Countdown to 2008

Ring in the new year with Hands in the Air by playing this video at 11:59:20 tonight.



For reference, here are the blogged events of 2007 that are counted down in this video:

10. New York subway samaritan (January)
9. Britney shaves her head (February)
8. Star Wars 30th anniversary (March)
7. 300 (April)
6. Grindhouse (April)
5. Sanjaya (April)
4. Drunken celebrities (May)
3. Larry Birkhead (June)
2. Writers Strike (November)
1. Celebrity deaths (Lily Munster, Iwao Takamoto, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Don Ho, Charles Nelson Reilly, Mr. Wizard, Bob Evans, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Merv Griffin, Kevin DuBrow)

2007 in Review

There are mere hours before we have to retire our Hilary Duff calendar for the year, so it's a good time for me to blog poetic on 2007's best and worst...


Best Comedies of 2007
Pregnancy movies: Knocked Up and Juno, though I actually consider pregnancy movies to be of the horror genre.

Best Semi Truck vs. Fighter Jet Scene in a Movie
Live Free or Die Hard. Strangely enough, it wasn't any scene in Transformers.

Worst Timing Award

• The release of Things We Lost in the Fire just before the California wildfires began
• Lynn Spears trying to publish her book on parenting

Guilty-Pleasure Pop CDs of the Year

• Dignity by Hilary Duff
• We Are the Pipettes by The Pipettes
• Headstrong by Ashley Tisdale
  (But NOT the new album by her fellow High School Musical costar Vanessa Hudgens. Well... I'm not a fan of V-Hud's music album, at least. Her personal photo album, though, is an altogether separate matter.)

Restaurant Jingle of the Year
The Outback Steakhouse song ("Let's go Outback tonight...")
I can't get that damn song outta my head. It's based on "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" by Of Montreal, but I actually like the digeridoo'd up version better.

Worst Restaurant Name
Pastagina.
I thought this was a symptom of a really bad yeast infection, but I guess it's just a poorly named Italian joint. But did they really need to use a triangle of spaghetti as their logo?

Other restaurant names to avoid: anything ending in "-esticles," "-lamydia" or "-airy nutsack." Also anything rhyming with "Schmapplebee's."

Best Pregnancies
5. Halle Berry
4. Jennifer Lopez
3. Christina Aguilera
2. Jessica Alba
1. Jamie Lynn Spears

Jessica Alba would've topped the charts if I had posted this in early December, but I ended up waiting. Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn Spears didn't end up waiting. Good thing for this list.


Top Celebrity Jail Sentences
5. Michelle Rodriguez
4. Keifer Sutherland
3. Lindsay Lohan
2. Nicole Richie
1. Paris Hilton

Paris wins for the blazing the trail and serving all the extra days that her other debutards didn't. Turns out that Lindsay's 84-minute jail term was longer than her movie I Know Who Killed Me lasted in theaters. I guess "overcrowding" wasn't the case in those theaters.

Microwave Lovin'

The other day some guys were microwaving a bar of soap. With the lights out. At work.

Now we've all microwaved things we shouldn't, or you know, things that maybe not everyone would appreciate us microwaving, but, at work? I feel really bad for whoever was next to microwave something in there...the entire room smelled of melted soap 'n' perfume, I imagine it might affect your ramen noodles a l'il bit.

In case you don't know, microwaved soap expands into a fluffball and I guess the effect is sort of neat (not plasma-generating grape or cd neat, but neat nonetheless) but this was at work, in a microwave other people expect to be able to burn their popcorn in as is their federally mandated right.

This reminds me of the time I went to microwave something at a different work and this woman was microwave-steam-sterilizing her breast pump accessories and what not. Yes, that's right, she was atomizing her titty drippins into the microwave I used to heat up my leftover pizza and, of course, it was wafting into the motherfucking air I breathe. It was sending out a steady billow of steam and I was like, YUM!

And she'd been breast-feeding for a while so chances are, I accidentally ingested or inhaled that shit. I actually complained to HR for that one. Anonymously, because it was shameful what I saw. Shameful! This woman blacked out her office window so she could breast feed in privacy but thought it was ok to share her steamed boob juices with the rest of us and our community fucking microwave? The same microwave that someone had placed a bitchy sign near, requesting that no fishy, garlicky, oniony or otherwise in any way ethnic or fragrant foods be microwaved there, lest their sensitive noses be bothered by it? Had that signmaker only known someone was blasting nippy squirts in there, too--well. I can't even imagine the signage then. Fuck, I shoulda made a sign.

I can't say that I haven't done somewhat naughty things with a microwave--I destroyed this one slut's Phish CD in a microwave because:

A. She was a slut
B. It was a Phish CD
C. You later
D. I heard it would be pretty

And it fucking was, like those lighted fountains tourists gather 'round to gawk at in your nicer malls, only made of sparks and in a microwave. I guess if you watched the video I linked to you know that, tho.

And this one time, I allowed this very cute boy to "put a bunch of things in my microwave" to "see what would happen," including a cheapie plastic elephant bank which btw does not smell good and yes, you should stop it when the black smoke starts pouring out. We probably both will get cancer some day because of that but you know, it was funny to see the elephant kind of poof out and then start to melt and collapse in on itself. And he was really cute, so, what was I supposed to do--say no? I have a hard time saying no to cute boys, I guess. I'll let them do practically anything to my "microwave."

But anyway all of my microwave crimes were in my own place of residence and did not involve lactation in any way.

And I kept the lights on.

Since Jason has a bug in his butt about end of year lists, I now present my top 5 people I've encountered in the Valley:

5. The guy who parks his kidnappin-ready white van so it creates a blind spot at the end of our street

4. The neighbor who hides behind the columns on her porch to avoid me saying hello to her

3. The same neighbor's kids or grandkids and their friends or cousins or some shit, who kept coming back to trick or treat at our house over and over again, causing us to run out of candy early
2. The other infinite numbers of people who come and go at that house, it's like a fucking clown house--how can that many people fit in one small, one-story house? Anyway, they don't all hide behind columns but none ever will look our way so fuck 'em

1. The person with the blue van totally stuffed to the gills with what looks like other people's mail. What's with the kooky vans???

Silent Knight Music Video

It's a Christmas miracle! Check out the very first Hands in the Air music video. It's my cover of "Silent Night" (with a silent "k" added in honor of Knight Rider's David Hasselhoff) starring the HITA gang, Santa and Jesus in a stop-motion fiasco guaranteed to earn me a lump of coal this holiday. It's also a little more "stop" than "motion." Humbug.



In honor of our music video for a song debuted in last year's HITA holiday podcast (we swear Season 2 will debut in 2008), I'm tacking on my best-of list for albums of the year. We'll be posting more best-of lists in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here is some proper music you should be listening to now that you've endured my holiday song and video...

Jason's Top 20 Albums of 2007
(or, "The 'Where's Radiohead?' List")

20. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
19. Calla - Strength in Numbers
18. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
17. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
16. Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis
15. Rockfour - Memories That Never Happened
14. The New Pornographers - Challengers
13. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81
12. Albert Hammond, Jr. - Yours to Keep
11. Lily Allen - Alright Then
10. Stars - In Our Bedroom after the War
9. Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block
8. Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City
7. Idlewild - Make Another World
6. Trembling Blue Stars - The Last Holy Writer
5. Maps - We Can Create
4. Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
3. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
2. I'm from Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends
1. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin