I'm moving out of my apartment and moving into myspace.

Apartment - They own it, so they can kick me out.
Myspace - it is my. space.

Apartment - expensive
Myspace - free! (if you don't count the cost of being harassed by sucky bands.)

Apartment - gays!
Myspace - jews, teens, and gays! oh my!

Apartment - 2 roommates
Myspace - 257 friends

Apartment - sounds of lady upstairs making babies.
Myspace - pictures of girls from high school with their babies.

Apartment - refrigerator
Myspace - bulletin board

Apartment - shameless self promotion
Myspace - poorly designed self promotion

Apartment - Reba, the well-meaning Landlord with Alzheimer's
Myspace - Tilla Tiquilla

Apartment - Paul, the pot-smoking, schizophrenic "massage therapist" neighbor with a heart of gold and a thumb of green
Myspace - Tom, the UCLA Film grad who IS a real person, lives in santa monica, and sold his soul to Rupert Murdoch for 100Million (which is totally worth it.)

Apartment - tanned skin
Myspace - new X-men skin

Apartment - gay porn
Myspace - child porn

apartment - real people
myspace - fake profiiles

apartment - i'm tired
myspace - i'm famous!

apartment - people with bad manners
Myspace - people bad grammar

Apartment - talking
Myspace - commenting

Scientology Sucks.

So recently I noticed a new building in Westwood with a big shiny corporate sign on top that read "HELIO." Yesterday I heard that Helio was throwing some kind of cell phone launch party that included a "secret musical guest" (Beck) and was hosted by Danny Masterson, Chloe Seveny, and Milla Jovavitch - it seemed unusual that 2 of the 4 celebrities mentioned were scientologists, so I decided to look it up and see what's the deal. HELIO is a really high-priced cell phone company, it has 2 phone options, they both come equipped with myspace and a full-color yahoo search engine. They're basically a competitor to the t-mobile sidekick (the teenage/media-whore version of the beloved treo/blackberry.) So first when I saw that its "partner" was myspace I thought that HELIO was just another Rupert Murdoch venture, but when I went to see who the CEO was, it was none other than SKY DAYTON, founder of earthlink and BFF of Reed Slatkin, skum of the earth. Sky Dayton is a scientologist. Scientologists suck. Here are some surprising scientologists:

• Sonny Bono, musician and member of U.S. House from California
• Nancy Cartwright, voiceover artist, most famous as the voice of Bart Simpson
• David S. Freeman, writer, video game developer, and screenwriting teacher
• Paul Haggis, director
• Mike Joubert, Bronson Pinchot's voice coach
• Chaka Khan, singer
• Bernadette Peters, actress and singer (source: Bergen Record 3/10/1985, may be an e x-member)
• Marissa Ribisi, actress, wife of Beck Hansen, sister of Giovanni Ribisi, raised Scientologist.
• Patrick Swayze, actor
• Greta Van Susteren, host of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren on FNC


AND Former members
• J. J. Abrams, Writer
• Adi Da Samraj (a.k.a. Franklin Jones, Da Free John), religious guru (renounced Scientology after ca. one year)
• John Brodie, football player
• William S. Burroughs, author, Beat Generation icon (later denounced it)
• Leonard Cohen, singer, songwriter (at New York Org in late 60s)
• Werner Erhard, founder of EST
• Emilio Estevez, actor (renounced it and won't discuss it)
• Soleil Moon Frye, actress
• Philip Gale, MIT student and primary developer of EarthLink's innovative ISP software; committed suicide on Hubbard's birthday
• Gloria Gaynor, singer (later renounced)
• Charles Manson, serial killer (professed Scientology in 1961, but critics claim he only read books in prison in the early 1960s)
• Ricky Martin, singer (says he dabbled in it)
• Van Morrison, singer, songwriter (renounced Scientology in the 1980s)
• Jesse Prince, former church official
• Lou Rawls, singer (renounced Scientology)
• Melanie Safka, singer, songwriter (renounced Scientology)
• Barbara Schwarz, former Scientologist claiming Hubbard parentage
• Jerry Seinfeld, comedian
• Oliver Stone, director (said involvement was finished after 4 months)
• Sharon Stone, actress (reportedly now a convert to Buddhism)

Iwhile it cannot be confirmed i also heard that Baryshnikov is ILSO a scientologist. I guess i just want to say - watch out, and cancel your earthlink/Helio accounts immediately.

I like Ads

SO i hate to say it, but clever advertising really gets me going. The latest and best example being THE DA VINCI CODE QUEST BY GOOGLE. This is such genius advertising! I'm quite proud of google actually - i think that this is a better ad for it, than it is for the Howard Movie!

The deal:
In the "quest," web surfers are challenged to solve riddles, curate virtual gallery walls, translate decoded puzzles, ace davinci-themed Triv, and navigate google earth. There are 24 days of the quest, and a new challenge revealled each day. The first 10,000 people to finish the quest on the 24th day are the "finalists" and will each recieve a "codex" from the movie. (yawn.) BUT the codex will help those 10,000 finalists solve the very last puzzle of the quest, and the grand prize winner will receive a first-class trip to London, Paris, Rome, and NYC - and they get to bring 3 friends! And they get a bunch of mp3 players and flat screen TVs and the like.

So basically I'm planning on winning this challenge as i have NEVER BEEN OUT OF THE COUTNRY and desperately want to go to LONDON, PARIS, and ROME, (and S Africa, but I suppose that can wait.) It should be mentioned that a free trip to NYC would be put to good use too.

AND - I love puzzles. I HATE jigsaw puzzles, but i do enjoy riddles and sudoku-type visual logic puzzles, which - with supreme web-surfing/searching abilities - is what the quest is all about. The chess puzzle is probably the hardest one for me, as I have never had the patience to learn the difference between the tower guy and the horsey man person.

SO what i'm saying is: if you have time to read my blog, you should also try out the da vinci quest... and if you STILL have free time, you should join me at my low-stakes poker addiction at pokerroom.com.

jh