My Favorite Things 2010

Favorite Songs
Download, listen and enjoy a mix of some of Can You Dig It?'s favorite recorded music presented by Lambda Lambda Lambda's in-house DJ, Lamar Latrell.




2010 Favorites Side A by canyoudigit

Groove Me/Maximum Balloon
Dave Sitek from TV On the Radio teams up with Theophilus London and you're gonna have to wipe the funk off your face.

Got Nuffin/Spoon
An epic song from Spoon's really, really good album, Transference.

I Wanna Be Your Telephone/Jamie Lidell
Funky in his own right, Jamie Lidell channels Prince/Morris Day grooves from the golden Purple Era.

Everlasting Light/The Black Keys
I love falsetto rock.

Doin' It Again/The Roots
Black Thought kills it, once again: "Dear Diary/The fans still swear by me/Even though I'm late night now, like 'Here's Johnny'."

The World (Is Going Up in Flames)/Charles Bradley
62-year-old soulman brings the heat!

Flying Overseas/Theophilus London
It's usually a no-no to have two songs from one artist on the same side, but since the first one is officially Maximum Balloon and this one is officially the hotness, I made an exception. Also, go download all of Theophilus' mixtapes. They're all free and full of great music. I can't wait to hear the music he actually sells.

I Can Change/LCD Sound System
Straight up British retro dance pop.

Think It Over/Bilal
Any of the songs from Bilal's innovative album Airtight's Revenge could be here, but this one gets special placement because it's not every day that a love song references the assassination of Dr. King.

Forget/Twin Shadow
I can't help but love Twin Shadow.


2010 Favorites Side B by canyoudigit

Never Tear Us Apart/Beck's Record Club (Beck, St. Vincent, Liars)
While re-recording the entire Kick album, Beck and his friends make this INXS song beautiful again.

Glass Mountain Trust/Mark Ronson & The Business Intl featuring D'angelo
D'angelo makes a triumphant return on this wild Mark Ronson song.

Power/Kanye West
Need a pick-me-up on the way back to work from lunch? Let Kanye be your guide.
"Screams from the haters/gotta nice ring to it/I guess every superhero need his theme music."

Black Magic/José James
Great voice on a great track.

Flash Delirium/MGMT
The video really brings this song to life.

Games You Can Win/RJD2 featuring Kenna
Flawless, all the way around. Listen, repeat. Listen, repeat.

Simili Life/Quadron
Again, any song from Quadron could get on this list. This one does it for me every time.

Headphone Rock/Donwill, Von Pea, Che Grand
Three of my favorite MCs rock the mic over one of The Roots' Late Night with Jimmy Fallon "sandwich" songs.

Loving You Is Killing Me/Aloe Blacc
I'll wait while you pick the soul outcho teeth.

Jupiter and the Moon/Los Lobos
These guys just do no wrong in my book. David Hidalgo's voice dynamite.

Favorite Things 2010

Favorite LPs
No Glee compilations here, you've got to have artistic vision to make it on this list.



Gorillaz/Plastic Beach
Maybe the best Gorillaz album so far... and that's high praise.



John Legend & The Roots/Wake Up!
The Roots take some of the polish off of John Legend on this gritty album of covers.



Quadron
For the record, I bought this Danish album in late 2009, but it qualifies for this list because it didn't officially get released in the U.S. until 2010. That's good enough for me. Truly, this record is one of my all-time favorites. Perfect from start to finish.



Twin Shadow/Forget
New Wavey, emo soul that sometimes sounds like Morrissey, but I don't hold that against it.



Janelle Monae/The Archandroid
Spacey, cinematic soul that plays to the film studies nerd in me with references to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.



She & Him/Volume Two
Zooey Deschanel's voice makes me tingly like a schoolboy who needs a minute before walking up to the chalkboard. She and M. Ward make sweet rocking songs with references and influences that span decades of good popular music.



Spoon/Transference
Forward-thinking rock-n-roll.



Kanye West/My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye harnesses his demons into an entertaining hip-hop masterpiece, complete with all the crazy, cringe-worthy moments you would expect. But in the end, it's all worth it.



Jamie Lidell/Compass
Not a one-trick pony, Jamie Lidell shows his command of a variety of musical stylings all anchored by his powerful voice.



Airtight's Revenge/Bilal
Record label and record leaking issues tried to eff-up the career of one of my favorite singers. Thankfully, the setbacks didn't stop Bilal from creating a genius work of inspired music -- no classification available or required.

