OK, We Get It—You Wrote a Book
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya………….
Like oh-so-many great observations, this one came from that group of drunken slobs that I watch football with on Sundays. For a bunch of guys who can’t win a confidence pool or their fantasy team games, they sure do see the rest of the world in a pretty clear light. I think an advertisement for former Full House actress Jodie Sweetin to appear on yet another talk show finally set off one of the boys.
He went on a Dennis Miller type of rant about these pathetic celebs who had fame, fortune, and security and now have to tell us what a living hell their lives were. That’s where I got the title today. It’s a direct quote from his tirade. And I don’t disagree with a single word he said.
This woman is just the latest to dump her problems on us. The poor thing had a hit TV show, huge paychecks, fame, admiring male fans, and all the rest of the perks. But now we have to hear about how she was a down-and-out crystal meth addict. And we’re supposed to feel sorry for her. I heard her say on one blurb that she “felt like she had to out-party everyone in the room. Everyone at the party. She felt like she had to prove that she wasn’t the squeaky-clean good girl Stephanie Tanner.”
I can’t write that quote and re-read it without laughing my ass off. Give me a Goddamn break. I don’t have anything super-personal to attack the girl about. The TV show sucked, sure. But what scrapes my nerves is that these rich celebs…….almost like the NFL guys going to Afghanistan (see yesterday’s post)………just have to try and use another form of exploitation to make a buck because they can’t get another role on TV. And in these books they have to reveal the deepest, darkest secrets of their lives in a sad grab at sympathy. Secrets most of us don’t reveal about ourselves and for the most part, still get by just fine. But these bullshit artists try and tell us they’re giving their story in the hopes of helping someone in a similar situation.
None of us have had anything close to these people’s situations because we haven’t basked in wealth and the limelight before we fell to addiction or depression or whatever. Ninety percent of us haven’t had the chance to walk the yellow brick road. To go to elite detox places. To hire personal chefs and trainers to keep us fit and healthy. To relax and chill out in exotic locations when we need a break. But these fallen celebs think they’re one of us. Blue collar joes. Just like Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long think they’re grunts like the real military troops.
A couple months ago, it was Mackenzie Phillips sharing all her wonderful incest stories with us. We’d already grown tired of hearing about how hard she partied with her father and all the other rock stars that got decadent at her house. So she stepped it up a notch. Wrote a book (or another book? Hell, they get churned out so fast I can’t keep track). Now we can hear all about the love trysts and kinky hijinks she had with Dear Old Dad. Aren’t we lucky?
Let’s not forget our old friend Maureen McCormick from the Brady Bunch. That had to be almost a year or so by now that we got to be astonished by her drug and sex addictions. She was a coke whore and a whore in general, apparently. I’m astonished, aren’t you? She’s kind of a pig now. Can we get another book about her food addiction?
The buddy who was on the Dennis Miller rant about this stuff shared an anecdote. I don’t know if it’s all true or not—-I haven’t researched it. When I heard the news recently that Hulk Hogan almost killed himself……….I skipped the story. And I used to be a huge wrestling nut. But I just can’t take any more of these woe-is-me celebrities. But my buddy says that he heard Hogan was ready to do a self-inflicted gunshot and he got a telephone call at the precise moment from a friend, Muhammed Ali’s daughter Laila. And per Hogan, the intervention of the phone call saved his life.
You can imagine the vicious attacks on Laila Ali that soon followed from the rest of the guys on Sunday. They tore her to pieces for that intervention. If she’d only been five minutes later !
And why all the Hogan appearances with the near suicide sob story? Hell, he has a book that just came out. He’s gotta make some sales ! We don’t even need a book to know this guy’s story. He was the most popular wrestler of all time despite being one of the shittiest to ever climb in a ring. He had a chesty (read: plump) blonde wife who recently left him for a teenager. Or an adolescent. One of the two. He has a blonde daughter with very questionable talent being shoved down our throats as a singer. She does have some admirers because she’s not as big as her mother yet. And then he has a goofball son who fucked his friend up bad in a car accident a la Leif Garrett.
Does that about cover it, Hulkster?
We get it. Y’all can’t land another TV gig so you wrote a book. You slept with daddy. You tried to kill yourself. You were (or are) a drug addict.
We get it. Now please stop. Nobody gives a rat’s ass. And we’ve heard most of your stories (like Hulk’s son Nick maiming his friend) in the news as you hurt us innocent civilians in your decadence crossfire.
Just leave us alone. I have better things to do.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get down to Borders and put in my advance order for the Andre Agassi tell-all. I can’t wait to hear all about his crystal meth use as a player and how good Brooke Shields was in the sack !!
Updates……We Got Updates Here…..Get your ice-cold updates !!!
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya……….
The Bears tried to save a little face yesterday against the hapless Cleveland Browns and accomplished that goal—-a little bit. I didn’t think there could be a worse team in football than the Detroit Lions after we played them. But Cleveland sucks pretty bad too. And despite the Bears easy victory, not everything looked great out on that field. Walter Payton’s daughter looked great during the halftime ceremony in honor of #34. But the Bears themselves were lucky this was the Cleveland Browns.
In the first six minutes or so of the game, both teams had three possessions of 3-and-out. It was like watching flies fuck. BORING. Finally, the Bears eeked out a damn first down. And thank God for Robbie Gould. He and the punter Brad Maynard have been the team MVPs over the reign of Lovie Smith. So Gould eventually had us up 9-0 because future Hall of Famer Jay Cutler once again couldn’t crack the end zone. Finally on our 4th foray into the red zone, Matt Forte rewarded fans with a TD.
Cutler finished the day with zero touchdowns and one interception making his numbers 11 TD and 11 INT on the season. Somebody start carving his bust for Canton.
Our Bears are 4-3 now, but our only hope of the playoffs is as a wild-card because Minnesota is still rolling. We still have to play them twice which could really change things. But we sure won’t be beating them if we play like we did yesterday. With Cleveland you can get away with it. Not with the Vikings.
In other updates, I checked in on October’s Asshole of the Month, Richard Heene, and yup—-he’s still an asshole.
