Pitching Perfect Projects: Bill and Ted... THREE.

Welcome to another installment of Pitching Perfect Projects. In the past, I pitched completely made-up great ideas of mine, like Eating Dinner, Looking for Work, Black Ghostbusters, and Four Lesbians Two Babies and An Elephant. Well, imagine my excitement when I read (a month late) that a third Bill and Ted movie actually has the backing of Keanu Reeves and others!

Even more shockingly, while movie sequels way after the fact are normally derisively mocked on the Internet, all the comments on that story are pretty positive. I think it reflects the original movie series well. Although Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey seemed like stoner movies, they were both really well-made. Heck, even Ebert gave Bogus Journey three stars in his review.

The question is, what do you do in the third movie? Here is my humble short list of ideas:

- A time wormhole that transports Bill and Ted from the 1990s to present day. There can be the obligatory "fish out of water" adapting that they have to do, like trying to get used to crap like Jersey Shore on television, and the whole concept of computers and the Internet. Their wives - the princesses - could also be a source of comic relief, as they presumably would be in their 30s now. And finally, the plot could hinge on the boys remembering that they had left money in a bank years ago, and now, the interest made them RICH. Or, something similarly cheesy.

- Bill and Ted get transported in the distant future, in order to see how it all ends. I envision something similar to a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy story, with plenty of loopy dialogue and side characters. (Mos Def, I like your music, but you really stunk as Ford Prefect.)

- The telephone booth can transport them to alternate dimensions, and they have to help additional Bills and Teds fix their respective life situations. This idea would be even better if they could also get Eddie Murphy to cameo as five different characters, although that might be far-fetched with the budget.

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Regardless of which way they go with the new installment, I'd definitely like to see some characters come back. First off, Death needs to make an appearance. William Sadler, the actor that portrayed him, is still alive, and I'm sure he's up for the role. If not, then there are other guys who could fill in. You could even go meta and cast Norm MacDonald or Adam Carolla (or both!), two guys who have played Death on Family Guy.

One role that shouldn't be mentioned is Rufus, Bill and Ted's time traveling mentor. He was originally played by the deceased George Carlin, and you don't want anyone trying to fill his shoes. If you absolutely must have a time guide though, I think Kevin Smith in his Silent Bob persona would be a decent choice.

So anyway, what are your thoughts? I think this could do some dynamite business, and be a pretty good flick in its own right, like the first two films are.

TV Review: Holy crap, it's Larry Miller! On Aqua Teen Hunger Force!

I'm a big fan of Adam Carolla, and for a while, one of the most frequent guests on his podcast and morning radio show was Larry Miller. The first time he guested, he was pimping a book, Spoiled Rotten America, that I subsequently requested a copy of and reviewed for my college newspaper. (Sadly, I can't find the review on their website to share with all of you; I'm sure it was glorious.)

However, whenever I try to explain who Larry Miller is to people, I have to go through his various movie roles. You know, he was the dad in Ten Things I Hate About You, and he looks kind of like Mr. Belding from Saved By The Bell, but he isn't him. Normally, after a few comparisons, something stokes the memory of the person I'm talking to, or they just tell me they know who I'm talking about so I'll shut the eff up about it.

Imagine my surprise to see Miller pop up on this week's episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force then, spoofing his own status as a "that guy in that movie" Hall of Fame member in the show's opening minutes. Carl has no clue who he is, and quite comically, Miller is trying to sell him his patented hair growth system. (Miller and Carl are both bald, very bald.)

Anyway, Miller darts out to Atlantic City eventually because of his crippling addiction to gambling. And in his van, there is a sort of glimpse of an alternate universe available, as Carl debates it out with a clean-cut, clean-living version of himself. Oh, and also, the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past of Christmas Future makes an appearance at the end, and he remains my favorite non-Aqua Teen character on the show, slightly edging out the Mooninites. Strangely, the Aqua Teens are barely in this episode, but it's still quite entertaining anyway, similar to the Bart Oates episode in a past season.

Grade: A+

How The Sausage Is Made: Vanilla Bean coolattas

The elimination of one of my favorite drinks, the Vanilla Bean coolatta at Dunkin' Donuts, has made me sad this week. I'm not sure how many stores they have discontinued the flavor at, but I know it affects at least the two Westerly stores and one in Charlestown, for you Rhode Island folk. They still have it at the mini-Dunkin' Donuts next to Kingston Auto in Kingston, so apparently not every owner has decided to give it the ax.

