zombie taxes

Am I deceased? You're seriously asking me that? I... I don't know sometimes.

not just another drop in the ocean

After much diagnosis, the conclusion has been reached that when approaching the threshold of my comfort zone, rather than persevering I tend to retreat.

That's not necessarily bad. I heard that when Peter Jackson started on the Lord of the Rings movies he used a computer program called (I think) MASSIVE for the war sequences. This program allowed them to create hundreds of computerized characters and then rather than animate them individually, just tell them to fight each other and they'd film the result. Legend has it that the first time they tried it they told the program to fight in the most efficient and logical way possible. Upon getting the instructions, all the computer characters put down their weapons and ran in opposite directions.

Of course there are problems. One is the lack of euphoria that occurs when accomplishing something unexpected.

Now it's your lucky day. I've resolved to attain the endorphins that come with tackling the discomfort. In the next few weeks or months or whatever, if you dare me to do something -- there's a good chance I'll do it.

three weird visions in the last day

One problematic thing about this crazy economy is cheap labor. It's especially noticable when Fox 13 airs their commercial promoting some help service specifically for these troubled times called 1-800-START-OVER (yeah, a couple of extra phone digits there -- bizarre). Anyway, whoever they got to proofread the commercial did not major in orthography.


Next up -- the recently made fan trailer for New Moon. What's up with not throwin' in the easy apostrophe? Is it because apostrophes show up so often when they're not needed? The thing could have been 20 times more believable if the apost was in there.


I get emails from LDS Living. Don't mock me! I'm LDS and I'm living. So yeah there's this game company I guess called Backyardmaniafun.com. Here's part of their advertisement in the LDS Living email today.

Did you have any idea that the beanbag throwing target game was called that?

the face that launched wwii

It's my wonderful, beautiful mother's birthday today. No foolin'.

For most of my life I've assumed that I never had any of her genes, but lately I've started to notice a bit of my mom in me. Thank goodness. Best girl ever. Happy birthday Mom!

twitterbaited

Many of you have been kind enough to ask how well Podcamp went. I say kind enough rather than cruel enough because it actually did go quite well -- then again how were you to know that? Somehow the five-minute idea that Mike Place gave me was somehow extended out to a half-hour. I made quite a few contacts, which will make my volunteer job a lot tougher. Here's to socialized productivity!


The biggest eye-opener of Podcast, however was the juggernauty presence of Twitter. Just about every single person I talked to asked me my Twitter information. By the end of the day I finally said "Check Twitter in the next few days and look up 'rexbasior' because that will undoubtedly be my Twitter name."

It's not like I've been resisting Twitter up to this point. I'm not that guy. I really love Facebook already and haven't OD'd. I understand that many devote too much of their lives to these social interweb things, but there's really no reason to protest the concepts outright.

I'm now on Twitter for anyone interested. I admit I still don't understand it, but they made it fun right from the beginning. They started with a list of "interesting" people I may want to "follow," which means I guess that I see their status updates as they happen. The suggested list included quite a range of personalites: Penn Jillette (I wonder if his kid Moxy Crimefighter is on Twitter?), Dave Matthews, Soulja Boy, Has Cheeseburger. From the big list I decided to follow Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder), Levar Burton and Spencer Pratt. Since last night, through Facebook and emails I've added Depeche Mode, Jim Gaffigan and Weird Al Yankovic.

Here is my very first Twitter entry:

just started twitter. i guess i'm "tweeting." is that it? caw! caw! wipporwil wipporwil look up here look up here! hey you guys!

Check me out. I'm rexbasior. I'll probably add a button or something soon. We'll see if it's worth liking.

So back to Podcamp. Toward the end of the day I found myself more relaxed and actually participated. The result was my winning a hat. A baseball hat. Longtime friends and astute readers of my internet presence know that I don't actually wear caps like this. I won it, though and it is kind of a cool hat and it's says "Podgineer" which is pretty geeky; so I think I'll wear it after all.


I do look really weird in it though. Ever see that old X-men cartoon episode where Wolverine infiltrates the Friends of Humanity by posing as a normal human being? He whips a baseball cap on and he looks totally abnormal. I'm not saying I look like Wolverine or anything, but I do have Wolverine hair and burns and stuff.


Oh, yeah. It's the last day of March and I'm finally revealing my March mustache.

funny world

Found a piece of interesting technology on my blogosphere prowl. Thanks (M)ary. There's this site called xtranormal and what it does is animate your text for you. So here's my first little animation. The character below isn't really me. He's just a confused, hilarious soul.

i am a pod person

This is weird. I really am presenting at PodcampSLC -- I guess today at 11:50.

I'm telling you now, so you won't come. You won't come anyway, it costs 20 bucks to get in. I'm pretty nervous. I think I have about five minutes worth of total B.S.ing that I need to extend out two a half hour. I want to go the full half hour because if I open it up to questions it will give me several chances to look even stupider.

