February 29, 2008

Ah, February 29th, the magical day that only occurs once every four years. If you think about it, salaried workers get screwed on leap years -- we work an additional eight hours for no extra pay. Fuck you, Earth's revolution and The Man! Your shady backroom shenanigans will soon be exposed to the public at large and you will rue the day! RUE I SAY!

Today I felt like writing about a very interesting phenomena: Girl Television. You heard me. Girl Television.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm about as heterosexual as possible without looping back around to the other side of the spectrum. I watch the action movies of the '80s and '90s with near-religious enthusiasm. My DVD shelf contains Die Hard, Total Recall, True Lies, Con Air and three Batman films. I love LOST, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter and the first season of Heroes. I have played some of the most violent video games ever created.

I also watch, with alarming regularity, America's Next Top Model, Beauty and the Geek and most recently, Project Runway. Girl Television.

Admittedly, I watch all of these shows with my girlfriend, but I'd be full of shit if I pretended that's the only reason. I'm in too deep now. Even if I lived alone or with a bunch of other dudes, I'd still need my quota of fierce competitive reality TV.

I've tuned in for every ANTM cycle since about 2006 and I'm beginning to notice a trend. Each time a new season starts, I have a personal favorite model. Without fail, they will absolutely clean up until the go-sees episode, at which point they fall apart so completely that they're immediately kicked off. Last year, it was Heather. The cycle before that, Brittany. I liked the redheaded twins from whenever they were on. Why am I attracted to brainy, eloquent girls who are bad at directions? Hrmm.....

Re: the judges, I'm sad to see Fashion Icon and Living Legend Twiggy go. She had a way of doling out the most worthless criticism ("I find your midsection odd to look at", "Your face is very bird-like") as if it were the most insightful comment ever. My least favorite is Ms. Jay -- his (her?) shtick has worn thin and relies too heavily on gimmicks. Last night's continuity error with the patches on his (her?) shirt offended the very core of my being. Also, here's a fun drinking game: Pound a beer whenever Noted Fashion Photographer Nigel Barker says "the camera loves her"; shotgun it if he adds "she's pretty, but she's not a model"; strikeout if "she has great bone structure."

Lately though, the competition aspect of ANTM has grown cumbersome for me. I instead like to view the show as a character study of Tyra's descent into madness. If we had suddenly jumped from cycle 3 to cycle 10, I think more people would be alarmed, but the whole process happened so gradually before our eyes, we didn't catch on. Now I fear it's too late and it's only a matter of time before her ego violently rips out of her skin like a Crab Person. Watch this Real Talk tantrum and decide for yourself how stable she is:

You can't say that's not good television.

Coming up soon is the new season of Beauty and the Geek, which will henceforth referred to as BatG (not to be confused with BSG, although they have similar nerd quotients). Last year's victors, Dave and Jasmine, are easily my favorite reality TV cast members of all time. The LARPing episode was one of the most hilarious things I've witnessed in my enitre life, and their victory over obvious ringers Sam and Nicole had me on the edge of my seat the way most hetero males are during NFL playoffs. When the winners were announced during the live finale, it truly was a triumph of good over evil, as emotionally resonant as when Randy Quaid sacraficed himself to blow up the alien ship in Independence Day. If it had gone down the other way, I would've seriously considered rioting.

Finally, there's Project Runway. I've actually only been watching this show for the last couple weeks, so I don't have too much to comment on, other than this is quite possibly the most fierce of the three. After watching the midseason retrospective and last night's new episode, I have determined a few things: (1) Christian needs a solid slap in the face, (2) you can make some surprisingly impressive garb with safety pins and human hair, and (3) the straight guys on Project Runway are kinda like the plus-size models on ANTM -- there's one or two each season, but they rarely make it past the halfway point. Gotta admire their spirit though.

Alright, I'm done talking about Girl Television. Hey, LOST is almost on. Maybe someone will get stabbed.

February 28, 2008

I have some talented friends. My friend Josh has just made a new mashup album, Dude York Mix '08, available here. Very cool stuff, reminds me of Girl Talk's album. Check out his Bear Attack stuff too (the video for "A Motherfucker Like Me" can be found on my newly annotated movies page). Enjoy!

Moving along, today's subject will be one I have thus far avoided: politics. "Oh, how original!" you might sarcastically say. Having already trailblazed the unique blogging topics of the Academy Awards and LOST, I shall step further out into the unknown and reveal that I'm a liberal-ish Obama supporter. Didn't see that coming, did ya? AM I BLOWING YOUR MIND?!?!?

