As you may have noticed, I almost never post anything about or even mention Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter because doing so would raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels. When I see video of them, I'm good for about 25 seconds, and then I have to shut it off.

But it's been hard to avoid the whole Amanda Terkel vs. Bill O'Reilly controversy. And Terkel has just posted a really compelling article about it all for The Daily Beast.

Read "Bill O'Reilly Is Stalking Me."

[Thanks to Angry Asian Man for posting this.]

While posting on this blog will continue at its normal brisk pace, I won't be able to reply to comments as frequently as I usually do. But please keep those comments coming—they help fuel my creative blogging fire. I read them all and cherish them dearly—well, except for this obvious nutjob. (I didn't make it past the first few sentences. If anybody out there does end up reading the entire comment, then please summarize for me. Thanks.)

[Thanks to Gabriel Fleming for snapping this photo.]

Don't you love going out into the South African wilderness and playing with dangerous lions as if they were cute little kittens? Watch:



At first, I thought, "Oh my god, there can be no good outcome to this video. That man is lunch." But, alas, I was wrong. And the next time I am confronted by a snarling group of lions, I will pet them, roll around with them, and talk to them in lolcat language!

Green Day: The Musical?



Hell the fuck yeah.

I wrote a new post for The Bilerico Project.



Read "Baiting Homophobes."

Oh, this is good.

Attention San Francisco! You know why old Chinese ladies shove you and knock you on your ass when they're running for the 30 Stockton? It's because their survival-of-the-pushiest mentality is so prevalent in their homeland that it's in their very bones. Watch in awe as all these Chinese commuters try to cram into trains during rush hour, and then watch in horror as station agents lend helping hands. Behold:



[Thanks to Superbadfriend for sending me this.]

[Addendum 03.31.09: Several astute (know-it-all?) readers have pointed out that the above video clip takes place in Japan, not China. I apologize for the mistake. But can you really blame me for not being able to tell the Japanese from the Chinese?]

The pointlessness of this video is matched only by its absolute cuteness. Watch:



[Thanks to Jason at Is That a Gavel at Your Pants? for this.]

Those of you who have ever suffered through a low-budget indie movie at a film festival or anywhere else will no doubt appreciate this astute parody that rips the indie film scene a new hole. Absolutely hilarious. Watch:

Bright Eyes* is now streaming a new single, "Slowly (Oh So Slowly)," for free online! It's from his soon-to-be released album, Outer South, and it's superb. I mean, fuck, just look at this first verse:

Potential, well, you're a loaded line
The veil between the world and the faceless bride
There's nothing yet but a bunch of white
Oh, potential, you're a loaded line

Listen to "Slowly (Oh So Slowly)."

[*I refuse to call Conor Oberst "Conor Oberst" and will refer to him only as "Bright Eyes."]

Did you see the new South Park the other night (oh, glorious DVR, I love you more than I love my own children [if I had children])? Finally, someone has explained the financial crisis in the most lucid way. Here's a clip about how the crisis is being handled. Watch:



Oh my god, imagine me, sitting on my green couch, laughing hysterically. Now I truly understand!

Someone has compiled 20 photographs of athletes in accidentally compromising positions. Oh, the joys that our dirty minds yield!



See the 19 other photos here.

[Thanks to The Big Picture for posting this.]

Remember Maru, that chubby cat who likes to dive into boxes? You delighted at this video and this video and this video. Well, now he's back! This time he wanders around the house with a bag over his head! Watch:



More Maru.

As you may know, I am most appreciative of the unquantifiable rewards of writing this blog: it gets my creative juices flowing daily; it teaches me the value of routine; it gives me a global platform to entertain the public; it has led to new friendships; it has been an incredible networking and marketing tool; and, simply, it makes me seem way cooler than I actually am. (See how cool it is to claim how uncool you are? Learn from me, people!)

But I must point out that Bamboo Nation has reached a kind of milestone. Ever since I started experimenting with advertising, this blog has finally earned its first—are you ready for this?!—one hundred whopping dollars from Google's Adsense program! For those of you who think that's easy, well, do you know how many fucking people have to click on the ads on this blog to reach $100 worth of revenue? A shitload! And Google doesn't pay out a dime to you until you hit that magic 100 number. I can't wait to get my hundred bucks so that I can change them into one-dollar bills and hit a stripper bar.

