The Fasterester and The Even More Super Furiouser: You Don’t Even Know

I think I speak for all of us when I say, “Bad. Ass.”

WTF Says WTF To Olympic Grill Kick

Image Credit: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images

I don’t have much on this except for what I thought was a funny title for a post. Apparently some asshole taekwondo Cuban dude kicked a judge in the grill at the Olympics because he was disqualified from his match.

So now the World Taekwondo Federation - get it? WTF. heh - has to decide whether to ban this guy for life. I would say he deserves it, though it could’ve been worse. He could have done this first.

Oh well. Tough shit, Cuban dude. Guess you shouldn’t be such a face-kicking poor sport. I don’t like how they skimp on the tequila in the El Presidente margarita at Chili’s sometimes, but you don’t see me kicking people in the face about it, now do you?

Now if you all will excuse me I need to go finish filing my charter papers for the Bahamian Amateur Motocross Federation.

the blizzog @ the movies: Tropic Thunder

I got home from work today and AG informed me that we were having an impromptu Date Night. Good times. This is the first night all week that I have felt even halfway normal after this fun night and three subsequent days of feeling like crap after picking up some bug in Blowing Rock over the weekend.

After dinner we went to go see Tropic Thunder. I’ve been wanting to see this since it came out last week; partly because of the controversy it is brewing up but mostly because I wanted to see Robert Downey Jr’s performance.

Tropic Thunder didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, but it was super funny in parts and didn’t really drag. That’s all you can ask for. I’d give it a solid 3 stars out of 4.

If you’ve followed Ben Stiller’s career from it’s earlier days - like the short-lived, but awesome “The Ben Stiller Show” - you know that he’s capable of doing some great parody, and all those skills were on full display in this film. Stiller and fellow writers Justin Theroux and Ethan Cohen do a fabulous job of mocking all the typical Hollywood steroptypes: endless sequels, stupid fart-joke movies, and yes, actors who take on roles as mentally challenged people in hopes of winning awards.

I didn’t see what all the controversy was about with Stiller’s “Simple Jack” character, honestly. If I were the type that gets offended, I think I’d have been much more offended by a character like “Have you seen my baseball?” Warren from There’s Something About Mary… if it wasn’t so hilarious.

Robert Downey Jr. is fabulous as the 5-time Oscar Award winning Australian actor who had his skin pigmented so he could play a black guy in the film. I’ve heard Stiller say a few times that in order to pull this character off without coming across as a cheap stereotype you needed someone with RDJ’s acting chops.

After seeing the film I couldn’t agree more. His character is hilarious, but not in a clownish, cheap way. Downey plays it right up to the edge in a pitch-perfect performance, and Brandon T. Jackson provides the proper balance to the absurdities of Downey’s character as rapper-turned-actor-turned-mogul Alpa Chino.

I can’t finish my review without giving my grudging respect to Tom Cruise’s cameo as a power-mad movie producer. He’s pretty funny in this, though it would’ve been funnier if he could get over the whole “I’m Tom Cruise Playing Some Other Guy” thing he does in pretty much every movie. That said, the role is pretty out of the box for him and you gotta give him credit for going for it. It makes you forget the Creepy Scientology Guy Tom Cruise for a few moments, and that’s a good thing. I’m still not taking this down.

Overall Tropic Thunder is some good times. You should check it out. Especially if you can go on Date Night.

Insomnia Sucks

Photo Credit: Joe M500

I can’t sleep. And it sucks.

We had a nice weekend with my parents in Blowing Rock this weekend. They left on Sunday morning and we hung around for a bit longer to do some shopping and hang out with my bro-in-law Matt and his girlfriend Lauren.

Sometime on the drive back - around 3 in the afternoon - I started getting crazy tired. Like all I wanted to do was fall asleep. I managed to trudge through the rest of the day but ended up going to bed around 9 on Sunday night, which is pretty early for me. I figured I was just paying the price for a week of staying up late to watch the Olympics and that a good, nice, long rest would do me right.

I was wrong. I woke up this morning with a full-on migraine. I haven’t had a migraine in years, and I’m thankful for it. This was the crazy blurred-vision-because-my-hair-hurts-variety, and it was not good times.

This was like at 6 AM. I took some Advil, called in sick to work, and went back to sleep. I didn’t wake up until around 10, making for a nice 13 hour slumber.

Wow, this is getting more boring as I’m writing it. Hopefully that means I’m getting tired and it will be sleep time soon.

The upshot is that I think I’m fighting off some kind of illness. My migraine finally went away today and was replaced by nasty congestion that filled my lungs and head. So then I loaded up on some Mucinex D to help clear everything up, which it did.