For those of you not in the know, once upon a time – like four years ago – I worked at Dunkin' Donuts, and I worked there when I was 17 and a junior in high school as well. As such, I have fond memories of the Vanilla Bean coolatta, even if it led to constant confusion amongst customers. (“I want a French vanilla coolatta!” “Uhhh do you mean a French vanilla coffee coolatta or a Vanilla Bean fruit coolatta?”)

The actual process of making a coolatta is... weird. By that, I mean making the mix for the machine. Basically, it starts with a six-gallon bucket. You dump two cartons of the fruit coolatta mix into it, and then add about three to four gallons of water. This would normally create a pretty heavy bucket, with the water nearly at the brim, which I would desperately try not to spill as I hauled it over to the coolatta machine. (The process is the same for coffee coolatta mix, except worse, since that mix comes out dark brown and immediately stains your clothing if you spill it.)

If the machine is completely empty, then you have to wait at least an hour for it to turn the water and mix into slush. Ideally, you try to do it a bit before it goes completely out. It does have to get completely cleaned out every two weeks though, which is highly annoying, since there is no real way to make coolattas in the meantime.

As far as the Vanilla Bean goes, it is a tasty, vanilla ice cream-like drink. However, do yourself a favor, as Adam Carolla would say – If they still have it in your area, ask them to make you a medium coolatta, half Vanilla Bean and half Strawberry. The combination is simply divvvinnneeeee.

The picture is from this site. Apparently they have discontinued the Vanilla Bean coolatta in the past - For shame!

Radio Review: Loveline still thrives, with the right guest

Olivia Munn has been rumored as a permanent co-host for
Drew in the past, but nothing has come of it, unfortunately.

There are few radio shows I manage to listen to regularly, since Rhode Island essentially only has two talk radio stations. One is WPRO (CHECK!!!), and while my friend is going to be hosting an entertainment show starting this weekend, they focus mostly on political talk – Ick. Pass.

The other main talk radio outlet in Rhode Island is WEEI – sports talk. While I can't stand some of the co-hosts on the afternoon drive show, and the morning show is always a horrible train-wreck of butchered politics and sports talk, the early afternoon (Dale and Holly) and late night shows (Planet Mikey, Celtics Rewind with John Ryder CHECK) and game coverage are excellent. However, I can't always stomach the sports talk, especially after a bad game, when horrible callers flood the airwaves. (“Gah-nett is washed up! We should trade Al-hen for David Lee!”)

Because of this, I really wish Loveline was available on my radio, but alas, I always have to catch a stream or a download of it after the fact. Dr. Drew is still taking calls from screwed up kids and stoners, even though Adam Carolla is long gone from the show. Thankfully, Drew also outlasted Ted Stryker, his horrible co-host following the Carolla years that caused the show's ratings to tank.

Currently, Loveline has no co-host with Drew. Normally the guest for the night serves as a sort of color commentator on calls, whereas Drew breaks it down like, shockingly, a doctor would. The variety of subjects he tackles is pretty admirable – It has to be difficult to follow-up a call on pot usage with a girl who has been molested, followed by another stoner asking why his wang can't get hard.

However, the quality of the show is definitely enhanced by a strong guest, as opposed to Drew going solo. The best guests tend to be comedians – Daniel Tosh absolutely kills it every time he guests, as did Don Glover and Daniel Puti (Troy and Abed from Community), and established celebrities like Joel McHale and David Alan Grier. I've frequently linked to DAG in the past, but he just has so many great Loveline bits that I can't resist doing so again. Check out this moment, when DAG talks about his girlfriend cheating on him.

Drew solo grade: B+
Drew with a good guest: A

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Please enjoy a song medley from DAG, David Alan Grier, on Loveline, above. His Thanksgiving song comes in at about 50 seconds, but the other songs he sings are also entertaining.

Some other classic Loveline bits: DAG giving his children names based on medicine. Adam tries to help out a phone sex operator. And a caller has no idea about how big things are.

The ancient vagueness of the Internet: Names

As the Internet has progressed, there are some bad things that have happened, such as comments on ESPN stories. However, there have been some good things - Such as people finally getting appropriate web site addresses for themselves.

