Good morning, America--how are you?

I was listening to Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans" the other day, and I thought that'd be an approriate blog entry title for this rare early-day entry...

THE JOYS OF HOME OWNERSHIP
As per usual when it comes to home improvement projects at my humble abode, I ran into a snag while attempting to redo my bathroom.  After removing the sheet rock along the exterior wall, I was pleased the find there was indeed insulation behind it, unlike my bedroom that I just finished doing.  However, after removing the insulation, I was quite displeased by the slap-dash job done by whoever it was that remodeled my house way back when long before I owned the place.  Those two horizontal gaps you see between the wood in this pic expose the aluminum siding on the outside of the house, subsequently allowing rainwater to get into the wood, causing that black shit you see, which is mold—it's a wonder I haven't gotten sick on this crap!  Some of that exposed wood is nothing more than a sponge now, too.  The good news here is it's a relatively inexpensive fix, similar to what my friend Phil and I did to the back door area of my house last year, albeit rather time-consuming.

A BIG PET PEEVE OF MINE...
...is people who abuse handicapped parking spaces, and I'm now on a bit of a crusade at my workplace.  There's this insipid woman who works for another company in our little office complex who thinks nothing of parking her car all day long in one of our handicapped spots.  While it's true the woman has an official handicapped tag hanging from her mirror, there ain't a damn thing wrong with her, unless having a fat ass is now considered a handicap (in which case, ALL parking spaces might as well have wheelchairs painted in them).  This woman certainly has no problem negotiating the two flights of stairs to enter her building, so yesterday I took it upon myself to type up this little note and affix it to her windshield:

"Wow, for someone who's handicapped, you sure get around pretty good!  Just so you'll know, at 10:15 this morning, ALL of the handicapped spots in both parking lots here were full, so the next person who came along who truly needed one was pretty much screwed, huh?...Hope you can live with yourself—just because you have a handicapped tag doesn't mean you have to use it!"

What's all the more appalling is this be-yatch works in the medical field, so she should know better!  While I'm on the subject, another pet peeve of mine are these lazy-ass people who press the handicapped-assist button to open the doors in office buildings, like they're just too weak to open the door on their own power...

YOU FELL FOR THAT (LITERALLY)?
Some yokel in Knoxville, TN claims he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while worshiping, so in typical red-blooded American conservative Christian style, the guy is suing the Lakewind Church for, oh, about 2.5 million semolians for his medical bills and "suffering".  Lawyers for the church claim that his fellow worshipers saw the man on the floor laughing after he fell.  In a way, I kinda hope the fucker wins—hell, I'd gladly go fall on my ass in a church for that kind of money in a heartbeat!  Praise the Lord and pass the loot...

SPEAKING OF RELIGIOUS PHONIES...
Not that I needed any further proof of what a cheese-dick he is, there was our favorite race-baiter, the Rev. Jesse Jackson this week saying that he wanted to "cut his nuts off", in reference to Barack Obama and the way he supposedly "talks down to black people."  Funny, but I thought "men of the cloth" weren't supposed to talk like that...

DUMB QUESTION, BUT...
...what the hell was the film School of Rock doing on Cartoon Network the other night?  Don't get me wrong, it's a funny flick, but what's it got to do with cartoons?!?  I find it rather pathetic how the cable networks can't seem to remain true to themselves by airing stuff that's out of their milieu.  TV Land is now obsessed with reality crap like "She's Got The Look" and "High School Reunion", The Learning Channel doesn't have a damn thing to do with learning ("World's Wildest Police Chases"?!?), BET airs a bunch of greedy white TV evangelists all the time, History Channel airs that ponderous "Ice Road Truckers" crap, ESPN is almost nothing but poker now and I don't think MTV has shown a music video since "The Macarena" came out.  Can we get back to the days when cable channels lived up to their names?

SPEAKING OF CARTOONS...
I made this little observation while watching "Family Guy" the other day—why is it humanoid cartoon characters always have three fingers and a thumb instead of four fingers and a thumb?  Why the digit deficit in animated humans?

STEVE MINGORI, 1944-2008
I read in the paper yesterday that former Royals pitcher Steve Mingori passed away on Thursday at age 64.  I remember how his was one of the first baseball cards I ever got out of a pack when I was about seven.  He pitched for Cleveland at the time, but he was a K.C. native, starring at Rockhurst High, and was traded to his hometown team just in time to be a part of the Royals' glory years in the '70s.  Rest in piece, Mingo...

CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #88
"Tomorrow And Tonight"—KISS (1977)  "Take it in the cellar, let me see your fella--I'm gonna teach ya somethin' new..."  This never was one of my favorite Kiss songs, but I always thought the line went "Let me be your fella."  Let me see your fella?!?  Fella?!?  What the hell kind of Rock lyric is that?  Then again, Paul Stanley has often been accused of pitching for both teams...

YUMPIN' YIMINY!
Former tennis player-turned-nun Andrea Jaeger recently admitted to "throwing" a championship match at Wimbeldon to Martina Navratilova back in the '80s.  Seems that Sister Jaeger felt that she may have disrupted Martina's preparation for the match the night before, and couldn't have lived with herself if she'd won, so she aided and abetted Navratilova's win.  Rather honorable of her, I suppose, and hearing her name reminded me of something I read in a magazine when Jaeger was popular when someone asked what her training regimen entailed.  According to the magazine, "Andrea yogs and yumps rope a lot..."

What would Brian Boitano do?

Damned if I know, but Brian Holland's gonna blog some more...

