Those Aren't Writers

The writer's strike has really affected my entertainment these days. No Colbert Report or Daily show... and the Those Aren't Pillows blog. All have been off the air without their talented writing staffs. I only hope they can come to an amicable solution to all involved, and get back to creating their entertaining shows (and blogs) soon.

Something really got me mad today. I had an “A HA” moment you could say, a ray of light shown into the usual attic-dark stale recesses of my brain. My new best friend on the radio, the NFL Pick’em Guy, is a total f-ing fraud. And I knew it. Follow me here. Let’s say this guy KNOWS that he can convert a loser into a customer by giving him three free locks in a row, for free. Yes, anyone considering calling an expert sport picker he heard on the radio is now a loser. Anyway, let’s say 10,000 people call him after hearing about his penchant for perfectly nailing his WEEKLY LOCK on his nationally aired radio commercial. OK, let's say The LOCK game is New England -22 against the Jets. Which team does he pick? Well, he fucking picks both. He tells 50% of the callers that it’s New England, and 50% that it’s the Jets. Now he has 5,000 people convince he hit his lock and who will try him out the following week, when he tells 2,500 people that the Steelers will cover against the Sea Chickens, and 2,500 people that Sea Chickens +8 is A LOCK. By the end of week 3 he has 1,250 newly converted customers convinced that this guy can’t miss a pick, which is 1,250 more customers than he had three weeks ago. What an A-Hole.

Am I the last guy on the planet to figure this out?

I saw a double feature with my wife this evening, we went to go see Juno, and Charlie Wilson's War. Both actually are very decent flicks, even though they are nothing like Beerfest. I think it was the first time I saw two back-to-back movies in the theater since JTW and I used to pull the "three for the price of one" movie marathon in SF as kids. And by kids I mean five years after we graduated college.

Each and every one of you should have TWO farms now, since you surly bet one on Pittsburgh this past Thursday, after the Wood Dog raised his pick'em run on Thursday nights to 0-7. I didn't tell you my pick for nothing. Those of you with only one farm right now can only blame yourself.

I have nothing prepared for my upcoming two minutes on stage at the Seattle Comedy Underground for my family Christmas gathering. Well, nothing except some bits about walking my dog. Which doesn’t sound funny at all, until you hear the part about me waiting for his ass to start opening about 20 seconds prior to crapping, and how good that makes me feel. Wow, now it really doesn’t sound funny. But it’s a big deal, when you’re walking your F-ing dog around at midnight in the shitty 38 degree December Seattle rain, and all you want to happen is for the damn dog to take her crap, and when the little butt hole opens up, it’s like she’s getting ready, now she just has to find the right spot, and I’m putting my fists up in a Rocky style victory celebration… So it needs some tweaking, sue me, but this could work. Only a minute forty-five left to go.

If only I had some writers.

Up on the woof

I bought a pair of "Lucky" jeans about two weeks ago. They were expensive, like $125 bucks. WAY more than one should spend on jeans in my opinion. Now, several washings past the return policy, I have determined that they are much too big on me. The gangsta trow-drop look doesn't really go well with my Twinkie white person. (You know the phrase "Twinkie", right? White on the outside, even whiter on the inside?) I think though that I'm going to take the easy way out, and just grow my ass bigger. Maybe I'm just that cheap.

I have FINALLY seen the movie BEER FEST. Holy crap. If you have been known to enjoy beer, and maybe to do stupid things while enjoying your beer, or even if you just like drinking games, RUN DON'T WALK to your blockbuster / netflix account / movie channel and see this movie. It's exceptional. The only thing I didn't love about the movie was that I didn't write it myself. Be warned though, if you're not in the right mood for this kind of movie, you might find it exceptionally stupid... oh and I think chicks will HATE it. If you must watch with a chick, make sure they're drunk.

I love how e-mailing and text messaging from your phone can make you look like a completely illiterate tool. The combination of the tiny keyboards, hurried responses, and the "smart" word selection software can create sentences like the one I sent the other day to let my wife know our takeout Chinese had been delivered: "The food is heterogeneous". I think I will call this phenomenon "mobile retardation".

Sometimes working from a home-office / cave is just like working from a real office. Well, except the PJ's and poor hygiene part. Usually I work on my computer, and talk on the phone just like I would from the company HQ. And then there are days like today where my wife intercom's me and tells me to clean the gutters.

By the way, does anyone know why gutters reek so much? The crap I pulled out of there smelled like I had thrown the boy and the dog up on the roof and told them to have a poop-off, winner doesn't have to sleep in the crate tonight. Why the hell haven't I showered yet?

