Word to your mother.

This guy is awesome, and proves that dancing doesn't have to be boring and sucktacular. I find this dude mesmerizing in his awesomeness...



Be sure to watch it all, as he busts some moves after the judges talk to him...

Clay Aiken not gay, still creepy.

American Idol Clay Aiken is evidently not gay, which I have to admit comes as something of a shock. Balancing out that thunderbolt is the fact that he is becoming more creepy looking by the minute, and his baby momma is pretty weird too. I have nothing against Clay Aiken except for the fact that his music sucks. I also have nothing against gay people. I am boggled that this particular blend of peanut butter and chocolate doesn't go together, but whatever.

As far as his baby momma goes, it's weird on several levels. To begin with, her name is "Jaymes". That's right, "Jaymes". That's not so much weird as ironic, given that Clay Freaking Aiken managed to find a girl named Jaymes. The weird part is that she is 50. Evidently, Clay has been unable to turn his American Idol stardom towards normal groupies, and is instead enjoying the lovely lady lumps of the elderly. Creepy.

Creepier yet is just how that guy looks. He has always been a little odd looking, but since he has parlayed his fame of singing horrible pop songs into a career of singing horrible Broadway show tunes, he has just gotten more and more discomforting to look at. I mean, not Michael Jackson odd, but just odd. I do think it's funny that his fans refer to themselves as "Claymates", but past that, there just isn't a whole lot going on there that I approve of. It is, however, pretty fun imagining Clay Aiken in a fistfight. Seriously, take a good look at the picture below, and then imagine him screaming "Your about to get Clay O'd, Beeyatch" while wading into a bar fight. That's just awesome.

In conclusion, I find Clay Aiken somewhat repulsive. Good Day.

EDIT TO ADD!!!

Breaking News: Clay Aiken might still be gay! It turns out that his baby momma was artifically inseminated, implying that Clay Aiken likes children, but not chicks. Word!

Memorial Day

So, I try and write something serious about Memorial Day every year, because it's a holiday that really means something to me. This year, I decided to just post a link to this article. It talks about it's subject better than I could:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080526/ap_on_re_us/wwi_survivor

If you don't read it, it talks about America's last living survivor of World War I. This man is 107 years old, and actually had to convince an Army recruiter that Missouri didn't keep records of birth so that he could enlist and go fight in Europe prior to turning 18. Now, he is the only one left. To me, that's incredible.

Reading about this guy made me think about WWI and our current war. While I would never in a million years try to compare the valor of those soldiers to today's troops, I would point out that we are lucky that this current war has had a relatively low human cost. Do you realize that France's male population was reduced by 10% during WWI? More troops were lost in a single day than we have lost in this war. During the Battle of Verdun, which lasted roughly 8 months, the British lost 542,000 troops. That's 67,750 per month, or roughly 2200 per day. The Germans lost about 432,000, or 54,000 per month. That works out to roughly 1800 per day. Combined, that means that in one 8 month battle, 4000 men per day were dying. This, of course, does not take into account French losses and any other skirmishes that were incurred during the 8 month period that the Battle of Verdun encompassed.

Now, those aren't American troops, but the example goes to show what an incredible meat-grinder WWI really was. It is my hope that it also makes you think a little bit about the sacrifices American troops have made throughout our history. Philosophical arguments as to the validity of the war on terror and Vietnam and nostalgic looks back on Korea and WWII aside, American troops have been putting boots on the ground and dying for us for a long time. Please take a second and think about that tomorrow.

Danica Patrick: Pugilist.

Danica Patrick is awesome. During today's Indy 500 she got clipped on pit row when Ryan Briscoe pulled into her. He put her out of the race, and she didn't like that one bit. So, she decided to go have a "talk" with the guy. The above picture is her marching down pit row. See the bald black guy coming over the wall? That's the head of IRL security coming to grab her and redirect her back to her own pit.

Danica Patrick weighs all of 100 pounds, and I believe she had every intention of going down and punching Ryan Briscoe right in the teeth. Even better, the announcers basically even endorsed her plan! This isn't the first time that Danica has gotten fired up, either. Last year she shoved Dan Wheldon in the chest for something. I have no idea what, because other than Indy, I really don't watch IRL racing, but he did something and she didn't like it. Also, some guy didn't get out of her way during a practice a couple of weeks ago, so she ran him over. Danica is not to be toyed with.

The best is how bitter she stayed. A full half hour after the wreck, they did a live interview with her, and I think it was all she could do to keep from screaming obscenities at the reporter. Sweet, beautiful Danica has a lot of rage, apparently. Anyway, I wish that I could find a video that showed her marching down pit row, as it is pretty awesome, but I can't. Enjoy instead this picture of Danica looking extremely angry...