Favorite Things 2010

Favorite Actor
I haven't seen Tron, and probably won't, but I'll be damned if Jeff Bridges isn't my favorite actor of 2010. He deservedly won the Oscar for Crazy Heart this year and was just as amazing performing the Cohen brothers' astounding Old West cowboy dialogue in True Grit. On a side note, True Grit is great mostly because of that dialogue and the actors who deliver it -- all of them, even Matt Damon. On a side, side note, I just saw The Informant, and really enjoyed Matt Damon in that, too. Still, it's Jeff Bridges for favorite actor in 2010.

Favorite Unintentional Insult
An old lady who kind of looked like Joan Rivers wins this one just under the deadline for a comment made today at Chick-fil-A.

As Sofia and I were finishing up our lunch, she stopped by our table and said, "Oh, I've been watching this little girl. She's so beautiful and well-behaved, and that's a rare gem these days. She's going to be Miss America someday. Are you related?"

Favorite Things 2010

Favorite Meal
I'm definitely a creature of habit. If I go to a restaurant and like what I order, I'll order that same thing on every return visit for years. Too many times I've tried to be adventurous and switch up my order, only to be disappointed.

Fortunately, that's not the case with our friend Chin's restaurant, Sweet Basil. Everything they serve is dynamite, and if I can bring myself to venture away from my current standing order, whatever I select becomes my new favorite. It started with the green curry, moved on to the mussamun curry, and then the pad see-u. But in 2010, the new best meal at Sweet Basil or anywhere else in the greater Greenville area is the curry/green beans/red and green pepper/lime leaf stir fry, pad prik-king. It's fun to say and it will blow your effing socks off.

Favorite Scheme to Get Fit
Somehow I was able to convince Santa Claus that the only way I was going to get fit in 2011 was if he brought me an Xbox Kinect in November. So, he did, and now I have a chart to log the future hours I will spend sweating without a controller in my living room.

Although a month-long sinus infection has me off to a slow start, I remain hopeful primarily because of the genius game that is Dance Central.

I used to get frustrated that Dance Dance Revolution severely limited my talent on the dance floor because it simply measured whether you could step on the right buttons in a pre-determined rhythm. But now, thanks to the technology of Kinect and Dance Central, I'm finally able to use all of the vast tools with which I've been blessed to totally smoke the competition and garner accolades from the game's choreographer/hype man: "You got this on lock!" he frequently cheers while I try to keep my husky jeans from falling off my ass.

Using the Kinect motion-sensor camera, the game tracks how accurately you follow the choreography -- from the hands to the feet to the hips. Each of the 32 songs has different moves, which you learn in "Break It Down" mode. Once you've run through the steps, you put them all together and perform the song.

It's fun even to do the queeny dances to the Lady Gaga, but what makes the game great is the awesome soundtrack selections. All of those hours spent in the early '90s dancing to Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison" and Wreckx-n-Effect's "Rump Shaker" have finally paid off for me.

Another important feature for professional dudes like me is the freestyle breaks included in each song, where you get to break loose and shake it while the Kinect camera records video of you for everyone to admire, study and/or laugh at. I would share some of me droppin' it like it's hot, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet. Here's one of Ellen:

My Favorite Things 2010

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book: Create lists of "the best" or "the worst" this or that of the year and let the debate rage in the public square or the comments section. Rolling Stone has a long history of creating lists of the greatest somethings of all time, Huffington Post does it every day for the dumbest things, and during this time of year, it only gets worse with every blogger in the world releasing best of the year lists.

I'm not going to claim to have the depth of knowledge that would be required to form an educated opinion on the best/worst any thing (save maybe the Best Prince Songs Released in 2010), so I won't be doing that here. Instead, I'm stealing a page from Oprah's book (club) and just announcing my favorite things of the year. There can be no external debate. These are just my own very personal favorites.

So, let's get this rocking:

Favorite Loaf of Bread
Got-dang! The Pillsbury people are geniuses. Maybe "How It's Made" has already done this episode, but I would love to see how they get their delicious dough in those cardboard tubes.

Regardless, from the cinnamon rolls to the crescent rolls, I've been a big fan of the Pillsbury folks for many, many years. My admiration was only further cemented when Carolina brought home their Crusty French Loaf. Just pop open the cardboard tube, bake for 25 minutes, and you have a simple, hot, delicious crusty bread. It's magical.

Eat it. You'll love it.

Favorite Technological Innovation
Hooking up the internet directly to the TV and being able to instantly stream Netflix titles has saved my whole family from the dangers of crap television and, thanks to the Netflix Instant Queue Challenge, prevented this blog from drying up without new content.

