12/31/2006

Down With Pants! Year In Review

Posted by Brandon |

Yes, it really is only about an hour until New Year's and yes, I am blogging. That's because the wife had to work tonight, she is on night ER duty this month, 10PM-7AM, so we celebrated the East Coast New Year's before she left. I couldn't think of anything else to do, so here I am.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights from the last year of Down With Pants! I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have...

January
I discovered that E.T. and Keira Knightley were separated at birth and I got in some trouble for writing about my top five favorite actresses after you all discovered that I have a "type".

February
I finally admitted that I have really ugly thumbs, saw one of the worst movies that I have ever seen (that subsequently won Best Picture) and had my retinas burned by the Olympic speed skaters.

March
I explained one of my favorite things to do to douchebag California drivers and had my heart broken, twice.

April
Ty Cobb did some guest posting for me including this gem while we mourned the passing of one of the DWP! entourage's most influential members, Larry The White Guy.

May
I stopped wearing undershirts, saw the deplorable DaVinci Code and revealed yet another one of my many man crushes.

June
I randomly ran into some old friends, lamented the sheer amount of smoking bike riders in Ventura and fell in love with Veronica Mars.

July
I was the best man in my best friend's wedding and gave a kick ass toast, got smacked by IT2M and I wrote yet another letter to my skanky neighbor.

August
My car broke down, so I bought a new car and then it broke down. At least I also saw my favorite movie of the year.

September
This was a particularly productive month, what happened? I finally got my hatred of Yahoo's ads off of my chest, remembered September 11th, proclaimed Gheorghe Muresan God, got pissed at Californication and then apologized profusely.

October
I diagnosed Project Runway's Vincent, started a list of celebrities that I have seen and got discouraged by the lack of trick-or-treaters we had this year.

November
I went to the worst dentist ever, wrapped up my soccer career and enjoyed some stimulating Thanksgiving conversation.

December
I discovered some funny Ojai residents, grew a beard and stayed at home on New Year's Eve and blogged.

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12/27/2006

DWP! Fantasy Football - Championship Week

Posted by Brandon | Labels: ,

Congratulations go out to Culture Kills Lions for winning the first annual Down With Pants! Fantasy Football League Championship. The Lions capped off a one loss regular season by demolishing CineRobots 86-39 in the Super Bowl. Shaun Alexander led the way with 19 points and six of his nine starters scored double digits points. CineRobots studs choked in the clutch. Ladainian Tomlinson failed to score any touchdowns and finished with just six points while Michael Vick cost the CineRobots a point after his miserable performance.

Here are the Championship Week scores. Playoff seed is in the brackets and, as always, leading scorers follow...

Super Bowl
Culture Kills Lions (1) - 86 - Shaun Alexander - 19 points
CineRobots - (3) - 39 - Panthers Defense - 14 points

3rd Place Game
Down With Pants! (2) - 89 - Vince Young - 24 points
Witty Team Name (4) - 56 - Isaac Bruce - 13 points

NIT Championship
2much411foozball (5) - 65 - Steven Jackson - 22 points
TheDutchFiles (7) - 62 - Marc Bulger - 32 points

7th Place Game
Cuckoo For Kapgar (8) - 53 - Philip Rivers - 15 points
johnnyhongkong (6) - 40 - Eagles Defense - 13 points


Here are the complete final Down With Pants! Fantasy Football League Standings. Awards and prizes are on their way within the next couple weeks...


4th - Witty Team Name
5th - 2much411foozball
6th - TheDutchFiles
7th - Cuckoo For Kapgar
8th - johnnyhongkong
9th - Red Zins
10th - navelgazing ramblers
11th - Blogography
12th - The OC Snackiepoos

Thank you to all who played, I know that it was put together at the last minute and kind of a mess because of the auto-draft. I hope we can do this again next year but with a live draft and some better rules and whatnot. Now that everybody has a year of experience under their belts, season two should be even better.

