With Sexy Results

So I got to thinking about certain driving issues I have yesterday on my way back to drop Baby Lentini off at her house after an extended Thanksgiving visit (new Baby Files sometime this week). Ever since I started driving in January of 1998 I've noticed many tendencies of other drivers that I come across on the road. For instance, drivers behind you don't like it when you put on the right turning signal and then turn left, though they do like to give you the finger afterwards. But enough about me. In my neighborhood, there are a lot of two way streets that can only fit one car going in one direction at a time, so if you're ever going up a street while someone is coming towards you, one of the two drivers has to pull over ("no, thanks, it's a cardigan") into an empty space on the side of the road. In all of the cases where I am the one who gets to keep driving, I always like to give the other car a "thank you" wave/double point/tip of my hat (whether wearing a hat or not) to let the other driver know that I appreciate what he/she has done for me. [Right here it should be noted that the following thoughts on the thank you wave don't just apply to this specific situation, but all situations where another driver lets you go ahead and do something on the road.] I always feel good when I acknowledge the other driver's kindness because we know that it all evens out in the end when it comes to giving the go ahead to others. It's a certain bond that all drivers share. Shortly after I give the wave though and am feeling good, things normally seem to change because the other drivers rarely give me a head nod or wave back, at least a certain tyoe of them. That's right, I'm talking about white people. Sure there are some nice ones out there, but in my driving experiences, if the other driver is white, and isn't me, they rarely acknowledge your thanks or give you thanks if it's the other way around. On the other hand, in almost every one of my experiences with drivers who aren't white (which includes every non-white driver on earth, regardless of sex) I have recieved either the "your welcome" head nod, or the "thank you" wave. Now I'm not going to sit here and get all scientific as to why this always is the case, and will instead jump to a racist conclusion: white people are a bunch of uptight **insert your own insulting word here**. White people always seem to be in a hurry whether they're late for work, or just driving home from Banana Republic. I'm sick of this. As someone who is white, I am ashamed of the rest of you. Give the proper response to me/the other driver all the time, no exceptions. You don't really have to mean it, you know. When you are heading in the opposite direction you can hold up your crossed fingers and yell whatever you want. At least humor me with a wave or a nod. I mean, come on.

My second and final thought on driving that I will discuss today is an innovation for every car in existence, as well as every future car. Everytime I drive, and the distance doesn't matter, I always put in one of my CDs cause the radio sucks everywhere (though it's better in Philadelphia than other places). Much like the people who can be seen in VH1's new show, Motormouth, I like to sing along and react to the songs in my on way. The problem is not that I'm embarassed when other people see me (cause I'm not . . . well maybe just a little); the problem is that when they see me singing, as I do when I see others singing in the car, they try to think to themselves as to what I'm singing (after they're done pointing and laughing of course). This is a problem for me because people think I'm listening to some band like New Found Glory or Hoobastank, when in reality I'm rocking out to Sam Roberts or Ben Kweller. If someone's going to catch me siging, I want them to know exactly what I'm listening to. So here's my proposal: every vehicle (except motorcycles) on the road should have a screen above the windshield (like public buses) that displays what is being played in the vehicle whether it's music from the radio (AM, FM, satelite), music from a CD, talk radio, or nothing at all. Just stop for a second and imagine how awesome this would be if it ever happened. All of our guessing and judging will come to an end, plus you might think of a song that you forgot about, or be introduced to a new band (if the windows are down), or make fun of someone later to friends after you came across someone dancing to an LFO or Ace of Base song. Who knows, maybe you'll come across another car who is listening to the same obsuce thing you're listening to and you'll pull over and become friends, or maybe even more than friends. Everything begins and ends with music. This needs to happen. I'll get my design team working on this as soon as possible.

BK looking lost:



Canada's finest, The Sam Roberts Band:



SMUSH PARKER WATCH:



11/26/04 vs. Miami: In 14 minutes Smush scored 5 points and had 2 rebounds. Iwatched some of this game on ESPN and his 5 points came from a shockingly forceful fastbreak dunk and a nice three pointer from the corner. Detroit beat Shaq and the Heat 78-77.

11/27/04 @ Milwaukee: In 8 minutes Smush had 2 points, 1 rebound, and 1 assist. Detroit lost 96-90.

