Wise Drivel

Happy Macy's Day!

Today is Thanksgiving Day. On Thanksgiving, we always get to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. Its mostly for kids, my wife, and people without lives.

My wife always leaves out the word Thanksgiving and calls it the Macy's Day Parade.

That's probably more accurate anyhow.

Happy Birthday to Bill Colrus.

Today, Thanksgiving, is Bill Colrus's 30th birthday. For those who don't know him, Bill Colrus is the king of all local media.

Go over to his blog and give him plenty of greetings (provided my url skills are up to snuff and this link works).

Happy Birthday Bill.

Where did all the Judys go?

My mom's name is Judy. She's in her 60's.

There are a lot of Judys in their 60's. About a third of my friends have moms or aunts named Judy.

How many little girls do you know now named Judy? Probably none. I work with teenagers and have experienced a slew of Jessicas, Brittanys, and Nicoles. But not a single Judy.

Before long all the Judys will be dead and there will be no Judys left to populate the earth.

Except Judy Tenuta. She is immortal.

Hard Core Pornography

When we refer to ourselves as part of a list of people, we are taught to always place ourselves last on the list:

Frank, Ed, Jemison, Becky, Ashley and I went to the mall.

Why, then, when we are talking about ourselves, is it referred to as doing so in the first person? On the list above, I am the last person. Screw it. I'm putting myself first from now on.

What are you thankful for?

As we approach thanksgiving, let's take a moment to discuss those things for which we are most thankful:

Mine are Two-day work weeks and gravy.

I really, really miss Ed Grimley

Martin Short is a genius. My first exposure to him was his first season on SNL (1984), when he introduced me to one of my favorite recurring characters of all time.

Ed Grimley

Absolutely friggin' hilarious. Really decent, I must say.

I wish we could se more of Ed. He had a second rate cartoon awhile back, but it loses a lot in the translation to animation.

Opus Returns!

I am very pleased to see Opus on the comics pages again.

Opus the penguin was the star of Bloom County, a very good comic strip from the mid 80's to, I believe, the early 90's. Berke Breathed, the creator, discontinued the strip himself much to the chagrin of fans everywhere.

Fortunately, Opus is back in his own strip, appropriately called Opus.

Berke must have a bunch of gambling debts to pay off.

The Bachelor -- simply amazeen

My wife hid the remote control and forced me to watch almost an hour's worth of the finale of The Bachelor last night on ABC. It was the one where Bob made his final decision, for what it's worth.

Bob is apparently a guy who was one of the losers on The Bachelorette a few months back. In spite of his being an incredible tool, many women wrote in to the network offering themselves to The Bob.

Anyway, all I saw last night was a goofy guy who was probably way too popular in high school for no apparent reason.

But I digress...

Bob (his real name, apparently) had to choose between the perky young girl with the double name and the demure, dark-haired girl. He chose the demure one.

This girl talked a lot. And she used the word amazing about a million times.

Well, kind of.

She didn't really say amazing. She actually opted to omit the G at the end of the word and go with amazeen (accent on the middle syllable: a-may-zeen). Here's a typical sentence:

Bob is so amazeen, and he comes from this amazeen family and the feelings I have for him are amazeen and I think it will be so amazeen when we get married and it's all just so amazeen and he lives in an amazeen house and this whole experience has just been so amazeen.

I'm not sure she even knows what amazing means. Frankly, the word has now lost all meaning.

I think she got that from none other than 80's pseudo-star Molly Ringworm, who drops the G off of every "ing" word she uses.

The most annoying SNL character

SNL has had its share of terribly annoying recurring characters over the years. About 40% of Molly Shannon's characters should never have seen the light of day. Rachel Dreck has exactly one character that is worth its salt.

But the most annoying character in history belongs to Jim Breuer.

Goat Boy.

This is supposed to be funny?

On the cusp of the OTOH DVD

The On the Other Hand DVD compilation is coming out very, very soon. Stay tuned for a future post with ordering information.

Speaking of OTOH, I saw a person tonight who had been featured on OTOH a year ago. It was one of the male cheerleaders Hillary interviewed. I thought he looked familiar, and then I remembered who he was. It was either Eric or Chris. I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but I know it was him.

What a great day!

Today is my 35th birthday. I had a great day.

Slept until about 10 AM

Brunch at Wally's (Cracker Barrel had too long a wait)

Got my son's picture taken with Santa

Vanderbilt broke their 23-game SEC losing streak by totally dominating Kentucky, 28-17

Dinner at Chef Lin with my family

Cake & presents at my parents' house

The best part was the Vandy win, but it was a great day all in all.

And now I'm old enough to be president.

Cheerleading Olympic Event in 2004

Here is an article I found in a nationally-known paper:

The International Olympic Committee voted 6-0 yesterday to establish competitive cheerleading as an event in the Summer Games starting with next year's Olympiad in Athens, Greece.

This decision shocked many, but came as no surprise to millions of middle school-age American cheerleaders who have dedicated their short lives to the "sport" of cheerleading.

"This is so awesome!" exclaimed 8th grader Kylie McCrane of Houston, Texas.

IOC spokesman Patten McGroine, in a statement released yesterday, indicated that the move to sanction cheerleading as an olympic sport was largely influenced by the "cheesecake factor."

