The DIA's Weird Mural

F.G.E.O.T.P. correspondent Maggie Paino delivers the goods with this snap from that creepy Freemason mural at the Denver Airport. Word on the street is there are more where this came from. Freemason meeting ground for the new world order of reptilians or not, the DIA is one of the most weirdly decorated airports out there.

Wee Wee See?

There's some urban legends show on the Discovery Channel right now, and they just debunked that one myth about there being a chemical in pools that will turn urine red.

I guess I never really questioned that legend, but it certainly makes sense that it isn't true. If it has been mentioned on a TV show though, it might as well be true, right? This legend was immortalized in the "Splashdown" episode of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, where the chemical was called "Wee-Wee See" (<- the whole episode is there on Google Video!) and it was manufactured by the ubiquitous Krebstar brand. But here's the thing. What this TV program said was that although this legend is false, we all benefit from the fact that children still believe this story because it keeps them from peeing in the pool. Basically what they are saying is "Let's keep it that way" and I think I might just agree with them. There are worse things that can get be deposited in a pool (Baby Ruth, anyone?) but I'd rather just not think about the pee in there, ya know. Like Santa Claus, a little lie that can scare little kids into being good might not be such a bad thang.*

*Speaking of the word "thang" I once worked with a guy whose name was Thang. He was from like Laos or Vietnam or something. This was at the height of this word's popularity. We all got a real kick out of embedding his name into simple little jokes that were spoken in honkified Snoop Dog parlance.

Recently Viewed Movies

So, school is out and movie-watching is in. I'm not sick of it yet, so I've been "feeding" my "brain" with a steady stream of movies via my revived Karagarga* account and a free month of Netflix.

My five word reviews:

• The Lives of Others -80's East Germany totally sucked.
• My Kid Could Paint That - Dad helped? Genre bogus anyway!
• The White Diamond - Gotta love intense German men.
• Paris, je t'aime - Even bad ones over quickly.
• Baby Mama - Your friends: Wingspan and Banjo.
• Ironman - Big budget, boring experience = meh...
• American Teen - Warsaw, Indiana felt very important.
• Triumph of the Nerds pt. 1 - Young Jobs resembles Tim Kinsella.
• Down and Derby - Pat Morita barely in it.
• That new Indiana Jones - Spoiler alert: There are aliens.
• 10 MPH - Dude rides Segway long distances.

So yeah, I signed up for Netflix. At least for the first free month (thanks K.V.!). I'm trying to get as many movies in as possible during that time, and then I might bump down to a cheaper plan or cancel, depending on what I think. You can add me as a friend there of you want, I am like such a loser on there right now, I'm like the new kid at school or something. Have pity on me. Have any good recommendations? I only have 50 movies in my cue (most are Northern Exposure season 3 and Dr. Katz discs, so help me out here).

*A word about Karagarga, it is a "private bittorrent community specializing in arthouse, alternative, cult and classic movies" and it's so wonderfully snobby that they once revoked someone's account for uploading High Fidelity. And that is why I love it. Sure, Tommy Boy is one of my favorite movies, but Karagarga has more weird and interesting indie movies from around the world than I would ever be able to watch in a whole lifetime, and their downloads are ridiculously fast. When I watch my computer as movies are downloading from there, I think to myself "I didn't know that my internet was capable of going this fast," like, whole 1.4 GB movies in 20 minutes, etc. Getting an account on this site was more trouble than applying for college (for example, I had to write an essay explaining what I could bring to the community, etc.), but it has been totally worth it. Snobbery has very high standards, and that is why I love Karagarga.

Diagonal Cities

I'm just trying to make Commander Mark proud. Can you spot the M.C. Escherisms? There are like two.

Oddry

I Bring a Lot to the Table

Cured of The Calendar

Friday Night Lights - My Favorite People as of Season 1

OK people, this is important:
Here it is, my list of favorite characters from the first season of Friday Night Lights, in order.

1. Landry. Wins by a huge margin. This guy just keeps getting better and better. First off, we find out that not only is he good at math and at being the friend of Matt, he is the frontman for the brutally heavy local Christian hardcore band Crucifictorious. Then, things start to kind of pick up with Tyra, the girl considered by many to be the biggest babe on the show. He is pretty awkward, but it's awesome because the guy has integrity out the wazoo. Also, for some reason he is the ref for the Powderpuff football game, and he gives Coach Taylor a yellow card or something.

