Cat Develops Superpowers, Idiot Goes Drinking

It was an interesting weekend to say the least. It actually started a couple of months ago when I wrote about my new hero, the guy who is trying to visit 1000 bars in a year. I resolved that I would follow suit in my pathetic little way, and swore that I would ty to visit 100 bars in the rest of my life.

(If you want to read my original entry, it's here. If you want to read about the 1000 bars guy, his blog is here).

Anyhoo, one of my many awesome relatives read about my lofty goal, and offered to take me out to a few watering holes. I accepted happily, but first I had to find out what was killing my lawn.

You see, I pride myself on having the best lawn in the world, which is one of my chief qualifications for running for King of the World. The lawn at our new home apparently hasn't heard that I expect it to shape up, and little patches of it keep dying, looking as if they've been singed by some intensely hot flame.

The mini crop circles that were getting me down

I figured it was my neighbors, sneaking over in the night to ruin my lawn so that their lawns will look better by comparison, so I set up a secret hidden motion sensitive camera to see what I could find.

On the first night, I wasn't able to capture any of my neighbors on film, but the camera did capture several pictures of Fluffy, the family cat, lurking in the area.

Fluffy, lurking

I reset the camera and went about my business, excitedly babbling about the fact that soon I would be an actual bar and actually drinking, getting that first bar under my belt. To fill the hours until we shoved off on our adventure, I called everyone I knew and told them about my upcoming trip to a bar and how excited I'd be to finally be going to Bar #1. My excitement kind of died out when I got to the relative who had taken me to the Red Sox-Yankees game a while ago.

"You really are an Idiot," said he, "we went to a bar after the game."
"Huh?" said I.
"Waiting for the traffic to thin? Remember?"
"Uh, yeah, oops, heh-heh...."
And so it was that I got all fired up to go out and go to Bar #2 on my great quest to go to 100 bars.

The List begins, July 17, 2005:

Bar #1- Boston Billiards. I had a Sam Adams Summer Ale.
Bar #1a- Fenway Park, I had many many beers here.

So as the clock ticked down to our departure, I set the special motion sensitive camera and waited to see what I'd capture. I should probably mention that in the many pictures I'd captured of the lurking Fluffy, there were a few that were rather disquieting: in them, our beloved Fluffy has very strange eyes that actually seem to glow!

Fluffy's strange glowing eyes...

Finally, the time came and Mrs. Village Idiot pushed me out the door to go drinking.

[Important Editor's Note: between 1987 and 2004, The Village Idiot visited several thousand bars and frequented an amazing number of these same establishments. When he refers, in this article, to "Bar #1" and "Bar #2", he is saying that these are the first bars he's visited since vowing to visit 100 bars. The Legal Team here at Chez Village Idiot felt we should get this point cleared up before our e-mail floods with testimonials from people who have visited bars with the Idiot, which is usually a memorable experience for everyone except the Idiot, who usually can't remember much the next day.]

So, out we went. We were a motley crew of three; First there was our host, my relative, who threatened me with violence if I called him by either his name or referred to him as the Idiot Relative. When I asked him what he wanted to be called when I wrote about the evening in the blog, he gave me a name so filthy I'm still blushing about it, so for the sake of our more delicate readers I'll simply call him "W". Our other drinking buddy said that he had nothing to hide, so we should call him Al, which he said right after he announced that I should be his bodyguard for the evening.

W, Al and I had a great time and visited three Portsmouth, NH bars on that lovely night of July 23, 2005:
2) The Stockpot. I had a Red Stripe.
3) Jack Quigley's. I had a pint of Guinness or three.
4) Big Moe's. I had a 25 ounce schooner of Guinness.

Some notes:
-At the Stockpot, I raised the question as to what actually constitutes a bar, since most people would call the Stockpot a restaurant. We were on the deck of the place, which is outside, overlooking the harbor and does not serve food, but the rest of the place, the inside part, is clearly a restaurant. We couldn't come up with a clear definition that wouldn't include places like Fenway Park, which is why Fenway is tentatively listed as bar #1a.
Al kept coming up with definitions that would include my basement, ("they have beer", "they have a pool table and a dart board") because I'm pretty sure that he's getting addicted to the xBox game Halo, which we play in my basement everytime he visits Chez Idiot.

