the greatest moment in cinema history

last friday celebrated the 30th anniversary of the finest moment in cinema history.

dr. w and i are watching 'star wars --the legacy revealed' on the history channel. two hours of bliss. it actually has a lot of cool info that i didn't know. and some legit professors to avoid coming off as a VH-1 'we love the 80s' type of commentary. thankfully, it focuses mainly on episodes iv - vi, with a bit of iii thrown in.

the history channel web site has a cool feature that will place a call from the dark side. suffice to say, dr. wintermute placed a call to me. we placed calls to moe, bloodninja, and gasparyan.

what a great end of the holiday weekend.

the driveshaft list

i haven't watched the season finale of lost, but mle tells me that it was nuts. although we forgot to dvr it, she tvo'd it (how's that for turning nouns into verbs? trying googling that one.) and i running over to their place to pick up a burned copy before i fly out to soflo this afternoon.

last week charlie made a list of the 5 greatest moments in his life (or something to that effect).

i really try to stray from anything sincere on this blog, but i'm standing in what remains of my atlanta apt, typing on the kitchen counter. there's about 20 half-filled boxes strewn around. playing hooky from work so i can pack. in four weeks, i will no longer be an atlanta resident. so, that's a long-winded way of saying that i'm feeling reflective.

in honor of charlie (who i'm guessing met his fate), let's call it the driveshaft list:

5. when my brother and dad came home after their (successful) kidney transplant.
4. when i got the email saying i was accepted into the seo program. it changed the trajectory of my adult life.
3. the first time my high school band played a show. i was on stage at bogart's, my brother was on bass, teen woolfe was singing. we had a great set, played some our own songs, closed out by covering rage against the machine's 'killing in the name' and had a real mosh pit. for a minute, i felt like a rock star. there's no better high.
2. my first day at emory. partly because it confirmed that getting out of cincicrappy was the best possible move and partly because it led to four great years and virtually all of the friends i have today.
1. the night i met dr. wintermute. bloodninja and i had just moved back to atlanta as room mates, and we called j-watt. she invited us to twain's to meet her class mates from her phd program. everything else flowed from this moment.

above the love

my bro has a new side project. check out the band's my space page here, at http://myspace.com/abovethelove

[i'm not supposed to visit myspace at work. dumb.]

i pity the fool

when dr. w and i were first getting to know each other, bloodninja, chall3Po and i were hanging out with her and j-watt in hilton head. dr. w later shared with me that from our jokes, she figured mrs. bloodninja (being bloodninja's mom, not his now-wife) was some fat, foul-smelling neighbor of ours, since she didn't know bloodninja's last name at the time.

years later, dr. w came to the realization that the mom jokes were not a passing phase of humor, but rather an essential facet of the way the chief, moe, bloodninja and i amuse each other, and that in fact, one day, all our respective offspring would be cracking these mom jokes.

mr t, however, has given me reason to pause.

the bloodninja monologues

first of all, big up to bloodninja for graduating this week. he got married, is having a kid, and got a sweet job, too. big up. [by the way, no one believes that you ending up at ut at the same time as your now-wife-at-the-time-ex-girlfriend was a coincidence, least of all me. you were going to go to michigan or ga tech and you know it.]


good past week. on friday dr. wintermute and i got on the plane. it left 20 fateful minutes late. we end up just missing the window to get in to hartsfield ahead the thunderstorms that end up closing the airport. we're out of fuel so we can't circle, and end up getting diverted to augusta, where sit for a few hours on the runway. we finally land in atlanta around 11:30, having left soflo around 5 that afternoon. normally, this would be a travel nightmare. however, we were on an old song jet, which had tv screens in each seat, featuring an interactive trivia game, with passengers competing against each other.

dr. w and i entered and proceeded to dominate the entire plane, winning four games in a row, and six out of ten games. it was addictive, in a law & order kind of way. as soon as one game ended, the next one started. it felt great. i played almost continuously for four hours. i proud to say that we scored 3 out of the top 10 scores for the whole day. i had to resist the urge to get up and yell 'in the face' after each victory. on my way back to the bathroom, i did identify myself as 'winter' to one of our rivals three rows back (the game identifies participants by their screen handle and seat number). dr. w was a bit embarrassed by that move.

on monday, we hit metalsome to celebrate dr. w's graduation. for the first time ever, we walked away sorely disappointed. great crowd, shitty song selection. normally, not a problem. the band has sensed it, too, as they are now relegating 'skinny tie 80s' to wednesdays and reserving mondays for true metal. pat benatar should NEVER be played at metalsome monday. 80s bands like skid row, whitesnake, and bon jovi, and styxx are what we come to hear. sadly, queensyche has yet to get any airtime.

a few weeks, bama boy brought out a smoking hot chick, as he often does, to metalsome. amazingly, he hasn't called her back.

she. likes. metal.

what more do i need to say?

one of the first times i hung out with dr. w, we started talking because she had system of a down on her party mix. not a lot of chicks put armenian metal bands on their party mixes, but i'm proud to say that my wife does.

anyway, back to bama boy. so last night i'm hanging with moe and him after soccer, and he asks, 'so who is bloodninja?'

so, in honor of bloodninja graduating, i'd like to share some key excerpts from the best of the bloodninja monologues. a few choice bits can be found here.

excerpt 1:
bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?

BritneySpears14: Aight.

bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.

BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.

bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.

BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.

bloodninja: Me too baby.

BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.

bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.

BritneySpears14: Hey...

bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.

BritneySpears14: Funny I still don't see it.

bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.

BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.

bloodninja: Don't f*ck with me bitch, I'm the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.

bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.

BritneySpears14: Don't ever message me again you piece of ****.

bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.

bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik's evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.

bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it's getting hard now.

bloodninja: Baby?

excerpt 2:
bloodninja: Ok baby, we got to hurry, I don't know how long I can keep it ready for you.

j_gurli3: thats ok. ok i'm a japanese schoolgirl, what r u.

bloodninja: A Rhinocerus. Well, hung like one, thats for sure.

j_gurli3: haha, ok lets go.

j_gurli3: i put my hand through ur hair, and kiss u on the neck.

bloodninja: I stomp the ground, and snort, to alert you that you are in my breeding territory.

j_gurli3: haha, ok, u know that turns me on.

j_gurli3: i start unbuttoning ur shirt.

bloodninja: Rhinoceruses don't wear shirts.

j_gurli3: No, ur not really a Rhinocerus silly, it's just part of the game.

bloodninja: Rhinoceruses don't play games. They f*cking charge your ass.

j_gurli3: stop, cmon be serious.

bloodninja: It doesn't get any more serious than a Rhinocerus about to charge your ass.

bloodninja: I stomp my feet, the dust stirs around my tough skinned feet.

j_gurli3: thats it.

bloodninja: Nostrils flaring, I lower my head. My horn, like some phallic symbol of my potent virility, is the last thing you see as skulls collide and mine remains the victor. You are now a bloody red ragdoll suspended in the air on my mighty horn.

bloodninja: Goddam am I hard now.

future spike!

hat toss

well, dr. wintermute is now an official wizard. commencement was yesterday. we had a great time and paul farmer actually gave a good relatively memorable commencement address. i'm dead tired after celebrating at metalsome monday last night, so i'll blog with more details later. for now, some pics will tell the story.

dr. w + j-town

dr. w + her fam

doctor scientist!

this is a big weekend. after our wedding, it is probably the biggest weekend i've had since i met dr. wintermute.

on monday, she officially gets her phd from emory.

dr. w has been slugging it out for almost six years. i met her a month into her first semester. bloodninja and i were "two business guys" and she and breaking h were j-watt's "hot friends." since then we've moved in together, i've left for boston, finished my graduate degree, gotten engaged and lived together for a summer, moved back to atlanta and gotten married, moved into together for a year, then had dr. w move to soflo, and live apart for another year. now, the end is in site. house almost purchased. next stop: washington dc. oh yeah, and all of that doctoral stuff.

clinical work? check. quals? check. dissertation? check. internship at the crazy house? check.

dr. w has had a great adviser and great friends in the program. ok, and some other people, too.

we're packing right now. fly to atl tomorrow evening, meeting j-town in the airport. both sets of parents are driving in for the big weekend. lots of family time and some nice meals.

and metalsome monday to top it off.

it will be a nice nostalgia moment for me to return for emory commencement. killing drinks at 7 am behind the chi phi house and stumbling with my pledge class in our robes to the quad.

it. does. not. feel. like. it. has. been. that. long.

the speaker is not anyone of whom i have heard. i'm sure he or she is smart and will have good things to say, but i'm not intellectual at all about these things. i want someone famous and funny. it's a long, hot day. emory is a good school. if they want to stop being known as a place for duke rejects, they should be able to get a good commencement speaker.

anyway, monday will be a great day.

it's been a haul. i'm so proud of you, dr. wintermute!

like drinking farts

why do farts smell worse in the shower?

dr. wintermute hypothesized that the fart molecules get attached to water molecules and get amplied. according to her, it's therefore pretty much "like drinking farts."

turns out she's right. answer bag says:

H2O, in the form of water vapor, easily attaches to methane molecules by the chlorine atom, or the sulfur released from bacteria, making the foul smell more readily attach to the nostril lining, subsequently sustaining the odor longer than in a dry climate. In addition, warm vapors will cause any crusted mucus to soften and disengage, providing more surface area within the sinuses. And lastly, (if you are male) the qualitive factor of "worse" is a perception of foreign gases - as to our own emissions, the qualitive factor is "better."

which reminds: in our old place (good old bohemia 5) that i shared with bloodninja, and then later with dr. wintermute, the bathroom wall touched the bathroom wall of our neighbors, this couple that lived next door. they liked to shower together in the mornings and the woman was a horrific shower farter. whenever we saw her around the neighborhood or in the parking lot, we'd smirk and call her 'shower farter' under our breath.

national darkroast day

last month i blogged here about the chief releasing his new book, which is a great read and is doing really well on amazon. i highly recommend it. if you like south park and team america, you'll love it. read it!

today, the website is up at http://www.nationaldarkroastday.com/

just in case you're debating it, here's what one reviewer said:

Reviewer:

Eric Wasserman (Santa Monica, CA)

A tour de force of social commentary that combines the classic satire of Jonathan Swift with the gut-laughter of South Park. Confident and assured in its style, pinpoint-precise in its approach, National Darkroast Day is an impressive debut from a writer with true staying power! If you like novels such as C.D. Payne's hysterical Frisco Pigeon Mambo or Gulliver's Travels, this is a must read!

it's easy being green

inspired by bloodninja (who bikes to work, shuns paper towels, has started not using plastic grocery bags, and chains himself to endangered trees), i've been making more effort to be green-friendly, or as many are calling it, "low impact."

this dude takes it to the extreme at no impact man.

anyway, this past week i returned all of my accumulated wire hangers to the dry cleaner so they could re-use them. i also brought my own canvas bags to the grocery store so they wouldn't have to use plastic bags.

now give me my cookie.