Netflix now offers a streaming-only package for $8 a month that includes lots of great TV shows and films and absolutely no Snooki.

Elizabeth Edwards

A lot people in this world are dealt a pretty crappy hand, but Elizabeth Edwards had to have one of the shittiest ever: Her eldest son died in a car accident, she got cancer, her husband cheated on her and fathered a child with a sleaze-ho while she had cancer, and then everybody found out about it.

Sad, but she seemed to handle it the best anyone could. She didn't run out to get a reality show.

Unfortunately, her death gives me another reason to revisit my John Edwards campaign stop photos from the '04 Democratic primaries. I was all proud of them (check out John's glistening wedding ring). The one above is not a great one, especially of Elizabeth, but I guess she survived worse tragedies.

Netflix Challenge: Romance and stuff

We're over the half-way hump on our quest to whittle the Netflix Instant queue down to zero, so it should be smooth sailing from here.

David and Layla
Another indie culture-clash (American Jews vs. Iraqi immigrants) romance film, but without all the stuff that would make it enjoyable. It received decent reviews, and Carolina liked it, but I thought the lead actor was a little over-the-top and the writing not so hot. The only enjoyment for me was seeing a street and some shops very near where I once stayed in Brooklyn. Besides that? Blah.




Jerry Maguire
This is almost a better football movie than it is a romance -- and that's a compliment. It's one of the Cameron Crowe movies that's Cameron-Crowey in a good way. People will watch this one in 40-50 years on the future version of Turner Classic Movies and get nostalgic for the 1990s.

But don't believe me. Listen to my hero, Harold Ramis:




The Headless Woman
Arthouse Argentinian movie about a woman who hits something with her car, then gradually begins to think she killed someone. There's an interesting subtext here about class and race in Argentina, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. Maybe you should give it a shot.




Just 37 to go.

Netflix Challenge: Tell No One & Black Dynamite

Tell No One
An interesting thriller from France featuring Mary Sharon from Under the Cherry Moon, aka Kristen Scott Thomas. I liked it.




Black Dynamite
To fully appreciate Black Dynamite, you need to have some experience with the cliches of the Blaxploitation genre. But even without, there are some good laughs to be had and plenty of "Can you dig it?" references.




Forty-one titles left to go.

Sofia Quote of the Day: Something Gross

The following conversation occurred on the car ride home today.









I will refer to it in the future every time she tries to bring a boy home.

Netflix Challenge: The King of Kong

The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters is, perhaps, the best movie featured so far in this Netflix Challenge. It's a riveting documentary detailing one mild-mannered, OCD father's quest to beat the 25-year-old world record high score in Donkey Kong. The original record holder, Billy Mitchell, is one of the all-time great film villains, and the supporting cast of classic video game nerds are hilarious.

Thanks to my boy, Mike Little, for recommending this one to the queue.

Watch it now!

Bill Maher gets it right

This great "New Rule" from Bill Maher isn't as much of a critique of the Rally to Restore Sanity as it has been billed. It's actually a message that any good progressive/liberal should hear. The right keeps moving farther to the right and we're supposed to meet them in "the middle" which isn't the middle any more? Forget it.

Bilal's 'Robots'

I love Bilal's music. His new album, "Airtight's Revenge," is great from start to finish.

This is his new awesome video for "Robots."



Here's a live cover of "Tainted Love."

FULL SCREEN
The Sounds of VTech / Bilal: Tainted Love

Netflix Challenge: Halloween Wrap-Up

Teeth
Just your run-of-the-mill tale of a pretty and chaste young high school abstinence advocate who discovers she's got Vagina Dentata. Three weenies get chomped by film's end, including one attached to that weird dude from Nip/Tuck.



Legion
I fell asleep during this one. Carolina says she liked it, and I have to admit, the trailer makes it look pretty cool.




Removed by Default
Two of the three films in German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BRD trilogy, Marriage of Maria Braun and Veronika Voss, made an artsy exit from the queue without getting watched. Seemingly out of the blue, Netflix decided Oct. 31 was the last day for these films in the streaming catalog. If you're interested, someone posted all of Maria Braun on YouTube.



Also eliminated by default is The International. The only reason this one was added in the first place was because I liked the look of the poster:



And unless I get to it tonight -- and right now it's not looking good -- The International will be joined in the default bin tomorrow by Sidney Lumet's version of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.

Thank you, Netflix. Only 44 more to go.

Happy Halloween from the Netflix Challenge

I'm not a big gross-out horror guy, but this funny and scary Norwegian Nazi zombie movie, Dead Snow, is a whole lot of fun.



Just 49 titles remain on the queue.

