It's Been a Good One...

Today is my last day as a temp, and I'm celebrating by reading a lot of newspaper articles as opposed to working. Some stuff I've read:

Bobby Knight has been a favorite of mine ever since he was a favorite of my grandpa's. Knight used to make appearances at Iowa Farmer's Conventions and my grandpa always enjoyed it. I'd like to see B. Knight keep winning, if for no other reason than to give Steve Alford something to do with his time since things in Iowa haven't been very exciting for him. I'm going to the Hawkeye's basketball game tomorrow and I'm super excited to go to Carver. It's an old favorite.

I haven't decided if I'm driving to Iowa City late tonight or early tomorrow. It's not an exciting drive but it's an easy drive there from Chicago. I'm glad I'm not in Florida or I may have to worry abut getting lost like this guy.

I'm a big fan of rough drafts, revision is my favorite part of the writing process. However, I usually get rid of old drafts if I no longer need them because you never know what trouble they will get you into. Sometimes you think an article can't possibly live up to it's fantastic headline, but sometimes it just gets better.

All the holiday driving I've been doing lately mixed with preparing for a move and working some extra hours has left little time to excersise, not like I excercise much to begin with but it's made me feel a little sluggish. As much as I want to stay in shape I'm bored with excerscise. I have a lot of respect for people who can go to the gym everyday, except for the people who like to brag about how much they go to the gym and try to put down those of us who stuggle with motivation for excercise. If you're one of these people there's something you need to know. I don't find it fun and the "reward" it poses is hard for me to keep in sight, so I'm constantly looking for new fitness routines and experiments. What guarantees my further avoidance of excersise is my brother giving me his old X-Box for Christmas and a sweet new game which is right up my alley, so video games seem to be creeping into my life. I've never been into the video game culture but it seems fun and way better than Yoga.

And finally, this link was sent to me recently with, "My favorite link of the year..." as the subject line, and after reading it I must agree. The first picture of the fire pit is the current desktop on my MacBook. Thanks to R. Smart for the link.

There it is, the last of the Random Good Stuff for 2006. The last entry I make while I should be doing work at my temp job. It's been a good one, a good relocation to Chicago, a good time painting my parent's house this summer, a good trip to Kansas City to blow the money I had saved to buy an ipod on an Eagles of Death Metal concert, a good visit to Minneapolis to finally see the Walker Museum of Art, a good trip to Boston on my brother's birthday to get drunk on Magic Hat #9 which is one of my all time favorite beers as a tornado ripped through Iowa City, and a good year to start a blog. I hope 2006 has been equally as awesome for readers of The Goulash Chronicles. See you next year, GoonBots.

Christmas Balls...

My mom sent me this video this morning, she had seen it on TV recently. It's a little corny, but if you watch this and it doesn't make you smile then we aren't friends anymore.

I'm not sure why it's in Spanish...



And while we're talking Late Night Christmas...

Yesterday's News...

NBC's wesbite isn't very friendly to Macs, at least it wasn't to mine last night. For anyone who has trouble with their page, here is a YouTube version of the SNL Digital Short that we were talking about yesterday...



And then there's this...



Thanks to D. Gilbertson for the links.

While we're at it...



And finally, in terms of talk shows Matt Damon has had his troubles in the past, but he was on point with Letterman the other night...

All Time Favorite...

After watching the Hawkeyes get smoked I had some projects to work on Saturday night and I had SNL on TV as I worked. I ended up not getting much done until the episode was over because it was really good. I've always been a fan of SNL and though they've been less than their best recently, especially earlier this season, last week with Annette Bening and this past weekend with Justin Timberlake have been dynamite. The Hugh Laurie episode was good too, though I must admit that I haven't watched every second of this season. The digital shorts are getting better as well. I had long hoped that the shorts would start to take a more prominent role in the show as they did back when Albert Brooks started doing them, but they have gone back and forth over the last decade. Since Lazy Sunday they seem to be more of a feature, which is great because my all time favorite SNL clip is a short.


This past Saturday had a very fantastic video and the rest of the episode had me laughing as well. NBC currently has a bunch of clips from the season up here. They might not work if you have a Mac or you might have to download a Windows media player but it's worth it.

As everyone already knows from all the articles and info written about Lazy Sunday, some of the new blood (last year) who are doing the shorts are (is?) The Lonely Island. They have all kinds of good stuff on their sight, and lots of it.


It's also no secret that I enjoy Tanqueray, though I haven't enjoyed it lately because I'm broke. Early this morning I got a text message from my brother Dante which compared me to Tony Sinclair, the current spokesman for the product and suffice to say it was an awesome thing to start my day. So awesome I was twenty minutes late for work.

I've been watching The Office on DVD since I don't currently have cable. Not having cable isn't a big deal since this never ever gets old.*






*For those of you who think the Goulash Chronicles are getting a little too close to repeating itself with this post, I thank you for paying such close attention.