Thank you to loyal reader, we'll call him Reeegano, for the update on our favorite Lexus driving fish lover, Tuna 307. Well it looks like we have another great hunter who found an even BIGGER natural phenomenon and speared THAT animal through the head and weighed it. Sorry Tuna 307, meet TUNA 381! Yes world, we have a NEW RECORD SIZED DEAD TUNA! How does THAT feel? Tuna 381 makes Tuna 307 seem more like a "Tuna 233", if you ask me. Congrats to you both though for being my 2007 Co-Naturalists of the Year. I hope your two meet some day, and I hope that meeting is on the freeway with your two Lexuses going in opposite directions.

Dare to dream

With two weeks left in the regular season I have “locked up” last place in my NFL pick’em league per our insane league commissioner. My Swan Kick was to incorrectly pick 10 of 14 games last weekend, and I now have a commanding 15 pick lead over my nearest competitor. I am a perfect 0-6 on Thursday games, and near perfect when picking on the road in bad weather. In a 90 person league, this type of lead is almost statistically impossible. I don't think I'm even on the probability bell curve any more.

I was driving around the other day, wallowing in my 38% pick’em accuracy misery, when I heard a commercial for one of those expert sports betting picker guys. He was GUARANTEEING a lock for that week if I just called him, and the lock was free... no strings attached. If I liked his pick, I could call him back to get his COMPLETE LIST for a nominal fee. only if I wanted to. I felt like a recovering alcoholic and Jenny Craig client walking by dollar beer and taco night at the Roanoak. I thought about it. What would ONE pick hurt? I have a 15 pick lead for last place. Maybe that one pick would be the difference to win the Week 16 $150 pot and I could STILL take the overall last place money.

Just the fact that I can win a week and still take last place was starting to get my adrenaline going. I could do it, I could be the king. He seemed so nice on the radio too, and boasted an almost anti-Wood Dog 58% accuracy rate, and like 80% on his LOCKS OF THE WEEK. He seemed nothing like the BRD persona Gold Chain Wearing Fist Pounding LOCK OF THE WEEK guy that haunts my nightmares. Maybe I could just take his picks, win a week, take home some dough and then just win last place by a little less. Not a terrible idea, right?

NO! Not that I was really going to call the guy, but I can NOT think like that. Dead last in a pickem league? That's something I can brag to my kids about later in life.

The cryptic words said to Gold-5 during his last seconds of life as he attacked the Death Star echoed in my head "STAY ON TARGET". Like some magic Jedi A-A Sponsor telling me to fight the craving. STAY ON TARGET. I have to finish what I have started this season. I will NOT CHEAPEN IT. Though I might have to turn off my proverbial targeting computer for these last two weeks to make it through.

(Oh, and I picked St. Louis + 9.5 for this week's Thursday game. Bet the farm... on Pittsburgh. )

STAY ON TARGET

Christmas Card

[AS SEEN AT The Wood Family Blog]

How to make a CHRISTMAS CARD
(in 5 easy steps)

STEP 1: Make some kids

STEP 2: Add water, grow kids

Step 3: Buy a dog

Step 4: take about 150 pictures of kids and dog.
(click on the above to zoom on the pictures)

(OK, nix the dog, too difficult)

Step 5: Make Christmas card

Dogg'n It

One of my favorite scotches Oban 14 is not available in the state of Washington. I shit you not. I have searched every liquor store and bar that I know for this smokey seaside single malt, and have come up empty. Every time I demand an anwer from the bar or liquor stor proprietor, they come up with some lame excuse about their wholesaler being short on stock, but they were sure it would come back next week. There is something fishy going on in the state of Washington, and I don't like it. I am sure the fat cats at the tobacco companies are involved somehow.

Oh, and yes the State of Washington controls all hard alcohol sales within her boarders, completely inflating the prices in a monopolistic fashion and stopping the free market from getting me my scotch. It's like prohibition all over again.

My ability to incorrectly pick NFL games against the spread is reaching historical heights this year. In a league with roughly 90 participants, I am currently ranked dead last in the ranking. There is a small last place prize that I am now shooting for, and you have no idea how hard it is to stay the course with my method in picking games. If I start trying to pick losers I am going to end up winning a week or something and completely screw my last place chances. This is stressing me out just thinking about it. See the TAP blog for my current pick % and be impressed.

My protrade account had a nice pop with the simultaneous selling short of Sean Alexander with the buy of Maurice Morris. The Sea Chickens are also 4-0 since Morris took over running the ball.

Is anyone else still a little pissed that we demoted Pluto to Non-Planet status a year or so ago? I LOVED Pluto. It was the little runt planet really far away that was named after Mickey's Dog. What wasn't to like about Pluto? I mean, what do you really remember about Uranus (other than the perverted name)? Now though, thanks to a grand triumph of scientific reasoning, Pluto has been reclassified as a "Dwarf Planet" along with Ceres and Eris, two little bitch rocks that happen to cirlce the sun too. I also think that phrase is B.S., and that they'd actualy prefer to be called "Little Planets".

