Just like it used to be...

Flappy Days salutes the Lakers and Celtics. Thanks for bringing back memories from when I first fell in love with basketball.

Have you seen me lately?

Please respond in the comments section if you know who this is.

Sweet and Sour Chicken is gross.

Not much more to say about this. I've never understood the appeal of this dish. I know it's fried, which in theory makes it a winner, but I've always found Sweet and Sour Chicken to be completely unappealing.

Fried chicken in red goop. I'd rather eat Chop Suey, which is gross and unexplainable in its own right.

Thanks for bearing with me. I've needed to get that off my chest for a very long time.

News of the Obvious

Dancing with the Stars is one of those shows - like Murder She Wrote, Matlock, and JAG before it - that (supposedly) millions of people watch but that I have never seen even a microsecond of (really. This is not like me saying "ooh, I would never watch Flavor of Love.") But I am pop-culture savvy enough to have a general idea of what the show is about. The premise is fairly clear from the title - a group of "professional" dancers get paired with a gaggle of non-dancer "celebrities" (Cristian de la Fuente anyone? No? How 'bout Marissa Jaret Winokur? Ok, moving on...), and attempt to impress a bunch of whiny judges for fame and glory (fame and glory sold separately. especially fame.). David Hasselhoff may or may not be one of those judges - I'm losing track of the fine selection of talent shows we now have to choose from. In any case, last night, while waiting for my TIVO to eat all the commercials in the season finale of Lost before we watched it, my wifey-to-be and I put E! Channel's "The Soup" on for some background, and there I learned that Kristi Yamaguchi was the winner of this season (the 6th!!) of DWTS. Yes, Kristi Yamaguchi the world class, gold-medal winning FIGURE SKATER. For those who have never watched the Winter Olympics, figure skating consists of people dancing...ON ICE. So, you tell me that Kristi Yamaguchi danced better than Adam Corolla, Penn Jillette and Steve Guttenberg (yes, that Steve Guttenberg)? Well, bless my stars, ain't that a kick in the pants. Marlee Matlin was robbed.

The only man in America with less credibility than O.J.

Because he hasn't brought enough shame to his name, everyone's favorite wide-stancer Larry Craig is penning a tell-all about his run-in with a Minneapolis bathroom stall.

So sayeth the shepherd:

"There will be a bit of what's happened in the last year, and the way it evolved," Craig said. "I think that's important for Idaho and those outside Idaho who are interested to know."

Some advice, Mr. Senator: We already know what happened. We don't need to read about it in a book. It's called a 24 hour news cycle, and in your case I think we're well past spin. It's time for you to start trying to not tell people what "really" happened. Seriously. Ask Ted Haggard about it- the sooner you stop telling us, the sooner we'll forget about you and get back to talking about high gas prices, Hillary's delusions of grandeur, or maybe even Lindsay Lohan's budding relationship with Samantha Ronson. We've got a really short attention span and most Americans are probably more concerned with the fact that Idaho actually gets two Senators than that one of them has a wider stance than Carlton Fisk on the toilet.

Wha' Happened?

So by now, we've all heard about former White House flak Scott McClellan's new book "What Happened." I found this nugget of particular interest (see Raw Story for the whole story):

The book recounts an evening in a hotel suite "somewhere in the Midwest." Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat. "'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'""I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."Bush, according to McClellan, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie.""So I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It's the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," McClellan wrote. "And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience."

Eventually, the Right will get tired of excoriating McClellan for his lack of loyalty. I wonder how they'll see this passage once the smoke clears. Will they judge George the same way they did Bill for his claims of "not inhaling", or will the message just die with the messenger? Either way, every time I hear or see the title of this book I think of Fred Willard's character "Mike Fontaine" from A Mighty Wind. I wish McClellan had titled his book "Wha' Happened" rather than "What Happened".

Oh, one more thing: as someone that went to school "somewhere in the Midwest", I'm a little offended that the best McClellan could offer as to the location of the conversation was simply "somewhere in the Midwest." Show the Midwest some love Scotty Boy! There's a big difference between Midland, Michigan and Manitowac, Wisconsin. I think.

Enjoy yourself some "Wha' Happened" below...

Critic's Corner: Indiana Jones and the zzzzzzzz.....

Meh. That's about the level of enthusiasm I can muster for this one. Sure, some good chase scenes, special effects, an occasional witty zinger from Indy, but in general I was underwhelmed. Rent any of the first three to see a better movie. See this one if your jonesing (no pun intended. ok, kind of intended) for nostalgia must be quenched, or if you have a crush on Shia the Beef (my favorite is his Oscar-worthy work in "Holes").