I need to talk on "The Future of Podcasting." Yikes. I'm no prophet. I'm not even a professor. I gotta get up and say that the Pinpoint SLC model we use is where independent podcasting is heading. I need to say that last sentence for 30 MINUTES.

How has my life of volunteerism led to this?

Talk to me at 12:20. I'll be so relieved.

british invasion '09

This week I bought three sets of concert tickets and am considering buying four. Lots of times when I splurge I splurge in sets. (ps.. I'm a tool) After watching Fever Pitch (the Colin Firth one written by Nick Hornby, NOT the Jimmy Fallon one) late last night, I realized that all four musical acts are actually British.

I've been constantly pulled to the motherland. One day I'll get there. It'll happen. I'm not much of a beans on toast guy, but I bet there are tons of good Chinese places there. Even while watching the movie I thought of how fun it would be to wander real English streets with soccer hooligans.

Back when I went to Israel ten years ago, I found myself hanging out with some of the European students. One Brit there wore his Doc Martens constantly (even at the beach) and had a giant Union Jack beach towel. Sorta punk, but definitely allegiant to the Queen.

One day he was dissing pretty hard on the United States at a steady stream and great volume. One of us was finally like, "Hey, take it easy. You're the guys who lost the revolution!" Then, I remember this well, he looked right at all us Yanks and said (with EXTREME sarcasm): "Oh? Is that when we let you have your own country?"

We all chuckled. No hard feelings. We won the war, but I've always felt that the British won the music. They gave us a country but since then there have been several very successful British invasions in music. In my opinion, they've dominated.

Anyway, let's talk about the shows I'm going to.

Lily Allen -- April 8, 2009 8:00 pm -- In the Venue
Buy tickets!

Lately I've had a real good time saying her name "Riry Arren."

If you're reading this, you know I've had a healthy obsession with her for the past few weeks. I first took notice of her on Saturday Night Live. I'm pretty sure she performed "LDN" and "Smile" from her first cd.



Notice how different she sounded back then. She was a little more reggae, a little more Nellie McKay-ish. Here's the complete new song of hers that everyone has been telling me lately how much they love.



What the heck. Here's her cover of the Britney Spears song "Womanizer."



The Ting Tings -- April 9, 2009 9:00 pm -- The Urban Lounge
Buy tickets!

Maria has been very adamant lately about how much I'll enjoy this show. They're sorta electronic I think, but they mix the beats and the loops live on stage. That means there is an element of improvisation and "live-ness" that may be missing from the average electronic show. My buddy Scott is a bouncer at the Urban Lounge. He seems pretty excited that the Lounge got the show. In his opinion The Ting Tings are very well liked by pretty girls, so maybe that will get some of my guy friends to come along (and some of my chick friends too probably). I don't know much about this band. Based on the clip below, they're sorta electro-loopy-cheerleaderish. Lemme tell ya though. Ten minutes after you watch the clip, it'll still be pounding through your head in a good way.



Franz Ferdinand -- April 21, 2009 6:30 pm -- The Great Saltair
Buy tickets!

Haven't gotten the tickets yet, but I'm pretty sure I will.

I bought the original Franz Ferdinand album when it came out and didn't think much of it for the first six months or so I had it. Eventually, it really really grew on me and I realized it may be in my top ten favorite albums. Everybody knows "Take Me Out," but most of the songs on there are way better (including the super-gay "Michael" and the weirdly groovy "'40"). I saw these guys at Saltair in pre-promotion for their underrated second album. Good. Times. Before the show I was able to meet the lead singer at an X96 meet and greet. We talked music a bit. He was extremely gracious and nice and genuine. That always makes the music sound better.

Here's their new song. I love the toward the camera intense walk. I'm gonna film myself doing an intense toward the camera walk someday.



Depeche Mode -- August 25, 2009 8:00 pm -- The E-Center
Buy tickets!

My first Depeche Mode show was in 1994 on the second leg of the Songs of Faith and Devotion Tour. Just about my favorite live show ever. I learned years later that the lead singer was in the middle of his romance with heroin and everyone in the band hated each other at that time. Never would have guessed. I've seen DM three times since then and Dave Gahan's solo tour once. If they do a show, I go. It's tradition I doubt I'll ever part with. Who knows how many shows that will be. This very well may be the last one. Of course they've milked me plenty for the past 20 years, what's another 20?

Depeche Mode shows are incredibly entertaining despite what they are on paper. The nature of the music means that much of the music isn't performed live on instruments. They've added A LOT more instrumentation lately, but unless I'm misinformed they still have a backing tape that plays the entire duration of the show. Nevertheless the show and spectacle of it all is brilliant and needs to be seen. I love just going to the E-Center every three years or so to see some of "my people."

Here's the new one. The album isn't out yet. I think it comes out April 21st or something.



Join these shows with me. 'Twil be fun!

order much?

Thanks to my good friend Jake for getting me what I asked for. I think I like the cd even better than I thought I would. Wonderful stuff. Check out the current song of the moment and see if you feel the same way.

