How to score 29 points before the other team even gets possession? By following your opening touchdown with three successful onside kicks! Let’s go to the highlight reel!
You can practically hear Les Miles chewing grass as he watches this one.
Author: kenwheaton
Oh No Katydidn’t!
On the 4 Train from Brooklyn, this morning, while reading the epilogue of A Dance With Dragons (holy shit, what am I going to do for the next five years), I felt something on my arm. I look glance over and there, sitting on my elbow, is a giant-as katydid. On my arm! While I’m riding the subway! In New York! I flinched. I’ll admit that much. And some guy standing over by the door smirked at me. But I recovered quickly and reached for my phone to take a picture. But by the time my HTC EVO 3D’s camera came online, katydid done took off in flight. She flew right for the head of Sir Smirk-a-lot, who practically threw himself on the floor to avoid the bug–and he, in turn, received a big-ass smirk from the woman standing across from him.
Anyway: Subway adventures.
Abba vs. Hannibal Lecter
Or put less delicately, “Dancing Queen” vs. “If I Could Smell Your Cunt.”
Two weekends, two musicals. One was Mamma Mia, the Broadway musical based on the songs of Abba. The other was Silence!, the off-broadway musical based on the movie Silence of the Lambs.
One, everyone’s heard of and many may have even mocked for the ten tons of cheese it serves up. The other, most people haven’t heard of so they can’t grouse about the ten tons of filth–FILTH–it serves up.
I enjoyed both. If you know me, I don’t think I have to tell you that I preferred the play that featured face eating, simulated ejaculate throwing, a song-and-dance number set to “Will You Fuck Me? I’d Fuck Me” (I’m not going to spoil anything about how the penis tuck is pulled off), and a side character that was basically the rebirth of Johnny (aka Controller Jacobs) from Airplane.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Mamma Mia. Love me some Abba. They’re no Milli Vanilli, but still . . . And at least the folks in the play, unlike the ones in the movie, could sing. (Though there was something charming about watching those A-list actors in the movie make such asses of themselves). I do have one complaint, though, in that while the women were attractive, they weren’t dressed sexily enough and even when they wore something mildly revealing they had unsightly ass-bulges where the microphone packs were. The men, on the other hand … well, I don’t appreciate spending that kind of money on a show that, when the young groom rips off his shirt and reveals his disgustingly chiseled body, has the entire female half audience catch its breath for a moment — and perhaps involuntarily squeeze the hand of the man they’re there with — then burst into applause. Unseemly.
New York Cable/Internet Question
I want to split with Time Warner.
Actually, I want to hook up with DirecTV because football season is coming up and I want my grubby hands on the NFL package, which DirecTV is now offering for free — or “free.”
But I’ll still need internet and, because my apartment is the cellphone zone of death, a landline.
So then! I check out Verizon, which has a DirecTV, phone, internet bundle. But here are my three huge issues.
1. The internet. Verizon’s idea of high speed is 0.5 to 1 Mbps. TimeWarner claims, I think, up to 10. Now, it may be I won’t be able to tell the difference, but that seems a big difference.
2. The DirecTV package, as offered online, offers no local channels. NO LOCAL CHANNELS! At least make it an option. Or is that where they fuck you? I bet it is.
3. Speaking of no local channels. Giving up Time Warner will mean giving up New York 1. This pains me to consider.
Any thoughts from people living in New York City area? Also, if you’ve dealt with either or both companies, would it be better to order this sort of thing through DirecTV or through Verizon? Which has the better customer service reps?
Video of Hero Chihuahua
If you’ve seen the headline but have been too lazy to click through and read the actual story about the chihuahua that foiled a robbery, here is the video.
The World’s Longest Excuse for not Going for a Run
When I bring it. I bring it.
Gone Fishin’
Greetings from Grand Isle, Louisiana. Down here with Mama and dem for a few days of fishing, sun and tar-ball dodging. What I hadn’t counted on was that Louisiana is turning into some sort of weird desert region. Despite all the worries about flooding from the swollen Mississippi, they haven’t had any damn rain for months. The land is baked and a hot south wind blows constantly.
I’m reading Game of Thrones at the moment, so I’m seeing all weird weather as a sign of prophecy. A sign of something coming. Me!
Take that as you will. But it did start raining yesterday. And again this morning. They’re pop-up showers and the wind hasn’t subsided, but this morning’s storm was so rough it actually stopped us from fishing. But no complaints. The wind keeps it relatively cool and keeps Grand Isle’s legendary mosquitoes away. The company’s good and the food is excellent. The only things I ate yesterday that wasn’t fried: boudin, Twix and a grilled ribeye (over charcoal, like the gods intended) the size of my not inconsiderable head.
The War Has Begun
In the mornings, before leaving for work, I peak out my back door to see how my plants are doing. This morning, I busted two squirrels trying to sneak up on my tomatoes and kill them in their infancy.
And so the battle begins.
These tomatoes are green and about the size of a marble at the moment, but they’ve got a fine coating of black and red pepper. I wonder what squirrel sneezes sound like.
Wanted: Your Money; Why? To Fight Cancer
I’ve signed up for my second year of running the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society’s Team in Training. Why? To raise money to cure cancer. To hang out with the friends I made last year. Because if I don’t sign up for these things, I start to grow as wide as I am tall. When I do sign up for these things I can eat ice cream and cake.
But before I blather on about me some more, a thing or two about LLS. Since it’s inception in 1949, it’s raised over $750 million to fight blood cancers. That’s a — what’s the scientific term? That’s an assload of money. What do they do with this money? Here’s a quick peak. And it’s made a difference. The easiest way to see this is to join TNT and notice the number of survivors actually training with groups. One gentleman who’ll be training with Brooklyn this summer spoke to us yesterday. He was diagnosed at the end of 2009. LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO. He was headed for a painful future of bone-marrow transplants when his doctors told him about a study in its fourth year that had discovered that people with his specific type of cancer responded to chemo just as well as they did bone-marrow transplants. This past March he ran a half marathon. Now he’s training for New York.
Guess who funded the study? Go on. Guess. LLS. And people like you who helped me raise money last year.
Another stat they dropped on us. A kid diagnosed with blood cancer in the 1960s had a 4% chance of survival. A kid today has a 90% chance. But before we go patting ourselves on the back, I’ll tell you what the coordinator told us. As amazing as that is, imagine putting 10 parents in a room and telling one set of them that their child is going to die.
So that’s why we do this.
Up next? Will I run the Hampton Half Marathon or the Hampton Full Marathon?
Putting the Servant Back in Public Servant
EPIGRAPH: “His life is no sinecure; and a methodical arrangement of his time will be necessary, in order to perform his many duties with any satisfaction to himself or his master.”– from “The Book of Household Management” by Mrs. Isabella Beeton
My friends, it occurs to me that when it comes to our so-called public servants, we’ve got the master-servant relationship exactly backwards.
After yet another spate of ethical scandals among our political class, we must admit that the sort of philandering and corruption rampant in their ranks reflects poorly on our ability to act as proper masters and certainly does not speak well to our ability to judge character and hire acceptable help. If the butler, stable-hand or charwoman in your own home behaved in such a manner, you would have sent him or her packing immediately.
What kind of servants are these, after all, who come and go as they please, who respond to neither phone calls nor letters, who hire their own family and friends and then exempt themselves from the very laws they’d have us observe? This is to say nothing of the awkward fact that they live in homes more lavish than our own and are ferried about in government vehicles as if they were to the manor born.
Continue reading “Putting the Servant Back in Public Servant”
KEN WHEATON 