Oh, the huge Dick Ourada Band holiday show is less than 4 weeks away now. The buzz on the street is picking up. Apparently Rolling Lanes (host site of the extravaganza) has told all bartenders to be ready for duty. It s the busiest night of the year for the bar and you’ll have to get there early to get a table. That is worth the effort though when opener Andy “The Big Deal” Plzak gets things started. Be sure you line up the babysitter now and make your plans for Saturday, November 28. {see earlier post The Dick Ourada Band Ready to Rock Out Again}.
I predicted the Yankees would win the World Series in six games mainly due to Philadelphia’s lack of pitching. So far, the Yanks are up 3-1 in games after Philly closer Brad Lidge blew a tie game in the 9th inning. I had said he was a roll of the dice whereas Yankees closer Mariano Rivera is a sure thing. The Phillies tied the game at 4-4 last night in the bottom of the 8th on a clutch homerun by Pedro Feliz. Then Lidge came on for the 9th and it was 7-4 before the Phillies could get back up to bat. But then Mariano came in to seal the deal. Which he did.
The Phillies could very well win one more game because they are sending ace Cliff Lee back out to the mound for the next game. He’s the guy who won game 1 with a shutout. But like I said before, after that the pitching takes a sharp decline for the Phils. And they’ve lost games 2,3, and 4 because of it. Now Lee comes back to win game 5. And the Yankees win the title in game 6.
I told you to bet the kids’ college funds, didn’t I ?
And remember my rant about how many damn football analysts there are out there and how long they ramble on-and-on about the games? Well next week we’re in for an even longer day with these slugs. They’re going to do the pre-game show from Afghanistan and it starts an hour earlier than usual ! Yippee !! We’ll get to see Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long give their really heart-felt thanks to our troops as they wear their Rolex watches in their $5000 dollars suits. Right before they jet the hell out of there and race back to their mansions and ranches as fast as they can.
Or worse, they’ll dress these bozos up in army fatigues and these pampered millionaires will prance around like they’re in the military too !!
Actually eating the same slop at the same mess hall as our brave men and women of the service. God bless Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long.
I don’t mind our troops being entertained by the WWE or a traveling group of celebs. But when one of these outfits like the NFL pre-game show go to a hot spot and we have to see the montage of the hugs and back slapping and the almost teary-eyed testimonials of the hosts (like Bradshaw and Long). I don’t buy it from those guys. They act like “one of the boys” out there and blue collar like so many of us truly are. But usually these guys wouldn’t be caught dead without their Italian leather shoes and their Hummer or BMW. They may have grown up in a blue collar town and once been grind-it-out grunts like us, but they’ve now been too rich for too long.
Finally, I hope you had a great Halloween. A friend of mine threw a party and it had everything from Mike Ditka to Jon Gosselin to a nun. And an afternoon stop at Hooters in the afternoon was enjoyable too. Those girls know how to dress up ! Next good time on the agenda looks to be Thanksgiving ….followed two days later by the Dick Ourada Band spectacular.
It’ll be a terrific night out. You can bet the kids’ college funds on it.
Survivor vote somewhat predictable
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya…………….
Last night’s episode of Survivor didn’t have anything too dramatic or tragic like when a player had to be removed from the game last week. It was more of a basic episode where they at least seperated the reward/immunity challenges into different contests.
The show started with the one tribe “electing” Shambo to take over as leader for the departed dread-locked Russell. Two things regarding this event. First, I realized while watching that I no longer will have to differentiate between the two Russells. Which I’ll miss, actually. I no longer can call the oil man “pot-bellied” Russell. Well, I guess I still can. But I don’t need to. So from now on, it’s just plain old Russell. Unless he pisses me off in some fashion.
The second thing about Shambo’s appointment as leader is that it is just a “puppet” maneuver by the guy alliance. They realized that there were four guys and four women left in the tribe. So they figure they are stroking Shambo’s ego a bit and can still influence her into running the tribe the way they want. We’ll see how long it takes her to acknowledge in her one of her solo ‘asides’ that she knows the men are just trying to manipulate her.
I have to admit though that the tribe continued to do pretty good under her leadership. They won both challenges during the show.
In the reward challenge, the tribe won a fire-making kit and a trip on a sailboat with lunch. Then they were able to send a member over to the other side as a spy—-something the departed leader did to Shambo twice. No one likes to be the one sent as the spy because they miss out on the reward that was just won.
I don’t like this bullshit “spy” thing they’re doing. It is nothing but a penalty to the victors. The producers know obviously that it is a double-edged sword. They portray it as a positive thing like it is part of the cumulative prize of a tribe winning a reward challenge. But it is more of a negative than a positive. Big freakin’ deal…..a person spends a night at the other camp and can see where some of the internal strife is. That’s nothing. Crapola. You better not send me on that lame-ass spy mission when I’m on the show. Just so ya know.
The flip side is that not only does the spy have to miss the sweet reward that typically includes a great meal, they have to spend a whole night in the usually sorry surroundings of a weaker tribe. It’s like living at the Plaza and having to spend a night at Howard Johnsons. And for what? To watch a couple of people snipe at each other and think that will help you significantly down the road.
It doesn’t really play out like that. The people who are a pain-in-the-ass and snipe with their tribemates are the people getting voted out when the same tribe goes on to lose the immunity challenge as well. The spy misses the meal, spends a night in the slum camp, and leaves saying to themselves, “Well, none of them like Player C. She seems to be bitchy and they all mock her. Maybe I can flip her later on.”
But there is no flipping her later because the very next day when that weak tribe loses the immunity challenge, Player C gets voted out of the game that evening. The spy’s mission is a complete waste of time.
And the negative reaction of the people who get chosen says it all. They always feel picked on or disliked by the leader who sent them. Like Laura (who was selected) and some other girl who spoke negatively about Shambo’s decision in an ‘aside’.
She said, “Shambo is like the girl who grew up in the trailer park and married a rich guy. She’s treating everyone like trash and I don’t know if she has a strategy or not for sending Laura over to the other camp. Laura is one of our strongest females.”