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12/26/2006

Prudielicious

Posted by Brandon |

Besides the obvious reasons that the song "Fergielicious" makes me sick to my stomach (T to the A to the S-T-E-Y, I used to like the Black Eyed Peas, I don't like cake that much), I have a personal relationship to that song that makes me both laugh and want to smash my radio or TV whenever it comes on.

In college I worked at the illustrious Pizza Place in Lacey, Washington. We had the best pizza in the world and I have never found a pizza pie that compares, but that's neither here nor there. One of the servers that worked for us was this orca fat girl who thought that she was the big time shit, Prudence, or Prudie for short. Never have I met a more objectionable person who was more in love with themselves anywhere. She was a bona fide piece of work. Fired from her job at McDonald's for being incompetent, how she ever ended up at the Pizza Place is still a mystery.

One night, watching her prance around the restaurant like she was queen bee and getting completely grossed out, my coworker Jeff gave her the nickname Prudielicious and it fit her like a glove. Ever since then, we have used Prudielicious as one of the worst adjectives you could possibly use when describing a girl. Never, ever in your life would you want to be called Prudielicious by one of us. It is, in our mind, the worst thing you could say about anyone, anywhere.

So every time I hear that song Fergielicous, it kills me. It reminds me of Prudielicious, someone I have tried to forget. It also makes me laugh my ass off because of everything that Prudielicious stands for and that it fits Fergie to a tee as well. She is so not Fergielicious. She is, in every since of the word, extremely Prudielicious.

UPDATE: Death? just told me that this post is really mean. I know it's really mean and I kind of feel bad, but then she added that she has met Prudie, and I shouldn't feel bad about it being so mean.

comments (1)

12/22/2006

Turkmenbashi Is Dead! Long Live Turkmenbashi!

Posted by Brandon |


Sad news out of Turkmenistan today. Saparmurat Niyazov, better known as Turkmenbashi, Father of All Turkmen, passed away from apparent heart failure. He was 66.

Turkmenbashi was one of the world's most fascinating and nutty authoritarian leaders. He created a cult of personality around himself that is unrivaled today. He named virtually everything after himself or his mother, including a meteorite, a month and the word for bread. He built statues and shrines to himself throughout the country like the one pictured above and the gold statue that sits atop the Neutrality Arch that turns 360 degrees to face the sun throughout the day.

During his time as President-For-Life, he made numerous decrees including...

  • Banning ballet and opera
  • Made all licensed drivers pass a morality test based on the Ruhnama, a quasi-religious text written by Turkmenbashi
  • Introduced a new Turkmen alphabet
  • Banned car radios
  • Banned lip synching
  • Banned news reporters from wearing makeup because he couldn't tell the difference between the men and women
I seriously considered using a picture of Turkmenbashi with the caption "Turkmenbashi says 'DOWN WITH PANTS!'" for my header when I switched templates but never found a good enough picture to use. Although I hate his oppressive regime and the freedoms that he has stripped from the already oppressed Turkmenistan citizenry, I also hate to see someone so interesting drop dead before he could really show off his crazy.

comments (1)

12/20/2006

Lazy Cameltoe Blogging - NSFW?

Posted by Brandon | Labels: , , ,


I'm running the risk of alienating my wife and all of the women in the crowd, but tonight I bring to you Paulina Rubio's video "Ni Una Sola Palabra". I keep seeing this video on the Spanish channel stations and, with my apologies, it's hard not to notice the hardcore cameltoe that Paulina is sporting. I'm not sure how I feel about it, it shocked me the first time I saw it but now it's kind of hypnotic. Either way, it ends up being one of the most graphic videos that I have ever see on primetime television. Warning: possibly not safe for work. No nudity, just massive cameltoe throughout.

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12/19/2006

DWP! Fantasy Football - Playoff Week One

Posted by Brandon | Labels: ,

As Donovan McNabb went, so did the Down With Pants! fantasy football team. 11-0 with McNabb healthy, 1-3 without him. Without McNabb the DWP! team floundered in the first round of the playoffs losing 75-45 to the LaDainian Tomlinson led CineRobots. CineRobots moves on to the Super Bowl while I will play for third place. Ouch.

