Shalom in the home, everyone! (Note: I was so freakin’ ahead of my time… that’s a real TV show now!) Well, I’m not sure how many more of these there will be before I return home for the summer. And then once I’m home for the summer, I can almost guarentee there won’t be very many. But for now, let’s enjoy the time we have together, waddaya say??

This shouldn’t be long, but I thought I’d share with you an occurrence that is taking place, as we speak… something which has never happened before and hopefully, will never happen again. During the middle of this last week, it struck me that I was running out of socks. I realized, I would have anywhere from 3-4 days worth of sock wearing before the whites would need to be washed… but then I realized, eh… I’m in Texas! Who needs socks? I’ll just wear my sandals, since doing laundry is basically one of the worst things in the world. Except for ya know… like slavery, starvation, child abuse, cannibalism… these types of things. Then… laundry.

So I put it off.

Then, out of the clear blue… as I reached into my boxer drawer… I came to the stark realization that I was on my last pair of THOSE as well… Problematic, but not insurmountable–it’s been done before, although this was slightly unexpected. The thing that really threw a wrench into the matter was the fact that I had been planning on changing the sheets on my bed and washing my towels on Sunday… They had done their duty and were ready to retire for the year. The closers, “The Light Blue Team” were ready to jump in for the home stretch. FURTHERMORE… for reasons I can go into more detail later, I spent the night Saturday night sleeping in a park in a huge demostration to bring attention to bad stuff going on in Africa. Anyways, I had planned on using Sam Marion’s sleeping bag, but there’s a law that no one is allowed to sleep in the Capital Park… which I guess makes sense, but whatever. So instead of taking that, I took my comforter from my bed.

Out of nowhere, the clouds began to swarm in from all directions… three separate storms of equally fury, bearing down upon me. Lights… darks… bedding/towels… all on one day!! Completely outrageous… At this point in the day, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to weather this storm. We have three washers/dryers on my floor… and they are always (ALWAYS) in use… It’s going to be a battle… But I’m up for it. Nevermind finals, THIS is the true test of Freshman year…

Ahoy, ye matees!

To answer your question, no, I don’t know why I drew myself with an Ancient Egyptian style body… Maybe that’s what you do, in a storm. Also pictured is typical Hollywood… trying to romanticize laundry. Don’t believe the hype!!

Okay okay okay… I’m terrible. I haven’t really done much all of April. I feel bad about that. But what are you going to do? The baby website (which shall go un-named, for competition’s sake… though he IS my server) has been crushing us in the ratings… even with our NYL, it’s no use. Maybe competition shouldn’t be our focus…

Anyways, I thought I’d write just a short little thing about the famous visit to Texas… the first! Of many, hopefully. On Friday, Jackson and Sue, along with Mr. and Mrs. Cottrill came down to Austin to see what all the fuss is about… and they saw!! Early Saturday, we traveled to Greune, Texas and had lunch with my mom’s cousin and her husband. That was fun and delicious. Then we went onward to San Antonio and saw the Alamo and riverwalk. I recommend a trip there, for everyone. Sunday was another day of touring. This time, it was kicked off by church at the University Presbyterian Church and then lunch at Doc’s. Then we walked around campus and attempted to break into some buildings. Not surprisingly, Jackson’s pull with getting into locked buildings doesn’t work here. After that, we split up for a little bit. Mom, pop and I took Sam to dinner. After being told there was an hour and forty-five minute wait at the Hula Hut, we went down the road to El Arroyo (The Ditch). This place had chandeliers and ceiling fans HANGING from the trees. (Note: Austin is weird.) It was delicious. Monday… I had school… which is dumb. After getting shut down at the Erwin Center to see where UT plays basketball, we went and saw the football field a little better than we had the day before. Finally, we had dinner at the Ironworks… ginormous ribs. No, not finally. Finally we went to the Driskol Hotel for dessert. Soooooo good.

And that’s basically all she wrote. It was a fun weekend, filled with many funny events, as you might imagine. Here are a few pictures from the weekend…

Well folks, this is it. Can you believe it? We’ve finally come to the final day of our four day countdown. I know that I, for one, am a changed person from when this event began. Is it safe to say your outlook on the world has changed? Don’t be modest. I’m sure it has.