In the meantime, disorder persists -- or at least it's directed right at me.

My new Canon camcorder continues to thwart me. Canon continues to thwart me. Weeks ago I went through all the time and expense of shipping it off to Irvine, California to fix it and they sent it back with a note saying they fixed one of the problems I complained about (they didn't even mention the other one). Okay, now here's the best part: the problem they claimed to have fixed wasn't even fixed. On top of all that, I just realized that a girl left me for Irvine several years ago.

I attempted to talk out their customer service guy last week in hopes of simply getting a new camera for the inconvenience. He informed me that the warranty only covers items being fixed and not replaced. If the engineers determine that an item can't be fixed, then the warranty is void. In my lamest way possible, I explained my fear that Canon could simply void all warranties if they wanted to since they were the ones determining what could be fixed and what couldn't. Obviously, the guy didn't have a response worthy of easing my annoyance. He even said that the camera could be shipped several times before the engineers decided the unit needed replacing and replacement options for me wouldn't be available until then.

I tried to be a little bit mean, but when I hung up the phone I realized that I can't be that way, at least not effectively. I mean to say that I'm all super-nice and rainbows and sausages or whatever. In actuality, I'm actually quite a negative and essentially mean person. Thing is, when I get emotional, I get useless and embarrassing. Rather than being a focused laser of cruelty I become a big dumb bag of incomprehensibility.

So I sent the camera back today with a stern (but ultimately non-menacing) note. What will happen?

Also, I accidentally ordered something on-line last night. I was just shopping around for shiz, and I thought I'd see how much stuff was with all the "free gifts and offers." The order deviously went through before the price confirmation screen. The free gifts and offers ensured that the cost wasn't doubled, but actually quadrupled at least. Super-embarrassing and mega-lame of them to do this to me when I was already so annoyed with the world already. I got the confirmation email immediately, but the phone customer service told me I couldn't cancel the order until it went through the system. Once it was shipped, however, I'd be stuck (or at least stucker). Despite the obviousness of their being aware of the order already, I played by the rules and caught it in time.

Is it any wonder I hate leaving my house? They're all out to get me. Perhaps I should lose the internet, though.

watched watchmen

Sorry it's taken so long to report on the movie. Maybe I figured I'd been talking about it too much.

Anyway, to sum up, I really really liked it. Usually, I hate it when a movie follows the book too closely. This, however, is an exception. It was SO close that a huge amount of admiration must be thrown at the makers.

Still, at the same time, taking so few chances GUARANTEES that the book is better than the movie. And for the most part reading the trade paperback of Watchmen is still the way to go.

There were a few tiny things that the movie went the extra mile in.

Probably the most original thing to come out of the movie was the opening credit sequence. Even though it didn't provide the essential backstory it probably needed to, it set the perfect tone for the re-written history that takes place in the story. Some highlights to this highlight: the reveal that The Comedian assassinated JFK, Silhouette kissing the nurse on V-J Day, Dollar Bill shot-up and stuck in the revolving door.

Also, Zack Snyder seems to be getting a surprising amount of credit for his re-tooling of the ending. I must say, that probably do like the new ending better. I think it wraps the story up more nicely to turn the action back around on Dr. Manhattan rather than introducing a completely new element. I am starting to see some flaws in it though. Maybe Alan Moore needed the alien component in there because all the other countries on Earth continued to war around even when they had the fear of Manhattan when he was a pawn of the United States.

I didn't like how they actually called themselves "Watchmen." In the book, the costumed masks never had an official organization called "Watchmen." In my opinion, the reason Moore called the series that is because the superheroes themselves didn't understand that they were acting as unnecessary watchmen. The PEOPLE understood that, which explains the graffiti "WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?"

Strangely, the other best parts of the movie are the ones that probably should have been excised for time -- like the extended soliloquy of Jon on Mars about his origin (which was absolutely beautiful). I also appreciate that they included the prison sequence of Rorschach. I think it would have been very easy for Snyder to simply have Rorschach evade prison and move the plotline forward early.

I heard the studio wanted to also cut the funeral sequence of The Comedian. Hey, I'm not even going to blame the studio heads for that. It makes sense to do so. I'm really glad they didn't because the guy who played The Comedian was the highlight of the entire film for me. In my opinion, he's EXACTLY how I envisioned the character and the flashback sequences during the funeral scene were awesome.

Love to the guy who played Rorschach as well. Silk Spectre and Ozymandias? Not so much.

So yep. Totally liked it. Here's The Cinematic Experience Review:



Here's an image of me taken at our IMAX screening. Yeah, I dressed as Rorschach, although I probably should have dressed as a naked, blue Dr. Manhattan.

blue with anticipation

So the numbers are coming in about the movie and I sorta hoped for better. What is mostly mind-blowing is the discrepancy in the numbers between Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.