ABBA DABBA-DON'T!
Supergroup ABBA was on hand last week at the Swedish premiere of the film version of the colossally-successful musical Mamma Mia! starring Meryl Streep.  Much to my surprise, the ever-reclusive Agnetha Faltskog—who for many years "vunted to be alone"—was a part of the festivities, which predictably fueled rumors of a potential ABBA reunion tour.  Björn Ulvæus and Benny Andersson were quick to quash those rumors, with Björn saying, "Money is not a factor, and we would like people to remember us as we were. Young, exuberant, full of energy and ambition."  I applaud Brother Björn's stance here—if there was to be an ABBA reunion, it should've happened about 10-15 years ago, and now I think it would border on embarrassing.  And they surely don't need the money—all four of them practically own half of Scandinavia anyway.  And they're the only group I know of with its own museum (slated to open next year).  There isn't even a Beatles museum, is there?  Thankfully, ABBA has decided to take The Beatles' advice and just "Let It Be".

For those of you keeping score, that's Benny in the red jacket at the far left in the pic.  Agnetha is in the white top above the first "A" in "Mamma", between Meryl Streep on her right and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad on her left, and that's Björn in the white jacket second from the right.

IT MIGHT BE...IT COULD BE...IT IS!! A GOAL?!?
It appears the NHL is going to stage this season's outdoor hockey game at venerable Wrigley Field between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings.  I'm a tad surprised at this, since they could easily pack in another 30,000 tuque wearers at the much larger Soldier Field II, but since the game is scheduled for New Year's Day, I guess it would be a logistical problem if the Bears make the playoffs.  I still say they'd have no problem scheduling one of these special games here at Arrowhead Stadium—it's not like the Chiefs ever need the place in January...

CAN YOU SAY "HYPOCHONDRIAC"?
Every so often, we get these over-officious patients at my workplace who go to the trouble of typing out a dossier of their various ailments and complaints.  I thought I'd share a little example (exactly as the woman typed it):

—SYMPTONS
—HAVING TROUBLE WALKING STRAIGHT
—SHUFFLE FEET
—GANT IS NOT THE SAME (Former Atlanta Brave Ron Gant?!?)
—CAN'T WALK WITH ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF OTHER (Alcoholism?)
—POUNDING IN MY HEAD-NO PAIN OR HEADACHES
—THOUGHTS KEEP RUSHING THROUGH MY MIND AND WON'T STOP
—HAD CATARAC SURGERY ON BOTH EYES, LAST FALL
—TROUBLE CONCENTRATION AND REMEMBERING
—MY WRITING IS GETTING WORSE (No shit!)

And then she used the mighty F-word:
—I HAVE FIBROMYLGIA...

If there's ever a word that's guaranteed to cause rolling eyes in our office it's Fibromyalgia!  The scary part about all this is this woman actually drove herself to and from her appointment with us!

"WE ALL KNOW THAT CRAP IS KING..."—PART 1
Heaven's to Betsy—A-Rod is divorcing his wife!  And he's been romantically-linked to Madonna!  A-Rod stands to lose millions of dollars—cry me a fuckin' river, will ya?  Oh, and Christie Brinkley's divorcing the dickhead she married after dumping Billy Joel!  Whatever will we do?!?  And of course, "Entertainment Tonight" will be sure to keep us informed of every up-to-the-minute detail—they said so right on their show last night.  I feel sooo reassured now...

"WE ALL KNOW THAT CRAP IS KING..."—PART 2
ESPN's obsession with Brett Favre apparently knows no bounds, as they continually keep pushing all these Favre-coming-out-of-retirement-again rumors, in spite of the fact that the man himself has consistently denied them.  I find it sad that ESPN feels the need to manufacture sports news instead of merely reporting it...

PARTS IS PARTS!
The signboard at our local Colonel Sanders chicken emporium this week was hyping something about a "10-PIECE MALE".  Uhhh, I think I have more pieces than that—some longer than others!

YET ANOTHER SELLOUT...
Was very disappointed to hear Blue Öyster Cult's "Godzilla" on a TV commercial tonight.  Couldn't they have at least found a better product to use such a cool song on than CarTrader.com?!?

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!
The local yokel small-time daytime-only AM station that carries ESPN's "Mike & Mike In The Morning" fills in their unused advertising time by running numerous public service announcements, including an extremely implausible one featuring Paris Hilton (yes, THE Paris Hilton) encouraging all her fellow females to "Rock The Vote" simply because "Chicks rock!"  I bet the little skank isn't even a registered voter...

EMBRACING FAMILY VALUES
As is my habit, I have recently "discovered" a funny TV series that has been on for damn near a decade, FOX's "Family Guy".  Okay, I may be a little slow, but I've found that my strategy of avoiding a show for about ten years or more tends to pay off in the long-run.  For instance, I never watched a full episode of "Frasier" until after it went off the air in 2004, even though I liked the Frasier Crane character on "Cheers".  When "Frasier" debuted in the mid-'90s, I was already into "Friends" and a few other shows and didn't want to get attached to any more sitcoms at the time, so I "saved it for a rainy day", so to speak, since there isn't squat to watch on TV in our current decade.  Subsequently, I watched all the "Frasier" reruns on DVD and fell in love with the show (as well as Daphne and Roz) and now it's one of my all-time favorites.

As for "Family Guy" itself, I'd seen it a time or two over the years and liked it, but for some reason, I resisted its charms until just recently when it kept popping up on TBS and Cartoon Network, et al.  The episode that finally hooked me was the one where Peter and Lois attend a Kiss concert (in full make-up) and meet up later with the band at a Denny's.  My man Stewie is a total crack-up, and I love the way they skewer old TV shows like "Eight Is Enough", "One Day At A Time" and "Joanie Loves Chachi" on here.  It's like "The Simpsons" on steroids, and me and the dog have two things in common:  the same cool first name and a penchant for drinking...