-Portsmouth has a seriously hopping nightlife, (which I assume ends once the nice weather and tourists go away). The streets were filled with throngs of happy people walking and enjoying the lovely evening, which is why I was especially sad when my host, W, took us away from the downtown area and took us to the last bar of the evening, a dive located in a strip-mall.
To my surprise, Big Moe's stock rose quickly. When the waitress announced that they had 25 ounce mugs of Guinness available, I knew I had found a home. A short time late,r when a gaggle of attractive female patrons decided that dancing promiscuously with each other would be a fun way to spend the evening, Big Moe's became the winner of the evening's best bar competition.


The Idiot in action

Eventually we made our way to our respective homes. The next morning I checked the images on the motion camera, and was absolutely shocked to discover that the burned patches on our lawn are made by our cat, Fluffy. I wouldn't expect you to believe it either, so here's the picture, straight from the old hidden camera:

Fluffy, eliminating mice with extreme prejudice.

We'd wondered why our dog was missing patches of fur from time to time, and why our youngest child calls the cat "Mr. Fluffy, Sir". Personally, I'm hoping that the cat soon discovers that there are mice on the neighbor's property because our lawn is really starting to look awful.

I must go now to see if Mr. Fluffy needs anything.

Matt Dillon- Proof That the Aliens Have Landed

I just took one of the kids to see Herbie Fully Loaded. Matt Dillon plays a major part in this film, just as he did in the original Herbie movies from the 1960s. The creepy part is that he doesn't look a day older, which got me thinking.

After some careful consideration, I'm pretty sure that Matt Dillon is an alien. He's been in our movies for something like forty years and really doesn't look much different than he did when he started. I suspect that his people have discovered how to assume our basic shape and infiltrate our people, but they haven't figured out how to age themselves yet. This explains why a number of Hollywood stars haven't aged as much as the rest of us have, which includes both Dillon and Bob Saget. On the other hand, look at what an awful job Michael Jackson has done trying not to age.

(I might also point out that the aliens have got themselves a remarkable agent, considering the fact that they've kept Saget in roles for over twenty years with almost no obvious talent. I'll leave the full thinking on this giant conspiracy to the great minds out there who read my blog, but I will offer up this one possible clue: both Saget and Matt Dillon's brother currently appear on HBO's Entourage, which is produced by Marky Mark Wahlberg, who hasn't aged much either....)

There, I've thrown it out there. If I disappear in the night, you'll know I was right, but I say if the worst the aliens want to do is entertain us, let them come, though I would appreciate a few more women from whatever ageless planet Heather Locklear came from.


Matt Dillon comes from the planet DickClark

Ethiopians- This Year's Must-Have Accessory

Last year, Paris Hilton made those little dogs fashionable.


You remember, she was toting her chihuahua* around and pretty soon everyone had to have a little dog too. The always fashionable Village Idiot lugged our bassett hound around for a few days, and would probably still be doing so if it weren't for the herniated disc combined with the plethora of unpleasant smells that bassetts produce.


So, last week I was bringing in Mrs. Village Idiot's mail and read the cover of her People magazine. It appears that Angelina and Brad are going to adopt a small batch of African orphans. "Holy Crap!" thought I, "they've discovered next year's chihuahua!" Soon I expect that all of Hollywood's A-list will be jetting off to Africa and adopting babies to haul around on their arms. If I had a little venture capital, I might set up a center where they could rent babies from me for big events, but I'm still trying to rebuild my finances after investing so heavily in my last eerily similar can't-miss scheme, "Rent a Spice Girl."

Mark my words, people. Everyone from Britney to Cameron to Demi will soon be spotted toting babies instead of Chihuahuas.

Trendy Paris Hilton in 2006?

*"Toting Her Chihuahua" is a punk rock band just waiting to happen, don'tcha think?

Gotta Get Me Some 'Roids

For a long time, I figured that the only "Roid Rage" we'd suffer at Chez Idiot would result from hemorrhoids not steroids, but having caught a segment of actual television news last night, I might have to go out and get me some of them steroids.

I've known for a long time that steroids could help me develop the buns of steel I've been cultivating all these years, but I'm happy enough with my current rigorous program of sitting/napping/ and stretching that the benefits of steroid use didn't seem so great. (I'm going with arteriosclerosis as my bodybuilding program, I'm on schedule to have buns, arteries and abs of steel by 2017, assuming the couch holds up).