On another note, I am currently drinking one of the most delicious beverages I’ve ever consumed. The Jones Soda Company’s Cream Soda goes beyond the bounds of a delicious beverage. It is an experience. Let’s call them our sponsors for this final day. Special thanks to Jones Soda, for being oh so delicious.

Well, alright. I’m stalling. I don’t have a fun picture game thing for the name of this year’s CHAMPION. It was too hard. You people are demanding. So enough of this jibber jabber, let’s get on with it. The envelope, please! Drum roll, please!

1. Katie Holmes: Okay, okay, okay. I feel that with a number one selection, it’s somewhat necessary to defend the academy’s decision. And I also feel it’s especially important in this case. Let me just say that, once upon a time… Katie Holmes used to be a normal human being like the rest of us. I’m not saying she’s not anymore, but… in light of recent events, we’re a little concerned… ya know… about her mental health and all. Tom Cruise? Seriously?

Back before the brainwashing (yeah, we’ll get to that in a minute), Katie was best known as Joey Potter, in her role on Dawson’s Creek, where she played the somewhat tomboyish “girl down the creek.” These are what we call the “good old days.” Then… she did some other stuff. Blah blah blah. And this summer, she starred in “Batman Begins,” easily one of my favorite movies to come out in the last few years. Things… were looking up.

THEN! (dun dun dun!!!!) in February of 2005 (okay, so we’re going back a little, but stay with me) she and her boyfriend of something like five years, Chris Klein. (American Pie, American Pie 2, Just Friends…. yeah alright, so I guess we should have seen this break up coming.) Then, in early April she meets Tom Cruise. Basically… The End. But I’ll continue. At some point in April of last year, Katie Holmes DISAPPEARED for sixteen days. No one knew where she was. Immediately after this period, she fired her both her manager and agent. These people were promptly replaced by, yup, you guessed it! Scientologists. Everyone’s favorite psychotics. Everyone basically assumes she was brain-washed during this period. And as they say on the nature channel, “Sadly now… it is only a matter of time…” By the end of June, Cruise and Katie were engaged. By October, she was pregnant with his spawn. We can only pray the child gets her height gene.

So why the #1? Well… some people are still holding out hope that Katie will return to her old self. The website “freekatie.net” has t-shirts with a variety of slogans, one more hilarious than the next. Run Katie, Run. Scream Katie, Scream. Free Baby. Free Katie, Stop Sofa Abuse, this one being my personal favorite. Anyways, the point is… if we don’t hold out hope, there’s no telling how many bright, young people we might lose to these crazies. Anyways… she’s #1 because she’s the bomb. At least… she was. Pre-2005, basically. And maybe one day, she will return to her old form. And until then… we wait. And hope.

I just looked up a bunch of other stuff about Scientology to include in here, but you know what? I don’t have time for all of that. That’s definitely going to require another, completely separate post.

Hello folks. Well, if you’ve made it this far, you either have nothing to do, are hoping these will get better or are related to me. Literally, those are the ONLY choices. Buuut, I’m enjoying it, so, the author is allowed to be indulgant. Or so I’m told. You know. The excuse every elementary school teacher gave you for why an author uses incorrect grammar, punctuation, etc. “Creative liscense.” Garbage.

Anyway, here we are at day three already! Hasn’t time flown by? The 2006 NYL is proud to announce its next on the short list, but before we do… yet another puzzle for your enjoyment. Or… ya know. Mine, at least. I’m especially proud of this one, actually. Here it is:

2. Natalie Portman: Well you had to figure… I mean Keira Knightley is on the list because she LOOKS like Natalie Portman, so this one can’t really be a huge shock, can it? In fact… this is a good story any parent would be proud to tell… According to a couple sites, when she and Ms. Knightley had on the “Queen Amidala” face make-up at the same time on the set of Star Wars, their mothers were actually unable to identify their own daughters. A proud parenting day, for sure. Let’s talk about, for just a moment, the liklihood of there being someone out there, who looks exactly like someone else… while being born thousands of miles away from one another. (By the way, that lie about the second half of the list being American is pushed even further, considering Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Okay, okay… but she’s practically American.) Anyways, I say we not worry about it too much. The fact that there are practically two Natalie Portmans/Keira Knightleys, however you look at it, is just proof God knows what hes doing. Ever notice there aren’t two of these ladies? And this is only further buttressed (haha, butt…) by this immaculate site.

