Proud to be an American.

I've often thought it would be neat to live in England, but this article that Ryan sent me really gives me some pause.

A survey by Nuts magazine has produced a top ten most groan-inducing festive gags, with a witticism about Santa's choice of pizza securing the top spot.

The joke asks: What is Santa's favourite pizza?

Answer: One that's deep pan, crisp and even.

Oh ye gods. First of all, maybe it's a more common carol in Britain, but "Good King Wenceslas" - which is about a Bohemian king of the tenth century giving alms to a peasant on the day after Christmas - is kind of a deep cut in this country, I think. Here are the lines in the song that might explain the joke above if you didn't get it right away.

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.

Huh? Huh? By the way, nothing about Santa Claus or Christmas anywhere in the lyrics. Nice going there, joke writer.

Maybe the problem is that so many of these jokes rely on homophones, and jokes like that work a lot better when they're spoken, because when you write them out you're forced to choose one of the spellings. Someone reading the joke only sees the one spelling and perhaps scratches their head longer than they should. Some other examples:

What's a specimen?
An Italian Astronaut

Bonus vague racism!

What do you call a short sighted dinosaur?
A do you think he saw us!

After this joke was used in Jurassic Park, there probably should have been a rule that no one else could ever use it again. Regardless, notice just how little sense this makes on paper. The saw us/-saurus soundalike is almost totally obscured, and in fact if you didn't know the joke already, you might have to repeat this one to yourself several times before getting it. It might take less time in England where some people naturally have the accent that sticks Rs on the end of W sounds, but still.

Why would you invite a mushroom to a Christmas party?
He's a fun guy to be with.

Again, this looks dumb when written out.

What's brown and sweet and glides around an ice rink?
Bourneville and Dean

I think even if you live in England and get the reference (and then also get the other reference), this is horrific. Well, it must be, since this is a list of the worst Christmas cracker jokes of all time, so I guess I can't get too up in arms. But I'm almost offended that anyone ever thought that was even worth writing down.

Please stop.

What is it with Hollywood analysts that they feel some obligation to make these totally insipid jokes when talking about weekend grosses?

The Warner Bros. tale "I Am Legend," starring Smith as a plague survivor who may be the last living human, debuted with $76.5 million, the biggest December opening ever and a personal best for one of Hollywood's top box-office champs, according to studio estimates Sunday.

"It's no wonder Will Smith feels so lonely. Everyone else on Earth is in the movie theater," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers.

*slap*

But wait, studio execs can get in on this too, and in much more confusing fashion!

The 20th Century Fox family flick "Alvin and the Chipmunks," starring Jason Lee in a big-screen take on the cartoon critters, opened a strong No. 2 with $45 million. The two films combined to give Hollywood a year-end surge after a drowsy fall season.

"Forty-five million acorns," said Chris Aronson, senior vice president for distribution at 20th Century Fox. "Chipmunks are diurnal animals and they do hibernate, but not right now."

Shut the fuck up. I assume these are just from idiotic press releases, though the thought of these guys actually speaking these sentences is kind of hysterical, but that's no excuse. Forty-five million acorns? Also, does this guy know what diurnal means or did he just think he'd drop the two things he knew about chipmunks to sound cool? It just means "active during the day," dude. Not sure that has much to do with movie-going.

I'm not even mad, that's amazing

The World Pie-Eating Championships in England were threatened with postponement after a dog assigned to guard the pies, which were being stored in the refrigerator of a former champion, instead ate the pies when the fridge door did not close fully.

This actually happened. Although I'm a little surprised the dog didn't go for the whole wheel of cheese instead.

"Fortunately," the contest still went off without a hitch. Although if you think we have issues with PC watchdogs in America, get a load of this:

Past competitions used to be judged on the number of pies eaten by competitors in a three minute period but after falling victim to the "healthy eating lobby", the format was changed last year.

Seriously?

In "updates we will have in the future" news, Root Beer Taste Test #3 is tentatively scheduled for Saturday evening.

Winner, winner, lobster dinner

Ridiculous won the day, as my chops-plus-Hulk-Hogan-mustache was enough to win the beard contest. My boss came in with his beard shaved into a Backstreet-Boy-like configuration, and wore a white shirt and sunglasses such that he ended up looking kind of like Justin Timberlake in the "Dick in a Box" video, which was pretty hilarious. I voted for him since we couldn't vote for ourselves, but I got maybe half the votes of the people assembled, with the other six present contestants splitting up the rest. I suppose I'm relieved that I didn't go through all that work for nothing (there was prize money associated with the win), although it was kind of an amusing exercise on its own.

So what did it look like all done up? Well, here you go:



I'm not sure if you can get the full "biker" vibe off that Jack Daniel's headgear at this angle, but I think you get the idea. My boss had given me that a couple weeks ago as a joke (I think his friend won it at a bar and, for obvious reasons, neither of them wanted it), and I actually won lunch from him a couple of weeks ago by wearing it around the office for a day. Since I was going for kind of a biker look anyway, I figured it completed the ensemble, and the voters evidently agreed.



It doesn't even look much like me, does it?

If I was invisible

Alma sent me a link to this site that will do facial recognition stuff, supposedly. I tried putting in all five beard pictures to see how varied a response I could get, since I was kind of suspicious that it was just spitting out random names. It stays consistent if you use the same picture, though, so maybe it's not random. Maybe I just want it to be after the results.

Week One: Terence Stamp
Week Two: Paul Walker
Week Three: Raoul Bova (some Italian actor)
Week Four: Bashar Al-Assad (president of Syria!)
Week Five: Clay Aiken

Because Clay Aiken is one swarthy motherfucker.

Anyway, here's my face morphing to Clay Aiken's and back. Sadly, it's somewhat compelling evidence.

Build-a-Beard Workshop

Alma suggested the title of this post, for the record. Credit where credit is due. This one is actually sort of fun because I semi-coincidentally wore the same shirt as Week One, so the difference is all the more obvious. Not that it would be much less obvious.

So, your 11/5 picture again:



And now 12/3:



Two more days until the final ridiculousness - still deciding what that will be; I have the feeling it's going to be a spur of the moment choice on Tuesday night - and two days plus eight hours or so until the whole thing is off and I look like the top photo again. It's funny how quickly one gets used to oneself with a beard; the top picture already looks strange, and I've only had this thing a month (and the heavy growth only 2-3 weeks). I guess it's the difference between gradual growth and a quick change.