My first big trip out to the Inland Empire (welcome to the IE, bitch), and Kevin and I were chilling at a bar. I tried to point out this girl to him--I was like the one with the fake boobs, the fake blond hair, and the dumb look on her face. But it actually didn’t narrow it down as much as you might think. We could have just gone out in Hollywood...

You know how there are certain trends and things that are relatively newish and we don't have certainty as to how they will evolve/affect us in the future (like all the chemicals in the foods we eat and stuff)? Well I was thinking, a couple gets married and they hyphenate their last night. When junior is born, his last name becomes Schwartz-Berger. So what happens when junior grows up and falls in love and gets married to Goldstein-Kaufmann? Do they go by Schwartz-Berger-Goldstein-Kaufmann? Do they rotate to be fair, and go something like Schwartz-Goldstein-Berger-Kaufmann? Do they do it snake style, like in fantasy drafts: Schwartz-Goldstein-Kaufmann-Berger/Goldstein-Schwartz-Berger-Kaufmann? This could be an exponentially compounding problem where in a few generations the price of business cards could go through the roof and the size will have to be adjusted. Think about it.

Within 2 pages of one another, in Daniel Handler's new book, he describes someone laying on the couch like a semi-colon and 2 people looking at each other like parentheses. In between those 2 beautiful punctuational similes he discusses how people puts things in boxes that are marked fragile from a previous move or box filling in which something that was actually fragile was put in the box, but how the box might now be mislabeled (nothing fragile in it), but nobody does anything about it. Sweet on sweet action.

Where do people go to get those supertapered, superfitting, booty tight jeans for beanpoles? You know, those people who are like 5'10" and like 85 pounds and they wear Chuck Taylor's with them? Is it a secret store where you can't get into it--or even know about it--unless you are like chronically, grossly, skinny.

Chris said, "I'd eat a yard of her shit just to get to her arse." He said he got it from "The Irish Kid," but that is all too suspicious. Wouldn't The Irish Kid have said, "I'd eat a meter of her shit just to get to her arse?" A cha.

Is it possible that doctors offer a free tramp stamp with a boob job? The correlation, percentage-wise, is all too suspicious. I was asking Kevin his thoughts about it, and he thought perhaps doctors might give you the option between a tramp stamp and a belly button ring. Good times...abound...

There seems to be something that I am allergic to at my mom's house. I keep waking up with eye boogers the size of matzoh balls and hella phlegmy/congested every morning. As I felt myself being awoken from my glorious post-beach slumber by my ma's phone, I could feel that I was mouth breathing. Weird...I guess sometimes it is good to know how the other half lives...

When I was a little kid and used to go visit my grandma, she would always break out these old school cookies called "Flakey Flix." They were magical cookies--vanilla and chocolate wafers with layers of vanilla and chocolate cream in between, dipped in chocolate, with some Wheaties cereal-style bits stuck to them--and I thought that only my grandma could buy them. That is, I thought that they were special cookies that a regular person couldn’t just go to the store and buy. It used to be one of my favorite parts of visiting grandma, and she would always take them out for me at some point in the visit, without my even having to as--she never played hard to get with the Flakey Flix (and you know I got real nasty). I remember being a lil Mr. Justin looking up and down the cookie aisle at the market for them, and never seeing them. I miss those cookies.

Why do some people drop anchor sooooooo far away from the water at the beach. These fools should just go to the park. Do they come to the beach because of a passionate love for the sand or something? Couldn't they like buy a bunch of cat litter and fill a kiddie pool in their backyard with it (plus the park usually has a playground with sand)? They creep me out.

In honor of my first visit to Dodger Stadium since high school, and against my former Little League team (the Cardinals), and the fact that the Cardinals have a player with the rare combination of being the best player in baseball and having the best name in baseball--Albert Pujols (pronounced "pooh holes")--I present my Top 5 Pujols headlines (since he is the best, he really does get a lot of headlines in the sports section/on ESPN, and a few of these are real headlines I actually wrote down):

Pujols Makes His Mark in Houston
Pujols Ends Streak
Pujols Stops Skid
Pujols Batting Cleanup
Pujols On Deck
Pujols In the Hole
Pujols Slides to Make Save/Into Home
Pujols Pounds Perez In the End
Pujols Injured
Pujols Hitting/Firing/Operating at only 80%
Pujols Will Need Offseason Surgery (oi, Pujols On the DL)
Pujols is Dangerous at the Plate

And just because I heart irony, isn't it a major upset that Pujols plays first base instead of second base? I wonder if he leads the League in doubles...

