First of all, my apologies to those of you who may have been attempting to download any of the Y-Chromes alumni songs, or view certain things that are hosted on my server at home. My RCA cable modem appears to have finally given up the ghost. It had always been very flaky; there’s something loose in it, such that if you move it, it completely spazzes out. It’ll be very reliable for a couple months, and then something will make it freak, and I’ll spend 2 days going down there and hitting it, unplugging it, hitting reset, or any combination of the three, trying to get it back into shape, and eventually it sort of comes back to life. Well, not this morning.
The truly annoying part is that I already have its replacement. When Sarah got me the wireless setup for the house a year ago, it came with a Linksys cable modem. I immediately slapped it in there and called up Comcast to alert them to the new box, but they couldn’t connect to it. The very nice Indian gentleman on the phone commented that sometimes Linksys cable modems are very finicky about signal strength; if my cable is split more than once before it hits the modem, it’s likely not to be powerful enough. He advised if I want to use it, get a signal booster. In the meantime, we switched back to my old RCA modem.
At some point over the weekend, it went out again, so I slapped it back into shape, but then it went out again late last night, so I slapped it back into shape again, and then this morning I woke up and it’s out AGAIN, and no amount of slapping was going to fix it. I took the opportunity this morning to finally install the cable signal booster I bought (with great trepidation; I didn’t want the added voltage to cause my DVR cable box upstairs to explode and lose me all my episodes of Doctor Who), and all of my TVs still seem to work, although the cable modem still wouldn’t reset. Tonight the Comcast Indians and I will switch to the other cable modem, and hopefully we’ll have a totally awesome signal. And then y’all can go back to downloading copies of Prayin’ for Daylight.
Okay. That’s enough excuses. It’ll be fixed tonight, that’s all you need to know. Possibly sooner, if I continue feeling like I’m going to blow chunks all over my cubicle. (I shouldn’t have put on sunless tanner this morning; it has a rather distinctive stench, and it’s making me nauseous.)
Next, I want to talk about two major media sensations, one of which is probably well known to you, and the other is probably not. The former: “Napoleon Dynamite.” The latter: “Strange Love.”
Sarah and I watched “Napoleon Dynamite” last night, and there are only two things I can say about it:
- WHAT. THE. #$*&. WAS. THAT.
- Man, I’m glad I drank most of a bottle of Sambuca before I put this DVD in.
The movie was jaw-droppingly weird, and had all the production value of a snuff film. Needless to say, we loved it. Vote for Pedro, indeed. Most of the people I talk to are like, “Man, I totally knew guys like that in high school!” or “Oh man, that guy is just like me!” I should tell you, that’s not true for me. I don’t know what kind of weird kind of radioactive mutant dorks everybody else had in high school, but the two biggest nerds at Brandywine High School while I was there were me and my best friend Josh Lewis. We were in the Math League, the Computer Club, Bridge Club, D&D Club, all that stuff, not to mention of course Band and Chorus. And we were still way cooler and had much more luck with Da Lad33z than Napoleon.
Sadly, neither of us were Mexican. Josh was Jewish, though. Technically I suppose he still is, unless he’s converted to Baha’i; anything’s possible.
The plot, basically, is that Napoleon digs this girl, and then he meets Pedro, who transferred up from Juarez, and then Pedro asks out the head cheerleader and gets shot down, and then Pedro asks Napoleon’s love interest to the dance, so then Napoleon asks out the daughter of one of his skeevy uncle’s customers, and they all go to the dance, and Napoleon likes his girl’s sleeves, and then Pedro runs for class president, and a bunch of stuff happens, and then it’s all good when the Uncle leaves town and Napoleon gets to play tetherball with the girl he likes, who turns out to be kinda hot if you get her out of her stretch stirrup pants.
The other totally awesome tidbit of entertainment that’s sucked us in like a college girl after a 4 pack of Bartles & James is Strange Love, which is a spin-off of the Surreal Life. If you missed Surreal Life (I sure didn’t, although I never watched a single show), it involved getting a bunch of has-been C-list celebs into a house together for two weeks. It had Charo, Brigitte Nielsen, Flava Flav, and a bunch of other dorks. Well wouldn’t you know it, Brigitte Nielsen and Flava Flav fell in love. She: tall, buxom, blonde, Danish. He: Short, black, American, over-the-top. After Surreal Life broke up, Brigitte went back to Milan to live with her fiancee Mattia, and Flav went back to New York to mix up a really poor album.
In Strange Love, Flav decides that he misses Brigitte, so he flies to Milan to find her. He gets her address from a guy who believes he knows where she lives, which of course is wrong, so Flav starts walking the streets of Milan, asking random strangers if they know where Brigitte Nielsen lives. Of course, he does this while wearing a massive clock around his neck, and a large Viking helmet on his head. Absolutely priceless. Mix this with his propensity for periodically yelling “FLAVA FLAV!” at the top of his lungs, and you have comedy that knows no equal. It’s on VH1 just about every day at some point, find it and Tivo that jaunpiece, it seriously is the best thing on TV.
Wow.. My Tivo recorded “Strange Love” as a suggestion. I watched it.. not sure why I sat there but I did.. I then “3 thumbs downed it”, deleted it, and threatened to turn it into a toaster-over if it EVER did something like that again. Thank God I was able to cleanse my brain with three hours of Sci-Fi Friday.. :))
-Dave