Blogger slams use of 'slams' in headlines

If I read one more "So and So slams So and So or Such and Such" headline, I'm going to puke on the computer.

It's indicative of two things:
1) The laziness of contemporary journalism, where it's much easier to write and report on "he said this quote, then she responded with this quote" stories;

2) The public's appetite for gossipy personal drama over facts that might actually impact them. Somewhere, somebody has done a study that shows headlines that include "slam" generate more clicks.

Here's a random sampling from the past week or so:


James Carville slams Obama

Deputy FM slams Vatican communique as libel against Jews

Taylor Swift slams Kanye West

Iraqi PM Slams Timing Of WikiLeaks Revelations

BJP slams Kashmir interlocutors for Pak remark

Archbishop Dolan Slams New York Times for Bias

Glenn Beck slams Tides Foundation, George Soros over boycott threat

Zaragoza Coach Jose Aurelio Gay Slams Referee In Wake Of Barcelona Loss

Steve Jobs SLAMS Competitors In Lengthy Rant

Sharron Angle SLAMMED By Tea Party Rival Jon Scott Ashjian: 'She Lies'

Conway's Attack On Paul Slammed By Fellow Dems

Arianna Slams Wall Street On CNN's 'Parker Spitzer': They're Not Making Things, They're Making Things Up

Olbermann Slams O'Reilly For 'View' Comments: 'Bigot And Islamophobe'

Gardner Slams Markey On Immigration Stance

Marijuana Legalization Group SAFER Slams Hickenlooper, Lauds Tancredo

Brewer Slams Mexico for Legal Brief Criticizing Immigration Law

Watchdog Slams Companies Hired To Prevent Foreclosures

Karl Rove Slams Fox News Hosts For Bringing Up Anti-Rove Protesters

Netflix Challenge: Super High Me, Singles and SNL

While a couple of weeks have passed since the last update to the Netflix Challenge tally sheet, that doesn't mean we haven't been hard at work whittling down the queue.

Super High Me
This one has been on the queue almost since the beginning. We finally got to it, and it wasn't too bad. Inspired by Super Size Me, comedian Doug Benson (who High Times magazine called the second best "Pot Comic" working today) begins an experiment where he'll spend 30 days without smoking weed, followed by 30 days of intensive weed smoking. The results of the experiment aren't that interesting, except he did score higher on the SAT while high. What is interesting is his tour of the legal grass dispensaries in California. The sticky icky is lovingly photographed. Makes you want to move to Cali with back pains.





Singles
Members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains (Nirvana said no) all make appearances in this Cameron Crowe movie that's a little too Camerony-Crowey for me.





SNL: The Best of Commercial Parodies
The commercial parodies are often the best part of any SNL episode. This compilation includes some of the best of all time: Bass-O-Matic, Buckwheat Sings, Oops I Crapped My Pants ("imagine this pitcher of iced-tea is really a gallon of your feces"), Mom Jeans, Chris Farley's "Hibernol," and maybe my favorite:




Doubt
I've been wanting to see this Philip Seymour Hoffman movie for a while, but when it comes down to it, you're just never in the right mood for a drama about priests and sex abuse. So, it gets pushed farther and farther down the queue until one day Netflix removes it from the Instant catalog. Thanks, Netflix. That takes off a lot of the pressure, not to mention one more film from the queue.

Countdown: An even 50 remain.

Jamie Lidell & Twin Shadow

I put on my brand spanking white Nikes, called up my sister-in-law and jetted up to Asheville last night for a great concert.

Jamie Lidell is all the modern blue-eyed British ElectroSoulFunk you'll ever need in this life. His last album, "Jim," reached classic status in my house, and now that the retro-Motown sound has just about been done to death, he comes back with "Compass," which sounds completely different-- the only common denominator being his amazing voice.

He's known for his ability to be a live sampling one-man band during his shows, but he had a full band with him last night and they were super funky, especially on the Prince-inspired "I Wanna Be Your Telephone."



Prior to the show, I hadn't heard of the opening act, Twin Shadow, but he was cool.

I say "he," because "Twin Shadow" is really just George Lewis Jr. His given name sounds like he should be challenging for the heavyweight title, but he's just a transplanted Brooklyn hipster doing cool new wavey songs, so he's (say it in a whisper) "Twin Shadow."

That's the latest trend, solo artists giving themselves band names. As far as I know, it started with Bright Eyes. That's just one dude, really. Sam Beam is a drink your grandpa would order, but then again, so is his stage name, "Iron and Wine." Conor J. O'Brien sounds like your Catholic bishop, so instead he's "Villagers."