In other Smush Parker news, he got a brief mention in The Sports Guy's (writing hero of mine) latest article on his website on espn.com's Page 2. Here's the link to the article, and the Smush blurb:

[On the latest episode of Desperate Housewives] And it's not a terrible show, unlike the last few seasons of "Sex and the City" -- although I wonder how it will have a shelf life of more than 20 episodes. One thing bothers me about last Sunday's show, though: You can't promote the death of one of the housewives, then have it end up being the nosy next-door neighbor who isn't even in the opening credits. That's like ESPN promoting an upcoming "SportsCenter" by saying, "Which Pistons star blew out his knee tonight?" and it ends up being Smush Parker. Gimme a break.

Smush Parker, welcome to the Big Show (at least in my mind anyway).

THE LOST SENTENCE (from Passion and Patience)

Every now and then, I think of something I forgot to put into a post of mine that I was either planning on putting in but forgot for some reason, chose to leave out, or didn't think about til a couple of days later. So, in order to put these extra thoughts out there I will do so in future posts because it's my site and I can do whatever I want.

The motto for this year's awful, but slowly improving team is "Passion and Patience" which I think is the first time that those two words have ever been put together. *****Two more words that have probably never been used together (that is, until now) are "fart" and "crowbar".***** Even though this season will be a test for even the most diehard fan . . .

Passion and Patience

Last Saturday marked what will be the beginning of yet another long and painful season for Fordham basketball when they opened their season vs. St. Francis College (NY) at home in the Bronx. The motto for this year's awful, but slowly improving team is "Passion and Patience" which I think is the first time that those two words have ever been put together. Even though this season will be a test for even the most diehard fan, St. Francis was a team that could be beaten by most high school girls teams. As a result, Fordham blew them out by 21 points, and this is probably the last time I'll ever write a sentence like this in my lifetime. Pretty soon they'll be back to losing to teams by 40 points (like some other teams I know) but I'm going to enjoy this victory until that happens. The story with this Fordham game though was that the school was retiring Ed Conlin's number 11 jersey. Ed Conlin was a large headed white man from the 1950s who is the school's all-time leading scorer and rebounder. Lucky for him, he was still alive to see the school honor him 50 years after he graduated. It was a ceremony for the ages. Everybody was there from some short old white guy, to some taller old white guy who could only have dominated the sport in their day. These ex-players from that era, along with other ex-players and staffers (myself included) from other eras were invited to come and celebrate. When I went to get my ticket before the game, the guy running things asked me if I still wanted to be introduced at the halftime ceremony. I, of course, had no idea what he was talking about. I thought this was all going to take place at a pregame reception so I never thought that I would be introduced at halftime among other things. After I thought about it for a couple of seconds I realized that it would be a little weird if I was introduced as an ex-manager from just a couple years ago, while everyone else who were going to be introduced were all ex-players from the 1950s and 1960s. If I knew that another manager was going to be there with me than the story might have been different. Since this was the way things were though, I kind of respectfully declined, took my free ticket, and headed off to the bathroom.

MORE ON ED CONLIN: Along with the pleasure of watching the halftime extravaganza, each fan who attended the game were given these nifty Ed Conlin buttons to wear both during the game and also in real life if they felt like it. Unfortunately, I'm not able to show you this button, but I'll try my best to describe it to you. The button is rectangular and it has an action shot of Ed Conlin from his playing days. In the picture he's driving through defenders and has his left leg bended in the air like a pitcher has during his wind-up. What makes this so hilarious is that his shorts are shorter than you can imagine, even for the 1950's and you can see clearly the size of his thigh. I don't think I've ever seen a larger, or brighter thigh in my lifetime. The players surrounding him seem to be blinded by his thigh and they are looking away so their eyes don't burn. Brian and I were fascinated by this button and it didn't wear off for the whole game and still probably hasn't days after. Since we normally act like a five year old when we both think something is funny, we kept making Ed Conlin thigh jokes throughout the night, even during the ceremony. It never got old, and it never will. Not only was Ed Conlin one of Fordham's best all-time players, but he had thighs that can't be compared to the thighs of any other person alive or dead. If only you guys could see this picture.

FROM THE RANDOM QUOTE DEPARTMENT: I was flipping through the channels yesterday and I saw that Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was on so I watched it for a couple of minutes. It didn't take long for him to say the following:

"You can only imagine how hungry someone must be to steal someone else's garden."



Mr. Rogers, if you're not dead already, you will be missed.

SMUSH PARKER WATCH:



11/23/04 @ Charlotte: In 13 minutes Smush scored 3 points, had 0 rebounds, 1 assist and 1 turnover.

