Kal 4 Prez: Issue One: Torte reform

Greetings, fellow countrymen. Well, the political world's all a-buzz over that actor about to announce a presidential bid. I'll tell you what, I ain't afraid of him.

Here at Kal For President, we welcome all comers: from Romney and his freshly shellaced hair, to obvious brainwashed-sleeper agent John McCain, to also obviously brainwashed sleeper agent Barrack Hussein Obama, I welcome them all.

So, as a part of my exciting and paradigm-shifting campaign, let's start talking some issues!

First, a reading from the Book of Al:

I sued Coca-Cola, yo
'Cause I put my finger down in a bottle
And it got stuck!

I sued Delta Airlines
'Cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey
I went there, and it sucked!

Yeah!!!

If you stand me up on a date
If you deliver my pizza 30 seconds late

I'm gonna sue, sue
Yes, I'm gonna sue
Sue, sue, yeah that's what I'm gonna do
I'm gonna sue, sue
Yes, I'm gonna sue
Sue, sue, yeah I might even sue you!

Ugh!!

From "I'll Sue Ya", off the Album "Straight Outta Lynnwood."

So, my "handlers" tell me Al is talking about the need for torte reform by sarcastically suggesting he will sue people for all these minor offenses. Sure, whatever.

Let me tell you, it's hard to get good help these days. These 22 year old kids fresh out of some fancy-pants college trying to tell me how to run my campaign. And then they come up with something stupid like this.

What the heck do they mean by torte reform? Look, I've had a lot about these little torte things, and let me tell you, I think they're wicked awesome. I love those alternating layers of cake and icing and chocolate mousse and all that. I think they're quite yummy. And I frankly don't think they need reforming at all!


Yessirree, I do love those tortes just the way they are.

Seems like it's my campaign staff that needs some reforming!

Rube Goldberg for pyromaniacs

Found this on Live Leak. It's a neat Rube Goldberg machine using fire...



(Just seemed appropriate, tonight's Criminal Minds is all about a serial killer arsonist.)

Memorial Day, 2007

The first Memorial Day since a 25 year old from Pleasantville was killed in action carried extra feeling for many in town. A fresh grave in our cemetery, which hasn't accepted war dead in at least a generation.

The war hit home for me this spring as well, as a young man I had worked with fairly closely was killed in action. He had joined the military in 2004, in the midst of the fighting, knowing full well what he was getting into. His father, a West Point graduate and decorated soldier in Vietnam, had turned against Bush's war, but Andrew had joined and proud to had done so.

This was after an evening of talking to the kids about the war, spurred by 60 Minutes' story of the Iowa National Guard troop they've been following since deployment. The Girl just doesn't understand it -- why do we need to waste American lives half a world away? Why can't these people just take care of themselves?

I don't have any answers for her. Some things I used to be very sure of I'm not so much anymore. I can't put a value on Andrew's life. Is all this worth it? Of course not. Not if you're asking me about this one kid I knew who went off to war knowing full well all the dangers and possibilities.

But what if it works? We won't know for years, of course. But are we planting anything that will blossom in the arid desert seas and lush river valleys of Iraq? Is there a child is Basra growing up amongst the chaos of hatred of a sectarian war (for this isn't Iraq against the US, this is Sunni and Shite and Kurd against each other, with bonus points for knocking off an infidel invader or two...), is there a young man or woman growing up thinking to himself or herself; this is crazy, this isn't what Allah wants?

Is there a teenager somewhere dedicating themselves to a future of bringing his or her country together around a shared vision and rejecting the destructive and nihilistic hatreds of the present?

How will this end? For too many American young, it will end in death. But will their sacrifice mean more than some writing on a marble slab in a cemetery; festooned with flags a flowers once a year? I hope so.

But I don't know.

Movie Night: The Most Depressing Movie Ever...

The picture to the right is from a scene of "The Pursuit of Happyness" where homeless Will Smith is spending the night in a locked BART subway station with his five-year old son.



And this isn't the most depressing scene in this movie.

