Roberts Will Make a Great Supreme Court Justice!

What the hell is wrong with you people? Julia Roberts will make a great Supreme Court justice! I admit, I've been a little too busy to read the articles about her nomination, just all the headlines that say there's gonna be a big fight to get her approved. Personally, I plan on voting for her when we go to the polls about it this November, because I think she'll make a great justice just based on her movies!

Let's look at her record: Thanks to IMDB for the research

1. Satisfaction (1988)- Didn't see it
2. Baja Okhlahoma (1988)- Didn't see it, but it shows she knows all about the Oklahoma Baha!
3. Mystic Pizza (1988)- Didn't see it, but I think that people liked this movie.
4. Steel Magnolias (1989)- Uh, it turns out I've not seen many of her movies after all.
5. Pretty Woman (1990)- Ah-ha! I saw this one! Judging by this movie, Roberts will be half of a two justice hooker-friendly voting block (with Justice Thomas).
6. Flatliners, Sleeping with the Enemy (1990, 1991) I saw both of these but have forgotten what they're about as well as the fact she was in them.
7. Hook (1991) Saw this one. She was Tinkerbell, which means she's in favor of animated women in skimpy costumes. This is a Supreme Court nominee I can back fully.
8. (There were a whole bunch of her movies from 1991-2002 that I either didn't see, (Notting Hill, Runaway Bride) didn't like (The Pelican Brief, The Mexican) or forgot she was in (Michael Collins, Ocean's Eleven, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind). Let's just say that this body of work shows that she's a hard worker, and leave it there.
9. Erin Brockovich (200o) Yeah, I know, it's supposed to be great, but I didn't see it. I know enough of the story to know she'd make a great justice based on all the acting she did in this movie. I mean, I think it's even got something to do with the law, so she's halfway there already!
10. Yeah, she's got other movies too. I don't think I've seen them.

Also, she was married to Lyle Lovett, who is a super cool human.

I think I've made my case pretty clearly, Julia Roberts will make a great Supreme Court Justice, stop the silly debating and join me in voting for her in November!

Fantasy Update #2

Yeah #2 is right. Total Crap.

Way back on April 3rd, I had a post called Fantasy Update #1. I hoped it would be the first in a series of posts that would chronicle the championship run my fantasy baseball team, the Wicked Good Team, would make. Surely with media scrutiny from the crack reporters here at Kicked Puppies, my team would flourish!

Note that I said "I hoped". Historically my baseball teams have finished 3rd and 4th in a league of 12-14 teams. This year, the bottom fell out. I spent much of the year in 14th place, managed to climb all the way into 9th, and seem to have settled into 10th. I am currently 8 points behind the friend I make fun of for drafting Ken Griffey Jr with the league's first pick year after year after year.

Here's the current line-up, in all its craptacular splendor:

C J. Varitek (Bos - C)
1B D. Erstad (LAA - 1B)
2B J. Vidro (Was - 2B)
3B M. Ensberg (Hou - 3B)
SS R. Aurilia (Cin - 2B,3B,SS)
OF M. Ramírez (Bos - OF)
OF C. Crawford (TB - OF)
OF J. Guillén (Was - OF)
Util J. Dye (CWS - OF)
BN S. Sosa DL (Bal - OF)
BN M. Lowell (Fla - 3B)

SP A. Eaton (SD - SP)
SP S. Downs (Tor - SP,RP)
RP B. Wagner (Phi - RP)
RP B. Looper (NYM - RP)
P T. Hudson (Atl - SP)
P O. Hernández (CWS - SP)
P K. Benson (NYM - SP)
BN G. Chacín (Tor - SP,RP)
BN T. Glavine (NYM - SP)
BN B. SheetsDL (Mil - SP)
DL M. Hampton DL (Atl - SP)