In giving her decision in front of everyone, Shambo clearly said that she “needs her 4 guys well-fed and ready for tomorrow’s immunity challenge“. And she also said that she has been there twice herself and wasn’t going this time. Sounds fair enough to me. But I saw her strategy run even deeper than that. Shambo had just sat out that challenge and MUST participate in the immunity challenge the next day. So she should be well-fed and stong too. Additionally, Laura had just participated in the reward challenge and therefore could sit out the immunity challenge. After all, she’ll be so weak and tired after playing the spy game all night. So there was a numbers strategy behind it too that wasn’t clearly identified. Good for Shambo.
And it worked like a charm. There was a lot of labor to be done getting the boat out to the sunken puzzle pieces in the immunity challenge. And in the end, Shambo’s team won again.
The show tried to make out like a tired Jaison was in deep trouble and a good threat to be voted off. But that was just the usual see-thru approach the producers use to make you think there are two equal candidates who might go. The truth is that Liz was still only in the game thanks to the injury departure last week. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been on this episode. So she was going the whole time. And she sealed her fate 100% when she griped about a tribemate chirping with the spy while there was work to be done. Russell told her it was good to make nice-nice with someone from the other side because obviously when the merge happens, they are short on numbers.
So Liz was cooked. As Richard Pryor once said, “somebody get some cole slaw and serve this shit up”.
Two last thoughts: where the hell did this Natalie come from? Jesus Christ. It’s almost getting ridiculous. They’re in the bush for almost 3 weeks now in torrential rainstorms with allegedly no luxuries. And this chick looks incredible—-at least from the neck down. She’s beginning to compete with my girl Monica as Best Eye Candy.
And second: If these people have no creature comforts or luxuries, how do none of the girls have underarm hair? They still look like they’re ready for a photo shoot for Sports Illustrated. Remember when Susan Hawk and the other girls all had a jungle under their arms on season 1? Reminded me of a Grateful Dead show. But these girls on recent seasons get help staying photogenic. They gotta be.
Let’s Face It: There’s really no stopping terrorism
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya……….
My buddy is one of those guys who likes to send out a lot of political crap in his emails. The type where it encourages you to send it to 20 of your own friends so that a worldwide boycott on buying gasoline for one day can happen. Or to bother your friends to bother their congressman about immigrants as if anything whatsoever will ever happen thru those efforts.
I hate politics with a passion. I hate talking about it. I despise reading newspaper articles, political commentary on TV….whatever. It’s all bullshit and lies. But I don’t hold it against my friend or demand he stop sending me the stuff. I don’t want to drop off of his mailing list entirely. Occasionally he forwards a good dirty joke. And on the very rare occasion, he sends a current events item that does capture my attention.
Like the one he sent me the other day. Maybe you received it too. It is an article/summary about a lecture given in New York City recently by Juval Aviv. Apparently this man was the Israeli agent on which the film Munich is based. He was Golda Meir’s bodyguard and she assigned him with tracking down and bringing to justice the terrorists that slaughtered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games.
The article goes on to build on his already substantial credibility by giving him credit for predicting the London subway bombing on the Bill O’Reilly show a week before it happened. Also with supplying the Bush administration with intelligence on the 9/11 attacks a month before they happened. The article claims that this man is now in the employ of the US Congress as a security consultant. Whether any or all of these claims about Juval Aviv are true or not, I have no idea. But no matter how accurate his background is reported or how decorated he may—or may not be, what he is credited with saying at this NYC lecture is right on the mark so many times.
He predicts the next major terrorist attack on US soil in the next couple of months. It is what he points out about our security structure that really hits home, though.
He describes how all of our security measures are reactive instead of proactive. Like when the one guy tried to light an explosive in his shoe. Now we all have to take our shoes off. Then someone else tried to smuggle an explosive liquid on a plane. So now we all can’t bring liquids on-board. Aviv laughingly asked what will happen when someone puts a liquid explosive on their underwear? What will be our reactionary directive then?
The sad part is that those observations are right on the money. But it was his next opinions that match my own views for a long time now. He says that terrorists won’t be using airplanes as their weapon again anytime soon—if ever. We weren’t prepared. They exploited that weakness. And we have reacted with those weak checkpoint searches and restrictions. So now terrorists will move on to our next biggest weakness.
Aviv says that the next major attack will be a coordinated effort in several locations across the US wherein simple explosives in suitcases and backpacks will be detonated in heavily populated buildings. Just like it happens in Israel. It doesn’t have to be a government building, a national landmark, or a courthouse, etc.
In fact, most likely those places will be excluded. It’s much simpler than that. They’ll set one off in a McDonalds at lunchtime. And in the packed convention hall of a Vegas hotel. Maybe another one in front of the major league baseball stadium where hundreds of people are in line to get in. Or even in the stands during the game.
I’ve made this same observation for many years. The friend who circulates all this political material (including this email on Aviv) and I were season ticket holders to the Chicago Bears for four years. This was right at the time of 9/11. And in our usual reactionary approach, they started checking tote bags and purses a lot more thoroughly at the entrance gates. For about half-a-season. After that, it was back to just making sure people had a valid ticket and weren’t carrying bottles of beer or liquor. I remarked to my buddy then…..and several times since then at various places……how easy a terrorist could wipe out 100 or more people at these venues.
It’s the price we pay to enjoy the freedoms of choice that we have (entertainment, food, recreation, etc).
I went to four major league baseball games this year and one Blackhawks game already. No one at the gates has done as much as pat my back or chest or made me open up the flaps of my coat. That’s how easy it is to wear a dynamite vest into almost any venue. I hate to say it, but just in the state of Illinois, terrorists could wreak havoc–killing thousands without ever coming within miles of the Sears Tower.
At 1pm on a Saturday, they could simultaneously hit the busiest roller coaster line at Great America, the overflowing Murphy’s Bleachers pub across from Wrigley Field before the game, any busy suburban McDonalds, and the check-in line at O’hare aiport.
That was another major point about Aviv’s dress-down of our airport security. We wait until people are at security checkpoint just before entering the terminal area before we look them over. They could kill just as many people at the front of the airport at a busy check-in time as they could on an in-air flight. And Aviv says they may very well try that ploy as long as we remain reactive instead of proactive. He says if we are going to conduct searches right down to the shoes, it should happen BEFORE a person even enters the airport. Until we do that, a check-in line attack is quite possible.
