Flight of the Conchords

So a few friends of mine have recommended that I get acquainted with the Flight of the Conchords, a comedy/musical duo from New Zealand. There's some pretty good stuff on Youtube, and I just wanted to share a clip that I like to watch when I am feeling bad about myself. It's called "Bret you've got it going on," and even though my name has two t's, I still like to pretend that he's singing to me. Enjoy.


Also worth watching is this clip from their HBO show entitled "Bret's angry dance."

Good. Lord.

So I was just looking around Hot Air.com, and I came across what is, quite possibly, the most disturbing thing intended for TV I have ever seen. It's a Canadian PSA about what is apparently a big, big problem: grease fires. Or getting married, I'm not really sure which. Or maybe it's just saying we should stop having accidents.


Pretty rough stuff, but I'm very glad that there's someone out there raising awareness about these things.

In other news, my cousin Molly has a bad ankle sprain, but nothing worse than that. Good news. Better news is that she ought to be better in time for ski season, which means I won't have to ski alone.

Welcome, Ski Season

So today I committed myself to a season of skiing by renting skis/boots/poles and purchasing a season lift ticket. I got an amazing deal on all of it, but unfortunately, there is a catch; I have to go to 4 lessons. This isn't a a huge deal, but the lessons are for absolute beginners (which I like to think that I am not - I've skied a few times). We don't even get to go up on a lift for the first lesson, which is an hour and 45 minutes long. Bummer. While this will be pretty boring, I can get my season lift ticket after completing the 4 lessons, meaning that these 4 lessons will save me a total of almost $400. Which is more than enough to justify a few hours of boring lessons (which will be helpful, for sure).

Unfortunately, we just heard that my cousin Molly rolled her ankle a few minutes ago at cheer practice, and my aunt just took her to the ER to get X-rays. If she is out of commission, then I have lost my number 1 ski partner before the season even started. I can't believe she would do this to me. She's so self-centered. More on Molly when we hear.

I'm picking out a thermos for you...

I wish this had video, but it was stuck in my head for a long time and it made me smile.

Merry Christmas!

So I just got back to Boise after a 10 day trip home, and apparently, it's Christmas. I got here and not only were there Christmas cookies (sorry mom), but also a Christmas village set up by my aunt. More like a Chrismas Metropolis. Hundreds of thousands (literally) of little ceramic houses, shops, people, animals, trees, and like 10 Santas. Oh, and today, they got a huge tree and already have the lights up, etc. I just feel like it's a bit early for all of this, but then again, I really don't require all of this - a bottle of whiskey will pretty much do it for me. I hate whiskey.

It was good to be home, but I felt really rushed the whole time. I wanted to try to spend time with lots of people in addition to my fam, and I don't think I was very successful. I only saw some of my good friends once for about an hour. But I did get to hang out with my brother and his girlfriend, Alicia, quite a bit, which is good. We all went to see the Blue Man Group, which was awesome. I would highly recommend seeing both their stage show and their touring rock concert. Also worth noting is that we saw the show at the new Sprint Center in downtown KC. It is amazing.

The only real bummer of the last few days was the fact that I had to fly during the KU - MU game. My parents and I watched the first 8 minutes or so at a bar in the airport, and then I tried desperately to avoid hearing updates so I could watch it when I got to Boise (my aunt DV-Red it for me). This proved to be frustratingly difficult. Every a-hole I passed was screaming loud enough about the game for me to hear through the music I was blasting on my iPod. And, of course, this is the one time in my life I'm on a plane TVs in the seats. They didn't have ABC for some reason, but people were watching ESPN to get the score updates, and then screaming across the whole plane about it. So, I had some inkling as to what was going on, but I wasn't all that sure until I got here. Then, literally the second thing my uncle said to me when I got here (after, "Welcome back") was something about how both BSU and KU lost. I was too tired to be pissed. But I'm not too tired today to be pissed that the Chiefs lost to the Raiders... Oh well. I think there's an episode of either Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm where they talk about trying to get people to not tell who won a Lakers game they had taped. It's not as funny in real life.

In more positive news, I recently heard that I have been invited to interview at KU Med a week from Thursday. This is exciting news, but I feel like I have a lot of work to do to get ready for it.