What a freaking nightmare of downer movie. I'm one of those people who identify just a little too much with characters in movies and books and by half way through this one I was ready to cut my wrists.


I'm not going to spoil the plot (here's the IMDB page for the movie), but suffice it to say, everything happens to Smith's character, short of a raging case of jock itch. Usually when a character eats one crap sandwich after another it's a case of lousy writing, in this case however, Smith's character is based on real-life homeless-man-turned-stockbroker-turned-multimillionaire Chris Gardner.


Couple of points:


* Between this movie and Crash, I'm beginning to think Carter's wife is a real bitch.


* Dan Castelanetta actually sounds like Lenny in real life, although oddly enough, Lenny is voiced by Harry Shearer. Weird.


* Jaden Christopher Smith, Will and Jada's kid, is painfully cute.


* Yeah, yeah. I cried. So sue me. I'm an easy emotional mark.


It's these damn father-son movies that get to me. I'm awash in Daddy issues -- the Father/son daddy stuff, not a fixation on old gay men -- so any movie with even a lick of Dad-stuff puts me over the edge.


This is an issue for another post and another time (I've just spent the last 1/2 hour of Cold Case trying to put into words the difficulty of raising boys, of making them men while teaching how to be so much more, all the while waiting for the inevitable point in time when they kill you in cold blood to seize control of your kingdom...), suffice it to say, I was puddle-city halfway through and felt emotionally exhausted by the end.


So, let's Sandraize this one. First, the groundrules, as always:


The Sandra Bullock Scale© was devised to rate a movie sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score of five out of five represents a movie's a) stupifying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage [see Practical Magic... what a waste of time, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and zero nudity... Rated PG-13 for sensuality my fanny...]


At any rate: there was no sleeping through this thing. It was a bataan death-march of a movie and it would've been unsporting chickening out mid-way through. Well, it was sort-of worth it, as... well... I'd be giving away the whole point of the movie (oops, too late).


Anywho, as dreadful as it was, it did keep me up, so, gotta be fair:

0 of 5 Sandras!

For those of you who are interested, the real story of Chris Gardner can be found here. Until next time, save the isle seats for me (so I don't drool on anyone as I fall asleep)...

Biker (coffee) Bar

You don't want to get in the way of these mean hombres before they've had their first half-caf venti double sweet two squits lattee.

A Little Advice

If you're ever in the State House, feel free to shake hands with the people who work in the coffee shop. Everyone else, not so much.

Someday, the Messiah-Shark Will Come...

The Washington Post had a delightful and terrifying story yesterday about virgin births among sharks. Apparently in September 2001 a baby hammerhead shark was born to one of three female hammerheads sharing a tank at Henry Dormley Zoo in Omaha Nebraska. No males had been in contact with the females and they had all been in captivity for a number of years.

Now, last year on my old blog I noted that the DARPA (black helicopter guys) have been working on technology to use Sharks for their nefarious schemes; putting sensors in shark brains to try and get them to be use their excellent sense of smell to root out... well, lord knows what those DARPA guys are doing with the sharks. Part of me thinks that the whole "friggin Sharks with laserbeams on their heads" thing in Austin Powers came from DARPA. So I'm a little skittish about sharks from the get-go. I mean, even more skittish than that whole "they like to eat people" thing. That I can understand. It's the teaming up with the evil government scientists in the black helicopters that puts me on edge.

Anyway, now we get news that sharks have achieved virgin birth. Scientists had originally thought that perhaps one of the females had some male "materials" (hey, this is a family blog) stored up from before captivity.

Well, when they autopsied the baby shark (apparently another animal in the tank killed it shortly after it was born) they found that it was an exact genetic match to one of the three female sharks. No poppa. Asexual reproduction.

Apparently scientists had heretofore observed this kind of asexual reproduction, parthenogenesis, only in lower forms of life such as lower plants, aphids, parasitic wasps, and certain fans of the Jerry Springer Show.