11/24/04 @ Cleveland: In 11 minutes Smush scored 3 points, had 1 rebound, 1 assist and 0 turnovers.

RANDOM THOUGHT: In my experience, it's been hard for me to call someone else selfish without sounding unselfish that I'm not being called selfish.

More Smush

Friday night's super brawl between the Pacers and the city of Detroit might turn out to be the greatest thing to ever happen to Smush Parker's career. With only eight available players, the Pistons were forced to start Smush tonight and he wound up playing for a large portion of the game which needed to go to two overtimes. The Pistons won 117-116 but the story was obviously Smush Parker's performance (well, not really but play along). In 38 minutes, Smush scored 14 points, grabbed 4 rebounds, and had 6 assists, along with a highlite reel double pump reverse slam that he did once (while at Fordham) in Madison Square Garden vs. Northwestern. Hopefully, that awful human being, Larry Brown rewards Smush with more playing time in the future. Regardless, I'll keep up with the Smush updates whether you like it or not.

The aforementioned Smush dunk vs. Northwestern:


His dunk tonight was less blurry. 

For no reason at all:


I am still in possession of that pumpkin. 

COMING SOON: My thoughts Saturday's (11/20) Fordham game.

It's FANNNNNNN-tastic

On behalf of Terrell Owens, the Philadelphia Eagles, the NFL, ABC, and Desperate Housewives, I'd like to thank the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons and their fans for their all out brawl last night. In case you know nothing about this, here's a link for you all to catch up. I didn't see this live cause I was watching the Syracuse/Memphis game on espn2, but when I saw the film of this fight I was shocked more than ever. I was shocked because I've never seen something that was so hilarious and scary at the same time. Of course you never like to see a fight between players and fans, but what were the fans really expecting? Did they think that they could just throw stuff at the Pacers (especially head-case Ron Artest, who just happened to choose not to retaliate after the Pistons' Ben Wallace attacked him after a hard foul) and not suffer any consequences. The players at least know there's a chance that a fight might break out with the other team, but when they're minding their own business with their back turned on the fans who are throwing stuff at them, how do you think they would react? I'm not saying the players aren't at fault because something like this should never happen, but the reality is that they're defenseless on the court, and the fans have a lot of options of stuff they can throw as weapons. Once the players come into the fans what do you expect they'll do? Their careers are in danger, and as a reults many stupid fans' lives are in danger. For the fans that kept enticing the players who got hurt I think they got what they deserved. On the other hand it looks like there were a lot of bystanders who were trying to break things up who also got hurt which sucks for them. I don't mean to sound totally pro-players on this, because I'm not, but the fans can really expect for a bunch of large athletes who feel like their careers/health is in danger to just simply walk off the court without any response. At least now Ron Artest should have more time to focus on his budding rap career.

At least there was no implied nudity.









SMUSH PARKER WATCH



Lost in all of this madness is what I believe to be ex-Fordham star and current Pistons guard, Smush Parker's first appearance of the year. In nine minutes, Smush went 1/2 from the field for 2 points, and had 1 rebound, 1 assist, and 1 foul. I don't know as of now what his role was in all of this, but knowing Smush he probably ran back into the locker room so his hair wouldn't get messed up. Maybe now he'll get some more playing time.

The greatest thing to ever happen

Twelve years ago today, November 18, 1992, the greatest thing that ever happened to me or my family to place when we officially became the owners of our beagle, Fenway. She was one at the time when my mom brought her home from the SPCA and wow has she grown. Actually, she's only really grown in weight since then but not enough for her to explode which our dad threatened was a problem with most beagles. For the last twelve years she's brought our family nothing but joy and happiness (and "accidents," unfortunately) and even though we all hate each other at times, we will never be able to do anything but love her as long as she continues to grace us with her presence. Wow, got real there for a second, but who cares. Happy birthday Fenway!

Now a celebration in pictures:


Squirming before take-off. 


Did you say something about food? 


Brother is able to hold her for more than 2 seconds for a photo-op. 


Artsy. 


Super Beagle! 


Queen of the bench-thingy. 


She likes to take a break from sleeping and begging every once in a while for some quality "me-time". 