Can Harrison Ford go back to playing presidents now?

Ich bein ein Soccer Mom...

My car is in the shop, so I'm driving a rental today. Perhaps because they knew that I had a bag full of orange slices and a thermos of iced tap water (do kids today bring thermoses of water to sporting activities, or has Smart/Vitamin Water claimed their innocence yet?), the good folks at Enterprise hooked me up with a pimptastic Mazda5. For the uninitiated, it is a mini-van.

See below to understand where I'm at right now:


I've never felt lamer.

Narcissus ain't got sh*t on this guy!

Erik Nordenankar, Swedish student, artist, footballer and Matthew McConaughey look-alike claims to have drawn the world's largest self-portrait. According to Nordenankar, he collaborated with DHL by giving them a suitcase armed with a GPS tracker and detailed travel instructions for a 55-day, 110,000 kilometer journey through 62 different countries (known in the art world as the "biggest. waste. of fuel. ever.") Environmental travesty and massive ego implications aside, this might have been a pretty cool project (in theory), had it not been a hoax. Or what those Madison Avenue-types like to call "an advertisement." Yes, despite a somewhat-convincing video of the project (plus flight logs and DHL package slips supposed to represent the entire journey), and fawning media coverage, Nordenankar has admitted that the entire project was a work of fiction and art-school project (in addition to being a pretty nifty PR stunt for DHL).

"A" for effort, Erik.

And just cause I can:

R. Kelly Redoo-doo

Big thanks to our Chicago Bureau Chief Delicious E. for forwarding this video. It's the perfect paean to R&B's favorite pee-on.

Update: Evidently, someone at YouTube doesn't like remixes of scatological R. Kelly parodies. But I love Brosephus' play on the words paean and pee-on, so we're going to leave this post up anyway.

Osama Bin R. Kelly

My brother recently posted about water sports. Considering the golden shower of charges that R. Kelly currently faces (including golden showers), I thought it was appropriate to address his ongoing trial. So I started googling around to find out what the story is. That's what bloggers do, evidently. They decide what they're going to blog about and then they google around. It's kind of fun. Anyway...

By now you're wondering why I chose title this post using both R. Kelly and OBL's names. What does R. Kelly have to do with Osama Bin Laden? Here's how R. himself answered that question back in a 2003 interview:

"Bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through".

Wow.

So, let me get this right:

One guy has been running from justice for about seven years, dodging into caves in search of a dialysis machine. When he gets a chance, he makes a video.

The other guy has been running from justice for about seven years, dodging into arenas in search of money, young tail and empathy. When he gets a chance, he makes a video.

The court of public opinion eagerly awaits R.'s next statement.

Really cool things

Watch this video:


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This week in urine-based gaming

For years, the world has lamented the absence of any significant gaming involving urine (snow spelling and that hilarious game where you walk up to your buddy at a party, nonchalantly drop your fly and pee on his leg while pretending to hold a normal conversation don't count). And just this week I discovered not one, but TWO urine-based gaming systems! Oh happy day!!

The first comes from Belgium and is called "A Place to Pee." The game uses sensors in a urinal and you can use your pee to ski or kill aliens (firefighting games are in development. Not really.) The game comes housed in a two-urinal booth so that you can compete against your friends (it just keeps getting better). And for the ladies out there who are feeling left out, fret not - the inventors have included a contraption that allows you to pee (and play) like a man.

Our second pee game comes from - where else? - Japan, and is a game played on the Nintendo Wii console aptly named Super Pii Pii Brothers (I wish I was clever enough to have made that up, but it's true). A witty description of this one just doesn't do it justice, so check out the video below and order yours today.

Happy gaming!

And you are...?

I like knowing stuff. Random stuff. Like, why do some people have "tear" tattoos? Or, will Greg Oden recover from microfracture surgery? Who are they inviting back for next season's Real World-Road Rules Gauntlet? I just like being in the know.

So it just feels weird that I have no idea who David Archuelleta is (did I even spell his name correctly?). I have no confidence that I could pick him out of a police lineup. Not that he's in a police lineup. Yet.

Has American Idol jumped the shark, or have I?

A breath of fresh ukulele

World, meet Julia Nunes. Julia Nunes, do your thing. Most of the twenty-four posts since our inception here at Flappy Days have been either snarky or ranty, which is fine, cause that's just the kind of curmudgeons-in-training we are. But we have no editorial bias against good things of all stripes. And I would categorize a ukulele cover of Destiny's Child (or an a capella cover of Kanye West's "Jesus Walks") by an adorable, fresh faced young lass as one of those "good things". Enjoy.