Anyway, as you may also know, I'm constantly trying to improve Bamboo Nation. You've witnessed me playing around with content and layout and overall philosophy on a regular basis. It's my aim not only to increase both the unquantifiable—and now monetary—rewards of this blog, but also to improve my readers' experience with it.

So I was jazzed to learn about Problogger's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a daily challenge starting on April 1 that's meant to help you, well, build a better blog. I know that many of Bamboo Nation's readers are bloggers themselves, so why don't you all join me on this cool one-month journey?

Register here.

[Thanks to Annie at It's Not the Thing You Fling, It's the Fling Itself for sending me this.]

After seeing a woman ridiculously scream bloody murder at a Carson, California, city council meeting on The Huffington Post, I investigated other fun city council meetings (there must be a few, right?) and found the following gem from Medina, Ohio. No one seems to know who cut the cheese or if it's some kid using the iFart application or what, but who cares? Farting is funny. Especially at city council meetings. Watch:

BBC News reports:

An 18-year-old has secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents' £1million mansion in Berkshire. It was there for a year before his parents found out. They say he'll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling.

That is one huge cock!

[Source: BBC News.]

In this fantastic wonder of stop-motion animation, Iron Man and Bruce Lee try to kick each other's asses. Goddamn, this is cool. Watch:



[Thanks to Angry Asian Man for posting this.]

Let's check in with my country of ancestry, shall we? BBC News reports:

An unusual disguise has helped a Bangkok fireman rescue an eight-year-old boy who had climbed on to a third-floor window ledge, Thai police say.

The firefighter dressed up as the comic book superhero Spider-Man in order to coax the boy, who is autistic, from his dangerous perch.

My favorite part of this story is when we learn that "a remark by [the boy's] mother about his passion for comic superheroes prompted fireman Somchai Yoosabai to rush back to the station, where he kept a Spider-Man costume in his locker."

Um...what?!

Read the entire article here.

[Thanks to Narrioch at Torschlusspanik!! for this.]

I wrote a new post for The Bilerico Project.



Read "Bromantic Comedy."

Let's get the good news out of the way first: a couple weeks ago I was kind of suddenly offered a teaching gig at the University of Southern California, as part of USC's Master of Professional Writing Program. Within a matter of days, I was locked into helming a Master Class in Playwriting for the Fall 2009 semester, I had turned in my syllabus, and I had already been assigned a room number. The MPW is an awesome multidisciplinary graduate program that trains writers to navigate different forms—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenwriting, drama.

That's all fine and good and all, but let's get to what's really important, shall we? For all the time it took for me to create an elaborate syllabus, I spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to decide which photo I would use to accompany my faculty bio page. I had to dig through tons of hard-drive consuming picture files (I can't bring myself to delete myself!), narrow them down, and evaluate what each one communicated to the public.

After plenty of careful consideration, I ended up choosing the photo you see above. I leave it up to you to guess what this picture conveys to the world and, more specifically, to prospective students who have no goddamn idea what they're getting themselves into.



(Everything old is new again...when it's in Spanish!)

From the Onion News Network comes the following bit of strangely literate humor. According to the ONN, Business Week has ranked Prague's Franz Kafka International as the #1 Most Dehumanizing Airport in the world (slightly ahead of Chicago, Dallas, and Denver). I love the airport representative who valiantly defends his place of employment. Watch:



Ha ha ha! My favorite line is, "And everyone keeps calling me 'S.'"

Those of you familiar with Impact Theatre's performance space—the basement of a pizza parlor in Berkeley—know how fun it can be to watch plays while downing slices and drinking beer. (In fact, some of you have seen Jukebox Stories there, intoxicated, and that's the way Brandon and I like it.)

Well, the other night, Impact had to toss a drunk girl out onto the street! Wow! Exciting things happen even after I am gone!

Read more about it here.

Speaking of Oskar, the role was actually originated by Patrick Alparone in Oskar: The Kid That Could several years ago. Patrick does things like call me up when he's visiting L.A. with only one hour to spare before having to go to the airport so that we can shovel Subway sandwiches down our throats while staring longingly into each other's eyes.

