An unfortunate model of a potentially analogous life: the Dagwood and Blondie Timeline

1930: Dagwood Bumstead and Blondie Boopadoop meet. She's a hot young flapper and he's the young heir to the fortune his stuffy parents made at Bumstead Locomotive Works.

1930 - 1933: She spends her youth wildly in the dance halls. He, the bumbling buffoon who has no business going after such a hottie, goes on a hunger strike for 28 days to win her love. She's a "flighty gold-digger" who decides to give him a shot.

1933: They get married. According to the site: "the young couple moved to a modest house in the suburbs, where they struggled over bills, bought furniture, met neighbors and fought and made up just like millions of couples everywhere."

1934: The young Bumstead family have a bouncing baby boy, Alexander. Dagwood, disowned by his family for marrying under his class, gets a 9 to 5 working for J.C. Dithers.

1941: Another baby. This one is named Cookie. (Cookie!?). Well, that's what you get for only offering $100 to the readers in a nationwide contest.

1941 - 1990: Fuckin' nothing.

1990: Blondie opens a catering business. Feminists everywhere realize their cause is finished.

1990 - Present: Fuckin' nothing.

That's our life. The only potential difference is that they've had a successful marriage for almost 70 years. Half of us (who are lucky enough to get married) will probably (statistically) get divorced, not to mention die before our 70th anniversaries. Makes the Bumsteads look pretty good, eh?

Fun Blondie fact: there were 28 theatrical films made. The "titular" Penny Singleton played the title role (and is a total fox, I might add).


Have a good life, guys.

omgomgomg

ahhhhhalskdjflaskdf i'm excited

it's raining for the first time this summer

The other day I was biking along the bay and two fawns (little spotted ones!) jumped up beside me. They tried to run away-- one ran behind me (the smart one) while the other ran ahead, in the same direction I was cycling. I caught up pretty quickly, the fawn and I were head to head. I turned to look at him and yelled, "IT'S A RACE!" He skidded to a stop, and jumped back into the brush.

My roommates decorated the whole apartment for my birthday, lining the entire room with a thirty of bud light (classy). My favorite part:

Doyle Cottage

http://www.doylecottage.com/

REPORT: ELIAN SNATCHED BY FEDS.

Developing...

The First BWF themed dream?

Last night I had a dream that James posted a really really long post of the blog. The first part of the post was in the form of an internet message board, the second part was reviews of youtube videos he had seen. I don't remember anything about the reviews, but the first section was really funny. James, my subconsciousness really admires your humor. There were some jokes and some pictures with commentary. You also had come up with memoir titles for a lot of people's sexual histories. I remember the titles of four of them:

• The Money Bear: A Sexual History of Leah Karels
• Oy! Vey! What a Year!: A Sexual History of Erika Pearson
• Except a Little Stranger: Encounters You could have had with other People: A Sexual History of Alex Sciuto
• I don't remember the precise wording of Tom's. The gist was that he had been selling himself short, but things were looking up for him now.

Dream Alex found the post to be very funny, so he decided to respond with my own post, I recreate it in full below:




-----------------------------

Two Southerners



Did you guys know that both both Usher and Britney Spears are from the South? Yeah neither did I. Well, in honor of this here's two music videos:

Usher.-.Love in this Club - MyVideo

Britney Spears - Pieces Of Me Music Video

slogan? "feel free"

Saw that at the grocery store yesterday. C-Ice Swiss Cannabis Ice Tea. It's made of black tea with 5% hemp bloom syrup, and 0.0015% hemp bloom extract.

It's sold as a health drink! Apparently, it "...supports ideally the new formation of cells of the human body. Thus they serve preservation and stabilization of the immune system and decrease susceptibility in relation to many sticking on diseases." That's barely English. Whatever.

Project Runway Season 5 Episode 2 Live Brogging

Keep an eye out here for it.

