Posted by Christian | Filed under American Idol, Reality TV, SYTYCD, The Bachelor
I have a few words of advice for the coming season’s crop of reality TV show contestants:
1. Your few weeks on a TV show don’t qualify as a “journey,” so stop calling it that. A journey is more along the lines of 30 years of [...]
Posted by Davis | Filed under Uncategorized
When you think about your daily routine, the list of things you do in order to qualify as a responsible member of society is kind of mind-boggling. It may be tempting to think of these tasks in broad strokes, but in reality, most of them consist of many smaller tasks. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ryan | Filed under Growing Up, High School, Rock & Roll, Stories
Some buddies and I got together to watch It Might Get Loud a while ago. This is a modestly interesting documentary whose central structure follows a single day in which Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White get together to compare notes on guitar godhood. It’s obvious from the start that the movie grew out of someone having a simple, mind-blowing idea: “Wait- what would happen if you got Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White together in the same room, at the same time? Seriously- what would HAPPEN???” I suppose the assumption is that the magnitude of the collected awesomeness would fracture the very fabric of rock and roll spacetime, perhaps creating an alternative dimension of flying shapes and talking elephants made out of druidic runes.
(Yeah, sort of like this)
The movie, being live-action, does not take place in rock and roll spacetime. It actually takes place on several couches gathered together in the middle of a pretty large warehouse in a very authentic looking part of a hardscrabble city. There are some grapes and melon slices on the table. Jack White tries to impress The Edge by showing him the custom guitar he commissioned, in which he had a vocal distortion microphone implanted directly in the body of the guitar on some kind of retractable cord. So Jack can pull this thing out of his guitar mid-performance and start singing in distortion. The Edge admits to playing the wrong chord on one of the verses of something. They jam dramatically on their guitars, Jimmy Page pasting a 26 year old’s callous pucker onto his septuagenarian face, and after a while you think “hmm, this needs a little more . . . Robert Plant.”
The movie isn’t bad; I actually enjoyed it. But somewhere in the middle, I got the feeling that everything was hollow, that for some reason, all of this artistry and attitude lacked something. The best way I could sum it up is that this movie made no case for the idea that what these men have done is consequential. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christian | Filed under Uncategorized
I was thinking the other day about how messed up the world is and what we can do about it. Then it hit me… You know what we can do about it? We can do everything in our power to get this young man to marry this young woman. Then they would produce a baby that looks something like this, which would go a long way toward healing the world.
…
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if W. and Biden had been President and Vice President together. Can you imagine the great times had by all? Or what if Cheney had been Nixon’s VP. We would likely all be dead. And I wish Billy C. could have had someone fun who understood that when the President has an eye for the ladies, he has an eye for the ladies and there’s nothing to be done, rather than Serious Steven Gore.
…
Do you want to know what my biggest dream in the world is? I will do this someday:
Posted by Davis | Filed under Holidays, Twinkies, Unicorns, Winter, World of Warcraft
I really, really, really hate January. The only thing I hate more than January is February. These two months of the year seem disconnected from any of the fond associations or larger meanings the other months enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by DDDT | Filed under Uncategorized
You know what’s fun? Debates about things. You know what the problem is with debates in real life? Someone is always willing to be more long-winded, more pedantic, and more obscure than everyone else. Because of that, most debates usually end up being won by the nerdiest and most determined blowhard, rather than by the person who is right. Debates are great, blowhards are sooo not. (Unless you happen to be the biggest blowhard in the room yourself, in which case blowhards are mostly just skilled and victorious debaters).
To solve this problem, DDDT presents 40 Word Debates. We want to have a safe place to work out the world’s pressing issues, without the threat that someone’s going to go off about how the whole thing may be resolved by resort to Kantian ethics and Darwin’s pre-Galapagos discoveries. You won’t find that here. That’s because all of the antagonists are limited to 40 words per statement. (So are the commenters, by the way.) With just 40 words, you can’t blather on and on about what you learned in your awesome college poli-sci class or how some of your best friends happen to be red-heads or whatever. Get to the point and win or walk away. With this revolutionary new format for truth-finding, we expect to resolve most of the Big Questions probably by mid-Spring. Just one more way DDDT endeavors to improve your life. And protect you from the nerds.
