Hi

Hey everybody! If you haven't checked my other site out, here's where I've been blogging for a while, I write there pretty often, unlike this blog (sorry).
Joe's Blog @ Oberlin.edu

I'm tired for no good reason.

Lil, gilbert, and dad visited this weekend. we packed about four days worth of stuff into two days of trip, and I actually ended up seeing more of Oberlin than I thought I had before, which was great. we saw a really cool steel drum band (sounds funny, right? They were pretty amazing) and an dance performance with R&B music, and a choir concert, as well. What a weekend!
I should be starting my other blog soon, the one connected with Oberlin. I've actually written an entry and two half entries, but they're not open to the public yet. When they are, the addy should be www.blogs.oberlin.edu that's what it is now, but the director of his whole program (I want to call it an 'experiment' or something, because I'm still not sure about it) is in Boston for a short trip. I learned recently that he was super active when he went to school here, in a capella and choir, and I guess he was the general manager for the Cat, which is a little coffeehouse that has acts from all over the place playing and stuff. Makes me feel downright lazy. I have been studying my ass off lately, and playing a lot of tennis, so that's good, right? I took a couple quizzes today and I'm taking a big exam Friday. I sound like a real damn college student right now, listen to me. I'm really not nervous about it though, which is good. I have been super tired lately, no real reason, I just can't get to sleep these days. My roommate usually comes home right around 4 am, which is AWESOME. I have nothing else to complain about, so bye!

Funny thing about....

…funny things. I find a lot of things absolutely hilarious. I like people with good laughs. There's this guy Aaron on the cross team that laughs really loud and kind of high pitched and I think he might have been stifling it because I've only started to notice it since break. That, or he caught laughing disease back home, the most hilarious disease since kidney stones (not at all funny to experience firsthand, but I will never ever forget Austin Perry describing Mr. Sissen bent all the way over the overhead in the middle of class and yelling 'YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
before limping to the bathroom). I'm in a weird, kind of random mood I guess. I watched a bunch of Youtube videos yesterday when I was burned out from writing my cancer class paper. I saw this short one where a model falls on a runway. These guys on the evening news were talking about the clip and they couldn't stop laughing. But I couldn't either. This model carrying a watering can fell once, got back up, then fell again, but this time took like five seconds to fall, trying the whole time to balance in her ridiculous heels and wobbling on her tiny ankles until whooooaaaaa she fell. I was dying. Here it is if you're immature enough to want to see it.


Here's a list of things I think are funny, beginning with:

1. Falling. Oh goodness. Not all falling, like falling that looks really painful, but well-timed falls are awesome to me. Call me sophomoric (that would be a compliment actually, since I am indeed a freshman).
2. Jokes when you're not expecting them. My friend Mike reached halfway across the table at dinner the other night and very politely asked me, "Hey Joe could you toss my salad over here?" I was looking for a salad for ten seconds before I realized the joke. While that jackal Mike just giggled to himself in his chair "Yeah, just toss my salad over here for me." It was clever though.
3. Incongruous, random things. Like Kramer. Or the joke about the two sausages frying in the pan where one says to the other “boy, it’s really hot in here,” and the second one says, “holy crap! A talking sausage!”
4. Clever stuff. Like British clever.
5. Fake translations. Like they do on the daily show sometimes, where like a Chinese government official is talking about something and the voice over guy is saying something completely different. Or like in this klutz book I had when I was little it had helpful phrases in foreign languages and they were like “Where is the nearest American rapid food establishment?” (Waar is de meest nabij amerikaan snelle voedselonderneming?) Or “Excuse me madam, your weasel has just made sick in my shoe” (m'excuser la madame, votre belette a fait juste malade dans ma chaussure)

6. Dave Chappelle. I think he's great and I wish he would come out of hiding already. I guess there are a lot of people I think are funny, so he shouldn't get his own thing. Will Farrell is funny, so is my family. Austin P. (aforementioned), Will Sevege, Jason, Tina, gosh there are tons of people actually...

7. Funny laughs. Like baby laughs. Those make me giggle like crazy.

8. Funny insults. As long as their not too personal, and everyone knows it's a joke, and we don't make jokes about Jeremy's lazy eye for a half hour again, I think these can be funny.

