mesmerizing

oh mah lawd

Well folks, I seem to be in a pickle. Or a maybe it’s a dilemma. Hell, who knows—what I’m sure of is that I will be in Hollywood filming an episode of Family Feud with my cousins on Saturday.

Yes, you read that correctly. Hollywood. The Feud. Survey says.

More about that in a second—what SUCKS is that because I’ve been called to defend my family’s sacred honor among the glitterati this weekend, I will be forced to miss my father-in-law’s acoustic gig in Birmingham, for which he will have traveled a great distance. You read the announcement here a week or two ago—Riely O’Connor, a great talent on the singer-songwriter circuit, will be performing at Java & Jams on Friday, November 30, at 8:00. That’s this weekend. And chances are neither I nor his daughter will be there (MP’s back is still healing), which is about as cool as the friggin’ sinking of the Titanic.

How did I come to be faced with such a conflict, you ask? To make a long story short, I’ll put it in handy, easy-to-read bullet points in third-person, chronological order:

• Last spring cousin Ray emerged from a very, very serious bout of leukemia. The family was elated. A badass, Ray spent a lot of his recuperation time angling for a spot on the Family Feud. He got it.
• The Johnston Contingency, consisting of Ray, Mason, Brice, Jim and Uncle Wat, flew out to Hollywood.
• They proceeded to get trounced by a Mormon family. However, they rocked on the show and were told they might get invited back for the annual “Lovable Losers” episode. Upon their return to Alabama, doubts prevailed as to their return to the stage. Entire family watched the show on Tivo at family gathering, to much guffawing.
• Around this time, Riely plans a gig in Birmingham, a first. MP and McD are elated. Serious plans ensue, involving friends and cohorts.
• Last week, the Johnston Contingency learns they’ve been invited back on the show as Lovable Losers. Shit hits the fan.
• Uncle Wat drops out, others in the family wisely recuse themselves, and McDowell is left as last-minute option. Apparently he’s not hip. Desperate, the Contingency asks if he will join, provided he doesn’t screw everything up. Much deliberation occurs behind closed doors.
• McDowell is torn. A chance to make an ass of himself on national television . . . or a sweet gig in Birmingham with friends and family? He asks Riely what he should do, who graciously tells him in no uncertain terms to hitch his wagon to the star, statim.
• McDowell accepts the somewhat reluctant invitation offered to him, does phone audition. He justifies the reluctance.
• When on the spot he is asked to name types of food that come in slices, he answers “Pineapple. Bread. Papaya. Tomatoes...” . . . and several other types of fruit. He starts listing every fruit he knows. There is some silence on the other end of the line. The producer-person asks him “What about pizza?” McDowell agrees that would have been a pretty good answer.
• Miraculously, he is accepted onto the show.

That, in a rather spacious nutshell, is how I ended up in this crazy situation. So here’s the deal. If you live in Birmingham or thereabouts, do yourself a favor on Friday and get down to Java & Jams and catch Riely walking his tones and tunes out among the good people. Mary Pat and I will be eternally grateful, and your ear contribution will help ensure that Riley will be back even sooner than he’d planned.

I’ll keep you posted as to when the show will air. The silly cometh.

phrase of the day

Immanentize the eschaton

Happy Thanksgiving

die, back pain, die

Things might slow down here a bit as Mary Pat has to have back surgery tomorrow. She's having a spinal fusion procedure done in her neck that will hopefully alleviate the pain she has been wading through for over a year. We'll be in Birmingham at Carraway Hospital until Tuesday. Please keep your fingers crossed for her.

UPDATE: Success! According to the neurosurgeon, the operation went "really, really well." After a necessarily rough night in the hospital, MP is back home in Montgomery chilling on the couch, sipping tea and letting her back breathe a long-waited sigh of relief. She'll be out of commission for around two weeks. Thanks to everyone for your kind comments and phone calls!

wow

even more wow: The US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS.

Ode to Clothes, by Pablo Neruda

Every morning you wait,
clothes, over a chair,
to fill yourself with
my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.

