Every day I write about things that don’t matter. That’s what this blog is about. I love doing it, and I’m going to keep doing it for as long as you’ll keep reading. For one day a year, though, I want to write about something that actually does matter – more specifically, about how you and I can join together to do something that matters.

During the 30 days of September, 29 other bloggers and I have joined together to see if our different communities could collectively raise $30,000 for charity: water, to provide clean water for people who don’t have it. 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000.

I want all of you to be a part of this. There are around a thousand of you who come by here on a regular basis. I really think that together, we can make a huge impact.

Here’s what you can do:

+ Give. $20 gives one person clean water for 20 years!
+ Share. Tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter about what we’re doing. We’re using the hashtag #30water and pointing people to http://mycharitywater.org/30 (shortlink: http://bit.ly/b1eht9)
+ Blog about it. I asked a while back, and I know a bunch of you also have your own blogs. We want you to write about it too and get your readers involved. Just point your readers to our site: http://mycharitywater.org/30

Of all the things I love about charity: water, here are some of the details that really stuck out to me:

+ 100% of all your money will go to water projects. It’s not going to printer ink or insurance policies – they have private donors for that. Your money provides water.
+ Our money will go towards building water projects in Central African Republic. Click here to see a video they made specifically about the people there.
+ After you give, charity: water will keep you up-to-date with the status of the project you gave to, provide you with GPS coordinates of exactly where the well is being built, and take pictures and video along the way.
+ Our page has a status bar at the top that shows up-to-the-minute progress of how much money has been given.
+ Like I said earlier, $20 provides one person with clean water for 20 years. An average water project costs $5,000 to build and provides clean water to 250 people. If we raise our goal of $30,000, we’ll help 1500 people get clean water!

Please take 4.5 minutes to watch this video. It is their founder Scott sharing how this organization came about, the ins-and-outs of how it all works, and the incredible success they’ve had in the first few years of existence. This is the video that made me tweet “My life just changed.” I knew that I needed to be connected to this cause…indefinitely.

Again, please consider giving. It is truly amazing how far a gift as small as $20 can go.

If you’re interested in which other bloggers are involved in this project, head on over to our site and scroll down to see the list. And while you’re there, spend a few minutes on the site – it’s incredible. Oh, and for those of you who have a site, here is a square ad you can put in your sidebar:

Tomorrow it’s back to the trivial…

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

+ After hearing a ton of people talk about it, I finally started watching Dexter yesterday. Ten minutes in, I was underwhelmed. Thirty minutes in, I decided I’d never miss another episode. It’s that good.

+ Two of the main comedic influences in my life are my younger brothers. You should follow them on Twitter: @stantonbryan and @kestanton.

+ Bryan Allain has been putting together a podcast called The Fresh Squeezed Podcast. Today he released the first episode. If you like hearing about the creative process of different creative people, you’ll love it. If you’re hoping to get a glimpse of his enormous schnoz, sorry…it’s an audio podcast.

+ Last year, I wrote a post about Male Accessories to Eliminate. I’ve noticed there’s been a lot of development since then, male-accessory-wise. What else needs to be eliminated?

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

4. Favorite Useless Feat – Solving a Rubik’s Cube while skydiving in a raft

3. Favorite Upcoming Movie – Waiting for Superman

4. Favorite Most Absurd Thing I’ve Seen in 2010 – This (thanks @dalycho)

5. Favorite Website – 0 Views

6. Favorite Show I Probably Won’t Have Access To – An Idiot Abroad (a documentary of Karl Pilkington, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant)

*In case you haven’t noticed, The Gregory Brothers get an automatic pass into The Weekly Six.

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

David Blaine
Sure, we’ve all seen David Blaine the Illusionist. But what about all of this other crazy stuff he’s doing? Encasing himself in a 6 ton block of ice for 63 hours in the middle of Times Square, standing on top of a 90-foot pillar for 36 straight hours, holding his breath for over 17 minutes on Oprah. How did I miss these things? I recently watched a TED talk that he gave where he describes how he does all of his different feats. Incredible.

Tim Ferriss
I’ve written before about my obsession for the book The 4-Hour Work Week. Ever since then, I’ve been following his blog, Experiments in Lifestyle Design, and watching his videos, which are jam-packed with goodness. I really love his Random Show, which is a video series where he and Kevin Rose (founder of Digg) talk about whatever is going on with them that month. If you can get over how presumptuous he sounds when he speaks, you’ll love him.