Things that are not funny to me:

1. Clowns. Not funny, never will be. Even when I was a kid I think I was just like, “Yeah, okay, so you’re silly. Do you do anything else? It does get boring doesn’t it, being silly all the time?”

2. Knock-knock jokes. Unless they’re really really good (What?!?! You say, good knock knock jokes? Oh, there are GREAT ones. So great they haven't even been invented yet.), like the ones on Garrison Keillor. Delivery counts in these, too. I like ‘em rapid fire
boom-ba-boom-ba-boom.
3. Folding socks. I only say this because I have a bunch of socks fresh out of the drier, staring me in the face and waiting to be paired and folded. Not tonight, boys. I gots ta sleep.

4. Carlos Mencia. I just think he's lame.
5. People who think they're really funny. These people just make me not want to laugh.
6. Dead baby jokes. I dunno, most of them are just supposed to be gross, and I like stuff that's creative more than just stuff that conjures up nasty mental pictures.
7. "That's what SHE said!"
8. Pick up lines. It has got to be the awkwardest effing thing if anyone actually uses one of these. What do you say to a guy who just told you that a polar bear weighs enough to break the ice?

Photo Phun!

OH Golly! I've been having time lately to take pictures, which has been really cool. We had Thursday off (for Yom Kippur, duh!)

We discovered this trail going to a lake on a run last week. There was this really cool stage-like picnic shelter thing by the lake that was shaped like a wedge. There were geese all over the place and we called it Utopia because it seemed like that kind of place.

Lorain Street early in the morning. Foggy, pretty trees.

This is the observatory from the rooftop just outside of it. It still works, and it's cool and old-timey.

Feathers in the grass, all dewy and pretty

Here's a historical building on Professor Street by my dorm. It looks cool, I don't really know why it's special, but there's a plaque out in front of it.

This is just wheat. Thought it was cool.

Gibson's! A really neat little ice cream place that serves breakfast and has yummy candy too.

listen, blog,

Hi blog, it's me. Yeah, it's been a while. Not a whole week, like a school week maybe. Okay, but that's not that bad. You know how one day can turn into two days that can turn into a week....
Hey, blog, I didn't forget about you. I visited you every day, I meant to write in you, I just couldn't find the time, things have been crazy lately. I know. No- well yes- I have another blog, but that's a school blog. You're my blog, my own personal blog, my real blog. I know. yes. I swear. never again.
It has been a while. I really haven't been that busy either. Just sick and trying like mad to get better before I go home for Gen's wedding. It'll be fun to see Steve and Lil and Gilbert after so long and to meet the Dazets. And see my Tina! Dad's cool too. I guess I'm looking forward to the whole thing. I gotta practice singing that song so it sounds wicked good at Genny's wedding (people at Oberlin say 'wicked' a lot. And 'hella' which sounds kind of dumb to me). Should get with Liam, my pianist, this week (Liam is also my nickname for my penis, which is funny 'cause it rhymes!).
I was sobered reading my Cancer Biology textbook today. As you can imagine, it's not a particularly cheery kind of reading, but today's chapter (seven, in case you're following along at home) was especially dreary. In the early days of X-Ray research, apparently, Thomas Edison had a techician whom he used to take X-Ray pictures of hands. He used the same technician, since he had no idea the radiation could be harmful. The poor lab assistant got radiation burns on his hands after a while, and cancer in them not too long after. Despite having his arms amputated, he died of metastatic cancer not too long after. Armless for Pete's sake. Who the hell is Pete, who gets put on the same level as God? 'For God's sake' is the same as 'For Pete's sake,' but I would be much more willing to do something for God than some guy named Pete, for the love of God/Pete.
Madam Curie died in a similar fashion, of leukemia after years of working with radioactive chemicals, as did her scientist daughter. Ouch. Similar radioactive materials are also found in cigarettes. Radon is in fertilizers they use to grow tobacco, and both radon and polonium are found in cigarette smoke (and in high concentrations in smokers' lungs). Smoking a pack a day for a year will subject you to 3000 times more cancer causing radiation than living next door to a nuclear power plant for a year, about 500 times more than getting a chest x-ray. Now I know that, even if this was well publicized and explained in a few Truth commercials, it wouldn't do a thing as far as getting people to quit smoking, but the fact that the government knows about all of this and has for decades now is a bit vexing for me. As soon as asbestos was linked to lung and chest cavity cancer, the US and affluent countries around the world banned it and actively excised all traces of it from their homes and public buildings. Asbestos isn't mined anymore, and asbestos products aren't produced. It only exists in third world countries where they need schools and hospitals and can't afford to tear down the walls and build new ones. Tobacco companies add things (fertilizer to grow tobacco, chemicals for taste and addictivity) to tobacco, and many of these cause emphysema and lung cancer, but really the only thing the government has done is put a warning label and a higher price on cigarettes. I think that kind of sucks. You can't even do anything with cigarettes, like build a house. You just burn them and suck on them. I wish they would just tell the people who make cigarettes to make them a little less harmful, but it's such a moneymaker that they won't even do that. I suppose I could try to do something about it, but then I would have to go into politics, which gives me the willies.