Bad Day Sunshine

Well I’m back from a brief little vacation from posting that took me nowhere at all. I’ve been thrown off my normal schedule of stuff lately thanks to the daylight savings time change. The way my bed is set up I have a window above my feet and to the right if I’m on my back. Now, since it gets lighter earlier, a ray of light comes through my window and hits me in the face every morning before I’m about to wake up which puts me in a homicidal mood. So I keep trying to avoid the light by moving closer to the wall, but it feels like the light follows me wherever I go. As a result, I feel like I have to sleep more just so I can get back at the sun for waking me up early every morning. This has led to bad results so far because I get so tired that I can’t wake up anytime before noon which throws me off for the whole day. I’m in a funk here and I don’t know how to get out of it because I refuse to get up earlier because the sun wins that way, and I hate the sun. What good is it to have something you can’t even look at? I’ve been fighting battles with the sun my whole life and I have yet to win. I’m getting sick of this because I know that the sun isn’t going anywhere no matter what I do. You suck sun.

You know what else sucks? That’s right, America. We’re in another football/sex controversy thanks to the opening from Monday Night Football the other night which I’m sure you all know about by now. You can’t turn on any news or sports program now without people talking about it. What happened to this country? The worst part about all of this is the fact that Terrell Owens is in the center of everything again and all he did was cooperate with a network. It wasn’t T.O.’s idea and I know that no one is blaming him, but I think that it’s funny that he is involved in the controversy of the week no matter what he does. Another thing about this is that ABC is gonna run Desperate Housewives into the ground. First of all, it’s a pretty good show, it’s not a show that I look forward to, but everyone else in my house does so I have to watch it. The show is nowhere near as good as ABC is making it out to be. Between the way FOX is promoting House and ABC’s Jesus-like worship of Housewives, I’m starting to want hockey to come back. Wait, no I’m not. One more thing on this, next year ABC is coming out with a new show about me called Indifferent House-Son.

Moving onto ESPN programming, the finale of Dream Job was last night, and for those who don’t know Dream Job is ESPN’s American Idol except instead of overrated singers, we have phony-voiced anchor wannabes. This time around though the finals came down to the only 2 guys that I didn’t hate, Grant Thompson and David Holmes. Grant Thompson is an actor in his late 20s who some might view as annoying and stuck-up, who as it happens is currently the guy in that Pizza Hut commercial who says everything twice to the delivery boy (“alright alright, my man my man”). I thought that he would have fit in better as an anchor, but the wild-card of the competition, David Holmes wound up winning because he did a better job last night, even though he was nothing better than average for most of the season. This isn’t the story though for me. The story for me is that I have now come across three people named David Holmes in my lifetime.

The first David Holmes was the guy who was the runner-up to that freak Jesse Camp in MTV’s VJ contest of the late 90s. Holmes #1 was more qualified than Jesse, but he had no personality which explains his loss, but MTV wound up hiring him anyway and he stuck around for a couple years after that. David Holmes #2 was a forward for Manhattan College’s basketball team who destroyed Fordham everytime he played against them even though he was undersized and awful at basketball (which tells you a lot about Fordham basketball). David Holmes #3 was the guy who won Dream Job who I just talked about above. So, what does all of this mean? There is no better-than-average/exciting David Holmes in existence on the planet, and maybe in the history of humans. If you ever come across another David Holmes in your lifetime, whether he’s #4 or #191, he’s gonna be very average at what he does, but he’s always gonna wind up getting the job done and somehow being better than everyone around him. I hope you never come across a David Holmes because he’s only going to make you scratch your head and want to commit suicide, or so it has been written.

David Holmes #1:



David Holmes #2:



David Holmes #3 (with Stuart Scott):



David Holmes #4:



David Holmes #191:



David Holmes #406:



David Holmes #1359:




Finally, if Pedro becomes a Yankee I’m going to find a way to destroy the sun.

Ear Wax America (The Baby Files, Volume 2)

Well I've delayed this as long as possible so let's get right into it before I forget everything. I went to pick up Baby last Thursday and I figured that it would be a non-doctor's trip visit, which I learned a little bit later that this wasn't the case and here's why. On my way to pick her up I called her from the car to tell her that I'd be there to get her in 20 minutes. After a few rings she picked up and here's what followed (I'm screaming every line by the way):

Me: Hello.
Baby: What? Hello? Who is this?
Me: It's John.
Baby: Hello?
Me: It's me, John! Hello?!
Baby: Hello?
Me: I'll be there in 20 minutes!
Baby: Oh, hello Marylin.
Me: What? No, it's me John!
Baby: No, my son isn't picking me up til later and my grandson has an interview.
Me: This IS your grandson! It's John! Turn on your hearing aid!
Baby: Sure, I'd love to come over for coffee. My son won't be here for a while.
Me: No he won't! It's me, John! I'll be there in 20 minutes!
Baby: No, I haven't heard from them. I'll be right over.
Me: What? It's John! My God!
Baby: Alright, bye bye.
Me: AHGHGHGAHGHGAHGH!!!

