The idea was to profile whatever album is taking up the most time in my CD player this week. Usually that's a good thing. Stab The Unstoppable Hero is everywhere, though, so I felt the need to warn rather than praise.

It's Weezer, without the burden of cleverness. Here are three wicked-fun tracks, diluted with nine sophomoric ditties and wrapped in cellophane.

"Little Americans," an everybody-singing-along anthem, opens the album. It's fun and catchy and you should download it from somewhere, if you remember. "Runaround" is so Meat Puppets and embarrassing that I'm blushing. And "Stoned" is, like, totally Jimmy's Chicken Shack meets the Beatles, dude!

Basically, Arlo would have thrived during the mid-Nineties DGC heyday, but don't you deserve better now? Achtung!

Get Out Of My Fucking Face
THIS WEEK:
Martin Lawrence

It's a stand-up routine, not a movie.
 

Columnists to brighten your life.

Maureen Dowd
MoDo loses her marbles on this one, an atypical pop culture-laced rant about politics.

Billy Manes
Leave it to Billy to find a Crocodile Hunter knockoff in the form of the "Dean of Gator Wrestlin.'"

Will Leitch
I swear to God, Will was drinking when he wrote this depressing dispatch from a friend's wedding.

Arcata Eye Police Log
Kevin Hoover's weekly watch over the town of 16,000.
 

The New York Times doesn't have a Best Stealers List, but maybe it should.

The library book reappeared, 13,668 days late.

Watch out, ladies... that romantic evening he has planned could be a setup for murder.

Graydon Carter is spending less time at Vanity Fair and more time in Hollywood.

Someone ripped off a ton of Starbucks with a single, senseless act of Photoshop.

This groom was surprise-married.

Ann Coulter (and her book) is nuts. And to think I once had a crush on her.

UFOs over Washington DC?

The Fayetteville Observer prints a civil union announcement. No street riots reported yet.
 

Author Toby Young wrote in to thank the Reader for recommending his book, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People:

"Why don't you select the funniest section from the book, email it to your friends and suggest they email it to their friends, all the whole recommending the book? It could turn into a great little viral marketing campaign.

What a disgusting opportunist I am."

To that, I have no argument.

The lovely and talented Caroline Reiners wrote in about the cruel and unusual ArtFags website:

I was delighted to learn of a website that celebrated the habits and markings of the remarkable Art Fag species. Although further study is still needed, my numerous years of experience in the dating and mating habits of the male Art Fag (well, and one female too, but that was back in college and I don't feel it is pertinent to the study at hand) have yielded some fascinating conclusions.

While often lovely to look at and sometimes not too bad in the sack, it is my theory that the male Art Fag species is generally incompetent in the male/female relationship setting. My own studies note such traits as constant shortage of funds, incessant bumming of cigarettes, inconsistent grooming, and general lack of ambition even though each thinks he is destined to be the next Jeff Magnum (of Neutral Milk Hotel fame and Art Fag role model). My study sampling, taken over the past 7 years, has been a random mix of both local Orlando, New Orleans, and Gainesville, Florida specimens.

Although my choice of hair style (long and not dyed), clothing (very feminine) and footwear (heels--high and strappy) do not make me an ideal decoy in attracting the male Art Fag (observation has showed they feel more comfortable among the female of their species, who can often only be told apart from the male by the appearance of breasts) I vow to continue my research. No one could say it better than the Kink's Ray Davies: "I just want to look at you, the way art lovers do". Uh, I mean, art fag lovers that is.

Be sure to listen to "Caroline's Playhouse" every Thursday moringing at 8 on WPRK 91.5FM.
 

A big thank you goes out this week to Lisa Cericola, Andrew Jones, Donavan Astwood and Alex Almeida.

t took Rita Bornstein only five years to raise over $160 million for Rollins College during an intense 1996-2001 campaign, but there she was, standing directly in front of me in line at the supermarket, unable to coax the $100 she needed out of her own checking account. Hilariously, she and husband Harlan took turns pounding numbers into the register's card swipee-thing. If the device could talk, it would surely tell you that she ran her card every which way but right.

"You can tell I don't shop very much," she told me with a pained grin.

How do I always end up in the wrong line?

Dr. Bornstein, "Rita" as the students call her, has been perched atop the Rollins tower for a dozen years, an unusually long term by most standards. But she remains humble. When I first spotted her in the soap aisle (carefully mulling over the toothpaste selection, trying desperately to make sense of it all), I noted how unexpected it was to see her.

"I know!" she replied, "a president! In the grocery store!"

Um, yeah. Her immodesty is understandable, I suppose. Rollins, for those of you outside of Florida, is a prestigious liberal arts college located right here in my hometown of Winter Park. While the deans and administrators and department heads toil to develop curricula and standards, the president serves only two real functions: she is the figurehead, the face of the institution, as well as its primary cash whip. At the latter, Dr. Bornstein is a master. Her fundraising prowess has startled most who keep tabs on such things, and her genius at finessing tens of millions from alumni is baffling.

