random thoughts during the oscars

hey, here's an idea: how about we get beyonce to dominate the best song category. then we can be just as common-denominator as this year's grammys

don cheadle should win something someday

i wish i had seen just one of the movies up for best picture--but i'm glad ray didn't win

renee zelwegger looked unhealthy-thin

i'm glad eternal sunshine won best screenplay

finally, morgan freeman wins something

weird that the motorcyle diaries wasn't even nominated for best foreign film

please tell me that's not hootie in a burger king commercial. wow, that's really sad. i don't care how good the new tendercrisp bacon cheddar ranch sandwich is. and why is robert deniro in an american express commercial. maybe next we'll see tom hanks for pennzoil

free mojtaba and arash

its just not right, damnit!

arash sigarchi and mojtaba saminejad, two iranian bloggers, are currently imprisoned by the iranian authorities for writing their opinions of iran's current state in their blogs. apart from being completely disgusting, this detainment is in direct contradiction of article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights.

in a tribute to these bloggers, and all those before them who have been detained, questioned, and hassled for expressing their opinion, this post is dedicated to "free mojtaba and arash" day.

for more information, check out the committee to protect bloggers.

automatic for the people

i was recently given a document entitled "stuff all guys should know", with a laundry list of things that the female species as a whole would like me to know, so that i may better myself accordingly (thank you, alexis).

most likely, this list rings true for most girls, give or take a few items. for example, i'm sure that most girls will agree that "only rockstars are allowed to wear leather pants" and that "[we] are cute in raglan-sleeved t-shirts (two-toned baseball undershirts". at least i hope they all agree because i wore one yesterday (thank you, erin c-s).

but brian, what does this have to do with us?

chill out, spazz, and i'll tell you: there was one (and only one) item on the list that i didn't already know and/or do, and i am now going to place myself in the stocks, for the merriment of all you manly-men out there, so you can kick me right in the arse, and feel better about yourself while doing so. and for the lady readers of this blog, i've got to come clean, and i'm sorry in advance for any false sense of attraction i may have conjured inside of you, for i am guilty of the wussiest of all trespasses against my y-chromosome:

i do NOT know how to drive a stick.

on the list, driving a stick was the second item! "real men can drive a stick" according to this definitive list. #2!

all these years, i thought i could fake it; i've lived in fear of any situation that would require me to hop behind the wheel of some standard transmission, with a damsel in distress in the passenger seat ...

[running, under hot pursuit by a wave of anonymously evil henchmen]
"oh my god, this whole abandoned warehouse is wired with explosives and its going to blow in any second"
"don't worry penelope cruz, i'll get us out of this mess. and after i do, i'm gonna take you out to a nice lobster dinner."
"or we could just skip the restaurant and have room service bring us dessert"
"quick, toss me those conveniently-laying-around keys you luckily swiped while i was hand-to-hand combat fighting the head bad guy"
"here you go ... oh god, brian, they're closing in on us ... even if we don't make it, i want you to know that you will always be my hero. i love you, brian hall!"
"oh penelope! that sounds so perfect with your accent"
"there's the van; quick, let's get the hell out of here!"
"oh shit! it's a stick!"
"yeah, so what?!"
"... i ... i never learned to drive a stick!"
"what do ya mean, you never learned how ...?! what kind of man are you?!! what the hell are we supposed ..."
[huge explosion]

so its out there. my dirty secret. someone please pick me up in your standard, and teach me to be a man.

new blog direction: game theorists do it rationally

well thanks for the overwhelming response to the contest, everyone made me feel really awesome about this blog. yep, you guessed it, i received zero suggestions. besides being a huge blast to my ego, it kinda confirms that no one reads this thing, so i'm free to say whatever i want. nipples.

[author's note: while writing this, i finally received an entry in the contest. ms. hayley shelton suggested "reverse cowgirl", under the premise that it is sexual and clever. i'd have to agree.]

maybe i should have created an overall theme for this thing, instead of writing about myself all the time. maybe someone would actually tune in if i had created a game theorists blog, for up-and-coming economists to discuss ideas. probably anything would have been better than anecdotes about myself and funny links (at least i think they're funny).

for the few of you still tuning in, here's a quick recap of my time-off from the blog: the weekend was a blast; i went to sewanee and hung out with dick and stu. rach and her roommate flew down, and so they got to see first hand the awesomeness that is the lodge (sewanee chi psi house, not dick lodge). sunday night, i hung out with the dan, william thomas oakes, III, their roomie peter, and sammy, the world's most OC dog. give him a plastic bottle and he doesn't stop chewing it. two-stick trivia was same-old. we ended up stealing our friend jack's fantasy baseball team name, "the tort-reformers". some 260 lb. guy started a fight with one of our teammates and kelso yelled at him to get the hell out of two stick trivia. but he was thrown out, so all was well. and last night, david had an after-party with about 60 people, but it was quickly broken up by the oxford police, and dave received a nice noise violation.