That's not what inspired this however. On a more WTF? note, it has come to my attention that consumer advocate and all around turdburglar Ralph Nader will once again be wasting a lot of his money running for president. GODDAMMIT! No, I'm not going to use up precious internet space ranting about how he spoiled the 2000 elections...that argument has been made before and whether you agree with it or not, you've surely already heard every point that can be made about it. Rather, I'm going to focus on the rhetoric of his campaigns, which hasn't really changed much in the last 8 years. Specifically, his platform of "Vote for me, because there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans"

Really?

REALLY!?!

Al Gore is the same as George W. Bush? Let's do a quick play by play of their post-2000 election resumés to see if Nader's theory holds water:

I guess they are sort of the same, huh? Nevertheless, I'd like to take this opportunity to unveil DDYH's new hit counter:

Ralph Nader has eaten nuggets of his own poop.

February 27, 2008

Have you noticed how many freakin' cranes there are up in Seattle right now? The other day, while waiting for the light to change at Pine and Boren, I was able to count at least 15. It's like Seattle is SimCity and whoever's playing just entered some sort of cheat code to make everything build faster. Let us pray that this doesn't happen:

This sudden burst in construction has even made its way to my doorstep, which is now located about 10 yards away from the future site of Queen Anne's Next Top Unnecessary Bourgeois Condominium Development. While the empty lot is temporarily giving me an interesting view, I'm a little peeved about (1) half my block being a no parking zone, and (2) the Honey Bucket port-a-potty located on the sidewalk directly outside my apartment. I suppose if I ever have two houseguests that need to shit simultaneously, the latter will come in handy.

So let's see, what else is new? I've received my first rant submission from angry Wii owner and Guitar Hero enthusiast Matt. Check that out here. If you have something funny you wrote, an amusing link you found or just feel the need to tell Red Octane to go fuck themselves, send it to me and I'll post it. It's not like anyone's going to read it here. Wait, are they? Hello? ECHO, echo, echo...

Last night DDYH made the monumental leap from being written in HTML to XHTML. What does that mean? Surprisingly little, unless you're one of my crazy friends who compulsively checks out my source code. I'm not going to point fingers; you know who you are.

I'll leave you today with a hilarious link Ruth sent me at work this morning. Check out Garfield minus Garfield.

February 26, 2008

Since I've been doing this for a few days now, I'm beginning to hear the same questions coming up again and again. I'll take today as an opportunity to address a couple of them:

Q: Uh, dude...your dates seem off. How come you talk about it being night but the date is the day after that?

A: I've actually changed this a few times and no matter what I do, somebody seems to think I don't know what day it is. Oh, I know what day it is. Do you? I update this page at around midnight or so and although I'm generally talking about things that happened earlier that day, I figure most people don't read about it until the following morning. And I don't want to seem, you know, behind the times or anything.

Q: Why is this site called www.dude-did-you-hear.com? What does that even mean?

A: In the quarter century or so that I've been alive, I've noticed that whenever something is proceeded by "Dude, did you hear?", there's at least a 50/50 chance that what follows is going to be complete horseshit. By adopting a non-specific passive voice and attributing the source to some anonymous "they" (for instance, "Didn't you hear, some people think that Huckabee still has a chance to win"), it allows the speaker to spout off something entirely made up without being held accountable for its credibility. That is the essential spirit in which this page is written -- lots of supposed fact, little citation. Also, www.morganross.com was apparently already registered by one of the traveling merchants from Wind Waker.

Q: How come your apostrophes show up as question marks?

A: Microsoft is a whore. And that shouldn't be happening now.

Q: Don't you work for Microsoft?

A: Shut up.

Q: Why are you doing this? I fail to see the point.

A: Boredom. That, and the fun of having a forum to rant about anything without having to worry about if anyone is actually interested in what I have to say. You should try it.

Q: You're not going to blog about LOST are you? Doesn't LOST suck balls?

A: No, you suck balls sir (or ma'am). That aside, it has occurred to me that a small minority of the people reading this either (1) aren't caught up with season 4 and don't want it spoiled, or (2) couldn't give a rat's ass. Solution: I will put handy LOST HTML tags around anything of that nature. Let's try it out, shall we?

