In January of 2010, a mismatched group of bloggers gathered in a random bar in the West Village. As will happen when heroic men and women assemble for the free exchange of ideas, copious amounts of alcohol were consumed. I don’t know if I was the first Smoker to venture off to the bathroom that night, but having the bladder of a hamster, there’s a good chance that it was me.

If you weren’t aware already, the biggest televised sporting event of the year is taking place tomorrow.  Contrary to the popular stereotype, that of the negative correlation between literacy and football fandom, I’ll be watching and enjoying tomorrow.

For the rest of you, particularly those who aren’t necessarily fond of football, but might be fond of film, here’s a short you’ll likely enjoy.  So.  Enjoy.

It does my dark heart proud to bring you the latest edition of  Conspiracy Corner.  Here we shine the light of righteousness on those dark corners of the human psyche that are best left unexplored, but from which you are powerless to look away.  It’s not unlike the proverbial car wreck, except here more people die – but never for the reasons they want you to think.  Today we’ll discuss secret organizations, mind control programs, and some not-so-natural natural disasters.

Mel Gibson – a crazy actor – has a new animated feature coming out called “Hedge Of Blandness” in which he plays a drunken squirrel hired by the CIA to find a break-dancing panda who has a briefcase filled with bamboo and plutonium. To save you watching it – the government did it, along with Big Business. Because Mel has a movie out, he has to appear on television and talk to people. He didn’t like this guy.

Yes, lolspeak will be the death of me. Before the death of me, I’ll probably be live-blogging the Oscars, which happens in 33 days according to their website. They have just released the nominations, and I have typed every one of the main ones out in full so I could garner your thoughts on who you think should win. Or who will win, but shouldn’t. Or who will wear a dress the color of midnight swamp.

If you haven’t heard, Facebook has declared this week “Doppelganger Week” and since Facebook is a real life big brother we must all do as they say.  DON’T  QUESTION BIG BROTHER, JUST DO IT!!!  All this doppelganging has got me thinking about something that comes up in my mind when ever I hear one of the following songs, is this musical “doppelganging” or is just copy-cating? 

Ra’ora’oa

(Cook Islands Maori)

To have swollen testicles.

You can buy Adam’s books here and here

Hello and welcome to your Smoke Signals for Monday. Mondays suck and there’s no two ways about it, but if you read some of the below you’ll find yourself in awe, somewhat like if you were an ancillary but returning character in Frasier, before Martin got married and it all went a bit down hill. You’d be part of the best comedy in television, and even the dog likes you – that’s the kind of awe these links will provide. If you have to scream, do it into your elbow.

One of the many themes of my week in New York was the continuous and repetitive background music emanating from Gianna’s computer. Because she and her girlfriend Logan are two of my cultural gurus – with the Wordsmoker Collective completing my complement of tutors – I asked her what she was playing. Apparently this song called “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” was composed by Adriano Celentano and is comprised of lyrics that don’t mean anything in any language. However, and this is the infuriating part, they’re meant to sound like American English to a foreign ear. Super Best or anti-American? You decide.

So egregiously awful that everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. Oh, except the writers; they should be shot before they can even feel a thing.

Many things inspire us. “A sunrise”. “A sunset”. “An otter gracefully scampering under a line of grid-locked traffic”. “A sharp pencil”. “A loaded gun”. “That guy’s hair”. Other things that inspire us are “having to write dreary lists about men and women for a national UK newspaper”. Someone was inspired enough to do that here, and by doing so, inspired me. It’s a circle of life if the circle is “mocking dreary lists” and life is “my spite-filled computer”.

Look, sometimes we all need a silly movie about pretty people in pretty clothes amid pretty settings. But frequently, romantic comedies suffer from what one might call the Pretty Woman syndrome: sure, it’s fun while one watches it, but afterward one is left with the cold hard reality animating the story – what Rachel Leigh Cook’s character called, in the one good line in She’s All That, “that whole hooker thing.”

I wish I were writing this as I was sitting in a spa in Costa Rica sipping some fruity concoction after my seaweed wrap – waiting for my sliced papaya – while Lupe gives me reflexology and Juan Carlos rubs my shoulders.  Oh, if it were only about my skin or my weight. Actually, I have been staying close to home (which is full of cat hair and crap Mr. Hagen & I never seem to throw out in a freezing January) detoxing from DRUGS!

Every once in a while I decide to go to Wal-Mart, usually when I’m too lazy to go all the way to Target. And I usually regret this decision, as my nearest Wal-Mart is the downtown location, frequented by many an unsavory personage (and their unruly offspring). Today I decided to smoke a little weed before venturing forth, as a buffer against any unpleasantness I might encounter.

This is the Smoke Signals – a compilation of links to other, better stuff than this. This might be a regular column if it’s hated enough. Hate’s better than love, as events continue to tell us. So think of this as a swan – a drunken, belligerent swan with a gun and a bottle of whiskey. With a real potty-beak. Yeah, welcome to Smoke Signals – today it’s a dirty, drunken swan who will scream filth into your mind.