Here's what people have contributed over this miserably long season:
Batters R HR RBI SB AVG
J. Varitek (Bos - C) 64 21 63 2 .301
M. Ramírez (Bos - OF) 92 33 115 1 .288
J. Giambi (NYY - 1B) 6 1 3 0 .175
J. Vidro (Was - 2B) 36 7 30 0 .271
K. Matsui (NYM - 2B,SS) 21 3 21 3 .234
C. Crawford (TB - OF) 73 11 67 29 .281
J. BagwellDL (Hou - 1B) 11 3 15 0 .250
M. Lowell (Fla - 3B) 16 2 12 0 .187
R. Mondesí NA (Atl - OF) 4 0 2 0 .100
K. Lofton (Phi - OF) 5 0 0 0 .333
J. Lane (Hou - OF) 10 2 8 4 .182
R. Branyan (Mil - 3B) 1 0 0 0 .167
T. Martínez (NYY - 1B) 10 4 12 0 .222
M. Grudzielanek (StL - 2B) 17 2 19 5 .257
J. Dye (CWS - OF) 46 21 58 7 .317
M. Ensberg (Hou - 3B) 55 25 69 3 .262
G. Jenkins (Mil - OF) 11 2 8 0 .173
O. Sáenz (LAD - 1B,3B) 0 0 0 0 .000
D. Erstad (LAA - 1B) 45 2 27 7 .278
F. Thomas DL (CWS - Util) 11 7 19 0 .188
J. Guillén (Was - OF) 36 10 32 1 .323
R. Aurilia (Cin - 2B,3B,SS) 27 7 28 1 .271
S. Sosa DL (Bal - OF) 0 0 0 0 .000
Totals 597 163 608 63 .267

Pitchers W SV K ERA WHIP
B. Sheets DL (Mil - SP) 10 0 141 3.33 1.07
B. Wagner (Phi - RP) 4 32 65 1.60 0.85
B. Looper (NYM - RP) 4 28 25 3.33 1.37
J. Putz (Sea - RP) 1 0 5 0.00 1.50
Z. Day NA (Col - SP,RP) 0 0 9 4.91 1.70
A. Eaton (SD - SP) 9 0 70 3.59 1.38
M. Hampton DL (Atl - SP) 5 0 27 3.50 1.33
T. Hudson (Atl - SP) 11 0 92 3.28 1.33
D. Bautista DL (KC - SP) 0 0 1 16.20 2.10
U. Urbina (Phi - RP) 1 9 30 3.55 1.26
G. Chacín (Tor - SP,RP) 7 0 81 4.04 1.50
K. Benson (NYM - SP) 8 0 77 3.89 1.23
J. Borowski (TB - RP) 0 0 10 7.20 1.30
Ru. Hernández DL (KC - SP) 3 0 25 4.82 1.39
D. Houlton (LAD - SP,RP) 0 0 6 6.27 1.66
O. Hernández (CWS - SP) 1 0 33 4.97 1.14
T. Glavine (NYM - SP) 3 0 15 2.50 1.08
Totals 67 69 712 3.67 1.28

But, life does get better. In fantasy football, I've actually won the league a couple of times and had I not suffered freakish losses during the playoffs would have gone all the way in each of the last two years. Our draft was yesterday, my team looks strong, especially for a 14 team league. I had the sixth pick on odd numbered rounds and the eighth pick on even numbered rounds.

QB K. Collins (Oak - QB)
WR N. Burleson (Min - WR)
WR D. Branch (NE - WR)
WR P. Burress (NYG - WR)
RB C. Portis (Was - RB)
RB D. McAllister (NO - RB)
TE A. Crumpler (Atl - TE)
BN T. Jones (Chi - RB)
BN J. Harrington (Det - QB)
BN L. Suggs (Cle - RB)
BN K. Curtis (StL - WR)
BN D. Jolley (NYJ - TE)
BN P. Crayton (Dal - WR)
K N. Kaeding (SD - K)
DEF Philadelphia

Of course the brightest side of all is that the Red Sox are in first place in the real world, college football starts this weekend and the pros start next weekend.

I hope they can get The Big Easy mopped up soon so those people can enjoy it too, we here at Kicked Puppies are remembering New Orleans and all the rest of the areas hurt by Katrina in our prayers.

Got Cheese?

You know what good cheesey tv is: TV that you know you shouldn't watch and know you shouldn't like but you get sucked into it anyhow. Good cheese is TV that you watch despite the fact that you feel a little guilty for watching something this dumb.

Dog The Bounty Hunter is Good Cheese.

