I have never really been an autograph collector exactly, but I had a few here and there. I had this one wall in my bedroom that I hung all sorts of stuff on. I had framed photos and a copy of the first record that came out on my old punk label and a three autographs:

1. The first autograph was John Snider from the Dukes Of Hazzard. I was a HUGE Dukes fan growing up and I found out that for a dollar her would send you a personalized autograph. It said “To Nate: God Bless. John R. Schneider.
2. The second was a letter that John McCain sent me thanking me for working/donating to his 2000 primary campaign. It is absolutely scary that a guy I would work so hard for would totally sell out and pander to the right like he has done. It pretty much makes me sick, but in 2000 I really trusted him and thought he would do a lot of good for this country.
3. The third autograph was from John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted. He was filming a scene in Old Town Alexandria, VA where my friends and I used to hang out every day. We kept yelling shit out whenever they started a take because we were punk ass kids. This guy Crazy Willy almost got arrested for it. I had been sitting watching this for about 30 minutes when I got an idea. I ran across the street to a CVS where a friend of mine worked… A girl who later got arrested for robbing a Ben And Jerry’s in full view of cameras where she was friends with half the staff who worked there. They came to her house a few hours after and found all the money, in a deposit bag with all the receipts. Amazing. Anyway, I ran into this CVS and asked her to hand me a WANTED poster that was hanging up. This guy had been hiding pornography in children’s books at the library or something. Anyway, I got this poster and got John Walsh to sign it. Awesome.

So, long story short… One day I realized when looking at this wall that all the autographs were of people named John. I thought this was very weird. I also am a big They Might Be Giants fan and they are both named John and I had their autograph… and when I was 10 I got John Ramita Jr’s autograph on an X-Man comic. These are weird conicidences. After that for about a month I became obsessed with collecting Johns’ autographs. I thought that since a signature is sometimes refered to as a “John Hancock” it was even more significant. I went on ebay and bought John Larroquette, John Lithgow and Neil Patrick Harris… okay, that last one is not a John, but it was only $3 and I am a pretty obsessive Doogie Howser fan.

Okay, long story short. I wanted to do something for a 4th of July update, so I decided to work on this idea of signing your “John”. John Hancock has the most recognizable signature in United States history. I wanted to do a little project to see how well people remembered their history books. Who remembers what his signature looks like? I just wanted to see peoples interpretation of it. I asked everyone to sign his name the way they think it looks on the Declaration of Independence and then I took a picture. I didn’t let them look at anyone else’s signature so everyone had their own view of what it looked like. Some people took it more seriously than others, and some people were just embarrassed that they didn’t know what it looked like. A surprisingly large amount of people had no idea what it looked like and basically mocked me for successfully completing 5th grade history class. I did not include those people in the project. Here are some interesting facts:

• Only 4 of 50 people underlined John Hancock. To me that is the first thing I think about with that signature.
• Almost everyone got the big J an H right.
• At least 5 people spelled his name blatantly wrong.
• It seems like 5% of the people involved in the project are completely illiterate.
• Two people wrote “John Han” and then drew a picture of a penis. Those people happened to be very close friends and did the exact thing as each other coincidentally only minutes apart. I made them redo them.
• Only one of the 50 people were actually named John.
• I shot 27 women and 23 men.

So what do we learn from this? I am not sure. But you should try the experiment on your own. Then look at his actual signature here. How did you do?

Check out all the photos here.

Today is the exact 10 year anniversary of me losing my virginity. In celebration of this fact I am posting a project that I have been working on for a while. I was not thinking about today when I started the project, but when I realized what it was, I thought that this was a perfect time to post it. Enjoy.

On a recent drive through the neighborhood I grew up in I realized that most of the strong feelings that I had were a result of a nostalgia directly related to a more innocent feeling of women and my own sexuality that I had when growing up in Alexandria, VA. I wanted to do a photo project on this and take some images of the spots that gave me the most tingles. I decided to use Polaroid film because it’s number one use is taking dirty pictures of people. My relationship with the film has also been a sleazy one as 95% of the pictures I have taken using the medium have been of naked girls. I though documenting my early sex life would be a perfect reason to use Polaroids to do something other than take naked pictures, yet to still play on the sexual identity of the medium.