Larry David
Creator of two of television’s greatest comedies of all time – Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. One could argue that I’ve been a tad obsessed with this guy over the last few months. One thing in particular that I’m fascinated by is the fact that the entire series of Curb was improv. Larry wrote paragraph outlines for each of the scenes, but would wait to show the actors the outline until right before the cameras were rolling, to make sure their reactions wouldn’t seem contrived. The result? Comedy gold.*

The Most Interesting Man in the World
This has been my favorite ad campaign for quite some time now. Last night I tweeted that “Sharks have a week dedicated to him” was my favorite claim to date. Then some replies started pouring in with ones that I’d never heard before – “His mom has a tattoo that says ‘Son’” and “He once taught a German Shepherd to bark in Spanish”. I hope this ad campaign never ends.

Two things:
1. Who is fascinating you right now?
2. What is the best “Most Interesting Man in the World” claim you’ve ever heard?

*I realize Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t for everyone. There’s a good chance some of us might just have to agree to disagree on this one.

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve been wanting to start this conversation for a while now. Every time I play golf, I realize how ludicrous it is to subject myself to the same rules as professionals. When I go to a batting cage, do I crank it up to 96mph and hope to foul one off? No. I dial it down to 60 and relive the glory days.

The vast majority of us suck at golf. We need to figure out a way to make the entire experience better. Which is why I present to you, Golf Rules for the Rest of Us:

+ When you hit a ball into the woods, just find a ball. It doesn’t have to be your ball – any white ball will do.

+ Any form of “Hit it Alice” after another player comes up short on a putt results in a two-stroke penalty for the perpetrator, as well as a hearty lower-back slap.

+ Each player gets one mulligan per dollar spent on greens fees. $60 = 60 mulligans. When a player runs out of mulligans, he is allowed to start using do-overs (players get 60 of those as well).

+ The red tees are there for a reason. Use them. Some would say they’re for women and children, but those people also shoot in the mid-70s and wear Musk deodorant.

+ First person to point out that the guy who plumb bobs before a putt doesn’t know what that even does gets to move his ball eight feet closer to the hole. The plumb bobber must then putt with his 8-iron, left-handed.

+ If players discover, upon arriving at the first tee, that the course is Cart Path Only today, they are free to return to the clubhouse and get your money back. No one should be subjected to those conditions.

+ If a player duffs a chip shot and no one is there to see it, did he really duff his chip shot? The answer is no. It was just a practice swing.

+ If a player has never legitimately broken 100, he has no right to get mad after a bad shot. That’s just what he does when he plays golf. He hits bad shots.

+ No player should feel guilty for quitting after fourteen. Everyone knows that is the ideal length for a golf course.

+ If an amateur player adamantly swears he can tell the difference between brands of golf balls, he will receive a 3-stroke penalty for lying and must give each of the other players a sleeve of golf balls.

+ Not only is a player allowed to ground his club in a sand trap, but he is also allowed to build a waist-high sand mound to put his ball on if he desires. Also, if he’d rather not get sandy, he is allowed to take his ball out of the trap and put it in the middle of the fairway.

What other rules need to make the list?

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

1. Kelly Mayfield
2. Everett Bracken
3. Eric “Allain Crusher” Olsen
4. Ben Day
5. Scott Moore
6. Brack
7. Blake “Big Brother” Swanson
8. Russ Ray
9. KC “The Doctor” Proctor
10. Jeremy Keegan
11. Kyle “11 Home Runs” Stanton
12. Sean Henry
13. Nate Rectum
14. Jake the Lions Fan
15. BS
16. Jon Cook
17. Kit
18. Jack Deus
19. Jeremy Reiv
20. Sarah Schulte
21. Ry Guy King
22. Brax Watkins
23. Josh Schneider
24. Luke
25. Jody

Team Stanton – I need to get you some more details ASAP. Click here to fill out your info, and put your mailing address in the comment box. I’m sending my Top 10 finishers a copy of my book (this is the incentive equivalent of offering you a paperclip, I know, but it’s all I got).

Knowing that Bryan and some of his teammates will be reading this, let the talking of smack begin.