RR was showing me some new pens that his lady got him and he was all, "These are hella sweet and stuff." He showed them to me and I was relatively impressed with how fine the tips were. He was all, "You can write hella small," and then he went on to show me. I'm not sure exactly why this is so funny, but if you know RR, then you know that it is.

You know what I am not a fan of? Of what I am not a fan? Girls that call me honey, sweetie, sugar, etc. Unless I am in a diner, in which case it adds to the general ambience. Or maybe if I am wasted and about to get some from her...but then, let's be honest. Do I really care what she calls me?

If there were no speed limit, I would drive 1000 MPH, no doubt. Driving fast rules. And not only does not driving fast not rule, but it sucks balls. Can you distinguish the subtle difference?

I was just challenging myself mentally by trying to turn this random string of words into an acronym (unacronym it), and the whole thing ended with S L so I went out strong with "Salty Locomotive." Which has band name potential. Now opening for Wyld Stallions (opening for Iron Maiden), Salty Locomotive!

Speaking of, I've started sometimes signing my emails "Justin Ghengis Khan."

I was talking with someone the other day and we were talking about a movie and I asked if they were referring to the original or the remake--and they answered, "Sammy Hagar." Which I think is a supercool way to distinguish between a new and old version of things (although "Sammy Hagar" has implicit connotations of the new version sucking compared to the old version. Perhaps I need to look into this and its ramifications regarding judgment of preference (oi, album name) a bit further before I fully incorporate it into my diatribes).

Why is fake wood panel considered the luxury upgrade on car interiors? That shit is soooo cheesy and fake; it is supposed to be classier but it is rather classless looking to me, at least compared to a clean black or whatever color.

I was watching A League of Their Own on TV and I realized that the ugly, homely chick is like a junior version of Mama Fratelli. Just thought I would share. She's probably hot as hell in real life. I always thought that was one of the fucked up things about Hollywood. A good percentage of the actors that play nerds and ugly people are actually totally hot, but dressed up to look nerdy/ugly. That is how shallow Hollywood is.

I was with my grandma at Junior's on Christmas Day (Jews Shun Chinese Food on Holiday, story at 11), getting real nasty on a fatty lox tray. My grandma is one of those people that even after she pays, you want to sneak back and give the server an extra fiver, you know, for the effort (patience, hopefully sense of humor, sheer volume of demands encountered, etc). She was commenting how our server was doing a good job with her demands, and I said that she was cute too. She said, "You are, as they say, horny." Good times.

Dude.

I was talking with Amber about how at faculty meetings and stuff I am either really quiet or annoyingly loud and obnoxious, and she said, "Uh, that's how you always are." Good times...

Mmmmm, binaries.

One of my least favorite bumper stickers: "It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child." It's a lovely sentiment and all (do you think I really believe that?), but you do know what country you are living in, right? In America, people don't even want their own family members to have anything to do with how they raise their kids. Plus, the bumper sticker always makes me wonder one question: Does the village idiot (oi, another popular bumper sticker) get to have a say in how the kid is raised too? Thank you.

I sort of want to write a whole column on my least favorite bumper stickers, but it would be ripping off an idea of one of my students. Oi, reverse plagiarism.

This week's that guy is another top notch guy. I almost didn't include him when I found this self-loathing, that guy-hating quote from him: "I prefer people to say to me, 'You're one of my favorite actors,' rather than 'You're one of my favorite character actors.'" Merits mentioning, however, that he was on the set for two separate watershed moments: the acting debut of former NFL players Howie Long (Firestorm) and Brian Bosworth (Stone Cold). His catalog includes:

Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy
The Devil's Rejects ("Director Rob Zombie." Seriously though, I want to see this)
Blue Streak (Fuck what you heard, Martin is funny)
Deuce Bigalow
The Rock
The Substitute (He has a lesson to teach. And nobody's going to have a problem with it)
Waiting to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story (Hello, Skinemax)
Out for Justice (6 Degrees of Steven Segal, check. Screwface, check)
Career Opportunities (That chick used to be so hot)
Dick Tracy
Raising Arizona
Cloak and Dagger (Sweet)
And last but certainly not least...
American Me (Son pocos pero son locos. Sometimes I just walk around saying that to people. They must think, "He's half right")

Merits mentioning that amongst all of his various TV show roles (including playing Al Capone for some show I never heard of), he starred in a couple of episodes of Hill Street Blues. The episodes were titled "Moon Over Uranus" and "Moon Over Uranus: The Sequel." I shit you not. Oi, get it?)

by Justin
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