I don't know. Look for it on Stuff White People Like soon.

Anyway, I like Twin Shadow. He didn't seem as pretentious as his name would suggest. You can get a free song here. This video makes me uncomfortable, though.

Netflix Challenge: Moon

I really, really liked Moon. It's a dark thinker full of Stanley Kubrick references (Kevin Spacey does the voice of a HAL-like robot) and a great performance by Sam Rockwell.

I was interested to learn on the old Wikipedia that the budget was $5 million. It seemed way more expensive.



This was director Duncan Jones' first feature. His next one is Source Code and will come out next spring. I'll go see it.

A good one and now it's gone: 55 remain.

Giant bubbles in slow motion

I see why this has 1.2 million views. You should see it, too. And take the extra time to let it download in hi-def.



I want to shoot in slow motion.

Netflix Challenge: 1990s Flashback

We're still slogging through the queue.

Last night it was Edward Burns' She's the One, starring Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz in all of their mid-90s glory, followed by the always entertaining Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley.

I'd never seen an Eddie Burns (as Drama calls him on "Entourage") movie before. This was his follow-up to the Sundance award-winning The Brothers McMullen, so I'm sure everyone was real pumped to see it in 1996. Fourteen years later, it serves as a nice time capsule for Aniston's legendary haircut. Tom Petty also did the music with the same haircut he's always had:





The Chris Farley compilation always makes me laugh and wonder what he'd be doing nowadays.





Side note: In searching for that Farley video, I landed on SNL's site, which implores visitors to "Check out" this or that link seven times on the front page. Too much!

Just 56 titles remaining.

Bad sideline reporting

I think I just heard the Notre Dame network's sideline reporter conclude her post-game interview of Michigan's coach with "keep doing your thing."

Netflix Challenge: Triple Feature

The titles just keep falling off the queue.

Funny Games
This Austrian film was one of the last movies to get piled on the queue before the start of the challenge and now I regret it. It only got there because we had recently watched another in the Netflix recommendation category "Foreign Film Featuring Crazy Kids Tormenting Rich People in Big Houses For No Apparent Reason," and I just wasn't in the mood.

The strange thing is I vaguely remember seeing it before and enjoying it. It's intentionally painful to watch at times as this dim-witted family fails to rise up against two not-so-intimidating kids in short white shorts wielding only a golf club as a weapon. It's not scary, just hard to watch, as they fumble with duct tape and never run away fast enough. What makes it sort of different than other voyeur torture films, though, is that the fourth wall is broken down a few times by the lead bad guy, who'll turn to the camera Ferris Bueller-style and wink or ask the audience if they think the family will survive until morning.

The director, the respected Michael Haneke who won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film last year, actually did a shot-for-shot remake of his own film ten years later with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.





Surrogates
An interesting idea, and I'm a Bruce Willis fan, but this one was a little on the hokey side.
It's the future and nobody does any thing for real anymore, they just link their bodies up to life-like robot surrogates who go out and do all the fun stuff. People live longer, but only because their robots do all the drinking and driving, coal mining and soldiering.
Everybody is real pretty, too, and Bruce's surrogate even has hair.





Independent Lens: Between the Folds
Who thought a movie about folding paper could be entertaining? Not me. Interesting, but definitely not a laugh-a-minute thrill ride. Too much paper folding.

Netflix Challenge: Off and Running

The Netflix Challenge continues on the non-fiction tip with the powerful documentary, Off and Running.

This is the very interesting story of Avery, a young girl struggling to find herself. Nothing super special about that, except Avery is the teen-aged African-American daughter of two white Jewish lesbians.

We meet Avery as she begins efforts to contact her birth mother. The decision to do so effects everyone in the family, including her multiracial older brother and Korean younger brother, and the film deals heavily with questions of race, identity, culture, religion and sexuality.

My mind is still reeling a little bit from this one, so I called upon Carolina to sum up the message:

"Adopting a kid and loving that kid is not enough. That kid might need more and you have to make your peace with that. No matter how loving and giving your home is, that kid will always have questions."



The most important thing is Off and Running is off the queue and we've got just 60 more titles to go.

Netflix Challenge: Modify

We've lost some ground on the Netflix Challenge this week and I blame my wife. She's the one who put Modify on the queue and Modify is the reason I've felt sick to my stomach for most of the week.

This is a documentary featuring interviews with people who have engaged in various forms of body modification -- that can mean anything from simple makeup, tattoos and piercings to branding, those giant earlobe stretchy things and horn-like forehead bump implantation.

And that was all well and good, but then they started with the plastic surgery footage, penis piercings and other genital oddities, and I just couldn't stand to watch.