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve never seen the last one as a legitimate option before. I just hope I’m never in a situation where I need to dry my hair in a downtown Atlanta Chevron.
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Reminder: Every pet I’ve been around is OK licking his own crotch.
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Just your run-of-the-mill ultrasound training session at Starbucks.
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The bookshelf at the Dollar Store. It’s just a matter of time before Everyday Absurdities ends up there.
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This is my most recent audition. Seriously. When I can’t make it down to the agency, this is how it goes down. I wonder if this is why I never land any roles.
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Dear Apple: How does “née” rank ahead of “new” in your predictive text? And while we’re at it, I’ve never, ever intended to write “tome”.
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A behind-the-scenes shot of a video that Tripp and I will be releasing very soon…maybe even this week.
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©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

2. Favorite Comedy Album – Stand-Up Comedy by Tommy Johnagin

3. Favorite Fake Movie Trailer – Christmas Vacation: Inception-style

4. Favorite New Running Playlist – Thanks for the recommendations!

5. Favorite Trick Shot - Roger Federer’s William Tell

6. Favorite Upcoming Movie – I’m Still Here (remember that crazy Joaquin Phoenix/David Letterman video I posted a while back? This is the movie they were making.)

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Bryan writes:

Tyler and I are going head to head this year picking NFL games against the spread. As I have done in every other area of my life, including hairlines, I want to own him. And as much as I’m going to enjoy demolishing him, I thought it would be awesome if some of my readers did the same to some of his readers.

I don’t know if you caught it, but he’s talking smack to you too. The way he said “his readers” wreaked of pompousness and conceit. I need you to band with me to collectively punch him in said Schnoz. My fist isn’t big enough to do it alone.

I need 5 of you (guys or girls) to join forces with me in taking down Bryan Allain’s NFL Pick ‘Em team. You don’t need to be an NFL genius, you just need to A) be savvy enough to log in to CBS Sports to create an entry and B) be committed enough to not quit halfway through the season.

If you’re interested in being on my team of six, leave a comment to this post with the following info:

1. Your Name

2. Why I should recruit you onto my team (be as ridiculous as you’d like with as many Bryan Allain low-blows as you’d like)

I’ll let you know who made the team in the next couple days. Then we’ll give you all the boring rules and details after that. You’ll be picking every game against the spread throughout the seventeen week NFL season, and in the end we’ll have an overall individual champion and a winning team based on combined records.

Bryan is posting this same thing on his blog today in order to assemble his team of six. If you like him more than you like me, head on over there and hide under the shade of his nose.

Are you ready for some (NFL) football?

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.

1. One day we ate a 45-minute lunch at Jersey Mike’s, only to come back out to Tripp’s car and realize he’d left it running the entire duration of our meal.

2. When I kicked the bumper off of his car in this video, it came off so easily because earlier that week he had driven through his grandmother’s bushes and ripped it clean off.

3. The wreck I mentioned above was the result of Tripp rear-ending a truck at 15 miles per hour. Both of our air bags deployed, but we were going so slow, our faces didn’t even make contact with them. He’s been driving a Chevy Cobalt for the last month while it gets repaired.

4. Speaking of the Cobalt, he ran out of gas twice in the same week last week.

5. Tripp recently forgot to put his (week-old) car in park on his sloped driveway, ran inside for a second, and came back out to see that it had rolled down the driveway and across the street into his neighbor’s garden.

6. When Tripp worked at a camp in college, the other staffers got ahold of his spare key. When Tripp would drive them to Walmart, one of them would sneak out and move the car a space over, then a few spaces over, then in the same spot but turned around. Eventually they would move it to the entirely opposite side of the parking lot. He never noticed.

7. Tripp bought a 4Runner from a dealership, took it back and exchanged it for a Toyota Matrix, hated that, took it back and exchanged it for another 4Runner, all within a four day span.

8. In college he couldn’t figure out why his car always smelled so bad. He finally opened his trunk to find a lunch his mom had packed for him for his ride back to school – 3 months earlier. In his words, there were roughly 899 maggots where his sandwich used to be.

9. Tripp recently got pulled over for an expired tag…on the way to the tag office to get it renewed. Fortunately, the cop didn’t give him a ticket due to how distracted he was by Tripp’s sound system.

10. He used to have a motorcycle. Then someone stole it.

11. Tripp was his brother-in-law’s best man. On the wedding day, Tripp was responsible for taking him to the ceremony. Of course, he locked his keys in the car and caused them to be late.

12. Tripp is the only person in history to run over his own MacBook Pro.

You got any Tripp car stories? I’m sure there are more out there.

And if you have any embarrassing car moments of your own, I’m sure he’d love for you to share.

©2010 tylerstanton.com. All Rights Reserved.