The best / worst example of this was Major League Baseball, which for years was only accessible via:

http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com

This is quite annoying, since you would naturally think that MLB.com would bring you to the proper site. Nope! Instead, some lawyers owned it, which must have been great for them because they were constantly overwhelmed with traffic for Major League Baseball. Click here to see what the site used to look like - Apparently people would get so misled that they felt the need to put a link on their site to the actual MLB.

Anyway, MLB eventually bought them out, as most big companies did. This of course led to a perverse situation where people would just squat on domains - like AdamCarolla.com - and hope that someone would buy them out. Carolla famously refused to, and called the guy a pussy multiple times on national radio.

... I'm not really sure where I was going with this entry tonight. Sorry! The baseball clip art is from here.

Getting freaky with SuperFreakonomics

Note - I will not actually be having sex with a book. Sorry for the misleading title.

However, I will say that I highly enjoyed the latest book from Steve Dubner and Steve Levitt, SuperFreakonomics, which is a "super" follow-up to their earlier work. I am coincidentally selling the book on eBay as we speak. Don't take my selling of it as a negative endorsement though - It's simply a financial motive on my part, since the wait was too long to get it from the library, and it did cost me $20, and I want to recoup some of that. My only regret with the book is that it is barely more than 200 pages.

Those 200 pages sure are splendid though. For those unfamiliar with the premise, the authors - a journalist and an economist respectively - take a look at several issues that seemingly aren't connected, but secretly are. For example, the introduction of the television to parts of rural India has caused violence against women in those areas to fall. In the initial book, the authors were able to prove that sumo wrestlers threw matches, which was similar to... Chicago-area teachers cooking the results of state testing.

The most controversial research in the previous book was that the legalization of abortion (Roe v. Wade) led to a reduced crime rate in the 1990s. Paraphrasing their reasoning: Women who got abortions were normally poor and not really fit to be parents yet, so their potential children were more likely to get arrested young, and thus more likely to commit violent crime. If they didn't have their kids - and they didn't - then the crime rate would fall - and it did.

Sure, other efforts, like pumping money into enforcement and crime deterrent, had an effect. But the point of Freakonomics is that some decisions have very, very unintended consequences. It's almost important to note that the authors do NOT take a moral stance on the issue - They don't say this is a reason to endorse abortion, but rather, they say that this is an effect of it.

The most controversial stance in the new book is that the solution to global warming and pollution is to... commit more pollution. Huh? Basically, the authors talk to a group of rogue inventors who have determined that the easiest way to lower global temperatures back to what they once were would be to simulate a big volcanic explosion. When the last one when off in the early 1980s, it basically undid years of pollution up until that point. Using that as their premise, the easiest way to undo years of pollution would be to snake a hose up into the stratosphere that would periodically release small amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere, blocking out some of the Sun's rays.

It is a completely wacky idea, and I doubt we'll ever see it. Environmental lobbyists in the book scream that it won't work, and I've heard the idea has elicited even more critical scorn after the book's release.

However, I do think we have to start thinking this way in terms of solving pollution. People are NOT going to cutback on consumption, and thousands more are getting added to the grid everyday in developing third-world countries. It seems unfair to say to them, "Well we got ours, and because we know how bad that is now, I'm afraid you're going to have to wallow around in shit for a few more years."

Therefore, I'm taking the Bill Nye approach. One time on Loveline, he was asked by Adam Carolla why it was important to go to the Moon when you had problems like the war in the Middle East and the economy here to solve on Earth. Nye rightly pointed out that you have to work toward solving ALL of these problems ALL the time - You can't just standstill completely on any one issue. As a society, yes, we should be looking at ways we can lessen our reliance on fossil fuels and to use alternative energy sources... but we should also be looking at aggressive solutions like terraforming and geo-engineering, in case we do need to use them.

I have some other thoughts on some of the other essays of the book, which I might give at a later date.

iTunes Running Diary – Monday, September 7 - The Best of Steve's Worst

This week's artists.

In case the theme of this week's diary isn't obvious, I'll just come out and say it: Songs I listen to even though they are not critically acclaimed in the slightest. In fact, most of them downright suck, and if you want to judge me, well, I can't really blame you. Admitting you have a problem with pornography is more acceptable than being a Limp Bizkit fan at this point. (And yes, I do enjoy them, but they didn't come up in the playlist Genius spit out.) Anyway, let's get this over with...

- "Mudshovel" by Staind. Prepare to see a lot of nu-metal / grunge / heavy rock / loud music on this list. I think just about every guy gets the impulse to listen to grinding guitars and hard rock at some point. Others who are luckier than me will find their heavy metal muse in something critically-liked, such as Metallica or Pantera, or at least in cheesy fun, like Kiss or Poison.