I was saddened to learn about how the economy has hit the All-American town of Springsteenville via the Onion this weekend. I think it's a little funny that the working class people who enjoy and are celebrated in Bruce's songs nicknamed him 'The Boss,' since I picture these same people spending a lot of time badmouthing the management. That really says something about-something. Damned if I know what.
It's been a really pretty weekend in Oberlin. It was chilly Thursday and Friday after some rain, but yesterday was around 70 and today was like 65 and sunny. Some small trees are turning already, and I think fall is going to be beautiful here. Nothing like Stewart road in the middle of October, but luckily I'll be able to enjoy that this year, too! Apparently one of the trees in Tappan Square was injured during the week (below), though how this happened is still a matter of speculation.





I'm feeling sick, which means... I'm human. Which sucks. Makes me feel like I'm a part of something though, which doesn't suck. I guess college is teeming with germs and stuff, I just never suspected putting my mouth directly on the water fountain and sneezing on the sleeve of whoever is closest would be anything but hygienic. hehe Genny put her mouth on a water fountain and got sick once.

Now, I'm no critic. I don't particularly enjoy critics. I like silly movies with little substance and catchy music with little meaning. It's just the way I am. Having said that, I saw Burn After Reading last night and came away really unsatisfied. I feel like the people who liked it just saw that there were stars in it and figured it had to be good. Of the many stars the film boasted, John Malkovich was good, and played a very convincing angry old man. On the other hand, George Clooney was kind of clowny, and had this weird, wide-eyed look that felt like mugging every time something was supposed to be funny. Disappointing, Dr. Ross. In describing the film to other people, a friend of mine reported that Brad Pitt was "phenomenal... Oh my gaaa...." faded out and made a searching gesture. I reported that Brad Pitt was "eh..." and made a noncommittal gesture. I never once during that movie forgot that he was Brad Pitt pretending to be an employee for Hardbodies Fitness Club. He just didn't do it for me. The ending left me wanting more, but more like the way the lame ending for The Golden Compass made me want more than the cool ending of the first two Lord of the Rings made me want more. Like, "You really should have made more movie, I want more so I won't feel so cheated," not "I want another one of these movies! Garsh that was swell!" I made that disclaimer about critics because I usually don't have a lot of negative things to say about movies, music, etc., and lately I have (see earlier post about Steve Martin) . I don't want to be a critic. I really want to be original and I don't think they are at all. Unless you're talking about the late-night animated show The Critic featuring Jon Lovitz which I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch sometime in the 90's.