Even though I claim to have made these observations long before I read the piece on Juval Aviv, I also surrender to another simple truth. There is really no way to avoid these attacks outside of the airport. Short of doing a complete pat-down search before we enter a fast food restaurant or a movie theatre, it’s like I said before. To enjoy the freedoms that we do in the US, we basically have to leave ourselves exposed to these types of attacks. Even if we did perform full pat-downs at every venue, that still doesn’t stop the guy just walking past the throng of people milling in front of Wrigley Field and detonating himself. Or gathered for a St Patrick’s Day parade downtown. Or Taste of Chicago.
There really just isn’t any way completely around it. From here on, periodically we have to pay for our freedoms with some innocent lives. Like they do in Israel.
That’s just the way it goes.
World Series a Match-up of the True Best
Dude, I’m tellin ya……….
So tonite is the start of the World Series. Even though I’m a rabid baseball fan, I’ve never gotten too excited about the Series. I kind of like the playoffs themselves a little better than the World Series. And even the playoffs don’t grab me if one of the two Chicago teams isn’t in ’em. By the time the Series starts, football and hockey are already going. Now it takes so damn long for baseball to get to the big show that the NBA has started its season too. So by this point, if the Sox or Cubs aren’t involved, I’m more inclined to watch a regular season Blackhawks game over a W.S. game.
Maybe it has something to do with interleague play as well. I’m a baseball traditionalist. I’m slow to embrace change in many aspects of my life. But in baseball, I liked the competitiveness of the All-Star game when I was a kid. They’re trying to recapture it again these days after the game had become a snore-fest. And when I was a kid, obviously there was no interleague play. When two teams met in the Series, there was no chance they had played each other since spring training. No one in the AL had played anyone in the NL—–except for the hotly contested All-Star game. Now the two teams in the Series may have played each other six times already in a home-and-home series during the season.
But whatever. The grand stage starts tonite between the Yankees and the Phillies. I was hoping for this match-up when the playoffs started. To me, these were the two teams who have the most talent-laden lineups. When I watch a championship game in any sport, I want it to be between the two best teams…..period.
I am NOT an underdog kind of guy. I don’t get off when a David slays a Goliath. I actually hate it when a .500 team in the regular season makes the NBA playoffs and knocks off a team that won 58 games. Hockey and basketball let so many teams into their postseasons, it makes you wonder why there’s even a regular season? One team kicks ass thru 82 games and wins 58 of them. Better than 2/3 of their games. And some other team that struggled to win exactly half of their contests not only qualifies for the postseason, but then gets lucky for 4-5 games and eliminates the truly better team. It’s bullshit. Unless it’s the Chicago Bulls doing it to somebody. Then it’s just fine with me.
And I’m only talking about a really average team that just barely slips into the playoffs. If the Chicago Bears were to go 13-3 one year and lose in the playoffs to a team that was 10-6, then that’s disappointing—but tolerable. But if they lost to an 8-8 team that eeked its way into the playoffs on the last day of the season just because another team had lost their final game…….that’s when it sucks. Unless it’s the Bears doing it to somebody. Then it’s just fine with me.
See the pattern here?
But at least in the baseball playoffs this year, four of the very best teams made the divisional championships. So no matter who made it to the Series, they could all claim to be deserving this time. I’m just glad that of the four teams, the Dodgers didn’t make it. I saw them as the weakest of the four possibles. They’re a good team, but I thought the Angels, Yanks, and Phillies were better.
I have to give credit to Dodgers manager Joe Torre, though. George and Hank Steinbrenner wanted him to take a pay cut after leading the team to the postseason for like 11 straight years. Sure, they hadn’t been to the Series in 3 or 4 seasons, but they always made the playoffs. I’ll take that with the Sox for a decade. So they forced this future Hall of Fame manager out of town and he lands on his feet with the Dodgers. Last year, he makes the playoffs (as usual) and sweeps the Cubs in the first round to make the divisional championship. Now this year, he makes the playoffs (as usual) and AGAIN sweeps his opponent in the first round to make the division finals. True, he has lost in those finals both years. But does this guy know how to lead a team or what?
So back to the big match-up. Both teams have great starting lineups from top to bottom. Both teams #8 hitters in the order could probably hit as high as 5th or 6th in any other big-league lineup. Both shortstops were on the US Baseball Classic team earlier this year. So were about 9 or 10 other players for their respective countries. I think what it will come down to is what it almost always comes down to in baseball. I learned it from my dad many years ago.
Pitching, pitching, pitching.
And I think the Yankees have the edge. The Philles have a bullpen that often looks as bad as the WhiteSox bullpen did this year. And that was god-awful horseshit. Phillies closer Brad Lidge is a roll of the dice this year. Meanwhile, the Yankees have the greatest closer in history cruising along on a great hot streak. And after the Phillies start Cliff Lee in game 1 tonite, there is a steep decline after that. The Yankees have CC Sabathia go up against Lee tonite, but then can still turn to Andy Pettite and AJ Burnett. Fantasy baseball guys know that Petitte is one of the greatest second-half pitchers and postseason pitchers in history. His career marks after the All Star break dwarf his numbers prior to the break. And he’s doing it again this year.
So I see the Yankees taking this in six games. Call your bookie. Bet the pink slip on your car. The kid’s college fund. Remember……I’m the guy who said the Bears would be a .500 team this year. And they’re 3-3 so far.
Guess I don’t have to worry about this being the year they go 13-3 and get upset in the playoffs.
New Feature: It’s The Asshole of the Month Award !
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya………..
The subtitle on this blog says, “Dude, these are the things that are scraping my nerves.”
A lot of people and things have been scraping my nerves lately. So I figured it was time to introduce a new feature. Actually, I’m stealing it from a very reputable magazine–Hustler. It was always my third favorite feature in the mag after the naked girls and the hilarious jokes they have in there. {Hustler jokes make Playboy’s jokes sound like little kids doing sorry “knock-knock” gags}. But I always loved Hustler’s Asshole of the Month Award. It used to be so freakin’ funny as they took some really deserving schmuck and tore him to shreds. That’s why I say Hustler is reputable. It’s hard to find a more blunt, honest look at prominent people and current events. Screw the New York Times and Newsweek.