<LOST>
Unsubstantiated theory of the hour: What if Locke caused the Christmas 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when he failed to enter the numbers into the Swan computer and thus is responsible for the deaths of a quarter million people, the knowledge of which will ultimately push him over the brink into supervillainy? Now break into small groups to discuss and we'll reconvene during the last 10 minutes of class.
</LOST>

That wasn't so bad, was it? You may have also noticed that I now have an email address for this site. (at the top, under XKCD) Feel free to send me additional questions, suggestions, flames, death threats, etc. Also, my web hosting plan has 5 additional email accounts that I can set up. 2 or 3 of them are already spoken for, so if you'd like a "YourName@dude-did-you-hear.com" address, let me know soon and I can probably hook you up. My only request is that you have a quasi-legitimate purpose for it -- either you want to work with me on this site, or you have a project of your own. Please, please do not use it to sign up for porn.

Speaking of porn, what the fuck is this product? NSFW, so beware. Be sure to watch the video.

February 25, 2008

And the award goes to...Daniel Day-Lewis and the Coen Brothers. I was surprised, were you surprised? While I would've preferred to see more accolades go in the direction of Eastern Promises and Juno, my personal favorites from '07, I guess I'm pleased that the prizes went for the most part to intriguing, original films and not to pandering melodramatic wank sessions like they have in years past. (Cough..Crash...cough..A Beautiful Mind) I actually still have yet to see No Country For Old Men, but it looks tits and everyone who's seen it has said as much. American Gangster, 3:10 to Yuma and Sweeney Todd are all pretty decent. Watching There Will Be Blood is sort of like suddenly getting uppercutted for no reason...it's powerful, inexplicable and uncomfortably violent and once it's over, it leaves you wondering what the hell just happened. In other words, it's a P.T. Anderson film. As Peter Griffin once said, it insists upon itself.

Did anyone else notice that when they showed the list of famous people who've died in the last year, they mentioned Heath Ledger but not Brad Renfro? Were they running short on time? Maybe he was considered, but the academy ultimately felt that the guy who did Rufio's makeup in Hook had a greater lasting impact on the industry.

While I'm on the subject of movies, I'd like to give a shout out to a curious Canadian fellow I know by the name of Thomson, who appears in a few scenes of I'm Not There. Well played sir. Well played indeed.

And finally, I saw Michel Gondry's new film Be Kind Rewind earlier this afternoon. While I doubt we'll be seeing Mos Def accepting a Best Actor Oscar next year, it's actually quite charming and the remakes...er, Sweded versions of Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2 are pretty fucking hilarious. And if you don't know Gondry, take a minute and check out this, this and this.

(Note: I'm fully aware that I've made anyone who's reading this page watch Gondry's entire body of work several times over. It was really just an excuse to put some links up. I believe that puts the complexity of my page at about the level of Geocities, circa 1997. Please be sure to sign my guestbook.)

February 24, 2008

Check out the fancy new green box! That's right, this webpage is now bichromatic. At this rate, by next week, there might be a third or even fourth color. BEWARE!

Tonight, I've learned a few things:

As it turns out, one of those nuggets of wisdom is complete horseshit (Hint: it's #1). That's all for this eve. Rock Band isn't going to play itself.

February 23, 2008

Random idea #47: All crosswalks should be equipped with motion sensors that trigger those severe tire damage spikes whenever a pedestrian is crossing the street, causing any motor vehicle that decides to gun it and run it to massively get its shit wrecked. Once the pedestrian has crossed the street, the spikes will retract and all will be right with the world again. The brilliant part with this plan is that no driver could ever contest it -- if your car gets fucked up, you were breaking the law. I'm getting pretty goddamn sick of almost getting run over while crossing the street. Pine and Boylston, I'm looking in your direction.

On another note, I have made it my weekend project to learn how to make panels in HTML. I know how fun it is to read center justified blocks of text in the middle of webpages, but something about its aesthetic just bothers me for some reason. Also, I enjoy my typo of "update" from last night. I think I'll leave little gems like that intact for the world to see.

February 22, 2008

I'm too intoxicated to have an actual upate for tonight. Will be watching LOST instead.

February 21, 2008

So, in an effort to just start posting things, I've dug out several of my college film projects. Honestly, I never thought that much about some of them until I saw them played in a 3"x3" low resolution embedded media player with the YouTube logo in the corner. Really does them justice. As my HTML-fu gets stronger, I hope to have these in a nicer format. Right now, it kind of looks like crap, but it's kind of fun to set them all to play at once and hear all the sounds overlap. And by fun, I mean not fun whatsoever. Enjoy!