Back to Tejas.



Well, I drove home today. On the way back Meg read while I listened to Patton Oswalt's album 222. It was sort of funny. Mostly he's just drunk, which really isn't all that funny. I take my comedy very, very, very seriously and he's so wasted that he botches a lot of what would otherwise be funny bits. It was an alright way to kill two hours, but he's no David Cross. I'm pretty out of the loop on contemporary standup, any suggestions about who else I think is funny? Bear in mind that I don't think Zach Galifianakis or Sarah Silverman are funny.
- posted by Mason @ 5:21 PM (1) comments

Happy Birthday Nanny!!!!!!



Today was my grandmother's 80th birthday party. I shot a little video of her and her sister Joyce (my grandma is the one on the left) and thought I'd post it. Happy Birthday Betty Jean, we love you!
- posted by Mason @ 5:09 PM (0) comments

Get Yo Grub On!



This place is out in North East Oklahoma County. I used to drive by it all the time, but had totally forgotten about it. I always wanted to eat there when we lived in OK, but it never seemed to be open.
- posted by Mason @ 5:03 PM (0) comments

Creepy Self Heating Coffee



I ran into this weird ass can of crap at a national chain retailer. You don't microwave it, see? It has some sort of chemical that makes the can heat up. Gross. I wish so much there was a soy version so I could try it. Oh well.




- posted by Mason @ 4:55 PM (0) comments

Gas Saving MPG Hack: drive slower.



We rented a sweet Subaru Legacy to drive back to the OKC. Budget-Rent-a-Car was much cheaper than I thought it would be, and I found a coupon for a free weekend day, making it under $100 for four days. This car is only rated at 30 mpg highway, so I was very pleasantly surprised when I was able to average 36.3 mpg on the 225 mile trip. How did I accomplish this feat? I drove 55 the whole way. It took just a touch longer than usual (4.5 hours), but it was well worth the fuel economy. I really like this car. I think it handles really well and rides very smoothly. I like that car, I think I will buy it tomorrow. Does anyone have $20k they'd like to give me? Better yet, does anyone have a Subaru Legacy wagon they'd like to give me?
- posted by Mason @ 11:36 PM (1) comments

My new favorite flavor.



Ooohhhh, Larabar Banana Cookie. We were previously die-hard Lemon fans, but this here little fucker taste-s just like fresh baked banana bread. I'm excited to try the new Peanut Butter Cookie, but we're not carrying it yet. We should probably start making our own, since they're just dates and nuts. Dates are nature's candy. Seriously, they are. Also, add prunes to your peanut butter smoothie instead of agave... it works!
- posted by Mason @ 5:29 PM (0) comments

We actually got our TV back, shockingly.



So they fixed our TV and mailed it back to us. They replaced a diode, a fuse and something else. I honestly didn't think we'd ever get it back after hearing numerous horror stories about electronics lost in warranty limbo. I'm toying with the idea of using it as a 32" computer monitor, but I don't know where I'd put it. Maybe dual screen right next to the other tv? Sexy.
- posted by Mason @ 5:38 PM (0) comments

Ginger Juice!



If you have a good blender, here's my new recipe for the best smoothie you can drink:

Power Metal Smoothie
2 packets of Orange Emergen-C
1 cup frozen peaches (or two fresh peaches)
1/2 cup frozen bananas (or one fresh banana)
1 fistful of spinach
2 tsp spirulina
2 tbsp flax meal
12oz orange juice
1/4 cup fresh ginger juice

blend that shit up and enjoy

If you don't have fresh ginger juice laying around the house (and you don't), buy several large hands of ginger and find someone or somewhere that has a juicer.
- posted by Mason @ 5:38 PM (0) comments

Thanks Emergen-C.



Several months ago I filled out a survey about how much I love Emergen-C. Today they sent me this awesome packet with coupons and free samples of every flavor. Recently I've started shooting these like Pop Rocks: rip package; pour into mouth; take sip of water; swallow before foam comes out your mouth.
- posted by Mason @ 5:38 PM (1) comments

Texas Microbrew Rootbeer? Fuck Yeah.



It's been well established that I'm a total rootbeer snob. I pour out all rootbeer in cans. Barq's? Garbage. Dad's? Trash. A&W? Vomit. Shasta? I'm offended. I've mentioned before that I don't eat high fructose corn syrup, and you shouldn't either. Anytime I have the opportunity to taste a cane sugar rootbeer, I'll buy it and try it. Before today Abita was my favorite, but this Saint Arnold's is even better. It's not too sweet (almost all root beer is, especially that flat Boylan crap or Hank's, which is so sugary it made my throat hurt), the flavor profile is just right, and the finish burn is crisp and bright. It's brewed by the Saint Arnold brewery in Houston, TX. If you like to drink beer (which I don't because I only have one liver), you should drink their beer, because it's good according to people I work with who know tons of shit about beer.