I don't usually associate with Metacritic. Maybe it always grades down. 15 points may not be much of a difference, but when J.R. told me a couple of days ago that the reviews were pretty rough going in the reports were 75 on Rotten Tomatoes and 30 on Metacritic. 30.

That's not too hard to believe considering that Metacritic highlighted the review of esteemed Anthony Lane of The New Yorker. I didn't read the review in its entirety (fear of spoilers -- and yeah, I know I read the graphic novel three times -- I still haven't seen the screen interpretation of said graphic novel), but here's how it ends:

I'm not even sure where to start with this. It's not like Watchmen was ever a comic strip. It was, I suppose, a comic book -- but even the highest educated snob in the nation ought to know that 90% of comic books aren't actually comedy. Not that I should compare Watchmen to Shakespeare or anything, but can you really justify hating Hamlet if you say "Where did the comedy go?" as the play finishes?

Perhaps getting in the right frame of mind helps. Joe disliked the book. The first thing he said to me was "there was not one redeeming character in the whole thing." For the most part I agree, but where he found annoyance, I found pleasure. Perhaps I'm morose, melancholy and morbid; but I've always gotten a bigger kick out of the antagonism in the arts and entertainment I subject myself to. I take more out of peoples' failures than successes. Maybe that's why The Old Testament is so wicked fun. Negative conditioning works better for me.


So a few years ago I read a story where the superheroes are failures. I can see why anyone would have a hard time enjoying that. The trick of course, is to distinguish what the message is. Is the message that superheroes are dead and therefore heroism is dead and the world is stuck in relentless entropy? It may be easy to think. In my own warped way I find stories such as these incredibly optimistic. The world may very well have no one to depend on, so that's where we come in. The world very well may have ended 30 minutes ago. Is it time to give up now? For most people -- for most heroes -- it would be. Watchmen spells it out. But is it right? Nope. The answer isn't given, but the question is asked... and answered rhetorically.

So sorry Anthony Lane. I love comedies and I love happy endings, but they have little value without tragedy.


My hope for the movie has picked up a little. Since I grabbed the Metacritic image several hours ago the critical praise has shot up to like 54. This week marks my first association with Metacritic and I'm not sure I'll continue. Among the new critics coming in is of course is Roger Ebert's high praise. The guy tends to go all over the place though -- especially with superhero movies. One reason I like reading his stuff is because he personalizes his experience a lot more than most.

Also, Maxim finally broke the three-time streak of people I gave my copy of Watchmen to who hated it.

So now it's a party. About 20 of my friends are going and my birthday celebration that started last week, comes to a close in about 40 hours. Even Joe is excited. This can only mean one thing: I'll hate the movie.

David Edelstein from New York Magazine makes a much better point.

Way too many people complain when movies diverge from the source material. I have the opposite complaint. If there's no difference between book and movie, what's the point of the movie? Where's the new life? Are we creating or are we Xeroxing? Anyway, good point David.

*sigh* I'll be doing the same thing when Ender's Game finally comes out. In the meantime...

everything's getting old

Like last year, I found a birthday present from the outside that I wasn't expecting -- besides someone new deciding to "follow" my blog (whatever that means).


This time it's in the form of this week's Entertainment Weekly with its date being my birthday and with Jon Osterman gracing one of its collectors' issue covers. Osterman is not only a famous Jon, but is of course going to be gracing us in full visual motion when we watch Watchmen a week from today.


It looks as if even more people are going to be coming than I thought. I've got this friend who does what he calls "The Nerdtacular" every year. He rents out a theater and the first of his podcast listeners/site watchers/friends who reserve seats can do so until the place is filled. I've gone the past two years for Spider Man 3 and The Dark Knight. This Watchmen show next week is kind of like my own Nerdtacular (but I'd probably call it a "Geektacular" because that phrasage would be a lot more fitting).

Anyway, several of my circles are colliding for this. We got reps from The Cinematic Experience, The Homestarmy and even my bizarre book club. The book club actually discussed Watchmen last night, so I, you know, threw it out there.

So the birthday party started today. Rhett used his Tucanos coupon on me. We then head (probably) to Ming's Garden for dinner this evening if you can come. 7:10. That means I'll have the afterparty at Charlie Chow's Dragon Grill tomorrow (I've got a coupon that expires at the end of the month) if you'd like to attend that (limit five people on the coupon, but come anyway). Here's to gaining 10 pounds this weekend. Next week at Watchmen will be the conclusion of the party.

I'm obviously nervous about the movie. I almost don't care about how I feel about it; I mostly care about how others will feel about it. I feel bad that the last three people I got to read the graphic novel really didn't like it at all.

So I'm older now and suddenly technology thinks I'm too square for it. Maybe that's not the right phrase for it. If I had to pick a shape for technology it probably would be a square. The point is, I'm suddenly having tons of ridiculous technical issues with my shiz and it's completely out of nowhere.