Also, let us not forget that she shaved her head (on screen!) for a movie. The news of this disappointed a great number of her male fans (sexist jerks!), but um, as it turned out… she pretty much showed Sinead O’Connor how it’s done. Unreal.

Further credentials? (not that they’re really necessary…) Try this one out. While starting out her film career, she also attended college. I forget the name… it was something like… oh yeah, Harvard. That was it. That’s not even the good part though. She graduated with a perfect 4.0–that’s right, straight A’s at Harvard. Not only that, but she’s been published… twice! The first was in high school (!!!!) and the title of her report is “Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen.” …..right. Here’s a sample. This is the second sentence of the paper “For example, cellulose, a glucose polymer that is the principal component of biomass and paper waste, can be enzymatically degraded to glucose, which can subsequently be converted by fermentation or further enzymatic reaction to fuels such as ethanol or hydrogen.” …obviously.

Her real last name is actually Hershlag. I wonder why she changed it?

Here we are, day two of the first annual NYL awards or list or event… or whatever it is we’re calling it. The point is, it’s day two, which means #3 from our list is revealed. Before we do that though, let me set something straight. In the first post I said that the list was split half and half, basically, between USA and international. Turns out… huge lie. I really don’t have anything else to say about that, other than… who knew these ladies weren’t American? Insanity. Anyways, the second thing is… seeing as how it’s baseball season now, I thought before we reveal #3, we’d have an “Ode to the Pirates.” At Pittsburgh Pirate baseball games, they reveal the batters by fun, mind-blowing puzzles. I’ve gone to the trouble of creating one for this list. And without further ado, number three:

3. Keira Knightley: Where to start? First of all, she just turned 21 on March 26th. That is INSANE. She was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, UK, as we all wish we were. Her first major role was in Star Wars as Natalie Portman’s “decoy” in The Phantom Menace. So basically, anyone who has look-alike credentials in the Natalie Portman department, has it going on. Probably best known for her role in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, she’s currently in the process of filming the third installment.

Keira has one, either attribute or flaw, depending on how you look at it, that most people do not. According to several sources, one of her former boyfriends, Del Synnott, actually attempted suicide after his relationship with Knightley ended. Wow. I’ll make another generalization and that is, anyone who drives somebody to kill themself after breaking up, probably has it going on as well. Completely ridiculous.

Here’s another one I enjoyed. Not only does she physically look very “nice,” but she was voted as having the second sexiest voice, behind only Sir Sean Connery, in a poll by the UK’s Royal National Institute for the Blind, commissioned to celebrate 70 years of their Talking Books service. That? Is hilarious.

And you know what? I’m not even mad that she doesn’t return my phone calls. I mean, we’re both just so busy, it’s completely understandable. Although, I will say this, I made it pretty clear that the next time she’s in Austin or Pittsburgh, just to let me know and we’ll have a lovely time. I’m pretty sure she’s going to call then, so no worries. I’m also not worried about that whole “restraining order” she has against me. See, that was an inside joke between us… a gag really. She got me pretty good on that one, I’ll admit. I laughed for a while… a while… yeah.

April is here! And I already missed my first opportunity to April Fool my audience. But that’s alright. It’s annoying, anyway. Umm… so lack of anything to write about has forced me to think outside of the box. A dangerous thing, to be sure. I noticed that every year, in fact, I believe it’s every April the magazine known as FHM (little known fact… “For Him Magazine.” Who knew? But see, I’m thinking this is going to cause problems down the road. Think about it. With the feminist movement and all the bra-burning that’s going on these days, pretty soon there’s going to be a For Her Magazine. And guess what? Same initials. FHM. I smell a lawsuit!) releases a list of the Top 100 Sexiest Women.

Soliloquy: (dim lights, overhead spotlight on center stage, where solitary man stands, looking upward, perhaps at the heavens) When oh when will these days of subjecting women in misogynist lists end? Are we not past this phase in our dark history, where we now can appreciate women as fully functioning, equal members of society and not as objects or trophies???