For more information about different kinds of rootbeers, look at this website.
- posted by Mason @ 5:08 PM (0) comments

Anyone for tennis? Wouldn't that be nice.



Hey, do you like tennis? We do, but we're not very good at it.
- posted by Mason @ 5:01 PM (0) comments

I forgot to post this last week.



Check this creepy picture of me with mud masque all over my face. We did makeovers the other night when we watched that horrible movie about weddings (the only thing to watch when doing makeovers). It made my face feel great, by the by.
- posted by Mason @ 12:59 PM (0) comments

Peanut Butter and Quinoa!



I love quinoa. You know this. Megan and are feverent supporters of the world's oldest continuously cultivated staple grain. Recently I've been eating it cold with peanut butter, bananas and agave. It's delicious and you should have a bowl for breakfast.
- posted by Mason @ 12:43 PM (0) comments

Someone please give me a job as a junior VP of development at NBC.



Dirk and I played TV Pilots today at work. I'm pretty sure I won. If you've never played before, the object is simple: come up with the worst, most predicable pilot outlines for as many network television shows as possible. It's a game of subtlety and cunning, requiring an extensive knowledge of pop culture and a war chest stuffed with has-beens and never-weres. You should start playing it at your job as well. Play it on long car trips, or maybe while having your nails done. Anytime really.

I thought of these:

-Brendan Fraser as a gay southern art dealer whose down-on-his-luck redneck brother is forced to move in with him. Their two very different worlds collide when their respective friends just can't seem to get along! [Sitcom]

-Tom Seleck as a failed NASCAR driver turned commentator who moves back to his hometown after his father dies. Seleck is then forced to manage his father's failing Ice Plant (the town's main employer) while he sets about fixing his dilapidated family home. [In the second season he runs for mayor]. [Sitcom]

-Jamie Kennedy as an out-of-work actor (no stretch there) on his way to visit his parents in Montana. His car breaks down in Dillon, MT, and while waiting for it to be fixed, he reads an article in the local paper saying that the local high school principal had died of a heart attack. Kennedy makes up a fake resume and cons his way into the vacated job. He immediately falls in love with the mous-ily beautiful and brilliant town librarian, who he then attempts to woo. He spends all of his free time trying to win her over by pretending to be intelligent, and over the course of the season, actually becomes a smarter better person, and eventually a decent principal. [Hour long filmed dramadey]

-Johnathan Taylor Thomas as a struggling songwriter in Taos who dreams of moving to LA while working as a ski instructor at a ritzy lodge. [Sitcom]

-Tom Arnold as an unscrupulous used car salesman in middle America. He uses his psychic powers to upsell customers, sleep with women and cheat at poker. He constantly finds himself at odds with his chosen low-rent lifestyle when he inadvertently stumbles into mysteries and is forced to use his powers for good to help solve them. [Hour long filmed adventure-comedy]


I have some more, but I haven't decided on actors for them yet.
Please post your sitcom ideas in the comments.
- posted by Mason @ 6:04 PM (0) comments

I puked when I watched 27 Dresses



Well, figuratively, not literally. This movie was also crap, but at least well edited crap. I hated this shitty film too, just not as much as I hated Prom Night. In case you hadn't been paying attention (and I hadn't), Chick-Lit and it's corresponding romantic comedy offspring are the vanguards of the new sexism.

This movie proposes that a woman with a good education, a high paying job, a gigantic apartment in Manhattan, and tons of friends can't be happy unless a man comes to sweep her off her feet. Marriage=Happiness, get it? I think that's fucking disgusting.

Predictable to the point of me calling out lines before characters said them. Movies like this are a self fulfilling prophecy. It's a story about a woman with unreasonable expectations about love, sex and marriage who ultimately gets everything she wants and for whom everything works out perfectly. The kind of women who have grossly twisted ideas about their lives generally derive those misconceptions from what? The media they ingest, like movies about people getting everything they want. Sigh. What a load of shit.
- posted by Mason @ 6:04 PM (0) comments

Prom Night, aka "The Hills: The Horror Movie"



Horrifically uninteresting. Grotesquely dull. Painfully obvious. The only thing terrifying about this movie was the acting. I hated it. I really, really hated it. I just really didn't enjoy the film at all. It was only 90 minutes, but it felt like four hours. All of the dialog was shot "Hills" style: under-table lighting, two shot, over the shoulder in 3/4 profile. Plot holes? Wow. Let me tell you about plot holes. The fire alarm is pulled and immediately thereafter the main character uses the elevator to go up to the second floor? What? That's just nonsense. The killer breaks down a hotel room door with a medium size fire extinguisher? HA! A telephone line is cut and instead of a busy signal or endless ringing the message "This number is no longer is service or has been disconnected" is heard? Preposterous!