First of all, there's weird stuff goin' down with my Cinematic Experience videos. Lemme try to explain. I use this program called Final Cut Express to edit them. Whenever a transition or a logo or text or something gets put into the timeline, the computer needs to take the time to render the information before the sequence can be previewed. If you attempt to look at the footage before the render process goes through, the screen will pop up with an "Unrendered" title card. That's fine -- whatever, 'cuz once the final video is exported the computer renders everything as part of the saving process. The final video has no trace of any unrendered screens and I even watch the final videos after they're saved to make sure nothing has gone wrong.


Lately, however the forbidden unrendered screens are appearing on Cinematic Experience videos on YouTube -- despite the fact that the videos I actually upload onto YouTube are actually completed. It's like YouTube has to wade its way through the good data to get to the bad data and then display it. No. Sense. At. All. Perhaps a Final Cut/YouTube jockey is reading right now and can figure out what's goin' on.

Other problem. My Jon Demand videos aren't syncing to my iPod after they're downloaded. Makes no sense. It took me forever to get them to download to my iTunes, so now that they're in my system they're not working. Either my iTunes or my iPod will not allow my own stuff to transfer over to my iPod.


Do me a favor people. If you have an iPod, subscribe to the video podcast called Jon Demand. It's easy. Just click here. iTunes should open right up for you. Now make sure you can transfer Jon Demand over to your iPod. Let me know if it works. It'll be fun for you too! Remember that charming video of me exercising? Well you can enjoy it on your iPod in the comfort of your bus ride home and not just on your home (work) computer!

This means a lot to me people.

Oh yeah, and happy birthday. Totally is.

Jon Demand 7: What I Want For My Birthday

oscar pics '09!

spork power

Check out me as a superhero I created over at The Hero Factory. I wanted a hotter pink and a dark a bit closer to black, but it's pretty groovy anyway. At least I think this guy's head looks like mine a little.

I didn't have to pick a spork as my weapon, but it was probably the most interesting instrument offered. Ever since I've learned about sporks I've had a fascination with them. Did KFC invent the spork? As I'm typing I'm going to make a quick check on Wikipedia...

Wow. I was way off. Apparently the spork's been around since 1874.

I always thought it was very efficient to combine the spoon and the fork into one instrument. But even if it didn't come around until 1874, it's a combination that wasn't thought of for hundreds of years.

I use the spork as an example of something obvious that was completely out of our grasp for an embarrassingly long amount of time. Why didn't we use it sooner? We could have cut our silverware budget by 30% over several centuries. I wonder if on other planets the civilizations there thought of the spork within just a few years of thinking of the spoon and fork.

Then again, it goes both ways. Maybe there are a lot of obvious things we've always had that they've never had. I think one example is the dual-open car wash. We pull into carwashes on one side and then pull out the opposite side. I bet on some other planets they pull in, but there's a wall there like a garage. Then, if someone pulls up behind them they have to do this annoying sequence of backing up awkwardly while the cars second and third in line have to try to give them room to come out.

Yeah, they're idiots, but they thought of the spork forever ago!

v.d. '09

In honor of the V.D. this year I've painted my phone. This is a pretty big deal since a few years ago I decided I'd repaint my phone every month to correspond with some event from that month. So I started with black and orange for Halloween of '05 and my phone stayed that way until a few days ago.


We went to see Push last week. It's hardly a V.D. movie and actually not too good for a Sundance picture. Maybe it just went over my head. I had heard that it was about an overweight black girl in New York who was trying to get out of an incestuous relationship. I wasn't even aware of which actor was playing that part. Perhaps Dakota Fanning's power of seeing into the future (but not very well) was a metaphor for striving to escape from a bad home life.

Anyhow, a girl at the movie had some conversation hearts that she graciously let me have -- probably because nobody likes conversation hearts. I do if they're SweetTart ones. She was like, yeah, they totally are! So I ate a bunch and they were chalky, just like they traditionally are. The package actually says they're Sweetheart hearts. They really shouldn't have basically the same name on these. Then someone else donated another box to the heart bowl. How do people have all these boxes that they don't want?


I managed to decorate the place for the first time in a good while. Black hearts is pretty standard, but black hearts with horns? That's probably the icon I'm most proud of coming up with.


In case you couldn't tell, I painted my phone with nail polish. Since I borrowed the pink stuff and figured if this stuff works on phones, it might just work on toes! I made use of the situation. The toes of my right foot were acting all weird and sedimentary, so I threw a coat on there. My middle nail was recently ripped off, so I didn't touch that one. My pinky toe and the one next to it grow funny for the same reason. My toenails have been getting destroyed slowly and perfectly from right to left over the past few years. My theory is that by the time my pinky toe on my left foot gets ripped off, my life will end. There are only three down, so I should have a long life ahead of me.


I meant to make another VDCD, but it escaped me. I even took notes on what songs I should put in, besides being intercut with How I Met Your Mother quotes. All I could think of so far though was "You're My Best Friend" by Queen and "Father Figure" by George Michael. In the meantime, check out J.R.'s VDCD.

Every V.D. I look more and more like a hungover Eddie Munster.