Anyway, an actor colleague of ours did a short interview with Patrick that's interesting in that it exists in the first place.

Read the entire article here.

I wrote a new post for The Bilerico Project.



Read "What Does Your Taste in Music Say About Your Intelligence (or Lack Thereof)?"

Don't you hate it when you nurse penguins back to health and try to set them free into the wild, only to find them swimming back for the creature comforts of the animal sanctuary? No real news here—just shots of cute penguins! Watch:

Do you know Trevor Allen? I know Trevor Allen. I went to grad school with Trevor Allen. I've seen several incarnations of Trevor Allen's fantastic solo show, Working for the Mouse, over the years. The show, written and performed by Trevor Allen, is a very funny, surprisingly moving, and juicy "inside" look at what it's like to work at Disneyland and, more specifically, to work as Pluto—while longing to be a "face character," Peter Pan.

Trevor Allen has launched a new website that features text, audio, and video from the show and from his in-progress book adaptation. Trevor Allen has, in effect, created a multimedia extravaganza that's meant to seduce your eyes, ears, and genital area—wait a minute, I'm thinking of another website. But you should learn more about Trevor Allen anyway.

Visit Trevor Allen's Working for the Mouse website here.

I've faced some tough crowds in my career (Drunk Bostonians in an Irish pub? Check. Bewildered Philadelphians in a coffeehouse? Check.), but never have I been filled with as much trepidation as I was last Monday, when my play, Oskar and the Big Bully Battle, was about to face the uncensored judgment of hundreds—hundreds!—of cranky kindergarten through fifth-grade students early in the morning. The first show of this Bay Area tour kicked off with an 8:30 a.m. performance (followed by one at 10:30 a.m.) in a school cafeteria—the kids sat on the cold, freshly mopped floor while the smell of hot dogs wafted in the air.

What exactly were the students watching?

OSKAR AND THE BIG BULLY BATTLE
by PRINCE GOMOLVILAS

In OSKAR AND THE BIG BULLY BATTLE a minor schoolyard mishap spirals out of control, and three elementary school students—Oskar, Frank, and Beth—become embroiled in a tale about bullies, victims, and bystanders. Sometimes it's hard to tell who's who, but OSKAR AND THE BIG BULLY BATTLE—a play told with humor and imagination—attempts to sort it all out.

I've often told playwrights that there's lots of supplemental income to be found in educational theater—indeed, it's been the bulk of my bread and butter for many years—but don't misunderstand how difficult it actually is. Do you know how fucking hard it is to write a kids' play?!

First, you have to face the technical challenges of creating a show that can be easily transported to and performed in places like cafeterias and classrooms, while still making it visually imaginative and interesting enough to hold the attention of elementary school students for a solid 35 minutes or so. Second, you have to write something that both kindergarteners and fifth graders will both understand and be entertained by (believe me, that's a wide spectrum)—it's a tough balance to make sure that fifth graders don't feel like they're being talked down to and that kindergarteners genuinely assimilate the material. Third, with educational theater plays, you have to figure out how to educate the audience without being didactic—youngsters can sniff preachiness a mile away. Fourth, while doing all of the above, you still must adhere to good playwriting craft. Finally, you have to ensure the play meets the demands of the theater company, school principals and administrators, teachers, and parents, who often all have different agendas.

Well, it's been a week since the tour kicked off, and I can safely start bragging. OSKAR AND THE BIG BULLY BATTLE kicks ass. (Even more so than my previous tour with TheatreWorks, OSKAR: THE KID THAT COULD, which I wrote about here. I knew that play, which promotes literacy, was a triumph when two kids were overheard having the following exchange after a performance—KID #1: Books suck. KID #2: No. You suck.)

The three actors (adults who play children) and stage manager are funny and dynamic on stage, and, while those first two performances were rough around the edges, the kids loved the show. I get performance reports from the stage manager every day, and it's been going very well—the students respond with laughter and applause, talk to the actors, voice their opinions, and are starstruck while passing the cast on their way out of the venue.

Hey, how could they not? The play features the following monologue, delivered by Oskar, who's struggling with what to do after he sees a classmate being bullied:

OSKAR
To tell, or not to tell—that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler to keep my darn mouth shut
About Frank's extreme outrageous misfortune
Or to risk getting into lots of trouble
By telling a teacher about Beth's deeds

...And I would add something about "this mortal coil," but even I don't understand the words coming out of my mouth.

