New York City

This new video for the late Joey Ramone's "New York City" is pretty damned amazing. Thousands of stop-motion shots merged together for a great little tribute to the man and the city that he loved so much. Featuring dozens of famous and not-so-famous New Yorkers in classic leather jackets all over different neighborhoods of the city. You should check it out. It's great. And check out JoeyRamone.com for the full story on the video.

But my favorite thing about the video? The guy up there in the screenshot and appearing at the 2:56 mark looks freakishly like a certain Verdant Dude that you all know. His name is Ed Stasium and he is a record producer who worked with The Ramones. We really don't look that much alike if you see other pictures of him. His hairline has receded much more than mine and he is about 20 years older than me, but in that video? Yup...dude looks like the Dude. And I'm okay with that.

Rock on, kids!

Irish

It was a joyous weekend for the sports fan that is me.

Excuse me, miss*...who does your hair?

Notre Dame beat Michigan State and all was well in the world. Meant I got to wear my ancient Irish hat with unrestricted joy. Add two victories for the Yankees on Saturday and Sunday to the equation and all was...fabulous. And I'm using that word as a man with a strict heterosexual resume. Was a fabulous weekend all around.

Next weekend is the Pickle Festival (see heterosexual resume referenced above), and then the hits keep on coming. I love me some weekends in the Fall.

Quick aside about the sports fan that is me. I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm kind of a fair-weather sports fan. I'll always root for Notre Dame football and NY Yankees baseball, no matter how well or poorly they fare. I just have a hard time watching them when they are in the crapper. The Yankees have been tough to watch for the past month or more. And Notre Dame, while always finishing with a winning record, have had some real clunkers these past few years. Here's to hoping for a great year for the Irish. Beating Michigan State was a great moment for them.

*Just got a few inches trimmed off last week too. I don't know how you ladies do it all your lives. I've had long hair for 3-4 years now and it can be an awful pain sometimes.

Overheard

Last night in our abode. I'm in the kitchen preparing dinner while Gia is reading in the living room with some crap celebrity gossip/news show playing in the background on the TV.

___________________________________________________________

TV: Coming up: Are the pregnancy rumors with Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux for real this time?
Me: I thought that guy was with Drew Barrymore?
Gia: No...Drew Barrymore is married to someone or other.
Me: Wasn't she with him for a while though?
Gia: I have no idea.
Me: Doesn't matter. Justin Theroux could walk past me in the kitchen right now and I would have no idea who he is or what he has done.

___________________________________________________________

TV: Coming up: A new reality show featuring primordial dwarfs.
Gia: Ooooh....primordial dwarfs!
Me: Primordial dwarfs. Always fun.

Exciting, eh? Go back to what you were doing.  Nothing to see here.

We are talking booze

Well, when aren't I talking booze, amirite?

But this time I mean we are hi-jacking our weekly baseball program, Just Talking to the Cornfield, to specifically discuss (and imbibe) booze. And, since it's a "very special episode" we decided to move it to a very special day and time. We will be going live at 9PM EDT this Thursday night. So you've got a few days to prepare your liver. Especially for those of you who consider Thursday night to be the beginning of the weekend. And for those of you on the left coast, the start of the show should coincide with Happy Hour. So join us and drink up! And we'll probably go on for a couple of hours, so join us mid-show if you can't handle the start time.

What, specifically, are we going to discuss? Um...wine, beer, liquor.  Maybe some interesting and/or embarrassing stories that involve wine, beer and liquor. I'm hoping this one will bring some of the chat-room attendees out of their shells for one evening and join us on the call.

So pop open that bottle of expensive booze that you've been saving for a special evening and join us for a night of libations in the Cornfield.  Because what's more special than that?

(Don't answer that last question)

Jumpin' Jack Flash*

Every once in a while, scientists figure something out that is not only a break-through, but hilarious at the same time.

Case in point: It's a gas: dinosaur flatulence may have warmed Earth.

Now, I have no idea if dinosaur farts really warmed the Earth in the Mesozoic era, but that headline sure warmed my sick, little heart. There's lots of real science in that article. They calculated the effect of methane production from current numbers of cows, sheeps and pigs. Then they calculated the numbers and average size of dinosaurs living in the Mesozoic. From there they were able to calculate the amount of methane produced and the effect on the environment.