Sports, Sports, Sports

So I pretty much watched football all day today (and I still am), with only a few hours off to go to a hockey game with my uncle. It was actually a lot of fun - I've been to a hockey game before, but it's been many years. There were a few fights, but a lot of spectacular plays and goals. The only thing truly worth mentioning, though, was the lady singing the national anthem. She had a beautiful voice, from what I could hear, but she either forgot to turn the mic on, or the sound people screwed up. Either way, it was pretty awkward as she sang her tasteful, yet barely audible rendition until a guy across the way from me started belting out with her. Before too long, pretty much the whole crowd was singing along with her at a respectful volume - not trying to drown out what little we could hear without the amplification. It was a cool experience, but I feel pretty bad for the singer.

In other news, I'm getting pretty excited to go home for Thanksgiving. I miss the fam and the dog, so it will be good to see them again. All of a sudden, it seems, I've been gone for 5 months. Pretty crazy. Oh well, go KU.

Bad News for TV Fans

In case you haven't heard, the WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike started yesterday. After negotiations failed to resolve the dispute, the strike started yesterday morning, meaning that no new scripts will be turned in, and in many cases, filming of the scripts that are already finished will stop. This is very bad news for fans of The Office (Steve Carrell is a guild member so production stopped yesterday), and many other shows. Here is an in-depth assessment of where many shows stand. Most shows will have either a truncated season, or will just stop after this week (talk shows like The Daily Show, The Tonight show, The Colbert Report, etc. have already gone to reruns). The whole thing is a huge bummer, especially for fans of shows like Battlestar Galactica, Scrubs and The Shield, which are in their final season and probably either won't end as the creators intended, or will be aired over the span of a year and a half or more. Also worth noting is that 24 likely won't start airing until a full season can be put together - so not until the end of the strike, plus production time, which could put it one or even two full years from now. Also worth mentioning is the fact that many movies which are in preproduction will get canned, and others, which were frantically scripted to be finished before the strike, will probably be terrible. As you can see above, Joaquin Phoenix isn't happy about this either.

Ty Pennington is a douche

So, the girls here really love Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which means I often have to suffer through it. To be more precise, I often have to hide in a far corner of the house to escape the cartoonishly over-the-top screaming and lisping of Ty Pennington (look at that hair). Embedded, you will find a clip from the show (with 18 seconds of silent lead-in, for some reason - bear with it, it's worth it); please watch it, so you can see what I'm talking about.



In case you're wondering, that's him saying "Oh!" over and over again, and then him talking like Krusty the Klown on crack at the end. Now, before you people even say it, I'm not talking about the guy's DUI arrest. While that is terrible, and no one should ever drive drunk, I'm not even calling upon that evidence to make my case. In fact, I'll even go so far as to say that he seems like a decent person; he obviously changes a lot of people's lives for the better on that show, and I have nothing but respect for that. That's not my point at all. You can be a great person and still be a total douche-bag. Which he is. He's one of those guys that people love, and I want to like, but his ego is too massively huge to feel anything but scorn for him. In case you don't believe me, take it from someone who knows, someone who's opinion is true and worthy... Joel McHale.



For the record, I am aware that there are people out there more worthy of my scorn that this guy, but his show was on tonight, and I'm particularly crabby tonight, so it was kind of the perfect storm. And he's a tool.

Wow

So I went with my cousin Amy to the BSU football game yesterday. It was pretty amazing - we got tickets from one of my uncle's fellow docs, and the seats were pretty sweet. We were about 10 rows up at just about the 50 yard line. I took a picture, but I'm not set up to transfer to the computers here, so the above picture will have to suffice. I'm really only including it to show the blue field (which some people say makes BSU football not real football [Alek]). Anyway, it'd been a while since I had seen a live sporting event, and it was fun to be in a stadium full of rabid fans again. For the record, Boiseans take their BSU football very seriously; you can't go anywhere without seeing bumper stickers, jerseys, etc., and everyone has an opinion. It was a fun afternoon, for sure. The only bummer was that one of the San Jose State players got hurt- the game was stopped for about 20 minutes while they stabilized him and took him off in an ambulance. It seemed to be a neck injury, and while I think I saw him move his leg a little once, it looked pretty bad. Hopefully he's ok.