I like mafia movies. Normally I don't like movies with a lot of graphic violence or gratuitious crime, but give me Bobby Deniro and Joe Pesci, maybe Al Pacino and la cosa nostra, and I'm pretty happy. I don't always like how they kill off some of my favorite people unexpectedly (Joe Pesci), or how they tend to kill people suddenly while they are getting into cars to go visit their wives or return to their humble wigmaking businesses. I guess the people making the films are trying to show how killing is part of these people's lives just like driving cars or making high quality wigs. Still, I tend to get on edge as soon as anyone, at any point in the movie, opens a car door. I don't like that kind of stress. Maybe it means I couldn't hack it in the mob. Hell, I know I couldn't hack it in the mob. They'd give me a nickname like Skinny Joey and push me around all the time. I'd have to be crazy and whack people all the time just to get some respect.
I only mention this because I just rented and watched Goodfellas and liked it a lot.
Today I ran the longest, distance and time-wise, that I ever have in a day or in a single run. I started out with all of the guys who showed up for morning practice (coach lets us choose whether to come at 10am or 4pm on Sundays) and ran towards Carlisle, where we've gone for three out of our last four long runs. I really didn't want to go there even though it's a cool place where they have trails and horse stables and stuff so I turned onto a bike path that runs through Lorain County and took it through the arboretum, where there are a number of paths through woods and another access to the bike path. After jogging around there for a while I hooked back up with the bike path. When I'm running, and I believe this is true for a lot of runners, I'm really tuned in to things around me. I was running on the shoulder of one of the roads, going north into a wind with one leg on the ground and one in the air and I noticed a green frog with brownish spots below the airborne leg. I certainly didn't want to step on it, so I pushed off slightly harder with my left foot and sailed past the frog. While in the air, both legs off the ground, I wondered if the frog was scared by my coming upon it, or if it was even alive to be scared. In flight I saw that indeed it was dead, and had only a red spot on the gravel where its right hind leg should have been. I ran on, left-right-left-right for another half a minute, and wondered how long it had taken me to notice and process that frog. I take around 90 strides in a minute (180 foot contacts) and it had taken me about half a stride to know all of that about a frog and change my actions accordingly. So, maybe 1/6 of a second? Pretty cool. I've noticed this a few times before, trying to avoid things that are only a footfall away and seeing thorns on a protruding branch individually as sharp, shiny spikes and angling my shoulders to avoid the prickers. I don't know if my mind is active or very calm when I'm running that it can notice these things to actutely and even react with control over swinging legs and arms. It is tiring, though, running 2 hours with a pretty sharp focus and not really getting a break. I'm looking forward to a nap before dinner.
Aside from the normal whole-body tiredness I get after a long run, I don't feel too tired. I even learned how to rock climb this afternoon, which was exhausting enough by itself. I will sleep well tonight, anyway.

Columbia Visit!

I just got back from my first visit to Columbia as an official college student. I have to say, everything looks smaller than I remember now that I'm all grown up. It was kind of a whirlwind of a trip, even though I took it pretty easy once I got to Columbia. Flying down for a long weekend was pretty enjoyable, on the whole. I only missed one Bio. lecture for the test tomorrow, and I already know basically everything there is to know about the kidney, nephrons, and such. Thanks anyway Yolanda Cruz. She's my Biology teacher, and she's really cool. Sassy, I would call her. She will sometimes ask questions like she is mad at you a little bit, with her hand on her hip all attitudinal like "Can you synthesize cellulose? You cannot, can you? huh?" I want to answer her like "no ma'am, I can't, but I can try if you like," and hope she calms down some.
In my recent travels I spent a lot of time around airline personnel. They are a group of extremes, I tells ya. Anybody who is actually going somewhere seems like they're in a good mood (the pilots, flight attendants, the bus driver who saw a wild turkey and told me to catch his bus in November so we could come back and get it for thanksgiving); but the people who stay put are always pissed off, it seems. The security people can't believe that anybody doesn't know that you have to take your shoes and your jacket and your belt off and take your laptop out of your bag and put it in its own container and you need your boarding passes again even though I just showed them to the guy on the other side of the metal detectors. the X-ray people are bored and radiated out of their minds, I'm sure. The Starbucks barista was just delightful and greeted me with "What?" instead of "How can I help you?" or some other standard phrase. Maybe it's all the standing while everyone else is moving, I don't know. Airports are stressful places. A lot of hurrying up so that you can wait, it seems.
Fall is coming quickly, and all of the sudden I feel super duper busy. An upperclassman told me once that it was hard not to get involved with a lot of stuff, maybe even too much stuff, at Oberlin. I laughed then. Now, not so much. I've been doing cross country since before school started, and classes started a couple weeks later. It started out slow enough, with one or two classes a day and light homework. Nowadays I have two quizzes every Tuesday, an exam in Bio tomorrow, lab reports due early next week, a trip to Como last week, a job at the Mad Factory downtown (where they mass produce insanity, I tell my friends), and applications in for a paid blogging position with the Office of Communications and a publicity photographer job with the dept. of theater and dance. Whew! I guess i just kept finding stuff that I really wanted to do (or that the college makes me do). Plus, they PAY you to do cool stuff. At the job I have currently I get paid to play improv games with kids, I would be paid if I got the blogging position, and paid for doing photography. I realize the last two are far far from set in stone right now, but getting one of them even would be really cool. Provided I still have time for sleep. That shameless hussy.