But I don't care about any of that. Because dinosaur farts are funny. And probably really awful. Imagine hanging with your dicky dinosaur friends. Just taking a drive to the movies of something.  Suddenly the dino-driver rolls up all the windows and locks them. You all wait for a second, and then it hits you! Deadly dino-gas! The driver, of course, thinks it the funniest thing in the world. Because not only did they produce prodigious amounts of gas (probably), they also had tiny, tiny brains.

And we all know that creatures with tiny brains find a lot of humor in flatulence.

Wait...what?

*It's a gas, gas, gas. Get it? Derp...

Living in the Future

"I'll tell you how I know. I read it in the papers...15 years ago. We're all driving rocket ships, and talking with our minds. And wearing turquoise jewelery, and standing in soup lines. We are standing in soup lines." - John Prine

I was gonna embed a video here. Of old John Prine singing his folksy tune about living in the future. But there ain't no video nowheres that I can find of him and that tune. A bunch of covers by a bunch of wannabes, but no originals anywhere. Gahbless ya, internets.

Even though Prine's words are dripping with sarcasm and social commentary, it's still a thought that dances through my reptilian brain every so often. We are living in the future, and everything sucks.  Just like Louis CK said, in a much funnier way on the Conan show once.

Our local, hated cable company has been recently expanding their WiFi network by adding to the number of hotspots they offer throughout the territory. I've only noticed it because I recently upgraded to an android phone.  And I keep it enabled for WiFi since I mostly work from home, and we have fast WiFi here. I was somewhere or another a few weeks ago, and I saw that there was WiFi available through one of their hotspots.  Cool. I registered, meaning that it would automatically switch to one of these hotspots in the future automatically if one was available. Excellent.

Except their WiFi network kinda sucks right now.  Yeah, the coverage is expanding all the time. But it's kinda slow. Maybe faster than surfing the web on 3G, but still slower than I'm used to.

So yeah, I sit there and complain while I'm trying to read about a Spring Training baseball game because the page takes an extra second or three to load.

And then I look around, and see everyone around me with their heads down.  Peering into their tablet or smartphone or what-not.  No one is talking. No one is making eye contact or looking at the scenery. And I've become one of them.

We are living in the future. Yeah...

Express Stress

I've got a silly little pet peeve that struck a nerve a couple of times in the past few days. So allow me to go off on a rant.

I do most of the food shopping in the house.  Mostly because I do most of the cooking, and I shop for what I need.  I'm not good at planning ahead, so I wind up hitting the supermarket 3-4 times in a given week. Sometimes only to pick up 6 or 7 items.  It's not time or cost effective, but it's just the way that I'm built.  Not much I can do about it.  Besides, sometimes I get in the mood for a certain meal on a whim. Hard to plan around whims.

So this particular pet peeve has to do with the Express Checkout lane at the market. We have automated checkout lanes and regular lanes with human checkout clerks. Both have Express Checkout lanes. You know, the type with a big sign that says "12 Items or Less" hovering someplace in plain fucking sight.  And I have an awful habit of counting how many items the person in front of me has.  7 items?  You're good! 15 items?  Wait a minute, pal...get in the correct lane!

But, generally, as long as the person in front of me is quick and gets through their checkout without any problems I'm fine. 

It's the 99.99% of the time when the person is an absolute fucking idiot that I lose my fucking mind!

Take my last two trips to the market as examples. The first trip I was picking up a few items to make some baked potato soup with green onions, cheddar and bacon.  Mostly I needed the green onions, cheddar and bacon. I was set on everything else. Hehehe.  So I grabbed my items and headed to the automated checkout counter.  The dude in front of me looked like a good dude. Interesting facial hair, NY Yankee baseball cap...he seemed alright. Until I wound up hating him.

He was purchasing some stuff for a party. Greeting cards, wrapping paper, gift bags, flowers, a balloon...those kind of things.  I immediately noticed he had around 16 items, so some mild warning bells starting ringing in my brain.  Then he proceeded to demonstrate no knowledge of ever having used an automated checkout counter before.  EVER!  He needed management assistance for no fewer than 5 items in his cart.  Including the balloon, which threatened to escape to the ceiling.  Also, he had no idea how to proceed after scanning the balloon because he couldn't place it on the conveyor belt for the sensor to recognize it.

