This Time I’m Really Gonna Do It!

I had lunch with Aunt B. today, and I told her that I got an email this morning telling me that I had won the UK British National Lottery. So she talked me into finally quitting my job.

Now I’m going in to tell my boss what I really think of him!

God bless the U.K. Wish me luck…

Did Anybody Else Notice…

…that the City Paper is a half inch wider this morning? Great, now they’ll have more space for verbatim wire reports disguised as articles and Sudoku puzzles. As a guy that sells paper, I’m all for the extra paper consumption. But as a fan of hard news, I doubt they’ll make good use of the added real estate.

What Jet Lag?

How could I be lagging when I was lucky enough to have lunch at the “bbq joint of the people” with my muse, Sista Smiff and blogger-mom royalty like Busy Mom? It was much fun to swap stories about blogging and play the “do you know?” game about folks we grew up with.

I thought the most telling comment was how we admitted we were pretty shy people, but that we were more comfortable in environments like this lunch with strangers that we already knew.

At the next table was Kerry Woo and his wife who was nice enough to serve as photographer to document the event. More great blogger people.

And the pork sandwich was particularly excellent today.

Thanks to all the folks who made for a great lunch! Pass the Tums.

Back From the Emerald Isle

RUABelle and I are back in Atlanta after an 8 1/2 hour flight from Shannon. We left for the airport at about 11:00 last night Nashville time, so we’re fairly wrecked. Give me a little time to detox, upload some pictures and figure out what time zone we’re in and I’ll regale y’all with some stories.

A teaser: I now know how many pints are in a gallon.

World Cup a Go-Go

Greetings from the international terminal of Atlanta/Hartsfield airport where it looks like rush hour in Beijing. The place is stuffed to the gills, and it looks like 2/3 of the folks are either on the way to or from Germany for the World Cup. Multi-colored football jerseys are the travel clothes of choice and the roars of hopes rising and crashing on the pitch are eminating from every airport bar with a television.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say some people actually care about this stuff.

We saw something fairly creepy in the food court. A woman was pushing a baby carriage with three young kids of various ages piled on top of each other and hanging over the sides. She was wearing a t-shirt advertising some sort of teen abstinence pledge that read in big, bold letters, “I gave my word to stop at third!”

From the looks of that baby carriage, it looks like somebody stole home at least three times…Batter up!

WTF?!

I’ve been working in Louisville for the past two days, and when I come back I find that there’s some sort of magic going on at The Dry Spot!

Then I go in the backyard and find my laptop doing this:

Listen up, Blaine! I’m gonna be in Ireland with RUABelle for the next few days, so I’m probably not going to be blogging for awhile. You’d better leave my damn site alone or I’m going to sic the Alliance of Magicians on your ass!

Think of a Card

Go ahead. Now concentrate on the card.

Now go here.

Was that it?

No? Crap.

Let’s try again. Now think of another card. Really concentrate on it!

How about this?

Really? Are you sure?

Cut! We won’t use this take. Tell the producer we’re gonna keep on walking around the neighborhood until we get lucky.

A Friendly Warning

I’m sitting at home watching the weather radar to decide when
I’m going to leave for Louisville. There’s a really nasty line
of thunderstorms steaming through southern Kentucky, and I have
to be at a meeting by 5:00 p.m. I feel like I’m shooting skeet
and trying to figure out how much to lead the pigeon by.

If you know my history,you might want to fill your bathtub with water.

I’m just sayin’…

Internet Exorcism

I just realized that if I were to just type one word and post it, then the last entry on my blog would roll off forever. That would leave no mention of that narcissistic moron, David Blaine, on my site anymore. Yipee!

Oh crap, I guess now he’s now in the previous paragraph. Well, we’ll all have to wait another fifty posts for him to disappear.

Curse you, David Blaine!

You’ve insidiously taken over my blog!
Go practice your dark magic somewhere else!

The Internet Is a Dangerous Place

I’ve always been the worst musician in any incarnation of the various and sundry bands that I’ve been a member of over the past 20 years. But I’m generally an organized, fun kinda guy to hang out with and I’m willing to schlep the PA equipment, and hell it’s just rhythm guitar and back-up vocals, so everybody has tolerated my awkward fingers.

But I also knew that this situation probably wouldn’t last forever. As I got older and practiced less and less (limit goes to zero), bands that actually had gigs not only wouldn’t want me around anymore but also wouldn’t play any songs that I knew anymore. It’s depressing when you used to be a top 40 band and you have become an oldies band by default.

So anticipating the end of my career as a guitar hero, I began to look for a fallback position. Maybe someone would let me play in a horn section of a kickin’ dance band and I could still get free drinks at the weddings of total strangers. I used to play trumpet, oh 30 years ago, so how hard could it be to pick it up again and recondition the old embouchure?

$100 and a used eBay trumpet later, I was back in business. I remembered all my scales, thanks to my extraordinary finger memory, and while I was no Al Hirt, at least I wasn’t “Ear Hurt” either. Unfortunately, after playing trumpet in the middle school band, I switched to baritone and then tuba. (Once again, I was the only one willing to lug the heavy crap around so I got the biggest instruments. And that’s why my right arm is six inches longer than my left one.) The bad news is that I had forgotten how to read treble clef in favor of the bass clef notation of the b-flat instruments.

“No worries,” I thought. There was always the internet. You can find anything on the world wide web. All I need is a treble clef fingering chart for the trumpet. So I did a Google search for the word “fingering.” And let me tell you, the stuff that came up on that search! It took me literally hours before I found anything to do with the trumpet…

Yet Another Barbecumonic Convergence

Just back from the Mothership where I got to meet up with my two favorite Blogger crushes, Aunt B. and Brittney. Sorry, Bob, I like you and all but you’ll never be in the same league with these two.

