BLOGNATION: Population 16

I finally got around to updating a few new links on my blog. Both are long overdue.

The first is my newest nephew's blog, Follow Art. Art is only four months old, making him Blognation's youngest blogger. Actually, his parents (Emily's sister Jessie and Jessie's husband) do all the blogging. He just acts like a baby in front of the camera and gets a blog named after him. For all you baby lovers out there, go give it a look.

I actually babysat Art all by myself for an hour this evening. I fed the dude, burped the dude, listened to him cry, and dodged a crap-filled bullet by not having to change his diaper. We watched the first half of the Duke/LSU game together and he was very happy during that time, while LSU played well. This makes me happy as I may be playing a part in making him dislike Duke as much as I do.

The other blog I have added to the list is Coach Dub, the finest DJ Grinnell College ever partied to in the 1990s. He also is a mighty fine blogger. I have neither changed Coach Dub's diaper nor watched a basketball game with him. But I do have fond memories of going to the 620 (RIP) with him when I lived in Iowa City. Anyway, check out his blog.

Spring Should Be Springing

Those of us who live in a state with four seasons have individual ways of marking the start of spring.

Emily has said in the past that for her spring begins when they put the handles on the water pumps along the Minneapolis parkway running trails.

I have a similar definition. Spring for me starts when the lower footpath on West River Road is clear of ice and snow. Granted, it is a definition very specific to our neighborhood. But I will report when this path opens, and we'll see if it matches when the rest of you Twin Cities types think spring has sprung.

What's Your Shoe Size?

In ecological terms, I wear a size 13. As in I take up 13 acres of Earth to live my life. Not bad, compared to most Americans, who take up 24 acres.

The bad news is, it would take 2.9 Earths for everyone to live like me.

Click here to learn the size of your ecological footprint. It's a short quiz that took me two minutes to.

Revolutionary War II

The first season of the British version of The Office finally made it to the top of my Netflix queue. AND I'm having a hard time deciding which fruit I like better: the apple (pie) version or the limey variety.

It looks like 200+ years later, we're back to the United Stated versus Great Britain. Sure we can kick their ass in any sport, but soccer and cricket, and their Prime Minister is our puppet, but I think their version of The Office wins out over ours.

For starters, the BBC shows run the full half-hour, giving them the time to develop their charachters and let gags and rants run for an extra minute and gain some momentum. I am amazed by how eight extra minutes really changes a show. But it makes sense, when you consider eight minutes is more than a third of an American show.

I also like the BBC version better because they make the "normal" male charachter (Tim) much more pitiful and human than the US version (Jim). In the BBC version, Tim still lives with his parents and is a bit more awkward and quirky than Jim. In the US version, Jim's most humanizing flaw is he has a crush on a girl and can't get over her. Big deal. Especially compared to the nut jobs he works with.

It reminds me of Seinfeld, where Jerry's biggest flaw was he was heartless and too neat, while all the other charachters were equally heartless, but riddled with quirks and flaws. So while his friends were annoying and quirky to the point of making us laugh, the lead charachter's biggest flaw is he was neat. I have found that I was the only person who was annoyed by this.

Is there something about the American TV, where the protagonists we sympathize with have to be perfect and cool, rather than a mirror of ourselves? Maybe we like to think that these ideal people are actually mirrors of us.

Getting back to The Office, the British version also wins out because thhe boss on the BBC show is slightly funnier and more dynamic than the boss on the American version.

So, while we may have dumped their sorry-ass stale Earl Grey tea in the Boston Harbor and ran their red-coated asses off the continent simply by hiding behind trees and throwing rocks at them, the Brits have us beat in the Battle of Dueling Sitcoms.

They also get extra credit for being the originators of the series.

Big deal. We'd still kick their ass in basketball, baseball, track and field, football (not that pansy kick the can version they love), hockey, tennis, NASCAR...

Mascot Mayhem

Mama didn't raise no Big Fool. So rather than get my photos with sports mascots, I'm going after coprporate mascots.

Here I am with the Gorton's Fisherman. The Gorton's Fisherman has a special place in my heart because when Emily and I went to the mascot baseball game before the start of a Twins game a few years back, the Gorton's Fisherman caught a ball using his net. Well played.



The other guy with me is a friend from high school who had the job two weekends ago of setting up the Gorton's mascot event at H.E.B. grocery stores throughout south San Antonio.

The idea was for kids to get their picture with Gorton's Fisherman. And that makes sense. I mean who better to send your kid to see than a sailor? Kids love the crazy antics of hard drinking womanizers who can curse a blue streak strong enough to make Andrew Dice Clay turn red!