The guy, and his wife, pictured above, dress like something out of a 1970s Heavy Metal band, live in Hawaii, and capture "criminals". I use the word "criminal" in quotations because in the episodes I've watched, they have yet to actually bring in someone dangerous, but nonetheless they dress and act as if they're going to war every time they go out to round up the jaywalker or purse-snatcher in question.

You really won't believe how cheesey it is until you watch it for yourself.

The show is on A&E and they run it pretty frequently, lately on Tuesday or Wednesday nights. The episode that is my personal favorite, The Godfather of Waikiki, will be aired again on September 7th at 8:00pm. (And yes, I did have to go look the listings up to write this, amazing that I do research for this crap, eh?)
I don't want to ruin it for you, but Dog has to bring in a fugitive that they refer to (repeatedly) as "The Godfather of Waikiki". Sounds dangerous don't it!

The Village Idiot, bringing good cheese to the masses since August, 2005.

Happy Birthday, Regis.

I was wurfing (surfing at work) through "this day in history" today, and learned that nothing very interesting happened, unless you're totally into the fact that in 1944, Romania declared war on Germany, in 1875, Capt. Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, and in 1825, mighty Uruguay declared independence from Brazil.

Then I got to the birthdays, it's a rather impressive list:
Today:

Game show host Monty Hall is 84.
Actor Sean Connery is 75.
Talk show/game show host Regis Philbin is 74.
Rock singer-actor Gene Simmons is 56.
Rock singer Elvis Costello is 51.
Movie director Tim Burton is 47.
Country singer Billy Ray Cyrus is 44.
Actor Blair Underwood is 41.
Rap DJ Terminator X is 39.
Television chef Rachael Ray is 37.
Model Claudia Schiffer is 35.
Actor Kel Mitchell is 27.

There were others, and perhaps if I were either artsy or fartsy I would have heard of them. As is, I find this list to be stunning.

I mean, just Monty Hall's birthday is worthy of celebration, but you throw in Regis Philbin, Billy Ray Cyrus amd Terminator X and it should be a National Holiday. In fact, if I had done any work at work today I would feel totally cheated.

A couple of thoughts that came to me out of this extensive research:
1) So much for Astrology, eh? Born today, they are all Virgos, and their horoscope today is Get in touch with your earthy side. Cook a great meal. Get some exercise. Ok, Rachel Ray can cook the meal, and Claudia Schiffer can get the exercise, unless Monty Hall wants to make a deal and Regis wants to talk, then Gene and Tim can.... yeah. Born under a Bad Sign.

2) It's waaaaaaaay past time to give Sean Connery a rest as the "romantic leading man". They cast him as a love interest for Catherine Zeta Jones a few years ago and I almost barfed during the make-out scenes. I mean, it should be a crime that the incredibly babe-alicious Ms. Jones is married to an Old Fart like Michael Douglas, there's no need to make it worse by having her canoodle with Connery.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

If Sean Connery did the casting,
he'll forever be my hero.

Happy Birthday all.

Go Ahead, Stop Believing

Saturday night I went to a bachelor party.

Given my widely ranging history with the things, and the number of things that can go wrong with them, I think it went quite well. No one was arrested, no one got into any fights, and no one ran off with a stripper. I personally delivered the groom-to-be back to his abode in the wee hours of the morning with both his dignity and virginity still intact.

I was more than a little curious as to how the evening would go. When I was young and stupid, bachelor parties were the wildest of the wild animals; you mess with them only at your own risk.

Then, a couple of years ago, I went to a bachelor party for my friend Robb. The day started with a round of golf. As we laced up our sporty golf shoes in the parking lot, one of the guys started talking about a restaurant he'd been to the previous evening. For the next eighteen holes, these guys talked about food and nothing else. They traded grilling recipes, deep-frying tips, and restaurant reviews; it was unbelievable.

Sausages of the world and where to find good examples of them seemed to be a favorite topic, so after a dozen or so holes of hearing about the knockwurst at the Brathaus, I started randomly shouting slang terms for various parts of the female anatomy, just to keep the "bachelor party" theme alive. I didn't know if maybe I was out of line, I mean these guys are a few years younger than I am as well as from a different part of the country; I didn't know if maybe all Midwestern Bachelor Parties are what I dubbed "sausage fests".