I lived in Alexandria from 1980 to 1999. These were my formative years and they were they determined the way I dealt with women. When I was a kid I was very weird and had no luck with girls. This was not really an issue until I transfered to a private school outside my neighborhood in the 4th grade. From that point on I was in school with the same people for the next 9 years. The first week of 4th grade I made a joke about eating a praying mantis and that haunted me for the rest of my time at the school. At my old school eating bugs was funny, at my new school it was weird. From then on I was the weird kid… and then the fat kid, and then the weird kid kid again when I started getting into punk rock my freshman year of high school. I eventually started working out, lost all the weight and starting in about the 10th grade I really came into myself and started acting confidently. I stopped getting beat up at school, but I still had no luck with girls, because even then I was still viewed as the weird kid who ate bugs. As soon as I met girls outside of school, that changed forever. I have spent the last decade of my life trying to make up for my short comings as a kid and that has left me perpetually single and probably a bit more promiscuous than is healthy. But my unhealthy relationship with women started slowly and those more innocent times bring back amazing memories and that’s what this project is all about. Working thorough those early sexual encounters and finding out what the fuck went wrong.

I decided only to include stories and images from directly around my old neighborhood. Many of the important events in my life happened outside this little area as my school and all my high school hang out points were farther away. That being said, this is the most concentrated area and because of that, being in these few square miles gives me the strongest sense of my past, both of my life and specifically of my early sexuality

This project can be viewed by visiting the Google Map I made. Each map point has a Polaroid and a description of why that photo is important. The map points are listed in chronological order and should be read in that order. I hope you enjoy the project, I spent way too much time on it.

To view higher resolution versions of the polaroids click here.

Update: Due to the amount of interest that this post has received, if you are linking this, please link this post and not the map directly, as the explanation of the project is important to it, and the google map did not allow me enough space to get all my thoughts down. Also, if you dig this, Digg it.

So anyone who knows anything knows that this commercial is the greatest ever made. I have blogged about it at least twice, and now we can make it thrice. So my friend Sarah 2.0 IMed me today telling me how much she hates this commercial, so much that she blogged about it in a NEGATIVE way. This is completely contrary to what she should be doing. Luckily it was only a myspace blog so it doesn’t count… but I am going to still take the time to attack her arguments. Start out by reading her blog and watching the video.

She breaks the video down by seconds. I have posted said video below so you can compare. Hit the play button on the control panel and not on the video because it is fucked up for some reason and will try to tell you that it is no longer available.

Her comments in italics.

.05: The cannon shoots through the wall and the wall falls towards the blast
The thing is, the cannon knocks over the wall when it hits the front wall of the house. You see it has already gone through the back wall and at this point it does not have enough speed to rip through the front wall, but it does have enough to push the wall over, knocking all the walls down in the process. Duh.

.14: GROSS pirate teeth!
Just because they are gross doesn’t make them any less piratey and if I have learned anything from the internets is that pirates are cool.

.22: Ok the mermaid costumes are kinda cool, but I wish they flipped their tails only on the 4’s
That is just bullshit. The costumes are amazing of course, but you need that extra flip. It ties the whole scene together. That is like having the Godfather baptism scene without the baptism.

.24: She’s watching the ocean via her digital cable internet? Is that whats going on? I’m sure they didn’t do that on Bay Watch.
Um.. Bay Watch was FICTIONAL. It was a made up TV show. Real life guards use the extreme value that is the Optimum Triple Play so they can both watch their swimmers with greater efficiency AND watch Bay Watch AND use the telephone if they so desire. Each for just one flat rate of $29.95.

.36: Pelvic thrust…and in those outfits. Who choreographed this shit?
It is clearly an homage to one of Bob Fosse’s most famous numbers, “Steam Heat” from The Pajama Game. And you’d think a dance major on a full scholarship would know that…

.40: Who lays out NOT facing the beach? and the conk shell has a cord coming from under a beach towel, obviously not connected to some digital cables.
Sarah clearly does not know shit about the way conch phones work. And also, while it might be confusing from the commercial anyone who knows anything knows that they are filming at the famous Optimum Beach which has a isthmus that jets out between the ocean where there is beach on both sides. So while they are facing away from the beach in the shot, they are facing towards the beach that the camera is shooting from. According the the productions notes which I was lent for the purpose of this article, the camera was actually positioned from a sand bar.

