Today I learned what happens when I see a real live celebrity.
As you all know, I am a HUGE fan of The Office. Huge. This afternoon, as my friends Mouse and Katie and I were waiting at a crosswalk to walk into Central Park, Katie whispers “Steve Carell is on your left.” Being from Denver, I never see celebrities, and so I was a leetle disoriented by this comment. I looked to my left, and holy shit, there was Steve Carell! I stared, hyperventilated a little, and stared some more. It was most certainly him, and he was most certainly on a casual normal person jog. He would be. I nudged Mouse and told her to look at him. We whispered excitedly and stared blatantly. Obviously, none of us thought to say anything (I’d like to think he appreciated that), but he totally smirked and knew we were looking at him. Maybe he’ll blog about me tonight too!
I’m spending this weekend with my college BFFAEAEAEAEs in Hoboken/Manhattan/Brooklyn and I will be chronicling some of the weekend’s adventures, naturally, on SWTCTW.
But before any of that, I’d like to relay a story from my college roommate, Mouse. Her boyfriend and a couple of his buddies — normal city folk who don’t hunt or fish or camp regularly — are experimenting with removing themselves from civilization and living in the woods (with no modern comforts) for a while. The experiment was supposed to last 90 days, and has eventually whittled itself down to one week. I mean, it happens.
I asked Mouse about the BF’s wildnerness status last night. She said that, in fact, she had gotten an unexpected phone call from the BF the day before. Though he wasn’t supposed to have access to things like cell phones, the BF and his buddies had to make an emergency trip to Milwaukee (they had been in the Wisconsin wilderness) to drop off some deer carcass. Um, yeah.
Turns out, the BF and his buddies had set up some snares to trap smaller animals to eat, and they accidentally trapped a deer. When they found it the next morning, it was still alive, but was suffering and had two broken legs. Somehow, these three city boys managed to put the deer out of its misery, skin it, and chop it all up. But rather than letting the portion of the carcass that three boys can’t eat in a few days go to waste (or feeding it to a bear, or whatever it is that you do with excess deer carcass), they decided to drive three hours back to Milwaukee to drop the deer off in a freezer.
Anyway, this side trip gave the BF the chance to call Mouse, and she asked him what he had been eating for the past few days, as the boys had been determined to not bring along any food. This boy, a regular city kid who likes buffalo chicken wraps as much as the rest of us, had eaten nothing but the following for the better part of a week:
Two earth worms
Four frogs
One larvae
A sparrow (eyeballs and brains and everything!!!)
A SPARROW? A sparrow.
This story made me enjoy today’s uhm-mahzing Thai lunch just that much more.
So, we just drank a bottle of champagne, ate three pounds of food (some of it vegetables, I swear!), and spent an hour trying to create some sort of “Best of SWTCTW” list. The problem is, all of our posts are so amazing, and we are so witty and entertaining and wonderful, that it’s hard to pick just a few select posts. Slash we drank a bottle of champagne and it’s just too hard to deal with stuff like that.
The point of all this is that Six Words To Change The World turned one today!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWTCTW! We were very excited when we realized this today, and you should be too. If you’ve been with us for the whole year (Dave, Susannah, Carlos, Mike, Abbey, Kelsey, Maddy, etc., we’re looking at you), thank you from the bottom of our bloggy hearts. (Kathleen: “I was just about to say, ‘Please write “bloggy hearts.” I hate you so much.'”) But seriously, thank you, everyone, for reading. Stick with us, and hopefully we can celebrate our second anniversary together next year. Until then, enjoy a little champagne, or maybe some cake, or maybe just this video (we’re still laughing, a LOT, a year later):
So even though most of us (or maybe just people like me who don’t know much about ’80s hair bands) only know Bret Michaels from his addictingly bad reality show on VH1, apparently he really was, at some point, famous for being in a band. For reasons I haven’t quite figured out, he and his band, Poison, performed at the Tony’s last night, and at the end of the show, Mr. Michaels got clotheslined by his set. See for yourself:
My first I’m-clearly-going-to-hell asshole reaction was to laugh. A lot. Because who doesn’t love seeing people (especially people who are men who wear eyeliner and have ridiculous blonde hair and star in reality shows about falling in love in two weeks) fall? But apparently he might be hurt? Let’s hope he’s not, for the obvious reasons, but also because then we can laugh at this clip with less guilt.
Kathleen must be given credit for finding this wonderful link to 25 of Nickelodeon’s Best Original Songs, but she didn’t post about it yet, so I win! Mwhaha.
I thoroughly enjoyed purusing these videos yesterday, because watching Nickelodeon took up about 50% of my childhood. The other 50% was spent eating some form of fast food almost every night. (My mom used to work late as a nurse and was horrified to discover, a decade later, that chicken fingers and french fries made up a substantial protion of her daughters’ diets. Thanks, Daddy!)
My sister and I love to try to remember all of the Nickelodeon shows that we were obsessed with, and this Top 25 Songs list helps with that. I mean, Doug is a given. But shows like My Brother and Me? Totally forgot about it! Clarissa Explains It All? Amazing. (Don’t pretend you didn’t have the biggest crush ever on Sam. It made me wish I lived on the second floor just so that my best guy friend could have a ladder and sneak into my room whenever he wanted.) And I’m not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed that I still know all the words to the Salute Your Shorts theme songs. I could have used a few references to Wild ‘n’ Crazy Kids or Guts, but I’ll take what I can get with this brilliant piece of You Tube-y nostaglia.
These days, I feel pretty bad for the kids who weren’t allowed to watch as much teevee as I was. What happens if “Nickelodeon Shows” is a Kings category? What if people start talking about how weird it was that Alex Mack turned into silver goo, and you don’t get the reference? How humiliating. (If you are one of those kids, please do yourself a favor and memorize the songs from the Top 25 list. Then you can probably fake your way through most of the references.)
So, to get all big picture for a second…it’s sort of strange to think that I spent so much time watching the teevee and eating horrific fast food, and ended up turning out okay. Of course, I played outside a ton, and I’m sure my mom snuck some vegetables in my diet when my dad wasn’t looking, but if a kid exposed to all that trash and poison managed to get through college and has turned out reasonably healthy and normal, do parents these days really need to be obsessing over Baby Einstein and organic milk and French lessons? I wrote a few speeches on this in college, and now I’m sort of obsessed with this topic. There’s certainly a lot to think about, there. (If you want to read a legitimate article about this, not just the ramblings of an unmarried, childless 20-something, check out this NY Times Magazine article.)
But since I’m (erm, hopefully!) many years away from worrying about this stuff fer real, let’s all just join together and appreciate the awesomeness that was Nickelodeon in the ’90s:
And speaking of le television, if you need a new show to get addicted to this summer, and you’re four years behind the times like I am, please start watching Weeds. You won’t regret it.
KILLER UPDATE: From a Gchat conversation with my friend Rachel, because I know you love getting inside looks at my deep, deep Gchat convos. (Background: Rachel and her friend Meghan are frm South Orange, NJ):
Rachel: here’s a tidbit u will enjoy
they filmed pete and pete in south orange me: no way! Rachel: and used meghan’s house for hair and makeup etc me: NO FUCKING WAY! Rachel: not the whole thing of the show just parts me: THAT IS THE COOLEST THING IVE HEARD ALL DAY
It doesn’t take much to get me riled up on a Monday morning, I guess.
Oh dear God, take a look at this. According to a Billboard article (and last night’s episode of “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”), the male half of the media whore team known as Speidi just came out with a rap single. Yeah. The video is worse than you imagined:
In the Billboard article, Spencer waxes eloquent about his rap skillz, and on the fact that he is like totally the best white rapper ever:
“Honestly, I used to be the biggest Eminem fan on the planet, but the difference now is that he’s so paid. My hustle is the same as his was when he was 25, coming out with his first flow.” And he continues his harsh criticism of [Asher] Roth, whom he recently referred to as a “nerd” in an interview with MTV News. “I want to be the antithesis to Roth,” explains Pratt. “If he’s the good guy right now, I’ll be the villain. I’m more hated than Eminem ever was, so why can’t I be the hated rapper?”
Spencer, I don’t think you’ve ever had “hustle”. And “so paid”? Okay, Kanye West. (I obviously had to look that up…but I understand that “Gold Digger” line now!)
