Wonder if this will affect the script for the third movie?

So wrong, but so very funny: Spider-Man's Greatest Bible Stories! [via Must See HTTP://.]

TMI

[Female gas station manager, standing outside open men's room door, shouting in]: Gerald?
[Male employee, presumably named Gerald, sitting inside locked restroom stall]: (silence)
[Manager]: Gerald?
[Gerald]: What?
[Manager]: You OK?
[Gerald]: (pause) Naw.
[Manager]: (pause) You OK?
[Gerald]: Naw!
[Manager]: You need more break time?
[Gerald]: (quietly) I'm constipated.
[Manager]: What?
[Gerald]: I'm constipated!
[Manager]: (pause) What?
[Gerald]: I can't shit!
[Manager]: Well. (pause) I didn't need to know all that, now.

Bad Education

I finally got to see Bad Education (La Mala Educación) last night. What a terrific film--and I was stunned at how beautiful Gael García Bernal is as a woman! Who knew? I've been thinking about how to describe the movie and its plot to friends, and realize that I probably won't be able to do so. This quote from Roger Ebert's review of the movie might help explain why:

Pedro Almodovar's new movie is like an ingenious toy that is a joy to behold, until you take it apart to see what makes it work, and then it never works again. While you're watching it, you don't realize how confused you are, because it either makes sense from moment to moment or, when it doesn't, you're distracted by the sex. Life is like that.

Indeed it is, sir. Indeed it is.

"This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven."

For those of you worried about your heathen loved ones who will be left behind when you get magically vacuumed up to heaven: it's Rapture Letters!

After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have just disappeared. Unfortunately, after the rapture, only non believers will be left to come up with answers. You probably have family and friends that you have witnessed to and they just won't listen. After the rapture they probably will, but who will tell them?

We have written a computer program to do just that. It will send an Electronic Message (e-mail) to whomever you want after the rapture has taken place, and you and I have been taken to heaven. [...]

This rapture letter service is FREE and will hopefully gain the person you send it to an eternity in heaven.

[via The Daily Show.]

"OK, what's next: Adam and Steve, or Madame and Eve?"

The same-sex marriage episode of "The Simpsons" was interesting, even though it had an odd twist in the final act. ("Veronica is a man!") But to answer the question no one is asking: apparently they do actually register those domain names they flash during the show.

My name is Chris, and I'm a TV-holic

Dear God in heaven, I need help. I don't know why I let myself get drawn into watching the crummiest, most pathetic reality TV shows in existence, but I do. Mind you, I'm the guy who's never watched "American Idol," partly because I've secretly thought it was beneath me.

And yet somehow, I find the time to catch every episode--every episode--of "Celebrity Fit Club". I know, I know. But I have to confess that this week's episode completely set of my schadenfreude-meter when poor pitiful Daniel Baldwin had a complete, drug-addled, Hollywood-style breakdown. This week, we got to see the low man on the Baldwin family totem pole get dressed down by his fellow quasi-celebrities, the show's fitness experts, and producers, all while Danny boy had a grade-A glazed expression on his face.

And I loved it--God help me, I loved it. And I wonder why I feel like I'm wasting my time.

Erotic/Christian Quote of the Day

Depending on where [on the grid] it was written, “M” could mean “masturbation,” “marriage,” “masochism,” or “Methodist.”

—from “Kinsey” on PBS' American Experience, regarding the code sheets that Alfred Kinsey’s team used to conduct sexual history interviews.

I got the crazy shits for you, baby!

Rule number one for good tattooing: If you do not know Chinese or Japanese, for God's sake, don't get a tattoo with Chinese or Japanese characters. In and of themelves, they're not cool, and you run the serious risk of making yourself look like an ass. Case in point: you might end up with an inking that says "Crazy Diarrhea"! Whee!

(Link from Hanzi Smatter, via MeFi.)

The Way We Were

I had lunch today with my friend Matthew. This is news, because it was the first time I'd seen him in nearly 15 years--half a lifetime. We'd kept in touch only sporadically via email through college and grad school and full-time work, but when he mentioned that he'd be coming into town to present a paper at a conference, I jumped at the chance to see him.

I don't know what it is, exactly, that I was looking for. Why bother getting together with someone who'd been cut out of my life when his family moved out of state during our junior year of high school? Why go on an emotional and social archaeological dig, to unearth so much of what I'd tried to keep hidden away for a decade and a half?

I hadn't thought much about the "why"s before we met outside the lobby of his hotel today. I just knew that I'd been giddy all morning at the prospect of seeing him again. OK, truth be told, I did know one reason why I was looking forward to seeing him: it seems that I had something of an unrequited crush on Matthew back in our high school days. Not that I ever admitted that to him back then; not that I even admitted it to myself back then. But the feelings came flooding back this morning in the form of flushed cheeks, sweaty palms, slight shortness of breath. I may as well have been 16 years old again.

When he walked out of the hotel toward my car, I recognized Matthew immediately. He was certainly taller than the late-blooming kid I remembered; the scraggly whiskers were new, too. But all in all, he was pretty much just as I'd pictured him in my mind after all this time--he looked good.

We drove down the street and found a restaurant, picking an Italian place over the microbrewery because of his lingering hangover from last night's overindulgence with colleagues. We spent most of our time catching up on 15 years' worth of condensed dishing: his wife, my sexuality, whatever-happened-to-so-and-so. We each confessed our own still-unresolved conflicts stemming from our high school days. I think we both surprised ourselves by remembering seemingly fleeting events and names and words that stung us so deeply that they lodged themselves at the heart of our memories, buried but unforgotten.

Flushing out the accumulated mire of adolescent angst felt good, but what felt even better (and what surprised me the most) was Matthew's confession about how much he admired and respected me back then. We'd been buddies, sure, brothers in the fraternity of geekiness, but I never knew that he looked up to me at all. He said that my stability helped calm his over-emotional teenaged angst. I had to confess that it was largely a front, and that I've been spending the last decade trying to reconnect to my emotional center that I lost during those years.

We both acknowledged that we're still carrying around those 16-year-old boys inside us, that core of ourselves that will always be part of us. But I was reminded that, each in our own way, we've largely transcended the insecurity and pain of those years. We've both gone on to success in our respective professional fields, and we've become pretty damn great guys, if I do say so myself. I tend to forget that these days, what with all the fresh reasons I find all the time to doubt myself. It makes all the difference when someone reminds me just how far I've come. That helps when I start despairing of how far I still have to go.