The "straight talk express" needs a breathalyzer

Hey Maverick - your ego is writing checks your body mouth can't cash.

And one silo of whole milk, please

A tractor trailer carrying 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos overturned on Interstate 80 in Illinois, spilling thousands of cookies all over the highway. The real question is - does the 5 second rule apply? And also, will journalists be able to cover the story without using the headline "Got Milk?"

The bottom of the barrel, part 86

Yet another reason to turn on off the television. If you don't want to waste your time with even the 3 minutes it takes to watch the teaser above, it's a preview of the new Beverly Hills, 90201. How is it that crappy television somehow transforms itself through the power of nostalgia? Well, on the upside, I have a lot more time to do the Sunday Times crossword.

I just can't get enough

More O'Reilly mash-up marvelousness. Enjoy, and to all 13 people who are reading our blog this week (that includes our parents) - have a great weekend!!

It was all Chuck's fault...

By now you've probably seen the clip: beloved New York newscaster Sue Simmons dropped an f-bomb while doing a teaser for the 11 o'clock news earlier this week. If not, here's the proof:

We here at Flappy Days were devestated- we've been big Sue fans since back in the day. I've probably seen her go through half a dozen different faces. I was chagrined to see that she got caught up Arthur Chi'en style with a dirty word. Not our Sue! How could this happen!

According to the New York Times, it may have been weak link Chuck Scarborough's fault. Chas was busy playing around with his computer and wasn't ready to read his part of the tease. Probably updating his Facebook account or checking out what adultfriendfinder has to offer in The Hamptons. This is what Chuck looks like when he's not behind the desk at NewsCenter 4. Pimp f'real!

So Chuck's playing with his Interweb. Sue, according to the grand 'ole dame of American journalism The NY Post, may or may not have been boozin' it up (for the record, they refer to her as a "Salty Swiller"). She realizes she's got a slight dead air problem going and, just like that, we've got adult language in the middle of primetime. In the middle of an all new episode of Medium no less! The humanity!

I'm guessing NBC won't be inviting her to Beijing to do human interest stories for its 'round the clock Olympic coverage. I hope it was worth it, Chuck Scarborough.

Facebook in real life

I happen to like Facebook. Sure, it has its annoyances - in particular, I have a pet peeve about people whom I have not seen in more than 10 years adding me as a friend without even so much as a short "Hi!" - but in general, I think it does more good than harm. However, these randy Brits have taken the piss out of ol' FB, and it's hilarious (at least for the first minute). Enjoy.

I love the interweb

It is precisely for mash-ups like these that I heart the world wide interwebs. Enjoy.

Will the real Hammer please stand up?

After reading my brother's post about that awesome blind bowler, I was struck by how difficult it must be to carry around such a strong nickname. Think about it. "The Hammer". It comes with such obligation.

Consider some past hammers: Hank Aaron, MC (aka Stanley "the Manley" Burrell) and the seemingly endless list of professional Jewish athletes (Ryan Braun, Demetri Salita, Hank Greenberg, Gabe Kapler...). Of course, they're Hebrew Hammers, but if anything that makes the obligation that much greater.

Let's face it though, the most feared (and loved) Hammer must be Tom DeLay. I always thought "Touchdown Tommy" would have been a more appropriate nickname for DeLay, but I tend to want to call everyone named Tom "Touchdown Tommy". Call it Bushitis.

I wonder how much influence a nickname has on its owner. Did being "The Hammer" push DeLay to a career full of bitter partisanship and a penchant for crookedness? Consider this: when DeLay served in the Texas House of Rpresentatives, his nickname was "Hot Tub Tom". Guess the guy liked to party in hot tubs. Wonder what kind of political career he might have had if that nickname stuck. He might have just been a really fun lobbyist. Or maybe he would have run Spring Break trips to South Padre.

The next president of the United States (or, please Hammer, don't hurt 'em)

If, as popular opinion appears to have it, our next president should be judged more on his ability to bowl (or lack thereof) than on his foreign or domestic policies, ladies and gentleman, I'm proud to introduce our next President of the United States.

Dale Davis, a 78 year-old legally blind man from Alta, Iowa known as "The Hammer" - no relation to Tom Delay or MC - bowled a perfect 300 game in a league season-ending roll-off last week. I wonder what his thoughts on immigration reform are? The Dude would be proud.

