BillyStyle

Here’s one for the books.

Tonight I hopped on to the site of one of my favorite bands: Eels. They had posted a recent video from an appearance on the Carson Daly show. I watched one of the two videos, it was the song “I Like Birds.” As the camera is jumping back and forth (somewhat annoying, but it made this story possible), I noticed something.

Now for some quick background. I’ve seen Eels perform live four times I believe; three of those have been in Hollywood, CA. Two of those trips I noticed the same guy (if you’ve been to many concerts in the same general area, this is known to happen, seeing the same memorable person multiple times). Anyway, he’s one of the only people I’ve thought actually pulled off the face-pierced look. So naturally, that stuck out in my mind, and I recognized him the next time I saw him.

Back to the story. In the audience on the video I spot that same dude! He’s rocking out singing along with E. It’s a small quicktime file, so I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m pretty blasted sure it’s the dude.

This is the first time that I can remember recognizing some random person that I remember seeing in person while watching a video online. Pretty unique thing that was to stumble upon late this good eve.

I grew up right in the heat of the Super Nintendo days and cling to those memories tightly. With the recent implementation of videos and all kinds of great media on the ol’ INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY, I’ve been able to reconnect with a lot of things from those days, including playing a number of the games. Now, there’s a site that can easily consume an hour of my free time with great ease. That site is ytmnd.com. If you aren’t familiar with it, check it out, you’ll probably say something like “what the heck is this?” but then find yourself getting hooked.

Anyway…here’s my point. I currently have a tab open right next to this one in FireFox which is playing the best music from Mario Paint. It is so soothing that I’m having a hard time staying awake to type this. Mario Paint was an awesome game. I never accomplished much on it, but it was fun to play with the pre-loaded stuff the game had. It was easily the most random Mario installment to hit any gaming system that I’ve seen. So, here’s the link, I suggest you check it out and let the soothing take control:

Click for incredibly soothing music from Mario Paint.

Well, if I said I didn’t doubt, I’d be telling a bit of a lie. I watched Andre Agassi’s opening match tonight versus Andrei Pavel. It was classic Agassi. The first set was a battle, both players having their moments, going right down to the tiebreaker. Pavel stepped it up big and took the first set. Agassi came back in the second set that was not very different than the first. At that moment, I relaxed a bit more and got ready for a great best 2 out of 3 to finish.

Now is when the Agassi routine kicked in. I don’t know if he’s a psychological genius or what, but I’ve seen him do it over and over again, and rarely seems to fail. He goes down 4-0 to start the third set. Then he changed to a racket with tighter strings. Next thing I know, he’s up 5-4…five games in a row after losing four straight! He kept on strong and took set 3 in a tiebreak. Heading into set 4, I could see Pavel’s frustration with a number of things – Agassi’s play, his own mistakes, and most of all, the harsh New York crowd. Agassi was all business in the fourth set and got up 4-0. After that, he let a couple go to Pavel and finished the job.

I think that’s why I love watching Agassi play so much. He is suspenseful and usually has great matches. When his game is on, he hustles harder than anyone and hits amazing winners on balls that look to be dead. He’s a tennis legend and I hope he makes it at least a few rounds into this tourney. If he doesn’t take it all, I’d like to see him go out in a barn burner against Roddick, which could happen if they both win their next couple of matches. Good stuff!

As I type this post, I have two other tabs open in FireFox that have been loading for over a minute each. Why? Well, they each seem to have some small image that doesn’t even show up (I’m guessing something to track visitors or ad impressions or something irrelevant to me, the user) when it’s done loading. I see this more and more. Webmasters really need to check these things when optimizing their site for user friendliness.

The main reason I’m upset with this is that both sites require a user name and password for me to access my account. I am lazy and take advantage of stored user names and passwords. In FireFox, the fields don’t auto fill until the page is entirely finished loading. In that case, I have to remember what I used for that site, which usually means checking my super state of the art safety vault with all my top secret information and fill it out myself. I’m far too lazy to do that.

Anyway, after working in the SEO realm for a year or so, red lights go off whenever a page fails to load in a timely manner. I lose respect for these sites…but sadly, I will still use them, because I’m mostly a complainer. By the way, both of those pages still haven’t finished loading yet.

The Wal-Mart Game is a glorious thing brought to us by Jeff Kay at The West Virginia Surf Report.

I imagine Jeff is not too much unlike Bill Sr. (my Dad). Bill enjoys going to the Wal-Mart (both my parents call it “the Wal-Mart” — awesome) just to watch the people, and that’s what this game is all about. I’ve got a couple of great voice mails from Bill Sr. excitedly explaining to me his recent trip to the Wal-Mart and the crazy people he saw doing the crazy things they did.

So I encourage you to check out this list, print it out, and head down to your local the Wal-Mart and have a gay old time!

I’ve noticed that one must be cautious when bringing up the topic of hygiene around people one thought to be clean. Yeah, weird.

This all came to my attention a few years back on a different topic, but led to this discovery. My roommate was washing dishes, and I noticed he was only washing the business side of the plates and bowls. I said “Hey, why don’t you wash the whole dish?” His answer, naturally, was “Because only the top got dirty.” Yeah, good answer smart guy. If I need to explain why that didn’t sit well with me, go wash your hands right now, because you’re the type of person who doesn’t was their hands after using the bathroom if you “didn’t get any on you.” Anyway, my response to him, trying to dumb it down, was “That’s like me saying I didn’t wash my legs in the shower because I didn’t get them dirty today.”

That is the line that helped me discover awkwardly unsettling things about people with whom I am associated. The topic of dish washing roommates came up at work recently, so that story resurfaced. I then learned that most of the people I was around there didn’t seem to think that all the body parts need to be washed on a regular basis. Sure, I can understand a 10 year old kid thinking that, maybe even up to 13 or so years old. But once you learn a little more about life, I just can’t see how anybody would actually take a shower and leave any part of their body as it was when they entered the shower. You’re there in the water, soap in hand, water running on you, what do you stand to lose by spending an extra minute finishing the job? I just don’t get why washing the body is such a riddle for some people.

I’m sure I’ve either offended somebody or you may be thinking that I’m anal retentive. Well, I’m not too fond of being smelly, sick, or dirty because of something I skipped in the shower. If this is all news to you, then here’s another piece of advice: Your body smell is stronger to everyone around you than it is to you, so wash yourself.

Anyway, I got a nice little rant there. My main point is that I am shocked by how many people don’t get the whole job done in the shower. I’m 6′3″ and still get it all, so I’ve got more real estate to cover than the average person. So, if you want to create an awkward moment at work, bring up hygiene in the shower, it’s a surefire way to stir things up!