After the golf, the party moved to a restaurant. Even though we did in fact make it to strip clubs later in the evening, the day's event that got the singlemost enthusiastic response from the guys was the fact that the restaurant's special that evening was a combo of ribs AND filet mignon, as there had been considerable discussion and debate all afternoon as to which one each of the guys would get, and I think that having to choose between the two was causing some anxiety. Their relief, when they heard the special, was palpable, like when the kegs or the strippers arrive safely at normal bachelor parties.

Based on the sounds of joy when the waitress told them the special, I figured that the restaurant would be the last stop of the evening for most of them. No mere stripper could offer them more happiness than the waitress just had. I'm not making this up.

So you can imagine my trepidation about another bachelor adventure. I mean, I did have a good time at Robb's memorable celebration of the sausage, but what if I was out of step with the times and the bachelor party tradition had completely left me behind like some crazed tourette's addled dinosaur shouting out obscenities on every green?

People my age don't need bachelor parties because we're old. Most of my friends, like me, have been married so long that we don't even look before we cross the street anymore. Still, I was game, and, as I was with the Robb party, I was just happy to be invited.

Then, the bachelor, who will be cleverly referred to as "Not Al" to keep his identity a secret, told me that the first stop of the evening would be at a Journey concert.

Yes, that Journey.

Remarkably, they still look like this

I looked it up and learned that Journey is touring again, and that they were to play in a venue called the Bank of America Pavillion, which is a giant tent on Boston Harbor. I assumed that playing a tent was one click away from opening up for tractor pulls on the state fair circuit, until I saw that they were charging almost $100 per ticket. Not only did we get no tractor-pull, there wasn't even an opening act. For $100 I thought they could at least throw in a few monster trucks or something, instead we got a complimentary copy of the as-yet unreleased new album from Journey.

(If my arteries weren't still clogged from Robb's bachelor party, I'm sure my heart would have been all a-twitter at the thought of owning an unreleased Journey album).

Now, I don't know if you can sense this, but I was not a Journey fan when they were super-huge back in the '80s. My friend "Not Al" and his friends were huge fans, and I was happy to go along and honored to be invited. The band played for like three hours, and played a whole range of songs, including many old chestnuts from before they were good big. They also played many songs from their newer albums, including their latest as-yet unreleased crap album.

For the record, Steve Perry is no longer with the band, but they do have a singer who sounds just like him and who prances almost as well. Neil Schon, the guitarist who founded the group, is apparently kinda touchy about the fact that Journey was really huge when Steve Perry was their singer and then was kinda awful not big without him, so every night he's treating his audiences to a solid hour and a half of music that doesn't feature Steve Perry, and which, coincidently, is an hour and a half of music that sucks well, frankly sucks. Not that the Steve Perry stuff is my cup of tea, but it's at least tea I've turned down before.

Actually, all jokes aside, I had a great time despite the fact I'm not a Journey fan, especially considering that when I usually go to concerts, the crowd full of youths makes me feel old. Compared to Journey's fanbase, I'm a spring chicken.

On the way to the concert I got to bar #10 on my quest for 100.
#10) TGIFriday's Woburn, Massachusetts. I had a couple of Guinnesses.
Lovely place. Take the family.

After the concert, I got to bar #11
#11) The Squire Lounge, Revere, Massachusetts. I had a Murphy's Irish Stout and a Coors Light (yeah, I know, it was a gift).
Lovely place. Don't, under any circumstances, take the family here.

A good time was had by all, including the cranky non-Journey fan, and I send a shout out to Not Al, for whom we wish the best.

Kidney for sale: I need to fill up my tank.

Exxon Mobil earned $25 Billion in Profits last year.
Exxon Mobil earned $8 Billion in Profits in the last quarter alone.

As the BBC says: (put on a good British accent when you read this next line)
The firm's annual profit is higher than the gross domestic product of Syria.

Now, I drive a giant SUV that gets about 3 miles to the gallon and even has a special button I can push to dump gas out onto the highway when I feel like being especially wasteful. (Yes, we also got the feature that allows us to track down and run over endangered species).