The close observer will note the Gorton's Fisherman made out of Legos at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture. A professional Lego artist was hired to build that. It's a crazy world.

"And We'll See You... TOMORROW NIGHT!!!!"

Jack Buck, during the 1991 World Series, announcing Twins center fielder Kirby Puckett's game-winning eleventh-inning walk-off home run in Game 6 against the Atlanta Braves' Charlie Leibrandt.

That is for me, the most memorable call from a baseball game in my lifetime. I can still get goose bumps thinking about that home run. That was arguably the greatest World Series ever, and Kirby Puckett was at the center of it. And this was well before I became a die-hard Twins fans. Kirby had retired three years before I got into the Twins.

Click here for a very eloquent remembrance of Kirby. Non-baseball types might even want to take a gander. It is much more eloquent, concise, and insightful than anything you'll read here. I really really like what Bat Girl has to say about mourning the loss of Kirby for the third time now, and what she has to say about the God-like status we put on athletes, who are just as imperfect and flawed as we are.



I may not have grown up a Twins fan. But I was Kirby Puckett fan, even when I was a high school kid in Texas or a hayseed at a rural Iowa college. Emily owns one baseball card. I was shocked to know she even owned that many. Not surprisingly, it is Kirby's rookie card.

And it is also no coincidence that I have the exact card. Emily likes to say our Kirby Puckett cards are married.

What amazes me about Kirby Puckett is those who followed baseball all loved him. And we all loved him for the same reasons: the smile, the warm personality, and the fact that he looked and played like the fat guy in the softball league that can hit the ball a mile and somehow blaze around the outfield. And the 1991 World Series.

Obviously Kirby wasn't perfect. It would be disingenuous of anyone to talk about his life and gloss over the alleged domestic abuse, the infidelity, and his overall fall from grace after he had to retire from baseball. But this is where we have to be careful as fans. Judge an athlete for what he does in the game, how he treats his teammates, and what kind of effort he gives the fans. You tread in dangerous water when you judge these guys as people. If you can't take the good with the bad, you shouldn't follow sports.

That being said, one of my favorite Kirby Puckett moments did occur away from the baseball diamond. It was when he was on David Letterman in 1997 and he read the "Top Ten Ways to Mispronounce Kirby Puckett" on-air. I don't know if I laughed harder when he said "Turkey Bucket" or "Punky Brewster," but I remember both. Click here for the whole list.

Kirby meant so much to the state of Minnesota. It is sad that he couldn't control his personal demons. And it is sad he had to die so young before he could overcome them. We can only hope he found peace in his life these last two years that he faded from the public eye in the Twin Cities.

My Pockets Have Been Hooverized

While not the most scientific indicator of consumer spending, the contents of my pockets in a seasonal coat can be very revealing about my economic health.

Anyone who lives in a state with four true seasons knows you need at least two sets of coats: the spring/fall jackets and the winter armour. And anyone who lives in these states knows that the pockets of these coats can be time capsules when you put them on for the first time when a new season starts.

For example, when I put on my winter coat for the first time this winter, I found $5 in it. Awesome, but not as awesome as when I was in my 20s. My disposable income was soaring, I wasn't saving, and I'd find $20 in these pockets at the start of the season. Anything less than $10 would be a disappointement.

So last night I went out with a couple friends to a local brew hall. It wasn't the gathering of friends at my house as I had suggested in an earlier post. But as I predicted, nothing was planned until 5 p.m. last night.

But I digress. The point being that spring has sprung early this year in Minnesota. So before I left, I had to unearth a light spring jacket. I put it on for the first time since early November.

I was a little giddy as I put the jacket on and my hands searched the pockets. It's like your own personal FOUND magazine. What would I find? Petty cash? A receipt from a restaurant? A zany note or cartoon? Did I mention petty cash?

Nothing exciting whatsoever. An unused poop bag for Pancho and a shopping list for the grocery store. A sign of the times. The days of disposable income are over.

However, hope springs eternal. I still have a fleece and one more jacket in my wardrobe that I have yet to break out in this premature spring. Just like we're disappointed when we don't win the lottery, I'm bound to be let down by the beer caps, candy wrappers, and gas station receipts I'll find in these soon-to-be-explored pockets.

But who knows? Maybe I'll find an unclaimed winning lottery ticket in one of these pockets.

What Makes Something Shitty?

If you asked me to name the worst movies of all time, three movies come to mind:

Legally Blond 2, Armageddon, and Daredevil.

And wholly shit is Daredevil so much worse than those other two.