It. Was. A. Nightmare!!!  And it took forever.

Yet, I found myself at the same market at the same automated "Express" lane the very next day.  This time I was pleased to find a guy with only 7-8 items in his basket.  This made me optimistic. But then that optimism turned to despair in mere moments. He also had never used one of these machines before, apparently.  And all the items in his bag were of the fresh produce variety.  So he had to look each one up individually.  At an average of 2-3 minutes an item.  This was worse than the previous experience. But not by very much. Both sucked.

See...it's not that I really mind the extra items or the occasional need for assistance from a manager.  I've been there, had an extra item and needed that assistance.  Not to this level, however. And it goes against the very nature of what this lane is all about. EXPRESS SERVICE!!! The lanes exist to facilitate a quick checkout, get it? And there are no apologies ever.  It's like this is their world and I'm just living in it. 

That's actually the basis of the pet peeve. People with no regard for anyone else.  Whether they fail to signal when driving or slow an express lane to an absolute halt.  I just hate those people. 

Because you know they would be the first one to complain if, God forbid, THEY were ever inconvenienced.

/rant

Browser ABC's

When it comes to computers, I'm still very much a keyboard/shortcut guy than a point and click guy.  I've been a high-level MS Excel user since it was invented, and I still start many of my tricks by hitting the old "/" menu key.  It's just habit. Ingrained by thousands and thousands of hours of use.

It comes across in my Internet use as well. Sure, I have lots of sites bookmarked.  But I find that I tend to just jump to the address bar in Firefox and start typing where I want to go and let my browser history find the site I want more than anything else. 

For example, I have this here blog bookmarked.  But when I want to go to it quickly, I jump to the address bar in my browser and type "B" and this is the first site that pops up. Easy peasy.  And quicker, for me, than finding it in my bookmarks.

So with that in mind, I've come up with a silly meme where you type in a letter in the address box of your browser and mark down the first site that pops up in your browser history.  Could be dangerous, could be boring...let's find out!

A - Amazon
B - The Verdant Dude (because the url is beearl.blogspot.com)
C - Citibank
D - Deadspin (a sports/humor blog)
E - Erin O'Brien's blog
F - Filmdrunk (a film/humor blog)
G - Google Reader
H - Huffington Post
I - IMDB
J - Just Talking to the Cornfield
K - Kongregate (a flash game site)
L - The LoHud Yankees Blog
M - Mike Silva's New York Baseball Digest
N - Netflix
O - Overstock (haven't shopped there in years!)
P - Pandora
Q - The Interrobang (there's a Q in the subtitle someplace)
R - RW's new website. 
S - Slyde...ugh.
T - Twitter
U - Uni-Watch (an interesting site devoted entirely to sports uniforms)
V - Version53 - RW rears his head once again
W - The Weather Channel...how boring.
X - Nothing. Nothing pops up for X. How weird is that? (Actually it was XM Radio...hehehe)
Y - Yahoo!
Z - This time really nothing. Just a bunch of urls that have random a random "z" in them.

OK, so that was pointless and boring. Tells us what we already know. I like baseball and movies.

Anyone got a good Z website I should start visiting?

Hi.

Memory Fail

I generally have a pretty good memory for the important things. And for the not-so-important things. As in anything to do with the movies. The other night on our radio show, my co-host was shocked when he asked me who was the other actor to play Shoeless Joe Jackson in a film besides Ray Liotta. I replied that it was D.B. Sweeney without a moment's hesitation.  That kind of shit, I'm good at.

But sometimes my memory fails me in craptastic ways.

Two recent examples of my that happened just yesterday.

First, I was watching TV late at night and the film Resident Evil: Afterlife (don't judge me!) was just about to start on one of the movie channels.  I looked at the brief plot description on the screen, did a mental inventory and decided that I hadn't seen it yet.  And for the first five minutes of the film, I was happy as a pig in shit. A pig in shit watching an awful movie, but I was in the mood for an awful movie.  So there.

Then the prelude ended and our hero was flying a WWII era Russian fighter plane up to Alaska to meet her friends and I was like "Wait a minute here...".  Yup, I had seen this shit.  And I remember it was awful.  Everything came flooding back at once.  The brief scene in Alaska.  The prison in LA. The huge axe-wielding mutant zombie. The finale on the ship.

