They're going to be showing movies from 1996 as part of the 10 year celebration tonight at AIR. Was 1996 the worst year for movies ever? Of course, the best year for movies was 1999. Fight Club. Magnolia. The Iron Giant. Office Space. eXistenz. Being John Malkovich. The Matrix. Galaxy Quest. Go. Three Kings. 10 Things I Hate About You.
Have I convinced you yet?

I keep meaning to post about the Jim Gaffigan show last Friday but I never seem to get around to it. So, here goes. The opening act, Rich Brooks, was funny. He had a great joke about how he had gotten his sideburns trimmed because he had crossed the line from looking like Neil Young to looking like Wolverine. Mr. Gaffigan was everything you could hope he would be. He did bear jokes. He did religious jokes. He did food jokes. He did a hell of a lot of food jokes. He did Hot Pocket jokes. The cheer that went up when he did his first Hot Pocket joke was unreal. If anything he went on for too long. I mean, how long can you expect people to sit there listening to food jokes? I was really hungry after the show.

At the end of his set he quickly came back out for an encore. After doing a few more jokes he announced that they were giving away a CD to a lucky fan. Mr. Gaffigan said the winner's name and the guy came down to the front of the stage. At this point Mr. Gaffigan asked the guy who he was there with and the guy said he was there with his girlfriend. Mr. Gaffigan said that she should come up too. So both the winner and his girlfriend climb up onto the stage. The guy is handed his CD and Mr. Gaffigan congratulates him. Jim Gaffigan then hands the guy the microphone, says something like "it's all yours", and walks off stage. So there's this guy on stage with his girlfriend. He looks out at the audience and acts like he's going to talk to us, go into a routine or something, but then he turns to his girlfriend, gets down on one knee, and proposes. She accepts and a voice comes over the PA system telling us that Jim Gaffigan will be out in the lobby signing autographs and posing for pictures.

I have no reason to believe the proposal wasn't sincere but that would be a great way to end a show night after night. Send the fans home with some great comedy and a great little anecdote to tell their friends.

Sweet monkey. I went in at 2:00 to help get AIR ready for its birthday party and I just got back. My calves are killing me but the tags for the art work have all been cut, the place has been mopped and vacuumed, and there are some sweet streamers hanging from the ceiling. Gonna be a good ole time tomorrow.

"There are those nights when you're pushing thirty and life seems over. When you feel like you'll never tie up any ends and no one will ever kiss your lips again."

Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson.

All right, when the pilot of Smith airs, and I'm assuming that a show written by John Wells and starring Ray Liotta and Simon Baker will be picked up, there should be a scene where Mr. Liotta is standing on the steps outside the "Tanner Museum" talking with someone over a walkie-talkie in his sleeve. During this scene two security guards walk past him. The second guard, the one that goes by on Mr. Liotta's left is my brother. Lets hope he makes the final cut.

I think that tomorrow all escalators in the world should be turned into stairs to commemorate the death of Mitch Hedberg.

I just dropped my brother off in Oakland where he gets to spend the day being an extra in the pilot of the tv show Smith starring Ray Liotta and Simon Baker. Do you think those two guys like working in Pittsburgh or are they always like "Shit, I have to go to Pittsburgh again!?!"

Happy anniversary

I went to the Pens game last night. The line for student rush tickets only went to the tv production trucks. I was inside in time to see the warm-up skate for once. The game was everything you could want without them winning. There was lots of scoring, getting screwed by the refs, and peewee hockey between periods. I love me some peewee hockey. Peewee hockey would get great ratings on tv. The kids played the whole time in one end but then they didn't play for very long. There was almost a two on one going the other way but it didn't quite work out. They only got one shot (a great kick save by the goalie). There was one standout player, wearing number 87, of course, this kid, I can't be sure if it was a boy or girl, in an attempt to skate the puck out of the zone, deked a defender, put the puck through that kids legs, corralled the puck, and promptly fell down. I'm kicking myself for not taking my camera.