Anyhoo, last night, in the middle of my nap/workout, I heard on the news that Kenny Rogers pushed a cameraman around before a baseball game a couple of weeks ago. "Big deal," thought I, "who hasn't slapped the paparazzi at some point?"

Out of curiosity, I looked up at the tv to see how The Gambler looks these days and I'll be damned if he doesn't look like a whole different guy. It turns out that he was at the baseball game to PLAY, not to sing! The Kenny Rogers of my youth was a paunchy country singer of cheesey ballads. The guy on tv is an all-star pitcher.

Holy Crap, those steriods really DO work!


How Else Can This Be Explained?

Chillaxing With The Idiot

Ok, loyal readers, I lied.
I didn't really boycott the media, I actually went on vacation with the fambly.
(Though those media bastards better pay attention to my campaign soon or I'll do something drastic like cancel my subscription to People!)

It was a very nice week of vacation. The Teen explained that she liked it because we spent much of it just "chillaxing", which in kid-speak means lying around doing very little. How this exactly differs from her routine at home I'm not sure, but that's fodder for some other blog and probably years of therapy.

Anyhoo, being in the midst of a heated campaign for King of the World, I used the vacation to get some serious work done. First, I started lining up celebrities for endorsements.

I started with Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band.

The Idiot Fambly was treated to the DMB concert in Mansfield, Massachusetts on July 10 by some very nice friends of ours who also were able to get us backstage to meet the band.

I intended to get Mr. Matthews on board with my campaign, but again found myself rendered dumb in the face of celebrity and instead babbled and gurgled and cooed, which was ok because Mr. Matthews was won over by Mrs. Village Idiot, who impressed him with her abilities at sculpting things from Play-doh. (No, she doesn't carry it with her, she and our children were chillaxing on the lawn in the backstage area playing Play-doh with some of the little kids that belong to the band and the crew when Dave walked up).

Despite my idiocy, I think he'll be on board when the campaign kicks into high gear. Who can resist a woman with Play-doh?

The view from the wings

For DMB fans, it was a great show:

I'll Back You Up [tease]
So Much To Say
One Sweet World
Dancing Nancies
Warehouse
Dream Girl
Hello Again
Out Of My Hands
Grey Street
Hunger For The Great Light
Smooth Rider
Crash
Bartender
Stir It Up [tease]
Louisiana Bayou
Too Much
__________________

Stolen Away On 55th & 3rd
All Along The Watchtower

From there, the Idiot fambly went to Newport, R.I. for some serious chillaxing. We toured the area, including the many Gilded Age Mansions built by the super-rich to be used as summer cottages. The most impressive of these was The Breakers, built by Vanderbilts in the 1890s. It has 70 rooms, over 130,000 square feet of house, and was used for only two months a year or so. Yes, this will be a nice palace for me when I'm king.

the Breakers, THEIR SUMMER COTTAGE!

Finally, last evening, one of my many fantastic relatives, who also happens to be a genuine big-shot, took pity on me and took me to the Red Sox-Yankees game. His seats are directly behind the visitors dug-out where we could "put our beers right on top of the Yankee dug-out" as he explained on the drive down. The seats were so good I was afraid that after too many beers I'd think that chaining myself to them would be a good idea, but fortunately we made it home without any ugly Idiot incidents. Since I would never use Yankees for campaign endorsements, and the only celebrity I saw was my new love, Kelly the Ball-Girl, I got to take the night off from campaigning and chillax in those awesome seats. It was disappointing that the Sox lost, and equally disappointing that yelling "yo yo ma" at Hideki Matsui didn't even get him to look up. (Gary Sheffield DID look up, and I'm still a little frightened).

Kelly the ball girl, my new love


So now I'm back and ready to roll. I send a sincere thank you out to those of you who know who you are.

La Salsa De Tomate

I was reading the ketchup bottle the other day, (yes, it got a little slow around here) and the label informed me that in Spanish, ketchup is La Salsa de Tomate. How does one order Salsa, then? What about the dance that's called the Salsa? The music? What if I innocently order ketchup and the burly waiter thinks I'm asking him to dance and beats me to a pulp? This is why there hasn't been a Spanish speaking world power since the Armada went down.

