A little bit of this, a little bit of that

In my browser, I keep a folder called “For the Blog” where I stuff all kinds of interesting bookmarks. It’s been getting quite full over the past month, and especially over the past ten days where the entries have been “All New Girl, all the time”. Along with some New Girl-related stuff, here are those aforementioned interesting things…

Breakin’ 2 — finally on DVD!

While the original Breakin’ movie was simply about breakin’ into breakin’ (the IMDB summary for the movie is “Girl is a waitress by day, a breakdancer by night”), Breakin’ 2 attempted to become a more “issues”-oriented movie by focusing its plot on the impending demolition of a community centre by the mandatory villain: the Evil Older White Guy Without a Shred of Funk Whatsoever. At the movie’s climax, the bulldozers — which take up the entire width of the street by driving in menacing formation — approach the community centre and only the scrappy crew of breakdancers can stop them. Along with a very young, very skinny Ice-T (listed in the credits of Breakin’ as “Rap Talker” and in Breakin’ 2 as “Rapper”), they put on a performance complete with hardcore poppin’ and lockin’ to stop the ‘dozers in their tracks. When the Evil White Guy orders the bulldozers to push through them, the drivers refuse, saying they’re not going to flatten a bunch of kids, especially talented ones! (Yeah, I know — in the post-Rachel Corrie age, it sounds even more contrived.)

Someone bring in Richard Dawkins — he’s a material witness!

At least one person out there believes that the true roots of terrorism are Darwinism and Materialism.

We’re in the big league now

At long last, Accordion City has finally got its own Craigslist. Let the job-seeking, event-announcing, stuff-selling and funny personal ads commence!

Right now, it doesn’t have many postings and doesn’t look like much. To see what it could become, check out the original (San Francisco Bay Area) as well as the New York one.

And finally, the New Girl update

I always save the interesting stuff for last.

Reliable sources indicate that New Girl last crashed on the couch of an old buddy from Cocaine Anonymous for three or four days and then got kicked out. (I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Cocaine Anonymous.) The word about her is going around town pretty quickly and I think the number of places where she can crash is dwindling rapidly. When this sort of thing happens, I’m told she relies on an unusual trick: checking herself into a psych ward at a local hospital, treating it as if it were a youth hostel that’s cleaner, if quirkier. I’m also told that she learned how to put on a convincing “unbalanced” act by using a paperback copy of Girl, Interrupted as a guide.

Memo to self: get introduced to women by friends with better “people radar” (admittedly, this one slipped under mine, which is usually pretty sharp). I was introduced to her by a former web guy for the Backstreet Boys, who later worked for the McDonalds web team. Simply put, the man makes a living bringing evil and misery into the world. You think he’d leave his work at the office, but nooooooooo…

The girl formerly known as my worst girlfriend ever (she’s now in second place — her performance was very good, but New Girl blew her away) offers her condolences. It’s kind of like being Batman and getting a phone call from The Penguin: “Hey dude, I just heard about the Joker thing, and I just called to say I’m sorry that it happened to you…”

The e-mail that got the ball rolling. Whistleblower has a LiveJournal set up just for New Girl-related stuff. The latest entry contains the full text of the email alerting me that everything I knew about New Girl was wrong.

Other people’s experiences with New Girl. Someone who’s had run-ins with her recently (complete with extremely unflattering photos — really, she looks better these days), and someone else who’s known her for much longer have very interesting stories to tell. After reading these, I think I’m going to sit in a tub of Lysol for a week.

And finally, a chance to get philosophical. A number of people have commented or emailed me, telling me that they hoped that my experience hasn’t turned me off dating completely. Not at all, and rather than explain why, I’ll leave it to AC/DC guitarist Angus Young, who sums my attitude up pretty nicely:

I’ve always found that it works to put your best foot forward and don’t be afraid. I suppose it’s a bit like swimming. You can’t just dip your little toe in the water. You’ve got to go all the way. I believe you’ve got nothing to fear, although a lot of people think that’s strange. If you hit a bum note, that was fate. Some of those bum notes might be a great accident. I think that if you’re too tight and restricted, then those sort of little spontaneous things just seem to give it that little bit of magic, they won’t happen. Every now and again, we all hit a bum note. The ideal situation is just to hit less of them! I think that it just takes a bit of confidence when you’re doing something. I’ve never been afraid.

As their song goes, I’ve got big balls.