Today's festivities may only consist of a date with Joe to see Confessions of a Shopaholic. Kind of reminds me of when I first moved to Salt Lake and saw 50 First Dates with Rhett for V.D. that year. I guess I'm not much of a monogamist.

the world is getting better

Fortunately I had my camera with me and I was able to snap a shot of this vanity license plate at a stop light.


It gives me great comfort to know that there are at least 994 other Neil Patrick Harris fans in this state alone. These are my people. You go NPH!

Jon Demand 5: Exercising

I've been sitting on the footage for this one for a while, but it's a story that must be told.

minor accomplishments, major grievances

I sort of left everyone hangin' on the whole Jeopardy! thing, huh? Well, I guess I haven't spoken a follow-up because they left me hanging. I did it. I answered all 50 questions, but they didn't give me (or anybody else) a score. Apparently they'll contact me at an undisclosed future date if I made the grade and the random selection process. So even if I aced every single question (which I know I didn't) I'm still dependent on a certain amount of chance (the probability of which scares me to think about).

I totally should have videoed myself taking that dumb test. You would have gotten a tremendous laugh. Five minutes before it started I went into major "Jon Fidget Mode" as I just sat there watching the countdown screen let me know when the test would start. I try really hard to be cool and laid back all the time, but a select few have seen me in my natural, anxious state. It's ugly (and funny). I really started getting nervous 30 seconds before the test began and it started playing the show's theme music.

It would have been easy to video too. I could have set up a Camtwist setting that would show my face as well as the question being asked (they actually ask questions instead of answers so that we wouldn't have to type "what is" every time).

The first 25 questions or so were easy, at least for me. I don't want to say that in a braggy way, but more in a "they asked questions from 80s movies and Greek mythology sorts of questions" type of way. I know I missed a couple of middle questions. I think nine of the last ten gave me problems. None of the questions were multiple choice. It was all "know-it-or-not" fill-in-the-blank.

A couple of my other friends from around the country tried out too. Edvalson said he didn't think he did too well and Ammon confided in me that he missed at least one -- one that I'm pretty sure I got. That's pretty cool because I always get a huge Jeopardy! surge of confidence when I can get a question that other contestants on the show don't get.

I guess we're allowed to take the test every year. Now it looks like I'll be taking it every year until I'm smart and lucky enough. Next year I'm gonna get video of the ordeal. Totally.

... So my car hit 200,000 miles last week. Much rejoicing. Here's the video of it. Joe was in the car with me. If you want to see the point of the whole thing, just skip to 1:54.



Last week I also discovered that life is simply unfair in so many ways. How fair is it that it's a hundred times easier to ruin somebody's day than it is to make the day slightly better?


I'm still sorry Alex. We'll be getting way awesomer eatingware.

My neck hurts. On the right side. It's buggin' me.

I hate the Fort Union area. It's like the forbidden zone of Salt Lake Valley. I'm so proud of SLV for being awesome enough to maintain a grid system where everything is easy to find. Not so in Fort Union. It's so diagonally that I make every attempt not to go there. Plus its main hub is the intersection of two streets -- Fort Union and Union Park. That's confusion waiting to happen, right?

One time Stephanie and Mark and I were hungry so we went to the Chili's downtown. When they said it was a 20 minute wait, Mark was like, "No way. We're not waiting that long. Let's try Five Guys." So we got in Mark's car and he drove as if he were driving Miss Daisy all the way to the Fort Union area. It took 30 minutes to get there. We couldn't find Five Guys at first, but found it after another five minutes of searching in the forbidden zone (right next to another Chili's). The burgers were okay. Sound gross now.

Anyway, the point is, there's only one Five Guys around and it's at Fort Union. A more likely story is that I'll want to go to the Belgian Waffle House. I went there a few weeks ago late at night, had some laughs and most importantly stuffed myself silly. They served me this stuff called garbage hash. It's a combination of hash browns, bacon, cheese and peppers -- and they gave me a couple of pounds of it. It very well could have just been the sweepings from the kitchen, but it was breakfast-awesome. An even more likely occurance for the Fort Union trip is World Market where I pick up my Tim Tams. Tim Tams are these Australian chocolate cookies you can suck hot chocolate through and then slide down your throat. The practice is called Tim Tam slamming. This Friday is a big Tim Tam slam contest so I had to pick some up (you're going, right?).

THE POINT IS if I ever crave the burgers, the garbage hash or the chocolatey gooey goodness I'll have to descend into what I call "The Salt Lake Axis of Evil." Observe:


I've discovered that I don't just get lost in Fort Union because it's diagonally. Notice that the union of Union Park and Fort Union combine to form an evil swastika. Surely this isn't a coincidence.

If you need to hit this evil part of town, though -- take this map with you.

the most popular kids in neptune

I'm nearly finished with the second season of Veronica Mars. I must say, I enjoy it even more than I thought I would. I may even enjoy it more than all the girls who told me to watch it. This is only an assumption, because I think I get a lot more of the disgusting terms and gestures that pervade the show. I'm fairly certain the good girls I know don't get all of that.