Sleep is a fickle mistress, I've found. A mobile bedfellow, a here-today-gone-tomorrow slut of a partner. I've been having trouble with sleep lately. It hasn't been affecting my running or schooling too much, because on the whole I think I've been getting enough sleep. Just kind of weird sleep, that's all. When I try to go to bed, my mind starts going into creative overdrive. I started conceiving a murder mystery in my head last night that takes place in a convent called Then There Were Nuns, then remembered that I had a job interview today and had to get a list of conflicts and references together and all this crap. I just couldn't close my eyes and sleep. My roommate also keeps peculiar hours, which doesn't help. Sleeping most of the day, the "Fussin' Russian" (I just dubbed him) took out the recycling for us Saturday night around 3:30 AM, making some noise with the glass bottles along the way.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post was actually about 4 times as long as is shown here. Blogger.com, useful as it is, messed up the autosave function after I had published the last note and went to add some tags. I lost everything except this first lonely paragraph. I went on to write about how cool it was to be busy with stuff you like to to, fun times I've had around campfires, and all the cures for cancer I've discovered thus far. Also a pretty sweet joke about an American who is invited to a party in the mountains of Scotland. Far too much trouble to re-write, I may clue my chem teacher in about the cancer cures, tho. After I sleep. Oh, sleep...

Cross

I just got home from one of the most fun Cross Country meets of my life. Oberlin has a brand new course with new paths around some soybean fields to our northwest. Half of the course was on the athletic practice fields (which was really great for fans because it was just to the north of Philips gym and we run through the fields four times) and half was back on the brand new path, covered with woodchips and, today at least, little puddles all over the place. It rained all day yesterday and through the night, and only let up a little after four miles today. Sam said it depressed him because this is what Oberlin is like the whole month of November, apparently. I felt like a little kid running through all the tiny lakes periodically through the course and getting so wet that I didn't even look for the driest path through the grass. I started fading halfway through the race and Derek L. really helped me out: he motioned for me to follow him. It's so funny, you can choose to go a little faster at any point during a cross country race, but you don't always want to or see a reason to. But, since Derek gave me a little wave I decided to speed up and stayed with him for the next mile and a half, when otherwise I would be watching his back get farther and farther away. As it turned out, I ran the fastest 8k (approx. 5 mi.) course in 29:07, a big personal best, and really good for such a wet and sloppy course. Then again, Wet N' Sloppy was my nickname on my high school XC team. I figured it had to do more with my kissing style than anything else.
Out of eight teams,the boys got third and the women got first! Joanna J.'s such a badass, she won by about a quarter mile and beat plenty of the boys' times. Not mine though. Hell no. The team aspect is one great thing about doing a sport in college. The school, coaches, and administrators also take really good care of you. We got bottles of Gatorade and Clif bars (chocolate chip and peanut butter) as soon as we finished and I changed into my super-comfy new Asics, provided by the school. I feel like such a big shot. I took a hot shower when I got back to my dorm that felt really really good, washed the wet clothes that I didn't give to Larry, our personable equipment manager, and then laid down for about 45 minutes looking at the ceiling. Nothing makes me quite as tired as a cold, wet, sloppy cross country race. whew.