The tough part of introducing this new segment to my own forum was deciding who this month’s asshole should be. There are just so many contenders. Let’s face it….Jon Gosselin of that whole Jon & Kate +8 nightmare (that just won’t go away) is always a contender. And for me personally, Bears coach Lovie Smith was in the running this month. His sleepy, forgiving outlook on the Bears lackluster play and numerous errors drives me nuts. I can’t see how he has ever motivated anyone in his entire life. Except to take a nap. Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are perennial favorites.
But for October 2009, I felt I just had to go with the bumbling, fumbling wanna-be scientist out in Colorado who used his young son to try and enhance his push for a reality TV series. Turns out he’s a real sphincter of a scientist.
Congratulations Richard Heene !! You’re our Asshole of the Month !!!
And a bigger pile of steaming fecal matter I am unaware of.
This dickhead apparently got the taste of celebrity when his family was on Wife Swap in the past year. And because he doesn’t seem to want to go back to some real work like the rest of the struggling country, he devised a scheme to land a reality show spotlighting his crap-ass scientific experiments. As I’ve mentioned before, I have nothing against schemes or a well-thought scam. But this bucket of butt gravy did one of the most heinous things a parent can do. He exploited his own son and used him as a pawn in one of the dumber hoaxes of recent years.
He purposely launched a laughable depiction of a hot-air type balloon that allegedly had duct tape helping to hold it together. Then he and his wife called emergency personnel claiming that their youngest son was on board the balloon. Emergency people responded and a day-long track & pursuit of the ballon ensued at great expense. In the end, the kid crawled out from his hiding place and ended the faux drama.
What this pud-knocker either didn’t think of, or is too fucking stupid to realize is that he shouldn’t have allowed the children to participate in the media blitz that followed. Instead of saying something like, “Falcon is scared and a little bewildered and we won’t be allowing any media to interview him or the other children. His mother and I will address all questions.”
But no. This veritable shit-for-brains paraded his whole family on to the Larry King Live show and expected a boy as young as 6 to hold up the wall of deceit under a barrage of questioning. And this guy is supposed to be a smart scientist? Hey genius—-if you’re so damn smart , how about teaching that wife of yours a bit more of proper English? Jesus Christ, on that 911 call she made, she sounded like the Vietnamese hooker in the movie Full Metal Jacket.
“Ummmmm……Me love you long time. And my son is on space ship! Help us ! ”
It’s too bad the balloon wasn’t a bit bigger so that dear old dad himself could have boarded the thing and blew away like a fart in the breeze. Now we all have to smell the sickly stench of this bastard’s little game for weeks to come. Nancy Grace can milk this sort of thing for months. His alligator tears and (fake) voice cracking came easy to him because allegedly both he and his wife once pursued acting. Maybe they should go back to it.
He can make one of those cheap sex tapes that assholes like John Wayne Bobbit (he of the severed…and then re-attached penis that his crazy-ass wife lopped off) and Dustin Diamond (that jerkoff from Saved By The Bell) have done. And then get spit out the bottom of the porn industry—which is probably where he met his submissive little wife. Swirling around the bottom of the toilet bowl after her unsuccessful X-rated career. Now he is swirling on the bottom of the bowl right next to her. A perfect match.
The best thing to come out of the whole affair was that the young boy was safe and unharmed. Not too hard of a feat considering he was never really in any actual danger. I feel sorry for the kids. Some children live with their single mother. Others live in a broken home. These little boys have to live with a matching pair of turds.
There’s probably very little doubt that whatever poor woman on Wife Swap had to come and stay with this pile of dung likely returned to her own home and said,
“What an asshole ! ”
She hit the nail on the head. Richard Henne……our Asshole of the Month !
A more pathetic display I’ve never seen…….
Dude, I’m tellin ya………….
First off, I want to send my deepest condolences out to the family of one of my very best friends. They lost a close member of their family this past weekend and obviously are in serious mourning. My thoughts are with all of you guys and I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m thinking of you and will say a prayer for your loved one. God bless.
On a lighter note, don’t forget the huge show coming up for the Dick Ourada Band. It is just about one month away on: Saturday, November 28, 2009 at Rolling Lanes in Countryside, Illinois. Everyone who is anyone will be there. Make sure you aren’t a nobody.
Now then, on to that debacle we call a pro football team here in Chicago and that laughingstock that they put forth yesterday afternoon out in Cincinnati. What horseshit. Although that may be a little too complimentary for the effort they put forth.
As you know from prior posts, I’n not exactly on the Jay Cutler bandwagon. I don’t completely dismiss his talent and think he’s the worst QB we’ve had. Not by a long shot. But I found these stats interesting in yesterday morning’s Chicago Tribune sports section. Keep in mind that these numbers were prior to yesterday’s comedy of errors.
Here were Jay Cutler’s ranking on some of the most important stats for a QB. The ranking is compared to all other NFL quarterbacks:
Passing yards 1,201 Rank: 16th
Passer rating 86.9 Rank:16th
Completion % 64.9% Rank: 15th
Completions of 20+ yards 19 Rank: 9th
Passes for 1st downs 58 Rank: 17th
Entering yesterday’s game, Cutler had 10 touchdown passes and 7 interceptions.
After his 1 touchdown and 3 interceptions yesterday, those numbers now stand at 11-10.
What a stud. What a superstar. Let’s rush out and give him another two more years and 30 million dollars on that contract extension. His numbers, which all dropped even further on the NFL rankings yesterday, suggest that we don’t even have a QB who is among the top half of the league. Meanwhile the guy we used to have is up to 6-0 out in Denver. Let’s not even discuss the draft picks we gave up along with that guy. And Cutler was getting all sorts of credit for leading two comeback victories—-including one over defending champ Pittsburgh.