Now, as a supporter of sex, I find this appalling. And even more importantly (frankly, how much more sex am I going to have anyway?), is this shark, born outside of shark sin, the long-promised Messiah-shark who will lead his Selachimorphian brothers and sisters to freedom? Will he rise again in glory to judge the living and the dead? And is he just a messiah for sharks, or are we land-based hairless monkeys invited?

I dunno. Messiah-sharks and Zombies. I don't like our odds.

Guess the Bellybutton

John Stamos and Tom Selleck were on Conan the other night and the subject of bellybuttons came up. Well, the three of them decided to compare bellybuttons. Can you pick which one belongs to each?

Well, the pasty hands probably give the last one away. The top one, the ugly, deformed and utterly disturbing nubbin of a bellybutton belongs to John Stamos. The middle one, flanked by discolored spots that are obviously fatal skin-cancer from his days of shirtless vollyball while house sitting for reclusive billionaire Robin Chambers, is Tom Selleck's, and the bottom is ultra-white boy Conan O'Brien.

See ladies: ultra-sexy John Stamos has a gnarly bellybutton. And ultra-sexy Tom Selleck has a nasty case of fatal skin cancer. And of course Conan, is, well, Conan.

Kal wins, by default.

See the youtube clip here. And a tip of the hat to Thesuperficial for finding this.

Thirteen Stories From an Old Man

Gino tagged me on a meme requiring the writer to make 13 predictions about the world as it will be when he or she is “old”. Well, RW already stole my joke about opening the paper this morning and reading off the first 13 headlines, so I guess
I’ll have to put a little work into this.

Appropriating his formula, what will the world be when I am 75, 40 years hence? Well, let’s see....


Dateline: Pleasantville, Massachusetts. May 23rd, 2047.
The bones are creaky as I rise out of bed. The ladies on the news sprightly tell me we’re in for a cool one today; the recent mid-90’s heatwave¹ will be replaced by a pleasant sea breeze bringing temps down into the ‘80s. Of course this will be only after a late morning series of thunderstorms which could cause a stray tornado or two². I make a mental note to fasten the storm shutters, then slap my forehead for my forgetfulness;

“Wifeypooh?” I say in a loud, clear voice.

As always, she answers. “Yes, dear?”, her voice cool and modulated.

“Could you secure the storm shutters when the barometric hits 29.5, would you?” She demurely responds yes. Never fails me, does she. “Coffee too, okay? And run the morning program, would you?” She quietly beeps an affirmative as the plasma in the bedroom lights-up with my emails, headlines, and the usual array of operational stats for the house.

The Boy was over with his grandkids the other day, my great grandkids – the oldest now two (it’s time to start paying for college, isn’t it!), and commented that he thought it was more than a little weird that I named the home control system³ after his mother – dead now these last ten years after blowing an aneurysm yelling at a door-to-door salesman⁴.

“Dad, don’t you think it’s time to move on? You’re still a young man, and with the new implantable, fully bionic penis⁵ that guy Avitable keeps talking about, you could still date. “

That boy. Always the romantic. And yes, I’ve read Avitable’s raving about the thing – how he actually made a horse cry the other day – but frankly, with my back I don’t think I could lug the bastard around. And look, as a full-time naked blogger he could deduct it as a business expense, I can’t afford $23.7 million… That’s almost two weeks of social security checks⁶.

The headlines were the same today as yesterday it seems. Luxembourg is the seventh European nation to make Arabic their official language⁷, George Quinton Robert Romney Bush has already announced for the 2056 Presidential election, having just turned 26. His uncle, President George Herbert Smith William Bush II pledged his instant support, himself the frontrunner in the 2048 race. His cousin, George Walker Texas Ranger Jefferson Bush, the current Governor of Old Mexico, cried foul – understandably, why his Dad would go supporting someone else for 2056 when GWTRB was running in 2052 and might be trying for reelection himself in 2056 was a little odd.

Although, hey, ever since the Bush and Clinton political families put aside their differences and pledged only to marry each other, the genetic material’s gotten a little thin. It wasn’t in the news, but I imagine George William Hillary Bush-Clinton, the military governor of Afganiraqanianistan is probably pissed.