As interesting as all that is, though, I'm actually logging in to inform my loyal readers that I will not be posting anything this week to protest my campaign's treatment by the national press. I've been running for King for like three months now and haven't gotten a single headline anywhere. It's just wrong. To protest the fact that Paris Hilton's dog has a better shot of becoming King, I'm starting a week-long media boycott here at Chez Idiot. One solid week of no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury, like David Caruso, primitive as can be. Join us here next week my friend, I'll be back and ready to kick this campaign into high gear.

On the Fourth Of July...

Dear Iraqi People,

I've been reading in the news that you've been somewhat resistant to the American troops in your country. As I'm running for King of the World, and as I am proud to be a U.S. citizen by birth, I thought I would write you all a letter on this most awesome of American holidays to let you know that we Americans are good people, that we welcome you into our society, and that you should just chill the heck out with this blowing stuff up business.

Today is the Fourth of July, which is cool because we actually have a holiday called the Fourth of July and we celebrate it on Independence Day, which is the first Monday of July, also known to our Spanish speaking amigos as the Cinco de Mayo. On this day we celebrate the fact that our Founding Father, George Washington, finally got the Pilgrims all sorted out and got them to sign the Constitution so that the hearing impaired people could understand it. There were a lot of hearing impaired people back then because of the fact that they'd just invented fireworks, which are really loud. You can tell that they were all deaf because at one point they rang the liberty bell so hard it cracked. (I don't think they had come up with that "close captioning" for television yet, which is why getting the document done in sign language was such a big deal).

Once George Washington got the Pilgrims to settle down and eat turkey instead of Indians and then got them to sign the constitution, he went out and turned his attention to the British, who were over here taxing us but not representing us. He beat them in the Battle of the Bulge, the Battle of Trenchtown and the most famous battle of the war, Bunker Hill. (It's a little known factoid that the battle was actually fought on Hillshire Farm). Once he beat them, the British, famous for their singing groups like Beethoven, The Spice Girls and Beatles, always sang Yankee Doodle to our soldiers. Yankee Doodle is a song about making a macaroni salad, which is why we eat a lot on July 4th and why it's called "Cinco de Mayo" in Spanish, because of the Mayonaise we put in the macaroni salad.

On July 4th we also eat a lot of hot dogs, which you lovely Iraqi people will love when you adopt our ways! Many of your Middle Eastern chums who have come to America already have found great jobs working in our convenience stores, and those stores almost always do a booming business in selling hot dogs to Americans who are on the go! See? Our cultures are incredibly compatible: one of our greatest Americans, Ben Franklin, invented the hot dog AND the convenience store so that your people can become part of the American fabric by staffing these stores AND selling this most patriotic of food!

At the end of every Fourth of July, before we're too tipsy from all the great Budweiser (another Franklin invention I believe), we either drag the family to the town's fireworks display or, in states that allow us to, we light our own fireworks displays. Now, having seen on the news how partial you people are to explosions, I think you'll relate to this holiday of ours.

See, I dragged my family to the town's awesome fireworks display after spending a fantastic day eating hot dogs and drinking beer. It occurred to me during the fireworks that this really is a pretty special place, and that there are an awful lot of our people over in your country who really just want to come home and have a great day like I had. The sooner you stop blowing each other up and the sooner you form your own government, the sooner our people can come home, so please hurry. Just think, your new government will be able to create cool holidays like ours did, all those years ago.

Sincerely,
The Village Idiot

That's me, to the left of the big toe

Last week we bought a kayak.

As I'm an idiot and have no previous kayaking experience, Mrs. Village Idiot called our life insurance guy, doubled my coverage, and sent me out to the river with her blessing.

Then, for my maiden voyage, she followed with the camera.
"Just to heckle," she said.

"Cool," thought I, "action pictures of the Village Idiot tackling the massive rapids."

Here's the results:

Our cat wanders the woods. She captured his entire journey on film, so there are perhaps ten more of him. Some further, some closer. Note that the shot does not include an idiot flailing about in a kayak. The other shots of our cat's meanderings are similarly sans flailing idiot.

My Favorite Series from that day:

Mrs. Village Idiot's feet. Note, again, the crucial kayaking element seems to be missing. Apparently, she's witnessed my bumbling idiocy enough over the years so that my desperate efforts to flog the river into submission with a purple kayak paddle just to the left of her feet didn't warrant any camera time.

Maybe, if I can get my hands on a cool craft like a space shuttle or a Diet Coke truck, she'll let me into the picture.