The other championship bracket game nearly witnessed a big upset. Witty Team Name led the Culture Kills Lions 58-46 going into the Monday night game. But his quarterback, Carson Palmer, laid a big egg and the Lions got a monster performance from Marvin Harrison and rallied to pick up a 70-59 victory to move on to play CineRobots in the Super Bowl.

In the NIT bracket, 2much411foozball stomped all over Cuckoo For Kapgar and will play TheDutchFiles for fifth place after their 47-42 defeat of johnnyhongkong.

Here are the playoff week one scores. The team's playoff seed is in the brackets...

Championship Bracket

Culture Kills Lions (1) - 70 - Marvin Harrison- 22 points
Witty Team Name (4) - 59 - Marion Barber III/Patriots Defense - 16 points

CineRobots - (3) - 75 - Ron Mexico, I mean Michael Vick - 28 points
Down With Pants! (2) - 45 - Brian Westbrook - 18 points

NIT Bracket

2much411foozball (5) - 73 - Steven Jackson - 18 points
Cuckoo For Kapgar (8) - 22 - Neil Rackers - 9 points

TheDutchFiles (7) - 47 - Steelers Defense - 18 points
johnnyhongkong (6) - 42 - Terrell Owens/Eagles Defense - 15 points

It's time for the first annual DWP! Super Bowl and a bunch of other games. May the best teams win...

Super Bowl:
(1) Culture Kills Lions vs.
(3) CineRobots

3rd Place Game:
(2) Down With Pants! vs.
(4) Witty Team Name

NIT Championship:
(5) 2much411foozball vs.
(7) TheDutchFiles

7th Place Game:
(6) johnnyhongkong vs.
(8) Cuckoo For Kapgar

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12/18/2006

Brother of the Brush

Posted by Brandon |


I am a token participant in the Brothers of the Brush competition that CineRobot is holding at Circle Cinema in Tulsa. Unfortunately, I live no where near Tulsa or else I think I would've had a good chance at winning this thing. Of course, I started a few weeks earlier than the rest of the competitors so I had a nice jump start. But I did give it a pretty hefty trim last week when I thought that I needed to make a good impression at my annual review to make sure I got my promotion. Turns out we did it over the phone rather than having my very pregnant boss drive 60 miles by herself and I still got the promotion, so the trim went for naught other than evening up the playing field with the rest of the participants.

The best thing about this competition so far has been the total cessation of shaving. I hate shaving with almost every part of my being, it's arguably my least favorite thing to do in the world. It's a necessary evil in many ways for a fox like myself, but this has been a good excuse to keep that damn razor away from my face. The only time I've picked up a razor in the past month and a half has been to keep my neck hair and my beard from joining forces. As much as I dislike shaving, I'm not quite ready to go the Chewbacca route.

By the way, notice the stylish hoodie that I am wearing in my own home tonight. Now I don't get cold easily and I prefer short sleeves pretty much the entire time, but ever since I bragged about how nice the weather is down here to all of my suffering, wind swept Washingtonian friends, the weather has turned bitterly cold at night, almost the coldest it has been since I moved down here. That will teach me to open my big mouth.

Finally, check out this mistake that I somehow managed to make on Photoshop tonight. I was just going to try to fix the color on my massive forehead but I didn't realize it was on impressionist brush when I started clicking. Before realizing what I was doing, I messed up my whole face except for my creepy, creepy eye...

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12/15/2006

Suddenly I'm Management

Posted by Brandon |

I was finally informed on Thursday that I did, in fact, get the promotion that I have been hoping for for the past four months. I've only been doing the job of three people during that time and I led my department through one of it's most massive changes and it's biggest Holiday season ever. A 30% raise makes up for a lot of the crap I've been dealing with.

Of course as soon as I get the promotion I made a mistake on a huge order that will cost us a solid chunk of change. I wouldn't have cared that much before, but now it's my ass on the line and I am pissed at myself. Some manager I am. Oh well, I got to raise my voice to an unreasonable customer this week and it was totally justified, so that makes me feel much better.