.43 Ship-less pirates on the run.
Seriously… are you fucking mental? A HUGE pirate ship can not pull up to the beach. They set anchor and are now doing their best raping and pillaging on foot. They also happen to be running away from the sea monster who capsized their attack row boats.

.47: Sweet Christ what is that dragon doing? My friend Daniel Feld thinks he’s kinda hot, but what the hell is going on with the pirate in the background? He’s just holding the tail and swinging a sword around. WTF?!
Um… it’s called rapping. Look it up. And the pirate in the background is dealing with the force of the tail that is nearly whipping him about. That “dragon” is clearly a sea monster and he has amazing tail strength and if that pirate wasn’t holding on for dear life he would be certainly bashed against something with it. Either that or he is dancing.

Its pretty down hill from here.
And by down hill do you mean informative? How else would you know that the savings are for real? And that the triple play is the deal? Also.. we needed to see the logo once more in order to gain brand recognition. It’s called marketing dumb ass.

So, in conclusion: best commercial ever. And Sarah is fired from my life. And Reggaeton should be used to sell EVERYTHING. Case dismissed.

UPDATE: Read Sarah’s dimly worded response here.  I do have to thank her for catching some typos like the Fosse misspelling and the correct price.  That being said, “internets” is not a typo, it is a way of life.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EVxI0uGzeY[/youtube]

Today we have two new signs that the world is ending.

Firstly, my greatest hero died recently. Honestly I did not even know him by name, but I do appreciate his controbution to the Earth daily. His name is Al Copeland and he founded my favorite restaurant Popeye’s Famous Chicken And Biscuits, which was evidently named after Popeye Doyle from the French Connection. This is a fact that I did not know, but am very glad to know. Speaking of the French Connection once I met someone who swore to me that he was Gene Hackman’s son, but he had never heard of the French Connection. He just kept talking to me about how he was once in a movie with Will Smith.

Secondly, giant Star Fish may or may not be taking over the world. I can’t imagine they would grow this large with out some plans of world domination. They cannot possibly have good intentions. As a man of science, I find it horrifying that we do not know about everything living in the sea. There could be Nazi’s or Communists or even bigger sea creatures living deep in the ocean training, getting ready to make us their slaves and we would never know. I have gone ahead and created a petition asking world leaders to drain the Earth so we know exactly what is down there so we can tag and number them and keep these monsters in line. Also, in a slightly unrelated note I take some issue to the creative language used in this article. Why the hell would an Associated Press article describe the giant star fish as “the size of big food platters”? What? What does that even mean. How do you define the size of a food platter… or a big food platter? And why would you associate mostly inedible mutant sea creatures with food? Bastards.

Don’t forget to sign the petition! These monsters must be stopped!

A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Since I just wrote up Be Kind Rewind I decided it would be a good time to do a Favorite Things about one of my favorite directors, Michel Gondry. The first time I saw Eternal Sunshine I became obsessed with Gondry. I started trying to track down all his music videos. I got a big help when PALM released their Directors Label series which featured Gondry. It had a pretty good collection of his videos. When comparing it to the Spike Jonze DVD I realized that I was not as into the musicians Gondry worked with. I loved the videos though and I found myself watching Bjork videos despite hating her music. His videos got me into several bands and complete inspired me. I couldn’t come up with just three favorites, but I tried to do my best… so keep reading to see three of my favorite Michel Gondry videos.

(Read the article)

A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday. In honor of this greatest of holidays I am going to be talking about three great football plays. Now, because of NFL’s fascist control over their highlights I can’t show you my favorite plays… or the favorite NFL moments I have had… in fact, I am not even going to be able to show you all of the plays that I am going to talk about. One of these clips is going to be from Tecmo Bowl. Anyway, I am sort of obsessed with football. I try not to mention it on here too much, but I do run a Miami Dolphins website (Bonus Link: me talking Dolphins football on FinsRadio.com) As you may or may not know, the Dolphins are the only team to have gone undefeated. Today our devision rivals, the New England Patriots attempt to become the first team since the Dolphins did it in 1972 to win every game. This I am not happy about. So I am root, root rooting for my home team and praying that some how the Giants can win this game. It is not likely, but I pray. Anyway, all my favorite football moments involve the Dolphins, and there are almost no Dolphins highlights online, so instead I am going to bring you three amazing football plays, for three different reasons. Keep reading to find out which.

