If you have to ask, you probably are

EVERYONE, AND I MEAN EVERYONE, spends most of college making poor choices and being a risk to themselves. Fortunately for those of us who graduated before 2005, most of those poor choices get put in a box and left in the past, to be opened like your middle school time capsule once every five years at reunion.

Unfortunately for later classes, however, that time capsule is called YouTube.

I'm Not the Fraternity Bicycle

What's the fish hook all about? Besides being genius.

Doctor, Lawyer, Accountant, Lover

I STEPPED INTO THE ELEVATOR behind a young woman in her late 20s. I was listening to my iPod, which generally means "Do not talk to me, this is my Britney time," but because she'd held the door for me while I checked my mailbox, I nodded and said, "Thanks."

"You a lawyer? You look like a lawyer," she said, looking at the tie I was wearing.

I laughed. "Nope, sorry. I'm a student."

"Yeah? For what?"

"Business."

"That's nice," she said, approvingly. "You can be my accountant when I'm a millionaire. I'ma make a record. I know you won't cheat me 'cause you from the hood."

I smiled and promised I never would. The doors opened on her floor and she stepped into the hallway.

She turned around. "You got a girlfriend?"

I laughed. "No."

"You need one? It's Chermelli. I'm a model too," she said, running her hand down her hair and bouncing her ass out a bit.

"Nice to meet you," I said, sticking my hand out.

"Nice to meet you too, baby!" she said, taking it.

Chris Recites Britney Spears

I Can Drink Myself Straight

I WAS E-STALKING A GENTLEMAN (who will inevitably read this blog, making the whole endeavor all the more shameful), and one of his photos was of a girl wearing a homemade t-shirt that read "I Can Drink Myself Gay."

Genius.

I would drink myself straight for Carrie Underwood, as long as she sang this song to me whilst cuddling.

Carrie Underwood - Alone

And by straight I mean I'll talk about boys with her.

How To: Dissuade Potential Suitors

TONIGHT THE SCHOOL HOSTED a bunch of prospective gay students who wanted to learn more about the school and gayness thereat.

I was tempted to stand up and say, "Our schoolwork is indiscriminate in its brutality, and everyone, gay and straight alike, is generally miserable. The only difference is that us gays aren't making up for it by finding hot future hedge fund managers at happy hour. Questions?" But I bit my tongue, and put on my best salesman face.

I spent most of the evening talking to a guy who was more interested in discussing his recent break-up than he was in learning about the school. Fine. If you want me to play psychologist, its an open bar and I'm not going anywhere.

"How do you think I can get him back? Should I make him feel really guilty?"

"Um... that may not be the best course of action," I said, feigning thoughtfulness. "I'd say play it cool. Act like you don't want him back and you're okay without him."

"But I do want him back," he said, his well-groomed brows furrowing.

"Right, but you need to even the power out a bit."

"So you don't think I should try to make him miserable?"

"No," I said firmly.

"But I want him back," he reiterated, seeming to suggest I hadn't understood earlier.

"Well, that's sort of his decision, right? Not yours. Maybe you should try dating someone else? Get out there a bit."

"I just joined a whole bunch of websites. Facebook, Connexion, Myspace, and then a bunch of sex ones."

"Well, that's... ah... a start."

"Are you on any?" he asked, looking at me over the top of his drink.

"Personally, I'm more of a Facebook and Friendster kind of guy."

"I like the sex ones."

"Well... heh... I mean, I'm like one cat and a hitch trailer away from being a lesbian," I said, using standby lesbian humor to make myself less uncomfortable. "I mean, that's just me. For you, uh... I'm sure it's really nice?"

"I like that there's no pretense about why you're there."

"That's... uh... true."

"So I'd like to take you out on a date sometime."

It's a wonder anyone dates. Ever.

A little less dirty dancing, a little more emo

IF BRITNEY SPEARS AND Tori Amos had a baby, and that baby turned out to be a queerbait with a flair for the melodramatic and a YouTube account, that queer baby would record a version of "Gimme More" a lot like this one.

As Toby said, be thankful I don't play the piano, otherwise my blog would be full of crap like this.

Nick Connell - "Gimme More"

Me and a gun.

A Very Hairy Jake Gyllenhaal

LAST WEEK, MAHMOUD AMADINEJAD visited Columbia. Amadinejad said that there were no gays in Iran. My response: "Not anymore!"

Coming out of the speech, the big controversy, of course, was whether it was appropriate for Columbia President Lee Bollinger to rip a world leader a ragged new asshole, effectively performing the most spectacular magic trick of all time by making the man almost seem like a sympathetic figure.

The second biggest controversy, however, was the age old question: "Hot or Not?"

I'm going to pull a Hillary Clinton and straddle the fence so as to avoid offending anyone (thereby annoying everyone). Although he's not an unattractive man, I've personally never been into the whole "bad boy (read: crazed despot)" thing. I mean, ride a motorcycle (even better, a Vespa and a helmet), but murdering your own citizens is a bridge too far. That said, Osama should buy stock in Just For Men. Yum!