One other thing that makes me feel good, it's was high 60's and sunny this afternoon here. Just felt like I needed to rub it in the face of all my Washington family and friends. If only they had power to read this. Neener, neener, neener!

comments (2)

12/13/2006

Mugshots Are So Hot Right Now

Posted by Brandon |


I'm probably not the first person to say this but what strikes me the most about Nicole Ritchie's arrest isn't the fact that she was driving the wrong way on the freeway or that she was high on Vicodin and pot or that she has blamed her Vicodin use on her womanhood. What strikes me the most is that her mugshot is the best picture taken of her in years. Congratulations Nicole! Looking like a Hot Topic cashier is definitely a step in the right direction.


And the same can be said for Rip Torn. Now that is one sexy beast!

comments (3)

12/12/2006

DWP! Fantasy Football - Week 14

Posted by Brandon |

First of all, sorry for missing a week of recaps, I simply didn't get a chance to do it.

I wish I didn't have a chance to do this recap either since I am sad to say that my Down With Pants! squad choked in the last game of the regular season. Needing a win to clinch the number one seed in the playoffs and facing the red-hot Culture Kills Lions, we laid an egg losing by 22 to give up first place for the first time all season. The Lions have now won 11 straight games earning him the regular season title.

The third and fourth seed teams in the playoffs both ended their regular seasons with losses. CineRobots continued to score high points but was nudged by the navelgazing ramblers 81-80. On the other hand, Witty Team Name struggled mightily scoring only 39 points in a 28 point loss to TheDutchFiles.

Here are the week 14 scores including some great battles to qualify for the consolation tournament...

Culture Kills Lions (13-1) - 84 - Matt Hasselbeck- 21 points
Down With Pants! (12-2) - 62 - Josh Scobee - 16 points

navelgazing ramblers (4-10) - 81 - Drew Brees - 37 points
CineRobots - (8-6) - 80 - LaDainian Tomlinson - 23 points

TheDutchFiles (7-7) - 67 - Mark Bulger - 23 points
Witty Team Name (8-6) - 39 - Carson Palmer - 11 points

johnnyhongkong (7-7) - 63 - Brett Favre - 17 points
Red Zins (5-9) - 49 - Reggie Bush - 13 points

2much411foozball (7-7) - 56 - Steven Jackson - 18 points
The OC Snackiepoos (3-11) - 45 - Vikings Defense - 16 points

Blogography Hellmonkeys (4-10) - 63 - Bills Defense - 20 points
Cuckoo For Kapgar (6-8) - 53 - Philip Rivers - 17 points

And now it's time for the playoffs. The DWP! Championship Series matchups are...

(1) Culture Kills Lions vs.
(4) Witty Team Name

(2) Down With Pants! vs.
(3) CineRobots

And four teams will face off in the DWP! Fantasy Football NIT Tournament...

(5) 2much411foozball vs.
(8) Cuckoo For Kapgar

(6) johnnyhongkong vs.
(7) TheDutchFiles

It should be a fun two weeks of fantasy football. Prizes will be handed out to the champion, the second place team and the winner of the NIT tournament. Good luck to all, except CineRobots.

comments (2)

12/11/2006

The Funniest Thing In All of Ojai

Posted by Brandon |

I am happy to announce that ETA VTA launched today and I'm really excited to start blogging about my adopted hometown this week. One of the goals of ETA VTA is to be a hub for Ventura County bloggers, so while developing the site, I started surfing around trying to find other VC blogs.

Tonight I stumbled on a site very similar to ETA VTA that focuses on Ojai, the little, rich, hippie/yuppie, community just to the north of us. The Ojai Post is written by a large group of Ojai locals who, to say the least, are, ummm...interesting. The following are actual excerpts from their bios that illustrate what kind of community Ojai is...

"He considers himself a practicing Buddhist and a potential Christian"

"A master communicator, Jason works daily to innovate"

"...is a fire-horse Leo. mother- sister- daughter- partner. poet. aspiring gardener, herbalist, artist, and Buddhist."