The only problem is that now I’m paying the price for sleeping 13 hours the night before and taking a monster dose of pseuphedrine, which can make it hard for me to sleep at times…. you know, like now.

So while AG went to be 3 hours ago, I stayed in bed for a bit and tried to go to sleep, but no dice. Then I got up and read about 100 pages from The Looming Tower, a fascinating read about the history of Islamic extremism and the lead-up to 9/11. That ate up about an hour.

Ever since I’ve been just sitting here surfing the web and not being tired. Bad times. Now I’m punishing you, the poor blizzog reader, with this mindless account of my day.

The good news is that the next time I need to read something that will put me to sleep, I’ll have this post to come back to.

Good night…. hopefully.

Update: Um, so it’s 3:18 AM. I’m still up.

Update: 3:54 AM. Shit. :(

I Have The Internet Installed on My Machine

AG and I are enjoying a nice weekend with my parents. They are visiting from Ohio and we’re all staying at the always-awesome Village Inns of Blowing Rock in, erm… Blowing Rock, NC. It’s our favorite place to stay when we come to the Boone / Blowing Rock area to visit.

They’ve just signed up with a new Wifi provider. It’s one of those deals where you have to log in with a password before you can get online. I chuckled this evening when I logged on and saw this screen.

I like how it’s redirecting me to “The Internet” OOOOOOOHHHHHH!!!! How exciting! I’ve always wanted to check out this Internet I’ve heard to much about.

I’m not sure why this strikes me as funny, but it does. It reminds me of when I used to do desktop support at Kenan-Flagler back in the day. Every now and then we’d get a call from one of our users who would exclaim “I need the Internet installed on my machine.”

This usually meant that they needed Netscape installed (this was like 1996, mind you), but we always had a good, geeky laugh together as we pondered how much disk space you’d actually need to store the entire Internet on your computer.

Wow, that was really dorky, wasn’t it? I just read that back and am now regretting sharing that with all of you. Oh well. Too late.

Send Me Some Pictures

I just read about this service called Picwing that seems kinda neat. You can send me pictures and they show up on the blog. Peep the Picwing page I set up on the blizzog here for more info. Note that you can get back to it using the Picwing link over on the blog sidebar.

Alicia Sacramone Will End You

If you had been thinking about giving US Women’s Gymnastics captain Alicia Sacramone shit for choking and taking the Americans out of gold medal contention in the team competition the other day - and you’d be super lame if you were - then you better think again.

Peep this video of her knocking some frat boy the F out at what appears to be a party at Brown University where she goes to school.

Pretty bad ass, right? It’s hard to say whether she really knocked him out or if he was just faking it or was just hammered and this was going to happen anyway.

Either way, I don’t think I’d be inviting a world-class athlete to punch me in the face as hard as possible, chick or not. Way to think it through, Skyler.

This Just In: Price Is Right Mountain Guy Still Creepy

I covered this a long time ago, but the mountain climber guy on the “Price is Right” used to scare me when I was a little kid, and it still kinda creeps me out today. It was always a combination of how weird the dude looked and the other-worldly yodeling that accompanied his ascent up the mountain.

I would have nightmares where I’d start hearing the yodeling and then the guy would be next to me in my room. It creeps me out even writing about it now.

But over the years I’ve managed to reduce my fear by mainly getting a job that forces me to work during “The Price is Right” - and you thought I worked for the money - and steeling myself against the bone-chilling grip of the mountain guy’s siren song on those rare occasions where I happen to catch the show and they play the game.

Though these tactics have worked for years, now they are apparently not enough. The creepy mountain climber guy has raised the stakes. Today I log into my Facebook account - yeah, I’m on there. so what? friend me, bitches - and what do I find my boy Jamie Babb has posted to his wall?

This…

That’s messed up, right? Now I have to work to stay away from “The Price is Right” during the day and to pay for years of therapy to get over this. Thanks, Babb.

Douchebag.com

Douchy

If per chance you have ingested some sort of poison or are interested in barfing up tonight’s dinner as part of some unhealthy-but-effective binge-and-purge weight-loss regimen, might I suggest this to help get the hurling started.

Spain Puts Wrong Slant on Olympics

WTF?

So much for One World, One Dream or whatever. The picture above shows members of the Spanish Olympic basketball team making what The Guardian calls a “slit-eye” gesture. I thought it was slant-eye, but po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh, it’s still freaking racist.

This picture apparently appeared in a full page ad in a Spanish newspaper and no one batted a racist, faux-slanted eye. Nice job, Spain. This is sure to help your chances in landing the Games in 2016.

Oh, and memo to members of the Spanish Olympic team in China right now: Let’s just say I wouldn’t drink any more Coke until I was back home if I were you.