Believe it or not, certain school audiences eat this monologue up.

We've already gotten a lot of great feedback. Here's an an e-mail from a school administrator/teacher:

The play was so successful, truly on target, and went beyond our expectations, entertaining us without losing the focus of the serious issues we needed to address. The playwright...has to be acknowledged for his ability to communicate to children and adults and for his special ability to bring humor in just the right measure in dealing with difficult concepts. The actors are wonderful, and as a cast they are believable, unflappable (a challenge with young audiences) and extraordinarily engaging. Those of us inside the arts know its value is in the communication, examining how we connect to others, resolving conflicts, and creating new possibilities. The collective efforts of all involved made it happen.

And this great one from a parent:

My 9-year-old daughter and I were two of the some 120 parents and kids who watched... Oskar...on Monday night. The morning after the show, she got irritated at her older brother, and said, "If you don't give me that toy, I'll rip your picture." I immediately looked at her and said simply, "What would Oskar do? How would Oskar work this out?" And thanks to the play, she instantly knew deeply and truly that Oskar wouldn't resolve a conflict by making threats. Later that night, she was apologizing to me about something, with a quick one-word "sorry"... and, without even having to think about it much, I turned to her and gently repeated one of the lines of the show, "Say it like you mean it." Then we had a great conversation about the ways you do that--by taking the time and making the effort to go speak to the person face to face and by speaking to them in full sentences. Again, thanks to Oskar, she and I had a great platform to talk this over in a loving, constructive way. I had the tools, and she was receptive to the suggestions, all because together we had watched and learned from Oskar. She later came up to me, with no prompting, and offered one of the most heartfelt apologies I've ever heard. In that moment, I was so proud of her and so grateful for Oskar! This play is a powerful resource for helping kids learn how to work out the conflicts that happen in life. So...thank you for creating this entertaining, and informative theatre piece that has in less than 24 hours already helped my family!

Yes, sometimes, a life in the arts is worth it, isn't it?

I wrote a new post for The Bilerico Project.



Read "70-Year-Old Porn Star Rocks Japan's Adult Industry."

You have no doubt simultaneously snickered at and coveted both the Snuggie (a blanket with sleeves!) and the ShamWow (a super absorbent towel!), two products you never knew you needed. And, yes, you do need them.

Real Time With Bill Maher has taken consumerism to its logical conclusion with this hilarious commercial for...the SnugWow! Watch:



Yes, I will be repeating "the full-body diaper shammy" throughout the week, in the hope that this parody become a reality.

One of the most fun times I have ever had at a concert was seeing The Proclaimers at the El Rey in Los Angeles last year. Loren and Donovan and I muscled our way to the front and jumped up and down with drunk Scottish people, who have intense cultural pride parallelled only by Filipinos and HSM fans. Paul Rudd was there too, but I didn't approach him because he was too busy fending off hot girls in heels. (I know what that's like.)

Most people think The Proclaimers—Scottish twins Charlie and Craig Reid—are mere one-hit wonders for their unarguably catchy "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)." But their back catalog of albums and songs is wide in scope and really terrific, and they're huge in the UK—their "Sunshine on Leith" has been adopted as a national anthem of sorts and gets belted out by sports-goers at ball games. And until you see them in concert (I've been three times), you don't realize how powerful their voices really are—recordings don't quite do them justice.

Watch the music video of "Life With You," a song that I actually sing to Pork Chop by replacing all instances of the word "you" with "Pork Chop":



Well, The Proclaimers will be performing at South by Southwest this weekend, and their set will be beamed directly to DIRECTV viewers! Check out the entire line-up, which includes Ben Harper, Third Eye Blind, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the fantastic band, The Airborne Toxic Event. Watch them perform an acoustic version of "Happiness Is Overrated":

Before going to bed lately, I have been saying a prayer that goes a little something like this: "Dear Lord, please help me. I do not want to turn into a douchebag and join Twitter. I want to use my superpowers for good. I'm enough of douchebag doing status updates on Facebook. Do not make me more so."

