Perfect Girl Exposed! (No, It’s Not What You Think), Shrooms Exposed! (No, That’s Not What You Think Either), Russ Wins at 12th Dimensional Chess, Jackie Hates Perfect Girl, How Long Does It Take to Write the Perfect Text, Always Carry the One When Calculating the Rapture, When Atheists Attack, and Storey Exposed! (No, It’s…Well, Maybe It Is What You Think).

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Give a Man a Quarter and He Can Play One Game, Teach Him to Write in Basic and He Can Feed a Village (Really), They Don’t Make Video Games the Way They Used To (and Get Off My Lawn!), Russ Can’t Help Falling In Love…Again…, Is This the Text That Launched a Thousand Ships?, How Rabbits From Certain Places Can Help You Recover Your Voice, How Many Meppers Does It Take to Get One Mepper a Date, Angry Pictures are Angry, and Chemistry = Not Fat.

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Headlines Grate While Storey Updates, Bedbugs are Bed (Uh, Bad), Some People Call it a Unabomber…Russ Calls it a Beard (mmmhmm), Slide Whistles are Better Than Suicide, The Final Days of DAOC, The Second Coming (and Leaving) of Greg, Then Everyone Was a Jedi, and the Forecast is Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Apocalypse.

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And so, the ravenous sports media culture finds itself T +24 hours past their biggest scoop of the summer.

The anointed one, the most finely tuned athlete/behemoth ever to come out of Ohio has left his hometown team. Instead of staying put and playing basketball martyr, LeBron James has decided to join two of his closest athlete/behemoth friends to form a mini-Harlem Globetrotter team in South Beach.

So, for fear of having to return to baseball, the World Cup, and other summer sports fare, the sports media has turned its attention to the jilted Cleveland fanbase.

And surely, there is suffering in Cleveland. This is a city whose last championship of any kind came via the NFL’s Browns 46 years ago. The Cavs, themselves, have never gone further than LeBron has taken them, as they have never won a title of their own.

If we’re to believe the media reports, every Cavs fan is now throwing an extended tantrum. They’re burning LeBron jerseys, screaming obscenities at the basketball Gods, and planning LeBron heckling parties at basketball arenas all over the country.

Now, what I’m about to say may hurt a little, Cleveland, but it’s for your own good. Acting like a scorned teenage girl who just found out that her Twilight Team Jacob friends have switched over to Team Edward doesn’t cast you in a very good light. It’s not likely to make you a preferred destination for future superstar players. And frankly, it’s not fair, given the circumstances.

You had seven years of one of the most prodigious talents in professional sports history. He took a team of stiffs, of cast-offs, and made them into a first-class basketball team. He played injured. He didn’t rest.

Do you realize that the man has averaged over 40 minutes a game played over his entire career? Only three players in history have averaged more: Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson. Jordan averaged 38 minutes played a game. Kobe averages about 37. LeBron killed himself to put your team on his shoulders. He knew that leaving the floor would mean leaving a team unfit to compete out there, so on the floor he stayed.

At some point, the Cleveland ownership has to take responsibility for this. Here you have this transcendent talent, and you surround him with second-rate nobodies. This is supposed to secure your investment? The best player that the man has ever gotten to play with, in Cleveland, was the empty, aged husk of Shaquille O’Neal or an Antwan Jamison rent-a-forward.

The man never had a real point guard to play with, so he had to be the point guard. He never had a dominant post-player, so he had to do that too. He never had a go-to shooter, so he made himself the go-to shooter. Wouldn’t this tire you out? Can you imagine being an adult on a little-league baseball team for seven years? Wouldn’t the novelty wear off after a while? Wouldn’t you want to play in the adult league if given the chance?

This is, in many ways, like the end of a relationship. LeBron is like the girl that got away. You knew, in your heart of hearts that she was out of your league. You were a devoted boyfriend. You bought flowers and chocolate. You listened to her problems. You even spent three weeks at her parents house for Christmas instead of taking a needed vacation. But ultimately, she was a little bit too smart for you. She was probably way too good looking for you. You could only jealously snap and rage at the other potential suitors (especially when Bron went to play for Team USA) for so long before one of them stole her heart. It was a sick inevitability eating away at the pit of your stomach, but an inevitability nonetheless.

Now that it’s over, have a little class. She didn’t have to stay for seven years. She obviously loved you, despite your faults. To paraphrase Forgetting Sarah Marshall, “She tried to make it work. You have no idea how hard she tried. She took relationship classes, she talked to her mother, she went to therapy. She tried everything. You were just too stupid to notice.”

First posted on Technorati.

The story here was that I had agreed to do stand up comedy last weekend, but wasn’t particularly in the mood for joke-telling (especially given that the venue was a standard comedian trap — a privately hosted party). So, instead, I decided to employ the audience as the cast and crew in a YouTube video.

The results were mixed. Obviously I had little control over what we ended up recording, but it was a promising experiment. I sort of like the idea of having strangers collaborate spontaneously on a web project. It’s very internet ethos-y. On the bright side, it may be an entirely new form of performance art. Fun.

Faced with the prospect of becoming the most popular weekend pastime in the United States, the National Football League is taking drastic steps to withdraw from public view.

As reported by Time Magazine last week, the NFL has adopted a “blackout” policy, preventing local fans from viewing their team’s games if the game in question fails to sell out its tickets.

In the face of harsh criticism, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, stood tough last week as he explained to the media that simply too many American moods hinged on a professional football result.

“It’s just too much pressure,” Goodell admitted.

Noting an unprecedented increase in NFL player-related violent crimes, Goodell blamed the American public for getting his employees all riled up.

“First Plaxico shoots himself in the leg, then Donte gets hopped up on goofballs and runs somebody over. Shawne Merriman just tried to lock himself in his basement with Tila Tequila. Can’t you see that you’re tearing us apart?”

