Best Rainy Afternoon Course of Action

Good job, Jim.

Best Making it Work

Man, tonight's Project Runway made me believe in that show again. This season just went from snoozers to All-Right! And the promo for next week has it looking like a tear-filled bloodbath. I'm in.

UNRELATED: So Tim Burton is making a live-action Alice in Wonderland? And Johnny Depp will play the Mad Hatter? Sounds like it'll be solid, but no points for originality as far as choice of film, director, or actor.

AND Johnny Depp is playing the Lone Ranger (or maybe Tonto? Conflicting info...) for Disney? That's a little neater, but seems like Disney loves Depp like Disney loves Miley Cyrus and High School Musicals.

AND UPDATED: That would be Johnny Depp as Tonto, Mad Hatter, and coming back for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean.

Best Well That Was Easy

While I wasn't looking, blogger got a whole lot easier to use, especially on the template side. Turns out you don't have to make your list of links on your own using html any more...who knows how long this has been the case, but for the first time in probably a year I've added links to friendly blogs and there's certainly more that need to be added.

Over on the right you'll find links to the excellent postings of Ali, Dave, Jeff B, Jeff M's new Chicago blog, Karen, Liz, Rebecca's post-New Awesome one-woman show, Rebekah, and Rustin.

If yours hasn't been added yet, I probably did it on purpose to hurt your feelings. (winky face)

Best Tale of Survival

US News and World Report has posted John McCain's account of his 5 1/2 years at the Hanoi Hilton, which they first published in May of 1973, on their website. After a few pages of reading, I really think he could have made it a lot zippier with a bit more humor. Guess 35 years ago people didn't know as much about making personal essays as we do now.

The Link.

ALSO: Here's an idea I had for a movie, or possibly a tv show: There's this guy, he's in the war (uhm...probably World War II) and he's in a prison camp for a real long time. He is the hero of his fellow Joes because he's the guy that makes up this long story that he tells every night for days and days and years and years. His stories were pretty much the reason everyone kept their sanity and will to live while they were in the jail. After the war and his return home, our hero decides to take his talent for storytelling to the work world, kind of thinking he's unique and brilliant...but he shows up at every ad agency or television writing agency and discovers there are dozens of Ex-POWs just like him trying to get their foots in the door with their tale-telling. Pretty much it's the tale of the long hard battle to get ahead in advertising, or tv writing, or something, while surrounded by a bunch of cut-throat Earnest Hemingway types with more gruesome prison-tales than you.

It could be a comedy or drama, depending on the director.

Best On the Other Hand, This I Approve Of

It's about a week old, but have you seen the new Quantum of Solace trailer?


Click
At about 1:22 it made me say "Whoah!"

On the other hand, let me make this prediction: We will all go see Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, we will all pretty much like it, but we will also all have some reservations...we'll realize we bought into something constructed to please us and have trouble swallowing scenes like Norah picking up Nick's iPod and saying "Oh my gosh, we like all the same music!"

Of course you do. We ALL like the same music.

Also, we'll find ourselves forced to face something we never expected we'd have to deal with ever: Michael Cera backlash.

Best You Are All a Bunch of Dopes II

You need to quit trying to use the word "whatevs", it always comes out so tentatively and awkwardly, like when a missionary tries out a slang word he's heard on the street in his new language. Even worst would be "whatev." Linguistically, these two are at least as appalling as shutter shades.

Let me get Oxford English Dictionary on you and dare to claim that "whatevs" was born of the blog "whatevs.org" which doesn't even exist anymore (born in 2002 or 1995, depending on the incomplete internet research I've tried to conduct, dead by February 2008, somesay victim to insidious Russian hackers). A pop-culture minded soapbox of one Uncle Grambo, the blog was the birthing spot for all sorts of slangterms that haven't yet totally infiltrated our Gossip Girl vocabulary.

For the sake of Never Forget, let me present to you an Abbreviated Whatevs Lexicon (ripped from another spot on the internet, I didn't write any of this part):

best - best, obvs. usually used as the sentence "best!" or "so best!"
bovs - beyond obvious.
buzz - something has "buzz" if it's being talked about or is cool.
durst - worst, as in Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit. worse than "no buzz", worse than worst. or wurst. eg. "Brit Brit's perf of "Me Against The Music" was side splittingly durst"
eff - obvs.
evs - ever. obvs.
no buzz - opposite of buzz. e.g. "Luis Guzman has no buzz w/out Soderbergh"
obvs - obviously, obvs.
p.h.c.f.y.s.b. - piping hot content for your sexy bod
shmears - seriously. shmears is short for shmeariously, which is short for seriously, like 'breakfast shmreakfast' mallrats stizz.
schmobvs - obvs schmobvs, so it means obvs.
stizz - style. eg. "Uma Thurman? amazing face. great pins. strangely appealing feet ('kill bill' stizz)"
tigs - tight.
whatevs - whatever, obvs.
WOM - word of mouth
uggs - ugly

That's what I've got to say right now.

Footnote: Had I the power or authority, I would surrender "whatevs" entry into the popular vernacular in exchange for everyone knowing how to spell the word "yeah" (which is actually a word, not just a piece of onomatopoeia [meaning: it's not "ya"]), but in that regard I might as well be calling for a reining in the use of the word "random."

Also, apparently my taste in grammar has shifted from the descriptivist to the prescriptivist schools.

Footnote 2: When I get bored but have a computer at my disposal apparently I just like to start fights with all my friends.