Thanks to a web series titled Super News!—and specifically an episode titled "Twouble with Twitters"—I now have more ammunition to kick Twitter in the stomach. This video is a tad on the long side (for Bamboo Nation, at least), but it's really funny. Watch:



(If you can't see the video above, go here.)

[Thanks to Aaron Lee Fineman for sending me this.]

Okay, there's really no news story here. It's just raw footage of a polar bear named Huggies hanging out with her twin cubs, Freedom and Swimmer. (Are they hippies or what?) It's cute. That is all. Thank you for coming. Watch:

I never imagined that a bunch of sheep strapped with LEDs (Christmas lights, basically) would bring me such unbridled joy. What begins as an absurd notion quickly turns into something truly sublime. And back off, animal-rights extremists! The sheep like it! I can tell! Watch:



[Thanks to Brandon Patton for sending me this.]

For those of you who work in theater, Mike Daisey's inspiring, funny, and sad monologue, How Theater Failed America, should be required viewing. Having played in New York (that's where I saw it last year) and toured pretty extensively throughout the country, many industry folk have already seen it and argued about it. It hits the Los Angeles area this week, and, if you're even remotely interested in the state of American theater, you should go.

The dynamic Daisey tells the story of how he fell in love with theater, while also breaking down how the industry is collapsing under the weight of its own ambitions. How Theater Failed America is at once a provocative and argumentative critique of the system as well as a clarion call to all theater artists to help save and honor the industry that they love.

The show runs March 18 to 21, 2009, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Find more information about the show here.

You can find half-price tickets ($10!) here. (In order to access that page, you have to be a [free] member of Goldstar Events—sign up here.)

Monkeys in Thailand have learned to pick up strands of human hair and floss their teeth with them. They are then passing along this dental hygeine technique to their children. Watch:



Monkeys in Thailand now officially floss more than I do.

One of my favorite film scores of all time is Randy Newman's lovely music for Avalon (1990), which also happens to be a great unsung movie that has held up really well over the last couple of decades. The score is heartfelt and elegiac, which also perfectly describes this deft, observant, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking study of three generations of Polish Jews in Baltimore in the early and mid-1900s.

Writer-director Barry Levinson is best known for Rain Man; Good Morning, Vietnam; and Diner, but I believe that Avalon is his most crowning achievement, a semi-autobiographical story of immigrants (and children and grandchildren of immigrants) that will no doubt hold resonance for anyone who has or who knows someone who has adopted America as his or her new country.

Avalon is a loving portrait of the large Krichinsky clan and its pursuit of the American dream, but that dream comes at a terrible cost. For all its humor and generosity of spirit, the film wants to explore the disintegration of the family, asserts that progress has dark consequences, and blames television of all things for destroying the cohesion that had always been central to the collective identity of the Krichinskys.

Near the end of the film, a character says, "If I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better." Avalon is a clarion call for us to remember our roots, a plea for us to make storytelling—to make oral history—an integral part of our lives once again.

Watch the trailer:

A woman in Spokane, Washington, plunked down $27 for a used couch, and her boyfriend found a cat hidden inside of it days—days!—later. Fortunately, the woman works in an animal shelter and nursed the stowaway feline back to health.

Pork Chop cannot believe that the cat survived days without food and water. He thinks it is all an elaborate hoax to gain your easy sympathy. Suckers! Watch:



Is the real crime here not knowing the source of meows—or is it that couch?

Read more here.

[Thanks to Superbadfriend for sending me this.]

Channing Tatum's shirtless, sweaty, and dancing antics in the janitor-turned-ballet-dancer fantasy, Step Up, instantly earned him a place in my prestigious spank bank. His career comes full circle when he performs shirtless, sweaty, and fighting antics in the petty-criminal-turned-street-fighter fantasy, Fighting.

I saw the trailer when I went to see the brutal Last House on the Left on Friday, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from jumping out of my seat and licking the screen, which, when you think about it, really is the only appropriate response to such a situation. Watch:



Be still my beating crotch!

The other night I received a mysterious text message from a stranger, who clearly intended to send the text to someone else and not to me. The text read:

No we did not make it this time. both taylor coaches had a loss.

Being the evil genius that I am, I decided to play along. So I sent this message back:

It is all your fault.