Well this made me furious but I figured she didn't have her hearing aid turned on since she never does. So I waited a minute and called back. After she realized that it wasn't my mother talking to her, she said that she'd be ready but she had to tell her neighbor she wasn't coming over for coffee. Little did she know, but her neighbor never invited her over for coffee, but I somehow did while talking to her just seconds before. When I got to her place she tried to explain all this to me but I had to tell her that it ws me that she was talking to the whole time and that neither my mother or someone named Marylin was talking to her. This probably would have made sense to her if she could hear me, which she didn't. I told her that she needs to turn her aid on and put the phone up to that ear, not the stone deaf one. I went on to ask her why she doesn't want every advantage possible for her so that she can communicate with others. As I was saying this we were stopped at a red light next to a copy store called, CopyPaste&Print. She said, "wow, I didn't know they put a restaurant over her now." I asked her what she was talking about and she said, "look, it says pasta." Yes, that's some restaurant. You can go there and copy some documents and have a nice Italian meal while everything is being printed. I wanted to tell her that it said "paste" and not "pasta" but I would've had more luck explainig that to an acorn, so I just left it alone.

Later that night we were all sitting around watching TV when we noticed a high pitched tone that was driving us crazy. It came from Baby’s hearing aid, and she couldn’t get it to stop no matter what she tried. It felt like my ears were burning so we just decided that she should turn it off for the night. When I woke up the next morning I found out that a doctor’s appointment had been made to try to figure out why we couldn’t make that noise stop. I couldn’t have been happier to hear this news, and I have no idea right now if I meant for that to be sarcastic or not. When we got to the doctor’s we had to go see the technician who I hoped to God would figure out how to fix everything because I was even hearing that awful noise when the hearing aid wasn’t even on. Well, as it turns out (and this is gonna get really gross here so I’ll try to speed through it), Baby had a wall of ear wax behind her hearing aid that somehow managed to get inside the little holes in the aid itself. This was causing the high pitched hiss that was driving us all so crazy and the technician said she could clean it out, but that Baby also had to have the wax taken out of her ears. So I went with her to another room where a doctor was going to remove what I could only have imagined was more ear wax than usual. At this point in time, Baby decided to tell that doctor that she had never had her ears cleaned so there was roughly 80 years of wax buildup in her tiny head. Well that was about the worst thing for me to hear, but things got even worse soon enough. The doctor went on to take out about a football field’s length of wax out of her. He asked me if I wanted to see it or not (which was kind of immature on his par I might add), to which I responded, “not at all, thank you.” Unfortunately for me, and now all of you, I was too late. I’m not gonna describe it to you because I think of done enough hear about it already without describing it to detail, but let me tell you, I wish somehting that horrific on no one. No one.

With Baby’s hearing aid working perfectly again there were no more hilarious misinterpratations for the rest of the weekend, just the normal nonsense stuff that she says. For instance, she thinks that every TV show and movie has the same format of The Apprentice, where “everyone’s trying to make money.” We could be watching anything form a football game to The Simpsons and she would expect that Trump would come out of nowhere and fire someone. Well, she thinks this is the case with almmost every show actually as we learned while watching a segment on her favorite all-time show, The Lawrence Welk Show on the news or maybe 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Everytime she comes down she wants to watch Lawrence Welk, but we always say no because there has never been a more retarded show in exsistence. For those who don’t know, The Lawrence Welk Show was a musical variety show from many decades ago that featured cheesy songs that brainwashed millions of old people then and old people now who enjoy watching singing cowboys in sequenced silk shirts. The piece we were watching was about how popular the show is even though it was taken off the air over 30 years ago, and also now that Welk has been dead for five years. Baby didn’t take it this way though and she thought that it was a programming note telling us that the show was on that night at 8:00 which obviously wasn’t the case. We told herthis and since she could hear us now we have to believe that she understood us. She went onto say that she would gather together with her family and friends and watch the show, and dance to the music when it used to be on for real. From this story, we got these two fantabulous quotes, both directed to my father:

1.) “I could jitterbug with everybody, but not your father.”

2.) “You should’ve seen grandma dance. She was a good dancer.”