However, because I grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it means certain tracks are burned into my psyche, like "Mudshovel." First, from a literary standpoint, I feel like that should be two words. Second, this is the only Staind song I can remotely tolerate.

If I am following my stated goals with this entry though, it definitely fits the criteria. The guitar breakdown leading up to and into the chorus is excellent. And, although the song is loud and nu-metal, there is some harmony and melody, as the lyrics are synced up to the pulsating guitar at points.

- "Bullet With A Name" by Nonpoint. There are several bad things about this band. For starters, they're from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Since they're not old or supermodels, that means there is a strong chance a member of the band is on meth.

Second, the chance of this is increased because this song is on the soundtrack to, not just a video game, but a wrestling video game, Smackdown vs. Raw 2007. It's kind of like if I told you my friend had a drug problem, AND he was moving to Harlem or Compton.

Final bad sign: Wikipedia keeps track of the chart positions for pretty much any single released in the past two decades. Even though "Bullet With A Name" was featured in a popular video game, it still only hit #22 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock charts. Even worse is that it's still there most popular song. They've managed to have 10 singles that placed between #22 and #40 on the charts, but no higher. That's the sort of middling mediocrity that is equivalent to Troy O'Leary or Tim Thomas or Ron Coomer or Xavier Nady.

- "They Say" by Scars on Broadway. Similar to the first two, this is a heavier song that features a good melody despite its heavy sound. It was pretty popular last summer, I believe, but seeing as I don't listen to a ton of new music, there is a good chance it actually came out five years ago.

The weird, synth guitar that comes in especially hard toward the end of the song really helps "They Say" out in my estimation. Also, its short length (that's what she said) helps it from becoming super repetitive and effed out. By the time it's over, I've moved on to another couple of songs, and I wouldn't mind hearing it again because the chorus isn't really dragged out.

- "Peace of Mind" by Boston. I believe there is a rule out there that bands based on cities suck, and Boston does not dispel the trend to me. (Confession: I don't mind Chicago.)

They have, to me, one unquestionably awesome song, which is "More Than A Feeling." In every other aspect, they are beaten by arena rock brethren Journey. "Peace of Mind" is a decent little 1980s rock song, but it's not nearly as good at rocking as "Anyway You Want It." The best of Boston can't touch Journey's more somber offerings, like "Open Arms", or the cheese value of "Wheel In The Sky" or "Don't Stop Believing."

- "Lick It Up" by Kiss. I believe this is Chuck Klosterman's favorite song, but it kind of sucks. There, I said it. Then again, it's not like Kiss shows a lot of musical diversity, and I do always rag on other bands for straying too far out of their comfort zone.

To make another baseball comparison, "Lick It Up" is a .275 rock song. Is it an incredible, life-changing experience? Not really. Is it so bad that you change it every time it comes on? Not really. It fits the bill if you're trying to round out a Top Five for your favorite Kiss songs, or if it was one of the first hard rock songs you ever heard, which I believe is why it ranks high on Klosterman's list. Hey, I can be the same way - You shant talk me out of my love of Green Day, Everclear, Billy Joel, Counting Crows, Soundgarden and Sublime, despite their radically different sounds.

- "Only Women Bleed" by Alice Cooper. I'm apparently closing this entry out with some of the worst / most dubious songs by rock legends. While Alice Cooper has some great songs, this is not one of them. Adam Carolla cited it as one of the worst songs to play at a wedding, and I happen to agree with him.

To be honest, I giggle like a 12-year-old at the chorus, so I don't even know that much about the content of the song. The chorus is so blatant and overbearing that the rest of the song's lyrics kind of get swept under the rug, similar to how "Rape Me" by Nirvana isn't endorsing rape in the slightest. Wikipedia says it is a song about a wife in a relationship with an abusive husband, and on second listen, it is a song with a message, and I'm probably going to Hell.

Stats, stats and stats - August 2009

[Left] Why this album cover? Because it's the album with "Popular", like totally duh.

I always liked when Adam Carolla would announce his salary while he was doing the Loveline radio show, so in a sign of openness, I've decided to share my hit numbers and advertising revenue numbers with you, my faithful readers, after each month. While these numbers might be a little too “inside” for some, I'm always secretly curious about how popular various sites are.