The Mythbusters Man

The Discovery Channel show Mythbusters is a weekly staple for viewers looking for some urban legend debunking or verification. Right? Perhaps on the surface, but in reality, the main purpose of the show is entertainment for nerds. While some of the myths have practical applications, I doubt that anyone who was washing their clothes in fermented urine stopped after the Mythbusters disproved its efficacy (Ironically, anyone doing that in the first place was probably living in either prison or a Unibomber-style shack in the woods, so they probably missed that episode). What does the format and subject matter of the show say about it viewers, intently watching and laughing along with the semi-science that captivates the biggest audience of any Discovery Channel show?
The target demographic, first of all, is pretty obvious: men. The show features 'science' which is field traditionally, tragically, devoid of women. Fires, explosions, and guns are all staples of the program, even more than they are staples of movies featuring Sylvester Stallone. It certainly isn't true that women don't ever appreciate a big bang, but just that men do so much more. And almost every show ends with a bang, quite literally, including a cement truck that was totally obliterated, a dummy shot hundreds of feet out of a sewer pipe, various household items left in the microwave too long, and a car, dropped from a crane simply because the owner didn't want it anymore. Car myths are huge on Mythbusters, another reason it would appeal to men more than women. To men, women are seen as complements to cars, or the perks of having really nice cars. The female psyche does not seem to be wired in this fashion, for reasons beyond any science the Discovery Channel is willing to tackle.
Of the men watching TV, why aren't all of them watching Mythbusters? Because the good people at the Discovery Channel aren't just targeting the men in America, they're going for the nerdy men in America. By being on the Discovery Channel, first of all, the men who flunked out of high school physics know to stay clear, figuring that the Discovery Channel just plays a loop of a cheetah bringing down an antelope in slow-motion all day. Occasionally, the show will run into a concept that they feel needs explaining, scientifically, and inserts a “WARNING: SCIENCE CONTENT” portion to clarify. Nerds like to chuckle when these screens appear and go to fix themselves some more herbal tea, since they already know Bernoulli's Principle, thank you very much. While these nerds are scientifically literate, they also have to be culturally literate. These myths are usually perpetuated orally, so someone who is hermetically sealed in their bedroom with their glowing computer screen probably wouldn't be interested in whether the hundreds of urban legends and old wives' tales they have heard are true.
So, the perfect Mythbusters watcher? It may be the essential 21^st Century man, after all. Technologically educated, masculine, culturally aware, and a bit nerdy. A man who likes to spend couch time, traditionally a time to sit vegetative and let colorful images wash over oneself, by becoming a little more informed, or maybe picking up little trivia to use in conversation some day. While the hosts of the show, Adam Savage and Jaime Hieneman, hardly have the 'nerdy chic' style that is so pervasive in 21^st Century America, the viewer of the show almost definitely does. They wear glasses, and do so proudly.

Oh, Stevie...

Dear Steve Martin,

I'd love to take this opportunity to talk to you about another one of my favorite persons/places/ things named Stevie, Steve Martin (I assume you read my new blog and have read about my favorite dining hall, Stevenson, and my favorite brother, Stephen). Gosh I used to love watching Steve Martin movies. He was always just so dern clever. I watched Roxanne with my dad when I was like five and loved it then, and loved it again when I was older and could actually understand the jokes. Lately, though Steve, you've been a little off. Let's take a journey through time with Steve Martin, all the way back to...

1979-The Jerk. I was born a young black child...Oh! How great was this movie? Steve and Bernadette, Carl Riener was in this movie! The dog was named Shithead! What's not to love? What a great start to your movie career Steve! Keep going....

1981- Pennies From Heaven. Drama! Music! Romance! Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters again! Plus Christopher Walken! I actually haven't seen this movie, but I've head it's GREAT!

1986-¡Three Amigos! Martin Short, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, El Guapo, Jon Lovitz, Phil Hartman, a singing bush (Randy Newman's voice BTW)! This Movie had EVERYTHING! Stevie's on a roll!

1986 (again, you believe it?)- Little Shop of Horrors. He was the crazy-ass dentist who got fed to the plant! Genius!

1987- Roxanne. Wow. Wonderful modern take on Cyrano de Bergerac. You are truly a genius. Just don't start making family comedies with too many awful sequels and you'll be a legend...

1988- Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Yeah, a man's movie. He's dirty, he's rotten, he's cheating women out of their money. There's a character I can get behind.

1991- L.A. Story. Alright, Steve Martin has some staying power. Excellent film, Sarah Jessica Parker starts her illustrious film career playing a dumb blond in L.A. Literally miles away from her dumb blond in New York act for HBO years later.

1991- Father of the Bride. Steve Martin turns a lame feel-good family movie into a hilarious tear-jerker. Ku-dos Steve, you're a real actor now. Just don't F it up...

1995- Father of the Bride Pt. 2. Umm, I think I remember saying something about family movie sequels... This one wasn't a train wreck, but don't let it happen again Martin, let's get back on track.

1996- Sgt. Bilko. Alright, another silly movie showcasing your silliness. Not bad, go make another classic.

1999- Bowfinger. What the hell...

2003- Bringing Down the House. Bringing down your credibility as well. Sure Eugene Levy's funny no matter how many American Pie movies he does, but honestly, did you read the script the whole way through when you signed on? I remember seeing a preview for this the first time and thinking "Okay, well at least the funniest guy in movies when I was little isn't stooping as low as dressing 'gangsta' and adopting ghetto slang" They saved that for the end of the preview, when I would lose the most respect for him.