Well as you could imagine, this threw us into histerics, especially my dad. This all happened when they were in their 40s or 50s, not teenagers, and God knows how old my great-grandmother was. I would’ve loved to have been alive and at one of these dance parties to see established grownups dancing to the lamest music that ever existed. Now that I know this happened, I’ll never be able to live with myself.

gay cowboys not pictured:



As for the last couple days of her visit, nothing worth noting really happened, except that she asked us a few time if we had the air conditioner on, even though it was 50 degrees outside and November. So she spent all her time covered under her jacket, which she does all year round, no matter the temperature.


Baby's tired from all that jitterbugging. 

The trip ended with another meal at the Robin Hood, this time without the french fries comment which disappointed me greatly. She did however keep forcing them down my throat like she always does so that was at least some consolation. Until next time, the Files are closed.

gay cowboys pictured:

This Day in My History (November 11, 2003)

First a little bit of background.

1.) Veterans Stadium, home of the Phillies and Eagles for 30+ years, closed forever in 2003, and was imploded about 7 months ago. Since it was closing down, the Phillies decided to make money by selling pairs of seats that the fans could order during the final year and pick them up when the season was over. I ordered a pair of these seats and I am cuttrnylu lookinf at therm while tuping thus.

2.) Larry “LA” Andersen is the current color broadcaster for the Phillies, and was an above average relief pitcher in the Majors from the late 70s to the early 90s with teams like the Phillies, Astros, and Red Sox among others. He will go down in baseball history as the man who the Red Sox traded future Hall of Famer, Jeff Bagwell for many years ago for a playoff run that ultimately failed for them in more than one way. Larry was also on my favorite team of all time (1993 Phillies) and I enjoy his current work.

LA in his playing days with the Astros:



On November 11, 2003 I headed down to the Vet to pick up my seats. The line of cars waiting for the seats in the parking lot wasn't as bad as I thought and I was in and out of there pretty quickly with my dirty, clunky Vet seats. It was a cloudy day, with the possibility of rain if I remember it correctly, but I was feeling good because I was now in possession of a piece of Philadelphia sports history. I pulled up to my house and parked the car across the street because there was some large black SUV that I had never seen before parked in front of my house. Since it was the middle of the day I wasn't that upset about it because most of my block was empty so there were a lot of parking options. So I figured that I would just go inside and have lunch and later on figure out how to carry the two connected seats which weighed about a ton collectively into my house. As I was crossing the street though, I noticed a tall bald man walking out of my now former neighbor's house. This man was Larry Andersen. Now it's not like I've never seen a famous person (strike that, semi-famous-to-certain-people person) before, I had just never seen one in front of my house. So, like the retard that I am, I screamed out:

Me: "Hey! (long pause) Larry Andersen!"

This caught him off guard (or at least I like to tell myself that it did) and stopped him in his tracks for what would definitely be an awkward conversation. My conversation skills are much better as the third-man, not so much the one on one, so I knew that this could potentially be dangerous but I had already called out his name like a mentally challenged stalker. Here's what followed, to the best I can remember:

Me: Hi, it's nice to meet you.
LA: You too.
Me: So, ah, I went and got my Vet seats today.
LA: Oh, really? I got mine last Saturday. We got to gets ours early.
Me: Ah I see. So you didn't have to wait in any lines like the rest of us.
LA: Yeah, it's one of the perks.
Me: Wow, nice.
LA: Yep.
Me (now realizing that I had nothing more to talk about): Well I gotta bring mine in, but first I'm gonna have lunch.
LA: I hear they're pretty heavy so good luck. Enjoy your lunch.
Me: Ha ha, I will. It was nice meeting you . . . I'm a big fan.
LA (confused): You too. Goodbye.
Me: Bye.

When I got in my house, I looked out the window to make sure that he had driven away, which he had. I was now free to laugh for the next five minutes, which I did. What an awkward conversation. Not only did I fail to mention my name or ask him why he was visiting my neighbor, but I somehow managed to get Larry Andersen to admit that he was a big fan of mine. It was unintentional, of course, but that's how it came out. Looking back, what I should have said was, "I'm a big fan . . . it was nice to meet you," but that's not what happened. Larry Andersen is a big fan of mine thanks to a technicality. Beat that, Jesus.

TO CLEAR THINGS UP: My former neighbor was a seamstress and was a friend of LA's wife so he was there to discuss curtains or dresses or whatever at least that's what I'm told.

So what's up for you next?