That being said, there is nothing that surprisingly about my blog. From the comments, it probably isn't surprising that I don't get 50 million hit per day, or make enough money to buy a Hawaiian island. (Even a small one with just a single palm tree, like in a Far Side cartoon.) Also, since some have asked me how to support the blog: If you see an ad you LIKE, or that interests you, click it. Just trying to rapidly click them doesn't help, since it invalidates that batch, and it is possible that they think you or I am a spammer, and shut down your account or mine permanently.

Here is the breakdown for Saturday, August 1 to Monday, August 31:

Total number of visits – 408
Total number of pageviews – 717
Average time on site – 2:03
Percentage of new visitors – 37.99%
Most popular days – Monday, August 31 (30 visitors) and Sunday, August 16 (28)
Least popular days – Tuesday, August 11 (2 visitors)
Top Five referrers – Twitter (28.19%), Facebook (13.48%), Blogger (12.50%), direct link (11.52%) and Gmail (6.86%)
Top Five states – Rhode Island (136 visits), Massachusetts (95), Mississippi (27), California (22) and New York (13)
Unpopular states – Nobody from has ever visited by site from Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, West Virginia, Delaware and Vermont.
Top Five cities – Biloxi, MS; Somerville, MA; Franklin, MA; Medfield, MA; Providence, RI
Ad revenue – $1.60, up from $0.52 in July

Podcasting habits and loves

My favorite podcasting trio.

If there is one thing that makes me happy about the rise of Apple, it would be the surge in podcasting iTunes and iPods can claim responsibility for. The increase goes hand-in-hand with the rise in the program and the device, which I'm grateful for, since it means I have more podcasts to listen to.

I'm actually trying to listen to one as I type this, but I finally had to cave and switch to music. Unfortunately (kind of) with podcasts, I have to pay attention a lot more, since it is spoken word as opposed to music. Podcasts slow my writing to a crawl, as opposed to encouraging me to type quicker, as most of the music I listen to does. Of course, I completely forget this half the time I'm typing, so I invariably try to pound something out while I'm listening to a podcast, and then marvel at how little I've gotten done.

Anyway, there are three I listen to regularly, and they're all somewhat-related:

1) Adam Carolla hosts a one-hour podcast that updates around 10, 11 p.m. PST from Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday off. While the biggest “name” he's had on was Francis Ford Coppola, Adam is consistently funny with his (usual) B-list guests: Eric Stromer, David Alan Grier, his old morning crew, Joel McHale and others. He also goes off the beaten path a bit with guests, as last week he talked to a writer from Rolling Stone about the crash in the housing market, and to another writer who used to be a drug runner.

The hour-long format is just Adam and another person, sometimes two or three, shooting the shit. (This also has a somewhat literal meaning; the show is not sponsored, so the language is uncensored.) While it can get tedious if the guest has been on a ton of times – I'm looking in your direction, Teresa Strasser – Adam normally powers through with his bluster. It's a lot different from The Man Show, so if that's your only experience with Adam, give this a shot.

2) Bill Simmons' podcast is probably a little better known to people reading this, since it is frequently on the front page of ESPN.com. However, I highly recommend subscribing to it on iTunes, since he'll have a busy week every once in a while and the front page will lag behind, or the latest Vick-Favre fiasco will push him off the front temporarily.

Simmons does a better job of serving is core demo as opposed to Carolla, as the people on his podcast are normally sports figures or analysts. For example, this week and last he has had Matthew Berry (Mr. Roto) and Suns' point guard Steve Nash on, and Cousin Sal, who is a cousin of Jimmy Kimmel and a degenerate gambler, to talk fantasy football.

However, just when you think his podcast is getting a bit stale, he'll spice things up with an “out of left field” guest, like Neil Brennan, the writer for The Goods and the head writer for Chappelle's Show. He has also had Marc Cuban on, and Dave Metzler to talk UFC and WWE, and he almost got Barack Obama before the election, except ESPN cockblocked him. (p.s. ESPN still sucks, even if they did manage to get two people on this list. Speaking of...)

3) I've been extolling the virtues of Dave Dameshek for years, ever since he was originally on The Adam Carolla Show in 2006, and when he got his own shows in 2007 and 2008. He has moved on to podcasting for ESPN, and while the show does skew toward Los Angeles and Pittsburgh sports (Dave's current and former areas), it is still enjoyable to just about any sports fan because of his guests.