But that first 5 minutes?  Nope...none of that was familiar at all.  And (since it came out in 2010) I had, most likely, watched this film less than a year ago! Maybe I was watching it while I was futzing around on the Internet late at night while drinking bourbon or something, but I don't remember that first 5 minutes at all.  So weird.

Then I sat down to right a post about something I found on Youtube! a while back.  I have a sticky note application on my laptop, and one of them is for blog post ideas.  I had jotted this one down a long time ago.  Maybe as long as a year ago.  But I suddenly got jazzed to write about it.  So I did.

About a third of the way through the post, I started getting this deja-vu feeling.  Did I write about this already? Nah...I would have deleted it off my sticky note. But these words do feel pretty familiar.  Hmm...lemme check.  And, sure enough, I had written about it before.  A little over a year ago.  Ur-dur!

So you get this post about that failed process instead. 

"You're a handsome devil.  What's your name?" - Mary Blank

I want to believe?

Hmm...not so sure.

There has been a rash of videos recently posted on Youtube and other sites claiming to be footage of UFOs or alien spacecrafts or whatever you want to call them.  Lately, the deal has been one video from a specific angle and then another from a totally different angle at the same place and time showing the same...ahem...event.  Then maybe even ANOTHER video from ANOTHER angle.

There are hoaxes, and then there are elaborate hoaxes.

I spend the requisite amount of time studying them and deciding that they are fake before I find out that they actually ARE fake, but I do it anyway.  For my own benefit.  Right now these fuckers are batting .000, but it ain't stopping them.

You know when I'll believe that the "event" is real?  When I see it with my own gorgeous blue eyes.  Or even as a live feed on CNN.

And then I will gladly shout in my best Will Smith impersonation "Welcome ta Earf!"

Right before they kill me and everyone I know.

How's your day going?

When did that start?

As in:

• When did I start preferring lumpy mashed potatoes?  When I was a kid, we used an electric mixer to get our mashed potatoes as smooth and creamy as possible.  And that's how I enjoyed my mashers for the longest time.  But now, I use a hand masher and I take no time at all in kind of mashing them.  I just think they taste better chunky.
• When did I start needing 8 hours of sleep a night?  I used to be fine on 5 or 6 hours every night.  Nowadays, I need 3 cups of coffee in the morning if I don't get in the requisite 8.  It was bound to happen eventually, I guess.  
• When did I start growing hair in my ears?  I'll offer no further input on this one.  Let's move on.
• When did I start chewing the fingernail on my right thumb again?  I used to chew on/pick at all my fingernails back in the day, but I was able to will myself to stop except for one finger on each hand.  My middle finger on my left hand and my ring finger on the right.  I've tried and tried, but I seem to hate those two fingernails the most.  So they get punished.  But lately, I've found myself picking at and chewing the nail on my right thumb as well.  I do it unconsciously, like when I'm reading or watching late night television.  But it's a nasty habit and it needs to stop.  I'd like to stop on my other two fingernails too, but let's work on this one first.
• When did my hair start to look like Gary Faulkner's hair?  He's the dude that claimed he had hunted and killed bin Laden a while back.  He was on TV tonight and both Gia and I paused because it was an almost exact match.  Yikes.

Stuff like that.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, kids!

Sleep

Had a weird sleep weekend which I hope doesn't translate into a weird sleep week or something.

Friday night was an absolutely drinktastic new episode of Just Talking to the Cornfield. If you want to hear what The Colonel sounds like drunk off of his ass, then this episode is for you.  I wasn't quite so gone baby gone, but the words "huge Dominican cock" were uttered by me at one point.  Yeah.  So be sure to download the episode on Talkshoe or iTunes.  You will be disappointed.

The cats, one asshole in particular, woke me up early on Saturday after about 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep.  Not my favorite way to begin a Saturday.  Especially when I found it difficult to fall back asleep.  After a little while I stopped trying, but late Saturday afternoon I was able to fit in a decent little nap.  Now the problem?  I wasn't tired at all on Saturday night. 

So I stayed up.

All.  Night.  Long.

I re-watched Gangs of New York (man...Cameron Diaz? WTF?) and I finished a book I had been reading.  And read a bunch of stuff online.  Next thing I knew, it was 7AM on Easter Sunday morning.  Yikes!  That was okay.  We had dinner plans later on in the day, and it was a foggy, crappy morning.  Almost perfect for sleeping, so I gave it a shot and managed to get a decent 5 hours in, waking up at noon.