Gold chains come in twos

The strange part of my brother's post about gold chains earlier today is that I had the exact same experience (prompted by our conversation last week), but replace the words "gold rope" with "gold chain and Star of David" and the phrase "judging from my wife's reaction, I may have looked silly" with the phrase "according to my girlfriend, I should never wear gold chains around her."

I wore a gold chain yesterday.

When I was fourteen years old, my Mother gave me her Father's gold chain. It's a big 'ole gold rope, and at the time, I thought it was fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's fantastic- I loved my Grandfather, and he loved that chain. Having it means the world to me. But at the time, I thought that wearing the big gold rope was cool. Granted, at the time I thought "pinning" jeans and bathing in Drakkar Noir was cool. Did I mention I was fourteen?

So I hadn't worn the chain in a while. It just sat in a little keepsake box (btw, I wonder if reading the words "keepsake box" made you feel as manly as it made me feel typing the words "keepsake box). And then just last week, my brother and I started talking about wearing gold chains. Why didn't we wear gold chains? Did anyone we know wear gold chains (or wear pinky rings, or drive Sedan de Ville's circa 1987)? I decided that it was time that I rock the gold!

So yesterday, I wore a gold chain. It felt good, although judging from my wife's reaction, I may have looked silly. Maybe I just need to grow into it.

It might be time to hang up the smoking jacket. For good.

Hugh Hefner has arguably influenced American culture more than any other living person. The magazine(s), the clubs, the television programs, the ideology- this is a guy that's accomplished more in his pajamas than entire seasons worth of Banana Republic chinos (and their collective owners) will in a lifetime. That said, it may be time for Hugh to finally exit stage right. I guess I could have made the same request when The Girls Next Door started airing, but I wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

The saddest part was that it probably wasn't even Hugh's idea. I'm sure he would've been happy to just lounge around the grotto with Jimmy Caan and a bunch of blondes . I'm guessing he didn't even know who Hannah Montana was until a couple of weeks ago. This story has all the markings of an overeager publicist looking to capitalize on a story that otherwise would've worked its way through the news cycle long ago.

We all know about the Hannah Montana-Vanity Fair-Annie Leibovitz photo imbroglio. Granted, it was creepy. And exploitative. Nakedly ambitious. Strange. Not how most people would "position" their 15 year old daughter. And on and on.

But the story would have gone away. Until Hugh's publicist got to thinking.

Says Hugh: "Sure, she'd be welcomed in the magazine," he told "Extra." "Very pretty lady." (Ed. Note: I wonder if Mark McGrath did the interview. I also wonder why Mark McGrath left Sugar Ray to host Extra. Is hosting a celebrity gossip tv show really higher on the totem pole than fronting a (craptastic) rock band? Is there something about growing old as Pat O'Brien that's cooler than growing old as Steven Tyler? This might go down as one of the most peculiar career changes ever.)

And: "I think to make such a big to-do over something as innocent as those photos, I think is a reflection on how schizophrenic America is about sexuality."

Um.... yeah. I would agree that America is schizophrenic about sexuality. I'm not sure, however, this was the appropriate time to be sending out feelers to a 15 year old girl about posing naked in a magazine. It just seems wrong to me. Call me James Dobson.

Maybe Neil Young was right, at least so far as cultural icons are concerned.

And this year's Tyrone The Crackhead Award goes to...

Dave Chappelle's "Tyrone The Crackhead" would be proud of this story. Turns out three men from the aptly named hamlet of Humble, California, dug a corpse up and used the skull as a marijuana smoking device (known to many as a "bong", or a "pipe"). True story- click here.

I've heard of people using Coke cans or apples, but a rotting skull? Did it not occur to any of them, at any point while exhuming the body, that they could probably just pop in to the local BP and buy rolling papers? Or that they could turn the Sunny D bottle on the floor of the car in to a bong?

The question is moot! I get the car!

Apropos of nothing, here's a link to one of my favorite SNL skits of all time, a parody game show called "The Question is Moot", hosted by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I think Jesse missed a real opportunity to take his career in a different direction. For the curious, this is from the 1984 season, which features my all-time favorite SNL cast, including Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer (followed a year later by my all-time least favorite cast. A pox on your house, Terry Sweeney).

The gift that keeps on giving

Mike Gravel, presidential nominee and hip-hop hopeful. He may be squandering a fortune on a doomed and not-even-serious-enough-to-be-symbolic campaign, but as long as he keeps coming out with pearls like this, I say we let him stick around and amuse us.

Leader of the Senate or Serial Killer?