Edition I
Antagonists: Davis (in black); Ryan (in Na’vi blue)
Davis: Avatar is now the highest grossing movie of all time. This is the sign that our new dolphin overlords have been waiting for, indicating that human stupidity is at an all time high and we are ripe for the conquering.
Ryan: I’m not here to defend Avatar’s receipts. I’m here to say it is a very entertaining movie. Are there better movies? Sure. But do I walk through my gloomy earth life dreaming of a better existence on Pandora? EVERY DAY. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christian | Filed under Advertising, Farmington, Local Commercials
I grew up in Farmington, UT, which had around 12,000 residents at the time. I would estimate that 90% were LDS and 95% where white. So in a lot of ways, it was a pretty homogenous place. But in other ways it seemed quite diverse. The economic make-up of my particular neighborhood was mixed. A couple streets east of our house was a 20,000 square foot mansion with a heated driveway, indoor pool, indoor basketball court, covered parking for 16 cars, and an observatory. Yet the area two streets to the west of us was populated by old homes in the 1000-2000 square foot range. Neighborhoods just don’t grow that way anymore, and I regret that.
Our house had a mere 100 yards between it and the undeveloped mountains behind us. My young summers were filled with trips to the Farmington river—only a half mile away—and roaming and camping in the hills above with buddies, dogs, and motorcycles. Drive through Farmington on I-85 now and you will see monstrously huge homes on the mountainside in the spot where we used to camp. There is a big rock jutting out from the hillside that we called “Cheese Rock.” We named it that to commemorate the special time our friend showed us the unholy substance that he was somehow able to consistently squeeze out of his nipple. Note, this particular friend was born in bawdy Centerville, so. It used to take us a good 15 or 20 minutes to four-wheel in our trucks up to that steep spot. Now you can drive right up there on a paved road that ends in the gaudy residences that have leveled the slope. Then again, I’m sure people lower on the hill said the same thing about my parents when they built a bigger home above their own homes 30 years ago, and so on.
Posted by Davis | Filed under The Bachelor
Well, it’s that time of year again. You know what I’m talking about. Let’s stop playing games and just call a spade a spade: The Bachelor is back, and we’re all pumped about it. Or at least we were, until we remembered that the Bachelor is a guy named Jake, who we know from the last season of The Bachelorette. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ryan | Filed under Clothes, Pretentious
It’s not my fault, but I ended up getting a pair of cuff links. You know how someone gives you a shirt as a gift, but you already have one in that color, so you look online for a different one to exchange it with, and the only one you like is the one with french cuffs? That exact same thing happened to me! So the shirt came, and then it sat in my closet for two or three months while I made up my mind whether I could make the leap. By the slow natural process of all the other shirts in my closet becoming stained or permanently unironable, I was finally pushed over the edge.
One day last week I walked a few blocks over to Salt Lake City’s best known, and lowest-end, men’s clothier, Mr. Mac. Mr. Mac specializes in two-pant suits for 19 year old missionaries and three-for-$20.00 ties printed mostly in microscopic patterns of interlocking ropes and wires. It has become famous for the speed with which its over-50 salesmen can materialize on top of any person just touching the front doorknob. If you have to go buy your first set of pretentious man-jewelry, and want to tone down the stuffiness of it all, you can’t beat the Sizzler of haberdashers, right?
The selection was predictably challenging. Maybe eight pairs of cuff links in total, almost all of them two-toned with gaudy faux-gold trimming the edges. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christian | Filed under Advertising, Awesome Videos, Local Commercials
Here at dddt we like to keep things loose, have a real good time, and always push the envelope, but we do have one rule that we feel strongly about.
The only rule at dddt IS THAT THERE ARE NO RULES, GRANDMA!
“But Sharkman, isn’t it a rule that every post has to be a 17 page essay from nerdville jr. high?”
Install our supercool DDDT link button on your site by clicking here.
