The Smarmy Carny

New Numa!

Gary Brolsma, the guy thrust into online fame via his video "The Numa Numa Dance," is back with a new video and a new dance!

Earlier this month, NewNuma.com appeared. Lo and behold, Gary finally returned at everyone's request to create a New Numa video along with his band, The Nowadays.

The newly released song "New Numa" has Russian lyrics and is performed by Minnesotan Chad Russell. It is reminiscent of O-Zone's "Dragosta Din Tei" (the original song used in the Numa Numa Dance).

Watch New Numa now:

NewNuma.com is also hosting a contest with a total of $45,000 given out in prize money to the top winners. Details will not be released until September 22, but it looks like it will probably be a "make your own video" contest.

Thornton and Heder

School for Scoundrels looks to be an entertaining comedy revolving around a loser-turned-romantic battling a teacher of romance.

Roger (John Heder, best known as Napoleon Dynamite) is a down-on-his-luck loser who can't communicate properly with women. He has the ever-popular (and manly) job of NYC meter maid.

Tired of being pushed around whereever he goes, Roger enrolls in a confidence-building class taught by Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton). He tells them not to bother with self-help books: "You can't help yourself because yourself sucks." Dr. P and his assistant Lesher (Michael Clarke Duncan) take the students through the dangerous yet effective confidence-building course. As promised, the program is successful for Roger: He switches from loser to lover and impresses his longtime crush Amanda (Jacinda Barrett).

After Dr. P congratulates Roger on his success, Roger makes the mistake of telling him, "Maybe one day I'll teach the class." This causes Dr. P's competitive side to come out, and Dr. P becomes obsessed with showing Roger that he is the master — by stealing Amanda away from him.

Watch the School for Scoundrels trailer and decide for yourself. Don't forget to check out the official site, too. The movie is scheduled to be released September 29, 2006.

Today I was tagged by Jono over at *insert witty title here* to play a word association game.

Here are the five words provided for me, followed by my associations:

• Stick — Post-It
• Bottle — Message
• Mint — Listerine
• Camera — Lens
• Trolley — San Francisco

I hereby dissolve myself from any conclusions anyone might make — trained or otherwise — regarding these thoughts from my subconscious. It's disturbing to me, however, that 3/5 of my answers are proper nouns. Two companies and one city. Perhaps I'm merely a product of television and advertisements. At least my Trolley answer wasn't Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco treat).

And now, I pass the torch along to 5 more bloggers. Here are the 5 random words for them:

• Kumquat — ?
• Gobbledygook — ?
• Lollygag — ?
• Diphthong — ?
• Masticate — ?

You can always count on me to be less traditional and more eccentric than the rest.

And here are the five bloggers I am tagging:

• Jule Ann – Who is Jule Ann?
• xenomouse – Screaming for Mercy
• Marlene – Buffalo Tales from South Wales
• Abigail – Shotsnaps
• Jim – According to Jim…

Of course, these five wonderful people are obligated to post their responses on their own blog, choose five new words, and tap five other people to play!

OK, so I cheated and picked not-so-random words. All the words I selected were from my list of 100+ Fun Words to Say. So sue me! (Disclaimer: By "sue," what I really mean is "place no legal action against.")

Cross the beams to toast this one

Today is National Toasted Marshmallow Day. All across the nation, Americans of all ages are toasting up these sweet treats. It's no coincidence that this holiday falls in late August, when starting up a campfire and enjoying a toasted marshmallow seems like the natural thing to do.

Rumor has it that most marshmallows consist of up to 80% air. With that much air, they must be low-calorie, so dig in!

No matter how you enjoy marshmallows, there are so many different ways to prepare them:

• Toasted on a stick over a campfire. (Classic.)
• Microwave. High. 3 seconds. Ding!
• Toasted over the kitchen range. (Ideal only for rainy days.)
• Toaster-mallows. (Please allow 14 days for cleanup.)
• . . . and many more creative methods!

Once you decide on a cooking method, there are still different ways to prepare the marshmallow:

• Rotisserie marshmallow: Lightly caramelized shell with a warm, gooey core.
• Kids' choice: Flaming ball of marshmallow death, resulting in a black, charred mass on a stick that burns your fingers as you attempt to pull it off.
• ADHD marshmallow: Well-toasted on one side, raw on the other.
• Impatient and hungry person's choice: Slightly warmed with no true toasting at all.
• Raw. (The abomination!)

How do you prefer to cook your marshmallows, and how well done do you cook them? Let your voice be heard!

Of course, you can always use your toasted marshmallow to make a S'more, but you should know that National S'mores Day was back on August 10. You must have at least one unadulterated toasted marshmallow today! If you run out of fire, feel free to play a game of Chubby Bunny with your friends.

For more weird and bizarre holidays, check out my Eccentric Holidays calendar at Google Calendar.

Click to view

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie have this great song truthfully titled "Every OS Sucks." It's funny because it's true.

There is a fairly lengthy introduction, but it's worth the wait if you're a computer geek. The song reminisces about the good ol' days when our computers never crashed. It's truly geeky snark at its best.

Be sure to check out the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie site for more!

Even though it was just a click away, I finally discovered Lists of Bests, which is part of the 43 Things family. Read more about my 43 Things at Random Fodder.

Lists of Bests allows you to create and find lists of products, places, goals and people. From the Pulitzer Prize to the Oscars and beyond; you can start the list yourself or find existing lists. For example, I have already added myself to several lists, such as:

• Academy Award's "Best Picture"
• Roger Ebert's "The Great Movies"
• 50 States of the USA

You can also start your own personal lists like "My Top 10 Favorite Books," "My Films for Computer Geeks," etc. There are three types of lists: award lists (lists of particular award winners), definitive lists (lists from other publications that are set in stone), and personal lists (created and edited only by you).

The most fun part about Lists of Bests is that when you add or create a list to your profile, you can easily check off your progress item by item. Especially useful is that, when I checked all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners that I had seen, those movies were already checked off in the "Roger Ebert's 'The Great Movies'" list when I visited it.

Here are the lists I have completed:

Here are the 5 lists I am still working on, but closest to completing:

What are you waiting for? Go get started today!

The Spider-Man 3 teaser is out now, and it's clear that the third installment will deal with the Venom plot line. I highly doubt they'll get into the Secret Wars plot simply to introduce Venom, so that development will be interesting to watch. My guess is that they'll stick with yet another lab experiment gone awry. Expect to see SM3 in May 2007.

Topher Grace is slated to play Eddie Brock, which should be fun. You may or may not have noticed the Eddie Brock reference in the original Spider-Man: J. J. Jameson mentions that Eddie couldn't get a decent photo of Spider-Man.

In the comics, Venom knows Spider-Man's secret identity, but since Spider-Man 2 seemed to be titled "Hey everyone, I'm Peter Parker!", the Venom plot line will hopefully be a good distraction from that mess.

If you're not a fan of Spider-Man, however, you can always watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles teaser. Based solely on the teaser, the movie looks pretty good. At first, I was worried that they might have dropped the lighter side of TMNT, but you'll notice that's not the case. One thing, though: I can't yet verify that Corey Feldman is not slated to voice Donatello. Once I can confirm that, I will be much more excited about the movie. TNMT is slated to be released on March 30, 2007.