Honestly, I missed a good bit of this movie because I had to close my eyes. There were even moments when Carolina felt it necessary to cover my already closed eyes. I don't even want to imagine what was going on then.

This one is definitely not for the squeamish, or anyone with a normal gag reflex.

If you must see the trailer, here you go:

Netflix Challenge: Revenge of the Nerds

Among the small number of movies I find entertaining enough to justify repeated viewings is the 1984 screwball college comedy classic, Revenge of the Nerds.

Once we hit puberty, my best friend Erick and I would watch this movie every chance we got. And we weren't even high. I know we truly and soberly believed every bit of it was hilarious, but let's be honest, our devotion probably had as much to do with the Tri-Lambs' panty raid and Betty Child's ass than the witty repartee between Lamar Latrell and Wormser.

Until I hatched this scheme to watch every title on my Netflix instant queue, Nerds just sat there like an old jar of icy hamburger dills in the back of the fridge. I didn't necessarily plan to use it, but it made me feel safe knowing that it was there and ready if I ever needed it.

After watching it last night, I'm pleased to report that while some of the jokes have grown a little stale, there's still genius to be found in Revenge of the Nerds.

Filmed right smack dab in the middle of the Reagan '80s, an era ruled by hard-bodied heroes like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Lewis Skolnik and Gilbert Lowe blazed the trail for what would be termed "geek chic" in the new millennium. You can get the commemorative bootleg T-shirts here.

We first meet Lewis and Gilbert as they head off to their freshmen year at Adams College. Maybe they should have gone to City Tech? Nah! Adams has the best computer department in the country!

Although the two nerds are hoping for a fresh start in college, they quickly learn that the campus is dominated by the good looking and athletic party crowd in the Greek system, specifically the Waspy Alpha Beta fraternity and Pi Delta Pi sorority. When the Alpha Betas burn down their frat house and push the freshmen out of their dormitory and onto cots in the college's gymnasium, Lewis, Gilbert and a group of other social castoffs (a sleazy nose picker, an allergy-prone geek, a Japanese guy with broken English, an effeminate gay African-American) band together to form their own fraternity.

Only one national fraternity agrees to give them a chance at a charter, the all black fraternity, Lambda Lambda Lambda. Sensing a brotherhood in the shared torment and injustice suffered at the hands of the white majority (a point driven home when the Alpha Betas burn "Nerds" on their front lawn), Tri-Lamb chief U.N. Jefferson agrees to make the nerds full-fledged members of the fraternity.

Using the talents that God gave each of them (and some muscle from their Tri-Lamb brothers), the nerds are able to rise above the Alpha Betas' brutality, win the prestigious homecoming carnival and control of the Greek Council. It's an underdog story for the ages. With plenty of T&A, to boot!

Supporting Evidence:

1: During the party the nerds' throw to impress U.N. Jefferson and the Lambda Lambda Lambda brass, Dudley "Booger" Dawson saves the day by breaking out the "Wonder Joints." Soon, everybody's high, horny and dancing to "Thriller."



Example 2: Sometimes the cheapest jokes are the best and what's cheaper than poking fun at the way Japanese speakers have trouble pronouncing Ls and Rs. And, WTF are "robster craws" anyway?




Gilbert: I just wanted to say that I'm a nerd, and I'm here tonight to stand up for the rights of other nerds. I mean, all our lives we've been laughed at and made to feel inferior. And tonight, those bastards, they trashed our house. Why? Cause we're smart? Cause we look different? Well, we're not. I'm a nerd, and uh, I'm pretty proud of it.

Lewis: Hi, Gilbert. I'm a nerd too. I just found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people. There's a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there's alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams you might've been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you're a nerd or not, why don't you just come down here and join us. Okay? Come on.

Gilbert: Just join us cause, no one's gonna really be free until nerd persecution ends.

Take that, instant queue! You just got one shorter.

Netflix Challenge: Sunshine Cleaning

Sunshine Cleaning was eliminated from the queue Thursday night.

Pretty dark and enjoyable independent dramedy about a single mom who takes on a new career as a crime scene cleaner.

Amy Adams is a great actress.

Get off my queue!

Netflix Challenge: The Damned United

Another night, another Netflix instant queue title obliterated. This time, it was the 2009 British film, The Damned United.

If you ask me, never has a better movie been made about late '60s, early '70s English professional soccer. It definitely made me want to go out and learn more about the whole Premier League set up.

Not quite a drama and not quite a comedy, it is a good sports movie without the usual cliches found in American sports movies. Plus, Peter Pettigrew is in it, as well as the guy who plays Liz Lemon's bad British date.