Normally, they are the better Page 2 ESPN contributors, such as DJ Gallo and Jonah Keri. I have no idea why they don't seem to do many other radio spots, because they are both funny and informative when they're on Dave's show. Still, the nation's loss is Dameshek's gain.

Dave also has random debate topics, like the best uniforms in sports, and the best movie fight scenes. (His #1 is, unfortunately, from a movie I've never seen but now want to after his description - Flash Gordon.) Dave also sometimes has trivia contests with a caller, The Ed, which are sublimely funny, since The Ed continually screws up athlete's names.

Outside of those three, I do catch a Loveline stream from time to time, but it varies a lot on who the guest is. Olivia Munn was the co-host all of last week with Dr. Drew, so that had significantly more appeal to me than the other night's show with Jon Lovitz (meh), or Andy Dick (ugh) the previous week. I do end up having to catch it live when I can, since it costs money to download after the fact, which stinks.

Expanding into multimedia

I'm a big fan of things like the Angry Video Game Nerd (see above), the gaming reviews at ScrewAttack and Bill Simmons' podcast, and all three have tempted me to make my own foray into multimedia. While I'm not really sure why people would want to see me on camera or hear the sound of my voice, I also don't know why they would want to read this blog, yet I still write. So why not do a podcast or videocast if I have some free time?

The odd thing is that I do have some professional and semi-professional experience. When I was in college, I had to do some video editing, and I did film myself doing a stand-up (i.e. when you see TV anchors standing outside of a building and talking about an issue). I even interviewed my friend Maggie for it; I should try to find that segment and post it online.

And when it comes to audio editing, I have even more experience. While I won't profess to being an expert on balancing levels or quality, I used to record and cut the audio for Dave Dameshek's Pittsburgh radio show, and I think I did a decent enough job at it. I did a few audio clips and interviews for East Bay Newspapers, when I worked for them. (Those definitely still exist, and I'll try to find and post them.) I was also on-air on the Dameshek show a couple times, and I was a caller on the final Adam Carolla Show.

Clearly, with all of that experience, I'm practically the King of Multimedia already. But, if I was going to start doing some of that stuff for this blog, does anyone have any requests? The easiest stuff would be to do music, movie or video game reviews like ScrewAttack and the Nerd do, so I'm skewing toward that if I do do it, but I'm open to other ideas.

Writing orgy

[Left] This picture doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I enjoy it. Maybe you will too.

At times, I'll just go into ridiculous writing sprees. The fact that I'm working a fairly easy slacker job at a driving range right now helps – I sit around for three or four hours, so unless I want to stare out at the grass, it leaves plenty of time for typing, reading or writing by hand. (Yes, I still do that from time to time.)

In a way, the lack of Internet is a good thing, because it forces me to be productive. I sometimes liken myself to Bill James, the baseball statistics pioneer who worked long hours as a security guard. When I read about that, my mind immediately thought, “So he was like me, and had plenty of down time to just sit around and think about baseball statistics.”

When I'm at the range, I am ridiculously productive, and I'm not sure why. As an example, in the previous three hours, I've typed 2,500 words. Most of these words were for three professional pieces that I'll actually be paid for and that people will actually read considering me a “professional” as they read it. That statistic doesn't include this entry, whose 200 words (as of this sentence) I typed in about five minutes.

However, these sprees lead to tremendous lows, and I'm not entirely sure why. For example, when I'm at home I'll often just stare at the empty Word screen for a minute or two, and then immediately find something else to busy myself with. Sometimes, it is in a productive way, such as playing a video game that I'll review later, moderating and posting at the Adam Carolla Show message board, or catching up on some decent journalism at Slate.com. But often, it's just sloth and wasteful on my part – Replaying Final Fantasy 4 or Earthbound for the 700th time, reading on Wikipedia about the X-Men, picking through Roger Ebert's archive for reviews on films I've already seen.

As I just suggested, these moments make me feel a bit slothful and wasteful, but should they? They sort of provide a subconscious reinforcement of my existing thought pattern and generate thoughts for my “idea bank,” for lack of a better term. If my writing and blog entries are full of random wanderings that people seem to enjoy, should I be trying to curb that rambling instinct in what I do in my “free” time?

... This is a sort of abrupt place to end an entry, since I normally go much longer, but that's the extent of my thoughts on the matter. I suppose I should start typing new. But maybe I'll play a game of Tetris instead. (See what I did there?)