I wanted to do something similar, but I don’t really make movies. In fact, since this past June, I’ve ostensibly been predominantly unemployed. Meaning: I don’t make much of anything.

I do, however, watch a lot of episodes of Gilmore Girls on DVD.

In the spirit of Tarantino, here is my list of the Top 20 Gilmore Girls Episodes I Have Watched Since Becoming Unemployed.

Like Tarantino, the list is unordered, with one exception: Keg! Max! is clearly the best episode of Gilmore Girls I have seen since June, standing high above anything else. The rest are ordered chronologically by air date.

• Keg! Max! Season 3 Episode 19
  Lane drunk dials her mom. High comedy, intense Korean Christian drama.
• Kiss and Tell Season 1 Episode 7
  Rory’s first kiss! The whole town is buzzing but she doesn’t tell Lorelai!
• Christopher Returns Season 1 Episode 15
• Nick and Nora/Sid and Nancy Season 2 Episode 5
  Paris craziness and the introduction of Jess. Swoon.
• The Bracebridge Dinner Season 2 Episode 10
• A-Tisket, A-Tasket Season 2 Episode 13
  The essence of Stars Hollow distilled to a fine 22 minutes, charming small town rituals and picnic basket zany mania.
• I Can’t Get Started Season 2 Episode 22
• Haunted Leg Season 3 Episode 2
• Eight O’clock at the Oasis Season 3 Episode 5
  A special appearance by a young Jon Hamm!
• Ballrooms and Biscotti Season 4 Episode 1
• Raincoats and Recipes Season 4 Episode 22
  The Season 4 finale, in which Dean and Rory doooooo it. Double swoon!
• Written in the Stars Season 5 Episode 3
• But Not As Cute As Pushkin Season 5 Episode 10
• So…Good Talk Season 5 Episode 16
• Fight Face Season 6 Episode 2
  The first appearance of Paul Anka. Marvelous.
• The Prodigal Daughter Returns Season 6 Episode 9
• Friday Night’s Alright for Fighting Season 6 Episode 13
  Wonderul Gilmore fight montage.
• Merry Fisticuffs Season 7 Episode 10
• I’d Rather Be In Philadelphia Season 7 Episode 13
• Unto The Breach Season 7 Episode 24
  Logan proposes!! Anti-swoon!

There it is.

Up next: Top 20 Jelly Donuts I Have Purchased Since They Finished Remodeling Our Local DuDos.

And you know Goliath is bad, because he’s…multinational.

DUH DUH DUHNNNN!!!!!

Corporations have operated in multiple nations for a long time. Which is apparently self-evidently horrifying.

FOR EXAMPLE:

District 9 is a movie I will go see this week:

The evil corporation at the heart of the film is MNU, or, Multi-National United. Corporate terror distilled to its essence.

It’s Multinational! That’s scary! There are evil things in multiple nations! Evil multination satanic corporate multiple nations corporations!

ANOTHER GOOD ONE:

The International is a movie I have not seen. The big evil multinational (pants: shitted) corporation Clive Owen is up against there? The International Bank of Business and Credit. Not bad, though it lacks the clear narrative punch of something more simplistically terrifying. Maybe: International Bank of Banking.

That’s suspense!

For those unable to view photographic images, I am about to feed champagne to my donut before we read the newspaper and heavily pet/neck on Cinderella’s hotel bed.

WOA WOA WAIT: A real-paper newspaper? This show is vintage.

* Congressmen Game Cards Do Not Actually Talk

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is like one of those dudes who says “Guess what?” and then makes you actually guess a whole bunch of times.

It’s all…

I was going to draw-up a bloggy Top 10 list of these strangely inspirational “Where Will Amazing Happen?” NBA ads (scope out all 17 here). But then I quickly realized the clear number one would be this ad of LeBron James completely schooling Paul Pierce and dunking KG’s brains out, like some sort of divinely chosen basketball grizzly bear hustling his way through a Man vs. Beast trout fishing event at Yellowstone.

As a diehard Cs fan, whose blood flows thick in green like the leprechaun’s gravy, that wouldn’t fly. But these ads are incredible, and LeBron James is a trout smashing beast:

Also notable: while both Celtics editions of this series are spectacular showcases of KG and Pierce’s championship-caliber dominance, Rondo pops out just as impressively, collecting the steal from Rodney Stuckey to start off the fast break for KG, and doing a little jibby jab to get Cleveland dancing enough to set up Pierce’s drive.