2. Matt Saracen. I mean, I know this is kind of obvious, but you can't help but LOVE the kid. Takes care of his grandma, his dad is in Iraq, he works at the DQ-type place, and gets pushed around by Julie (who is actually the one character on the show who keeps getting worse and worse). Julie was pretty awesome at first, but she has just had some bad ideas towards the end of the season. Let me list them:

• It was her idea to have sex with Matt (they didn't do it though). Matt would never have thought to go there in a million years.
  
• Mouthing off to her parents.
• Ditching her nerdy friends.
• Doing slutty dance routines to bad music.
• Just generally being a little too precious about stuff.

Anyway, enough about her. Matt Saracen. "He's a good kid." You know who always says that? Read on:

3. Coach Taylor. This may be obvious, but it's kind of not obvious too. He screams at high school kids for a living - He's a football coach. He dresses like someone I would normally want to punch. But the man has a huge heart and total integrity. The dude is trying to do what is right and get his daughter the hell out of Dillon Texas before she becomes "one of them." But what makes him so endearing is that he is utterly and completely hopeless without his wife:

4. Mrs. Taylor, guidance counselor. I think her first name is Tammy. She is amazing. I wouldn't normally like a woman of her style, but man, she is really awesome. Her "don't have sex" speech to Julie is about the most heartfelt mother-to-daughter talk I have ever seen on television, or real life, I'm not sure. She sees it all, every day in that guidance counselor's office, and you can tell that she really actually wants to help. Her relationship with her husband is very real and very healthy. They fight, they prod at each other, and they make mistakes, but when they make it right they really make it right. Like her husband, she is a woman of mad integrity, and you gotta love her for it.

5. Tim Riggins. I know this is a controversial stance to take, but come on, the dude has made a serious comeback. First off, the guy has mojo. He gets with all of the hottest girls: Tyra, Lyla, AND the kid from next door's mom. And he has very real issues. His dad stole a video camera, for example. He is constantly drinking brewskies. He is obviously weak and accepts that. His lack of ambition is kind of refreshing, especially compared to hotheads like that Smash Williams. He's just so... I dunno. So Brokeback. You hate him so much of the time, that when he does something even misdirectedly good, it seems like the awesomest thing in the world.

6. Herc. Who is Herc, you ask? Herc is the wheelchair guy. The other wheelchair guy besides Jason Street. At first, I hated him, but then everything he said turned out to be true. This guy has a crystal ball for the lives of people in wheelchairs. Herc is spot-on about everything. He has no time for pity because he's out there being totally obnoxious and awesome. If I met him in real life he would probably roll his eyes at me and tell me to get the hell out of his way. And that's what I love about the guy. He isn't on the show that often, but when he is, it's a total party.

7. Tyra. She is... something else. She's pretty free with her love sometimes (dude from LA, and Smash Williams on his mamma's couch), but she pulls it off with flair. Sure, her mom is one of those irresponsible drinkin' moms and her sister is a stripper, but Tyra's "aggressive bitch" attitude is really starting to grow on me. And maybe the fact that Landry is into her makes me want to be into her too. Maybe it's how mean she is to Lyla Garrity. Maybe it was her stellar performance at the Powder Puff football game. Or maybe it was that she told Julie Taylor that she didn't have to have sex and that she was actually being kind of lame about it. She's a good girl, waitressing at Applebee's, workin' with what she's got, kinda being the female parallel to Tim Riggins, which is not a surprise seeing as how they went out for so long, although she constantly calls him out on being a loser, but I think she does it so that he will try harder.

There you have it. These are my picks. I hope (or do I?) that season 2 doesn't shake up these opinions too much! We shall see!

P. S. Honorable mentions go to Mrs. Williams and Waverly. Oh Waverly!!!!

In closing, you can go ahead and buy me this shirt in a size small. The price has been reduced, I have no idea why...

People Be All Pushin' the Envelope on the Concept of 100%

I was watching this one cooking contest/reality TV show, where these three bungling chefs were promising that they would do better so that they wouldn't get eliminated by the cranky British host/judge. You know the show I'm talking about? It's pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of television, but whatever.

Anyway, the first guy faces the judge and commits to giving 110% in the kitchen from now on.