I'll tell you though that these ten year presidential election cycles⁸ are getting a little tiresome...

The siege of Fort Gino in Arizona continued. I’d have to remember to send him an email. I mean, really, how important are incandescent bulbs anyway? Jeez. Just give up the lightbulbs⁹ Gino.

"Wifeypooh? Tull tickets?" She responded that she had placed the order for tickets, and Ian and the Boys, well the embalmed corpse of Ian and four sessions players all born about ten years after Ian passed out and fell out of his walker on stage that fateful night in Providence, playing the Jacobi bar mitzvah¹⁰.

But we loyalists still show and hope that one of these years they'll produce a new album. Although fifty years later Dot.com still holds up, I'll tell you what.

I surfed over to Large Regular, where Chris is mocking Bill Simmons for having a real, live, stroke when the Celtics yet again got screwed in an NBA draft lottery, getting the supersecret purple ping pong which gives them the last pick in the NBA draft, right after last year's champion, the Beijing Yau Mings¹¹. Well, there's always the Patriots who have won the last 39 Superbowls¹² and will be coached this year by a retarded Monkey with one testicle. The Krafts complained that the NFL forced them to hire the retarded monkey, but given the fact that the the majority of NFL teams are coached by Schottenheimers, the descendants of Marty and Brian, the commissioner figured that was the only way to level the playing field.

Of course, I had to surf through 57 popup ads of Peyton Manning trying to get my to buy a Rascal. That bastard's been dead and he's still in 67.3% of all the ads¹³ on Webovision. Well, that's what winning one superbowl (and choking 14 other times in the playoffs) will get you...

And, don't you know, I've been on the webovision longer than they government allows¹⁴ (don't want us to all get obese, you know...) so Wifeypooh breaks in and gently reminds me it's time for my mandatory exercises.

Well, that's fine. RW said he wanted to break-in the new flying Mini and wanted to zoom up to Minnesota to hear Harmonica Man's latest band rock the nursing home. I've read of his prowess with the holographic harmonica is something to experience in person.

Afterward he promised to drop me off in Toronto. I've got a hot date...

If the home system would just stop it's interminable bitching... Yes, I am wearing this out of the house, thank you very much. No, I don't mind that it's a velour sweatsuit... Yes, yes, I'll be back by ten... Jeez. Where's the remote?

Damn that boy. He disabled the mute button.

Why This Culture Stinks: Reason #272

News Item: (Well, sort of, I got it from The Superficial) (Heyyyy.... It's not on The Superficial. I'm aghast. I rely on The Superficial for all my celebrity news! Oh, I guess I'll have to go to TMZ...)

Okay, News Item: Britney Spears made such a stink about the lack of leather seats on the United Airlines plane she was supposed to fly to Florida on that the captain of the plane taxied back to the terminal to let her off.

(Oh, and The Superficial has the story up now. I think my vicious taunting got to them)

Anywho: what the heck? If I complained about something so bitterly that the captain of the plane had to go back to the terminal to let me off, what do you think would happen?

Yes, that's right. I'd end up in the hoosegow. And so would you. And after getting extra special full-body cavity searches by the TSA, we'd most surely end up on a no-fly list and possibly even get audtied by the IRS just for fun.

We would most certainly not be allowed to interfer with a flight crew (the catch-all federal felony they tag everyone from terrorists wanna-bes to disorderly drunks) and get dropped off at the terminal.

I mean, this is America, right? This is a country of laws, and not men (and chicks). Right? Why the special treatment for trailer trash multi-gazillionaires?

And Britney, really, hon: You wear so little clothing, and velour dosen't stick you your fatty sweatty baby-momma ass like leather does. It's really the better choice.

Love,

Kal

I'm not threatening, I'm just sayin'...

News Item: Earlier this week the corpulent body of Jerry Falwell was found dead on his office floor.

Fact: March 12, 2006, Falwell dismisses global climate change, saying "scientists who are not on the payroll of the government" were skeptical of climate change.