If you want to be a part of it, I encourage it. Just keep editing and publishing posts as the episode plays. I wonder if that will work. You may have to be an admin (read: true bro) to do that. I'm not sure. If you can't edit posts, just keep up in the comments. I'm pushing for a true interactive experience here.


~~~


12:40 p.m.

Colin: Oh man, only 8 hours and 20 minutes until the episode starts. It's taking all of my will power not to look on bravotv.com to see what the challenge will be. Anyone want to make predictions on who will go home? My initial guess is rocker chick. She has no clue.

1:52 p.m.

C: Hey Greg, Project Runway > the Brog. I'll give this post all the space it goddamn needs. What do you mean by jumps?

2:50 p.m.

C: I'm about to leave work. It is with much excitement that I think about sitting in front of my television on a large, comfortable couch watching some old Project Runway season marathon they are airing to lead up to tonight's new episode. Maybe I'll watch last week's episode for a third time so I can be really familiar with everyone. My only friends. My inevitably shrinking group of friends.

3:00 p.m.

C: Before I go home, I want to remind everyone about something that's happening after Project Runway tonight: GRIZZLY BEAR are playing a new song on Letterman. Tonight. That's exciting.

3:49 p.m

G: This is definitely nearing the point where it would be useful to have a jump before additional text. 'S all I'm saying.

C: I concede, and thank you for serving as the voice of reason.

8:51 p.m.

C: Do you know how to make a jump G? Be my guest. But seriously guys: disaster. I just returned home from dinner to find that a storm knocked out our wireless. I'm trying my best to fix it, but it looks like there will only be internet on the desktop upstairs this evening which means that the live brogging event of a lifetime must be postponed. Fuck, dudes.

If for some reason it starts working in the next... 7 minutes now, I'll brog. If not... I don't even want to think about it. I guess I'll just have to enjoy the show.\

8:55 p.m.

C: Also, Alex, I wanted to respond to your post. Firstly, you're right. But secondly, I don't care. What you just said can be applied to every single reality show ever. Everyone is a character. There are probably only 20 different types of people in this world and they make regular appearances on TV. That doesn't mean however that there can't be novel conflicts or occasional sparks of talent over the course of a season.

9:00 p.m.

C: FIXED IT! IT'S ON!

9:02 p.m.

C: Heidi's outfit looks like it's made out of trash bags. Rocker chick is all like "wtf I was on to something".

9:03 p.m.

C: Ooooh, model picking drama. Some guy just described himself as "saucy" about the situation. I question his word choice.

But fer real, it looks like the models were a little important. The challenge is that the models are the designers' clients for whom they must make a cocktail dress. That's not too original, is it? A little dress for the young and hip?

Oh, there's the clincher, they have to use green fabrics.

OH SHIT, AND THE MODELS ARE DOING THE SHOPPING. "A project runway first," says Tim Gunn.

9:07 p.m.

C: I get it. The models don't know how to shop for fabrics. I sip my beer. A Starr Hill Amber Ale. Gooooooo local brew!

My mom just said "Ooooo that's pretty" about one shade of blue a model chose.

9:10 p.m.

C: Some of the models are dumb. This one girl chose a champagne fabric, a peach fabric, and peacock feathers. Another one chose a dark chocolate brown and a light lime green. Barf.

Oh, and in case you wondered, Suede still refers to Suede in third person.

9:11 p.m.

C: Commercial break. Rocker girl is confused and worried... again. Get her the fuck out of here. I'm going to check Facebook.

9:16 p.m.

C: Blaine just made a weird analogy about Heidi being Darth Vader. He is weiiiiird.

9:18 p.m.

C: Stella (rocker) is choosing to make a sleek urban outfit (her style) instead of something flowy (like the model asked for). I think she's retarded.

Oooh someone just called Suede out on the third person thing.

9:22 p.m.

C: Suede's dress looks like ass. Like a bird's nest messily woven out of brightly colored shit. But Tim is excited about it? Ew, Tim.

9:23 p.m.

C: No immunity this challenge. The winning thingy will be on bluefly.com. Eh. Commercial.

9:28 p.m.

C: Stella only does leather. That's all she works with. She makes rock clothes. She sucks. She's bitching about using fabric.

9:31 p.m.

C: It's runway day and no one is anywhere near done. Blaine is still saying "-licious". Goddammit, Stella's model likes her dress.

3 models chose the same ugly dark brown fabric. Everyone is nervous... for gooooood reason.

In the last shots before the show... none of the dresses look cute. At all. Aaaaand commercial.

9:39 p.m.

C: Ooooooh! NATALIE PORTMAN IS THE SPECIAL GUEST JUDGE! Aw, and she just created a vegan shoe line. Do me now.

9:42 p.m.

C: Suede... kinda... pulled it together. There are just sooo many dresses... I can't even comment. Vacuum cleaner girl fell pretty far. Good thing she has immunity.

9:45 p.m.

C: I don't care what the judges say, those big weird looking collar things look like those things you put around dogs so they can't chew on their wounds.

9:47 p.m.

C: Dammit, Stella was one of the top 3.

9:48 p.m.

C: Natalie said she'd wear Suede's thing. There's no way he's not winning.

9:52 p.m.

C: My pre-commercial predictions: Suede wins. The guy with the unfortunate fitting shittily fabric'd brown dress loses... which kind of sucks. I like him and feel like somehow this loss isn't totally his fault. We'll see.

9:57 p.m.

C: Totally called the winner. It really wasn't that hard to predict... when the top 3 were all next to each other.

The bottom 2 are both the shitty dark brown fabric. DID I GUESS THE LOSER RIGHT!? ...you've got to watch to find out.

Fuck. Typing this all out was boring. Lesson learned. First and last PR LB.

Charles Barkley Futuristic RPG?

Project Runway Stereotypes

As I was watching the first show of season five, I couldn't ignore a suspicion that I had seen all of the contestants before. I know, Colin live-blogged that he thought all of the contestants looked exciting, but as I watched, the contestants all looked like has-beens. Has-beens? It's only episode one and I'm tired of them? Could it be that they lack fashion skills? I thought that at first, but as I watched, some of them sucked, but there were quite a few good ones--the vacuum dress and the blue solo cup dress in particular.

They're has-beens, not because their style/skills/fashion-sense is old and boring, but because they're personalities are so cookie cutter. Whoever chooses the characters on Project Runway (and whoever it is is pretty powerful), hasn't come up with any new easily identifiable character types.

For example, to your right you'll see pictures of the Token Sassy Black Woman. Each previous season, except for season three, has had one black woman, and that woman has always had an opinion and known she's right. Kara Saun of season one was awesome until the finale. Kind and polite and friendly. But then her friend made her a bunch of nice shoes that she didn't think she had to pay for. Kara Saun couldn't see that she wasn't playing fair.

Now you'll say, well wasn't Laura Bennett and Wendy Pepper opinionated? They were, but besides the fact that they weren't African American, they were also plotting. They wanted to win, they were going to play dirty and they were damn self righteous about it. They didn't have that honest sincerity that the Sassy Black Women had. It's not a subtle difference.

So, can we put our collective knowledge of Project Runway together and come up with all the character types? Right now I've got:

Sassy Black Woman
Girl Next Store
Outrageously Flamboyant Gay Guy (Just to clarify this one: Austin Scarlett, Andrae 'Andrae' Gonzalo, Kayne Gillaspie, Ricky 'I always cry' Lizalde)
Punk Girl

The Dark Knight: A Minor Complaint

Like Aaron said elsewhere, if you haven't seen The Dark Knight yet, you should. Maybe the best superhero movie yet--really exciting, really well-written/directed/acted, and Ledger's Joker is the most genuinely scary movie villan I've ever seen. But while I applaud the stark realism of Christopher Nolan's film, as well as the respect he's shown for the character and its history, the director's approach has had consequences no one seems willing to talk about. I'm talking about the absence of Batman-related novelty singles in the Nolan-Bale era.

Till now, whenever Batman has loomed large in the public imagination, be it during Adam West's high-camp TV take on the character, Tim Burton's films with Michael Keaton, or the mid-90s Joel Schumacher terrible shitfests, one thing has remained constant: musical tie-ins. The trend ends, apparently, with our generation, and this is what we've lost:

Method Man - "The Riddler"



Prince - "Batdance" (#1 in 1989!)



Jan & Dean - "Batman" (This one is really pretty baffling)

I'm da best mang, I deeeed it

This video really deserves multiple viewings to catch all the subtleties. I've watched it about 10 times in the past 24 hours.

Colin's Celebrity Sighting #1... I'm pretty sure

So I'll just get it out of the way so everyone knows: Pitchfork was awesome. I won't rub it in because I know people wanted to be there who weren't there... so I'll just leave it at that.

Fleet Foxes was the best live performance I've ever seen.

Ok. That's it. That's all I'm going to say. I won't rub it in.

Two 27 exposure disposable cams will be developed and displayed on Facebook at some point in the future.

One of the wackier moments (there were many) occurred as I stood near the food booths.

This weird looking leathery skinned dude wearing these kinds of sunglasses (with neon pink stems) walked by me with an entourage of just some dude and some chick. He looked familiar so I started wondering out loud to whoever was near me, probably Erika:

"Hey... it that guy looks like that guy. You know... that guy.. um... from.. MTV... the old VJ dude... um...-" at which point I was cut off by the chick from his posse who turned to me, dramatically lowered her sunglasses and said,

"It is him."

She pushed her sunglasses back up on her nose, turned to other member of the entourage and they shared a belly laugh while John Norris kept walking.

"Oh, geez. Sorry! Thank you! Sorry!" I shouted after them.

He had been talking and gesturing when I spotted him and he continued to do so as he walked by even though his entourage had been temporarily distracted. It was weird. Did they even know him or were they just walking behind him while he talked to himself?

I bumped into him at least twice after that. He seemed drunk.

"wettest place on earth getting drier", my favorite headline of the day

Shit, man, no posts for 3 whole days??? GET INSPIRED.

Also, brohos/hobros, how was bitchfork?

Some news: just so you HP fans know, the next movie is coming out November 21, 2008. And did you know that they are splitting the final chapter of the HP series up into two movies? Part 1 and Part 2? MAKING OUR HARRY POTTER JOY LAST AS LONG AS POSSIBLE?


(why hasn't hermione joined the sidebar wall of fame?)

pssst i'm starting to blog on my blog again. so googlereader me.