When you're that successful, you can afford to hire "little helpers" to do the shopping. On this particular evening, my assistance came gratis, as I helped her dial a C-note out of the Presto! machine, approximately one-5,000th of her total annual income, including expenses. It was a pleasure, considering all she's done for me.

Rollins may boast an uncommonly high number of endowed chairs for a school its size (a good indicator of academic priorities), but its most important ranking is provided by the readers of Playboy, who consistently place the institution's coeds among the top three of all American schools. The magnitude of this cannot be overstated.

othing, absolutely nothing, is as splendid as when the Rollins Girls return. The air is sweeter, exotic flowers bloom and the Avenue somehow sparkles in anticipation. The lingering heat of summer will keep the fabrics light and minimal as they strut around the neighborhood. God bless them and their assumption of wealth. God bless them in all their arrogant vulnerability. God bless them and their little conversations.

They smoke a lot, and they're not very challenging. For a few intense days they'll skulk through the streets, sniffing out the place like cats in a new apartment, reacquainting themselves with everything that had bored them so, back in spring. Park Ave CDs will unload some copies of John Mayer and Dave Matthews. We'll see them at the farmers market, looking as cute as possible while remembering that little else is sold there than plants and chili mixes. They will talk on teeny cell phones.

Despite the posing and predictability, their charms are not lost on me. I'm as afflicted as a saucer-eyed, hopeless freshman. Their wide belts and narrow attention spans still entice, but there are only a few who offer the total package. My hope is to find one of these anomalies. Somewhere in between the insipid stalks of blonde and the sexy-smart girls of the outside world are the full-scholarship knockouts and the Holt night school goddesses. They're feminine and sunny, and can be trusted to handle sharp objects. These illusive women usually light up the library, and are harder to find in public. When you do, it's a little miracle that should be appreciated and embraced. No matter what her place in the college, when you find one of the Rollins rarities you should never let her go. Don't make the same mistake I made.

Rita, baby... call me.
 
 

It's Votin' Time, Cletus
Elections in Florida are now notoriously obnoxious, though we who live here are quite used to it. An Orlando Sentinel article (curiously marked as posted on the 28th, while actually posted the 27th) describes how the filing deadline for candidates was delayed by one day due to a plane crash. On board the Fed Ex Boing 727 were the filing papers for Democrat Dwight Seigler of Merritt Island, FL, along with those of several other state candidates. Both pilots survived with broken bones, and no information is given about their political orientation.

This week's most side-splitting, laugh-out-loud political news comes from District 36 of the Florida House, where retiring Representative Allen Trovillion's seat is being contested by, among others, a gay Republican candidate. Patrick Howell is a 32 year-old attorney from Orlando with a 3 1/2 year-old son from a previous marriage, though he has been with the same partner for 3 years now. So what is so funny? Well, if elected, Howell would replace one of the most vehemently anti-gay representatives still holding office. Trovillion, once a mayor of Winter Park, made headlines in April 2001 when he told a group of students, "I don't understand why the gay population is becoming so vocal. You are going to cause the downfall of this country." The students were visiting his Tallahassee offices to lobby for an extension of civil-rights protection to gay students.

Democratic leaders are also questioning how a gay man can be a Republican, pointing out that longtime Republican Trovillion is supporting a Democrat in the race. Orange County Democratic leader Doug Head takes it waaaaay to far with his comparison of the situation to a "Jew voting for Hitler." And others are knocking Mr. Howell for his web site, which contains a photo of the candidate next to his son and female campaign manager, looking an awful lot like a non-gay family.

Please email me with your questions for Mr. Howell; I'll be speaking to him about his campaign.

And why are they still haggling over the 2000 elections? Now there's controversy over whether or not to throw away the 176,000 contested ballots that traveled by Ryder truck to Tallahassee, where they were ignored by the repugnant Catherine Harris. A Division of Library and Information Services official ballparks the annual cost for storage and security at around $100,000. I'll store them in my parents' house for half that.
 

Photo O' The Week
Looky this here alligator! Our unaltered photo shows the 18 1/2 foot-long gator found at the Orange County Convention Center. Golly, Florida sure sucks. Click to enlarge.
 
 
 

Funnier Than 'Cop Rock'
Kevin L. Hoover edits the entire Arcata Eye, a weekly out of Humboldt County, California, but his favorite assignment is the Police Log. While most community papers offer one, the Eye breathes new life into this usually dull feature. There are routine drug arrests, vandalism incidents and the occasional theft, but it's Hoover's particular knack for the English language that makes this log special. Sometimes his witty entries paint a portrait of this quaint town of 16,000:

9:10 p.m. A confused calf got loose on Q Street, and likely experienced the bovine equivalent of relief when it was repasture-ized.

Sometimes Hoover mixes in a limerick:

5:18 p.m.
Four stoners were somewhat crestfallen
When Park Ranger Bob came a-callin'
He took all their doobs
And left the poor rubes
With naught to inhale but pollen.

And sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get a haiku:

2:24 p.m.
Living with you is
Doors slamming, all day, all night
And paranoia.

We're pleased to provide a link to the Log each week, over in the sidebar.
 

Turn For The Wurst
It would've been so cute, a story posted here about how I took a stab at running that vegan hot dog cart on Orange Avenue with a friend. But she and the cart's vacationing owner got into a nasty fight, and now the dream is gone. For two months, hungry vegefreaks must endure the lips-and-assholes variety of wieners offered on every other corner.
 
 

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times require a username and a password to read their articles. If you don't already have these, just use "weaklytest" and "capndave," repectively, for both papers.

He makes his living touching cars until he wins them. "He doesn't really have a career, per se," says his mom, "I wish he'd find a nice girl and settle down." You cannot miss this incredible story of obsessive Brian Root, who has mastered the art of the hands-on victory, and the people he's pissed off along the way.

First the wonderful/evil Tina Brown slams Talk magazine into a brick wall. Now she gets $1 million for the remaining two years of her contract. That about sums it up.

Tina's last gig was editing the New Yorker, where she doubled the number of fact checkers. Here is an fascinating account of just how meticulous these overlooked and underappreciated worker bees truly are. Here is one anecdote from the story:

"When a newsmagazine ran a cover story on General Muhammad Naguib, shortly after he became Egypt's first president in 1953, the writer said that Naguib was such a modest man that his name didn't appear among "the 000 people listed in Who's Who in the Middle East" and that he refused to live in "the royal palace, surrounded by an 00-foot-high wall". A cable was sent to a Cairo stringer to fill in the data. The magazine never heard from the stringer, so they rewrote the story so that the numbers were not needed. Later, they received a cable that looked like this:

I AM IN JAIL AND ALLOWED SEND ONLY ONE CABLE SINCE WAS ARRESTED WHILE MEASURING FIFTEEN FOOT WALL OUTSIDE PALACE AND HAVE JUST FINISHED COUNTING THIRTY EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDERED TWENTY TWO NAMES WHOS WHO IN MIDEAST."

Oh the irony! A drunk liquor executive got into a car accident near Philadelphia, which is bad enough, but then he tried to hide it from cops. Here's where the guy wins the Asshole of the Week award: he tried to keep his four 13 and 14 year-old passengers from seeking medical treatment, despite fractured skulls, internal bleeding, chest pains and various cuts suffered among them.

You know them, you've danced with them. They're Metrosexuals!

La la la, a man buys a home in Rochester, New York. "Hmmm," he thinks, "it smells like something died up in here." Maybe it's that dead body in the closet.

The UC Davis media board has allowed the student editor of the California Aggie to keep his job, after controversy followed the publication of a satire issue.

I cannot wait for the Jackass movie to hit the big screen. It may result in more idiots setting themselves on fire. A rare blessing in a world no longer beholden to Darwinism.

My traffic attorneys are gods among men. This week I may actually get my drivers license reinstated, which is both amazing and unspeakably irresponsible of them. And all it cost me was three or four grand! Good thing I didn't have this attorney, whose client claims is charging them $350,000 for a phone call. And speaking of attorneys, the Segway scooters aren't out yet and the lawyers are already salivating. Here's a law firm that plans on specializing in Segway litigation.

See Quick Hits on the sidebar for more links.
 

One Nervous Cap'n.
Last week I discussed my favorite cereal marketing technique, where the characters on the box have an accident and create a new, more delicious variety of breakfast. Obviously, you and I both have a lot of questions about this, so I spoke to the fine people at Quaker Oats who make Cap'n. Crunch. Well, I tried to anyway. After being passed around every department I was finally dumped into a voice mail black hole. I received this delightful message the next day:

9:12am
"Hi Dave, this is Shalini Lula, at Quaker Oats company at the Cap'n. Crunch brand. I got your message yesterday about the article you're doing on accidents in food. I wanted to actually let you know that that's no longer a strategy that we're pursuing on Cap'n Crunch. Um, we've actually discontinued the product, that was called 'Oops All Berries' and our new product Choco Donuts happens to be under the 'Oops' banner. But it's, uh, we're no longer positioning it as accidents that happen in the kitchen or in the factory, so don't think we can help you with your article, um but thanks for touching base. Bye."

Hmmm. Mysterious! I'm still on the story.
 

He's A Super-Streak
Well, he's more of a 500-pound naked guy who won't get out of the road. He's not a sports streaker, but he's won my heart.
 

A Virgin In Brazil?
There are reports of a Virgin Mary sighting last week in Chicago, but I can't find a story to back it up. Luckily, there was another one in Brazil, where the likeness was spotted in a window. Tens of thousands came to pray and ask the image questions. A Catholic bishop later refuted the sighting, claiming that it's actually the hazy visage of Bruce Villanch.
 

That's it.

See you next week!

Yer Pal,