So my point is: this movie is a waste of time. It only gets a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes, so there you go.
- posted by Mason @ 6:01 PM (0) comments

Nerd Pencils? What an asshole.



Thanks to Media Matters for posting this stomach churning clip of Fox News pipsqueak and all around douche bag Griff Jenkins talking shit on Barack for riding a bike in jeans. Fuck this asshole. Please head over to this tool's blog and leave a note about what a turd he is.

I'd like to know what nerd pencils are and where I can get some. Oh also, Barack Obama is going to be the most powerful man in the world and Griff Jenkins will still be jerking off into his autographed pair of Anne Coulter's panties.
- posted by Mason @ 6:04 PM (2) comments

Green Spot Market



We finally happened to be over off Buckner today so we stopped in at the Green Spot Market, Dallas' first natural and healthy convenience store (they also sell bio-diesel). It was like 7-11, but with things I could eat instead. If you're over by the lake, it's at Buckner and Northcliff. You should go by. And go buy. HAHAHAHAHAHA. What a funny pun I made.














- posted by Mason @ 9:23 PM (1) comments

Books from that book place where books are half what they usually are.







Clearance at Half Price has been good to me this week.
- posted by Mason @ 9:20 PM (0) comments

This one's for my homies...



So there's a Steve and Barry's at the Valley View Mall. Everything there was on sale for $8.98, a fair price to say the least. The shoes there are some the cheapest I've put on, but they looked cool. I would like to point out that this basketball jersey was only a size Large. They went up to XXXL. This was a fucking dress on me, the big one was like a Hooverville Tent City.
- posted by Mason @ 10:50 PM (1) comments

burndownmybillboard.com


(pic courtesy The Denver Post)

This totally awesome billboard in Denver is definitely going to be defaced almost instantly. The Freedom from Religion Foundation paid for this beauty. I would love this in bumper sticker form.

Also, Bill Maher's Religulous is going to be the best film of all time.
- posted by Mason @ 10:45 PM (2) comments

Out of Context



In a comment on my post about being interviewed by the Dallas Observer, our friend Will made referece to the time I was on the local news about four years ago. A pawn shop owner had the Iraq death toll up on his marquee, and our local NBC affiliate had a remote crew out covering the story. We happened to be in the store at the time, and the field reporter asked me what I thought about it. I gave what I considered a well informed, balanced and lengthy (of course) answer. We rushed home to catch the newscast, and were deeply disappointed at my brief foray in to the limelight. When it aired it was cut down to:

VOICE OVER: This customer was in favor of it... [CUT TO SHOT OF ME IN PAWN SHOP]
ME: ... I think it's great [AUDIBLE BREATH]...
VOICE OVER: Other's thought differently
OLD WOMAN: I think it's disgraceful.

I thought it was hilarious. It was a real eye opener regarding the malleability of information and the news media. It wasn't as if I had stars in my eyes over the local news prior to this experience, but it was certainly enough to solidify my belief that 90% of what's reported is either an outright lie, or at very least totally manipulated beyond recognition.

I could have been asked about Neo-Nazi hate crimes, and said "With regards to holocaust denial, I think it's great to be passionately opinionated, but when that passion impedes or harms others, the law must intercede." When it aired the reporter would be heard to say "This local man was very much in favor of burning cars owned by mixed race couples". Cut to a shot of me saying "I think it's great!"

Context is always everything.
- posted by Mason @ 3:54 PM (0) comments

On Dad Rock and Dad Rockers.


this makes me so sick

I'm not a dad, but I am a dad rocker, or so says Megan (and she's never wrong when it comes to me). Dad rock is less a style of music, and more a style of music listeners. Bands can be classified as dad rock, but dad rock has no unifying sound or theme. Dad Rock comprises a unique selection of bands spanning a 20 year period (roughly 1968-1988) of music that only music geeks love. Many women like individual bands which might be classified as dad rock, but few would enjoy the entire dad rock collective of music.