Trailer:



68 to go.

Netflix Challenge: Mary and Max

Mary and Max is the latest movie to fall from the Netflix instant queue.

This one was a Carolina addition, which usually means we're in for something light and sweet or dark and filled with crazy people. Mary and Max manages to balance all of that in this truly amazing claymation animated feature about the pen pal relationship between a lonely little Australian girl and an obese, middle-aged Jewish atheist New Yorker with Asperger syndrome.

Directed by Oscar-winning (Harvie Krumpet) Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot, the film deals with very intense issues like mental illness, alcoholism, suicide, bullying and a bunch of other craziness without losing its sense of humor.

It's sad, funny, amazing to look at and no longer in our queue.

69 and counting...

Trailer:

Soul Power

The Netflix Challenge continues full-steam ahead tonight with the 2008 documentary Soul Power.

James Brown, sporting a killer mustache and wearing a navy blue and black jumpsuit with "GFOS" stitched on the front, leads a group of the hottest American R&B acts of 1974 (Bill Withers, B.B. King, The Spinners and Celia Cruz) to Zaire for a joint music festival with Africa's biggest performers to coincide with Ali and Frazier's "Rumble in the Jungle."

The film is edited together from footage left over from the Academy Award-winning documentary, When We Were Kings, which focused more on the Ali-Frazier fight.

There's some great stuff from the plane ride over featuring Celia Cruz and her band playing mid-flight. Azucar!

A highlight from Bill Withers:



And The Godfather:



The best part, though, was right at the very end. After the credits roll, James tells the camera, "I hope this can be put at the tail end of this thing. When you walk out this movie, or you walk away from your television, if there's one thing you walk out with in your mind when get up and walk out in the street, you say to yourself, 'Damn right, I'm somebody'."

Down to 70 titles and counting.

Ladies, let's have a party

Scottie Pippen's getting inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, so I guess that's reason enough to post this:



I like that one of Mr. Submarine's offerings is something called "Assorted Sub."

Scottie went on to win six NBA championships with the Bulls. The two Luvabulls, Kim and Cheryl, got a free lunch.

A new, totally self-inflicted challenge

If I weren't a lazy ass, now would be a great time to challenge myself to get fit. Maybe run a 10K or some shit like that and put a sticker on the back of my car so everybody driving behind me would know that I, or perhaps some other person frequently associated with my vehicle, was physically fit enough at some point in time to run that distance.

Or I could sit down and try to write something. Really write something with some depth. A big project that I would write and revise and rewrite. It doesn't have to be a novel, necessarily, but something big that would earn enough money to pay for a trip to Hawaii or Peru or another exotic locale of my choosing.

Those are good, productive goals to strive for and would be very satisfying accomplishments, to be sure.

Unfortunately, that's not the journey on which I've chosen to embark.

The family Netflix Instant Queue has gotten completely out of hand. Not counting the 10 entries for various television programs, the queue (or the movie lineup for those of us outside of Great Britain) has grown to 73 items of filmed entertainment just waiting there to be watched. Some of it (Super High Me) has been there since the day our Netflix account was born, continuously getting passed over by newer, more intriguing additions to Netflix's streaming library.

Long story short, the wife and I have challenged ourselves to see how fast we can watch every film in the queue. We will not be allowed to add any additional films onto the pile until the current slate of titles has been wiped clean. It will be a sometimes tedious and mostly pointless exercise, save for the kind of pleasure you get after dumping a big load at Goodwill, or in your own toilet, for that matter. Regardless, it's the mission we've given ourselves, and one we must accomplish.

I'm pleased to report the big number has already been reduced by one. Last night, the Matthew Broderick film, Wonderful World, went down without a fight. Nothing groundbreaking here -- just another down-on-his-luck grumpy guy getting his life changed for the better when a hot foreign lady (Sanaa Lathan with a Senegalese accent) unexpectedly shows up on his doorstep. Carolina says that sounds like our story.

Anyway, if you like Matty B., you won't be disappointed.

Come back for more later. We've got a lot of work to do.

A break from my inadvertent hiatus

Oops, it's been too long. Let me post the following stuff before this blog becomes dormant:

Just a couple of weeks ago, I went camping for the first time in 20 years. It was 99 degrees that day. I thought it might be cooler because we were camping on Paris Mountain. Turns out, we were just closer to the sun. The experience did provide a good opportunity to reconnect with Mother Nature and wear my captain's hat.

I went to see the big summer buzz hit, Inception, last weekend. It was good. Definitely more thoughtful than your average summer blockbuster.