"in an early life, Millennium Twain was the father of the US/International Space Station Program. after his discovery of the lissajous electromagnetic structure of the electron he went on to show the complete foundations of adolescent/superficial 'science' (space, time, mass, energy, charge) in the actual complete helicoidal electrodynamic aethereal experience of sacred nature (light, spirit, consciousness, sensation, communication, knowing). he continued on to discover and publish the topology of the proton, and the neutron, and the atomic nucleus ... and to show the ubiquity of superluminal phenomena (including discovery of the toroidal superstars) in the cosmic wilderness.

later he designed the series of X49 scramjet (air-breathing) spaceplanes, and is continuing that trajectory in superluminal starship plans. his greatest insight, gift of our collective ancestry, is his discovery/uncovery/witnessing of the 'Eight Mother Turtles' (or Eight Cosmic Divinities) which make up the hierarchy of the eight 'layers' or inward/outward shells of cosmic structure, enlightenment, life. with his wife Tatsuzawa Megumi, Millennium (raw, vegan, organic, green, probiotic, bicyclist, immortal) listens to our global culture, the growing feminine, the aboriginal wisdom -- and shares what he can in every moment of every day. for our Blue Star arrived / ascended -- the adi shakti, messiah, maitreyah, meschiak, maadi -- a.k.a. global consciousness ..."

"He has lived in Ojai since 1999 and is an active member of the permaculture community."

"He considers himself a multi media artist and a student of gorilla ontology...This experience is just one drop in the metal bucket placed on the floor of my geodesic dome. I have been exploring body sensory awareness for over 11 years. This has cleared away some of the debris or at least enough to allow for a nice place to land when my wings get tired."

"perhaps more importantly evan is an avid student of peace, nonviolence, and democracy, and of the social structures that encourage these things to develop...evan considers himself to be a citizen of the world, and his religion is to do good."

"I opened my colon hydrotherapy practice in the fall of 2003 at Synergistic Health"

These are the community leaders of Ojai for better or for worse. I have no problem with them, I'm a very liberal person myself, I just don't take myself seriously enough to ever write anything like that. I'm not sure that any of them have a sense of humor because if they did, their bios wouldn't be so damn funny.

comments (6)

12/10/2006

Death? and Dying

Posted by Brandon |

It's been kind of a rough week for my family and the emergency room.

On Monday my grandpa was rushed to the ER after acting all loopy for a couple days and taking a spill. Turns out he had a whole host of problems including pneumonia and a weak ticker and things didn't look to good for him early on this week. But being the tough old pain in the ass that he is, he managed to pull through and got out of the hospital this afternoon and is raising 87 year-old hell at home now. He's on oxygen and is pretty weak but if I know my grandpa, he isn't going to go down easy. They sure as hell don't make them as tough as that anymore.

I also found out that my grandma on the other side of the family has some kind of infection in her foot that doesn't seem to be getting better with antibiotics and she may have to have it removed. At this point it sounds like only a Christmas miracle would be able to save it.

To go along with my family's problems, one of my temps at work's father passed away on Thursday after about a week in the hospital following a massive heart attack. She took it very hard as did her mother and unfortunately, she had to quit her position with us to watch her kids (who were usually babysat by her mom) and to take care of the arrangements.

And then tonight, I was minding my own business watching The Simpsons when I heard Death? yell from the office "OW! Oh shit, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow...." and go running into the bathroom bleeding like crazy from her leg. Turns out she was wrapping presents when she rolled over to get some tape and stuck herself right in the thigh with a pair of scissors that she had left open. The big, dull, dirty blade plunged sideways into her and managed to take a huge chunk out of her leg. So we rushed her over to the ER where she got it cleaned up nice and good and got herself a couple of stitches.

It wasn't a serious injury or anything and it pales in comparison to my grandpa nearly dying, my grandma losing her foot or my employee's father passing away. But with so many health worries tugging at my heart and brain over the last week, you can imagine the split second of fear and sadness that struck me when I found her crying and bleeding in the bathroom. It was over like that, but it was still very, very scary and powerful.

