Random Nonsense

Ahh, this art is all so good!

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If you've seen me at any point in the last nine (!) years, you'll likely have seen me in my blue windbreaker, a jacket that was as practical as it was increasingly unstylish. What a great jacket. Just warm enough to sustain me on cold days (presuming I wore a reasonable sweater) and yet light enough to keep me from sweating my face off on those hot days when I drastically misread a weather report and overdressed. And the pockets, oh the deep pockets! The apex came in university, when I was once able to fit an entire 600-page history textbook inside a single pocket on a day when my backpack was overstuffed.

After nine (!) years of use, however, the jacket finally met its end. The zipper just, essentially, exploded the other day. My roommate suggested that we could possibly re-attach it with a clothes pin or something, but because I'm not a loveable street urchin, I declined. No, it was time to put the old boy out of his misery (the jacket, not my roommate) and get a new coat. This new jacket also has pretty deep pockets, I guess, but you see, the zippers on the pockets go in the opposite direction, so I'll have to completely rearrange my entire routine for when I'm carrying three things at once while also trying to wrangle my keys out of my pocket. #hardlife

I'm not going to throw out my old jacket, however. My plan for now is just to leave it in the front closet….forever. You see, my townhouse has had a number of different tenants over the years, so there's something of an accumulation of stuff left around that we all presume used to belong to someone that once lived here. We hope. Now, I figure my old jacket can be my little contribution to the house's history. It's sort of like the vengeful spirits in American Horror Story, except my windbreaker is a better actor than Dylan McDermott.

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Two great human beings have waded through the mountain of contradictions within the Simpsons over the years and produced a full Map Of Springfield. Among the many amusing notes on this map, I think my favourite was how Springfield State Prison is apparently across the from a day care centre.

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Just when you think Kristen Bell couldn't be more adorable, she reveals her obsession with sloths on the Ellen Show. Who would've thought that all this time, the villains on "Veronica Mars" just needed to release a few sloths onto the streets of Neptune to keep Veronica distracted?

Now, I realize this is poor form given her marriage to Dax Shepard and all, but really, this sloth obsession is rock-solid evidence that Bell and I are soulmates. If she's already this fired up about one hairy, lazy, slow-moving creature, wait'll she gets a load of me.



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Shit Liz Lemon Says. Don't worry, this is the only 'Shit People Say' video I will ever post on this blog. (Editor's note: guarantees not valid.) I'm making the exception since Liz Lemon is a personal hero and, in my ways, I'm a male Liz Lemon. Laszlo Lemon?

If you're keeping track, in this post alone I've compared myself to both a sloth and to a notorious train wreck of a fictional female sitcom character. And waxed nostalgic about the fact that over nine years, I was too cheap to buy a new jacket. In an unrelated story, my Valentine's Day plans are pretty wide-open.



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Stop everything, Jack White has a new solo album coming out. Here's the first single, "Love Interruption," which is thankfully really good since my expectations for this record could not be any higher. Between solo work, the Dead Weather and Racounteurs, hopefully White uses the next decade to put out a Ryan Adam-esque amount of music, except, y'know, much better than Ryan Adams' music. Nothing against Adams, but White is playing with a much higher ceiling.

Food for thought: would a Meg White solo record not be immediately one of the most fascinating projects in music? I'm not sure anything could top such a disc for sheer curiosity factor. Meg should do this for laughs if nothing else --- announce a release date of April 1 and then put out a Ringo Starr cover album.

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And, just to find the exact sonic opposite of Jack White, here's London Is The City Of Opportunity. Yes, that's right, my hometown now has a theme song. And, apparently, a song taken from, like, an advertisement for a dentist office in the early 1990's.

Compounding the hilarity, it was written by Jim Chapman, a local conservative radio host/political thriller writer/vintage car collector/musician. I actually semi-worked with Chapman back in my student radio days, and he was a very pleasant fellow to chat with in person, but…man, my brief summary of his biography doesn't nearly get over the sheer cheesiness. Chapman is a renaissance man in the same way that Alan Partridge is a renaissance man.

If London has to have a theme song, I think we can all agree it should be the theme from the 1960's Batman TV show, except with "LONDON!" replacing "BATMAN!" in the lyrics. Or some kind of mashup of London's two most famous musical acts, Guy Lombardo and Kittie.