2003- Cheaper By the Dozen. Ooohhhhhhhhhh Goddddddddddd! Steve! DO SOMETHING FUNNY! Or at least something original....

2005- Shopgirl. Not that!

2005- Cheaper By the Fucking Dozen 2. It's a Sequel.

2006- The Pink Panther. Well Steve, you wrote a screenplay from a cartoon that was already turned into a quality movie once, then you actually made the movie, which is more than a five year-old can do, so I guess you deserve some credit for that. I wonder if a five year-old could watch this movie, or even be amused by the flickering colors on the screen.

2007- Baby Mama. I have to give it to you Steve, you were a little funny in this one. Mostly because your part was written that way. I'd still rather watch your bit on SNL about "If I could have one wish this Christmas..." than all your scenes from this movie put together. Sorry.

Coming in 2009- Pink Panther 2! WHOO HOOO! Who saw this coming? Who fuckin' saw it coming?


Oh, Steve. I only write this and think these things because I have such respect for you and wish it were different. You started out and you were edgy and really clever (like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop) and fizzled, and now you're soft, and kind of lame (like Eddie Murphy in everything else. Pluto Nash, for instance. Maybe Eddie deserves one of these lists). Find some how, some way to make good movies again please.

Love you Steve,
Joe

Intro-explaining the Soul Porpoise

Hi all,

First I guess I should give a quick note about the title of this blog. The other day I was eating dinner at Stevie Dining Hall (a wonderful establishment whose name I am a big fan of since I have an older brother named Stevie) and I thought for some reason about the phrase "sole purpose," like "my sole purpose for taking this biology class was to see diagrams of the mammary glands" and I thought about a sole porpoise, like a beluga searching around in the middle of a cold lake like "Guys? Guys?" But that seemed like it was too depressing what with people so concerned about polar bears and stuff so I changed it to a Soul Porpoise (all while waiting for the ice cream cart to clear up, you believe that?) and imagined a narwhal, no longer alone, but chilling with some cool shades and maybe an alto saxophone. Oh, and lots and lots of soul.
Giggling like crazy, I returned to my table, hardly able to keep my porpoise thought to myself, and waited for an opportune break in the conversation to interject a snub-nosed whale joke. I don't know if I explained it well, because four of the five people I told just kind of looked at me. I got a lot of "yeah, okay, so back on the subject of cork..." but my new best friend, a girl on the cross country team whose name I have not learned yet, laughed a hearty laugh and asked, "Did you just think of that? Oh my God, that's funny!" Oh, that was rewarding. I should really learn that girl's name.
I've been watching a ton of movies lately, five in the last five days actually, which was made possible by the Oberlin College library, boasting some 4000 DVDs on campus and bunches more through OhioLINK, which allows loans to Oberlin from any library in our solar system, as far as I can tell. Before I took home No Country for Old Men and Life is Beautiful the helpful lady at the library counter told me "you better have a whole box of tissues for that one" I assumed she meant Life is Beautiful, and so I watched this one first. A whole BOX of tissues? I didn't even need one, I didn't come once during that movie.
One thing I really enjoy about Oberlin is the number of people with a good appreciation for irony. Now, rape is never funny. It couldn't possibly be funny and I think it's terrible when it happens in real life. But among friends, in the context of a joke, when someone is moving around a dark house and accidentally has sex with a person he might not consent to having sex with under normal circumstances, it IS funny. People at Oberlin tend to get that. There are places in this world where irony just seems to be lost on people. If you had a friend with an unusually large posterior, and you nicknamed him Bubble Butt, some people who take things too seriously might stop and say "Well now why would you call him something like that? That could hurt someone's feelings!" and make every one of Bubble Butt's friends feel like bad people for using a funny nickname. Not to say that Oberlin isn't politically correct, but they definitely don't take themselves too seriously, which I definitely appreciate.
At dinner the other day I started to think about the phrase "my old man" I don't do this kind of thing that often, thinking about well-worn phrases, but I have been lately I guess. What if, when a person said "My old man always says 'If it ain't chocolate, it ain't worth it'," that person was actually talking about an old man that was theirs, not their father. Just like a pet senior citizen. Again, my dinner mates weren't as into it as I was. I think it would be a really good source for sage wisdom. I want one.