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12/07/2006

ETA VTA

Posted by Brandon |

I don't know what makes me think that I can maintain yet another blog, but tonight I started work on a new Down With Pants! media creation, ETA VTA. Ventura, California is a surprising wasteland of blogging. There are a handful of good blogs, but nobody deals with Ventura entertainment, sports, local goings on and whatnot. The VC Reporter recently launched a bunch of blogs that I thought would have more of a Ventura slant but only one, Popscura, is updated regularly and it's about pop culture in general and doesn't focus on Ventura like I hoped it would.

So a void exists and I feel like filling it. I don't know if I'm qualified to write about Ventura in depth having only lived here for a year and half and being kind of a hermit at times, but I've been thinking about everything that goes on here and in the county and I'm sure that I could find enough to post about every single day, which is more than I can say about DWP! and The Sports Logo Pundit.

Anyway, tonight I worked on the basic framework. Since I've been so happy with how my other two blogs look since I redesigned them, it looks very similar. I wanted to use a picture that I took myself for the header but none of them that I have taken turned out to be worth a damn. The one that I used was the best that I could find. Sometime soon I'll go out and take some better pictures to give it a little less of a travel brochure feel. And I don't know about the green background. At times I like it, at others I hate it, but I can't seem to find a better looking color so for now, that's what it's going to be.

If you have a second, please head on over and check out the little that I have done and give me a some feedback. I would really appreciate it.

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12/06/2006

Disgust: The Real Reason I Blog

Posted by Brandon |

Sadly, neither of my blogs got a finalist nod from the 2006 Weblog Awards. It appears that if I bored everybody to tears with conservative bullshit, I would have been golden. Seven of the ten finalists in the same category as DWP! are conservative political blogs, two are normal blogs that seem conservative and the other is an architecture blog (which is cool and has my vote). Obviously whoever chose these loves political blogs (I hate political blogs, conservative or liberal) so Jess and I never had a chance in hell.

I was feeling a little down and blogging didn't sound very good the past couple days, but then Death? said something tonight that snapped me out of my funk: "I heard on the radio that the Edward Scissorhands musical is coming to Thousand Oaks."

Whoa...Let me type that one more time, perhaps you read it too quickly and it didn't quite set in...

"I heard on the radio that the EDWARD SCISSORHANDS MUSICAL is coming to Thousand Oaks."

What the fuck. An Edward Scissorhands musical? How fucking awful is that? There is just about nothing in this world that could make me more pissed off than one of my favorite movies being bastardized into a Broadway sing fest. Only one of my favorite movies selling cell phones to kids could make me feel worse. But hold on....somehow it does get worse. Watch a little bit of this...



It isn't even a musical! It's a goddamn modern dance "stage adaptation"!

It's official: there is no God.

comments (4)

12/04/2006

DWP! a 2006 Weblog Awards Finalist?

Posted by Brandon |

I hate to admit this, but I am anxiously awaiting tomorrow's announcement of the 2006 Weblog Awards finalists. I nominated Down With Pants! in the TTLB Ecosystem Based Best of the Top 6751 - 8750 category and The Sports Logo Pundit in the Best Of The Rest category and after surfing through some of the nominees, I really think that both have a good chance at being named finalists. I might even be a little bit disappointed if they aren't picked.

It would be a huge deal to me because of how down I have been about blogging over the past few weeks. I still love doing it, but I have seen a significant drop in comments, visits and blogger friends lately and whenever I hit one of these valleys, it makes me a little bit depressed. I openly admit that I'm not the best blogger in the world based both on the content of my sites as well as my lack of commenting on other people's blogs (the number one way to build readership), so it shouldn't surprise me that nobody is hanging on my every last word. But when there are, it motivates me to do better. I shouldn't need that motivation, I should put the same quality into every post, but when people are paying attention, it's a lot easier.

So here I sit, not reminiscing about a fun and interesting weekend or thinking about how my dream job is currently hiring or writing a letter to the new sports team in town offering my services or buying Christmas presents. Instead I am sadly sitting here, antsy in anticipation for tomorrow's announcements, writing a whiney, whoa is me, post. Has Down With Pants! officially hit rock bottom?

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