Barely
risen from sleep,
I relinquish the water,
enter your sleeves,
my legs look for
the hollows of your legs,
and so embraced
by your indefatigable faithfulness
I rise, to tread the grass,
enter poetry,
consider through the windows,
the things,
the men, the women,
the deeds and the fights
go on forming me,
go on making me face things
working my hands,
opening my eyes,
using my mouth,
and so,
clothes,
I too go forming you,
extending your elbows,
snapping your threads,
and so your life expands
in the image of my life.

In the wind
you billow and snap
as if you were my soul,
at bad times
you cling
to my bones,
vacant, for the night,
darkness, sleep
populate with their phantoms
your wings and mine.

I wonder
if one day
a bullet
from the enemy
will leave you stained with my blood
and then
you will die with me
or one day
not quite
so dramatic
but simple,
you will fall ill,
clothes,
with me,
grow old
with me, with my body
and joined
we will enter
the earth.

Because of this
each day
I greet you
with reverence and then
you embrace me and I forget you,
because we are one
and we will go on
facing the wind, in the night,
the streets or the fight,
a single body,
one day, one day, some day, still.

so true

I apparently missed this when it came out in 2001, because when I read it this morning I laughed out loud: Coca-Cola Introduces Coke Mandatory.

Though possible repercussions for failing to meet daily Coke Mandatory consumption requirements have not been formally announced, Hasworth stressed that one 12-ounce can of Coke Mandatory per day is "essentialicious," and that those who fail to comply with minimum daily allotments "will wish they'd done as they were told."

This is Kelly Webb. Bow to the cuteness.

(this image was not found on www.kellywebbgonewild.com)

indeed

Beautiful libraries.

ouch

All this waterboarding talk got me to wondering about some other types of torture used throughout history.

detail

How many of these people can you identify?

an iceberg collapses

(watch until 2:26 or so)

breakfast fix

This is how junkies make pancakes.

strange times

Dave Barry gives a funny (as usual) history of the millennium (so far).

tanks a lot

This is a rather amusing collection of very strange tanks. You can read the second part here. Then after you've begun wondering what they do with all those defunct (hopefully) tanks, you can see for yourself.

image

Great story about the "Marlboro Marine" and the photojournalist who transformed his life.

Hiphop explained in convenient statistical graphs

These are brilliant.

*ahem*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!!!

OH!

Say it now!

I'm back!

I'm back!

I'm back!

I'm back!

Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you, sing it now!
Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and shake it, say it now!
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!
Get up off!
Ha!
Good God!
So good!

Ha!
Everybody ready?!

Follow me!

Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and shake it, sing it now!
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!
Get up offa that thing, (Ha!)
and twist 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you, sing it now!
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!

Huh!
Get funky!

So good, Uh!
I'm first to stop, ha!
I've told them now, ha!

Uh!
Ha!
Go higher player!
Can you hit it one time, from the top?!
Get up offa that thing,
and dance to try, you better!
Get up offa that thing,
and... Help me!
Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you feel better!
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!

Huh!

I need it!

That's the wise old brother at the side start good!
C'mon Clive do it!

Do it!

Uh!
Ha!
Good God!
God Good!
Huh!
Feels good!
Feels good!
Do it to me!
Huh!
Good God!
I want you all in the jam!
Gonna get you all in the jam!
Play that bad funk!
Show 'em how funky you are!
Play it JB's!
Play it now!
Hey!
Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you feel better!
Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you, help me out!
Get up offa that thing,
and dance 'till you feel better!
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better!
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release, say it now!
Get up offa that thing,
and shake 'till you feel better,
Get up offa that thing,
and try to release that pressure!
Get up and... call it!
I feel good!

big bang

Fascinating factoid of the day: the Tunguska event was a massive explosion that occurred in central Russia on June 30, 1908. It is surmised, though not proven, that the blast was caused by a huge meteoroid that slammed into the earth's atmosphere and burst, creating a release of energy 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion felled an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers (830 sq mi). Wow.

roamhome

What I'd like to do is rent a Unicat and travel around North America for an entire year. Who's with me? Mary Pat?

'_'

schadenfreude

This is a rather amusing list of words in foreign languages that have no equivalent in English. Not only linguistically but conceptually--at least I don't think I've ever experienced Oka Shete before. I could be wrong.

Dona - Yamana, Chile: to take lice from a person's head and squash between one's teeth.