The rib plate was particularly smoky today. When I walked through the door at the office after lunch, somebody asked if I’d been to a pool hall. Now that’s good bbq.

Is It Just Me?

The always witty Tennessee Mom has this picture posted over at her website as part of a nice tribute to Daddies on Father’s Day.

She swears it’s never occurred to her or anybody else in the fifteen years she’s had this photo, but isn’t that a truly unfortunate choice of fonts in the name of the horse “Great Clint?”

Maybe it is just me. I also thought Dave Ramsey was doing radio ads for something really disgusting…

Happy Birthday, Sir Paul!

That’s right, Paul McCartney was born on June 18, 1942.

“Will you still need me? Will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”

Apparently not…

Have a great birthday, anyway Paul!

He Said WHAT?!

First of all, the disclaimers:

Don’t keep reading this if you are easily offended by puerile discussions of bodliy functions or discharges. I, for one, think they’re hilarious.

Secondly, don’t read this if you’re a big fan of Dave Ramsey and his financial ministry. I’m looking at you, 2 Retire at 50 Dude.

There, consider yourself warned. If you don’t want to read this, just click on one of my other posts or go look at Neil Orne’s puppies or something. Here, I’ll make it easy for you.

Ok, so I’m flipping around the radio yesterday and I hear the familiar voice of Dave Ramsey. I’m always good for some self-righteous preaching and enjoy hearing the same advice over and over and over again. Who doesn’t like hearing the plights of people who are much worse off than you are?

But this was different. Dave’s monotonous voice jerked me to attention when he said, “Listeners, I want to talk to you about how to protect your most important asset…urine cum.”

“Urine cum?” What the hell is that? My best guess is that it’s the brackish substance that comes out between sex and your first pee after sex. I know that’s nasty, but I’m not the one talking about it on the radio.

Ramsey kept blathering on about urine cum for awhile before I finally realized that he was talking about “your income.” It’s not my fault, I swear. That’s how he pronounced it and that’s how I heard it.

But I guess I should have figured out that there’s no reason why anybody would want to insure that stuff…

You were warned.

A Friendly Warning

RUABelle and I are on the way up the mountain for a long weekend in Sewanee. We must have seen at least twenty THP troopers and local police on I24 between mile markers 100 and 114. They probably had ten different vans pulled over.

Look out Bonnaroonies! They’re huntin’ hippies!!

One of Them “I Wonders”

I just mailed in my quarterly tax payment to the IRS.

Why the hell do I have to put a 39 cent stamp on an envelope containing a check with a comma in the total that’s going to the U.S. government anyway?! You’d think they could print a damn SASE.

I’m feeling extremely Libertarian today.

You Gotta Have Faith, Faith, Faith

Lately, the Nashville Sounds have been getting a lot of national press about there Faith Nights at the ballpark. An enterprising group of promoters have packaged what was to be a one time only event at Greer into a national campaign. Good for them, I say. It balances out “Thirsty Thursday” and their dollar draft beers. I have seen folks wait in line for their two small cups and then get in the back of the line while they drink them. Hullo? You could do that at home or in a bar. I know, it’s all about the ambiance.

But is there anything better about the Sounds’ Faith night than the fact that last year they actually gave out John the Baptist Bobblehead dolls?!

Yes, John the Baptist. Head on a platter, Herod’s gift to Salome dude. Bobblehead.

And the jar of honey is hilarious. I know J the B lived on wild locusts and honey, but I think it makes it look like they bought some overrun Winnie the Pooh dolls and popped a He-Man head on top.

RUABelle and I actually instigated a bit of a stir at one of the earliest incarnations of Faith Night. They hadn’t organized it yet, but the Sounds staff did market certain nights to lots of smaller church groups as a family outing. Unfortunately, that was also the year that they opened the hot tub deck in right field. A friend of ours was celebrating a birthday one Saturday night and we all pitched in to rent the tub and the surrounding patio area.

Sometime around the 7th inning stretch, they started to announce all the various groups in the crowd. We could barely hear from way the hell out in the outfield, but I hollered at all the nubile young girls in bikinis and all the besotted guys in surfer shorts who were overflowing the tub and hanging off the railings of the deck. “Hey guys, they just announced Sharkey’s birthday!” Whereupon the derelicts we were with all went nuts, screaming, singing and jumping up and down and hoisting their plastic beer bottles across the field in a toast to all the folks sitting in the reserved section. (And I do mean “reserved.”) Their enthusiasm was not returned. The silence was deafening.

The PA announcer had not said anything about the birthday party in the hot tub. What he had actually said was, “and a special welcome to our guests from the Church Street Church of Christ.” I’m sure we were the topic of many a sermon the next morning.

I’m such a little stinker…

Back from the Mothership

 

Wow, what a week! I get to meet Aunt B., Kat Coble, Ryan, Huck and actually pay for Mothership BBQ? That’s tough to beat.

I did just miss Ivy and didn’t get to meet Sista Smiff or Sarcastro, but I’m sure there will be many more opportunities to “meat up.”

That is, without a doubt, the most links I’ve ever inserted into a post. 

Good Thing I’m Impotent

You know what I’d do if I had a baby boy born on Tuesday 6/6/06?

I’d have 6-6-6 tatooed on his head somewhere where it would only appear when his hairline receded in his thirties.

That’s what I’d do. Yet another good reason why I’m childless…

Lunchable

I spend entirely too many lunches sitting alone in a food court working the City Paper Sudoku. There are way too many interesting people out there to be such a stupid loner..

Aunt B. made today’s lunch a helluva lot more interesting!

Thanks, B. We’ll do it again soon at the Mothership.