Ok... Last Post

This is the honest to goodness last post you'll ever see at this site.

I promise.

No, I swear.

Cross my heart and hope to die.

Stick a needle in my eye.

Nope my finger's aint crossed...

From here on out you can find me here ranting and raving about sports (namely the Cubs), politics, and popular (and unpopular?) culture. I've brought my blogroll along with me, so please make all pertinent changes.

Thank you and good night!

You'll Never Walk Alone




You say the hill's too steep to climb
Climb it.
You say you'd like to see me try
Climbing.

You pick the place and I'll choose the time
And I'll climb That hill in my own way.
Just wait a while for the right day.
And as I rise above the tree lines and the clouds
I look down, in the sound of the things you said today.

Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd
Smiling.
Merciless the magistrate turns 'round
Frowning.

And who's the fool who wears the crown?
And go down, in your own way
And every day is the right day
And as you rise above the fear-lines in the crowd
You look down, in the sound of the faces in the crowd.



Thanks to everybody for everything. I appreciate the support and friendship.

Me First and the Gimmee Gimmees

I've been tagged for a meme by the nice folks over at Over Fed Mind (Thank you very much). Whenever I read the word Meme I always think of that fat chick on the Drew Carey Show. (Thank you very little.)

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Pest Control technician
2. Restaurant manager
3. Athletic track builder
4. Steel factory worker

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Fletch
2. Where the Buffalo Roam
3. Apocalypse Now
4. Legend of Boggy Creek

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Newton, Iowa (Land of the free)
2. Ames, Iowa (Where the grass was green and the girls were pretty)
3. Iowa City, Iowa (Home of the free lunch program)
4. Chicago, Illinois (Nothing was free)

Four TV shows I love:
1. Daily Show
2. The Colbert Report
3. History Traveler
4. Modern Marvels

Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven’t seen (much of):
1. Scrubs
2. That show about Earl
3. Big Brother
4. Dr. Phil

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. California
2. Arizona
3. Minneapolis
4. Austin, Texas

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Plate
2. Bowl
3. Cup
4. Bottle (?)

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Big StupidTommy
2. Hawkeye Hoops
3. Des Moines Register
4. Amazon

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Buck Owens concert with Nate in Bakersfield, California
2. With Haws in Washington D.C.
3. In a convertible speeding down a southwestern desert highway with my wife
4. At a ballgame with my kids

Four bloggers that I am tagging:
1. Ginny
2. Karen
3. Jonnie
4. Omni

Ok you four... You've been tagged. Now it's all about youyou.

Hamburger Helpless

I think my all time favorite food is Hamburger Helper.

It's even delicious when it is prepared without hamburger, as I found out last weekend while I was sick. I simply called it, "Helper."

It lived up to it's name. It warmed me all up inside and made me feel nice and fuzzy.

Actually I already felt fuzzy... But it added warmth to my fuzziness. It maintained it's warm and fuzziness right up to the moment I projectiled it into the toilet.

Hamburger Helper is special because it's one of those few foods that are good no matter how it is broken down. Hamburger is good with or without "Helper", and "Helper" is good with or without the Hamburger... Put the two ingredients together and you have what is perhaps the world's perfect food.

(Unlike for instance: Sugar Peas... Sugar is certainly ok by itself... But Peas can't really stand alone.)

The name Hamburger Helper lends the idea that hamburger actually needs help. Like I already mentioned, hamburger is perfectly good by itself... It doesn't really need the help.

It would make more sense to name a product say... Peas Helper.

Another one of my favorite foods is Tuna Helper.

In fact If I had to list my favorite top three foods, I't probably be:

1. Hamburger Helper
2. Tuna Helper
3. "Helper"

On some days that list might be switched around, depending on if I want fish or beef. Or if I have a red wine or a white wine. (Obviously a red wine would be more suited for Hamburger Helper, and a white wine more suited for the Tuna version.) Or if I wasn't in the mood for that meaty texture, I'd just choose the "Helper" like I did this past weekend.

There you go. Now you know where I stand on Hamburger and Tuna Helper. And you were probably expecting a Valentines Day post... Sheesh!

Oh, and one more thing:

Nate in Bakersfield once said that "Hamburger Helper is the hottest substance known to man." At the time I absolutely agreed with him. Now being older and wiser, I often find myself pondering if Tuna Helper might rival the heat of Hamburger Helper. Unfortunately we may never know... Because there isn't a thermometer that exists that can register that high level of temperature.

Ding Ding Dong

I will be sore on Wednesday morning. It's a new automatic... Death, taxes, and muscle aches on Wednesdays.