Oka/SHETE - Ndonga, Nigeria: urination difficulties caused by eating frogs before the rain has duly fallen.

Pisan Zapra - Malay: the time needed to eat a banana.

Physiggoomai - Ancient Greek: excited by eating garlic.

Baffona - Italian: an attractive moustachioed woman.

Layogenic - Tagalog, Philippines: a person who is only goodlooking from a distance.

Rhwe - South Africa: to sleep on the floor without a mat while drunk and naked.

Shvitzer - Yiddish: someone who sweats a lot, especially a nervous seducer.

Gattara - Italian: a woman, often old and lonely, who devotes herself to stray cats.

Creerse La Ultima Coca-COLA EN EL DESIERTO - Central American Spanish: to have a very high opinion of oneself, literally to "think one is the last Coca-Cola in the desert".

Vrane Su Mu Popile Mozak - Croatian: crazy, literally "cows have drunk his brain".

numba crunchin

I love statistics. I love looking at how numbers match up in various parts of the country and reflect our crazy patchwork culture. When I was a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald I used to scour the 2000 U.S. Census report for interesting trends and could almost always find something newsworthy. Did you know that Alabama's population increased by 3.4% over the last six years? Or that 26.4% of the businesses in Alabama are owned by women? This stuff is endlessly fascinating. Anyway, I recently found another site that ranks 101 U.S. cities in a similar manner as the census, with hundreds of categories. I'm not sure how relevant it is to know the top 101 cities with the highest average wind speeds, but you never know. You could end up on the Family Feud..

wretched excess

Sometimes I am filled with the overwhelming desire to punch someone. In the face.

oh haha

National Funk Congress Deadlocked On Get Up/Get Down Issue

"Until our country's funky leaders can resolve this deadlock, U.S. funk leadership, and the booties of all Americans, will remain immobilized," said Gregory Tate, domestic motorbooty-affairs reporter for The Washington Funkenquarterly. "Unless a compromise can be reached soon, the entire nation's thang could be in serious jeopardy."

Some artists of note

Jacob Magraw
James Roper
James Jean
Jerico Santander
All the artists at Desktopography

stop

Speaking of photography (below), these high-speed photographs are amazing.

face to face

Apparently 46% percent of Americans think we should attack Iran in relation to their nuclear program. That's a lot of people. And a lot of war. I wonder if these people feel the same way after looking at these striking photos of the country.

full steam ahead

This guy has built a rather interesting 'steampunk' laptop. It's twice as convincing as his desktop.

now hiring raindancers

For those of you who have heard about the drought in Alabama but haven't really given it much thought, take a look at these pictures of Lake Martin, just north of Montgomery.

it's the shoes, stupid

After spending the past few months attempting to get back in shape, mainly through running, I have now come to a conclusion. Shoes matter. Yes, they do. Granted, I was out of shape and hadn't run in many moons when I started circling my neighborhood early in the summer, but for some reason I got shinsplits right away. Bad ones. I was running in a pair of Nikes, which I admit I bought in order to get in on the new idea. But after three months or so of recurring shinsplints and a knee problem thrown in, Pat (MP's wonderful mom) bought me a pair of Asics. And for the past two mornings I have run two and three miles respectively with virtually no pain at all. I haven't even felt the shins acting up one bit. Call me a convert.

Of course, this change could be because I "ran through" the splints and strengthened my legs rather than just getting new shoes. Perhaps it's a little of both. But after doing a bit of research, I think it's possible that I was running in shoes that were bad for me.

deep

Zena Holloway takes sublime underwater photos.

(If you like those, you'll appreciate these too.

stunning

Houses with a view.

craziest prank evar

This poor guy had no idea what sort of taxi he was getting in.

Items in Lincoln's pockets when he was shot

Items in Lincoln's pockets when he was shot
Originally uploaded by mcdowell.

loot

Since 9/11, TSA has collected tons of items at security checkpoints; in 2006 alone, screeners took in more than 13 million items. What happens to all that stuff? The TSA turns it over to state surplus property agencies, which tend to sell it online or at retail stores. Find a store near you.

zoom in

These are in fact 11 phenomenal satellite images of Earth

best/most contemporary halloween costume