Best Third Road Trip in a Row

The past three weekends* I've spent at least sometime out of the city, and I didn't even plan that to happen. Last Saturday I went with Duane to Hartford for the UVA/UCONN football game (Duane is a UVA grad, that was the impetus of the interest). It was my first football game since becoming ingrained with Friday Night Lights fascination earlier this year and pretty much the whole time that's all I thought about and when they played "Welcome to the Jungle" over the loudspeakers all my heart heard was Explosions in the Sky.

Of course, gamewise, it wasn't such great television as the Huskies beat the 'Hoos 42 to 10 (or something like that).





Afterwards I had my first Taco Bell Volcano Taco and it was awesome.


*Montauk (not yet blogged) and Gettysburg (quite blogged) were the other two trips. And if I were more proactive, maybe I'd be gone this weekend, too.

Best Best Sights to See in Soho

Some might say the best sight they could see in Soho would be the fancy ice cream truck parked in front of APC.


I say the best sight for me is the totally rad van that's been parking on Prince near Mercer these days.






If I was told there was candy or a puppy in that van, I would risk it.

Best Memoir of a Mancation

The day's second dispatch from the borrowed workspace...

Come, let me tell you the tale of the trip Jared, Lars, Brigham, Jeff and Collin took to Gettysburg. It is a tale of travel, brotherhood, history, museums, battlefields, and discoveries! (also, some of it was in 3D)


We departed several Fridays ago and this was our chariot, Jeff's boss's Jeep Cherokee, which he happened to be babysitting and we totally had permission to drive it to Gettysburg. Also right by our car: The Fire Bus.



Jared came prepared with tapes n tapes to make our time in the Jeep more pleasant.


Ah, the open road!


After some time of journeying we stopped at a Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. It was not good, but we would certainly eat worse before the trip was over.



Somewhere in the neighborhood of midnight or later we arrived at the Gettysburg Best Western. Built in 1790something (no, really) this hotel had probably been remodeled a few times since then and met our lodging needs quite well.


Treats were shared,


Teeth were brushed,



and then tracks were laid.


Also, one thing about this trip was that pretty much at any given time someone was either humming, singing, or harmonica-ing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (especially during showers) Here Lars plays the harmonica. Who is Lars, you might ask. I have never seen this Lars before, you might say. Well, Lars is our awesome new buddy. He's Australian, he's married, and he's a successful fashion designer. (see? Lars doesn't work for this company, he IS this company) He imparted so much wisdom upon us throughout the trip it was like having a cool grandpa who happens to be about your age.


In the morning, the morning broke and with it came the hurricaning of the East. This is our Gettysburg Best Western.



Breakfast was eaten at the Lincoln Diner. When I said we'd eat worse a few pictures ago I was not referring to the Lincoln Diner. We had fun there.




Jared took his He-Man breakfast to the next level.


Still ravenous, Jared negotiated his way into a bit of Collin's grub.


I ate this, what a classic & classy diner breakfast.


And in the bathroom I spotted some graffiti that I think we can expect to see more of in the near future...


And then we headed for the Gettysburg Military Park. The weather was not good, so a lot of time was spent in the excellent new Visitor's Center/Museum.


This is me. I sure wasn't in a lot of pictures before now.


Good job, Utah!


Way to go, Illinois!


The Gettysburg Museum really beat a lot of humility into me, perhaps it's an understatement, but the Civil War wasn't fun for anyone. I especially liked the quotes they had here and there amongst the exhibits. It's great that there's such an astounding wealth of information available on this dark time. Thank goodness for journals, letters home, and newspaper columns, that's all I have to say.





Also, I liked the flags and musical instruments.




Having logged numerous hours in the museum, we headed for the field of battle. The rains remained intermittent and the winds occasionally very strong, but learning was our mission and we would not be held back.

Our first stop was this one monument, shoot, my mind is blanking on for whom it was meant to honor. Pennsylvania, maybe? An especially tall and broad Confederate soldier was waiting for us there and he taught us much.




The monument had an uptop...


And you could go up to the uptop if you felt like receiving a battering from the elements.



From up there you could see an encampment of re-enactors who weren't scared off by the hurricane.


From there we drove about the "park" visiting monuments and rocky ledges where terribly awful things happened 140-some years ago.






As we drove swiftly along one of the park's outer roads I spied a friend in danger and ordered Jeffrey to stop the vehicle for in the middle of the road there stood a noble Eastern Box Turtle unaware of his perilous position.


If you didn't know I had an Eastern Box Turtle (er, Tortoise, I mean) of my own when I was a younger fellow named Sherman (after the tank, or, more accurately [and fittingly], after the General) who ran away from home one day. He was a magnificent pet and it was a thrill (surely you can see that is not a forced smile that I wear) to hold one of his kin in my hands, to watch its head move around just like my old buddy moved his, to feel the strength of his legs as he kicked middair. It was a thrill and and honor and an absolute highlight of 2008 to spend some time with a tortoise again.


This dent in the bottom of the shell meant he was a man-tortoise. (figure it out yourself if you must)



The last time I saw street-turtle he looked just the same as Sherman did the last time I saw him. If you think making this post didn't turn me a little wistful then you are a fool.


Last stop in Gettysburg, the cemetery and the monument where Lincoln gave his famed address.



Back on the road, we stopped at a Red Robin.


Here's a picture from a happy time before our especially bad (cold) meal was served to us. This is the worse meal I referred to so long ago. We filled out two unhappy "How'd We Do?" cards and there would have been more had they left more at the table.


Hours later, we returned to the city, stronger and wiser than ever before, bonded by an experience that tested our mettle and our manliness.

This post is dedicated to the memory of our friend and brother Lars who is no longer with us.


(he's home in Australia is what I'm saying)