Well, now that THAT’S out of the way, (Gotta pay the bills. By the way, this portion of Jeety’s Joint is brought to you by Dove Energy Glow Products: Bring out your natural glow!) We’ve decided to compile a list of our own. Here’s what we did. One hundred is simply far too many. Who has time for that? I don’t even know 100 people. We divided by ten. Then we took the word “Hot” which is demeaning and crass, and flipped it to “Toh.” Then, we dropped the H and added a P. This gave us “Top Ten.” So from there, it was easy. We are proud to present the first annual Jeety’s Joint Top Ten Nice Young Ladies list.

We’re doing this countdown style. We’ll see how it goes. The list is basically divided in half. The first half, your 6-10, is basically blonde and “International” with one exception, whereas your second half, 1-5, is mostly United States ladies, and brunette. Well, you’ll see.

10. Scarlett Johansson: She actually won the FHM list this year, but we say… not so fast there little missy. I mean, “The Island” was decent, but you’re not winning any Oscar’s. She was in “Lost in Translation” and “The Horse Whisperer,” which smart people seemed to like, but she was also in “Home Alone 3” (aka the one nobody saw). A paradox. She’s only 21 years old, which is ridiculous, and she shares a birthday with Mac. So she gets the ten spot.

9. Heidi Klum: Enter the international sect. Though we’re sort of stretching it with “young” here, she is the oldest Nice Young Lady on the list. Now famous for her Project Runway show on Bravo, I remember her best for her brilliant role as Mike’s girlfriend on Spin City. She is also on this list because she was born in Bergisch Gladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, which happened to be the bonus city that gets an automatic bid in the NYL 2006 tournament.

8. Anna Kournikova: The most successful, least talented tennis player the world has even known. That’s gotta be good for something, doesn’t it? Well… at least 8th place. She was born in the USSR in ’81, but since we won, she now calls it “Russia,” which continues the international theme going on at this point in the list.

7. Elisha Cuthbert: Okay, so I don’t exaaaactly know who this is. Which was one of the rules before making this list, but… With the help of some assistants here at Jeety’s Joint, we feel confident that she is a nice young lady, and worthy of the seven spot. She’s Jack Bauer’s daughter on the TV show 24 and was in the films “Old School” and “Love, Actually” neither of which I’ve seen, both of which I’m told are good. So in closing, this pick is based solely on other people’s opinions. By the way, she’s Canadian and her brother and MOTHER play in hockey leagues.

6. Charlize Theron: So this one’s kind of hit and miss. We love her when she’s accepting her hundreds of awards and looking like a normal human (albeit a better looking human being than most). But when she’s dressed up in flannel or killing people or anything else weird (think Monster’s Ball or North Country… even though I’ve seen neither of these), we’re not about that. Think “Italian Job” Charlize. Yet another international supa-star, she was born in South Africa.

5. Eva Longoria: A Texan! Born in Corpus Christi, she started out on The Young and the Restless, but really, no one knew her until Desperate Housewives exploded all over people’s television screens. Anyways, she WAS born to a Mexican-American family, so she’s the perfect transition into the next phase of our list. She was #1 in Maxim’s hottest female stars of 2005, but again… we don’t condone such callous, abrasive lists.

4. Rachel McAdams: Okay, so I lied. She’s Canadian. But, we’re getting a little closer to home. Mexico, Canada… all basically USA property anyway. She was apart of each of the movies Mean Girls, The Notebook, Wedding Crashers and Red Eye. They all seemed to be big deals, although I will admit I’ve seen Wedding Crashers and it was hilarious. Here’s a fun fact for you, she claims to be addicted to maple syrup, even known to drink it. Weird? Maybe. Nice? Definitely.

Hmm… what’s this? It’s the end of the post? But the list isn’t over yet!! Ahhh… in an effort to drag this thing out as long as possible and thus make it look like I update this site daily, I will be revealing 3, 2 and 1 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday respectively. These will (or at least should) be more in-depth, and hopefully funnier. There’s only so much you can do, people. Anyways, hopefully you’re on the edge of your seats. Until tomorrow!

In case you didn’t believe me, I brought along proof. Unfortunately, crazy-psycho woman just missed the cut this year. Better luck next time.