"Everybody knows that sex sells," the chairman's statement reads, "and the studies have shown that competition cheerleading would boost our ratings by nearly 14% as millions of teenage girls and 45 year-old man would tune in to watch, albeit for entirely different reasons."

As soon as the announcement was made, thousands of would-be Olympians began preparing for tryouts.

Olympic hopeful 15 year-old Aymeee Bruce of Jablib, Wisconsin is stressing her improvisational technique.

"When a member of my squad gets hurt in the middle of a routine, I have to know exactly what to do. We don't get to tall timeout. I have to improvise, adapt and overcome -- WITH A SMILE ON MY FACE THE WHOLE TIME!"

Naysayers have long derided cheerleading as a sport. 38 year-old Cambellsville, Kentucky-based crumudgeon Phil Riley, founder and president of Cheerleading Is Not A Sport So Get Over It You Friggin Psychos, released his own statement moments after the IOC's announcement was made.

"On behalf of CINASSGOIYFP, I hereby protest the inclusion of competitive cheerleading in the 2004 Olympic Games. As a support activity, cheerleading has no business being counted as a sport. Today is a sad day in the world of sports."

Thirteen year-old Kaughleine Stein of Morningwood, Florida laughed off Mr Riley's statement.

"He's just jealous because he didn't make the squad when he was in middle school. My sister Bryttknee is almost a sophomore and she is awesome! She's going to try out for the olympic cheerleading squad." Ms. Stein then went to he mall.

Return to Mayberry -- painful to watch

I watched the first half or so of the Andy Griffith reunion special.

Ron Howard need never go hatless again.

It was just so painful to watch. Andy & Don Knotts shuffling around the reconstructed set saying, "Oh, look there's my old gavel. Oh, and there's the old phone. Look, Don. There's the broom. Remember the good times we had with that broom?"

TAGS was probably pretty good TV in its time, but it's been eclipsed many times over.

Aunt Bee was sexy, though. Made me feel lieka man.

New Legislation -- No Child Held Responsible

The No Child Left Behind legislation has caused quite a few waves in the educational community. It's the Federal Government's way of tainting education with even more red tape.

Apparently, the Federal Govt (most of whom, I believe, are not and have never been in the education field) believes that they key to a better education system is more regulations and mandates for teachers. You know, because teachers don't have enough to do.

I guess if the govt wants to meddle with education they can't harass the students because they're minors. And they can't harass the parents because they're private citizens. So they harass the ones who actually work for the govenrnment -- the teachers.

There's only so much the teachers can do. At some point, students, parents and community have to bear some of the burden.

I think they should just call NCLB what it is. Instead of No Child Left Behind, they should call it No Child Held Responsible. Let's just pass a law that blames the teachers for all of education's ills and get it all over with now.

Joe Schmo -- I was wrong

I admit it, I was wrong.

Remember, the day after the first episode of Joe Schmo aired I publicly predicted on my blog that at the end it would turn out that Matt, the butt of the joke, was actually an actor and the joke was really on all the other actors.

Well, not only was I not the only one to have that theory, but I was wrong. I don't feel so bad, though, because the internet is full of other people who were just as wrong as me.

Still, though, it would have made for some decent television.

UNLESS...

Maybe the producers saw that so many people were on to them that they shot an alternate ending... Hmmmm

Politics

As I posted some time ago, I am fairly apolitical. I have my beliefs, and I try to vote accordingly.

Now I shall wax political for the amusement of you out there who enjoy such things:

I voted for W and will likely vote for him again. But I don't think he's all that great. Better than Gore, yes. But not all that great.

Contrary to popular belief, he's a smart man. And, I believe, his heart is in the right place. He is moral and wants to serve the USA well. He has integrity.

Our previous president was also a smart man, but that's the only thing he shares with W. He wasn't all that great either.

I wanted John McCain to win. I think he could have made things interesting if he had more money. I hope he runs in 2008. And beats Hillary into a fine powder.

Welcome back, me

I haven't blogged in awhile. 9 days, to be exact. I spent the weekend working on a paper for grad school and didn't have time to share my thoughts with all of you. Sorry. I'll try to do better. Really, I will.

Roll over, Beethoven

Last night my son (age 15 weeks) rolled over for the first time. My wife put him on his tummy (which he hates) and he started twisting his body around. She summoned me downstairs to watch. Fortunately, I got the video camera out in plenty of time to capture the transition from tummy to back. Then we went for take 2, putting him back on his tummy and capturing his second rollover from a different angle.

I am soooo proud. I'm thinking about telling him all about the birds & the bees today, you know, just to get it out of the way early. Maybe I'll take him to Chuck E Cheese afterward.

New brother-in-law

As my parents' only son, I grew up with 2 sisters and no brothers.

In 1989 my older sister got married and I got my first brother-in-law.

Last Saturday my younger sister got married and I acquired my second and final brother-in-law. His name is Travis. He's a welcome addition to the family.

The ceremony was nice, although the primary officiant allowed a few errors in timing to throw things off just a bit on a couple of occasions.

They had shrimp at the reception. Good call.

The shoes that went with my tux hurt like the devil.

They're in Jamaica now, hopefully relaxing and enjoying a little "alone time."