Cop Knocks "Critical Mass" Cyclist Off Bike

Critical Mass is a group in NYC that stages monthly group bike rides through the city, to protest NYC's bike-unfriendly laws, for example not allowing more than a few bikes to ride together at a time. Members are occasionally arrested and spend a night in jail.

This time they were riding through Times Square, and a cop just outright assaulted one of them, knocking the rider off the bike onto the sidewalk. I hope the cop is brought up on charges. From the video there is little defense other than an attempt to intimidate the other riders and future riders.

Flight Of the Conchords: Foux Du Fa Fa

I love these guys! Makes me want to create music and music videos.

Flight Of the Conchords, Foux du Fa Fa

Flight Of The Conchords: Business Time

My friend Crash sent me this one. I've heard of these guys but had never seen them. They depict modern life with this off-handed, casual sense of humor that they hold together with tight music. The guy on the left, Germaine, also reminds me a lot of Austin Powers.

Flight Of the Conchords, Business Time

I can't believe he said that out loud!

Al Gore said this out loud!

We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.

Perhaps I'm naive (in which case GFY!), but this is possibly the most forward-looking statement I've heard from any "mainstream" politician. The astonishing thing to me is that he mentioned the borrowing from China. Be nice if someone high-profile like Gore had said this a few years ago, but now it's been said.

What's that? I'm naive? GFY!

The News World Tries To Explain Male Anatomy

236.com has posted a hilarious video montage of news anchors and pundits groping awkwardly to report Reverend Jesse Jackson's declaration that he wants to cut off Obama's nuts, without actually saying "nuts" on television. Thank you Reverend Jackson (and Reverend Sharpton for the look on your face during the interview).

That senior black correspondent has a hell of a time explaining it, to viewers that one must assume have only recently landed on Earth. His communications degree did not prepare him for this.

This montage highlights a critical flaw in our news programming - that the anchors must report everything with a sense of urgency and with no humor whatsoever. They want to be taken so damn seriously all the time that when they have to juggle something like a presidential candidate's testicles they trip over their own vanity trying to remain erect.

Here's the video they're all talking about:

The Mind Of a Landlord

About 30 of my friends from various generations of the The Binghamton Crosbys (my college acappella group) and I have rented this huge, gorgeous 30-acre estate for next weekend, an event we're calling "Freedom Estate 2008" (the T-shirt says, "Go Free Yourself"), and we were all asked to read the lease. I may be the only one who actually did, but it proved a marvel of English syntax and paranoia. I think the wood-chopping clause was the deal-breaker for me: "NEVER chop wood inside of house or on the deck or concrete".

Actually, quite a few inspired moments in this document, which I now imagine the landlord writing in a desperate hindsighted rush as he watched the first tenant take the place to the ground:

DO NOT touch or play with anything mechanical/technological as this could cause serious problems

So true. God bless the Amish. Actually, it includes lights in the list of examples, but we will of course be observing the Jewish Sabbath.

Please do NOT open your windows while the heat is on as this will cause the pipes to freeze.

And the jacuzzi to explode. Is this kind of thing common knowledge? I've opened many windows while the heat was on without freezing any pipes. And it's the middle of July - if the heat is on I'm damn well opening a window. Makes me want to go into the dining room and chop some wood.

NEVER through anything in the toilet except for toilet paper in the toilet.

Such a promising selection of words ultimately failing to form an English sentence. Let's see, they make it very clear they're talking about a toilet here, something in the toilet, in the toilet, definitely, definitely in the toilet. This repetition of "in the toilet" actually creates a legal and astrophysical loophole - do they mean we can only "through" toilet paper in the toilet that is ALREADY in the toilet? It's a trick lads!

Then there's this unusual use of the word "through", which one can assume is just an Olde English spelling for "throw", but especially given the unorthodox spelling I insist they clarify this most critical verb in the lease. Does "throw" include "project"? "launch"? "expel"? "jettison"? "thrust with intestinal spasm"? Barbarians!

If the TV or stereo does not work after your departure due to someone fiddling with the wires...

Or diddling with the dials, twiddling with the thingamadiddies, you know.

Do not empty fireplace ashes or hot amber's.

Hot Amber's what? Can I fill it instead?

No skis are allowed in the house.

Even just down the stairs?

To summarize the rest, there will be no running, jumping, laughing, farting or talking on the premises. I also recommend this person read Strunk and White. Join me next week as we dissect a letter I received from my own landlord regarding my excessive petunia usage and opening of the refrigerator while the shower is running.

I ever tell you about the time me and Flappy Donuts hopped a freight car down in wheezy, right in the middle of the state pumpkin parade, and then pushed over a hayseed bank in Arkansas wearing nothing but really long ties? Oh I got lotsa stories - that old Ibanez guitar once saved my cat Teddy; she was sittin on a tree branch bendin lower than yo mama on a Saturday night, swattin at wild salmon - the cat now not your mother - when whoops! there goes Teddy into the river. Lucky I had the old steel string with me and rowed out to her, sitting on that guitar just like a frog on a lily pad. Teddy was pretty happy to see me; I played Bojangles on the way back with my feet. Now pass that joint sonny, I'm old but I ain't dead.

