American Dream

Folks, I'd like to sing a song about the American Dream. About me. About you. The way our American hearts beat down in the bottom of our chests. About the special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, maybe below the cockles, maybe in the sub-cockle area. Maybe in the liver. Maybe in the kidneys. Maybe even in the colon, we don't know.

Ah yes, the American Dream. The idea that one can better themselves through preserverence and hard work. The idea that someone with nothing at all can achieve greatness. The kind of stuff that really warms the hell out of the cockles of your heart and makes great "Lifetime Movie of the Week" moments. With that in mind, I have decided to give getting back into shape a try.

Now, sure, I've made this pledge to get in better shape every year around New Years like most people do. And, like most people, I have generally given up within a few hours of making said pledge. This year was different. So far I have managed to not only eat healthier but also keep a mild schedule of excercise in my like as well. It hast not been easy, as you can imagine, but hopefully I will be able to not only sched a few pounds, but be healthier as well.

Initially, my main motivation for this endeavour was that many people I have talked mentioned how much better and more alert they felt after exercising. I have not quite experienced the same results so far. I generally feel awful after doing any kind of exercise. The kind of awful that only a truly out of shape person should feel I guess. Punishment for all the sitting on my ass that I have been so prone to do. Hopefully, once my body gets used to the activites that working out entails, I will begin to reap the benefits of the program.

I would like to eventually get into the kind of shape that I was in while in high school when I played baseball. I could literally lift an elefant into the ait while riding a unicycle back then. Notice how I used the word "literally" there, thats' because it really happened. I'm sure you are at this point wondering why you havent seen this on youtube or something. Well, we didn't have all the fancy intertubes that you kids have now back then. Well, we did, but no camera or anything. So there, HA! Good luck proving it never happened.

I sort of went off on another tangent there, so ya. Honestly, I am only posting because I was listening to Dennis Leary on the way into work and wanted to post a few of the lyrics from the song "asshole". So I hope you enjoyed it. ENJOY IT BITCHES!

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, hot pink with whaleskin hub caps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights, yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115mph getting one mile per gallon, sucking down quarter pounder cheese burgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers and when I'm done sucking down those grease ball burgers, I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag and then I'm gonna toss the styrofoam container right out the side and there ain't a damned thing anybody can do about it.
-Dennis Leary

Hot Shots

Shots. Yes, shots. Shots are a beast that can bring the toughest man down to his knees dry heaving and begging for what he just drank to get the hell out of his system. There are also the cute designer shots that hardly have any kick in them at all save for a splash of grapefruit vodka or any other equally "girly" (sorry ladies) liquor. Many times just the word "shot" will give the queasiest of you out there a jolt to the back of your throat which is generally more than enough motivation for you to give a response of "some other time pal". Luckily many of the people I go out and drink with do not share this blind hostility and are open to try new drinks from time to time.

Now if you have ever gone out with me to a bar, chances are I have forced you to take my favorite shot of all time: The Three Wise Men. This shot contains equal parts of Goldschlger, Rumpleminz and Jagermeister. Now before you irrationally cry foul at the simple idea of all those ingreients in a cup, let me assure you that their combination is nothing short of epic. If you are a fan of Beg Red chewing gum, you will like this drink. So if you are ever hanging out with me and have never had one of these before, lemme know so I can introduce you to greatness. And if you end up not liking it, well, I might just have to keep getting them for you.

In the spirit of shots, I would like to make a shout out to one of the more recent ones I have tried: The Lindsey Lohan. All the drink consists of is a normal Red Headed Slut with a slash of coke. Pretty lolz, huh? So give that one a try as well next time you are at your local watering hole.

Stay thirsty my friends. And don't hate on shots!

Don't rape my shows

And now, onto the entertainment. Many of you know that Futurama is perhaps my favorite television show of all time. The ammount of lolz I have credited to that show surely numbers in the hundreds of millions. I am able to watch any of the classic episodes and still get a kick out of them. Sadly, poor programmings schedules forced this epic show to be cancelled before its time. A true tragedy indeed.

