Archive for September, 2007

I wasn’t able to make my predictions last week because of a death in the family, but I’m back and ready to break down this week’s action.
It is District time for 5-4A and 9-2A, which means now the games finally matter. And that is what makes these next few weeks even greater.

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How could anybody not have heard the music of Marvin Gaye. That’s the question I asked myself the other day.
I was at the Wichita County courthouse when an employee asked if I had any new ringtones. I said I doubt it unless she wanted a Marvin Gaye song.
“Marvin who?” was her response. I couldn’t believe it. Surely, she was either joking, or she just wasn’t good with artist’s names.
I played her the song, “Let’s Get it On,” and she had never heard the song in her life.

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This is a re-run of a blog I wrote back in May, but with Grand Funk Railroad coming to town in two days, I thought it was timely.

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The other day, I wrote a column about how the area is thriving with six football teams ranked. But who has the best chance of finishing the regular season still ranked between Graham, Holliday, Rider, Vernon, Munday and Windthorst?
Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:

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I have lived 60 years, 10 months and five days — and not once in all that time have I ever had my ass glued to a toilet seat.
But I can certainly sympathize with Bob Dougherty.
He is 59 and it has allegedly happened to him twice in two years.
The first time was in a Home Depot in Louisville, Colo.
He went into a bathroom stall, did his thing and then couldn’t stand up.
He said he thought he was having a heart attack.
I know chest pain, arm pain and shoulder pain can be the sign of a heart attack.
But an ass pain?
I’ll have to ask Dr. Serrano about that.
Well, with his butt super-glued to the toilet, Bob does what anyone in that situation would do. He screams for help.
The employees hear him and ignore his pleas, probably figuring it’s just another Republican announcing he’s running for some office.
Dougherty said the incident has made his life one big pain in the ass.
He claims it has caused him post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes.
To fix it, he and his lawyer are asking for $3 million.
I wouldn’t give them 3 cents.

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What kind of box office dumpster of a weekend does it take to put the new Resident Evil movie at the top of the charts.
I kinda liked the first Resident Evil movie. But the second was horrible and I’d put someone else’s money on the third one be a substandard also.
It’s based on a video game. How many successful movies have their been that have been based on a video game.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d play Resident Evil on Playstation 2 all day, but I can’t go near the DVD.
Good luck Chuck was a not-even-close 2nd place. Dane Cook is a good comedian with charisma, but maybe he should stick to hosting Saturday Night Live.

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Either nobody read “Sound Off” on Sunday, or everybody agrees with my opinion.
I have a hard time believing either.
The “Sound Off” was from some Rider parent, who was pissed because the school has about as many football coaches on the payroll as it does math teachers.
My response was “So what?”
Who needs math?
It is great that schools teach kids a lot of different things, including how to work algebra problems.
But now that we have calculators and computers, who needs to do long division?
One of my co-workers said he uses his math skills when he grocery shop — figuring out I guess which is the better deal — buying Dr Pepper by the six-pack or 2-liter bottles.
My wife says she still uses math to balance a checkbook.
About the only time I would ever have need of math skills is mentally figuring percentages in a poker game.
Instead of trying to teach me about logarithms in high school, I wish they had taught me how to count cards.
A logarithm – whatever that is — has never once helped me at the black jack table.
No slide rule ever made can tell you whether to hit or not hit 16.
I

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Johnny’s cover of NIN’s “Hurt” has got to be one of the best songs recorded in the last 20 years. NIN did a good job, but you feel it when Cash sings it.
The guy was on his deathbed, but he continued to record. It’s too bad it took a Joaquin Phoenix movie to get me to appreciate him. Or was it a good thing?

The Boys look good. They’re not the greatest, but I don’t have too many complaints. They should have destroyed Miami more convincingly last week, but a win is a win.
T.O. looks almost unstoppable. Romo is the only thing that can hold him back. That bit last week when he scored when he poked fun at the Patriots was great. That fine was a little out of line, but T.O. has a past on the field. At least he’s not Vick.
The D needs to step it up. Nose tackle Jason Ferguson was a big part of their 3-4 attack, but it doesn’t look like Demarcus Ware is going to be the next Shawn Merriman. Ware is from Troy and Merriman is lights out, especially when he’s on roids.

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I have a couple of burrs in my butt this morning.
One is the mother in the school bus incident.
Lady, give it up.
Your son was done wrong. You have a right to be pissed.
All of us were on your side — but now you are pissing us off.
The boy is OK. He has not been harmed for life. You helped expose some big problems in the school bus system.
Now leave it alone.
The driver does not need to do hard time for being a jerk.
And any suit against the bus company is plain silly and frivolous.
If something like this had happened in my old neighborhood — and it wouldn’t because we walked to school — we would have:
Thrown the driver off the bus.
Whipped her ass.
Set her on fire.
Stole the hubcaps and sold them for gas money.
And Clarence Daily — who had his driver’s license when he was about 6 — would have driven us all the Acuna.
Now for that second burr.
.

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This is a re-run of a blog I wrote last November.
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We were boyfriend and girlfriend in the Summer of 1958.
I was 11. She was 12.
We went to movies together.
We went swimming together.
We went to the park together.
We hugged. We kissed. We played a little touchy-feely.
Then we broke up.
A few days after the break-up, I walked over to her house to kiss and make up.
Her grandmother said he had gone on vacation.
The next week school started.
She wasn’t there.
Nobody knew why.
Then one day I saw a short story in the newspaper where a local cab driver had been charged with statutory rape of a 12-year-old girl.
I knew his name. I still remember his name.
He was a friend of her dad and had given us free cab rides to the movies, to the swimming pool and to the park.
Sharon Ann never came back to school.
About 10 years later, I was shooting pool and drinking beer in a downtown bar called “The Cave.?
The barmaid who waited on me kept smiling at me.
I knew her from somewhere but just couldn’t remember where.
“Do I know you?? I asked.
“Maybe,? she replied.
“Where do I know you from?? I asked again.
“You figure it out,? she smiled.