I joined a city dodge ball league. It's perhaps the most questionable thing I have done in the last 15 years. We play on Tuesday nights, and I suppose I'll lace up the tennis shoes for another violent round tomorrow evening.

It's brutal. I might as well be dodging baseballs fired by Roger Clemens. Times six.

I am quite possibly the oldest person in the league. The teams are dominated by young college athletic types... Who hold no quarter when it comes to laser beaming a ball up into my grill.

But honestly, I do pretty well. I don't even get hit that often, and when I do it's not up in the nostrils. It's usually in my back as I'm bending to retrieve a ball... This second layer of back fat is coming in pretty handy.

The soreness comes from the running and jumping and the reaching and the lightning speed of the fast paced game. It's forcing me to use muscles that I have had on the shelf for over a decade. It's not like playing frisbee golf where my body uses one smooth sweeping motion and has developed a comfortable pattern that glides the exact same motion in throw after throw.

Oh no. Dodge ball is not like that at all.

I am jerking and leaping, dodging and throwing. I am somersaulting after loose balls, sprinting for others, and shaking both fists with determined anger. I am diving. I am bouncing. And yes occasionally I am taking a 200 mph heater right upside my melon.



That is where the pain comes from... But I'm not complaining. Afterall, Pain is just weakness leaving the body.

The name of our team is Capital Punishment. We probably receive it more often than we dish it out however.

It's a team I assembled... And I recruited it with an emphasis on the word team, with the intention of building a complete package. I got a couple of great athletes for offense, a couple of lunatics for psychiatric support, two girls (who are great athletes) for decoys, one mean ass biker type for the fear factor, and a couple of other guys that I'll call pawns.

Oh... and I got my brother in law but he may be on pernament disable because after the first game it was revealed that he had ripped several of his stomach muscles.

They say that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. That statement may have some merit at some level. But I can't help but think that what doesn't kill us only makes us strive for that one step that brings us closer to death... I truly understand that there will be a day when I am getting too old for this shit. But I am not there yet. And with that being said, there will be guaranteed pain on Wednesday.

Yeeaah. Like Dre' says, Keep their muthafuckin heads ringin'. Dinga-linga-ling-ling-dong.

What Killed Peter Benchely?

Yesterday I watched Jaws the Revenge on some afternoon cable movie channel. It had a promising lineup of actors... Micheal Caine, Mario Van Peebles... but it was the description of the movie that actually hooked me into watching it:

A large great white shark haunts the widow of a fisherman and her son as they vacation in the Bahamas...

The widow of course was Ellen Brody, the wife of the deceased Police Chief Martin Brody from the original 1975 classic. He was eaten alive by the shark in an earlier episode of Jaws... Jaws 2?... Jaws 3-D?... And the grizzly old sea hag never really got over it.

Ellen Brody, played by Lorraine Gary (Glen Close beaten with an ugly stick), decides to take what's left of her family to the Bahamas for a little sun and fun at the beaches (How ironic) and to put her past presumedly behind her. Of course it's all wishful thinking because somehow a great white shark- a cousin of the original shark in the first Jaws - catches wind that she'll be down there and decides to go down there himself to personally disrupt their vacation plans.

Of course that means eating basically everybody that she knows and well... You get the picture.



It's kind of hard to enjoy a vacation and put painful memories of your friends and family getting eaten alive by a giant shark behind you when your friends and family are half way around the world and still getting eaten alive by a giant shark.

If she was smart, she would have vacationed in say... Ohio... Or Montana... Or some other place very far inland. What the hell is she going to do next year... Take the grandkids to Sea World?


Anyway, Peter Benchely died today (The creator of Jaws) and I was wondering if he too saw this movie yesterday. It might have been enough to kill him.

Friendly Fire

In light of this headline, please caption this photo:

Sick Sick Sick.

Yes I have been. All weekend long. Well, maybe longer than that. But this time it was physical. A case of some food poisoning I am guessing... I lost so much liquid these last few days that I could have rivaled a sun dried tomato for lack of hydration... Which, by the way, when made with a wine white cheese sauce... Is very good on pizza.

Sun dried tomatoes that is...Not what I was extolling out all weekend.

Anyway I had the chance to listen to a lot of talk radio these past few days, and to catch a glimpse or two of the TV. I did witness the HAWKEYE beating of Indiana on Saturday for a season sweep, and a lone spot atop the Big Ten Conference standings.

That made me feel pretty good for a while... Until I had to puke again.

