Things I Think I Learned This Week

There was one six-day span in college during which my roommate and I did nothing except play Tekken 2 and occasionally go out into the hall and run directly at each other to see who would be left standing.

This past week was slightly more eventful than that.

Let's get right to a few things I think I learned.

1. America finally has its Keanu Reeves
Did you see that South Park where Kenny ends up in heaven, fighting for the forces of good by playing a golden PSP? And then everyone refers to him as their "Keanu Reeves" as in Keanu from The Matrix? I'm not saying Barack Obama is the chosen one, I'm just sayin that nobody would be that surprised if he eventually went on to co-star with Sandra Bullock in The Lake House.

2. Openly Republican musicians are as difficult to find as a picture of Wil Francis where he isn't smoking.
If you visited Altpress.com during the past week, you probably noticed our "Barack You Like A Hurricane" feature in which musicians give us their thoughts about the outcome of the election. If you happened to scroll down to the comments, you'll see that a bunch of readers were upset that we rigged the results and ignored the landslide of support we undoubtedly got from frustrated McCain supporting rock stars. Here's the thing: I'm the guy who posted all of the responses, and we straight did not receive one answer from anyone who seemed the slightest bit bummed on Barack. Please believe. We tried. We went so far as to specifically seek out known Republicans (ahem, Jonathan Cook, etc.), but none of them wanted to comment. I asked one publicist if there were any Republicans in our musical scene, and she said, "If there are, they aren't saying much this week." Believe me, I'm not the kind of guy who has any sort of political agenda (unless the politics we're talking about somehow dictate the number of Oreos I'll be able to consume).

3. If you're taking a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland, and the seat next to you is empty, you absolutely have to snag the extra pillow immediately
Granted, this advice will likely only be useful to a handful of you over your lives, but if you do find yourself in this situation, you're going to hear my blogged words reverberating throughout your temporal lobe. If you sit down in a window seat and there's nobody in that middle seat between you and the lady with the aisle seat, reading O Magazine, slyly grab the pillow and blanket left there. Otherwise, that mean-ass lady is going to commandeer them instantly and use the extra pillow to keep her iMac comfy, while you spend the next five hours struggling to sleep with your head digging into the freezing window.

4. Figure skaters spin faster when they pull their arms in because of the conservation of angular momentum.
I know. It seemed so obvious. I only know this because for some reason, I'm on the mailing list for all the new editions of The Complete Idiot's Guide To... whatever it is that idiots need to learn that day. At first, I was kind of offended. How did I get on this list? But then I received The Complete Idiot's Guide To The Science Of Everything this week, and reluctantly realized that I'm kind of an idiot. This thing tells me a ton of stuff I always wondered about--like how a remote control works and how we know that the universe is expanding (the reason: it's a guess). This might radically alter "Things I Think I Learned This Week" entries in the future...