The Right Cuff

This one cheered me up when I was having a tough morning. A conspiracy theorist walks up to Buzz Aldrin and starts calling him a coward for faking the moon landing, and Buzz just knocks him the fuck out. Buzz is twice this guy's age.

Cock Of the Mornin To Ya

George Carlin's "Seven Words" routine got me thinking this morning about profanity. Why is, for example, the word "cock" considered profane? It's not the sequence of letters, c-o-c-k, and it's not the word itself, because it also means "rooster" and it appears in the bible in that context. It also isn't the reference to a penis that's offensive, because we can refer to the penis in a medical documentary on the urinary tract all day long and no one will object. So the obscenity would seem to lie in the tone or context implied by using the word "cock" to refer to a penis. That it also means "rooster" may be a hint, because it implies the attitude of an animal that struts into the henhouse and has sex with all the chickens.

Aha! Perhaps sex has something to do with it.

After all, referring to one's elbow isn't terribly offensive by anyone's measure, and the penis is just another piece of the anatomy, so it must be that this particular piece of anatomy is responsible for sex that offends. In fact, cock could even be interpreted to only mean a penis that is erect:

First, is cock, the male bird, from Latin through French, and from this comes the use of cock, on account of some fancied resemblance to the tail of the fowl...

English Words: An Elementary Study of Derivations By Charles Frederick Johnson (via Google Book Search)

A rooster's tail turns upward, as does, if memory serves, an erection.

But it isn't just the sex - we can refer to sex all day long too, in a documentary on the reproductive process. Nowadays we can even refer to sex as something enjoyable on television. Big Bird could say "You know kids, sex is quite enjoyable", and although the world would stare with mouth agape, the FCC would have a difficult time fining anybody. The word "cock", then, is more offensive than sex itself, meaning that it implies something about sex or puts sex in a context that is suddenly offensive.

It's a violent-sounding word, like the sound of a gunshot echoing on concrete, or the kind of onomatopeoia they'd use in the Batman comics during a fight scene - "Pow! Thwack! Cock!". Perhaps we object to the image of man using his penis to fight crime.

...to be continued...

Kevin Spacey doing various impersonations

Also found this, Kevin Spacey doing a number of great impressions on Inside the Actor's Studio. The interviewer, James Lipton, is possibly the most annoying and self-indulgent person on Earth - the pauses make you want to scream - but Spacey's impressions are ingenius. I especially enjoyed Katherine Hepburn and Marlon Brando.

From the wikipedia page on James Lipton, it would seem that the bulk of his career has actually consisted of other people parodying him rather than work he's done himself. Everybody parodies this guy - SNL, Dave Chappelle, David Cross. Why? Because he's annoying and self-indulgent. It's as if he had a web page where all he did was write about himself and his own stupid thoughts on whatever stupid th- oh dear god.

Cooking With Christopher Walken (Impression)

Great Christopher Walken impression, and also funny. It takes you a few seconds to settle into it as an impression, and the sound seems like it might be a split-second off from the video or something, but I thought it was dead-on.

This must be from a real TV show, but I don't know who this guy is. Since I don't have a TV, YouTube has become my TV. My tube.

Ruslana

I only met Ruslana Korshunova once, but she struck me as a lovely person and I enjoyed talking with her. All the news items about her death keep reminding me of our conversation. I met her over dinner a few months ago with my friend Kira; they grew up together in Kazakhstan. She and Kira were adorable together at dinner, gleeful even, like 7-year-olds at summer camp, gently taking hold of each other's hands, giggling about whatever they were talking about in Russian. It was clear they loved each other. Ruslana and I actually argued the whole time - she later said she knew I'd be difficult the moment she came in. Which is true; I didn't know who she was until Kira told me she was a famous model, but after that I kept trying to cause trouble. But Ruslana laughed here and there and seemed to get a kick out of the conversation. The pictures of her on magazine covers are much more severe than the person I met. She reminded me of a kitten. She talked about how she prefers to listen to her emotions than to her brain, because the brain is always trying to do you in.

I was at Kira's birthday party the night Ruslana died. I had wondered why she wasn't there. At one point Kira disappeared for a while a couple hours after midnight, and then left the party, looking hollow and tired. I remember seeing her by the elevator about to leave, eyes red and wet, someone touching her shoulder and escorting her out. When I saw the newspaper the next morning I realized she had been leaving to go to the scene.

Ruslana seemed like a lovely person - smart, worldly, sweet, vulnerable. Her death has reminded me how urgent it is that we let go of the nonsense in our heads so we can be present with one another, because all we have is this moment.