Thus, I'm forbidden by contract to complain about gas prices, but sheesh, aren't we winning a war in an oil rich country? Those Iraqis must love us by now and would probably love to get us a deal on oil, eh? Didn't our President used to be in the oil business? Can't he get us a deal?

When I'm king, all cars will run on love, or flatulence, depending on which you have more of.

Bill that to Butt Munch

I loved the recent story about the lady that called to complain to her cable company, and the next bill arrived addressed to "Bitch Dog"

"I was like you got to be freaking kidding me," said LaChania Govan, 25. "I was so mad I couldn't even cuss."

The even better story, though, was the guy who was getting his energy bill addressed to "Jeffrey Scrotum Bag Barnes," which Mr. Barnes says is not his middle name.

Any day now I expect that companies with whom I've exchanged lively and animated phone calls will start sending their bills to "ass-bag" or "total tool," which is cool because thenI can just hand them off to baseball analyst Tim McCarver.

As for the quality of insults, I'm totally unimpressed with "bitch dog," and only slightly amused by "scrotum bag". The employees, now former employees, would have done well to go to the Shakespearian Insult Generator and gotten some good words like "puny hedge-born pumpion" or "mewling earth-vexing coxcomb". Should they want a more political tone, they could have gone with the North Korean insult generator and called these people "bellicose bloodsuckers" or "psychopathological hooligans."

Shall We Have A Caption Contest?

-Pleased to Meet You, Little George.
-The Republican Conga Line
-Whattaya Mean Monica Was Busy?
-I know they're here somewhere.
-This Is How We Greet People In My Country
-Ooh Ooh, I'm Next! I'm Next!

Take it from there, readers.

Hi Diddley-ho P.Diddle!

Didja see that P. Diddy changed his name again?

A brief history for those of you not as hip as the Village Idiot:
Sean Combs, who was a rap artiste back in the day, stopped using the name 'Sean Combs' and started calling himself 'Puff Daddy' many years ago. A while later, he got tired of that moniker and started calling himself 'P.Diddy.'
As of yesterday, he stopped calling himself 'P.Diddy' and is only going by 'Diddy..

I am not making this up.


Ned Flanders, noted P.Diddely fan

"I felt like the 'P' was getting between me and my fans and now we're closer," Diddy said.
"During concerts, half the crowd is saying 'P. Diddy'--half the crowd is chanting 'Diddy'--now everybody can just chant 'Diddy.'"

Ok, I was all geared up to make fun of the man until I read that. You see, he has fans. I'm lucky if I can get my nine year old to give me a high five in public, let alone get a group of strangers to chant my name. Instead of hating the player, I decided to learn the game.

From now on, I'm dropping the first letter of my name too, so from here on in call me the Illage Diot. Don't diss the new name, friends, I went through many many rejected ideas before I was able to come up with my new most fly handle.

Here are some names for myself that I rejected along the way:

1. P.Diddly
2. Count Chockula
3. L.E. Vator
4. @
5. Pookie
6. L33t Playa
7. Nerd Boy (suggested by Mrs. Village Idiot when she read #6)
8. Ooooooh, that really smells! (also suggested by the Mrs., I'm not sure why).
9. Lumpy
10. Does this make my ass look big?
11. Inigo Montoya
12. Def Phat Blingmaster J
13. Ben Dover
14. Survivor Vanuatu
15. The Vanilla Swirl
16. Dog, the Bounty Hunter
17. Darth Something
18. Mr. Tibbs

Yeah, I think Illage Diot is the best of the bunch too.

Going back to the real Diddle for a moment, Sean had this to say about why he changed his name:
He confessed that his unwieldy name was even starting to befuddle him.

"I even started to get confused myself--and when I'd called someone on the telephone it took me a long time to explain who I was. Too long," Diddy told the New York Post.
"One word. Five letters. Period," he added.

Technically, of course, it's only three letters, with one of them repeating three times, but who's counting.

In the interview, you'll notice that he said "five letters. Period". The astute reader will have already noticed that I chose not to include a period after my proposed nicknames, though I did include a question mark with proposed nickname #10 and an exclamation point for #8.