Minutes later the stranger sent me this desperate text:

What why

So I replied:

If you have to ask, then it is worse than I thought.

The stranger stopped sending me messages after that. Damn. I was just getting started!

I recently wrote about my adventures on the set of Jake and Will's latest shoot, and mere days later the video in question has been edited into a nifty 30-second commercial. This contest entry for Poptent features a cat that is actually fat, and a split-second cameo by me, me, me! Watch:

Jason Terry of Is That a Gavel in Your Pants? has finally, after all these years, fallen into the evil lair of High School Musical, and he blames it all on me.



Read "Open Letter to Prince Gomolvilas: You Corrupted Me" here.

Okay, plushophiles, I will ignore your needs no longer. I scoured the internet so that you can get your jollies. Watch:



Don't say I never did anything for you.

I don't typically wish ill will upon anyone, but, when I read that hottie Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin had broken up, I felt a twinge of evil joy for reasons that only those who have followed the entire Palin saga could understand. I'm not going to rehash the entire drama here, but let's just say that this further damages Sarah Palin's self-righteous family-values ideology and her overzealous support of the sham that is abstinence-only sex education.



Levi Johnston is not just a pretty ass after all. The boy wised up before it was too late.

On Friday, Gabriel took me to opening night of Outfest's Fusion 2009: The Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival.

When he walked up to the entranceway of the Egyptian Theatre, where I was waiting, I said, "Hey, wait a minute, you're not an LGBT people of color!" He smiled, and I realized that one of the reasons I was invited was to pull attention from the fact that Gabriel is whiter than a polar bear in the snow and to ensure that he didn't get hate-crimed by minorities like me. When whitey comes to our events and eats our food, we tend to initiate a beat down.

My favorite films in the evening's shorts program was Mi-rang Lee's The Bath, a lovely Korean movie about a transgender woman's relationship with her sister and mother, and Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega's La Corona, a rich documentary about a female prison beauty pageant. (Yes, I said "female prison beauty pageant," and, yes, some of the contestants are murderers.) Keep these shorts on your radar for future reference.

At the after-party (where I shoveled Indian food into my mouth like a slumdog millionaire who was pre-millionaire), we bumped into Mike Roth—check out his really moving and fascinating documentary, Saving Marriage, which traces the fight for gay marriage in Massachusetts—as well as Barney Cheng, who's appeared in two of my plays in New York—check out his scene-stealing turn in Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending. (Read a terrific interview with him here—he talks about the film and working with Woody Allen.)

Sometimes it's fun being a people of color. Ask Gabriel.

Back in the day, Mattel manufactured Baby Secret, a creepy-ass doll that whispered malevolently in your ear. Girls may have found joy in sharing secrets with these sneaky dolls, but I certainly would've crapped my pants. Watch:



[Thanks to Scott Heim for this.]

I just wrote a guest post over at Jake and Will's Video Contest Warriors blog.



Read "Another Man's Shirt."

Even if you were wowed by Prachya Pinkaew's Thai martial arts films, Ong-bak and The Protector, nothing will prepare you for the jaw-dropping awesomeness of Chocolate (2009). The last time I was blown away by a martial arts movie was when I saw Kill Bill: Vol. 1 in 2003, and before that it was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. (It's truly something to sit in an audience full of people so amazed by what they are seeing that they are watching in stunned silence.)

Our heroine, played by the super-talented Jeeja Yanin, is an autistic girl (seriously!) whose nimbleness and agility is matched only by her ability to instantly pick up martial arts moves by watching them on TV and she practices by playing video games. And to say that she kicks some serious ass during the course of the film would be a gross understatement.

When you watch Chocolate's delirious action sequences, which seem to get more absurdly elaborate and delightful as it goes along, you are first confused by how they pull off such dangerous-looking stunts. Then, when you realize that there are no wires or special effects or stunts doubles, you get the sinking feeling that in Thailand they don't care about such petty American notions as "rules" and "safety" and "insurance." By the time the end credits roll around and you see outtakes of actors writhing around in real pain and bleeding from real injuries, your suspicions are confirmed.

I like it when people hurt themselves to keep me entertained.

Here's the trailer:



Chocolate, which will eventually find its way onto my list of favorite films this year, is now out on DVD. Get it!

