Conan Visits the Day Spa

Certain dead musicians continue to release new music long after they're gone because people keep "finding" "lost recordings". And so it is with me. Except I'm not dead. But I had ripped all my old VHS tapes long ago and was much disappointed by what I had apparently failed to keep. Recently new VHS tapes were uncovered and so I'll be ripping/editing them for days to come. Some - but not many - will even make it to youtube.

And so here's the first of hopefully many.

This is going all the way back to February of 2003, Conan is feeling run down and decides to visit a day spa for a day of relaxation.

This is one that I can tie to a specific time and place. I brought the tape on which this piece was recorded to a friend's house and we watched it during a particularly heavy snowfall (there was a blizzard in '03 but I think this was a few days later). We went through the tape, laughing, eating, making jokes, cracking wise and generally enjoying life.

And after a good amount of that, a little bit of reality set in. His parents wanted us to shovel the driveway. This was particularly important as it occurred to me that I needed to get home. The next day I had class and I had a paper to do. Problem was, his driveway was like 40 or 50 yards long and the snow was (as I recall it) about 20 inches deep and heavy. In the face of those kinds of numbers, there we were just two regular dudes and a couple of shovels. It was not looking good. I think I shoveled a single strip about 8 feet long before I hit the wall (even in those days I was out of shape) and realized that I wasn't going to survive. Not good. With my primary mission to get myself home, looming in the back of my mind is that I have a paper to write that's due tomorrow and I haven't started yet. It was an essay for a Media class where I had to write a 4 page analysis of a local news broadcast. Sure, it helped that part of the assignment was just watching TV but I dread trying to expand the material to cover 4 pages. The local news is the local news. It loomed over me every bit as much as the snow clouds.

The giant driveway snow tonnage didn't kill me but it was a close call. After an hour of back-breaking labor (over which we made approximately 0% progress), a dude with a snow plow came by and offered to clear the driveway for 20 bucks or something. The deal was made, I was able to get home, record the 11 O'Clock news and get the paper done in the wee hours of the morning.

The day of basking in the warmth of late night comedy while the snow fell down was a fleeting happiness but it's a memory I'll never forget.

David Brent Cameo in The Office

Brief but alright.

Catfish

Catfish (2010)

When one thinks of all the great movies within the "psychological thriller documentary" genre, not many movies come to mind. In fact no movies come to mind. This is one of those things that perhaps in a few days it'll suddenly come to me that I forgot one but at the moment there are no movies in this category. Except for the new documentary "Catfish".

We all know that the internet is a place where fiction and reality can be hard to discern. It's a hard and fast rule for instance that the attractive lady you're chatting to in chat rooms is really an overweight 40-year-old man who works as a part-time accountant. But can you be sure either way? And wouldn't you like to find out the stark naked truth (NOT LITERALLY)? This is "Catfish".

"Catfish" is a low-budget indie documentary that only recently came out on DVD and (I assume) if anyone is to find out about it, it will only be via word of mouth. In it a 24-year-old photographer from New York strikes up a friendship with a family in the Midwest over facebook. Through social networking, email, pictures, texts, videos and phone conversations he starts a relationship with the 19-year-old oldest sister and things progress steadily from there. As the relationship starts to get more serious, a series of strange clues cause him to begin to question whether he's actually interacting with a real person. And if he wasn't talking to a real person, what is the alternative possibility? Hoping to finally uncover the truth he decides on an impromptu visit and finds that the reality of the situation is beyond strange.

Obviously, getting at the truth is exactly the point of the movie and I won't spoil anything here. I only suggest that the building mystery is as fascinating as any mystery/fictional movie you're bound to see and the slow descent into the fictional (real) world is absolutely creepy. In fact the creepiness combined with the low-budget one-camera style at one point brought up memories of "The Blair Witch Project". Except this documentary is real (I think) and truth is stranger than fiction. Definitely recommended.

Oh yeah, and don't read or watch anything about the movie beforehand because, like "The Sixth Sense", a large part of the interest of the movie is finding out how it ends. That is, don't read anything about it starting now.

Beavis and Butthead In 2011

Beavis and Butthead are coming back for a new season of shows to air on MTV this Summer. Yes, you read that sentence correctly.

Not much else is known about the show other than that Mike Judge will still do the voices, the two protagonists will still be in high school, it will still be on MTV and they'll be mocking current music videos. It's unclear how the music video data will actually be pushed through the MTV channel system but sources in the scientific community assure me that the technology exists.

This article about the comeback was written in July of 2010. How am I only hearing about this now?!

SNL - Dana Carvey

This week was a special event for Saturday Night Live. The guest host was Dana Carvey. The show saw the return of "Church Chat" and special cameos by Mike Meyers and John Lovitz.

Oh yeah and a little something called THIS:

Also, this one isn't so much funny as I just like this song and wish to buy the record album.

And I thought this was pretty funny too.

It was nice to see him back and it was one of the better episodes of the past few years. You can watch the full show here.

Super Bowl of Serenity

After a week of contemplation, trying to figure out how to fill my Super Bowl hours, I finally settled upon the idea of a "Joy of Painting" with Bob Ross marathon.

Using the power of the internet I was able to get a multitude of episodes and at 30 minutes each it was enough to cover the 8 hour (or whatever) span of overpriced commercials ("The Super Bowl"). The show was on the air for 30 years so there are A TON of episodes to choose from. I tried to sample one episode in each season across different seasons but even with that I didn't even get to Season 10.

And what a Super Bowl it was... there were almighty mountains, happy little trees, little rascal squirrels, clouds who had other cloud friends, trees that were sons of guns, bravery tests and plenty of happy accidents.

Some of the episodes were pretty unusual. One had a predominantly purple motif which I enjoyed and in another episode a woman came on and taught us how to paint saw blades. Turns out it's exactly the same as painting on a canvas... except on a saw blade. That's one of the great things about painting; it's your own little world. When you buy your first tube of paint, you get your Artist's License which allows you to do anything you want within the boundaries of your painting.

The whole experience added up to ultra-relaxation. It wasn't the most exciting Super Bowl ever, it was the most peaceful. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CONTEMPLATIVE RELAXATION?! Yes.