And I am fully aware that there are many movies probably much worse than Armageddon and a few other movies that sucked more than Legally Blond 2, but none have annoyed me as much as these three.

Which raises the question, what makes us hate or love a movie? For the most part, a movie can be judged on its own standing. No matter what you were doing and where you were when you saw films like Casblanca and Crash, chances are you will like them. And movies like Gymkata or Earnest Saves Christmas will be universally ridiculed.

But there should be a subgenre of films that we judge mostly based on the context of how we saw them. Movies like Son-In-Law, Starship Troopers, Kingpin, or, well, Armageddon could be fondly remembered or loathed depending on who you were with and what you were doing when you saw it.

Take Son-In-Law, for example. I saw it when I lived in Iowa City with a bunch of fellow cooks that I worked with in a restuarant. It may have been related the kilo of dope they smoked over the course of ten years, but they thought Pauley Shore was a comic genius. And then, so did I. But then I rented Jury Duty awhile later, and hated it. Same jackass actor, same dumbshit jokes, but since I watched it by myself with a frozen pizza instead of four burned-out cooks, the movie sucked ass. Pauly Shore a comic genius? Not so much.

Kingpin will always be a comic tour-de-force for me, since I saw it on a "Pissing the Day Away Saturday" with my friends back when I was in grad school (including this girl whom I hadn't yet considered dating yet). So I pissed the day away with this hip 20something crew, by eating some brunch, walking around a lake, playing some football, watching Kingpin, and then drinking some beers before going out to drink more beers. How can Kingpin not be the greatest movie ever under those circumstances? It may have been a much worse movie if I saw it on an airplane or in a hotel room by myself.

Or I remember watching Weekend at Bernie's and Look Who's Talking in a dollar theater, back when dollar theaters were a new concept, and was thought those movies were hilarious. This could only happen because I was 1) in high school, so my time wasn't the premium it is today 2) I only paid $1 to see it, back when paying $1 for a movie was a novel concept. It was a perfect storm of timing for these movies to be funny to me.

But seriously, there is no way Daredevil can be saved. A Frog Takes A Shit would be a better movie.

I don't care if they showed it on the jumbotron before the start of a Spurs/Pistons game 7 of the NBA Championships AND I was there with 300 of my closest friends AND it was free beer and taco night AND the Spurs went on to win the title when Bruce Bowen blocked Rip Hamilton's shot and threw the ball down to a wide-open Tim Duncan for the game winner AND then afterwards a scientist announced the discovery of a mint chocloate chip ice cream that is good for you and cures cancer AND Emily defended and passed her PhD dissertation, while she was at the game AND she was offered a kickass job before the start of the 3rd quarter that made it so I could be a stay-at-home Dad for our dog Pancho AND during the first period I ran sub 14:00 5k around the upper deck of SBC center while watching the game.

It wouldn't matter. Daredevil still would have been a shitty shitty movie. Serioulsy. Worst movie ever. I challenge you to come up with a worse movie.


You can't.

A Great Idea Pissed Away

I went out to lunch with some friends from high school on my last day in San Antonio on Tuesday. We started bouncing off great ideas for stories and business we had, that had never been realized. These guys still have some relevant ideas; they just need to get around to putting them into practice.

I became a little depressed on the plane ride home because I concluded the window opportunity for my one money-making idea has long since been closed. I thought urinal cakes with rival cities printed on them would be a hit sports bars. For example, is there a crazed Spurs fan out there that wouldn't relish in pissing all over a urinal cake that said "LOS ANGELES" on it when he used the bathroom at a San Antonio sports bar? But now that urinal cakes are a thing of the past, so is my idea.

And I've had this idea for years. Long before some jackass thought up Osama Bin Laden toilet paper.

Party Time

I have received some heat on several fronts for not updating this blog lately. This is surprising, given that so very few people actually read this.

Anyway, I was in Texas for the last five days and got back late last night. Emily then left for Arizona this afternoon. So I will have seen her for a grand total of two hours (not counting when we were sleeping) between last Thursday morning and this upcoming Sunday night. That's two hours over 11 days.

I am going to live it up BIG TIME. Like right now, I am on my way to Sears at Mall of America to pick up some glasses I ordered last week. Maybe I'll get crazy and get some Chic-Fil-A as well. Or maybe not. I have to run when I get back.

Friday I am going to get the timing belt replaced on our second car to cross over to 100,000 mile threshold.

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Actually I am planning to have a few friends over Saturday night to knock back a few Coca-Colas. It will be a minor miracle if a) this event gets planned before Saturday afternoon and b) we actually leave my house.