In the end, Sean Puffy Diddly Combs is obviously an ass, but it's ok because he's given me something to laugh about all day long.
Personally, I prefer old school Diddley's:

Bo Diddley, who, ironically, thought about changing his name to Sean Combs

America's New Obsession

It's official, I've started a craze. This past weekend, chums came all the way from Cincinnati, Ohio just to go drinking with the Idiot.

[Editor's Note: Actually, they came to visit with the family, perhaps do a little shopping, and explore New Hampshire in general. Because he is an Idiot, we allow him to think what he wants to, until we absolutely have to spend the effort required to make him see the truth. In this case, it simply wasn't worth it].

So, on Saturday, the womens went shopping and the boys went drinking. All of the bars are in Portsmouth, NH

Bar #6- The Portsmouth Brewery- One of my favorite pubs in Portsmouth. I had an Old Brown Dog and my drinking partner, who wanted to be known as Teemu, had a porter. It was his last wise beer choice of the day.

Bar #7- Muddy River Smokehouse- I had Guinness (or three) and Teemu had some sort of gawdawful cream ale, maybe a Boddington's. This place has great food, by the way.

Bar #8- Fat Belly's I had a Guinness (or three) and Teemu had a horrendously horrible blueberry flavored beer. I should mention that we got the bar manager to flip through the tv stations while we sat, and we convinced him (and everyone in the bar) to watch Alone In the Wilderness, the great PBS movie about Dick Proenneke, who went to Alaska to live by himself. (Yeah, The PGA Championship was boring and the only baseball on was the Diamondbacks against the Braves).

Dick Proenneke's Cabin

Bar #9- Portsmouth Gaslight Company- We rounded out our mini-pubcrawl at the lovely Portsmouth Gaslight. I had a Guinness (or three) and Teemu ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon to keep his streak of fantastically bad beers alive. This place has awesome pizza, by the way.

So there you have it: America's new craze, drinking with the Idiot. A good time was had by all and no animals were injured during the filming of this episode. If, by chance, you want to get a head start on America's next craze, Dick Proenneke, click on the link below and order yourself the DVD from Amazon. (The Idiot Family will even get a cut, so order two or three and give them out as gifts!)


Click on the picture to order the video, it's almost as fun as drinking with the Village Idiot!

Thug Life Under the King

Ok, it's time for me to mull over some policies for when I'm king. Forgive me if it's a bit muddled, but I'm working on the fly. (Yes, the damned thing got stuck and I can't get it to zip all the way).

I was originally going to make everything legal unless it involves physically hurting someone. No doubt this would send the lawyers into fits of joy because they could go to work coming up with loopholes and addendums and all those great things that lawyers do, and while they're busy doing that we could enjoy a little lawyer-free quality time, so it looked like a win-win deal for the King.

However, I've been silly, I read some current events type stuff recently.

Dig this: We're at war with Drugs. Did you know that?
It's true, and apparently this war is out to take the place of Viet Nam as America's Longest War. I mean, I knew about Afghanistan and Iraq, but I didn't realize that George Bush the Elder had opened up this front against drugs and we hadn't yet whupped them.

It was this week's Newsweek that clued me in, apparently we're losing the war on drugs. War, What is it good for?


Newsweek in Current America

Then, I read in a recent Rolling Stone that we have something called a Drug Czar. Does that title sound a little scary? What the hell is a Czar? Don't they wrestle bears or something?

Anyhow, according to what I've been reading between Newsweek and Rolling Stone, we've been spending trillions of dollars on the War on Drugs, spending something like 50 billion this year alone, and our new Drug Czar is using much of that money to go after pot heads.

Really.

Ever met a pot head? They're really not much of a danger to you unless you happen to be a pint of ice cream or a Hostess Cupcake. In fact, these are the same people that have come up with some hilarious ways of circumventing drug tests, including The Original Whizzinator. We shouldn't be locking these people up, we should be recruiting them and harnessing that creative energy to write sitcoms for television. The current crop of crap on tv is really starting to be a problem, but that's a different topic.

I studied a little U.S. History and saw that Prohibition of Alcohol didn't work, in fact, it backfired and gave outlaws a commodity that they could sell. The fact that drugs are illegal has done exactly the same thing. Our government has made some very bad and very ruthless people very very rich by making drugs illegal, and according to Newsweek and Rolling Stone, hasn't done much to stem the flow of drugs.