Misty Harris, who brilliantly penned the now-deceased Popcultini blog, wrote an article about cute animals that features Pork Chop! The piece ran in a bunch of Canadian papers, including the Montreal Gazette, Nanaimo Daily News, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times Colonist, Edmonton Journal, and Calgary Herald!



Read the entire article here.

Oh, there are many joys in Taiwan, the least of which is not The Martun, a hip, contemporary restaurant that boasts seats shaped like toilets and food served in toilet-shaped bowls! I'm not sure what the point is. All I know is that if I went to eat there it would make me want to go poo right where I was sitting.





Read more here.

[Thanks to Superbadfriend for sending me this.]

I haven't blogged a single word about Octo Mom Nadya Suleman because I pride myself in making Bamboo Nation a refuge from overrun news stories, but the following video clip is just too damn good to not share. Jimmy Kimmel presents to you exclusive video of Suleman giving birth to all her babies. Watch:

I'm not sure where in the world the following photo was taken—all I know is that it's a place where birds are prone to swooping down and stealing your ice cream. This is no doubt the fulfillment of a prophecy first presented by Alfred Hitchcock many decades ago.



See more birds stealing ice cream here.

[Thanks to Gabriel Fleming for sending me this.]

The following song does not quite reach the level of religious absurdity as "The Renewed Mind" (featuring a moonwalking worshipper) or "Jesus Is My Friend" (a tune bouncy enough to convert you instantly), but it offers some good laughs. It's about breakfast. No—it's about heaven. No—it's about how in heaven, there's no breakfast. WHAT?! Watch:



[Thanks to Louise Larsen for posting this.]

Our beloved Pork Chop uses all the limbs he has in an attempt to get to his drugs. Watch:



Man, post-production on this took forever! Love it!

The winner of the second pair of tickets was Brent, who wrote me a review of the show, which gives me even more reason to put down my CTU bag, get out of my house, and go:

Ken Roht’s 99¢ Only Calendar Competition is a trip to another planet. Every last stitch of costume and set decoration is made exclusively of items purchased from the 99¢ Only Store, and I swear to god, when Miss January through Miss December come out for the first time, you’ll swear there are more than twelve months in a year; it’s just that overwhelming.

For numerous reasons, it might not be right to call it a drag show, though the high camp and high hair certainly qualify it in my book. But unlike typical drag, which is often heavy with burlesque and improv, this is definitely much more, with beautiful music and singing and dancing.

In the end, it’s a parody of a beauty pageant, but certainly not a direct parody. There is no narrative, really, and the sequence of events is often vague. As a Beauty Pageant, its the last place you’d expect to see Bollywood and Biochemistry side by side. But you do. And you don’t question it.

You are immersed in a weird world of color and song and comedy and beauty, and the only connection you maintain with the world outside is the sudden recognition of the same laundry basket you have at home in its dazzling new incarnation.

At seven epic minutes, some of you may find this video utterly boring—after all, it's just a camera placed on one of those conveyor belts that wrap around a sushi bar in Japan. But I think it's strangely mesmerizing—we get to see the camera creep up on a wide array of Japanese customers eating and their genuine reactions to being recorded. There are also a few great surprises—the running waitress at 2:41, the drama in the kitchen at 5:15, etc. This is definitely worth the price of admission. Watch:



[Thanks to MK for sending me this.]

Dear Roxette:

For absolutely no reason at all, instigated by nothing that I can discern, I started thinking about you this morning. And, no, I was not thinking about your big hits, "The Look" or "Listen to Your Heart" or "It Must've Been Love." The song that I could not get out of my head was your ultra-cheesy, appropriately little-respected "Dressed for Success." I love you, but I hate you. I sing along, but I want to stab myself for doing so. You are the best Swedish thing since ABBA, but I wish you were never born. I mean, watch:



Sincerely,
Prince

Ah, New York! I want to visit you again so I can get some fresh hot buns from this place:



[Thanks to Aaron Lee Fineman for sending me this.]

This baby has a career in villainy if he wants it. Watch:

From Passive-Aggressive Notes comes photographs of signage that elevates Asians to the nail salon masters that they are:




[Thanks to Is That a Gavel in Your Pants? for sending me this.]