Wiping back tears, the Commissioner continued:

“We used to have a nice little league. Football was a fun little Sunday jaunt in the park with leather helmets and a few friends. But then you had to care soooo much! You had to craft your little foam fingers and cheeseheads and spiked shoulderpads. What kind of self-respecting person wears a silver killer robot zombie costume to a local sporting match? Is that what we’re supposed to look like? Is it?!? ” Goddell whimpered.

According to Goodell, the blackout policy is intended to slowly wean the American public off of football for the time being.

“We…just need a break. We need time to work out our issues. We would really appreciate it if you stopped watching us on television if you’re not coming to the games. Don’t call us, don’t e-mail us, and please take us off of your facebook page. Look, there are other things going on in the world. I’ve heard that there’s some kind of national healthcare thing that you can go make yourself crazy over. If you really love us, you need to give us some time.”

With that quote, Commissioner Goodell retreated into his NFL executive tour bus to consult with his girlfriends. Press were advised to delete his cell phone number from their records and “grow up.”

Last night, at the behest of my girlfriend, I saw the steaming pile of mastodon dung known as The Time Traveler’s Wife. Going in without reading the novel, I carried several misconceptions about the movie. I will now disabuse you of any of said misconceptions that might cause you to accidentally watch this thing…

Misconception 1: The Time Traveler’s Wife is a Movie.
Fact: The Time Traveler’s Wife is a highlight reel, poorly pasted together.

There is no consistency, no narrative, no character development, and virtually no plot. The husband and wife only interact with each other in brief exchanges that resemble something like this:

McAdams: “Where have you been?”
Bana: “I’ve been time traveling.”
McAdams: “Well, shit.”

As you can imagine, it’s awfully hard to develop any characters or plot when the protagonists are only allowed to speak two sentences before one of them gets dumped in the middle of a bridge for no reason.

Misconception #2: The Time Traveler’s Wife is about time travel.
Fact: This movie has nothing to do with time travel.

It’s as if the author saw the movie Terminator once, and decided it would be super sexy to employ the Terminator rule that you have to time travel naked. Otherwise there are no rules. According to this movie, you can never alter the course of history as a time traveler (except when you do), and you definitely can never use your time travel powers to go anywhere interesting or historically significant. There are no parallel universes, time paradoxes, or Deloreans to be found. What Eric Bana does in this movie has nothing to do with space, time, or theoretical physics. It just confuses things to call this time travel. I prefer calling it, “Jamiroquai-ing.”

Misconception #3: The Time Traveler’s Wife is romantic.
Fact: The Time Traveler’s Wife is an allegory about an abusive relationship.

The secret about this movie is that its entire purpose is to give women a justification for staying with a shoddy husband. Think about it. Here is a husband who skips out on his own wedding (letting some older dude take his place at the ceremony), leaves town for weeks at a time, and holds no job. Did I mention that he originally seduces his wife when she’s nine years old and he’s forty?

His excuse for this? He’s a “time traveler” (Jamiroquai-er). Whenever he gets stressed out (or drinks too heavily) he “time travels” to a place of no accountability, where he’s compelled to pick locks, break into stores and/or apartments, crossdress, steal things, and spend the night evading the cops.

The time-traveling aspect is simply a mental trick invented by a rationalizing wife who doesn’t want to admit to herself that she married an alcoholic, distant man. This woman is in some serious denial. As are the many women who think they are married to a gallant, marauding, hero, who just happens to never be around. Keep drinking that Kool-Aid, ladies.

The only thing this movie succeeded in, was making me desperately want to time travel into a world where I’d left the theater 15 minutes in and snuck into District 9, instead.

Today, the entire film can be found on Hulu. So ready your supply of Doctor Pepper and Mountain Dew, jump into a nearby Teamspeak channel, and enjoy:

We have the too-hot-for-her-environs girl interviewing the SuperNerd (personified by Bre Pettis).

The too-hot girl neither cares nor understands what’s going on. Her primary function is to look as hot as possible and anchor the male demographic in place.

SuperNerd tries vainly to entertain her with his various half-built gadgets and Star Wars collectables.

She perfunctorily tries to move the interview along. He lamely tries to hold her eye contact. She tries to not visibly look disgusted.

Welcome to Internet TV.

>.

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A guy tried to pick me up the other day and it was so bad that I thought I would share how bad it was so that others can learn from his mistakes.

1) Do NOT try to pick up a woman while in a Pizza Hut line inside a Target.

2) DO notice that she is buying two individual size pizzas and is carrying a huge bag of diapers.

3) Do NOT try to pick up a woman while you are wearing a sleeping 1.5 year old in a carrier strapped to your front.

4) DO know that she helped you pick up the dollar bill you dropped because she thought you were a fellow parent and understood your situation.  She did NOT do it to give you an opening to hit on her AND when she realizes that you took advantage of the situation to lure her into a conversation, she will NOT be happy.  You don’t want to make momma unhappy.

5) Do NOT try to pick up a woman by asking her “Do you know any good restaurants around here,” followed by, “Do you know where this conversation is going?”

6) DO note that her wedding ring glitters brilliantly in the fluorescent Target lighting and she’s not just wearing the ring because her husband would be pissed if she wasn’t.  She’s also wearing it to send a message to men just like you and the message is not “come hither you hunka hunka…ooo, is that an Ergo?”

Courtesy of the Onion News Network

So now I’m left having to try to meet moms at the park.  I feel like I’m trying to pick them up:

“You live around here?”

“Come here often?”

“Know of any fun things to do around here?”

“So, can I have your number?”

Sigh…I need to start a dating service for stay-at-home moms.  Ewomb.com

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