So, when I'm King, drugs will be legal. All of 'em. I'll even hire nerdy celebrity spokesmen to get on television and encourage kids to use them. Then I will make doing well in school illegal. If it's forbidden, you know everyone will want to do it.

Here's Newsweek When I'm King:

Newsweek under the King

Bar #5, Reunion #20

Last weekend I went to the fifth bar in my quest to reach 100. This one was The Broken Putter in East Bufu, Maine. A good time was had by all.

Drinking Makes Us More Attractive

During the course of the weekend we also went to a concert by the folk-rock duo Aztec Two-Step. Even the Teen was impressed with their sound, though I don't think she's going to rush out and buy any of their albums since the 1960s era hippy-trippy folksy lyrics were a bit whack for our little hip hop queen.

At this point I should probably fess up that the family made the trip to Bufu, and then east to East Bufu, so that the Idiot could stroll down memory lane at his 20th high school reunion, which is why I've cleverly cloaked the real name of the town in order that you internet freaks will not be able to learn my secret identity and the location of the Batcave.

Those of you good at math have already figured out that the fact I went to my twentieth reunion means I'm officially a card-carrying Old Fart, which is something I've been ready to face ever since some guy called me "Pops" at a concert a couple of years ago. Fittingly, next week I'll start writing a regular blog feature on regularity and other senior health issues.

The town of Bufu, the school, and most of my high school chums all look great and seem to be doing ok. I was pleased that I only put my foot in my mouth like twenty-seven times during the course of the weekend, which is not far from my norm during a regular weekend, let alone a weekend so rife with opportunities to ask questions about marriages that have gone sour, relatives that have gone crazy, and pets that have gone missing.

As my saintly mother said when I showed up, "Reunions kind of suck, don't they." Actually, it was fun and I'm glad I went. I send a shout out to any of my fellow Bufu High Alums who might be reading this, as well as a special thanks to the people who put all the effort into making the weekend so much fun.

Totally Amped

As the oldest member of generation X, I woke up this morning totally stoked. I did a wicked drop in tailslide followed by a totally maxed out ollie. Then I did a railslide down the tub to a bluntside with a totally honking tailwhip. The kickflip at the end was just showing off, as was the massive air I got.

At work I was able to get some mass air, including my patented trey flip, and my tailwhip got the co-workers totally worked up.

Now I'm home chillaxing until the X-Games come on in a couple of hours. We're all totally amped about it here at the Chez, as you might well imagine.

Totally Amped Idiot

Actually, I Believe Raffy...

OK, once I figured out that the "Raffy" that's all over the news is Rafael Palmeiro, not Raffi, the beloved singer of children's music, I was able to breathe again. I mean, I always thought there was something VERY creepy about Barney the Dinosaur and there is definitely something wrong with the Wiggles, but Raffi was OK in my book. I would have been crushed if he'd been taking steroids.

For those of you who are freshly out from under the rocks, baseball great Rafael Palmeiro is weathering a bit of a shitstorm due to the fact that he tested postitive for steroids. Yes, this is the same Rafael Palmeiro who recently pointed his finger at some probing Congressmen and stated that he had never done steroids. And, yes, this is the same Palmeiro who hit recently became only the fourth player in major league history to get 3000 hits and 500 home runs. And yes, I think that "Probing Congressmen" would be a great band name too.

Anyhow, Raffy says he accidently ingested the steroids. From what I'm reading, people are having a tough time believing this. Palmeiro's detractors say that the steroid he was alleged to have taken, Stanozolol, is far too powerful to have been accidently or casually ingested as part of some health drink or over-the-counter supplement. I borrowed the graphic below from the great site Boston Dirt Dogs to give an idea of what people are saying about Palmeiro.



I, on the other hand, believe that Palmeiro could easily have ingested just about anything accidently. I myself ate an entire Friendly's Ice Cream Peanut Butter Cup Friendzee after dinner when I'd intended to eat nothing at all. Also, at dinner, I'd intended to order a dinner salad instead of the chicken parmigian melt. A couple of weeks ago at the Dave Matthews Concert I accidently ingested six or seven JagerBombs. It happens all the time, give the guy a break!