I'm old and grey...

Over the weekend I was involved in a conversation regarding natural talent. We had started talking about Brian K. Vaughn's book Pride of Baghdad and that lead to talking about instincts and that lead to professional sports and that lead to the Bulls current hot streak and that lead the conversation to a guy who plays for the Bulls whom one of us sort of knew or at least we had met him once in Okoboji over the 4th and then had met him again in Lawrence because we had a mutual friend. At this point the conversation hit a slight lull, as it sometimes does when pro sports are brought up because the majority of pro athletes are in their 20's like myself and they're also multi-millionaires which I definately am not. In fact I'm the opposite. 26 is a weird age because I'm young enough to justify working for pennies in order to train myself (new newspaper internship starts January 2nd) for the career I want to work until I'm old and grey, yet I'm old enough to have friends buying a new Mercedes every year. Well, maybe not every year but you get the point.

I think a lot of what goes into being a pro athlete is luck. Not luck in the sense that they're lucky to have the opportunity to make lots of cash because I truly believe that athletes, the ones with staying power, obviously have to bust their ass each day to keep up to par with everyone else in their field. These people aren't just playing games. (Get it? Games? Sports?) I think the luck comes into play because they're natural talents happen to also be what they want to spend the rest of their life doing. Pretty lucky if you ask me, lucky and fantastic. If someone is good at tennis and they like tennis, it's a no brainer that he/she should be a tennis player. If someone is good at baseball but would rather be a chef, that's where it gets tough. What makes the road even longer is when you see someone your own age without student loans and they're able to pay their parking tickets on time so that the city doesn't send a letter home to your parents because your Lumina is still in your dad's name and that prompts your dad to reconsider your having a car in Chicago, hypothetically. It's easy to be proud of your friends, but envy is hard to mask when you eat Ramen every night.

Anyway, all of this led me to think about my natural gifts because writing sure as hell isn't one of them, hence all the attempts at practice. I kept my eyes open this weekend and I think I found something, let me set up the scene for you. It's late in the day and you're at a small clothing store, or a barber shop, or a coffee house or even a bank and they're just about to close. You're the last person in the place and you're the last customer to leave before they lock the second door. The exit has a double door and they have already locked the door on the right to deter people from coming in and their needing to tell them, "Sorry we're closed. We open at ten tomorrow." I walk toward the double doors trying to hurry as to not further hold up the people working because I've been in their shoes when all you want is for that last person to leave so you can close and go home and turn on the TV take off your socks and rub your feet on the carpet and BOOM. I run into whichever of the double doors has been locked. If the right one is locked I'll have picked the left, if the left is locked I'll go right. It's a natural talent which pisses me off to no end because the place is always empty so when I smack into the door the sound reverberates throughout the space for all of the employees to here. "Oh, that door's locked. The one on the left is open." No shit, coffee batista or bank teller or whoever is working behind the counter?

That's my natural talent. It isn't exactly what I want to spend my whole life doing professionally, but I'm not saying I wouldn't capitalize on it if I could. After all, it might be nice to drive a Mercedes to the store for Ramen.

I'm going to try...

Since I'm always on the look out for new condiments I was excited to read today on Daily Candy (which isn't just for girls) about a reataurant called Smoque in the Irving Park neighborhood. Since I'll soon be leaving my current home base (a futon in a friend's livingroom in west Lakeview) for a new home base (a sublet with an air mattress in east Lakeview) I'm going to try to make it over to Smogue while it's still in walking distance.

I can't watch YouTube at work, nor can I look at MySpace or Digg.com or other video sites, which is why alot of stuff people send me during the day doesn't make it onto the Goulash Chronicles for a little while. Those of you who have sent links and video please keep them coming. I'm going to try and make more little posts with random good stuff and save the digressions for after work. We'll see how it goes, but the Goulash Chronicles are still in the experimental stages anyway. With that said, I was ecstatic to learn about a new Arcade Fire song available over the phone as well as online. It's all explained hear.

More to come...

His hands are tied...

Dear Santa,

For Christmas I would like you to please tell Steve Jobs and the others at Apple to get off their asses and put the touch screen iPod on the market already. I don’t even need you to bring it to my house on Christmas Eve, I’ll pay for it myself but I’m tired of waiting. It’s no secret that those clowns have us all by the balls, but I thought you could work some magic. I saw the Easter Bunny last Saturday at Borders and asked him about it (I hate to bring up work stuff on the weekend but he’s so damn hard to get a hold of) but he said his hands are tied this time of year. I had to wait forever to buy a Macbook and I don’t want a repeat of that situation so anything you can do will be appreciated. I have been pretty good this year, but you told me last summer that you don’t give a shit about that “for goodness sake” jive, so whatever.

Say hi to the Mrs. for me.

Yours truly,
Don Goulash