When my great-aunt died my mother inherited her estate including her dog. We'll call her Stinky to protect her identity. She is about twelve years old, has arthritis, and lives a simple life at my great-aunt's house. Everyday either one of my parents or I go over there and cook her a hamburger. Stinky is totally set in her ways, will not eat dog food, won't chase a ball, and goes positively ape shit when the telephone rings. Anyway, my mother is in Texas visiting my sister who is performing in a show there. Tomorrow morning my dad is flying down for the weekend to catch the show. I'm terrified that Stinky will pick this weekend to die and I'll have to deal with her body.
Hang in there, girl.

My hair is at a length where I could have a really wicked mullet. Or I can continue having a party in the back and a party in the front. And a party on the sides. And a party on top.

Here's a slick Photoshop tip. It works in Illustrator, too.

The Flickr tag of the day is grope.

Some ways I've been wasting time on the Internet today:
Looking for new Flickr contacts to feed the blog aggregator.
Looking at this guy's pictures.
Playing Weboggle.
Looking at people's honeymoon pictures.

My younger brother has laid down the challenge that we go see Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector and see which one of us can go the longest without walking out of the theater. Anyway, shouldn't the movie be Larry the Health Inspector Guy? Dan Whitney is Larry the Health Inspector Guy instead of Dan Whitney is Larry The Cable Guy in Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector? Larry the Cuddly Racist Guy? Larry the Lowest Common Denominator Guy? Larry the Guy! Simplify!

Free James Brown! Free James Brown!
I was watching tv on the night of February 27, 1989.

Liz Phair, in a stunning evening gown, gives a tour of the downstairs of her house to a television crew. Ms. Phair had been living in Willy Wonka like seclusion and this is a very big deal to get a peek into her world. There is an ingenious and stylish conveyer belt system that runs through all the rooms of the house. No matter how much we plead she won't take us upstairs.

23-9 going into the field of 32. I almost cracked the top 500,000 on ESPN.com's tournament challenge!

Pitt is a scary team now that they can shoot.

It's Friday afternoon and I'm at my grandmother's house on the South Side. I go to the basement to get a haircut. I want my hair cut short with a little bit left long in the front. Kind of like Tintin. The guy ends up shaving off the sides and back but leaving the top long. Everyone tells me it looks good but I refuse to look in a mirror. I go upstairs to the front bedroom to get a second opinion. I debate the merits of my current look with the new hair stylist. I tell him I wouldn't normally really care what I look like but it's Friday and I have to go to work at TerrorMania and then go to a high school basketball game. I end up being convinced that I look good. I decide to take a shower. Luckily, there's a shower in the front bedroom. I have to move the bed to expose the drain. There are people around and it's an open shower but I don't seem to mind. Later, while putting on my shoes, a woman looks at the bottom of one of my shoes and tells me that it says I've been banned from going to the basketball games because I had gotten too many high school girls pregnant.

I'm 13-3 after the first day of the tourney. I got Marquette wrong and I almost looked like a genius by picking Pacific. The only wrong pick that hurts is I had Oklahoma going to the Elite Eight, ouch. On the correct side, I had Montana over Nevada and, out of pure spite, Texas A&M over Syracuse. This is all a total crap shoot. In the interest of full disclosure you should know that I have Pitt losing to Duke in the Final Four.

10th birthday party at AIR on the 31st from 4pm to midnight.
Pass it on.

These sketches are so good they make me want to vomit.
Well, vomit and then sketch.

"I know a guy who can **** a bear!"
I don't know why Jimmy Kimmel even has a talk show, but I do find his This Week in Unnecessary Censorship bit to be hilarious. The end of the Super Bowl one is particularly great.

To Antwaan Randle El: thanks, congratulations, and good luck.
To Daniel Snyder: dude, you're so crazy.

I hope you'll excuse me as I go all Mike Holmgren for a moment and say that Big East refs suck donkey balls.

My dad and I went to the driving range for the first time this year today. We were itching to try out the new driver we got last week at the Expo Mart. I was happy to discover that all the stuff I figured out last year is still in my brain. Thank you, Justin Leonard.