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We used to have a hefty bag of a business editor here at the paper who came to work every day wearing an under-arm stained white shirt (missing at least one X); a clip-on tie and a pair of pants about one “X” too big.
And no belt.
Some afternoons phones all over the newsroom would ring at the same time.
That signaled one thing.
“CRACK ALERT”
Big Joe’s butt would be shining brightly.
Nobody really wanted to see it, but everybody looked.
The only butt cracks I care about looking at are young, attractive women.
Pardon the pun, but scratch that.
I am old. I can’t be picky (pardon again).
The only butt cracks I care about looking at are women’s.
I love those little (and sometimes big) tattoos that girls now at least partially expose to us with hip-hugger jeans and shorts.
Birds and butterflies and hearts — stuff like that is cute.
But did you girls ever think about being walking billboards?
“Eat at Pioneer”
“Trucks, truck, trucks, we got ‘em”
“Viva Viagara”
There are businesses out there who will buy your butt crack.
OK, Nick, we already knew you were a dirty old man — but get to the point.
Why are you writing about butt cracks?

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Before I give some of my picks for this weekend’s games, let me get this rant off my chest.
If you checked out Thursday’s paper, you have may noticed the high school picks. And you may have noticed that I was bringing up the rear. Yep, dead last.

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My wife and I were eating queso and drinking beer in the On the Border bar last night.
Each time our waiter walked by our booth, he had this puzzling expression on his face.
I figured he was either constipated or confused.
Honestly, I have seen that same confused expression many times over the year.
Someone recognizes my face but just can’t remember where he or she has seen it before.
I keep waiting for them to ask: “Excuse me, sir, but are you Brad Pitt?”
But they never do.
Finally, my waiter stopped at the booth and pointed his finger at me.
“Now I know,” he said. “I finally figured it out — Nick of Time.”
Then came the weird part.
He said: “I’ve been looking at your picture in the restroom.”
“Oh,” I joked. “You must be a Republican.”

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A lot happened during Week 1 (aka the second week of the season). Here are my quick thoughts from last Friday night:

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A few days after 9-11, Frank Silecchia was digging at Ground Zero digging for human remains.
At about dawn, the tired and weary construction worker looked up and saw “a glimmer of hope.”
Remarkably — some might even say miraculously — standing before him in a heap of rubble was a 2-ton, 20-foot cross..
It was steel beams that had fallen intact when the north tower of the World Trade Center implodes
But to Frank Silecchia, it was God telling us that “everything was somehow going to be all right.”
WOW!

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On this, the sixth anniversary of 9-11, I offer you words of a housewife from New Jersey, whom I don’t know and have never met. But forget “Hillary for President.”
I am voting for this chick
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“Are we fighting a war on terror or aren’t we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?
Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation’s capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ?
Did nearly 3,000 men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn’t they?
And I’m supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was “desecrated” when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?.. Well, I don’t. I don’t care at all .
I’ll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.
I’ll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia .
I’ll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg’s head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.
I’ll care when the cowardly so-called “insurgents” in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.
I’ll care when the mindless zealots who blow! themsel ves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.
I’ll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

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I had a pretty rough day yesterday. When I first started my work day I found out that a family I know , the Helenschmidts, had to deal with the loss of a loved one.
Scott Helenschmidt was killed after what I’m assuming was a cry for help. I know Scott’s son, and his niece and nephew.
They’re all great people. I graduated with his niece. Every year our photos were right next to each other in the yearbook. For that reason alone we’ll be forever linked. I still remember our 9th grade photo. I got ragged because we had almost matching shirts.
I got even more difficult news last night that continued into this morning. One of my greatest friends in the world, Cameron Harris, lost his little brother, Jeremy.

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The NFL season gets underway today…can’t you read the bleeding excitement coming through this type?! The year doesn’t really begin until I make it to football season, the rest I just sleep walk through.
The Saints will beat up the Colts on the ground tonight for a close win and a fantastic start to the regular season. No DTs and no Bob Sanders lead to a porous run defense. I have a love/hate relationship with Peyton Manning also. Love the guys desire and skill, hate his audibles.
I’m also a Pats fan, so I must hate the Colts. It’s written somewhere in New England law, my birthplace. Just like the fact that I have to hate the Yankees. It doesn’t say I can’t like Roger Clemens, it just says I can’t like the Yankees.
I think they gave my dad the manual to hand down to me when I was born.

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Dogs are in the headlines a lot these days.
Pit bulls invade a woman’s home and maul her.
A man shoots the family dog for eating his supper
And of course, there is Michael Vick.
But on the opposite side of all that is Leona Helmsley.
This billionaire goofball died and left more money to her dog than to anyone in her family.
Thanks to the old woman’s will, “Trouble,” an 8-year-old fluffy white female Maltese, is now worth $12 million.
That’s $7 million more than two or her grandkids got.
And $12 million more than two others.
Yep, that’s right, the old bitch left $12 mil to a dog and nada to two of her grandchildren.
She did leave $10 million to her brother and asked him to take care of “Trouble.”
But he said he doesn’t want the dog.
Maybe Michael Vick will take it.
After all, this dog is not living in a 28-room mansion — much nicer than the cell that Vick will soon occupy.
Whoever takes care of “Trouble” will need to hire a lawyer.
One of Leona’s former housekeepers said she is going to sue the dog for biting her.

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