I gotta make this one quick because I took my nighttime pill combo a little bit ago and it's gonna kick in soon, and soon I'll either stop typing or I'll be typing gibberish. I hate, hate, HATE waking up the next day, seeing something I've posted, thinking "WTF is WRONG with ME??" and frantically deleting and/or editing the post.

Anyway, just some recent stuff from the inbox and/or Google Reader...

• At my YouTube account I got a note from a kid named JC Van Luyn, asking me to check out his music and comment on it. I might have been a bit reluctant at first, but the note really charmed me:

  Hope the day/night is finding you well, just to let you know, I apologize in advance if I took your time in some way by you reading this message. Don't hesitate to press the delete button if it does....

  He goes on from there to talk about his music, etc, but ya know what? When's the last time someone solicited you to check out their website and preceded their remarks by saying that, yeah, it's quite possible you actually do have a life and something better to do?
  
  So I checked out his stuff, which consists of some interesting covers and original songs. I found one original that I particularly enjoyed ... but what really won me over was JC's cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya." I'm sure you remember that song, it was a huge hit a few years ago and even though I really liked it, the over exposure eventually ruined the song for me. Well, JC's solo acoustic arrangement brought the track back to life for me and, damn! I'm diggin' this:




• Speaking of YouTube, most of the time when I load that page it's to check for updates from The Mighty Zo, like this one:

  I been saying for months that this guy was going to move on to bigger n' better stuff. Looks like Pajamas Media is the first step.
  
  One day we'll all be saying "Remember back in the day when Zo Rachel was just another guy with a YouTube account??"




• Another semi-daily check for me is the What's New page at Snopes, where you can learn fascinating things, like the latest web scuttlebutt about the history of the French Dip Sandwich.
  
  The French Dip, of course, is a sandwich made of thinly sliced beef, served on a hard French role, and often served au jus. Au jus is a French term that is pronounced Ah JHOOOO and means "sneezed on."
  
  Probably sneezed on by that beret-wearing asshole who resented having to wait your table in the first place, you American capitalist dog vit no ah-prishy-a-SHAUN of cul-CHA vaut zo eveh.
  
  Well, no ... not all Frenchmen behave like characters in Merry Melodies cartoons from the 50's. Some of them are much worse. But, I think my point is, you can get the real scoop on the sandwich at Snopes.



• Instapundit has posted a link to a story about twenty celebs who've aged badly.
  
  I thought the story was a bit hard on some of these folks:
  

  

  
  OK, so Diamond Dave doesn't look like a rock star anymore. He kinda looks more like a shop teacher now. But what's wrong with looking like a shop teacher? What's wrong with being a shop teacher? Someone has to be held accountable when a 14 year old kid bandsaws off two or three of his favorite fingers.
  
  But then I saw this picture and yet another small part of my childhood died inside of me:
  

  

  
  How will we ever convince the younger generation that those two women are the same woman? And that Kathleen Turner used to be one of the hottest actresses in the business?
  
  But then I noticed something:
  

  

  
  They only seem weird when you stick them out there by themselves and compare them to their bygone youth. Youth is bygone for all of us, dammit, and comparing today to '85 is always a bad idea. But if you saw that couple, the two people in the third picture combo right above ... if you saw them pushing a cart together at Wal-Mart, contemplating the best kind of detergent to buy or looking through the bargain DVDs, you wouldn't think anything of it. Nice enough looking older couple, right? Maybe she works at a law-firm and can help Shop Teacher Dave save his job when that damn kid finally gets sloppy with that bandsaw.
  
  So here's to the celebrities that grow old ... if not gracefully than at least naturally. Maybe even fearlessly. Is there any other way to do it? Screw the Botox and plastic surgery. Screw running from aging. Aging beats the alternative, right? Get old and enjoy it. It seems to be working for that nice couple, the Roths; Kathleen and Dave.

Labels: Links, Movies, Music, Politics, You Tube, Zo