Which was fine, really.  I hadn't been drinking or carousing on Saturday, so a five-hour recharge is usually perfect for me.  Except that it wasn't and by the time we got home on Sunday, at 7:30PM, I could barely keep my eyes open.  So I didn't and I fell asleep. For a few hours.

Now, it's a little past 11:30PM on Sunday night as I type this and I'm wide awake again.  I somehow managed to get in a little over 8 hours of sleep today, but it was all the wrong hours and I have this sinking dread that I'm going to be up all night again.

So if you see me roaming the blogosphere or Twitter early on Monday AM (after midnight), tell me to get my ass back to bed.  Because I'll pay for it tomorrow if I don't

Mr. Steve

This past weekend, on the way to my sister's house for dinner and a rousing night of whiskey karaoke*, we stopped at our local coffee shop for a cuppa for the ride.  A Dunkin' Donuts shop, to be specific.  When I walked in, still kinda groggy from having taken an afternoon nap, I was confronted with this standing in front of the counter:

click to get the full horror

OK, so it's obviously some kind of dummy dressed up like the Easter Bunny or something.  But I didn't realize that right away.  I thought it was real, and it was the living embodiment of everything that creeps me the fuck out.  Specifically:

• Creepy old people.
• Creepy little people.
• Creepy people dressed like creepy animals.

Bottom line, I almost had a heart attack.   And if you zoom in on the picture, you will see that IT has a name tag.  Mr. Steve.  Named after an old dude who hangs out at that particular Dunkiin' Donuts all the time, according to the guy behind the counter  He said that they really do look alike.  Like the dummy is a Mini-Me version of the real dude. 

And just when I'm starting to calm down from my initial scare, I turn around and the real Mr. Steve was standing behind me.  Grinning like a fool.  He walked out before I could take a picture of them together, but I assure you...HE exists.  And he was nearly as horrifying as his effigy.  Nearly.

I haven't slept in three days.

*We drink whiskey and sing karaoke.  Simple as that.

The End

I have this weird memory from about 30 years ago that I refuse to let go.  It's because I've made it a part of a conditioned response that I have.  Like whenever I hear someone say "mostly", I repeat it, but in a little girl Newt voice from the film Aliens.  If you dig that movie, then you know what I mean.  If you don't, please don't judge me.

This other conditioned response I've developed comes whenever anyone mentions the Doors or Jim Morrison.  It, thankfully, doesn't happen that often.  Not that I don't appreciate the Doors.  Hell, I kinda like them.  But I say thankfully because this particular conditioned response makes me smile every time, and I wanna keep it that way.

You see, there was this comedian I saw on TV way back around 1980 who did this bit about how Jim Morrison's life would have been a lot different if he had become some kind of clown-poet.  And then the comedian, it may have been Bob Nelson, started in with Clown Jim's version of "The End".

The clown awoke before dawn,

he put his clown shoes on

He put on a clown face

from an ancient gallery

And he, he, HE FLOPPED ON DOWN THE HALL!

I don't know why, but that always made me laugh.  It still does to this day.  So whenever the Doors or Jim Morrison (or the end of Apocalypse Now) comes up, I wanna yell out "HE FLOPPED ON DOWN THE HALL!"

It's all I can do to keep it to myself when it's, ahem, not appropriate.  Ya know?

Root Beer Jingle

I've got the worst earworm of all-time going on right now.  And only because it's only a 3-4 second part of a root beer jingle from a million years ago that is stuck in my head.  And I can't remember the root beer brand or the tune that it borrowed from.

Here's the deal:

I think the jingle is from a commercial from the mid to late-70's.  I don't recall if it was A&W, Barq's, Mug or some other brand of root beer.  But the commercial had gangsters and molls and showgirls like something out of Guys and Dolls.  And the only part of the lyric I can remember, the part that is currently stuck in my head, goes something like "Root beer, Mr. Shakes...".  Sung by the showgirls or the molls or whomever while they were dancing around like flappers from the 1920's.  The tune that is uses is just out of my reach too, but I think it was from a fairly famous show-tune or something.  Gah.