(Read the article)

I have stayed pretty quiet about politics on DBB and intentionally so. I am someone who has always been very interested in politics and in the past have campaigned for people. In 2004 I worked for Wes Clark and in 2000 I registered as a republican so I could vote for John McCain in the primaries. After I campaigned for Clark and then again for Kerry in 2004 I was pretty much destroyed with Bush won a second term. I just felt like the bad guys had won and I was devastated. For the next few years I was completely disinterested in politics.

I am very liberal, but in this current election I have sort of stayed out of the way. On the issues Mike Gravel is pretty close to what I believe in… But of the two candidates who actually have a shot, I think they would both make good presidents. Hillary’s attempts at health care reform during Bill’s term in office were inspiring and I have always appreciated that. I think she knows how to get legislation passed and has a good track record in congress. I think her vote to go to war has been slightly blown out of proportion. The majority of people were in agreement with that vote at the time, but I was not one of them, and neither was Barack Obama.

In 2004 we all watched Obama become a celebrity over night. His speech at the Democratic National Convention (Part 2) inspired everyone in the party. I thought that a few years down the road he would make an excellent presidential nominee. I figured a few years in the senate was not enough to base a presidential run on. Clearly I was wrong.

With the two of them head to head I was worried about their electablity. Not only would it be harder to elect a woman or an African American, but I think that Clinton can be very unlikeable and Obama has the issues of inexperience. I told myself that I would just wait to see who came out on top, and then get behind that campaign. I didn’t even get my registration moved from VA, to NY in order to vote on Tuesday. I figured I would worry about it later, and until yesterday I was okay with that.

Last night, my mother changed my mind. My mom is extremely active in politics. She was the woman who got me to really get behind Wes Clark, and she is the woman who has pulled me into the Obama camp. After Tuesday, it might be too late, but I will do what I can in the next few days. What she said to me really made a difference. We had a two hour conversation about the campaigns and I had to pretty much hang up with her around midnight because I needed to go out. She told me that seeing Obama speak was like watching JFK. She said that he is the type of leader that makes people understand they have to make sacrifices for the good of the nation. She talked to me about how before Reagan Republicans and Democrats worked together and actually got things done. There were compromises. Obama is someone that can bring this country together. He is a leader.

I think she is right. When I hear him speak I get excited. He has the overwhelming support of the youth vote, not just because he is young, but because he is the future. He is the next chapter in American history. I believe that both of the Democratic candidates have what it takes to be a good president, but Obama has what it takes to be a great leader. Watching clip after clip of him on YouTube just gets me excited. He will move millions; he has moved me.

This country wants change, and Barack Obama is the man to bring it.

New York, vote wisely this Tuesday. Your country needs you.

A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

I have a handful of movies that I break out when I really need to impress someone. If I think someone is really amazing, I invite them over and watch some insanely twisted movie with me that I know will blow them away. 9 times out of 10 it is an Asian Extreme film… Battle Royale or maybe something by Takashi Miike or Park Chan Wook. It was hard to narrow films down to just three… I figure too many people know Battle Royale, and not everyone can appreciate a film like Salo or the 45 minute rape scene in I Spit On Your Grave… and speaking of rape scenes, Irreversible is not a film I want to watch over and over again so showing that to people is sort of out. I can usually judge a persons character by how much they appreciate Wayne’s World (unless they are really young… or really old) so that spends a lot of time in my DVD player. But, when I really thought about it, I came up with three films that I show people over and over again, that have never failed to fuck up the minds of the friends and well wishers I invite over. Keep reading to find out the top 3 films that you need to bump to the top of your Netflix queue.

(Read the article)

A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Last week I talked about how I couldn’t find my very favorite commercial jingles and I still can’t, but I did find some pretty great ones. The ones I can’t find were local DC commercials that I grew up with and the old AutoZone commercial which was sweet, but does not seem to exist on the internets. I did find some good stuff. Also, I just wanted to give a shout out to the Human Giant sketch that inspired todays post…. and part 2. Lastly I wanted to mention that this might be the last Favorite Things for the next two weeks because I will be out of town. Anyway, keep reading to listen to some amazing commercial jingles!

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