Dad Rock bands? A (very partial) list of the most famous:

XTC - The Talking Heads - Rush - Genesis - The Police - The Cars - Steely Dan - Todd Rundgren - Gentle Giant - Elvis Costello - Jethro Tull - King Crimson - Dinosaur Jr. - ELO - Crowded House - Thin Lizzy

Get it? I should have been born ten years earlier, I know. Are you a Dad Rocker? Are you also a dad? Let your voice be heard.
- posted by Mason @ 3:31 PM (2) comments

They putted me on the internet, grandma.



I got "ambushed" by two guys from the Dallas Observer last week. They wanted my take on a song by the band The French Kicks, who I didn't particularly like. I didn't hate it either, and knowing me, I suppose that's saying something.

Aural Ambush: The French Kicks
Wed Jun 04, 2008 at 03:47:23 PM

This week, we again sent Observer interns Daniel Rodrigue and Spencer Campbell out onto the streets armed with a cheap-ass walkman and a copy of a song from a band coming through town.

The song in tow for this go-round was the French Kicks' "Abandon," and the dynamic intern duo found themselves a willing and impressively insightful barista in Mason Weaver out in front of Whole Foods' Lower Greenville location. As a result of their find, this installment's a little different--we liked Weaver's take so much, we let him have the full-length of the song to give his take.

- posted by Mason @ 10:37 PM (1) comments

The Coolest Coffee Maker Box of All Time







- posted by Mason @ 10:13 PM (1) comments

Coffee Soda tastes good!



I bought some Java Pop at Big Lots today, and that shit tastes gooooood. It's organic, fair trade and made with Green Mountain Coffee. I cheated and filled my four pack with Espresso, Hazelnut, Vanilla and Mocha. I just drank the Espresso (it's just coffee flavored) and I really liked it. I'm probably going to go back and buy more because they're only $2 a four pack.

EDIT: 6/7/08- I tried all the other flavors Hazelnut, Vanilla and Mocha and I hated them all. The espresso flavor was awesome, but the others are fucking crap.
- posted by Mason @ 2:52 PM (0) comments

1890-1910: The Things They Don't Mention.



What do you know about the Philippine-American War? I would wager nothing. Am I right? I am, aren't I? American History 1024 (Civil War to Present) tends toward leaving out most of the shitty things that we've done after the War of Succession.

So basically what happened is this: Starting from the middle of the 16th century, and for the following three hundred years (1571-1892), the Philippines were a Spanish colony. In 1892 the Filipinos revolted against the Spanish. This conflict dragged on for a while, during which time the Spaniards also got involved in a war with us. In June 1898 they declared independence, but both the US and Spain ignored it. In December of that year, Spain ceded the Philippines to the US along with Gaum, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Three months later hostilities between the Filipinos and their new imperialist American overlords came to a head, and we went to war with them. The war dragged for four years officially and fifteen years unofficially. The Phillipines didn't gain their independence until 1946, after WWII as part of the Treaty of Manila. Things went fairly well for about 40 years until the Marcos' revolution in '86, and you probably know the rest.

Before today, I didn't know a lick of this. Well, obviously I knew about the Spanish-American War, but not about any of the Filipino shit. Did you learn this in school? I didn't.

I don't really know that much about this twenty year period in world history, but I'm now going to read up on it. I suggest you do the same, as the end of the 19th century was the era of crumbling empires, burgeoning independence of new democracies, and the formation of the modern era of western society as we live it. You should really learn this stuff.

Read more about the Philippine-American War.
- posted by Mason @ 10:13 PM (0) comments

When Barack Obama wins, America wins.



Hillary can now OFFICIALLY suck it.


- posted by Mason @ 10:46 PM (5) comments

Now I'm all weather.



We did some thrift stores with my friend Ketch today. This awesome TourMaster Rainsuit was only $9. The bastard is $80 new! I'm now fully protected from all manner of weather, cold and rain. I didn't buy the following t-shirt because it was too big. It made me very, very sad:


- posted by Mason @ 10:30 PM (0) comments

Eat a Peach!



We went to the farmers market and bought some wicked local (well, Canton, which is about as local as it gets around here) produce. Peaches, tomatoes, green beans, sweet onions, yellow squash and potatoes. These peaches were delicious. Not quite as good as the Stratford peaches, but still quite tasty. They've finally got signs up disclosing who is and who isn't really a farmer, so get yourself to the Dallas Farmers Market next weekend, and eat your veggies.
- posted by Mason @ 8:08 AM (0) comments