Edit to add: Check my comments. My buddy Toby actually did find a link to her marching down pit row. The crowd is cheering, but what is especially interesting is how many people in pit row itself seem to be egging her on...

Music and Mood

Ever have one of those moments where your listening to a song and it hits you that it is the perfect song at the perfect moment? I have had a few of those instances, and I thought you might be interested to read about them. If you have had a similar experience, add it to the comments!

1. Some Mexican Guy, Some Mexican Song - This just happened the other day when I was in Cancun. We were riding the bus back from a Mayan restaurant and it was hot. Some guy got on the bus with his guitar and sang some Mexican song, and it was just perfect. The song was sort of a melancholy song, and it blended perfectly with the moment. I gave the guy 20 pesos, which he liked.

2. Traffic, Dear Mr. Fantasy - Brad and I were heading to Sturgis for the first time and we were on a lonely dirt road out in the middle of South Dakota when this song came on. The opening guitar line was perfect for the moment. Given that we had never been to Sturgis and didn't know what to expect other than some adventure, the song as a whole just really struck a chord. Interestingly, when Big Ern came with us the next year, he felt the same way about the song, and now it's one of his favorites.

3. Simple Minds, Don't You (forget about me) - This song remains one of my all-time favorite songs, and it's mostly because it sort of encapsulates a whole bunch of moments, in particular my high school graduation day. I knew I was going to the Marines, and I knew that I wouldn't be seeing the bulk of my classmates for a long time, if ever again. In my opinion, this is one of the top 100 rock songs ever written, and is a perfect song in many ways.

4. The Star Wars Theme - In fourth grade, my mom gave me a sweet Star Wars themed birthday party. It was rad in all respects, but when she brought out the cake, she also blasted the theme to Star Wars. Imagine 25 or 30 fourth grader heads all snapping around to see my glorious Star Wars cake being brought out the back door. Seriously, Star Wars was/is awesome.

And that's sort of it. I have a lot of favorite songs, and I have a lot of songs that resonate with me, but those 4 really, really resonated. Of the four, the Traffic song was probably the most perfect. I will likely remember that moment until the day that I die. Sadly, that might be next week if I don't change my ways, but still...

Weezer = Awesome.

If your like me, and you should be, you enjoy rocking and internet memes. This video by Weezer contains both and is thus possibly the coolest video of all time. I especially like the inclusion of the Numa-Numa guy and Tay Zonday. Anyway, hit play and enjoy.

Edit to add: I wrote this, then looked at Neatorama and discovered that they already posted this, to include mentioning Numa-Numa guy and Tay Zonday. I swear, this wasn't intentional plagarism...

Brief downtime

For my ones of fans out there, I will not be posting anything for the next couple of weeks due to an impending vacation. Please check back a couple of weeks from now, as I am sure I will have some rad stuff to post.

Baby monkeys are cute.

So, it's pretty unmanly to find cute pictures of a baby monkey and put up a link so that everyone can view them, but thats exactly what I am doing. I can assure you that this will be the only time that I will post "cute" pictures, and I may even go out and start a bar fight just to remanify myself.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=563068&in_page_id=1770

I love super-heroes.

I went to go see Iron Man today with my buddy Mike, and it was awesome. I have been pretty excited to see this movie since I first heard about it, and it was well worth the wait. Possibly it is the best of the superhero movies, though the first X-Men was pretty rad and I was so excited for Spiderman that I almost had a heart attack.

I am not afraid to admit that at my age I love superhero movies. I was and am a big comic book nerd, and the technology exists to bring my heroes to life on the big screen in a believable way, which is rad beyond belief. That being said, maybe I need to turn down the nerdliness a couple of notches, as I think I managed to scare our waitress today by proclaiming "I just saw Iron Man and it was awesome!!" in response to her question "Just the two of you?". I also got extraordinarily excited and stood up and cheered when Samuel Jackson as Col. Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. came onscreen at the end of the credits and mentioned the Avengers. I am not joking when I say that, either. I literally stood up, threw my arms in the air and cheered. Mike promptly left to go to the bathroom.

On a wholly unrelated note, I stopped at my moms house and was whipping my "Bear Pride" towel in order to display my pride in the Bears, and the wind caught it and I ended up towel-whipping myself right in the eye. Philosophically, on the drive home I began to ponder the old saying "Pride goes before the fall" and how whipping myself in the eye with a Bear Pride towel was highly metaphorical. The more I thought about it, the more that my towel incident spoke to a deeper truth: I am a moron. I mean, I whipped myself in the friggin' eye! Stupid philosophy and stupid metaphors have once again proven to be my greatest foes.