Let’s look at that picture a little more closely. First of all, you only have to make comebacks because you haven’t scored enough to win the game in the traditional manner. A comeback in the final two minutes means that you were being beaten after the first 58 minutes. And out of the Bears six games thus far, we’ve entered the 3rd quarter with 12 points or less in 2/3 of them. I’m not talking about points at halftime….I’m talking about when the game is three-quarters over. You are almost always trying to come back in games if you are only scoring 12 points in the first 45 minutes every time out. There’s no honor there.
And if the Pittsburgh placekicker could have made just ONE of the two field goals that he missed, the Bears wouldn’t have won that game. Cutler and the 17 points he led us to wouldn’t have been enough.
So what do we have? A blowout win over the (1-5) Detroit Lions, an early Christmas gift from Pittsburgh, and a win over the (2-4) Seattle Seahawks who were playing without their own stud starting quaterback.
I don’t want to put all the blame on Cutler here, though. I simply just don’t buy his “franchise player” recognition from the media and the team personnel. But the defensive line just went its second straight game without a sack. That’s eight quarters and counting, guys. Of course perennial Pro Bowler and seeming future Hall of Famer (that’s sarcasm, folks) Tommie Harris missed both games. The King of the 9-Game season is back to his old tricks. But it’s not like you hear his name much when he plays anyway.
But the defensive line HAS to put some pressure on the other QB and help out the defensive backs….because these are some of the crappiest defensive backs in all of football that we have. These guys couldn’t cover a decent high school wide receiver. They get beat so bad, by such wide margins, and with so much regularity, it really is completely unacceptable. We don’t seem to have one guy who can cover a top wide receiver.
I have to admit that after the Bears had climbed to 3-1, I complimented them in this forum on making me look like an idiot to that point. My original prediction of 8-8 (at best) was looking bad. But now we’re back to .500 at 3-3 and we still have two dates left with the Minnesota Vikings who stand at 6-1 and look great. At least next week the Bears play an even shittier team than Seattle and even Detroit in the (1-6) Cleveland Browns. Now if we lose to the Browns, fold up the tent and start watching the best team in town more often. The Bears will be done. Playoffs? Don’t cross your fingers. If we indeed lose to Cleveland this coming Sunday.
You remember the best team in town? The Blackhawks. Yup….the team that won 2-0 on Friday night and looked really good doing it. The team that is sitting atop their division right now. The team that is almost ready to get superstar Marian Hossa back in the coming 30 days or so.
Start watching these guys as much as you can. The Bears make you wait all afternoon to score 12 points or less in 3 quarters and then try to hook you back in with a fourth quarter comeback. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. And in the end, it all adds up to an 8-8 record.
Medical emergency on Survivor
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya………………
This week’s episode started off with a statement from pot-bellied Russell that I totally agree with. I often question the alleged toughness that these people have to go thru on the show. Oh, they don’t eat for 3 days….welcome to unemployment. But anyway, pot-bellied Russell was saying he welcomed the non-stop rain that was hammering the tribes. He said something to the tune of, ” All this sunny, nice weather sucks. I’d take my family on a vacation out here when the sun is shining. I like the rain. If it rains for 7 days straight and wipes out one person, I’ll be happy.”
Amen, brother. I hear ya. That proved to be prophetic. They already minimalize the punishment of the challenges with their “light-combat” rules. Like I’ve said before, find your way out of US Cellular on the South Side of Chicago on-foot late at night after a game and tell me how tough Survivor is. At least the producers can’t control the weather. And it has taken its toll. It has now rained for a good 4 of the last 5 days on these people. Relentless.
Yet, call me an even bigger pig than last week….call me a total scumbag loser. But blonde hairstylist Kelly somehow still looks like she’s shooting a spot for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Early in the episode, she was curled up under some palm trees and giving her thoughts on the tribe. She looked like a million dollars for having spent 15 days starving in the jungle. The same goes for one of my personal favorites, Monica the law student. She could still pose for Maxim with the way she looks after two weeks (allegedly) trying to survive.
Like I mentioned before, I know I would look like horseshit by then. Remember on season 1 when Susan Hawk and Kelli Wadsworth had a forest growing underneath their arms and looked really awful? No cuties that season. Apparently that isn’t allowed anymore. Monica looks like she just stepped out of the surf in a James Bond flick and is ready for a pictorial. Hey, I know a grad student like Monica who looks absolutely stunning. Freakin’ incredible. But if we sent her out to (allegedly) survive in some (supposedly) unforgiving conditions, she’d probably wilt and look terrible. Maybe not, knowing her. She does have some moxie.
But back to the show. The two tribes showed up at the challenge and were told that regardless of who won the challenge, BOTH tribes would go to tribal council and vote out a member. I don’t like that bullshit. This is one of their cheap ways to keep things close when one tribe is kicking the other’s ass. I mentioned how they like to do this in a previous post. Even though this would have allowed the weaker tribe to keep pace with the stronger one, it was like saying the producers figured the weaker tribe to lose and were going to keep things status quo. Lame.
The dread-locked Russell fouled up the producers’ plans by passing out during the contest. He had pushed himself keeping the tribe’s fire alive during the torrential downpour. When it came time for the challenge, he had little left to give. Normally, my buddies and I would have torn him a new asshole if this was the NFL on a Sunday afternoon. But it wasn’t. He was down-and-out. Gave it his all.
At first, the asshole in me DID come out when I asked myself why they stopped the challenge because one guy couldn’t continue? Why can’t the other team continue on and probably win with the advantage they gained? Is this Survivor or tiddly-winks? But thanks once again to the level-headed advice of my more civilized friends (like the grad student), I realized that dread-locked Russell was likely finished and he would be the lone ouster from this week’s show.
I did get a kick out of Russell’s teammate Dave, the fitness instructor, questioning Russell’s condition and dismissing it on the man’s extra efforts during the rain showers. A professional fitness instuctor couldn’t tell when another person was in serious physical distress. Nice. What a stroke.
I did think the result of the challenge was weak, though. No one won the reward. Both tribes were told they had to go to the tribal council. {Now in the end, neither tribe had to vote someone off due to dread-locked Russell’s withdrawl}. But I thought the one tribe got ripped off. The challenge was halted because a participant on one tribe couldn’t continue. This has opened up a whole new door.