The most fun for me has been the craziness of characters at Neptune High School. My high school was pretty boring. There were hardly any detective cases to be solved. There also wasn't nearly as much flagpole taping, administrative corruption or (alleged) incest. Everybody was too bland for all that. The kids at Neptune are either way too smart, way too conniving, way too nice, way too mean or way too psychopathic.

Here's my countdown of my favorite characters from Neptune High School.

16. Weevil
I simply can't believe how annoying this kid is. First of all, he's like 35. Perhaps he was held back several times, although I don't know if high schools even do that anymore. I just watched the episode where he makes Beaver teach him the quadratic equation so he can graduate and his grandmother can die in peace. We never see his actual parents. Perhaps his "grandmother" is really his mother and he just says she's his grandmother so nobody suspects his real age.

It was a lot more annoying in the first season, but I also don't like how he can take the form of a single dude or take the form of entire biker gang. It's a Dracula-like power. A few times Veronica would call in a favor and if it was muscle she needed he'd show up with his biker gang like five minutes later -- as if he was waiting by the phone and then he opened a garage and the whole gang was there waiting and piled out ready to go. Silly really. That gang was so freakin' uptight too. At least the 09'ers had senses of humor.

I also hate how he constantly licks his lips and pouts 'em out a little.

15. Troy Vandegraff
This was Veronica's boyfriend for a couple of episodes at the beginning of the first season. He was snarky like her, but everyone knows she could do better.

14. Madison Sinclair
The school byotch. Very rich, very snobby, VERY one-dimensional; but I'd hang out with her because she flexes her pizza delivery privileges in front of the less-popular kids.

13. Jackie Cook
She's Wallace's flirty love interest. Of course she started out all diva-like, but Wallace calmed her down and turned her into a nicer person. BOOOOR-ING. Also, she's simply not pretty enough to be the obvious temptress the creators wanted her to be.

12. Beaver Casablancas
The smart, brooding non-shallow son of the big Neptune real estate tycoon. This kid constantly looks like an abused puppy. Live a little, dude.

11. Duncan Kane
This guy has a few mental disorders. As a result, he has blackouts, amnesia and severe mood swings. He also dated Veronica a few times. It wasn't just simple dating. He accidentally deflowered her shortly AFTER discovering that she was probably his half-sister. If that's not enough, for a time he was the biggest suspect in the Lilly Kane murder. With that kind of background HOW IS THIS GUY THE MOST BORING PERSON AT NEPTUNE HIGH?

10. Mac
She's the resident computer whiz. Now, I'm officially a Mac guy over PC, but did they have to name her Mac, really? Apple would have been a better name (but just BARELY).

9. Jane Kuhne
This is Wallace's nice, mainstream white girlfriend when Jackie is having her time of the month. A little too normal to be interesting, but you gotta feel a little for her.

8. Veronica Mars
Yep. Veronica's right in the middle. I like her because she's so smart, BUT she's also way too snarky, sassy and conceited. Yeah, that's right. Just because you make fun of people more conceited than you, it doesn't absolve you from your own conceit. Thing is, she's always complaining about how horrible everyone in Neptune is, but I'll bet you a million dollars if I was in her high school and I was nice to her, she'd still think she was way too cool for me.

I also have a problem with her being in contention to be valedictorian. Yes, I know I just said she's smart. She very well may be an absolute GENIUS. She's absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I know. Here's the problem though. She never studies. Okay, I know I know. This is high school. You don't need to study to get A's. Okay, fine. I'll give her a pass. BUT, she also never does homework. She's constantly out on a case of some kind. Even if she's a genius like I've previously said, she still has to actually do the work -- even if she is better at it than others. I had a 9th grade biology teacher who gave us perfect scores if we turned it in and it was complete, regardless of our answers. I discovered this slowly after supplying a few test responses. For example, if it was a fill-in-the-blank question, I'd write "do you really check these?" Never got a response about that. Yeah, maybe Veronica's teachers are like that. Okay okay okay okay okay -- MAYBE Veronica gets all her work done because she's so smart and because it's all she does when she helps out her dad at work. Even so, SHE RARELY ACTUALLY ATTENDS HIGH SCHOOL! What's up with that? And when she does go to school she sleeps through class. So yeah, Veronica's a valedictorian of detective work, but NOT Neptune High.

I hate her phone. What is that, a Sidekick from 1994?

I still like her a lot though, because she gave Logan Echolls a shot and she also wore that awesome material girl outfit to the '80s dance.

7. Wallace Fennel
Pretty cool kid that Veronica manipulates into doing the detective grunt work. One thing I don't get about him is that he started the show as a complete outcast just like her. Then, two episodes later he's suddenly the star of the basketball team and EXTREMELY popular. I guess that's one thing I like about Neptune. The turnaround rate of popularity is off the charts.