Where will Rondo’s “Where Will Amazing Happen” happen?

I certainly see the appeal. Shat would seem to be the standard and historic preterite/past participle of everyone’s favorite smelly verb, and so its presence in a sentence inevitably invokes a nice bit of tension between the strict gramatic traditionalism and the inevitable vulgarity. (It even works when constructing haughty blog posts!)

But shitted is poetry; much more expressive, funnier, a surprising and livley addition to any BM-related anecdote.

BRIAN: And then who walks into the Bratskellar? BAM! Wayne Brady!
FRANCIS: What did you do?
BRIAN: I totally shitted myself.

or

GRANDMA: I just shitted that entire bag of Sugar Free LifeSavers.

As with anything, much depends on the rythm of the sentence, the relationship between fellow nearby words, adjacent phonemes, etc.. But pounds for donuts, shitted is a far more engaging option. Try it with friends.

BONUS!
In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses “shitten.” Not bad!

My own mother weaves marionette
     strings on an old broken loom,
          has found honey in rusted oil canisters.
  She broke her flower’s arm in a trip
               with falling, and a man named Josephine
            Appleseed, has bet me to differ.

    I am complacent enough as bubblegum
         is on subway tracks, with fields
         of almost melting popsicles attached
      by veins to my wife in Oregon.

Bella opens the bathroom door
   to wash goofy figurines.
She sits in a purple-plaid fizzled white tub
            soft grey, the tiles, with plastic pet people
            some floating, others sunk to the bottom.

Outside her window, an unhappy ocean is on fire
   and when it all burns up, which is all it will,
   there will only then be left the salt, and Mr.
            Gandhi will be happy, but he will be hungry.

(
Far off and long ago in a rural distance
   a plum light hangs large over dirt roads,
   as tow trucks towing other tow trucks
  drive past a young woman’s future grandfather

            Who takes a large bite of asparagus
                            and smiles despite his teeth.
                                                                                )

WARNING: Blatant self-promotion contained below.

Media Bistro on Demand

mediabistro.com is a pretty indispensable resource for creative content professionals, providing an online venue for writers and editors, producers and circus performers, on and on, etc. etc., to make contacts, find jobs, share resources and develop new skills.

A big part of their operation is Media Bistro on Demand, a series of info-packed short form instructional videos detailing the ins-and-outs of emerging media technologies, from blogging to Wikipedia, writing for the web to online video.

I’ve been working with MB on a series of these videos the past year or two, both as writer and occasional host.

And two new videos just popped up online!

Facebook Self Promotion

The first is a half hour instructional treatise entitled “How to Promote Yourself on Facebook.” From the website:

Want to reach a few million people without spending a cent? Whether you’re publicizing your blog, book, business, or just your own cool self, Facebook can be your new best friend.

I picked up a lot of these tips through promoting The Bridge and Press Play via Facebook Page, a process that very much takes on a promotional life of it’s own, absolutely ideal for fellow New England-shy content creators to whom blatant self-promotion is a soiling sin that must be scrubbed and washed and washed and scrubbed and removed.

Job Search v. 2.0

The second video clocks in at a slightly longer 45 minutes, an in-depthy rumination on the nature of “Job Search v. 2.0.” Once again, from the website:

Mediabistro knows online job search. We’ve got tons of smart strategies, cool sites, and timely social media tips to help you use the web to find your next position.

A lot of good info culled from the net, filtered through my brain, and regurgitated for consumption via Snapz Pro and Flash video.

ENJOY!

I’m a casual, predominately accidental viewer of Jim Rome is Burning, and I should admit I’ve never listened in on Rome’s radio show.

But I’m absolutely certain Jim Rome himself wrote this Craigslist ad:

The Jim Rome Show and Jim Rome Is Burning are looking for a writer(s). Looking for someone who comes at it from different angles, knows sports thoroughly, and is hungry, competitive and driven. Must be willing to grind. Tremendous potential payoff and upside for the right candidate(s).

I am out.

From 1992 to 1997, Boyz II Men spent a total of 54 weeks with a Billboard #1 single. Five singles, three of which broke a previous record for longest rein at #1. The phrase “#1″ appears in their Wikipedia profile 11 times.

