New York Doll

I saw an interesting movie on Saturday, called "New York Doll." At first I wasn't even paying attention to it, it was just on in the background at a party, but it gradually sucked me in. I definitely recommend it.

It's about a punk rocker who converted to Mormonism.

Here's the Synopsis:

New York Doll relates the meteoric rise, resounding fall, and recent all-too-brief resurrection of the seminal New York glam-rock-punk band, the New York Dolls, but it is foremost a story about the band's amazing bassist and leader, Arthur "Killer" Kane. With empathy, respect, and humor, director and friend Greg Whiteley follows Kane and interviews key musicians, friends, and colleagues to uncover the legacy of the Dolls and their significant impact on the London music scene in the dizzying heyday of the early 1970s.

After Kane and his band bottom-out on drugs and alcohol, he disappears from music, embracing a surprisingly different path when he becomes a born-again Mormon. When rocker Morrissey organizes a London reunion of the New York Dolls, Kane buys his guitar back from a pawnshop, takes leave of his Family Center library job, and heads back to New York City to prepare for an unlikely comeback.

Google maps is the best. True dat. (Double true!)

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in a few years, since it isn't very funny anymore. In fact I don't watch much TV at all, except for a few sporting events. But a couple months ago I read on the net about a funny "digital short" on SNL, so I checked it out here. Hilarious stuff. Almost made me want to watch more TV.

At that time I sent the link to a few friends and family members, and I figured it was pretty old news by now, but I was talking to my friend Ryan on Saturday and he had inexplicably never heard about it. So I thought I'd better add it to this blog for the benefit of anyone else who was overlooked.

My favorite lines:

1. Google maps is the best. True dat. (Double true!)
2. You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.

In case you can't make out all the lyrics, here they are:

Lazy Sunday wake up in the late afternoon
Call Parnell just to see how he's doing

Hello?
What up Parns?
Yo Samberg what's cracking?
You thinking what I'm thinking? (Narnia!) Then it's happening.

But first, my hunger pangs are sticking like duct tape.
Let's hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes.
No doubt, that bakery's got all the bomb frostings.
I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling.

Two, no six, no twelve, baker's dozen!
I told you that I'm crazy for these cupcakes cousin.

Where's the movie playing?
Upper West Side, dude.
Well, let's hit up Yahoo! Maps to find the dopest route.
I prefer Mapquest. (That's a good one, too.)
Google maps is the best. True dat. (Double true!)

68th and Broadway (Step on it sucker!)
What you wanna do Chris?
Snack attack ***!

The Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Yes, the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
We love the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Pass that Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.

Yo stop at that deli, the theater's overpriced.
You got the backpack? (Gonna pack it up nice.)
Don't want security to get suspicious.
Mr. Pibb and Red Vines equals Crazy Delicious.
Yo reach in my pocket, pull out some dough.
The girl acted like she'd never seen a ten before.
It's all about the Hamiltons baby.
Throw the snacks in the bag and I'm Ghost like Swayze.

Roll up to the theater. Ticket buying what we're handling.
You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.
Parked in our seats, movie trivia's the illest.
What Friends alum starred in films with Bruce Willis?
We answered so fast that we're scary.
Everyone stared in awe when we screamed Matthew Perry.

Now quiet in the theater or it's gonna get tragic.
We're about to get taken to a dream world of magic.

The Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Yes, the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
We love the Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.
Pass that Chronic (What?) Cles of Narnia.

Me as an old Asian

I ran across this face altering site that lets you morph your photo into a different age or race.

My favorite was me as an Asian:

And here's me as an old person. Not the best likeness but still SCARY!!

The Amazing Race

(Easily bored? Illiterate? You can skip straight to the photos here!)

There's a popular TV show that most of you have probably seen, called the Amazing Race. I assume most people have seen it, because whenever I tell anyone that I haven't seen it, they're always shocked. But anyway, even though I've still never seen the show, I participated in a local version of the Amazing Race on Saturday night. The TV show version has a prize of $1 million. Ours was only half a million. :)

A girl from church, Rebecca Barton, decided to put it all together, just because she's cool like that. I'm sure it was a ton of work.

The race consists of different teams performing different tasks, and then at the completion of each task, finding the clue indicating what the next task or destination is. I was on a team with Cami Leeper, Ryan Wells, and Todd Bigelow.

To start off, we had to find a certain park, and then find a person at that park who had our first task, which was to tie the legs of all our teammates together and then run around the bases of a softball field.

