis for this?

Reason #86 why I won't be going to medical school

Saturday, Brian & David & I went to see Bodies, The Exhibition.

For all you link-phobics who don't know, this is a collection of dead bodies, dissected and treated with a polymer to keep them preserved. As horrific as it sounds, it's actually presented very tastefully. And it's a supreme educational experience. Spend some time on the web site to get a better idea of what it's all about.

So anyway... we go down there, and inadvertantly, we haven't eaten for a few hours, so we're starving as we're walking through. It doesn't help that human muscle looks like flank steak. Or that human tendons look just like KFC. So I was simultaneously starving and queesy the whole time. It was like, "Damn I'm hungry... Oh God, this is gross... Oh man, I'm totally going to barf." Despite the constant battle not to throw up, I managed to enjoy the experience overall.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

It was like a crash course in anatomy. Lots of cool facts combined with awe-inspiring demonstrations. The rooms were separated into different parts of the body: muscles, joints, heart, lungs, digestion, reproduction, skin, etc.

In the lungs room, you could see a healthy non-smoker lung compared to a smoker's lung w/ emphysema. They had a bin next to the exhibit where you could deposit your cigarettes if you chose to stop smoking then and there. In the digestion room, you got to see a liver with cirrhosis compared to a healthy one, and in the brain room, you got to see a brain with a severe stroke compared to a normal one.

One of the most interesting parts was the fetus room. They showed preserved fetuses in each week of development. It was really shocking to see just how quickly things like skeletons and fingerprints developed. They also had some babies who died of birth defects, like one born without a frontal lobe (head) and another born with its insides on its outside. They give you the option to bypass this part of the exhibit if you don't want to see it.

Probably the thing I thought was the coolest was the person cut in half right down the middle, so you could actually see how all the organs and systems sat inside the body. So cool!

Interestingly, the bodies were all Chinese. The web site says it's cuz they have a good team of doctors at the universities there, but I think it's more about the number of "donated" or "unidentified" bodies available there.

SPOILERS ENDED

So yeah, if you get the chance, definitely check it out. Just don't go either right after or right before you're supposed to eat. Also, don't see Saw 2 the day after, cuz it'll make you feel sick again. I'm just saying.

Off the Hook

So Friday, while I'm at work, I get a phone call from a number I don't recognize. I answer and it turns out to be someone asking about an apartment for rent. "Wrong number," I say, and continue about my business. A few minutes later, I get the same kind of call from a different number. Then again. And again. Eventually I got the hint and stopped answering. These calls have not stopped all weekend.

Turns out my mom put an ad in the paper to rent out an empty apartment and, for whatever reason, decided to put my number in the ad instead of her own. When I confronted her about it, she just said, "Tee-hee. Yeah, I don't know why I did that. Just don't answer your phone." Oh, okay, no problem. Mi cellular es su cellular!

We're not all sociopaths...

Thanks to Greg for passing this on to me. It's the most awkward Daily Show interview EVER.

Oh yeaaaaah.....

The best reality show on TV is back starting tonight!

Can't get it out of my head

I frickin' love this song right now:



Hate Me by Blue October

Ha! There it is!

Bitter Monkey

The stupid gameshow that I got rejected from premieres tonight on VH1. Actually, they aired it on Sunday morning orignally, so I've already seen it. I will never understand how those people got on that show and I didn't. ((Shaking head))

America's Next Top Shelf Organizer

Alright haters, the tall blog is updated.

Sleepaway Camp

So, instead of the usual company retreat, Brian's boss thought it'd be a good idea to have a company camping trip. You know, a family-friendly get-to-know-your-neighbor kinda thing. So we grabbed our 11-year-old nephew and headed to Zion National Park with about 30 other people.

I thought for sure I'd hate every second of camping, but surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. I think that when I'm scared, I kick it into survival mode and I just deal.

Going back to some of the questions & suggestions from before:

Q. Did you remember to bring toilet paper?

After last year's hiking debacle (also known as the "why I don't eat at Quizno's anymore story"), you bet your candy ass I did. I brought 4 rolls of toilet paper, 3 packs of wet wipes, and 3 travel-rolls of Charmin, just in case. I even brought toilet paper when we went tubing in the river, which actually turned out to be a pretty bad idea.

Q. Did you have to shit outside?

Thankfully, no. We got there early enough that we snagged the campsite closest to the bathrooms. The toilets flushed and the sinks had running water.

Q. Were there lots of bugs? If so, how did you deal?

Yes. I was OCD with the bugspray. And OCD about keeping the tent zipped up at all times. It also helped that I am severely near-sighted and refused to focus my eyes on the ground. The less I saw, the better, especially at night.

Q. Were there showers?

No. By the end of the trip, I had a thick black layer of grime on my skin. It was this sick combination of bugspray, sunscreen, and dirt. I had to shower twice when I got home and scrub my skin raw, just to get it off.

Q. Did you bring makeup?

I meant to, but then I couldn't find it, so I had to go without. That was actually my favorite part of camping - not having to worry about appearance. By cutting out showering, blow-drying my hair, putting on makeup, and choosing an outfit, I reduced my prep time from 1.5 hours to just 5 minutes. It was pretty freakin' nice.

Q. Were you the biggest crybaby there?

No. There were 4 teenaged girls on the trip, so the role of weak sister was overfilled. There was also a 5-year-old girl whose family left early with her on Day 2.

Q. What was the suckiest part of the trip?

The heat. It was miserably hot all day and all night. Oh, and also our air mattress. It sprung a leak on Day 2, so that night we slept on the hard, rocky floor. That really sucked.

We had a nice time overall though. The pictures are lame, but here they are anyway.

Cockblogged

Cockblogged:
1. v. past tense. To prevent someone from blogging.
2. adj. To be prevented from blogging.

Ex 1: Allison M. cockblogged my Shakespeare festival post by not emailing me the digital pics of the weekend's events.
Ex 2: Brad cockblogged my Moapa fireworks post by blogging about it first.
Ex 3: I am cockblogged from posting about the camping trip until we use up & develop all the film in the waterproof camera.

Don't dream it, be it...

After an unimpressive visit to my new cardiologist last week, I thought to myself, "What an idiot. I know way more about my heart condition than he does. I could totally do a better job than him." So ever since then, I've been wondering whether I should just go to medical school and become a heart doctor myself.

On the one hand, I'd be totally stoked to help other people with heart conditions, especially those with Marfan Syndrome. And I'm still relatively young, so I could potentially get a good career going by my late thirties. And I've always wanted to live up to the same epitaph as Thurgood Marshall did: "He did what he could with what he had." Becoming a doctor and a lawyer in one lifetime would surely maximize my potential.

On the other hand, I'd have to go back to school to get 38 more units of science credits (an estimated 1.5 years worth of school) & take the MCATs before I could even be admitted into medical school. Then there's med school itself, studying for and taking the boards, residency and "paying your dues" as a bitch doctor...

While I think I could do it, I don't think I would be happy for a very long time. And even if I tortured myself and jumped through all the hoops, there would not necessarly be a guarantee of happiness in the end. Don't doctors work long hours and never see their families? And what about medical malpractice insurance and medical school debt? Yeah, that's not really what I'm into. So for now, it looks like it's back to relying on the boneheads that managed to jump through all the right hoops.