I do like astronomy, and Astro 10 with Professor Filippenko was my most enjoyable class at Cal. Though I think my astronomy career peaked when I made a room full of pledges pretty accruately reenact the orbital rotations of the nine planets (YES, INCLUDING PLUTO) around our sun, along with a few moons, and a comet.

Poorly Hung

In case anyone wasn't at the Cal - UW football game last week, you missed one heck of a halftime show starring Berkeley's very own American Idol, William Hung. Thank you to beat reporter JTW for finding a link to the video here and reminding me of my thoughts on the matter.

OK, JTW isn't beat, unless you consider a 4.7 on hotornot.com as beat. But I digress.

There we were, loyal Cal Berkeley grads and football fans, fighting off the rain and cold of a typical November game in Seattle, when we are warmed by the announcement that our very own William Hung would be performing for us at halftime. What a nice gesture to the Cal crowd in attendance, right?

Well homeboy appears on the field, wearing HUSKY gear, and shouts out "GO DAWGS" to the student section just before going into his inspiring rendition of his trademark song "She Bangs" while the UW cheerleader corps dirty danced around him. The UW band backed him up and even spelled out IDOL! in their own special marching band way. They were one. They were a people. Hung might as well have faced his ass toward the Cal section of the stadium, dropped his pants, and showed us a sparkling new "KISS HERE CAL" tattoo.

I felt betrayed. I felt angry. I felt like someone had kicked my wet cold nuts with a hot iron boot. Was he so wrapped up in the gig that he didn't realize his own people were there, as sworn enemies that day to the school he was now siding with?

William Hung is dead to me. He is the new poster boy for high treason and treachery. That sell out no longer deserves the honor of being considered a true Berkley icon among the ranks of The Naked Guy (may his soul rest in peace), Rosebud (may her soul rest in peace after doing time in the slammer in the sky for attacking the Chancellor), Rick Starr (may his overworked liver and crazy mind continue to belt out Sinatra into his fake microphone attached to a coffee can), David Temple (a.k.a The Yashua Guy), and the lovable Hate Man.

Where you once stood William Hung, you are no longer welcome.


NOTES:
In googling for pictures of the above I ran across this article published in September 2000 declaring that the venerable Rick Starr Show has gone on permanent sabbatical. Something about his tendency to harass attractive coeds on their way to class. Oh that suave crooner was always testing the limits. Rick Starr, thanks for your tunes, I bid you adieu.

Dog Jamm'n

I was TERRIFIED over the weekend when the power went out for about 90 minutes on Saturday night. It wasn't so much the dark that scared me, or the heat being off, or the kids being scared, or my wife going crazy, or the dog barking... it was the potential that I was going to have to cancel on my whiskey tasting party I was headed to. Thank GOD (and Puget Sound Power) for getting things worked out in time.

Yeah, my wife went into action like a crack commando unit. Or a commando unit on crack. The contingency plan was enacted, we had candles lit, and the emergency flashlights on in like 8 seconds. I was informed we needed to conserve battery power "just in case". I was amazed she wasn't handing out firearms to the kids, and telling me to get the hell out of the way, or to just start baking bread.

HD service is entering my life in 24 hours. Just TRY to wipe the dopey grin off my face. I DARE YOU.


Whiskey tasting was MUCH harder than I gave it credit for. After 6 or 7 drinks in, everything starts to taste the same. 100 proof Knob Creek or Balvenie Doublewood Single Malt? Who the hell knew? Except the Laphroaig... a very distinctive scotch that smells and tastes like a peat bog... it's awesome.

I almost had a spit take (spit took?) in the car yesterday when I heard on the radio the following words: "I'm Wally Szczerbiak, and YOU'RE listening to Sonics radio!". I just realized that the shock that Wally Szczerbiak is a Seattle Supersonic is clearly overshadowed by the spelling of his name in the blog format.

By the way, my early season prediction that the Sonics were going to go 0-82 this year is looking more and more like a lock.

That "Dick in a Blog" guy looked like he had so much promise when he entered the blog world, but then just disappointed. He reminds me a lot of Niner QB Alex Smith, well except for the promise.

If you stare at the Monkey Collage long enough, you can see the image of a little black wooden dog. Creeped out yet?

If you are scheduling a training for work, that is really more of a boon-doggle, and are trying to get away with it, you really shouldn't refer to the training location as "Vegas" to your boss. It's "Las Vegas". And don't follow up with the obligatory "baby" either.

Jesus, it's like we have all been programmed to say Vegas "Baby!" when talking about a trip to Vegas. I personally can't help it. I try to fight it, but it just happens. It's just way too fun and catchy not to I guess. Note to marketing people everywhere: all you have to do is repeat a word 10,000 times over the course of 90 minutes to permanently engrave it into someone's unconcious.