So you can imagine my utter joy nearly 3 years later when I heard the show was going to be coming back in a straight-to-dvd movie form. I waited patiently with much anticipation. This was going to be the dawn of new greatness for a series that few had the opportunity to savor. But alas, when the time came, I was met with disappointment. I watched all 89 minutes in shocking horror. I realized near the end that I had not laughed once during the entire flick. Something had gone horribly wrong. The creators of the show had pulled a George Lucas and invented their own Jar Jar Binks, so to say.

So I was thinking, "Ok, no biggie, this was their first ep back, they were probably just nervous or something, the future movies will surely be vintage Futurama". So I waited a bit longer for the second film to come out. And sadly, once again to my horror, it was another 90 minute piece of unfunny, uninspired garbage. I made a promise to myself that night to not watch any of the future movies made if only to preserve my image of the way the show used to be. The 22 minute episode of "Everyone Loves Hypnotoad" was the pinnacle of the two films I watched.

Last night, I was vindicated in my decision to stop watching the newly released films when a friend of mine, who I had warned about the awfulness of the new movies, informed me that indeed the new film was terrible. Charles Barkley might say it was "turrible, turrible, crazy knuckleheaded turrible." I would like to now ask, nay plea with the producers of these new movies to please stop making them. Stop ruining my show the way George Lucas ruined Star Wars. I feel like I need smokey the bear or something to say something to the effect of "Only you can prevent the destruction of your franchise".

You know it really is a shame they no longer use Smokey the Bear. I felt he was a effective way to inform people about the dangers of forest fires. Good guy, that bear was.

On a related note, a group of people are about to release a documentary of George Lucas' ruining of the Star Wars franchise. For more information about The People vs. George Lucas click here. My favorite line of the trailer goes as follows:

George Lucas: "Star Wars is my story. Just like my house is my house. So if I wanna paint my house green, even if everyone else thinks it should be red, guess what, I'm going to paint it Jar Jar."

Check out the trailer here.

This isn't a business plan, it's an escape plan!
-A guy from the 80's

More like the Lastros

I have been trying not to think about this topic for a good time because I know how much it will depress me. But now since most other sporting events I care about are over, it was inevitible that we would have to start talking about the 2009 MLB season, mainly how god awful terrible the Astros will be this year.

I was taking a look at the 2009 predictions over at the Baseball Prospectus where they currently have the Astros winning 66 games this year, only 2 ahead of the Pittsburg Pirates. That struck me as funny since in previous years when the Astros barely missed the playoffs by a few games people would counter with the "at least we're not as bad as the pirates" argument. And, to some extent, they had a point. While the team did miss the playoffs, they were at least still watchable. I have a feeling it will be nearly impossible to watch an entire Astros game this season without ripping ones eyes out in disgust.

In my opinion, the only bright spots on the team this year will be Roy Oswalt, Carlos Lee and Lance Berkman. I might throw Hunter Pence in that list later depending on how his spring training numbers look. After that, the Astros have no one. Period. Starting catcher J.R. Towles, starting thrid baseman Geoff Blum and starting Center fielder Michael Bourn will combine to hit .300 when you add their batting averages together. Shortstop Miguel Tejada should and probably will be suspended for lying to steroid investigators. Second baseman Matsui will be injured every other weak and hit .250 when he's healthy. And Mike Hampton will be out for the season after throwing a couple warm up tosses before his first start.

I think the 66 wins the Baseball Prospectus is giving the Astros this year is generous. I feel it will be closer to 60 or 62 making it out first 100 loss season this decade. What is even worse is the fact that they have no star players in the pipeline that could be called up to play at the major league level. This season truely is going to be a dud.

But, of course, I hope I am wrong. Hopefully a magic wizard or something comes along and casts a magic rainbow over the team which enables them to actually, you know, play baseball. And if not, at least they will lower ticket and concession prices to reflect the team's poor performance the way they raised them when the team was doing well, right? Right? *sigh*.

With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them.
~Art Hill

Pizza Hut delivered this blog

I was watching tv this weekend when I saw yet another Pizza Hut commercial where they supposedly dupe a restaurant full of people by informing them that THEY, in fact, made they food they are currently eating. I have a couple hangups with this, mainly the fact that the folks who are being duped are having intense discussions about how good the food is prior to the jig being revealed.