yes, that paragraph was not interesting, so if you've made it this far, i offer you brian's awesome song of the month:

"common people" -- by william shatner, with joe jackson. produced by ben folds.

no really, its good.

next post won't be whiny, i swear.

tony danza tap dance extravaganza

team doodoo is no more. broken up, disbanded, laid to rest. our tuesday two stick trivia win/loss record under team doodoo is a pathetic 0 and 254, or something like that. we needed a new approach, a fresh start, a clean slate. and so what better way to boost morale than to totally bogart someone else's clever band name, and pawn it off in another town as your own? i give you, the new two stick tuesday trivia team name:

tony danza tap dance extravaganza!

again, that's the tony danza tap dance extravaganza. glorious. and though we stumbled out of the blocks last night, we made a valiant effort, and almost pulled off the upset. but we lost, so maybe its time for a new team name. hence, i call on you, faithful readers, to submit incredible team names so that we may seem witty come future tuesdays.

"ho hum, what's the point? what's in it for me?"

well, don't interrupt and i'll tell you, selfish. besides the tingling in your loins, any entry that we deem humorous enough to use will receive two dollars american, to be mailed along with a handwritten thank you note and/or a humorous picture of kelso, which can be used to the full extent of your wildest desires (wink-wink, ladies). that's a pretty sweet deal, considering all you have to do is type out a funny name, and email it to me at rbhall@olemiss.edu, and if you think your idea is too genius for our eyes only, feel free to post it in the comments section below, for the millions of others to scrutinize.

get cracking, america ... we need you to make us look funny!


[limit three team names per person. contest is over when i say so, but will most certainly go on throughout the month of february. as always, we here at a post-graduate year despise bigotry, and do hereby promise there will be no discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, in accordance with title VII of the civil rights act of 1964]

the world doesn't suck!

[author's note: the following post was composed after losing the buzz from a night of moderate drinking ... hence the cheesy, melancholy-but-hopeful tone]

ah, the superbowl. what was once billed as the single greatest game in american sports has been reduced to an advertisement orgy with anheuser-busch at the helm. sure, i love hackneyed video blurbs starring cedric the entertainer just as much as the next guy, but the game that once so vehemently tugged on american heart-strings is dying, willing away its record-breaking viewers to the nation's collegiate c-students, a.k.a. marketing majors.

so the game itself is overshadowed by the commercials, and the commercials are getting worse, so what is the allure of the superbowl? has it simply become an excuse for twenty-somethings to drive to the neighboring county, the one that does sell beer on sundays, just to pickup a couple of malt-liquors to partake in the age-old classic of "edward forty-hands"? what else is left?

years ago, someone who accepted the above premises could argue that the superbowl halftime show was the true reason for the season. enter janet jackson's tit. to avoid all unoriginality, i'll avoid that subject, because everyone can agree that never has a poor horse been beaten to death in a more sadistic fashion--suffice to say this: love it or hate it, that boob single-handedly destroyed all credibility ever warranted by the halftime spectacle.

but that credibility has been restored. our knight in shining armour: sir paul mccartney. at a time when we needed it the most, one fourth of the fab four banded together the capacity crowd, as they all joined in a symphony of "na-na na nah's", a celebration of all that is good and right and just in today's world. despite the bastardization of sir paul's british heritage by the patriotic brainwashing required at any upscale sporting event (reference to the american flag obsession), the rendition of "hey jude" left me with a smile on my face that has yet to fade, thinking in my head that maybe, just maybe, all could be right with the world, if we could just pack ourselves into a stadium within earshot of such an epic feel-good tune.

bless you, sir paul, for being so goddamn charismatic that you could force an entire nation to forget about jugs for five minutes, and just sing along. indeed, the world doesn't suck after all.

stay fresh

i recently had the staff sort through all the fan mail, and the question we get the most is "brian! i love that dog so much! where did you find such an exquisite picture of that gorgeous pup?"

well keep your pants on smelly, because i can't believe i'm about to tell you: the picture was borrowed (without permission) from the vintage vantage website, an online t-shirt company that specializes in manufacturing brand new shirts with the softness and superiority of a rare thrift store find. i guess the process is a bit similar to the making/purchasing of worn-in pre-holed jeans, except that vintage vantage doesn't suck--not in the least.

although their specialty is clearly the shirts, the vv website is worth more than the passing glance. the bichon frise picture is from the "ask heather" portion of the site, which i discovered once when cole and i were seeking outside sources to decide which was girlier to watch, real world/road rules challenge or dawson's creek; the creek won in an estrogen-packed landslide, as i predicted, but it did nothing to quell the creek addiction that cole and kelso suffered last year.

back to vv: check out their shirts, and their auctions. these feel-good camp coolers work in vintage graphic stylings much like michaelangelo worked with paint and marble; freshness is their true medium.