The most significant hit of this impressive reign of dominance was “One Sweet Day,” a collaboration with Mariah Carey that spent a (still) record 16 weeks in the top spot. Mariah Carey herself, during this same period, charted 7 of her 18 career #1s, encompassing a total of 43 weeks.

That is to say, from 1992 to 1997, the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 was held be either Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey, and/or Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey, for a total of 81 weeks (out of 260).

Were these guys really that good, or were the mid 90s that devoid of pop competition?

Ok, so.

The US financial system has been taken hostage by a zombified incarnation of Carlton Banks, whose debts resulting from the sale of substandard prime rib submarine sandwiches have been shored up by implicit and/or explicit credit support from Uncle Phil. Yes?

Enter Timmy, who has sent Lassie to purchase a brood of toxic donkeys from Carlton at potentially inflated prices. Once the donkeys are out of Bel-Air and Uncle Phil has thrown Jazzy Jeff out the front door, the money supply frees up, enabling Hilary to continue shopping for some new outfits, thus providing the foreplay necessary for the recent broad national dose of Cialis to bestow upon America a steady five hour erection. Right?

But will it work? Mr. Feeny doesn’t think so.

** Only just now hitting me that it’s definitely a toxic goat in that picture, not a donkey. Damn you Google Image Search!!!

A libertarian-leaning friend sends over this column by Uni Chicago Economists and Hoover Institute Fellows Gary Becker (Nobel Laureate!) and Kevin Murphy, advocating a “do no harm” approach to the current crisis.

Some smart dudes, about as articulate as it comes when arguing against government overreach into free market capitalism. Though count me as not particularly persuaded in the midst of the current poo fest (is Obama really pushing card check as a solution to the credit implosion? Really? I hadn’t noticed.)

All merits aside, though, I’m still baffled as to why their famed libertarian institution has survived nearly 100 years with the same name.

If you’re going to develop ideas promoting a laissez-faire approach to capitalism, why why why name your institution after Herbert Hoover? It’s almost too clean a satirical joke.

“And you know what the worst part is? I just bought a James Hardy jersey. You can bet TO will steal his number 81.”

Count me as glad the rumors proved incorrect; Hitler simply isn’t a Pats fan.

How many 16th century Parisian-style merchants
must I charm
to colonize my mother’s reunion barbeque?

French Canadians in their blue jeans,
wearing bell-bottom Heritage under a Tree of ferris Wheels,

in a pro-creative Park amongst the wooded clearings of Southern Maine,
reuniting under exile of Nova Scotian oral history.

Cobblers the sons of cobblers the sons of older cobblers,
bankers the mothers of bankers the mothers of younger bankers;
7 generations of Bachand mechanics.

Sweet Barbara, bequeathed maitre d’ of a proud familial arch.
And then,
Her son, A SENATOR!
Her nephew, A GOVERNOR!
Her grandson, A SENATOR!

SWEET HIGH TRAVESTY CRIME
AGAINST THE MERITOCRACY!!!!11!!

GRRRRRRRDIESDIESDIES
ANGRY!!!!!!111!!!!!!MOOOOBBBBBBBB!!!!!!111!!!!!!!!

My apologies to the Pitch Forks.
I will bank, I will bank.

“Can’t we English-speakers just agree upon a gender-neutral pronoun?” attorney Paul Easton recently Twittered. “Tired of PC grammar gymnastics.”

…

Consider the sentence “Everyone loves his mother.” The word “his” may be seen as both sexist and inaccurate, but replacing it with “his or her” seems cumbersome, and “their” is grammatically incorrect.

But that’s silly. “Their” is it! “Their” is what we agreed upon! “Their” is the daring little pronoun the English language chose!

If we’re in such desperate need of a gender neutral pronoun, then we should simply stop correcting people when they say “everyone loves their mother.” How is using their in that sentence any more grammatically incorrect than using ip or thon or any of the other nonsense word jabberwoky the article mentions?

Sure it might be slightly messy or logically inconsistent, but 1) this is English, the bastard stepchild of tribal West Germany and whoreish France, and 2) we’ve actually been using a singular they for like 600 years.

Some old school English speaker had a problem, and they* solved it! A long time ago, and no one seemed to notice.

* See! See!