Spencer Pratt, please go away. Take your wife with you. WE DO NOT CARE.
P.S. If you insist on staying around, at least make your wife dye her hair a normal human color.
Here are two psych-ish articles you can think about today, both from the NYT:
Can your dog feel regret? (My dog, Copper, certainly hangs his head and sneaks around a little bit when he does something wrong, like eating an entire cake. Maybe it’s no coincidence.)
Despite the fact that I write for a blog that often focuses wacky celebrity gossip, and despite the fact that I’m a young person with plenty of access to and knowledge of technology, I often entirely miss major pieces of pop culture news. As in, some things on “I Love 2009” will be totally new to me. A few recent cases in point: I’m just starting to know the words to “Just Dance” — don’t talk to me about “Poker Face,” because I don’t know that I’ve heard it. I also don’t understand some basic Facebook commands. Yesterday, whilst Facebooking stalking (that I know), I clicked some button that was apparently the wrong button to get where I wanted to go. And I was flat out mocked by my companions, including my sister, who told me that she was ashamed to be related to me.
I’m not super concerned about things like this. I know that Lady GaGa wears weird apparatuses (apparati?) on her head, and I know how to use Facebook to find out which of my middle school friends are knocked up. That’s about all I need. But I have been hearing an awful lot about this movie called Up. In the past 24 hours or so, a bunch of people have been talking about it, and it’s gotten to the point where I can’t pretend to understand the references anymore. (Comments like “Oh, ha ha, yeah, the dog with the talking collar” or “Right, houses tied to balloons, genius” only work for so long.)
Being the modern day Nancy Drew that I am, I YouTubed that shiz, and here’s what I found:
Now, while that preview is cute, it doesn’t exactly make me want to leave work early, pick up some Red Vines, and run to the nearest theater to see the movie. I do have faith in Pixar, though (like Google and Mac, they seem to never screw up), and comments on Rotten Tomatoes are astonishingly good. And if the movie can make me cry within the first 15 minutes, as one Rotten Tomatoes commenter said Up did for her, you know I’ll be an easy sell.
My little sister was in town this weekend, and we were both up early so that I could get off to work and she could get to the airport. We were ready ahead of schedule and had the fortune of watching some of “The Today Show” — and of being reminded why watching the news can be really depressing. Today’s headlines include:
George Tiller, a pretty infamous late-term abortion doctor from Kansas, was murdered yesterdayIN HIS CHURCH. Where his wife sang in the choir and he was an usher. As Barry said, abortion (particularly late-term) is an incredibly divisive issue and the two sides may not be reconcilable, but this takes it way too freaking far.
GM officially filed for bankruptcy. I won’t even pretend to be able to explain the real economic impact this might have, but all those people on the teevee say this is a really big deal.
An Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris went missing. The plane, which had 228 people on board, went off the radar about three hours after taking off, and that’s not normal. Here’s hoping the plane was full of beautiful people and it will land on a remote island and everyone can live “Lost”-style until we find them and save them. UPDATE: The AP reports that debris presumed to be from the plane has been found in the Atlantic Ocean. So sad.
Celebrity news wasn’t quite as depressing, but there’s a lot going on there as well:
“The Hills” finale was on last night, and LC is OUT. Maybe I’m just naive, but I think it’s remarkable that she seemed to stay so normal throughout the show, and I’m glad that she’s getting out before she totally ruins her life. Via BBM (and Cosmo), my sister informed me that Lauren apparently got angry that the producers were taking over her life a leetle too much. In a world where cute people like Susan Boyle and seemingly perfect families like the Gosselins are ruined by reality teevee, it’s nice to see someone say (albeit after a few years), “No thanks. I’m done.” Oh and also Kristin Cavallari showed up.
Shit got crazyat last night’s MTV Movie Awards! Call me lovestruck, but I think Andy Samberg did a pretty good job hosting. But that nonsense with Eminem getting smothered by Bruno and storming away…and Kristen Stewart seemingly being blazed out of her mind…and Megan Fox managing to make herself look ugly…and I didn’t even watch the whole show!
Let’s hope the week calms down a little after this…
six words to change the world. 