Again, this is how my mind thinks…….whenever your tribe is getting trounced in a challenge, feign a serious injury !! You won’t get eliminated from the show because of course you will make a miraculous physical comeback after the challenge. But you avoided the loss in the challenge !!
Survivor just invites that sort of shit if they had any real, scheming, smart challengers like me instead of a bunch of hired models and schmucks.
I do want to give proper kudos to dread-locked Russell, though. I had absolutely no complaints about this guy. I cajoled him last week for sniping at his tribemate Dave over starting the campfire. But if that was my biggest complaint after two weeks with this guy running a tribe….that’s a tribute to him. He led the dominant tribe. He wasn’t a tyrannical dick. He explained his decision to send Butch….er…Shambo… on the scouting mission to the other tribe’s camp two times in a row. And he lost his remaining energy keeping the tribe’s fire going in the torrential downpour. He wanted to stay when they told him he was being removed from the game. He cried…….and I have nothing to say about that. A stand-up guy. I have always tried to surround myself with tough, stand-up guys who wouldn’t crack under pressure.
Dread-locked Russell deserves a spot on the (alleged) upcoming All-Stars show. He reminds me of that dude Mike that killed a wild pig in the forest many seasons ago and then fell in the fire from exhaustion. I always thought he deserved another chance on an All-Star season. Perhaps he was invited to play, but declined. He was cool. A real warrior.
So pot-bellied Russell, the weak–but hot—law student Monica, and even the men’s BVD-wearing Shambo survived yet another week. Who will piss off their tribemates enough next week to get ousted?
{use the Adam West voiceover here)
Same Probst time !!
Same Probst channel !!
The workplace; comedy’s best source of material
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya……………
I’ve acknowledged before that I’ve been out of work for a number of months. Or to use the politically correct format of NFL announcers, I’ve been “in-between jobs” for a while. Isn’t that so much nicer? This seems to give me a lot of time to watch sitcom reruns like The Office or Spin City.
When I watch these shows, it makes me reflect on what a zoo the typical office setting in America is really like. Or the warehouse. Or the plant. Just your colleagues in general. It’s a miracle that most US companies ever make a single dollar. I think we can all relate to this in some fashion. I’d really like to get back to some gainful employment. If not for the money and feeling of self-worth, then just for the comedy material and the life-long memories.
When I was working at the local liquor store in high school (imagine that?), we used to hide in the beer cooler and drink cans of beer at a pace that would make “Stone Cold” Steve Austin jealous. We’d crush the cans with our foot and toss them far into the roofing of the ceiling. There was a hole in the ceiling where you could stand on a keg and just wing them far into the darkness. One day I came in to work and my buddy pulled me aside. He said that the ceiling collapsed in the storeroom and about 5,000 smashed beer cans fell to the floor. We’re talking there were collectible cans up there like the old Old Style cans with the ’78 Pittsburgh Steelers on ’em. Hilarious. One stock boy had passed the secret stash on to another for at least 10 years.
After that, we started throwing our smashed cans behind a burnt-out ice cooler that was in the storeroom. We figured we ourselves would be long gone before they did anything with that. A few months later I reported to work and the same buddy walks up to me laughing. He said that earlier that afternoon some guy showed up and said, “Yeah….I’m here to take out the dead ice cooler machine.”
Apparently he moved it out of there and left behind about 500 smashed beer cans.
I once worked for a family-owned business where two brothers did most of the administrative work. One was the President and his brother did insurance replacement. The matriarch of the company was their mother—-and an elegant, high-society woman at that. I recall one of the funniest damn days of my life when the brothers had one of their notorious, explosive blowouts. The Prez picked up an old-fashioned dial-up telephone that offices used to have, ripped it from the wall, and threw it at his brother. The younger brother ducked and the phone smacked their 68 year old mother square in the head. Holy shit, was that funny. She walked it off. After all, they were southern folk. They called chickens “yard walkers”. Tough group.
At the same place, we hired a kid to work in the warehouse. He sold himself to the boss as a straight-and-narrow kind of kid and someone we could rely on. Within a week, he wanted to leave early one day. When asked why, he told the God’s-honest truth. He had to go and see “his fuckin’ parole officer.” If I remember correctly, we let him leave early. He didn’t last long, however.
Another guy got fired for being late about 4 out of every 5 days. When told he was expected to show up on-time like all the other employees, he stormed out of the office shouting, “He says I have to be here on time ! That’s f’n bullshit ! ”
Where do these people come from? I do thank them for the laughs, though.
At my last place of employment, we had another kid who didn’t show up for three days. When he got back, obviously we asked him what the hell happened? He said his mother had passed away. Wow. We accepted that excuse and everyone told him how sorry we were. The next morning at arrival time out in the parking lot, there were six or eight of us saying “good morning”. And who pulls up? The kid with his mother behind the wheel dropping him off ! He didn’t seem to last too long after that.
Another guy somehow got our forklift tipsy inside the back of a delivery truck. It tipped over sideways and there was absolutely no way to unwedge that forklift without taking out the side panel of the delivery truck. Luckily, no one was hurt. But believe me, there was half of the office laughing their ass off at such stupidity.
I once worked at a collections office where every phone call was an adventure. I got my buddy a job there and, like the rest of us, he adopted a pseudonym for himself so he didn’t get his head blown off by an angry customer. No kidding. He called himself Mr. Long. I’ll never forget the day he spent fifteen minutes trying to help someone spell MR. LONG. After a while, he was standing beside his desk, pulling his hands thru his hair like a beleaguered NFL coach screaming, “L-O-N-G !”
The rest of us were laughing our asses off.
At the same place, we once caught up to a guy who had fled back to Mexico and was now in a Mexico City hospital bed dying. My supervisor got the hospital information from a relative and called the guy on his (alleged) death bed. We knew we weren’t going to ever see another car payment. He just wanted to harass the guy and make him squirm. We’re all laughing as he grills the guy on the phone from 3000 miles away. {Hey ! The guy had made our life miserable by not paying his bill. Our career advancement was being hindered by this bum. So shut the hell up ! }
But whether someone is turning out the lights in the plant crew’s bathroom with a full house, or someone fouls up the boss’ lunch order and it’s a major catastrophe, or a warehouse guy bends over and splits his pants……..the office is such a treasure chest of laughs.