News Item: Pat Robertson escapes death when his private plane crashes without him aboard last May.

Fact: on August 2nd, 2006, Pat Robertson declared on the 700 Club that he was a "convert" on Global Warming.

God doesn't screw around. C'mon Gino: hand over those incandescent lights before anyone gets hurt.

Yup, still alive

Sorry I've been away for a couple of days. I'm writing something that's a little difficult (plus I'm fat and lazy. Just so you know.)

I will leave you with the one thought:

Chicken Curry and an english-style pub for a business lunch = Bad Idea.

Smellingly yours,

Kal

Reason #476 I'm a Republican....

It's tough nowadays to admit one's republicanism, but Thank God for Tony Snow.

Apparently Mr. Snow, Bush's spokesman, is in a band called "Beats Workin'", and, get this...

He plays...

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Jazz/Blues Flute!

I sh^t you not.

Here's a YoutTube clip of him doing "Stormy Monday Blues" sounding A LOT like Ian Anderson on Tull's version of the same song.



Apparently Tony and his band are in a battle of the bands at the National Press Club dinner with geriatric newsreader Bob Schieffer's band: "Honky Tonk Confidential". Here's an MP3 clip of one of their songs, with Shieffer singing.

Tony and his band, on their website, has on their songlist stuff like the Stones, The Grateful Dead, Badfinger, The Doors and Grand Funk Railroad. Shieffer? Schieffer plays crappy honky tonk crap.

Republicans = cool music.
Democrats = crappy music.

I rest my case.

Ewww....

 

Meat free chicken? Well, if you're the kind of person who's strict about definitions and says "chicken is poultry" then why feel the need to tell me it's meat free? All poultry should be meat free, right? I mean, you're not slipping porkchops in with my poultry, are you?

And if you are the kind of person that says anything with eyes is "meat", then what exactly is "meat free" chicken made of? Bananas?

This is very troubling...

Can't talk... eating working...

Ugh. Deadline for vast quantity of written work coming up (like in two and a half hours). Eeek! Just checked, it's two hours! Small amounts of written work done. Need to turn into vast amounts quickly... No time for chatting.

Have a great weekend, and to all you Mothers and Mother$@#$ers out there, happy Mother's Day!

Oh, and for Motherdear, who may or may not be lurking, here's for you:

Arggghhghg!

Two frickin' I've tried to set up my linklist. Two times. Both times I get like 14 entries done and the thing closes. Closes!

Mother$^@#$ing Blogger...

So, sorry to all my regular reads for not linking. It's not that I'm a big snob, it's just that I'm technically inept...

I don't mean to alarm you but.... RUN!

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, they used to say. These days, the price of just staying alive is eternal vigilance. Or at least watching Fox25 every morning.

Case in point: last week news broke around here that the Medical Examiners office had "lost" a body. Apparently some poor guy died under mysterious circumstances in some hotel and they carted him off to the ME for an autopsy, and the ME "lost him".

Now our ME's office has been in the soup quite a bit lately. They misplaced somebody's eyes last year, and had a real bad problem with unclaimed corpses piling up and stinking out the joint. So, according to the cover story press accounts, in the process of cleaning out all the old, unclaimed corpses (maybe it's like a school lost and found: if nobody claims stuff it gets donated to orphans or something at the end of the year), anywho, in the process of cleaning out the old corspes, they think they might have gotten rid of this new corpse by mistake.

Sure. Right.


But I was buying it. Until someone thinking themselves a wiseguy emailed into the Fox25 morning show that obviously the body was a zombie and had walked off on it's own. The hosts all laughed it off and moved on to the next story.

Well. You see, I've read "The Zombie Survival Guide", and I know what to look for. I remembered a story back in February about alleged misdoings at a certain catholic cemetery in the Boston Archdiocese. Apparently they were reburying bodies, dumping them out of caskets, taking gold fillings, that sort of thing. Now, the interesting thing is a family had requested an exhumation to see if the charges were true, that their grandmother was buried just in the dirt, actually under the coffin of her later-deceased hubby.

