Long-lost twins

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Free genealogy - Family tree chart

How to make love and influence people the Bryan Mahoney way

There are many of you out there in the blogosphere who ask me often, "Bryan, how can I be just like you?"

And I often answer, "Suck it."

But today I'm feeling an overwhelming need to connect with you, the loyal Blurb reader, and so for the first time ever I'm going to offer secrets to living life and doing things the right way, the only way, the Mahoney way.

STEP ONE: Be lazy.

I'm not as lazy as I used to be, and I'm not as lazy as my friend Dan who once challenged my wife to a lazy duel.

STEP TWO: Learn some drinking games.

Drinking games let you do two things: Win friends, and lose friends.

It's a virtual inevitability that you will do one or both should you partake in drinking games.

Here are some fun ones:

First, try shotgunning a beer.

Then, I suggest an appropriate alcohol-themed board game. Pass-Out's a good one.

Lastly, become a pro at Beer pong, also known as Beirut. But the best one is "Stumbling Tower" - get a Jenga game, write instructions on each block, and then play according to Jenga directions while at the mercy of whatever is written on the block you pull. Great fun!

STEP THREE: Talk as if you know what you're talking about.

You need what scholars call "An area of expertise." This will allow you more time to make long-winded speeches to strangers at the bar.

SCENARIO 1: The fakeout

If you work at Blockbuster, you should practice talking up movies you've never seen.

Customers asked me all the time what I thought of the movies they had. They would get indignant if I admitted I hadn't seen them.

So I started crafting eloquent lies.

"Oh, yes sir. That obscure Japanese docuhorror about errant shapes that jump off looseleaf paper to kill people is Kubrickian in its delivery, yet almost Spielbergian in the way it makes a commentary on the way World War II just OH SHUT THE HELL UP AND RENT THE MOVIE."

SCENARIO 2: The truth

You could actually talk about what you do for a living. I only know two people who can actually pull this off: One works on "Deal or No Deal;" the other used to work on SpongeBob.

STEP FOUR: Develop a marketable skill.

A few years ago some folks told me Step One just didn't work for them. So I developed Step Four. I must say it really helps in the paying-the-bills department.

The key to having skills is that they have to be good in a fight. I have video game skills; VERY good in a video game fight. I also have Origami skills; these are NEVER good in a fight.

Public speaking skills can help you get out of a fight. Aiming skills would help you point the shotgun in a fight against a zombie.

That's about it. Follow these simple steps and who knows where life will lead you? They led me to Boston, a lovely wife, and a distinguished palate for food and drink. Though these days it's much less about the drink (watching my weight and whatnot).

Thanks for joining today's episode of the Blurb. Stay tuned for tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day extravaganza, which will be all about beer. ALL about beer.

Jon Hamm's John Ham

If you haven't seen Saturday Night Live in a while, you don't know what you're missing.

Albuquerque

Wokka wokka doo doo yeah.

I suggest visiting the Albuqurque Holiday Inn, where you could eat soup out of the ashtrays if you wanted to. Just avoid the one-nostriled hermaphrodites.

Dog on blog

http://view.break.com/468548 - Watch more free videos

Banana's video

My friend Banana is in a comedy troupe trying to make its way in the world.

Here's one of their videos on Will Farrell's site, FunnyorDie.com.

He's the one in the pink shirt. This kind of reminds me of my bachelor party; not so much for the events that transpire but I got a distinct flashback of Banana yelling things at me.

Please spread the word and help these brothers out.

Guess what ...

I got a fever, and the only prescription is ...

more cowbell.

Skeep Bop!

Marcy's new computer is a veritable paragon of technology, which allows us to do important and groundbreaking things such as this:

Droppin' some knowledge on YouTube

I get YouTube. I really do. I get its user-friendly methods, and the necessity to shrink video file sizes in order to post the millions of closeups from desktop Webcams of preteen pontificators.

It's a money-generating machine for Google, which bought it last year. And darn if it's not fun.

That's what makes me think that somewhere at the YouTube home office there is a room full of monkeys at typewriters trying to conjure a solution to the aspect ratio issue.

Of what do I speak? Well, we recently bought our wedding videographer - I say "bought" because we plunked the $700 the pro wanted into buying our very own Hitachi HD and DVD camcorder. It's pretty sweet - it has its own hard drive, which can keep something like 4-5 hours of video, but also can burn 30 minutes directly to a tiny DVD for immaediate viewing.

I tested the camera last week at work, and kept the letterbox aspect ratio. But when the video showed up on YouTube, Youtube automatically added the black bars at the top and bottom but, as you can see, still squished it a bit on the left and right sides.

I'm not complaining. It's an uber cool free service, and technology is only now outpacing it. The only question I have is: When will the monkeys launch V 2.0 to give us bigger picture capability?

Best game of the minute

www.kingdomofloathing.com

Go there now. It's easy to sign up. I'm a level 2 Sauceror, also known as a Cilantro Seer. Anyone want to challenge me, I'm game.

I love math!

But only when it does this.

Thinky animation

I'd been meaning to pst this for awhile now and my computer overload this evening (now that it's working) got me thinking about this animated short, a student project put up on YouTube about a year ago.

I don't know why I love it so. Maybe because it's happy and sad? Or because it says so much by saying so little? I'm in the camp that feels the little kiwi is crying tears of joy at seeing his dream realized. Because in the end, if we did what we wanted to do in life, then wasn't it all worth it?

True story.

OK everybody - let's lift some spirits.

My friend Mike, aka Garv, aka KOTB, had a less than good weekend. It ended up with him getting his ass kicked by Irish step dancers, but it wasn't all bad. He fought them Matrix-style, then his pet tiger BattleCat had to come in and I'm pretty sure he had to fight his way out through the streets of China town. That's the gist of it, I think. Oh, and they stole all his clothes and he barely escaped with his life and to get away he had to put on one of those uniforms all Luke Skywalker-rescuing-the-princess-style. I'm serious! There was a wookie and everything!

Anyway, my friend is lucky to have escaped the Irish feet of fury. He even was able to blog about the whole experience! Read the story at this link here.

Oh, and here's the photo of his daring escape.


So visit his blog and send him some well-wishes and good vibes, mmkay?