IHNO

I have, and I think we all do at points, the bad habit of having an opinion when I, in fact, have none. I got caught last week when somebody asked me if I kept up with baseball. I couldn’t just say, “No,” which would be completely honest. I tried to fake my way through it, stumbling about liking the Braves when I was younger and such. The truth is I have a really deep love of baseball that exclusively stems from childhood, but if you asked me if Chipper was doing well this season, I honestly couldn’t tell you if he was still on the roster or not. But I overhead that he is.

There’s an internet acronym IMHO: In My Humble/Honest Opinion. I’ve never had any use for this masturbatory, extraneous phrase. Everything I say is my opinion, unless otherwise noted as being someone else’s; I always give credit. Why do I need to say IMHO, … it’s useless. The internet might be a better place if we started using IHNO: I Have No Opinion. And I think people would appreciate my fresh look on opinions (to steal lyrics from Nada Surf) if I just told them that on the topic their discussing, I have no opinion. So that’s that, today there is a new piece of internet lingo, IHNO. Write about it, unless UHNO.

Check out Katie’s blog for a great picture of our place. It looks like she took it out of a magazine, but she didn’t.

I just ordered an 18-month Moleskine planner (how in the hell is that pronounced anyway? I say Mole-Skyne.) . I’m very excited, I have a small notebook of there’s, but its pages are blank. I am meaning to fill them with creative thoughts for certain scripts and television shows. Hopefully, they will be more interesting than the above-the-fold part of this blog.

Also, I’m looking into getting a new Eagle Creek bag from their website. The Local Messenger is really big and badass, and it comes in red. I’ve been looking to get a red bag that’s also manly. The multiple-views pictures shows a man with the bag – a good sign.

My favorite music right now is between Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, any of The Strokes’ albums, and Wolf Parade. Wolf Parade is so incredible, I love that album, what’s it called?

If I could take the fire out from the wire/I’d share a life and you’d share a life.

PS: If there are any mistakes, please catch them and hand them to me, I wrote this in Word quickly.

Agreed.

I've never agreed with a Pitchfork review so much until now (except whatever he says about "Sick, Sick, Sick"), because when he describes missing Nick Oliveri and listening to older albums, that's exactly what I've been doing. Weird.

I will update soon with all the new additions to my life.

iBlog

According to this quiz on the happenin' new "App" on Facebook called iLike, I don't know the difference between the following bands:

My Chemical Romance
The Used
Fall Out Boy
All-American Rejects
Yellowcard
Simple Plan
The Starting Line
Story of the Year

and I don't care.

Also, it's sick that some of the people I know have points in the 7 and 8 thousands. The questions give you 10 points at a time! That's seven-hundred correctly answered answers!

I was standing around at work, what they call "Hosting," trying in vain to give assholes catalogs, when it dawned on me. I was just zoning out, thinking about things for the cartoon Jules and I are working on, and when somebody would come up, it would sap me of every creative juice that I had the moment before. Talking to people, specifically strangers, even more specifically the lower grade of humans known as customers, is quite possibly the most uncreative act. It requires recitation ("Hello, how are you doing?"), recall ("Let's see, that's over in Closet"), and scripted actions ("Let's go over there" waddle waddle waddle).

That's not to say that talking to people itself is uncreative. I love collaborating; in fact, I'm convinced that the best work comes from working directly with somebody. Although, I did try an experiment yesterday. Our pilot episode is set in a mall, so I figured, why not go to the mall for some inspiration? And while it did provide some atmosphere and some non sequitur jokes, it was mostly useful to just go and sit and be alone and be forced to think and work.

It's strange, because writing doesn't come to me naturally (except for here), that I have no real instincts for coming up with something funny or clever, it's an awkward medium. What works written, but what also works visually and when spoken? It truly is a shot in the dark when I write something down, because comedy needs an audience, and if you don't have that partner there to laugh, then what the hell?

Also, as you're building these characters, how do you choose the precise words to define them? There's an infinite number of nuances to write in and directions to go, but I think that at that point, it's just my mind unable to pin the concept of fiction down.

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The new Queens of the Stone Age album is out today. Maybe I'll drive and go get it. Also, the Wilco concert is next Tuesday, not today as my lovely fiancee had previously thought. What to do instead?

Sick, Sick, Sick

Alright, I think I've written about the taste I have, and I think bad taste is something all of us have, unless we have good defenses. I'm bad at arguing and can't defend my taste, so I just have to take the hit. In terms of music, I worry that I have the worst of taste at times, and it was only recently certified as genetic or a product of nurturing when my dad said that he finds all of the songs he loves in iTunes under the "Pop" section.

In any case, I'm glad when one of the bands I listen to is deemed cool, beit by hipsters in general, a menagerie of bumper stickers ranking it with other equally acceptable bands on the rear of a car, or by personal anecdote of someone I know has fairly good taste all the time. Queens of the Stone Age is one of these bands. And in this case, fuck it, I do not need any of these social instances to confirm just how awesome QOTSA is. Yes, they have an acronym.

Josh Homme, the lead singer, has been around forever, starting with Kyuss and building QOTSA from the ground up, I think he's the only remaining original member. Maybe the other guitarist is as well. In any case, Josh Homme is a bona fide badass, he dances like Elvis on stage, constantly calls out dumbass assholes who are ruining his shows, and he's friends with every other badass on the planet. Dave Grohl, Mastodon, ZZ Top. The list goes on.

Anyhow, I downloaded their new album (and I will purchase it, because it's awesome), and I just saw the new video for their new single "Sick, Sick, Sick." The track's really different, pretty dark for QOTSA. And this is only matched by the music video. This video is not innovative like Michel Gondry or Chris Cunningham, it's not particularly clever, it's just a damn good music video in that in captures the attitude and mood of the song so spot-on. That's what they should do, right?

The video features a woman very subtly eating the members of the band. The clips of her eating are barbaric and sexual and disgusting. I'm not sure what the lyrics to the song are, but I have a clear idea after watching the video. Plus, the band is playing in some sort of fiery, vaginal cavity. It's fucking great.

Magazine clips

Maybe I'm just dumb, maybe it's a girl thing, but whenever I open a girl's magazine to the index at the front, looking for a certain interview or tips on pleasing my man, I am so overwhelmed by how poorly the index is put together. I can't find anything! I was just looking for this interview with Zooey Deschanel in Jane, and for the life of me I cannot find any sort of indication as to what page the interview is on. I finally flipped to it, realizing these magazines tend to be indexed by their advertisements, kinda like tabs in a pimped out dictionary. Ah yes, the interviews are under Calvin Klein.

Very strange evening last night. Our neighbor fell out of his wheelchair, drunk apparently. Had to carry him to his bed, his pants fell off. Awwwwkward.

Katie and I, aka JKLOL, wrote a song to our friend Jules, aka DJ Jocular, entitled "Ode to Jules." You can download it here: Ode to Jules