Both the Church, and the family (who had hired a high-priced lawyer famous for his role in litigating the big church sex scandals) made high profile statements and Fox25 ran wild with this story... up until the exhumation. Then: nothing. Now, if indeed the charges were true, wouldn't that family (or the high-priced attorney) want to say, "See, I told you so(now pay up)". And if the charges weren't true, wouldn't the Church want to say: "See, we did everything right, now buzz off"?

But the silence has been deafening. Which can lead me to only one conclusion: the story was hushed up by the government. Classic Stage 1 Zombie Outbreak behavior. I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting my stocking up now. By summertime this place could be crawling with the living dead, and I need to be ready to split at a moment's notice.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

Pot (Belly) Purri

As a special treat, I'm train-blogging today via the Treo and my spiffy magic wireless keyboard, so if this post degrades into gibberish, blame my inability to type on a tiny keyboard perched on my shoulder bag (plus the keyboard has a nsty habit on not synchingup with the Treo until you type your first letter, so if I miss a bunch of first letters of words, you know why.

(Note: I went back and edited when I got to my desktop. Couldn't take all the errors.)

Anywho - on to today's subjects.

1. Crash

Saw Crash over the weekend. Going to Sandra-ize it in a later post, but, man, what a movie. After it came in the mail I really thought we'd hate it, and the first ten minutes filled me with dread, but, wow. This could be the one that rewrites the rules. More later.

2. Fat@ssedness

My back has been on strike since about Saturday, and as much as I'd like to blame some crushing yardwork or fantastic accident, I woke up with it this way. So unless ninjas attacked during the night and I sleep-fought them off, there's no good reason I've been schlepping along like an invalid for the past three days.

There seems to be one solution: my back has finally decided that it's tired of lugging around my fat gut, and has gone on strike until further notice,

There's a lot of merit to this possibility, as I have reached yet another level of fat@ssedness I never thought I'd get to. The two of you who've been around for a couple of years may remember that I hit 250 a couple of New Year's Eves ago and went on a dieting and exercising binge that saw me drop 30 pounds, back to to marriage-day weight of 220.

And 220, you mqay recall, is about 40 pounds heavier than my woo-ing weight of 180. (But that was high school, back when I had a metabolism..)

Well, recently we've been flirting, aw, hell, when been completely molesting, 260 pounds, with the number 264 actually being spotted recently.

So this is completely out of hand. It's time again for an epic quest to dump off a pound or 50.

But I need incentive. (Oddly enough, "Not dying" isn't incentive enough.)

Last time I had the incentive of a contest with Brother-in-law #3, who himself was weighing in over three bills and needed to lose some weight for a wedding.

Plus, I was trying to look good for a certain young lady who I was sort-of mentoring and totally chasing after.

(Before you think me a cad: I am very happily married. But that doesn't mean I'm completely inured to the charms of the fairer gender. And it's kind of like a dog chasing a car: like the dog, I have no idea what I'd actually do with it if I were to catch it, so it's harmless, okay?)

Anyway, I need a potential victim love connection unsuspecting lass to chase after to get the old testosterone focused in the right direction. (Otherwise the testosterone says "screw the treadmill, let's play Madden tonight"). I'm going to start perusing the local health-food store to see if I can find a suitable person. (I have a wickedly horrible thing for hippy-chicks... They're my krypotite.)

And Bollix, occassional commentor and long time reader has volutneered to accept the challenge and enter into a gentlemen's wager as we both try to lose weight.

Since he's about 40 pounds lighter, we'll be doing it on a percentage basis. He's one of those crazy bicycle nuts who dress up in tight clothes and cycle all overr the place (lunatic), but I think with the proper incentive (find that hippy chick soon), I can give him a run for his money.

Well, gosh. My train ride's already almost over, so I've got to wrap this up. I wanted to mention one more thing, but that will have to wait.

Just one warning though: Stay away from the graveyards, okay?

That'll have to be it for now. Chat with you later.

(unless they get me, of course....)