I just watched an episode of "Go, Diego! Go!" about a green iguana who has to suffer through a long journey with Diego before he can shit out strawberry seeds at Abuelito's farm. And not a moment too soon, because the big strawberry festival is just around the corner.

Prince released a new album this summer, not in America, just in Europe and only through print newspapers and magazines because he said the internet's dead. He's a dynamo, that Prince, but the album's better than I thought it would be. Lots of old Prince sounds without being too forced. But don't take my word for it. Go to Belgium and get yourself a copy of Het Nieuwsblad!

Quadron in Atlanta

I've been shouting about Quadron for awhile now. In this age of throw-away, digital music, it's rare and exciting to find a whole album of songs that I -- if I can borrow a phrase from Sir Anthony Michael Hall -- just glom on to.

Quadron's debut definitely got in my brain like that, and continues to do so six months later. So, when I heard they were coming to play in Atlanta, it was deemed a babysitter-worthy excursion.

The night was memorable for several reasons:

1) It was nice to go on a date with my wife without worrying about booster seats.

2) I ate two squishy white things before realizing they were sauteed garlic cloves. (I'm sure the people who stood within smell-shot of me later that night will remember this as well.)

3) The fashionable, young Atlanta hipsters in attendance. It was like a casting call for Theo Huxtable's post-Gordon Gartrelle posse. Or maybe a scene out of She's Gotta Have It.

4) The black rock group Jimi Cravity opening the show with a cover of Coldplay's "Viva La Vida."

5) The front woman of the other opening act ego-tripping on stage, talking 'bout how she's "in a cocoon" phase right now in her "artistry" and what a great opportunity it was for us, the audience, to be there to witness it. Her on stage banter ruined what could have been something interesting.

6) Meeting Coco and Robin from Quadron and finding that in addition to being talented artists, they're good people who deserve to have their music purchased, not stolen.

7) Learning I can still stay up until 4:00 a.m., if I want to.

Here's a couple of videos from the night:

What happens if I wear this?

OK, I'll be brief. Ca-ching!

It's called "The Active Leisure Brief." I'm not sure that's even physically or metaphysically possible, but Puma claims it "allows you to move around freely all day long during your athletic activities."

That's a lot of pressure. My athletic activity rarely goes plural, let alone "all day long."

$28 at Zappos.

The kid was in rare form tonight

Three Sofia moments to remember from dinnertime tonight:

1) Dora the Explorer is on in the background and blabbering, "How many giraffes are there?" Sofia, sitting on the toilet but within earshot of the TV, yells back, "I'm in the bathroom, Dora!"

2) "I want to listen to Alicia-kira!"

3) "Do you think Prince likes purple?"

Father's Day stuff to remember

Sofia: (touching her ribs) These are my longs.
Me: Your longs?
Sofia: Yeah. They make you breathe.
Me: Who taught you that?
Sofia: Some kind of lady with a pink shirt on.

Today, we were walking home from the neighborhood pool and Sofia spotted a dead, dried up worm on the sidewalk. "Ah! That worm's broken," she said. "It's not moving."

Please believe me: Quadron is where it's at

Good gawd, y'all. When are you going to believe me about the Danish duo Quadron? Coco's voice is like hot butter drizzled on cinnamon Viagra! Yes, exclamation point!

She destroys all contenders.

I'm going to ask her to move in with me and my family.

Here they are performing live on KCRW. Watch it only if you want to fall in love.

Happy birthday, Prince

Don't tell any of his Jehovah's Witness friends, but Prince Rogers Nelson turns 52 glorious years old today. As always, I'll be celebrating in various nerdly ways. Right now that involves a quick listen to the "Gett Off" maxi-single (whatever the hell a maxi-single is), including the ridiculous "Flutestramental" version.

Despite some difficult artistic and business decisions as of late, this is actually a great time to be a Prince fan. After years of stomping on and suing anyone who posted anything on the internet featuring his work (his internet cops even asked YouTube to take down a video of my toddler daughter swaying to his music), he's either fallen asleep or seen the light because there's a treasure trove of unreleased concert videos and songs being posted and watched right now. It's crazy, amazing, genius stuff I never even knew existed.

If you have a minute or two, check out the Minnesota Dance Theater Benefit show from August 1983, where he and the Revolution debuted the songs that would become "Purple Rain." Prince even used some of the tracks recorded live that night as the foundation for the album. But besides its historical significance, the show is also just totally amazing to watch. This is Prince before he became all manicured. He's raw, sweaty and sleazy. Watch it while you can.