I think my all-time favorite is when the smart-ass warehouse foreman used to come into the office and right in front of the boss ask me,
“Where’s sissy tits at?”
I used to laugh my ass off every time he did it. Right up until the very day he got fired.
Here’s an idea for a new sports channel
Dude, I’m tellin’ ya…………
As we’ve seen in some previous posts after a weekend of watching football with the boys, I often think one of us actually crapped out a good idea while watching the games.
I’ve had an idea here for many years. So it’s not a brand new brainstorm I just had this Sunday. But it is an idea that gets reinforced in my head each and every Sunday that I watch the games with my buddies. The way they watch the games just proves to me more and more the need for a real man’s sports channel. A true blue collar sports channel.
Really, it’s not even a sports channel. It would be more of a very unique ‘live feed’ for major sporting events. Perhaps it could take off and become a full-fledged sports channel broadcasting almost all of the games. And I’ll declare this…I had this idea long before satellite radio came along. Satellite radio allows broadcasters and their shows to be more open and uncensored. Just like Howard Stern’s show now has profanity and no limitations on language that they couldn’t say on commercial radio. I brought this idea up at least 12-15 years ago. But maybe satellite radio is where it might find its first home.
The idea is simply based on the fact that sports announcing is so sanitized and politically correct. The announcers are objective, use the cleanest language possible, and waffle on anything that calls for an opinion. None of the people I enjoy sporting events with has those traits. For one, 90% of the people I know talk like they did on The Sopranos. That’s what made most of the characters on the show and their daily lives/interactions believable. There are very few males I know who don’t toss in an F-bomb about every 8 words or so. And call a situation exactly as how they see it.
And they are not the most objective bunch of people who waffle every time an opinion is invited.
I want a sports announcing setup where there are a couple of real-life, meat & potatos, blue collar guys calling it exactly how they see it. No cleaned up PC bullshit. They can even drink throughout the telecast (like my boys do) allowing their observations to be even more brutally honest and (mostly) hilariously accurate as the game goes on. A la Harry Carey back in the day.
Real life: “Manning completes it to Reggie Wayne for a pickup of 6 yards. A lot of fantasy owners have to be pleased with the production of Manning and Wayne today. These two grew so much together under the tutelage of former coach Tony Dungy and it really shows”.
The boys: “There’s another fuckin’ completion to Wayne. Manning sucks ! The guy didn’t do shit last week and now that I’m playing the guy who owns him in my fantasy league, he’s kicking ass. I wish somebody would snap his fuckin’ leg. Yeah…they blossomed under the tutelage of Tony Dungy. By the way, how’s that son of his? Is he still blossoming under Tony Dungy’s guidance? Oh yeah, he’s fuckin’ dead.”
Even when a player is injured on the field, my boys are relentless.
Real life: “We have a player down on the field. It looks like #48 for Washington…….LeRoy Rogers. It’s hard to tell if it’s his leg or his shoulder. He seems to be favoring both. We don’t want to speculate and unnecessarily worry his family. He’s had a great game to this point with that 1st quarter interception. Let’s hope he’s going to be OK.”
My boys #1: “Is that #48 ?? I think it is !! SWEET !!!! That fuckin’ bastard picked off Favre back in the first half and fucked up that drive that would have put us ahead. Good—-I hope his leg is broke. (High fives around the room)…….How’d you like that? Pussy !! ”
My boys #2: “Will somebody please get a wheelbarrow and get this piece of shit off the field so we can play some football. Jesus fuckin’ Christ !! It’s been like 5 minutes now for a broken leg ! How long does it take? Get a shovel….scoop his sorry ass onto a stretcher, and let’s go already.”
My boys #1: “I hear ya. Fuck him. I hope his kids are watching. How’s your daddy’s leg, huh? Apparently not too good ! “
And don’t think that me or my buddies are harsh or uncivilized. I can tell you this: all beers have a coaster underneath them. A few of us even went to college. Or junior college at least. That’s how civilized we are. But we all grew up watching the games with our fathers. That was how we all learned football. We share stories of going to games with our dads and some of the funny shit they used to say and do. So blame them.
I used to love watching games with my dad. It was the late ’70s and early 80s right before Mike Ditka restored the Chicago Bears pride. We had coaches like Jack Pardee and Neil Armstrong back then. And as a boy of 8 or 9, I used to love my dad’s reaction to things……
Real life: “And it looks like the Bears are going to go for the field goal. Coach Armstrong feels better about getting the easy three points in this situation. It’s only 4th and inches and you have Walter Payton on your team. But Coach Armstrong looks like he’s going to be cautious here.”
My dad: “Awwwwwwwww….shiittttt !!! That candy ass !! Give it to Payton ! We’re down by 5 points. We need a goddamn touchdown ! Give it to Sweetness (Payton) !! Aw, this coach is such a candy ass !”
That’s how I want my announcers to call the games today. Forget all the saccharine-sweet bullshit that we get from Joe Buck and Al Michaels. To listen to them, everyone is good. Everyone pulled themselves up by the bootstraps after a tough childhood. Every coach is a genius. All assistant coaches deserve to be head coaches. Blah, blah, blah.
If they’re all so damn good and hard-working, upstanding people, how come half of the NFL are rapists and murderers? Why are there so many dropped passes and stupid penalties? Children out of wedlock? Dog fighting rings? Unpaid child support?
We fully realize that these guys in the NFL are the most talented 1000 players on the planet. But enough of the endless ego-stroking and hyperbole that today’s announcers shove down our throats.
Call it like it is. When Ray Lewis makes a great tackle, tell the damn truth. Tell the audience that the runner pulled up like he thought Lewis was going to cut his throat from ear-to-ear. You know……like he did at that Super Bowl double homicide a few years back?
Just tell us the truth. Some players are good and some suck. Some coaches are smart and some are fuckin’ dumb asses. Or as my dear old dad would say……”Awwwww, what a candy ass ! “