I listened to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory Friday night and Art Bell Saturday night almost in their entirety due to diarhea induced insomnia, and to some guy I never heard of before named McConnell whom I found somewhat entertaining.

He had a little rant about Valentines Day and how it is a feminine holiday because generally males spend about 6 times more each year on this holiday than do women... Which I really don't have a problem with, but then he said, according to polls, that 7 out of 10 males say that they pick up the check for the Valentine's dinner, and that 6 out of 10 women say that they do.

Hmmm. I thought. That's like 13 out of 10. No wonder restaurants love Valentines day so much... There's virtually no dine and dashing going on.

Then Saturday night our house caught on fire and the entire neighborhood was awakened shortly after midnight to fire truck lights and sirens and the sloppy ruckus of Jaxon my trusty chupacabra trying his best to get at the firemen as they barged through our dark house in full fireman gear with flashlights and long handled axes.

Luckily I was able to stave off Jaxon, thus sparing innocent lives.The fire was minimal - the result of some loose wiring on a power outlet in the basement. The house was spared... And nobody was hurt thank God. Aside from an uncorfortable moment in which there was a discussion about "exotic animals allowed within the city limits" everything worked out ok in the end. I gave twenty dollars to the fireman for "the benevolent fund" and he said that he'd forget about the whole thing. I was dead tired, but due for another run to the toilet, so I puked and went back to bed.

When I woke up today the radio was saying that "Michelle Kwan's olympic dream has come to a nightmarish end!"

Immediately my thoughts raced back to the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding episode of many years ago. Just as I was pondering whether or not Tonya Harding might have the audacity to hire an attack again and to have Michelle Kwan's knees bashed in with a baseball bat, the lady on the radio said that the Michelle Kwan was pulling out of competition due to an aggravated groin injury.

Yeah, some nightmare lady.

Some have dreams of the boogey man. And others have dreams of groin pulls that keep them awake all night.

Myself, I have my bodily fluids.

Super Bowl Commercials

Did you like the ads this year during the Super Bowl?

I thought that they were ok, with some being better than others. I especially liked the first Bud Light ad with the office worker guy talking to his boss on the elevator saying that he hid several Bud Lights around the office to boost morale, then the elevator door opened to complete chaos; people tackling eachother for the hidden beers, punching holes in the walls, etc. Then his boss says that he found the last one only to get creamed from another office worker.

The caveman Fed Ex commercial wasn't bad, and it garnered a chuckle from the room, including from me. However, I am a bit biased... I love about anything caveman. Cavemen always make me laugh.

I noticed that Miller didn't even run an ad this year... which seems kind of strange to me. Budweiser being there was a given, you'd think that Miller would be cornering that market. Not that I cared. I don't drink Miller products anyway, unless I'm in a desperate situation. Also, I thought that maybe Ford dropped the ball too. With the game being played in Detroit and confronted with sluggish sales prompting thousands of lay-offs, perhaps a good old fashioned American car commercial might have been an effective marketing tool.

But then again, maybe not. There is obviously a reason that I am not in marketing.

Congrats to Robby and Shep: Two bloggers that I know of that are avid Steelers fans. There's no denying that it was your year.

I'd like to hear your thought on the Super Bowl commercials, so drop me a line...

Helping the Wealthy

Besides the normal preparations that are a part of Super Bowl Sunday - prepping the hors d'ourves, digging out some vintage CHIEFS clothing to wear for representation, and picking up a case, I also found time today to vote for the dress that I want Kimberly Stewart to wear at the grammys.

I prefer a little "white noise", a lavish cream colored dress designed by Anthony Franco as opposed to the competition - black number designed by Dawid Wolinski or a gold gown designed by Jenny Packham.
Apparently I am in the majority because 45% of the people surveyed so far agree with me.

Now I am not a fashion critic by any stretch of the imagination. I haven't watched the grammys since the hair band days, when I actually had a vested interest in them. But I couldn't pass up a chance to be a part of history - a chance to help a young fashionista choose her grammy night red carpet attire.

Who the hell is Kimberly Stewart anyway?

I don't even know. And nor do I want to. If she is up for a grammy, I do know one thing: She probably sucks.

But that is beside the point. The fact that she'll possibly be wearing a dress to the grammys that I personally helped her to pick out is a cool thing. Even though I won't actually be watching her red carpet arrival, knowing that she is comfortably wearing a dress picked by her peers gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. She'll be glowing radiantly as the Hollywood "Ooohs" and "Aahhhs" greet her as she steps out of the limo.

And I will have had something to do with it.