I will say that, rather than being a total douche whose balls must have fallen out his pants leg on the walk to the podium, Bollinger should have (used a time machine and) played this video from the SNL premier this past weekend.

SNL Digital Short - "IRAN"

Andy, if I go tanning will you love my butter pecan thighs?

Shout Out Louds - "Impossible"

WHEN I WAS A KID, the end of summer was always marked by the Saint Leo's Fair. Kids from all over town would come for one last hurrah before school started. The fact that doom was looming so close was highlighted by the fact that Saint Leo's was, through some cruel twist of fate, located on the same block as an elementary and a high school.

All us kids would go crazy trying to ride all the rides, desperate to hold on to the final days of freedom. The fair would last five days and nights, and we would go as many nights as possible; during the first days at school, we would one-up each other about how much time we'd spent at the fair, or how many times we'd ridden the rides that everyone agreed were the most likely to make you barf and were therefore the best.

Even when we got "too old" to ride the rides, going to Saint Leo's was still an end of summer ritual. It was a chance to see (or in my case, actively avoid) people you hadn't seen all summer, to try to sneak a beer from a priest, and to show off your tan to the pretty girls in your class (or something).

There was something manic about Saint Leo's, but it was tempered by the universal acceptance that summer was over. The video for the Shout Out Louds' latest single, "Impossible," off their album Our Ill Wills, uses the Saint Leo's effect wonderfully. The song is about that last night you spend in a relationship you know is ending, a night with someone you still love but can't be with anymore. You get that same frantic feeling, like you need to make it last, but because you can't, or won't, you don't do anything but lie there and hold them in silence.

Shout Out Louds - "Impossible"

"Let's not fall back to sleep like we used to, do you remember?
I don't want to wake up knowing I don't have a future."

Rilo Kiley - "Silver Lining"

A FEW MONTHS BACK, a guy I was sort of dating said he'd met someone else, that they'd slept together, and that we needed to stop seeing each other. I was taken aback by his confession, not because I thought my shit was too hot to give up, but because he didn't owe me that level of explanation. We weren't in a relationship, we'd just been on a few dates, yet now we were going through a whole breakup rigmarole. He could have just said he wasn't feeling it, that it wasn't there for him, and that would have been that.

Instead, I felt like he'd cheated. It was like paying the taxes on a big lotto win without the getting the payout. If I never liked this guy that much to begin with, why did I feel so shitty?

Jenny Lewis, in the latest single off Rilo Kiley's wonderful new album, Under the Blacklight, sings about cheats, and how the cheated can take back some of their lost dignity by calling things off. The song, "Silver Lining," is about a woman who leaves her lover after he sleeps around town, saying, "I was your silver lining, but now I'm gold."

The video is just okay (not as good as the long form docu-video for "The Moneymaker"), but the way Lewis' vocals float up into falsetto during the chorus and the shimmying electric guitar are glorious.

Rilo Kiley - "Silver Lining"

I didn't like you anyway, I was just looking for fun.

Representing the Sizzler

IN THE LAST TWO years, new styles of hip-hop dance have popped up all over the country and have spread through YouTube. Last year in New York it was the Chicken Noodle Soup, and this year it's the Aunt Jackie.

Check it out.

Jason Fox - Aunt Jackie

"New rap music with the old school flow."

And because it's so obvious they're having such a good time, here's a couple of guys doing the Aunt Jackie around the house.


Startlingly similar to a trip to the Wizzle home.

Getta getta a dissaway?

AMONG THE MANY WORDS of widsom that my father has spoken over the years, "You know you know but you don't know" is surely one of my favorites. It's either entirely nonsensical, or it's a brilliant reduction of Faith. Given, however, that it was generally muttered when one of us kids did something moronic, I'm going to lean towards the second.

Another winner, "Boys are like streetcars: when one passes you by, there's another coming around the bend," has held me in good stead as well, perhaps because it leads to the obvious corrollary that boys are easy to flag down and ride.

Perhaps my favorite, however, is the old Wizzle family addage, "Better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're an idiot than open it and prove them right." Poor Britney Spears needed this advice, and she needed it bad. My girl released a demo track full of actual gibberish.

The beat is kind of hot, but what is happening here? Is the track waiting on a songwriter? Maybe it's some sort of commentary on the vacuous nature of most pop music. Like, let's just give up on lyrics entirely, put on some ripped fishnet stockings, bare our navels, hump around a stripper pole, and sell ten million copies on iTunes.

Leave it to some poor drag queen to choreograph a "routine" to this mess. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Miss Britney Houston.

Britney Houston - "DFA Demo (by Britney Spears)"

"He hit my heart/And he hit me hard."

This drag queen also goes by Lil Britney, and she did an amazing video remix of Lil Mama's "Lip Gloss."

Lil Britney - "Lip Gloss (by Lil Mama)"

But where's the bubblemaker this time?