SIDENOTE: I should mention that I’m lazy.  So I looked up some of my favorites on the ol’ YouTube.  Enjoy.  Or don’t.  Fuck you.

• Liam Lynch’s United States of Whatever

• Sex Pistols’ Who Killed Bambi?

• Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized

• Damien Carter’s Hangin’ Out With My Family

Art, via the billionaires over at Instagram

This is actually an old Happy Find, in the traditional sense, but I’m happy to find that my sister is keeping it up again.

It’s an odd little art blog called Art of My Mind, and she very well may be what the pun is a pun of, but I enjoy it, so I hope you would, too.  I find myself laughing more than I thought I would at her insights.

Check it out by clicking here.

Seriously, though.

(via @whereismychair on Twitter.  Apparently some douchey teacher always complains about someone taking his chair.  In reality, the chair has a life of its own…)

This makes me happy (which is long overdue you horrible, horrible movie):

For the remainder of The Schwarzenegger Follies, you can click here.  You’ll find wondrous classics, such as Conan the Barbarian: The Musical and Predator: The Musical.

And because I’m so kind, here’s another called… Commando: The Musical.

So of course it’s natural that I would rediscover The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince That’s Now Known Only As Prince’s I Would Die 4 U while bouncing around the dial.

A refresher from 1984 (in the form of a strange college project in 2009):

Then the thought occurred to me, could this be the first song that used leet speak in its title?

The Jets had a hit in 1988 with Rocket 2 U…

…and in 1990, Sinead O’Connor struck gold with Nothing Compares 2 U (which was also written by Prince) 

But there was nothing sooner.  Or was there?

Now if I had actually done all this homework, I probably would have stopped at Prince’s I Would Die 4 U.  I wouldn’t have even delved to the album that preceded Purple Rain and 1999 called Controversy.  (Released in 1981, it had a song called Jack U Off.)  So does that make it official that Prince started leet speak since he has three of the earliest appearances of it?

Not quite.

In 1977, there was a funk band known as Graham Central Station, and they put out an album (and song) called Now Do U Wanta Dance:

But even better than that – the first song on the album is called:

Happ-E-2-C-U-A-Ginn

Can we be sure PR1NC3 knew about Graham Central Station?  According to Wikipedia:

In 2011, Graham Central Station opened for Prince on Prince’s “Welcome 2 America” tour.

Isn’t it ironic?  Don’t U think?

(SIDENOTE: Thanks to my brother-in-law and fellow blogger, Judd, for the research.  Check out his insightful site Pancake Dominion by clicking here (or over there —>)…)

The good ol’ days aren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.

The same could be said for this slightly different Unofficial Trilogy.  It’s unofficial for the simplest reason – they’re home videos.  A grouping of skits that I made with my kid brother starting back in 1991 (when he was around 7 and I was around 16) and ending the early winter of last year.

If you watch them, I hope you enjoy them.  If you don’t, don’t ever come looking for help from Shott Gunnn!

(SIDENOTE: Some history… the first two were filmed within rainy days of each other.  I started each with a basic idea, but we made the dialogue and action up as we went along.  I edited them both in camera, rewinding to erase takes, most times not successfully.  The last one was filmed on an iPhone 4s, which is a fraction of the size of a VHS tape.  It’s a worthy homage of the originals, including mistakes and all.  If you get through all three, I think you’d agree that it wraps things up nicely, bringing the Unofficial Trilogy full circle.)

(SIDENOTE: Much to my chagrin, the same thing goes for Barry Sanders.  I’ve only started following the NFL since 2006…)

Anywayne, add to my disappointment that I didn’t know The Great One had a 22-year-old daughter that had a predilection to post provocative pictures of herself on Twitter.  And if G.I. Joe taught me anything, knowing is half the battle.  (However, it did not teach me not to drink before playing soccer.)

Here are some pictures of Paulina Gretzky in case you too were iced out (sadly, The Great one has since made her quit using Twitter… talk about a slap shot):

She did not borrow those glasses from any officials, I'm telling you...

Hat trick. I just had to make some caption.

Puck.

(More pics here.)

So now I find myself in a similar quandary as I did when I had my crush on Chris Elliott’s daughter, Abby:

More like, Sunday Morning Live

And my upcoming crush on Mirror Mirror star, Lily Collins, daughter of Phil Collins (she plays Snow White in the re-imagining):

Sadly, her father does not play one of the Seven Dwarfs.

Imagine if  this dude was singing this song to any of the above dads:

The HeartMark™ is trademarked?!

Trends.

They’re always stupid.  Pet rocks, sequenced gloves, pogs… and now this.  The inescapable heart hand gesture.  It’s everywhere.

Aeroswift™

But would you believe some lady “claims” to have the trademark on it?

This lady looks like she makes many "claims"...

She even licenses it out allegedly (although it just looks like she just made a list of places she’s seen it used and retroactively authorized it).

(SIDENOTE: Did she donate the gesture to Show Your Hearts?  It could be a tax write-off.)

My hope is that it actually is trademarked, and that she’s making bank on its pervasiveness.

I mean, what she claims is not impossible.  She could figured it out during a round of This is the church and this is the steeple gone bad.  I haven’t seen it in use until recent years, and it seems like a simple gesture to devise.

But was she the one who told Taylor Swift about it?  Because Swift claims she invented it, and her fans claim that Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, et. al. stole it from her.

All that matters is did this woman really trademark what she calls The HeartMark™?  Because I have an idea of my own:

My trademark... Deez Nuts™.

Seriously.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Click this picture to read the Amazon reviews.

I’m not about to jump on the bandwagon of slamming some misguided, self-righteous kid, but boy… do I want to.  This is one of those situations best illustrated by illustrations I made to defend Justin Bieber:

By hating on McKay Hatch and his No Cussing Club, you only make his message stronger.  But then he goes and makes videos like this, and it takes you somewhere completely different:

The only reason I know about him and his fruitless endeavor is because he came out against an episode of Modern Family in which the toddler Lily says:

Fudge.

That’s really what she said in real life.  Fudge.  They just bleeped it out like Jimmy Kimmel does in his Unnecessary Censorship:

And he wonders why he’s “the most cyberbullied kid in the world”?

Here are rational reasons why; here’s the irrational; and here’s one more.