After that, we had to go to Mesa High, run up and down the bleachers, around the track, over the river, through the woods, etc. Then we got "road blocked" which means that one of the other teams found a road block sign so they were able to call in an extra task for us to do. For the extra task we had to find a stranger and have him sing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. Of course, the guy we found was Mexican and didn't know the song, so we had to teach it to him really fast and have him sing it along with us. Wish we had that on video. :)

After completing all the running and singing, the next clue led us to the Mesa Temple, where we received an assignment to go to Kiwanis Park in Tempe and find a certain small obstacle course and complete it. Initially we found the wrong obstacle course, so we ended up doing 2 of them. We definitely got our exercise for the evening.

After that we had to go to a certain ice cream shop. The people at the shop were apparently participating in the race, because they knew what to do. We ordered a certain large frozen yogurt, and at the bottom of the frozen yogurt was the next clue. We all got brain freezes from eating frozen yogurt too fast. Eventually I got impatient and stuck my hand in the frozen yogurt and pulled out the clue. Ryan kept eating what was left. Good thing my hands were clean. :)

The clue in the yogurt directed us to a swimming pool. But before we could get there, someone roadblocked us again, so we had to stop at a gas station and buy a soda. Cami ran in like The Flash and grabbed a soda as I took photo documentation, then she threw the money at the cashier and left. As we were leaving the cashier was saying, "I'm going to need to ring that up for you..." Hopefully she didn't call the cops. :)

We made it to the swimming pool and looked around for the next clue. But there was none to be found. We looked all over, we even made this young couple that was cuddling on the pool steps get up so we could look under them. There was nothing. After about 8 minutes another team showed up, and right after them the moderators showed up and threw some balloons into the pool. We were so fast we had beaten the clues there! :)

We had to jump in the pool (actually only Todd jumped in) and grab a balloon, pop it, get the clue out, find some dice on the bottom of the pool, and then have two people on the team roll two sixes in a row with the dice. It took us quite a while to get the sixes, and by the time we did the other team had left already. That was the last task, and we just had to race back to the home base. We made it just behind the other team.

I griped a little bit about having to wait for the last clue, so the winning team took the high road and declared us the winners, even though we really got second place. But either way, lots o' fun was had by all.

You can view my photos from the event here.

Improv Everywhere

I only really follow two websites, espn.com for sports, and digg.com for tech news. Yesterday on digg I noticed an article about Best Buy being invaded by improv artists. I glanced at the article, and it quickly led me to the Improv Everywhere website.

I am not that easily impressed by anything on the Internet, but I found Improv Everywhere to be fascinating and hilarious. It's a little hard to describe without seeing the site yourself, but they describe themselves as a group that "causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places." I know that sounds a little weird, but the missions are just plain cool.

A few favorites:

1. The hypnotist -- a phony hypnotist and assistant hypnotize a bunch of people in a park, and then flee the scene, leaving the people in their hypnotized state (kind of like in Office Space).
2. The time warp -- a group of people go through a series of intricate interactions in a Starbucks, and then repeat the exact same actions over and over in a loop.
3. U2 on the rooftop -- A phony U2 plays an impromptu concert on a rooftop (with a Korean-American as "The Edge." :)

Great, amazing stuff. I can't believe it's been going on since 2001 and this is the first I've heard of it.

Who is this Boris Diaw?

I've been in Arizona seven years now, and I've become a fan of the Phoenix Suns. I don't think I'll ever learn to love ASU, but I have grown to like the Suns. They have a quality group of guys, a great coach, and they're fun to watch. (And of course, Shawn Marion and I are tight!)

I was watching game 6 of the Suns / LA Lakers playoff series with a group of rabid Suns fans Thursday night. (The Lakers were up 3 to 2 in the series, so a win would have clinched the series for them.) The Suns were down 3 with 6 seconds to go, the Lakers were about to start their celebration, when Tim Thomas hit a big 3 pointer to send the game to overtime. And then who would score 6 crucial points at the beginning of overtime to keep the Suns in the game? BORIS DIAW! Who? The NBA's most improved Frenchman came through bigtime. Who even knew they played basketball in France?

Then with about 3 minutes to go in overtime, my friend Dave was fiddling with the remote, and he accidentally shut off the cable system. Not just the TV, but the whole thing. He turned it back on, and it said "booting up" and then did nothing. No one knew how to get it working. There was dead silence in the room. Someone muttered "I can't believe this is happening." Then after about another minute of everyone trying to help turn the TV back on, someone went and grabbed a radio and turned it on. The Suns were taking it to the Lakers. We finally got the TV back on with about a minute to go, and the Suns up 9. Despite a couple more lucky shots by Kobe, the Suns held on for the win. Pandemonium ensued. Game 7 in Phoenix on Saturday!