It's maddening that I can't remember enough of the details to do a proper search for it.  And believe me, I've tried.  Even worse is wondering why this tiny bit of an un-remembered root beer commercial popped back into my brain after all this time.  And got stuck there.  Is this what a stroke is like?

Someone...please help me out here.  Or put me out of my misery.

Dirty Legs

I've been noticing something more and more lately after I shower each day. I don't seem to pay as much attention to my legs as the rest of my body when scrubbing down. Weird, right?

I'm a fanatic about scrubbing. I use one of these to really go at my skin. And I really do go to town. Face, shoulders, arms, torso, back, naughty bits...and feet. But for some reason as I make my way down from my upper thigh area to my feet, I seem to give my legs on the most cursory of scrubs. And I don't know why.

More to the point, I know that I'm doing this and I'm doing nothing about it. Isn't there a clinical term for that kind of inaction?  I mean, if I actually think about it before I start scrubbing, I will take some extra time with my legs.  But I normally don't think in the shower.  Or at least I don't think about showering when I'm in the shower.  I think about everything else.

It's not laziness. It takes far more effort to scrub my back or my feet (there will never be a fungus among us). Maybe I subconsciously believe that my legs from my upper thighs to my high ankles don't get as dirty as the rest of my body. It's a mystery to me.

Fascinating stuff, eh?

___________________________________________________

Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. And I couldn't even find a way to make this interesting.  Move along...

1,000 and 44

So here it is...my 1,000th post on The Verdant Dude. And, just like I planned, it has landed on my 44th birthday. It's like the two great tastes that taste great together.  Geez...it seems like just yesterday that I was celebrating my 300th post here.  Or my 40th birthday, for that matter.  Time flies when you throw a clock across the room, eh?

So, what's the best way to celebrate? A blow-job and some whiskey would be nice. No, not from you Slyde. You do have nice lips, but you have terrible taste in booze.

In lieu of that, how about 44 random and stupid things about moi?  Let's do it to it, shall we.

1.  Prior to moving in with Gia, I was extremely allergic to cats. Now they sleep on my face.

2.  My family never really did figure out exactly what my father did for a living.  I mean, we have an idea, but I'm going with international spy.

3.  I was terrible at drinking in college.  I generally drank until I blacked out/passed out, and vomiting was usually on the menu.  Now, at 44, I'm just hitting my alcoholic stride.  Yay me!

4.  I've got the cutest dimple on my...right shoulder.  What?  You were thinking someplace else?

5.  Boxer briefs...all the way.

6.  It's been five years since I got my one and only tattoo.  It's starting to feel pretty lonely down there on its own.

7.  I've still never been to any of the West Coast states.  Las Vegas is the furthest west I've traveled in this country.  And that took a whole lot of convincing on someone's part.

8.  I have been as far south as you can go in these here United States of America.  Many, many times.  But it's just about time to go back.

9.  I know it's just two guys eventually giving each other brain damage, but damn...I love me a good boxing match.

10. I find women with a kinda crooked face (like Ellen Barkin) to be incredibly sexy.  I find some women without crooked faces to be incredibly sexy also. I'm just saying I like a woman with a crooked face.

11. Gia does not have a crooked face at all, and I find her incredibly sexy.  She does have two different color eyes though.  So there's that.

12. If I had to have just one food for the rest of my life it would be tuna salad with pickles on sourdough bread.  But you gotta dice the pickle and mix it with the rest of the salad.  I'm not a barbarian, people!

13. With what we are going through with Sammi, I'm so glad that I decided long ago never to be a parent.  I don't think I could handle a sick or dying child.

14. Plus, having kids would just cut into my boozing time.  Priorities, people!

15. I'd stay up until 4AM and sleep until noon everyday if I could.

16. I love our Keurig one-brew coffee maker, but sometimes I think I'd like to sit down with a whole pot of delicious brewed coffee in the morning.  Just like the old days.  And not that drip shit either.  I'm talking percolator, baby!

17. I just found out that the first "season" of AMC's The Walking Dead is only gong to be 6 episodes.  So just 3 episodes left this year.  WTF?  Am I living in the UK or something?  Pfft.

18. I miss collecting comic-books.  Until I see a new issue of something and it's barely recognizable in format from what I read when I was younger.  I hate all that glossy paper.

