johnnyhongkong says…

It’s said that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of US 61 and US 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

I call bullshit because I met the devil today.

He lives right around the intersection of the 84th dip and the 90th pull-up in a workout that consists of 120 reps of each.

He doesn’t buy souls. He just chills there, threatens to tear your arms off and make fun of you.

I can hardly type…

I recently changed dentist.  My old dentist was kind of like a way station of humanity that also happened to do teeth cleaning.  You walked in and there was this holding area where the waiting patients looked like they had other health issues completely unrelated to the oral hygiene.  I always kind of felt like they ran a free clinic in back to help boost revenue.

When I had my consult a few weeks ago, I was set at ease because my new dentist counts Nelly Furtado and Tyra Banks as clients.  The office was clean, so that helped, and it looked like it was all oral hygiene, all the time; no STD tests given in a back room.

Today, I went in for my cleaning and my inital impressions were all true.  The dentist said that while I do a bang up job brushing, I have to start flossing more regularly or I will continue to experience bone loss. 

Yeee!

What’s weird is that while my OCD manifests itself quite powerfully in the realm of oral hygiene, it only covers brushing.  Somehow, flossing continually escapes the purview of oral health in the obsessive part of my brain.

Anyway, she scared the hell of me.  I’m gonna start flossing like a motherfucker.

Last bit about oral hygiene: I learned a great trick from one of Mary Milan’s colleagues who has sparkly white teeth.  He uses Crest White Strips but only for the week after he gets his teeth cleaned.  The theory is that since your teeth are cleaned of all the gunk on top of them, they are more ready to drink in the whitening powers of the strips. 

I got my white strips from CVS, which is the bomb of all drug stores by the way, yesterday and I’m gonna start whitening tonight.

It’s gloomy and rainy today in sunny SoCal.

Thanks Alec Baldwin.  He apparently brought the tropical storm from New York when he flew out here from New York “for the day” to “straighten out” his little girl.

It sounds like David Mamet wrote the angry voicemail that Baldwin left for his daughter. 

“…Good daughter?  Fuck you!  Go home and answer your phone!  You wanna be my daughter – pick up the phone.  Pick up the phone.  PICK.  UP.  THE.  PHONE.”

Esquire just published a list of 60 Things Worth Shortening Your Life For.

So far, my number is 17.

What’s yours?

While I never thought that casting a vote for Sanjaya was subversive, I will admit that I loved seeing him on American Idol but only when he crashed and burned.

When he rose up and became vaguely mediocre, I lost interest, wishing that Haley Scarnato’s gams were still on the show.

Still, I must admit a real sadness when Sanjaya was finally voted of the American Idol Island tonight.  As he butchered Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About,” on the exit (during A.I.’s final humiliation where the newly minted ex-contestants must sing after their dreams are crushed), I couldn’t help but think that this was the death of Schadenfreude.

I felt a real loss.  The People’s Idol is gone.

So what happens when you put The Three Most Universally Loved^TM filmmakers on a project together?  Apparently, it’s the fucking royal rumble.

In an interview at MTV.com, Frank Darabont, who as you’ll remember is America’s Most Universally Loved Filmmaker^TM as determined by my metaanalysis of Netflix data, said that his year working on the Indy 4 script with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (the “other” loved filmmakers) was a terrible disappointment:

Darabont: “Indy” is definitely in that category, topping the list. It showed me how badly things can go. I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script.

MTV: Did you ever speak to George Lucas directly?

Darabont: Yes! I told him he was crazy. I said, “You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.” You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.

Which is strange because according to this report, Darabont’s script was about Indiana Jones investigating UFO’s and it doesn’t take any meta-analysis to know that aliens are universally loved by both Spielberg and Lucas. 

So as some of you have asked, yes, the Chinese nicknames for NBA stars is absolutely for real (the nicknames for Manute Bol and Don Imus, on the other hand, are not).
I can’t find a link to the ESPN: The Magazine articlet but I did one better and found a link to an NBA.com article which answers Alicia’s question about Dirk Nowitzki:

Apparently the NBA is not good at keeping a comprehensive list because the Orlando Sentinel has even more nicknames, including one for Stevie Franchise Killer:

Special Rights –That’s for Steve Francis, aka Te Quan. But no word from the NBA on the Chinese translation for “Franchise Killer.”