Reports about a cat named Ugly Bat Boy have been circulating the media, perpetuating the idea that this feline is perhaps the ugliest in the world. I have to say that, if it's not, then it's pretty damn close. Before viewing the following news clip, please put down whatever you're eating so that you don't throw it up all over your computer. Now watch:



Read more about Ugly Bat Boy (also known simply as "Ugly" and "Uggs") here.

But that's not all in breaking cat news. The week started out with this news item:

A man who stuffed his girlfriend's cat into a makeshift bong and smoked marijuana through it said Tuesday that he had done it on other occasions and that it calmed the cat down.

Watch:



Read more about the cat in the bong here.

Man, sometimes this blog is no work at all. I just cut and paste and cut and paste.

A certain someone brought home a gift so glorious that it almost made me wet my pants: an authentic Jack Bauer/CTU Messenger Bag! So I did the only thing one could do when presented with a gift such as this—I staged a 24-inspired photo shoot!



By the way, that is not a real gun. But my badass-ness is real. Watch out, evil-doers!

Okay, so there's been a lot of chatter about how the child actors in Slumdog Millionaire are being exploited and swindled by Danny Boyle and the Hollywood elite responsible for the film. For example, The Huffington Post published photos highlighting the kids' return to the slums of Mumbai, and other critics have charged that not enough has been done for these children, given the movie's runaway success.

Since I feel peripherally connected to Slumdog Millionaire, I must jump to Boyle's defense and provide a bit of additional information, in case you missed it, so you can make an informed decision about where you stand on this whole issue.

Because all the money that the kids were paid for their work on the film has now disappeared, Boyle and the filmmakers set up a trust fund for each of the child stars—the money (and its interest) will be available to them when they turn 18, provided they finish the educational program that has been set up for them. They are also receiving a weekly allowance, and will soon be rehoused into apartments. (They had also been given money for new housing, but that money has also disappeared.) Boyle explains in this news clip:



Instead of showering the children with more cash (their previous payments appear to have been grossly mismanaged), Boyle and crew have decided to make sure that the kids are taken care of on a long-term basis. Perhaps this is a smarter move, considering that one of the child actors' fathers is prone to slapping his son and insists, "I want the money now. It is of no use later."

What say you, dear readers?

The title of this post pretty much says it all. Watch:

[For Parts 1 and 2, read "My Black Levels Are Better Than Your Black Levels" and "My Black Levels Are Better Than Your Black Levels, Part 2: The My-Oscar-After-Party-Is-Better-Than-Your-Oscar-After-Party Edition."]

Shortly after Loren and I gloated about our Oscar night adventures with the Slumdog contingent...



...our friend Diablo Cody's column in Entertainment Weekly was published, detailing her glamorous night at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna and Robert DeNiro.

Read Diablo Cody's column here.

Did we just get majorly pwned?

Don't laugh, Gabriel. You weren't there either.

Because you didn't win tickets to Letters to a Student Revolutionary when I was giving them away for free on this blog, I got to go in your place. The production (which admittedly made me shed a tear at the end) was mounted at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in downtown Los Angeles to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. The show is now closed, but NBC ran a great segment on the production last week. Watch:



Hey, I know most of those people! Yes..."those people."

Quest Crew, a group of nimble Asian-American men, are poised to win the third season of America's Best Dance Crew (and its whopping $100,000 prize) if they rack up enough votes by 10:00 p.m. (PST) on Wednesday, March 4, 2009. I'm sure you'll be a true believer once you see them shake their booties. (The actual dancing starts at 0:55.) Watch:



Vote here now.

[Thanks to Superbadfriend for sending me this.]

Back in the early 1980s, this TV commercial probably elicited chuckles for its bad acting. But ever since a certain disease co-opted a particular vocabulary word (and its homonyms), the ad now reaches a new level of amusement. Watch:



And when's the last time the word "homonym" crossed your mind? For me, it might be at least a decade.

Please. Keep this word in circulation. Use it sometime this week. Thank you.

Our beloved Pork Chop returns to the small screen with a new short movie, in which he puts his despair squarely on your shoulders. Watch:



Here's that link again, in case you missed it: www.facebook.com/pages/Pork-Chop/52495544585.