It used to be possible to shock the status quo with beauty. Remember when beautiful things were shocking? The last beautiful thing. Something beautiful to shock the world. Shook the world with her beauty. Made the world quiver. Quivered the world. Quivered the heavens. In heaven, the angels quivered in anticipation. Caused heaven to quiver and hell to quake. Caused hell to quiver and heaven to quake. Quake with pride.

I've been using Last.fm the last couple of days. I think Pandora.com is better, but you can't beat being able to throw what you're listening to in iTunes onto the Last.fm webpage so you can obsess over the stats. Anyway, check out my horrible awesome taste in music.

Don't you hate it when you want to start a blog for a project and when you type the name you want to use in your browser you find that someone already has it but it only has one post from coming up on four years ago?

Um, the Oscars, yeah. Much like a Hot Pocket, I never finish watching the Oscars and think "I'm glad I just watched that", but at least I don't end up feeling like I'm going to die. Have I mentioned that I'm really looking forward to seeing Jim Gaffigan? I thought Jon Stewart handled himself well. How's that for some weak praise? George Clooney had, by far, the best speech (who would've thought when we got that George Clooney magnet as a joke for my sister that one day he'd be an Oscar winner?). To me, the best parts always seem to be the opening and then any honorary awards. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep are talented, aren't they? As for the awards themselves, who knows. My two favorite movies from 2005 were Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Wererabbit and the 40 Year-Old Virgin. Also, during the course of the evening I lost a bet with my brother and now have to go see King Kong.

Of course Pitt's first game in the Big East Tournament is during the finale of Project Runway. Way to choke down the stretch and not get the bye. Now we all suffer. Weren't they paying attention during the Steeler's Super Bowl run? You can't win a championship if you don't get the bye!

Check out the art of Hideo Takeda by way of Alberto Ruiz. That first picture is one of the most wicked things I've ever seen. I hate that I didn't draw it. It would make an awesome full back tattoo.

My brain won't shut off tonight. My dad and I went to the golf show at the Expo Mart. It's strange to find yourself hitting golf balls indoors while listening to Silverchair. I ended up not going to see Camera. Instead I threw myself into Illustrator. Where would we be without sublimation? I've been sketching a lot lately and taking stuff into illustrator and Photoshop. Using Illustrator puts me in a state of mind where I want to make more art. Art breeds art and my brain won't shut off so I can't fall asleep. AIR's been going well lately. My hours were expanded. I was there from noon to seven on Friday. Being there longer means I have more time where I don't have to do anything, so I sketch, and sketching there is sketching with more of a purpose. I'm working on two print 'challenges'. One is to print something big. Really big. The other is to use the grey/green ink that you get when you mix the leftover ink together. There's a couple containers of slight variations of that color and I think I'm going to do something fetus related with them. Now I'm sketching fetuses into the wee hours of the morning.

Did any of that make sense?

Who's up for a double feature of Cheaper By The Dozen 2 and Yours, Mine, and Ours at the Maxi-Saver?

I was struck by the idiocy of this as well.
I wonder what Chris Matthews would score on the Wonderlic?

My driver's license is going to expire soon. This might be the thing that makes me get a haircut, but probably not. When my license is up for renewal in 2010 will I look at the old picture and think a) What was I thinking with all that hair? b) I can't believe my hair was so short back then. c) I wish I still had hair.

But, hey, that's a long way off. Maybe I'll have evolved into some strange, headless creature by then. Anything is possible!

Did anyone else notice how Bush kept invading Elizabeth Vargas' personal space when he was answering her questions on ABC News yesterday? It was creepy. Damn creepy.

Buck up, cupcake. I've been a bundle of insecurities lately. No idea what I'm doing. Totally lost at sea. I need to get drunk and get in a fight. I need to get out of the house. The only time I ever get out is when I have to feed the dog (if you know what I mean). Hopefully I can drag myself to the 31st Pub on Saturday to see Camera and Black Tie Revue. It's been ages since I've partaken of the local scene.