I don't know about you, but when I am at a swanky restaurant with friends we are generally talking about a local sports team or maybe why we are so awful at trivia. We are most certainly not talking about how well the lasagna holds together. My only guess as to why everyone is talking about their food is simply this: Pizza Hut found a bunch of homeless people, dressed them up, and gave them a free meal to be in the commercial.

Secondly, once Pizza Hut reveals that they are the people who prepared the food, everyone gets all excited and claps and pretends to be embarassed. Of course you are going to be embarassed! People have been filming you eat and listening to your private conversations for later use on national television. What if I had been talking about how I was nailing this hottie at work and laughing about how my wife would never find out? I would be pissed!

Not only that, if a restaurant I was at told me that they didn't even make the food I was eating, I would almost certainly never go there again. If I wanted Pizza Hut, I would have ordered it. But no, I decided to give your craphole place a try and you then proceed to give me someone else's food? Not cool at all.

I realize that this is just a commercial and I am taking it too literally, but still. Please don't tape my converations or dupe me into eating at places I didn't intend to go to.

I didn't realize this was like The Pentagon Papers.
-Dave Nelson

Amanduhhhh

I was watching the film Can't Hardly Wait the other day, which is a great flick if you have never seen it. In the film, the topic of fate is discussed and I began to think about whether or not I believed in it. One of the lesser characters in the movie, the Angel Stripper, says "There is such a thing as fate, but it only takes you so far. Then it's up to you to make it happen." I guess that is a reasoning I could allow myself to subscribe to.

The more I think about it, folks who belive in full on fate ie. "everything happens for a reason", must be rather bored. Believing that nothing they do will affect the way they live their lives. For me, it would suck to know that everything I do was what I was supposed to do. That I was supposed to write this blog, today, at this time and on this topic. This would also have huge implications for future me as it means that bar stool of mine will probably never get assembled.

In a way though, I also kind of hope that their is some guiding force behind the actions that we take. However, I still want to be spontanious and give fate the finger every now and then. Just to keep it on it's toes about where it is leading my life. Perhaps fate is your conscience whispering in your ear "hey mike, it might be a good idea to put the beer down before attempting to ghost ride your car."

In the end, I have to belive fate is real. That can be the only explanation as to why this post was so woefully snoozeariffic. I didn't even feel like posting an update here today. The fate of this blog may very well be in question. But then again, if it's predetermined, there is nothing I can really do about it anyway.

That is a Fragrance of Love scented candle, bitch. Damn!
-Kenny Fisher

Mightier than the sword

No, I am not talking about Pens. We're talking about shoes. Mainly the fact that several would be protestors are turing to them to get their message across. This has happend twice recently. First some crazy guy threw a shoe at then current President Bush while at a press conference in Iraq. And today when some other crazy guy threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at a press conference in the UK.

I guess I am just wondering why this seems to be the new way of expressing outrage at a certain individual. I suppose it is a bit less extreme than lighting yourself on fire. But for some reason, I think that the people who decide to go this route of protest think that it is some sort of ultimate shame to have a shoe thrown at you.

What they seem to not grasp, however, is that we and most other parts of the civilized world don't really give a damn about shame anymore. I mean look at Lindsey Lohan for crying out loud. The poor girl wouldn't know shame if the entire world laughed at her at the same time while she cried and cried about not being able to get a first class seat on an airline. You think throwing a shoe at her is going to make her feel embarassed?

I digress, my point is that protesters need to liven it up a bit. Throwing a shoe at an important person might get a clip on the "and before we go tonight" segment of CNN. However, throwing Lindsey Lohan at someone, would be in tabloids, talk shows, coffee shops, water cooler chat, internet blogs and parody commercials. You know, the stuff people really watch. Everyone would be thinking "haha that guy is going to have to take a lot of showers to get all that Lindsey Lohan off him."

Protestors have gone soft and it is time to liven it up a bit for our amusement. I'm ready to see some truly humorous and unique forms of protest. Throwing washed up celebrites at important peole is one of several things I want to see before I die.

I am not really sure how to wrap up this post, so I will just just post a picture of a silly koala bear.