Movie Night: Tom Hanks, the World's Greatest Actor..

After holding on to The 40-Year Old Virgin and Return From Witch Mountain for about two weeks, finally got around to returning them and getting the next movies on the kid's and our lists.

First, the mandatory explanation:

The Sandra Bullock Scale© was devised to rate a movie sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score of five out of five represents a movie's a) stupifying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage [see Practical Magic... what a waste of time, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and zero nudity... Rated PG-13 for sensuality my fanny...]

Anyway, we seem to have blown through every single kid's movie at Netflix and are starting to get mostly-harmless '80s PG-rated comedies of suspect intellectual heft. I hope we're not doing any permanent damage to their developing brains...

This weekend's offering for the kids was Turner and Hooch, a typical odd-couple cop movie from Tom Hanks' unfortunate "I'm getting paid for this, right?" period (The 'burbs, Turner and Hooch, Joe vs. the Volcano). The only twist being Hanks' partner -- a large, ugly, slobbering dog. The Hooch of the title.

I'm not going to bore you with the plot, you've undoubtedly seen it before, so let's get right to the digressions:

First, if you look up "Turner and Hootch" (note the different spelling of Hootch) in The Urban Dictionary, you get slang for something very dirty. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but the kicker is the whole humming the Sanford and Son theme. That just makes the whole thing, if you ask me.

Second: decent "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" potenetial in this one. For instance, I was looking up the career of bit player Clyde Kusatsu (he played a grocery store manager) and was too lazy to type in "Tom Hanks" in the search bar and managed to get to him in five steps (with bonus points for actually using Kevin Bacon). Kusatsu was in a couple episodes of M*A*S*H with David Ogden Steirs, Steirs was in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame with Demi Moore, who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon, who was in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks.

You've also got Urkel's next door neighbor (who was also in Die Hard) and Craig T. Nelson for your Kevin Bacon game needs.

Third: Did I miss the three and a half weeks where Mare Winningham was romantic lead material?

All in all, a fairly inoffensive bit of late '80s buddy genre. Nothing to write home about, but gave the kids a couple of chuckles.

(The Boy just wandered down, here's his take: "I liked... Umm... Ummm.... Uhhh.... DAD! Don't write the Ummms!...." okay, okay. Here, after much prodding: "I liked that the dog wrecked the really organized guy's house. And I like Daddy's stinky feet")

(Uh, thanks. I think he just wanted to see if I would put that down. No editing here, babe. We're blog veritie!)

Anyway, I'll give it three out of five Sandra's, as I didn't fall asleep, but probably because I was surfing the net while watching it.

(The Boy's rating: Zero! And he wants to remind you all that he likes my stinky feet.)

(Yes, he's truly a delightful child.)

Happy Beltane

Sorry been away, but it's Beltane you know, and I've been... well... busy.

The first of May, long before the Commies stole it for May Day, is a very important day. In the Celtic and Pict parts of the British Isles it's Beltane, the traditional kick off of summer.

Beltane's an ancient festival celebrating the death of winter and the begining of summer (June 21st, our "first day of summer" is actually mid-summer's day). Befitting my new status as a Crunchy Conservative interested in the environment and Mama Earth and all that crap, I've been trying to revive some of the old customs.

So, for Beltane you've got to build a big bonfire, dance around, maybe do a little Maypole dancing, and... well... some other stuff.

Beltane is around planting time, and you really want to make sure the Earth is super-fertile so your crops will grow nice and tall. Apparently the ancient druids believed that you could help along Mama Earth in her fertility by, well... getting busy in the furrows. Your fertility would rub off. So to speak.

So I got the bonfire all set, did a bit of dancing around, skipped the Maypole (that just looks goofy). And then asked Wifeypooh if she wanted to help me fertilize the garden.

Long story short, I woke up this morning in the bushes with a splitting headache, an egg on the top of my head, a broken spade next to me, and a ticked off wife locking me outof the house.

I guess she said no.

Ah well, maybe next year. For a bit of Maypole dancing, how about Men Without Hats?