Hey! The trailer's out for The Brothers Solomon. You may remember that I was excited about this movie a little while back because there are so many awesome actors in it. I can't say all the jokes in the trailer are particularly amazing (a little too crowd pleasing, perhaps), but I'm still pretty excited:

When I woke up this morning, I had an email from an address I didn't recognize. This is nothing peculiar; any joker who is reading this right now can just look to the right and see how to send me an electronic message. What was strange was that the guy acted like he knew me. He's playing a show in Philly soon, and the (very short) email included the lines "You should come. We'll talk old times."

We'll talk old times, eh? So I started thinking: did I know this guy? I mean, the name he used was obviously a pseudonym. He could maybe be someone I knew in high school or who was on the periphery of my friends in college. Maybe hard times had led him to writing terse, cryptic emails instead of mmm…explaining our relationship. But then I went to his website, and I looked at his picture. And I'll tell you, I'm pretty sure that I've never seen this man before.

No big deal, right? Well, except for the fact that he's finding people who live in cities he's touring to and apparently sending them emails pretending he knows them in an effort to get people to his shows. Seriously? That's how he expects to get fans? By telling not-quite-truths? (I didn't say lies, because he could easily claim that by "talk old times" he meant discussing the plights of feudal societies in England.)

Dude, listen here: it's not great to send people random emails inviting them to your show just because they live where you're touring to. It's downright silly to pretend you already know them.

My sir is working on a totally sweet webcam theremin. Look:

This week, I noticed that I was getting to work 5-10 minutes late every day. As you can imagine, this was of great concern to me, a bright young professional who knows that sharp punctuality is much more important than the volume or quality of work completed. I couldn't figure out what was wrong—I was waking up at the same time, give or take a snooze, and the subway didn't seem to be running any slower than usual. I even asked a physicist.

Friday morning, however, I finally discovered the problem—my kitchen clock, that stalwart companion, guiding me out the door every morning—had hatched an insidious plan to get me fired from my job. It was running 10 minutes late.

And I know why.

It was pouting because I haven't given it a new battery.

I know what you're thinking. "Meg, it's like a child! Just give it a toy and it'll shut up." But I think it's really time for some discipline. The clock needs a time out—not literally, of course, because that's the whole problem. But it needs to learn about the value of a dollar, and that things that seem "old" aren't always beyond use. That's what I told the clock. I said, "Suck it up. You can drain more juice out of that battery." The first time the clock complained, I even reset it as a favor.

But as it turns out, the clock is an ungrateful bastard.

I flew into a rage when I realized how it was exacting its revenge. "How could you?" I asked, pointing my finger at it where it hung on the wall. "Do you realize what you're doing? If I get fired, if I really get fired, I won't have any money. Do you know what that means? No new batteries. That's right, no new batteries. I know it's hard to understand when you don't have a job outside of the house, but there are harsh realities to life. And if you can't accept that, maybe it's time you get turned out onto the street. It is trash day, you know."

But the clock didn't respond. It just sat there, looking smug, ticking away the ten-minute-slow time.

Clock, I just want to say this: you better watch out. Time is running out for you, and there's not going to be anyone to save you in the 11th hour.

Oops, I meant to post this a little while ago. I spent the last Saturday in March dressed in an Easter Bunny costume for the 48 Hour Film Project. Take a peek:

Also, please visit the Pieri Creations website right now. There is something about the composition of their front page image that is incredibly pleasing.

When I was young, Nickelodeon came out with a couple of substances that they marketed as toys for children. There was Floam, comprised of tiny Styrofoam balls and some manner of goop that glued them together, and there was Gak. Gak was a slime-type substance, and it could make various popular noises when you smushed air bubbles in it –- "pffft," "prracpt," "grrrrrup," and so forth.

I was very pleased when, one Christmas, I received a packet of Floam and a packet of Gak. The Gak was pink, and I was very excited to put my small hands in it. But when I opened it, I discovered that it smelled AWFUL. It was like bad cheese. Now, maybe I was just one of the few children who didn't enjoy the smell of rotting dairy products, but it was not pleasant. Still, I plowed ahead, sticking my hands into the stuff, until I discovered that the bad cheese smell didn't exactly wash off my hands when I was done. I shoved my Gak in the back of the closet, never to play with it again.

This spring, however, I experienced an olfactory shock when I discovered that some of the flowering trees in my neighborhood smell exactly like Gak. This brings up a couple of questions:

• Were they trying to make Gak smell like flowers and just totally screwed up? Like, they opened up a book, pointed to some flowers, and told the Toy Scientists to make the stuff smell like that? And thusly they could have just as easily pointed to one of those flowers that smells like rotting meat and Gak could have ended up smelling like that?
• If a tree is known for smelling like bad cheese every year, why do you plant it? I mean, it flowers, sure, that's nice. But tons of trees flower. And this is the city. Each one of these trees was planted on purpose. Every time this tree flowers, is it supposed to remind us that life is double-edged, and for every beautiful thing, there is an ugly smell to maintain balance in the universe?

According to Wikipedia, a couple of years later Nickelodeon came out with a version of Gak that smelled like pickles. I haven't come across a pickle-gak-flower tree yet.

Have you been wondering what it's like to follow the day-by-day ripening of bananas...virtually? Wonder no longer! For one week only, I present: The Banana Report.

Writer Leslie Marmon Silko, as seen on the outdoor screen at the Philadelphia Book Festival.

There's a lady who I see in the bathroom at work who covets my hair. On Monday she asked me where I got it cut, and she was shocked when I said that I usually do it myself. I saw her again on Wednesday, and by the time we washed our hands I had somehow agreed to email her a picture of myself so she could try and match my style (at least, I think that's why she wants my picture).

She isn't going to get far if she doesn't know how to cut hair, though. There's a certain finesse to the way I create my do. And so for the lady at work, or for anyone else who is interested in giving their hairstyle that certain "WTF?", I now present the Meg Favreau School of Hair Cuttery:

1. Go three days with hair that is too long. Get angry.
2. When you get home from work, throw down your bag, grab a pair of scissors, and strip to your underwear. Grunt.
3. Looking in the mirror, take a fistful of whatever hair is annoying you the most. Cut it.
4. Try to even the rest of your hair out based on that first chunk.