Wallace's head is huge. Seriously. Check out a few scenes of him with Jackie. His head is twice her size. No foolin'.

6. Hannah Griffith
She's not in it for much. She's the daughter of the star witness in Logan's murder trial, so Logan starts dating her for leverage. What's up with this town? Not only is there a high-profile, high-media murder case every year; but every single character in every single major case has some close relative in Veronica's class. Anyway, Hannah is a sweet girl. I'm putting her quite high because she's a curiosity to me. She must be half the size of Veronica. Veronica looks obese next to her. Perhaps Hannah's brash decisions in the show can be explained because she simply didn't consume enough calories to function properly.

5. Meg Manning
Aw. She's great. Every horrible horrible high school needs a super-nice girl who is just to good to handle the grit of a place like Neptune. Of course she was wronged terribly by Duncan, which gave her reason to despise Veronica. Perhaps that short bit of fault justified her tragic fate. Before such a tragedy happened, I'd be sure to hit on her a little.

4. Lilly Kane
The show kicks off by telling us of her death. She was Veronica's best friend and the whole first season revolves around Veronica's search for the truth surrounding the death. Still, nobody seemed to bring up the fact that Lilly Kane DESERVED to die. Hard. I mean, really. She was a HORRIBLE person (but at least she wasn't boring). We all know that if she wasn't killed she'd be on the stripper pole within four months. She would say it was to support her smack habit, but really she'd start using drugs to support her stripper habit. It actually doesn't make much sense that she was Veronica's best friend. Sure, Veronica was dating her brother but it doesn't mean they had to get along.

3. Gia Goodman
The daughter of the mayor looks a bit weird. She looks like an Addams Family character in an extremely impractical skirt. It's strangely cute. Some dumb people talk to themselves, but the way she talks to herself is awesomer/cuter/funnier than any other. Just the fact that she's into Dick Casablancas is funny in itself. Speaking of...

2. Dick Casablancas
Love this guy on the show. I'd HATE him in real life. He's shallow and one-dimensional, but since he's obviously tipping the scales in those regards, his actual character is borderline brilliant. It's like you couldn't find a laboratory that could produce the proper genetic makeup to create a guy as Californian as this guy. I mean, what kid these days actually embraces a name like "Dick" anyway?

Hey, ever notice what the names of the Casablancas brothers are?

1. Logan Echolls
See, most people start liking him after 15 or so episodes, but Logan was my favorite from DAY ONE. Sure, he's despicable, but he's got a snotty charm that I find endearing. That's weird to type, but it's true. He's every bit as bad as the PCHers, but he's also funny -- and that's important. Kudos for Veronica's bizarre attraction to him. I think their weird relationship fit perfectly and snugly into the narrative. Logan also has some of the best (suggestive) asides in the show.

He's also arguably the most tortured soul on the show. Well, there are A LOT of seriously messed up kids at Neptune High. Let's just say, I believe his tortured soul-ness the most.

Didn't you just love it when he crane-kicked Weevil when the biker gang tracked him down just in time to beat him up before he attempted suicide? That was awesome.

** Okay, now just a couple of notes on a few of the adults at Neptune **

Veronica's dad: He's simply way cooler than his daughter. I wish he went to Neptune High.

Woody Goodman: Okay, what's up with this guy's name? Is he really a "good man?" Kind of gives me the impression that he's not good, but is actually PURE EVIL. That's too obvious though, so I think it's reverse-reverse psychology. Now, I haven't seen the last episode yet, but what's up with his telling Gia not to take the bus that went over the cliff? Actually, a better question is what's up with Veronica, Veronica's dad, the sheriff and Gia NOT CALLING HIM OUT for obviously knowing the bus would crash? My theory? The creators of the show planted in something OBVIOUS for us to think we know about and we're gonna be thrown off again.

Jackie's dad: So he's like, O.J. Simpson, right?

Mumbly cop that Veronica dated for a little while: So like, what's up with that mumble, big guy?

Trina Echolls: Okay, she's funny because she's Allyson Hannigan and she's married to Jason Segal on How I Met Your Mother (and he absolutely dwarfs her). I find this amusing because Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) dated Jason Segal in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. When Allyson Hannigan and Kristen Bell are next to each other, Kristen Bell is like half Allyson's size. Strange that Kristen Bell could be that much tinier than Allyson Hannigan and still date Jason Segal when Segal obviously dwarfs Allyson -- if any of that made any sense. Don't even think about throwing Hannah Griffith in the mix.

Aaron Echolls: I like watching episodes with Aaron in and also his wife played by Lisa Rinna, because aren't they like married in real life? I think they are and whenever I see them on talk shows they seem a whole lot like the people they're portraying. I wonder if the Aaron Echolls scenes are actually filmed like a reality show and then they write his character around whatever footage Harry Hamlin provided that day?

Okay, no doubt you haven't made it to the end of this post without first being a fan of Veronica Mars. Congrats much! Let me know if you made it.