- How Brendan Fraser always plays a man out of time in his movies. He is either going back to see mummies, or frozen for centuries only to wake up in Encino with Pauly Shore, or a football playing Jew in the 1940s - he is never in the right place and time.
- I think this made it into a blog - when The Captain spent an afternoon raving about how good-looking a young Robert Wagner was. But what didn't was the list of "Dos Minutos' Current Top Hollywood Dreamboats." We only got to one - Paul Rudd - and then something more interesting, or less gay, pulled our attention away.
- An acquaintance of Dos is trying to raise money to start the National Hero Hall of Fame, which would honor regular American heroes like firefighters, and policemen. He wants to buy an abandoned train station in Buffalo to build the museum. Sweet idea. We voted in the Dos Minutos office for three nominees: former Red Sox Manny Ramirez, Jack Black, and Billy Corgan. Alternate: again, Paul Rudd (I think it was the same day). All were rejected by the director of the hall as too famous.
- This was a good idea by The Plumber but now I don't remember exactly what the premise was. Something about how the Japanese Americans handled their WWII experience differently than other minority groups have handled the discrimination they have faced. Note to Plumber: a friend of mine started a similar research topic not long after you suggested it, but abandoned it because he had trouble finding enough primary source material. Since he lives in Florida, though, he couldn't possibly be less well-located to do that research, so I think that the topic stands as a good one, though I don't remember exactly what it was. Note to all Dos Minutos readers: just because The Plumber overvalues every New Jersey Net by approximately fifteen to seventy percent doesn't mean he isn't super smart in all other areas.
- Oh, I was going to write a whole blog post about how I played a game of Skins (a gambling golf game) against Sammy Davis Jr. I didn't - I was just going to make it up. I still may do that one.
- Oh, one day at the office The Captain and I talked about how every time you transfer your porn files from one medium to another, like flash drive to cd-r, a little bit is lost in the copy. The Captain said that, over time, "that takes all the romance right out of them."
- If you knew that your favorite sports team would probably win the title by doing it, would you sign Bin Laden to a one year contract and give him immunity from prosecution? Then, after the year you have to return him to Pakistan safely. Someone pointed out that you probably wouldn't win the title because he would adversely affect your chemistry, but whoever that person was totally misunderstood the premise of the question. Like, that's the major logistical problem with putting Bin Laden on your basketball team - he is going to adversely affect chemistry? How about the immediate international outrage, and the violent homicidal mobs every single city your team went to? This whole idea started when I realized that Bin Laden looked like former Chicago Bull Scottie Pippen in disguise: http://z.about.com/d/crime/1/0/w/S/pippen_s.jpg. You think about it, they would probably have about the same game: lanky shutdown perimeter defenders who could rebound and finish in transition. Anyways...
- I think I mentioned this to people but never posted it: remember when that lady called Obama a terrorist, then McCain snatched the mic out of her hand to correct her? That type of behavior - grabbing the mic - could literally get you killed in a rap battle, my friends...
- Speaking of that, I had a whole list of NBA preseason predictions based on the campaign but I killed it because they were all making fun of how McCain was about to get smoked. Dos Minutos is to the left of Frederick Engels, generally, but we welcome and celebrate all viewpoints. Even The Captain, who wouldn't bend over to help a union member out of a collapsed mine shaft, is starting to be swayed over to Dos' official motto: "Socialisme o muerte, by Antoine Walker!" Welcome to the dark side, Captain - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Incidentally, the only thing that I remember from the Election-NBA preview was: The CNN's John King Award (for hugest head) - for the 8th straight year, Memhet Okur of the Utah Jazz.
- Someone had the idea to research a write a history of Cuban athletes defecting to the US. Good idea, honestly, but I don't speak Spanish so I can't really do that.
- Oh, when former Heat point guard Jason Williams, from rural West Virgina, considered signing with an Israeli team this offseason I was going to write a blog post about how a lot of people aren't aware of the rich Yiddish heritage that exists in West Virginia.
- I don't remember who said it first, but one day in the Dos offices we decided that a lot of our political divisiveness in this country could be traced back to Susan B. Anthony, and someone said that "if she were here right now, I'd punch her in the face."
- There was an idea to write a post about what black dudes do, or, more specifically, what black dudes on tv look like they do. Like, if you saw Hill Harper on an episode of ER, what types of things do you think he would do in his spare time, based solely on how he looks? Mami Minutos and I spend approximately 90% of our tv watching time discussing this topic - the other 10% is the same topic, but about white dudes.
- The Captain got a new boat and I wanted him to name it The Tiramisu, but he wouldn't.
- Oh, I was going to write a post about how I have no respect for James Earl Jones. He takes advantage of people thinking he knows stuff because his voice is deep, and profits off it, while we all buy some stupid product just because he makes it sound good. Shame on you, James Earl.
- The cowboy from the Village People? Oh, no, I wrote that one, forget it...
- Big debate one day at Dos which spilled over to our satellite office in Broward: the best container to drink a soda in. I am going to my grave claiming it is the bottle. Thor claims it is the fountain pull - that's nuts. Too risky: you may get flat and too syrupy, you may get bad water, or bad ice - plus, I don't think the perfect fountain pull is better than a bottle anyways - the bottle condenses the flavor perfectly in the glass, then funnels it out through the neck in to your taste buds.
- We were going to rank all two guards in order of athleticism because Plumber thinks that Manu Ginobilli is not an elite athlete. He is.
- I read something that a historian named Alice Kessler-Harris wrote in which she claimed that she was engrossed in studying "relationships between mechanisms of order and those of protest." Well put.
- Oh, a post about New Yorkers positing the premise that they have crossed the threshold of reversal with their rudeness. Like, how if we don't start to reverse global warming now, in a couple of years its effects might be irreversible. Are we past that point with New Yorkers and their behavior? They can never go back, right? Its like throwing a shuttlecock at the Great Wall of China to try to knock it down. In a related topic, as a person of partial Jewish heritage, it is frustrating when people claim someone is being annoyingly Jewish, when what they really mean is that they person is from, and/or acting like someone from, New York.
- Oh, I just read another note that elaborated on the McCain "grabbing the mic" incident in which I compared a rap battle to a town hall meeting. I forgot the details, though.
- Does anyone know that song by UB-40 "Rat in the Kitchen?" Who even knew they had a song besides the utterly horrific "Red, Red Wine" As I listened to the rat song I was thinking "this is bizarrely awful," then I looked down at the scroll on my radio, saw it was UB-40, and was, like, "oh, okay."
- A study of Jock Jams. Evaluating what is and what isn't, what are the best and worst of the bunch. This is still totally valid, this needs to be done.
- Here is a note that reads "eyeballs and evolution." I don't remember the premise - I think maybe it was something about why haven't our eyeballs developed to be more protected, but I am not sure. I guess, compared to frogs' eyeballs, they are.
- Oh yeah - why isn't American Olympic basketball coach an elected position? That's ridiculous, we just get this fascist organization which selects whomever they want - we should get to vote. I am voting for Rick Majerus, but you know Craig Robinson is going to have an inside track.
- The two greatest competitors I have ever seen: Michael Jordan, and Wes from the Real World-Road Rules challenges. I am not kidding. Not only that, those challenges are amongst the most grueling petri dishes of human competitiveness that exist. There is not one ounce of empathy in any of those kids. Even Michael Jordan would help a guy who fell down up once in a while. Not these Real World kids - you can't, you would get crushed. Jordan could hang with them, but most NBA players could not.
That's all for now. Back Friday for the Lakers game.