19. I've mentioned this before, but it's been a while.  I chew my fingernails.  But only two of them.  I call them my "bad fingers".  One on each hand.  I used to gnaw on all ten, but about 10 years ago I was able to make this little compromise.  Now all my fury and stress goes toward those two bad fingers.  They are a mess.

20. I still have occasional issues with Restless Leg Syndrome at bedtime, but they seem to be happening less and less recently.  I have no idea why.

21. When I turned 19, I was legally allowed to purchase and drink booze.  But only for 12 days.  Because on December 1st of that year, the drinking age in NY went up to 21.  Looking back, it seems unfair to have had it taken away from me for 2 years.  It probably seemed even more unfair at the time.  Especially since I was very sick during those 12 days and on medication so I couldn't drink even if I wanted to.  And I'm sure I wanted to.

22. That semester at college was a bad one for me.  Because of the impending increase in drinking age and the rumors that the entire campus would go dry, it was all party all the time that semester.  I think I barely managed passing grades in everything .  I mean BARELY.

23. I did, however, learn how to hacky-sack and juggle that semester.  Skills that keep paying dividends to this very day.  Or not.

24. That Shake Weight advertisement on TV is disturbing.  Looks like an excuse for building up those jerking off muscles to me.

25. Not there is anything wrong with that.  Those are important muscles to exercise.

26. I'm becoming addicted to the Craig Ferguson show on late nights on CBS.  And it's one of those things that it feels right to watch it when it's on rather than DVR it to watch later.  The problem?  It doesn't go on until 12:35 or so in the AM.  See #15 above.

27. I wish I spoke with a Scottish accent.

28.Even though I love the weather in November (sweaters...yay!), I definitely start a 3-4 month mild depression around this time of year.  Probably because there is no baseball.

29. There are these stupid commercials for 1800 tequila starring Michael Imperiole that I'm starting to hate.  Not because they make fun of Patron tequila - which I agree is overrated - but because he turns the bottle upside-down and watches the tequila pours into the empty cap.  Then he says, "Look...my 1800 bottle just poured me a shot", but they don't show how he gets the cap off with the liquid in it without spilling mediocre tequila all over the place.  Phew!  I think I'm over-thinking some of these.

30. I only know that 1800 tequila thing doesn't work because we have a bottle at home and I tried it.  Oh, gullible me.

31. I wouldn't recognize Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Ke$ha or a bunch of other pop singers if they walked up to me and slapped me on the face.  Well, maybe if Gaga was wearing her meat suit...

32. Nor would I know any of their music.  I'm not being an old, grumpy guy here.  I've probably heard some of their songs, but it's just not my bag, man.  And I wouldn't really know where to go to listen to music like that anyway.  OK, I guess that does make me an old, grumpy guy.

33. I'd love to see last week's episode of Community win an Emmy this/next year.  If only because I now know what a "bottle episode" is.  Well done, kids.

34. Speaking of Community, it's one of those shows right now whose theme song get stuck in my head.  The other one right now is Veronica Mars.  Especially the slower funky version from Season 3.

35. Whenever I watch A Few Good Men, and I watch it a lot, there are about a half dozen times that I just wish Tom Cruise's character would punch Demi Moore's character right in her privates.  Lt. Cmd. JoAnne Galloway is easily the worst character Aaron Sorkin has ever written!

36. Whenever someone asks me what I want for my birthday or Christmas I always say the same thing. "I don't really need anything."  I mean, I guess I do need stuff.  But I can never think of anything in that particular moment.

37. Speaking of gifts, I still have to figure out some kind of prize for Paticus for winning the first ever Verdant Dude Jack Contest a few weeks ago.  Sorry, dude...I've been busy.  I promise that I'll get 'er done.

38. There's a new show on the Discovery Channel that premiering this weekend.  Brew Masters, a reality show following Sam Calagiano - owner of the Dogfish Head Brewery - as he travels around the world searching out new ingredients and styles of beer.  I'm checking it out, are you?

39.A lot of people find it hard to believe, but at one point in my life I seriously considered joining the military.  I even was a part of the ROTC program at my college for a year before deciding it wasn't for me.  I often wonder how that one choice changed my life.

40. I've never met someone who knows more about MS Excel than I know.  I'm sure they are out there, but I've never met them.  Back when I was a corporate stooge, our bosses in the head office sent an "expert" to train my staff on Excel and Access.  It took all of my willpower not to take over the class after 10 minutes of listening to what this so-called expert had to say.  Instead I just pretended that there was an emergency I had to work on and I excused myself.  Saved myself three days of correcting the fool.