So since I'm sitting up waiting for Rilo Kiley to perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live with nothing else to do, I'm gonna post really quickly to hold you people over til the Baby Files, vol. II late tomorrow afternoon. Speaking of Kimmel, can someone please tell me why this show is still on the air? What is appealing about this show? Do you mean to tell me that this is better than The Magic Hour? I don't think you can tell me that. At least Magic got some guests every now and then. The number one guest on Kimmel is some actor from Wales named, Rhys Ifans. I guess Vincent Chase wasn't available.

The most serious picture of Rhys Ifans I could find:



Anyway I want voice my opinions on my speaking voice in this post. I was out with my friend Mike at a bar on Saturday night and while we were there I was talking to him about how I have an awful bar/loud place voice. For those of you out there in radio land who have heard me speak, this comes as no shock to you. By no means do I hate my voice. In fact I think it's kinda cool at times. I just don't have much volume which means I have to put on a fake broadcasting voice whenever I have to talk to someone in a loud place, which I hate doing. Most of the time I just try to scream as loud as I can but I wind up sounding like Webster, so I just stand there silent 'til I'm drunk enough to sing at the top of my lungs.

I also have a problem with my voice on the telephone, which is one of the many reasons why I hate the telephone in general. I couldn't begin to tell you how many daytime phonecalls from strangers have gone this following way for me:

Stranger: Hello is Mr. or Mrs. Duffy there.
Me: No, I'm sorry, they're at work.
Stranger: Oh, I'm sorry ma'am. I'll call back later.
Me (furiously under my breath): Ok.
Stranger: Thanks.
Me (now screaming as I hang up): I'M A MAN!!!

If I had a dollar for everytime that happened then I wouldn't feel as guilty as I do for not having a job.

RANDOM STORE WINDOW PICTURES FROM MY ARCHIVE:

This first one is from my trip with Fordham basketball to Milwaukee in December 2001.


The one reason I'd go back to Milwaukee. 

This one is from my trip to Chicago in July 2003.


For lack of a better caption -- How much is that doggy in the window? 

And finally from my January 2003 trip to Newport, RI with Fordham basketball.


There are too many things wrong with this sign. 

Smoking Gun Holding Ape

I originally intended for this post to be about something else, but I'm gonna hold off on that one for now because I need to talk about the Eagles. Here's a safe statement - they sucked yesterday. They were awful on offense and they couldn't stop a 40 year-old, 500 lb running back on defense. While the run defense is scary and doesn't look like it will be fixed in my lifetime, for the rest of it I say, "so what?" Wow, they lost a game. Uh-oh. As you could imagine, the sky is falling in Philadelphia and it started right as the game ended on the local postgame show. The current governor of this state, and ex-mayor of this city, Ed Rendell (aka the most successfull Ape-Man in the history of American politics, pictured below) is one of the panelists on the postgame show and his mood was that of the typical mood in Philadelphia after an Eagles loss (either that, or he still hasn't gotten over the fact that I struck out his son about 10 years ago). In case you didn't know, the Eagles will now never be able to win another game since they lost yesterday. To top that, now the whole media will focus on what they saw Terrell Owens do during the game on the sidelines when he was only trying to get McNabb back in the game with some fiery encouragement. I can't wait to read all the articles on this non-incident over the next week until T.O. celebrates his next TD will will be the main topic of discussion for the following week. "Journalists" like this uptight white guy named Skip will blow everything out of proportion again like he did last week even though he didn't know, or decided not to report on the complete story. Let the flaming begin.

Forest of back hair not pictured:



ONE MORE THING: In case you didn't see the game, or the highlites, Steelers WR Hines Ward did a mock T.O. celebration after his first TD by flapping his arms like wings which T.O. has done this year. This was hilarious and didn't bother me at all. That feeling ended though after Hines Ward's second TD when he did the SAME arm-flapping celebration. Come on, Hines. Is that the best you could do? Are there not enough T.O. celebrations or dances that you could choose from? This was flat out pathetic. If you're going to mock a creative TD celebration artist like T.O. at least be creative. He could've done crunches, or pretended to tear a sign down, or pull out a Sharpie, or called one of his ex-QBs gay, or grabbed pom-poms, or something. I could go on forever. There were about 90 other options that he decided to pass over. Instead we got a longer version of the first one. In the words of Awesome-O, "LAME."



BABY FILES UPDATE: Tomorrow afternoon.