As junior high school graduates, we all know that 100% is the maximum. 100%. That means everything. Every part of the whole thing. It means everything, but we live in a very extreme world, and I don't know if you noticed, but everything is just not enough anymore. So people started saying 110% to refer to trying really extra super hard at things that are actually not mathematically quantifiable - things like being a chef on a reality TV show, for example.

So the one guy, he said he was going to give 110%.

Then the next guy comes up to talk this fake a-hole host/judge dude. This guy gets an idea. He is going to mathematically one-up the guy before him. Why not, right? If you can throw around one magical and imaginary mathematical value, why not another one - one of higher imaginary value.

You see, he commits to give 125%. He will give 125% in the kitchen from now on. Wow.

Yup, 110%, the beloved value of sportscasters and youth athletics coaches throughout America had just been made completely obsolete.

Now what happens next is a very intense moment for me. There are three guys who have to report to this idiot judge/host guy, so there's one more guy left. The question on everyone's mind at this point is this:

Is he going to "go there"?

It's quite intense. He is caught in the middle of an arms proliferation battle, except the 'arms' in this case are conceptually impossible values, escalating at the speed of reality TV. Is he going to say that he will commit to giving a value larger that 125% in the kitchen from now on? To not do so would be letting the other guys win, but... It's dangerous, it's completely uncharted territory. They show the guy on camera, he clearly seems to be weighing his words. Could the very fabric of the universe be destroyed if he says the he will give more that 125%? Has a value higher than 125% ever even been thought of? What would that even be? 135%?... 200%?!?!?!

My heart was pounding.

The guy, he faces the judge, and he just says something like "Iiiiiiiiii'm not so good with percentages, but all I can tell you is that I'll do my best."

Point being: He did look like a chump, but he might have actually saved the world from imploding on itself.

He might have gotten voted off the show. I forget.

That One Cash vs. Credit Commerical = A Lie.

You know that one commercial where it's like this hip cafeteria and there all these people just zipping along paying for their food with credit cards all quick, and then this one "total jerk" pays with cash and like, time stops, the line comes to a halt, and everything is totally logjammed?

It is a lie.

At least, it is a lie in the world that I live in. I just got through waiting in a line that was comically the opposite of the scenario that this commercial depicts. Cash? Ok, here's your change, here ya go, thanks, see ya. Card? Swipe. Cashier waits, as if to make it seem as obvious as possible that she is annoyed by the fact that she has to wait, she smacks her gum, rolls her eyes, rests her head on her hand. People next in line be all like "Can I pay while we're waiting for her card to go through?" The cashier's like "nuh-uh." And then finally, to save the day, a junky little receipt comes buzzing out of a junky little printer. Transaction complete!

I mean, I'm sure that it depends on the location, but cards are still slow and everybody knows it.
Who are they trying to fool? Cash is cool. Cash is fast. Cash leaves no trace. Cash is universally less annoying in pretty much 98% of the real-world transactions I can think of.

Plus, I just like paying with cash (and I like getting paid in cash). It just feels classy. It makes me feel like my money is dangerous. Did this legal tender come from a drug deal or a landscaping job? Did this bill come from a metal briefcase or from a ziplock baggie under his bed? It's mysterious and nice.

It's also really fun to have a bunch of one dollar bills because then you can make a joke about working as a stripper, even if it isn't true. When someone sees you with a large stack of one dollar bills, this joke works, EVERY SINGLE TIME. I think it might actually be the only joke that NEVER gets old. The more unlikely you are to actually work as a stripper, the better, especially if the person who hears the joke might have to touch the money later.

Everyone knows someone who is totally "cards only." We all know these people. They like to order stuff from catalogs. You might be one of these people. I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway: These people are kind of annoying. Get some cash! You will spend it! We live in America, it's OK, you're not going to get pick-pocketed at the market or nothin. Getting cash from an ATM is inconvenient? Guess what, so is wanting to go somewhere with your friends and then being all like "Oh wait, they don't take cards there, let's go somewhere else." Want to buy a tamale from a street vendor? You better get with it, dude. Your friends will hate you that much less the next time you can actually pay for a Sprite at the vending machine by yourself.

Anyway, I wish I could find that commercial on YouTube or something. It is really unbelievable. I wanted to yell at the screen when I saw it, because it is just such a lie. I mean, when you pay with a card, sometimes you even have to enter a PIN or sign a piece of paper! Who do they think we are?

UPDATE:
Aaaaaaaaand here's the video! Cousin Sarah to the rescue! Hooray.