41. Besides the Dude, of course, one of my favorite all-time characters in a film is Wade Garrett from Roadhouse.  No way that Dalton was a tougher cooler than Wade Fucking Garrett.  Plus, Sam Elliot = awesome.  And he understands the Dude.

42. I generally pick up at least one bag of potato chips every time I go to the food market.  For health reason only, of course.

43. If you want to be my Facebook friend, click here.

44. I sometimes dream of electric sheep.  Is that weird?


Phew! Alright, now that we have that accomplished...done, done and I'm on to the next one. DONE I'M DONE AND I'M ON TO THE NEXT...

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. See you at 2,000!

One of these day...

...I'm gonna figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

I know what I don't want to do. Or at least I think I know what I don't want to do. Maybe I'm just lazy. Actually, I'm sure that's it. Lazy.

I know I've worked incredibly hard and for incredibly long hours in the past, and I just don't want to do that anymore. But my work life now, while comforting in a "wake up at 9, work in your pajamas" kinda way, isn't very financially viable. It's also not very stable. And we are looking to relocate and maybe grow up and buy a home one of these days. So maybe it's time for a "real" job again.

Scary proposition.

I've never had to really look for a job. They've always just kinda fallen in my lap. Now I maybe want to look to do something else. Something different. And I'm not really sure how exactly to accomplish that. I know I don't really like what I do now, but then again I don't think I'm going to actually like ANY job out there.

And I'm turning 44 in a couple of weeks.

Time to grow up. No matter how scary a proposition it seems.

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. I really, really have no idea what I want from my work life.

OK, well...that IS better

So you know the post that I wrote the other day? The one about how my new smartphone didn't really do anything better than my old dumbphone? Well, I almost immediately found something that they do, um, do much better.

I was either going to go to the Sprint store this weekend to have my contacts transferred over to the new phone, or I was going to transfer them one at a time via bluetooth. Something I've done before, even though that's a bit of a pain in the ass.

But after I set up the new phone with my email account, I was surprised to find that 90% of my contacts were already there. The phone automatically transferred the contacts from my email account. Phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses and any other relevant information that I had stored there. Well, maybe it prompted me to see if I wanted to do that. I don't really remember. All I know is that it was soooo simple.

And that's something the old dumbphones didn't or couldn't do. I'm pretty impressed. And I'm not easily impressed.

So all I had to do was some cleanup on my email address book. Something I've been meaning to do for a long time now. And bazinga! Mission accomplished.

I now take back everything bad I've ever said about new technology. You...you're all right in my book.

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. Go Yankees!

IMDB

I'm probably on The Internet Movie Database as much as any other website out there, and I have been ever since it was created way back in the early days of the Internet. Comes with being a huge movie geek. The amount of information gleaned from it's web pages has been invaluable to me when boring dinner guests with my extreme movie trivia knowledge.

Over the years, they've expanded their databases to include television shows, video games and reality programming. They've added features like trivia, memorable quotes, awards, and a host of other things. But  for years, it's been basically the same with just some small changes.

Then they had to go ahead and change the format of it recently. And I hate it! With a capital fucking HATE! They moved all the links from the left side of the page to...wherever on the home page. Extremely random. A lot of hunting and searching for stuff that used to be right there. I don't get it.

And once you get to a title or actor or whatever, the same thing. The links used to be right there in the left sidebar. Now most of them are down at the bottom of the page. Like this:

clicken ze biggen

Which would be fine if that was the way the entire site was formatted. But it's not. Like I said, the links on the homepage are strewn about all over the place. A lot of them in a new right sidebar, just to be difficult. Left is right, up is down...madness!

They've also concatenated gafluddled the credits page for actors, directors, writers and such.  So you have to expand the credits for them as a writer or producer if they are mostly known for acting.  It's a small thing, but it bothers me.  Like hunting and pecking for links that used to be right there.

And when you do find the link you are looking for, it brings you to a page that is still formatted the old way. With the links on the left-hand side.

Look! Trivia for Halloween!

Just stupid and lazy. I guess it's a work-in-progress, but I neither like the work nor the progress.

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. Fuck change.