I don't know how many of you caught this appearance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the Daily Show earlier this week, but it got me to thinking - THIS GUY IS THE LEADER OF THE F*CKING SENATE??? I mean, seriously, there's soft-spoken and then there's creepy. Plus, he ambles out like he's 120 years old and has that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look of a man born in the 18th century trying to figure out an iPhone. If you watch the interview, Jon Stewart holds up a photo of the shack where Reid was born and raised. I knew it looked familiar.

Good to the last drop

No one really cared when they got rid of inflight meals (which my brother strangely loves, by the way)

It's true. One time back in high school, on a flight from New York to Denver, I made friends with the stewardess and she brought me 3 extra Salisbury steak dinners. Mm, mm good.

Delta, Delta, Delta Can I Not Help Ya, Help Ya, Help Ya?

First off, apologies for that title. It was too long, and it also referenced one of the lamer SNL skits of all time. Btw, I never knew that the Tri-Delts took the skit so hard...

So while I hate to sully our blog with your typical anti-airline post (what's next, an anti-cable company rant?), the folks over at Delta have given me no choice. I showed up 35 minutes prior to my flight today and couldn't check in because there were no gate agents. Evidently they were at the gate checking passengers in to my flight, and couldn't be in two places at once.

I take responsibility for not showing up on time (as well as for booking a 6:40 am flight). What's so annoying was Delta's attitude when I called them to rebook on the next available flight. Because I was flying from a small regional airport, there wasn't another flight for six hours. I was told that if I wanted to rebook, they'd charge me a $100 rebooking fee plus the difference in fares between the flight I missed and the flight I was trying to get on. The total cost would be $550. This, for a one way flight from Newburgh, NY to Atlanta. Like it wasn't bad enough that I woke up at 5:30 am, missed a flight and found out that I'd spend six hours in a small regional airport with nothing to do but listen to Hillary on CNN give 'em hell in Indiana (she's really fed up with the folks in Washington, she really is!). Now I get to spend $550 to fly the same plane that I was scheduled to fly six hours earlier. Ugh.

I explained to the Delta phone rep that I fly Delta often, that by missing the flight I was already firmly ensconsed in the "having a bad day club", and that I really could use a break. She was unmoved. I then explained that I'm always told at the end of a Delta flight by the flight attendant that "You have a choice in air travel, and we hope that you choose Delta for future flights...", and that this experience was making me not want to choose Delta again. She responded by asking me if I thought that it was Delta's fault that I missed my flight. Seriously. She asked me this. I told her that I didn't hold Delta accountable for my tardiness, but that good companies go out of their way to treat good customers well, especially when they had empty planes with plenty of seats to accomodate said customer. We ended our call agreeing to disagree.

Ten minutes later I went to the ticket counter and was rebooked for a flat $50 fee by a very nice Delta representative named Victor (who by the way, was a real saint to the drunk lady who was also denied from my earlier 6:40 am flight. You did good Vic, here's to ya'.).

While the $50 fee is an annoyance, it's an acceptable solution. I don't think Victor went out of my way to help me, but he also didn't seem to relish telling me that Delta was going to try and make up for high fuel costs by sticking it to me. I know the airlines need to make money, but it seems like they're going out of their way to anger their customers. No one really cared when they got rid of inflight meals (which my brother strangely loves, by the way) or blankets, but now that they're charging for extra bags, curbside check in (skycaps are singing the blues more than subprime mortgage brokers) and changing standby policies so that they can squeeze every last dollar out of us. It's hard to believe that airline consolitation will make this any better.

At least I'm home now. I think I finally scrubbed the airport Quizno's smell out of me. It may take a little longer to get the stink of Delta off of me.

The bottom of the barrel, part 85

I haven't actually watched Celebracadabra, but that's mostly because my tolerance for crap is much lower than it used to be. The description of the show:

7 stars team up with 7 professional magicians in a race to become the ultimate celebrity magician. Watch as Celebrity Fit Club host Ant, Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt, comedian Hal Sparks, singer Carnie Wilson, 80s icon C. Thomas Howell, Kid N' Play's Chris "Kid" Reid, and actress Lisa Ann Walter duke it out while learning tricks that can take the masters years to master.

And so, the devolution of the words "celebrity" and "star" and "entertainment" and "reality" continues. I'm most disappointed that this is how C. Thomas Howell decided to make his "comeback".

Tell me something I don't know

President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history. And the sky is blue, Twinkies have a 100 year 25 day shelf life, and Ronaldo loves trannies.