no, seriously 

bike crash and biker fox

so i went all last semester without ever purchasing a new university parking decal; somehow, i made it all fall without getting ticketed (probably because 40% of the time, i walked to class, and 55% of the time, i skipped). but this semester, during the very first week of class, i got caught twice, and am currently fighting some bullshit charges on the tickets. so, i guess i have to give in, get in line, and go purchase a decal, right?

wrong! enter kelso's bike. i've been riding to and fro campus for the past couple of weeks, and i've got to say that the bicycle is exactly the medium of transportation that i've been looking for--and yes, i have been taking it off sweet jumps. best of all, chicks love bikes!

so about thirty minutes ago, i'm living it up on two wheels, and i'm cruising at an above average pace, just riding down the sidewalk; and (this all happens instantly) i hear a POP! and i look down (for a split second) to see the front brakes falling apart--sounds scary, huh? well don't worry, it wasn't a big deal ... because in the split second that i looked down at the brakes, i ran off the sidewalk going over 20 mph, flew over the handlebars, and completely wiped out in front of oxford's 5:00 traffic. yeah, my face literally broke my fall. thank god i hit grass, because i would've scarred my face for life, effectively ending my moonlighting as a male model.

as it stands now, it might be a black eye, it's too early to tell. one thing is for sure, there is definitely a headache. in the aftermath of the accident, i realized that once again, its time for the biker fox to return to my life. i never once thought i would serioulsy contemplate learning the crash and preventative techniques from de fox, but hey!, "ninety-nine percent of the time" he lands on his feet.

best thing about biker fox: you would think such a thrill-seeking renaissance man like himself wouldn't have time to give back to the community, but you'd be wrong ... oh so wrong. the fox knows how to get serious. take it from him:

"For the most unprecedented motivational speaking presentation including bike tricks and comedy like no other you have ever seen in the United States whom can actually relate to high school and college students, please call me directly at 918-493-1966."

don't believe me? just ask danny-elle who she talked to directly when she called that number at 2:30 in the morning. bikerfox is the real deal people. meanwhile, i'm 0 for 1 on flipping over the handlebars and landing on my feet ... i rather prefer my face to be the first thing to hit the ground. but at least this way, i feel somewhat connected to bikerfox in a way that only two rugged dudes with an appetite for adrenaline can understand. i'll close with some more words from the fox himself, in foxy third person, of course:

"BikerFox wants everyone to know this golden opportunity that you've been given on this Earth only comes around once in a lifetime. There are no second takes, second chances, so please understand this life is about you and the mark that you will make on the rest of the world. Oh and guys, this life is all about the girls so if you are having trouble communicating with these cute little creatures, pick up Dr. Phil's book and do exactly what you are told and everything will be just fine."

sage.

the jill formula

so those of you lucky enough may have heard my stories about dr. william staton, my real anaylsis teacher and definitely the coolest mathematics professor in the department, which i realize isn't saying much, because mathematicians develop nerditis at an early age. dr. staton has this tendency to be completely enthralled in his lecture and then pause to ponder, seemingly about how to best clarify his next point, and then suddenly launch into whatever ridiculous thought or story just entered his head. examples:

"... and we can choose our delta to be sufficiently small enough to force our limit to be less than epsilon and in doing so ... did you guys here about this guy that's going around shooting ladies in the ass with a bb gun? i mean, it's weird!"

"... but we have to keep in mind that in our metric space, we don't know what kind of elements we're choosing, but only the distance between ... so austria's trying to revoke arnold's citzenship, huh?"

these are merely examples fresh on my mind, but others like them occur about two to three times per class. today, however, he stopped for a while when he came across what he calls the jill formula, and since the mathematics is literally elementary, i decided to give everyone a bill staton story:

"... so you can see how this (9 - x^2) is the jill formula! [his enthusiasm is met with our blank stares] i didn't tell you guys about the jill formula? [shaking heads] are you sure? ...

well, i was about your age, maybe a little older. i was a first-year grad student, and had just moved in to this apartment housing, and was hanging out with my buddies across the hall, and was introduced to this very attractive young lady named jill. 'bill, jill. jill, bill.'

i think she was a journalism major or something, and she asked me what i was in school for, and i told her and she said 'oh that's so funny that you're a math major'
'why's that funny?'
'i don't know, it just is ... quick what's 32 times 28?'
'896.' [instantly]
'ha, you're so funny.'
'well i'm glad i'm funny, but 32 times 28 is 896."
'yeah, i'm sure it is,' she said, not believing me.

so sure enough, someone got out a calculator and 32 * 28 = 896. and so she was really impressed, but i just got lucky, because she had given me two numbers that worked out wonderfully in the soon-to-be jill formula [writes on board]:

32 * 28 =
(30 + 2) * (30 - 2) =
(30 - 2)^2 =
(30)^2 - (2)^2 = 900 - 4 = 896

and so the whole point of the story is that the difference of two squares came to be known in the department as the jill formula, because ... well ... after that, jill thought i was a genius. and, well, jill was pretty easy on the eyes, and ... uh ... how can i put this delicately? ... it, um ... it paid off for her to think that i was a genius."

total badass.