So I decided to stay up all night so I can watch Landon Donovan/Tim Howard in the Merseyside Derby (Everton vs. Liverpool), one of the best rivalries in the EPL as it is live on ESPN2 at 4:45 AM.

I decided to stay up all night rather than go to sleep early and wake up early as I know I would never wake up or I would only to fall back asleep a couple minutes later.  This whole plan sounded great earlier this afternoon, but I am starting to hit a wall right now and it is only 2 AM, which is somewhat early even for me.

We shall see how long I last.

Here is a new song by 3OH!3 featuring Lil’ Jon (he yells “Hey” in the background….I know, shocking….).

At first, I wasn’t a fan of the song, but it is growing on me since I love the cheesiness that is 3OH!3.

I always get bored every couple months and want to create a new web project and my latest is a soccer blog following American soccer players who play professionally overseas.  So if you have any interest, check out Over There.

Since last night, I have been watching that Peep Show on Hulu and they changed their theme song for Season 2 to this Harvey Danger song that I have always loved.

Random thought, but I think this band broke up in the last couple months.

Tonight I stumbled across this UK pilot starring David Cross and Will Arnett called The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.  You can watch it on youtube at the moment (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

It is decently funny and it looks like it got picked up for a six-episode season recently.  I guess they do six-episode seasons over there.  While reading up on the show, I saw some good reviews about some other UK show called Peep Show.  I also found out that the first five seasons of this show are up on Hulu so I checked out the first episode tonight as well.

This show was alright, but enough to keep me watching a couple more to see if I like it or not.  It follows the lives of two guys in their late 20s/early 30s as they try to meet/pick up girls (and generally fail).  It is also shot in a point-of-view way so the camera is their eyes and you see what they see, as well as what others see.  Sort of different, but intriguing.

Coming back to American TV, I am a fan of The Buried Life on MTV.  A group of young guys try to cross things off their “100 things they want to do before they die” list, while helping random strangers along the way.  So far, they have crashed a party at the Playboy Mansion and gave a toast at a complete stranger’s wedding.

I did a bunch of PHP programming tonight.  Basically four hours straight without a break and got a lot done.  I haven’t had a programming session like that in a while and it felt good, considering I didn’t hit any major snags, which always help.

Maybe it is the dork in me, but I do enjoy just putting on some headphones, cranking up the music and just going to town on code.  I even had another classic coding touch of my past by wearing a hoodie up over my head.  Brings back memories of being in the computer science lab in college at two in the morning the day before a project is due and just grinding it out.

I am probably going to wrap up the rest of the major coding sometime tomorrow.  But the good news to come of this is that I understand Wordpress’ PHP language/lay out a lot more that I can eventually jazz up this site with a nice new design at some point instead of using this basic theme I randomly found.

Like I said, I am a dork.  Good times.

Song of the night:

Really digging Motion City Soundtrack’s new album.  My favorite songs so far:  Disappear, Pulp Fiction and @!#?@!.

One of my buddies randomly tweeted about this site called Teux Duex.  I make a lot of small to-do lists between work and stuff I want to do when at my apartment and this site is a small browser/app thing that allows you to create lists for each day and easily cross things off while also being able to move things between days.  Something pretty small and stupid when you think about it, but pretty handy if you create a lot of to-do lists like myself and are around a computer a lot like myself.  I am going to give it a shot and see if I keep it up as I have ignored online calendar type stuff in the past, but I think I could see myself keeping up with this since it is all small/little picture type things and not big picture projects.

It has been raining a lot in SoCal this week.  I forget how much I enjoy rain, but it is comical to see people out here freak out over rain.  Supposed to keep on raining through the weekend.

Turns out that Clint Dempsey did not tear anything in his knee and he should be back before the end of the EPL season (and the World Cup).  Good news.

Holy hell, I have the NBA Network on right now and Eric Snow is really fat.  I was watching an old Iowa-Michigan State basketball game from 1993 on the Big Ten Network today and he was playing in the game and a lot skinnier.

Speaking of that 1993 game, it was the first game after Chris Street’s death.  And the 17th anniversary of that was on Tuesday.  I can’t believe it was 17 years ago.  I was in fifth or sixth grade at the time and switched my number to #40 because of him.

I was invited to a comedy show at the Hollywood Improv on Sunday.  I am a huge fan of stand-up comedy and don’t know why I don’t go more often with so many good clubs in town.  But anyways, I got to go for free with some friends and saw some decent big names, including Aziz Ansari, who was hilarious.  He might be my current favorite comic at the moment.  His new Comedy Central special was pretty good the other night.

I like the new Vampire Weekend album, but I am not in love with it like the first one.

Also just got done listening to a new Lostprophets album.  It is alright, but they have slipped a bit over the years.  I remember seeing them put on a good show as an opener to Hoobastank at the IMU Ballroom in college my junior year.  They did this awesome braveheart/crazy crowd thing before they played Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja.  But their second album, Start Something, is probably my favorite.

I haven’t seen too many new movies lately, but saw Up In The Air and Youth In Revolt.  I enjoyed Up In The Air more than I thought I would.  Youth In Revolt was OK.  Slightly odd, but I am Michael Cera fan.

I think that is enough rambling for one night.

Probably the most important player on the US Soccer team has had an interesting last month.

Landon Donovan was loaned by the LA Galaxy to Everton in the English Premier League for 10 weeks.  Most would think that David Moyes, Everton’s manager, would slowly work him into the lineup, especially when the first game was at Arsenal.  But Mr. Moyes decided to insert him into the starting lineup on the right side and gave him corner kick duties.

Donovan terrorized Arsenal’s right back, Armand Traore, for 68 minutes before being subbed out after being gassed since he hasn’t played in an actual game in over two months.  Donovan also got an assist on Everton’s first goal, finding Leon Osman’s head on a corner kick.  An impressive debut.

As for this past weekend, Donovan got the start again on the right side as Everton faced Man City at Goodison Park.  Donovan played another stellar game, giving Man City some fits on the right flank.  Here are some highlights of the match, basically every play that Donovan was involved in (highlights).  He came close to scoring his first goal, chipping a ball over the goalie and just wide, while almost getting an assist or two as well.  He was subbed out in the 90th minute to a nice ovation by the home crowd.

As a fan of US Soccer, I want to see him do well, especially after having some bad experiences in Europe before.  Now there are some articles coming out today that Donovan wants to stay in England for longer than the 10 weeks and I hope that happens, even despite becoming a LA Galaxy fan this past season.  As much as he means to the MLS and Galaxy, I think he deserves a chance to do well overseas, especially in the prime of his career.

But we (fans of US Soccer) might want to break out the bubble wrap for Donovan after Clint Dempsey got injured this weekend and there is already talk that it is ligament damage in the knee before the MRI took place today (results are supposed to be released tomorrow).

One of the biggest weaknesses for the US is creative/scoring players.  The US is already down Charlie Davies and now Clint Dempsey (3 goals in the Confederations Cup and the Bronze Ball winner) looks to be out for a while.  Throw in Oguchi Onyewu’s injury and the US can’t afford to lose any more players.  The US has a decent team, but not a lot of depth.  They need all the best players to make any run in the World Cup this summer.

I know I pimp Thrice on here a bit, but the song “Beggars” is such a great song to end their album.  Just a perfect closing song to an album.

To turn things up after that Debbie Downer-type post, how about Lane Kiffin?

He always had sleazeball written all over him in my opinion.

But him and USC are a perfect match for each other and I hope the NCAA brings the pain.

Pat Forde: “Paris Hilton has paid more dues than Lane Kiffin.”

Awesome.