Normal Again

***I apologize in advance for anyone this offends (with "anyone" meaning anyone who matters).***

Well I was riding high for about a week there. The Red Sox had just won eight straight games and their first World Series in 86 years, new South Park episodes were back again (and even though Turd Sandwich lost the election, I was still happy), and Terrell Owens danced his way into my heart with the greatest TD celebration of all time. Halloween even went well even though a bunch of lousy kids cleaned out my house's supply leaving me with only 3 mini Butterfingers. The voting even went better than I expected it would, which I said before. It was one of the best weeks of my life, and it was gonna end with what I had hoped would change the next four years of my life. Ah, but the gods of victory and happiness only had so much in store for me, and the more familiar gods of losers and despair came back and roundhouse kicked me back down to reality. If you hadn't figured out already, I'm talking about the cancellation of Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, the in-your-face step-brother of the Daily Show. I will now have to go back to watching the Seinfeld reuns on Fox at 11:30 but that's fine because I don't mind watching up to 8 episodes of that classic show a day.

I'll miss you, stupid!:



If you haven't figured out by now, I wasn't being completely honest about Colin Quinn (though that's probably the best picture of him that exists), his cancellation is more of a side dish to the cancellation of my liking this country. I'm not really as upset as you might think I am because I'm so used to watching everything that I root for lose (the Red Sox victory was merely a joyful hiccup in my tortured existence) that the Bush victory wasn't a big shock for me. I had just expected too much from the gods of victory and happiness, and I kinda even knew in the back of my mind that my enjoyment of life was about to run out, though I thought it would last me through the election. This also taught me that I put way to much faith into that Redskins last loss before the election theory. I was being toyed with, and that's cool cause at least I'm back to my normal life again and I have nothing more to expect.

Bush actually winning for real this time isn't as bad in my mind compared to the people that voted for him. I stayed up until 5 AM Wednesday morning, and wound up going to sleep holding onto the belief that more than half of this country wasn't retarded. When I woke up early Wednesday afternoon, this belief was shattered and my fears came true. It was over. My country officially sucks now. I looked at the map of results just to see what it finally looked like even though Iowa still wasn't decided though we all knew what the result would be. I got to thinking, and I have to tell you that it actually had nothing to do with the states that Kerry won, though seeing the blue made me realize something. What do the red states contribute? Really, I need to know. Aside from Disney World, parts of Virginia, and of course, the World's Larget Ball of Yarn, why are these states even part of the union? The blue states were the only ones that I had any desire to go to anyway before the election, and now especially after. All of these states are partially bordered on water, they all have cool and unique shapes, and they all have some sort of character, at least in my mind. The red states are all mostly flat, with born-again "moralists", and the potatoes and corn and wheat or whatever else they contribute is overrated. These are the people responsible for making Blue Collar TV and country music succesfull. These are the people who have kept Mad TV on the air for what seems like 48 years, and who understand what "hemi" means. These are the people whose corner store is thirty miles away and use their children's foreheads for ashtrays. These people are the ones who have never seen a gay person or been attacked by anything other than killer bees. They're all moral enough to be racists, homophobes, hunters, and incest practicers, though a pointless war doesn't seem to bother them.



I feel like I need to make this next point clear: I have nothing against Republicans, they're cool with me as long as they live in the important states. I know for a fact that they even agree with me about the red states. This isn't political at all, remember that. Though I might not agree with all their beliefs, I know that they're at least smart enough to pick them. Yes, I know that I generalized and stereotyped a large portion of this country, and yes, I see the irony in that. I just wanted to make it known how much of an intelluctual and cultural wasteland there is here, and how unfortunate it is that they have become the representatives of Americans worldwide.

So this is my proposal to everyone in the important states (and before you attack Wisconsin think about the cheese). How about we secede from the reast of the country. We all have the water access, and we have a good amount of cows and whiskey to last us for a few years. I really want to get the ball rolling on this one. All I need to do now is think of a new name. New America maybe. No, wait we secede but we keep the name America and call the waste states "Moralia". Yeah, that's what we'll do. Who's with me?


ONE MORE THING: I made a map of my plan for the new country but I can't show it to you until I figure out how to put it on the site since I did it in Paintbrush. Yes my computer is old, thank you. Do the newer ones even have Paintbrush anymore? Until then, please enjoy this map on the migration habits of the Robin.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Expect Baby Files, Volume II in the next couple of days. Baby is at my house now and her trip has been fantabulous so far. Looks like Monday or Tuesday as of now. I gotta write everything down that's happened so far right now before I forget it. Goodbydios.