12 Rounds With The Big Brother & The Godfather

It's time to get another flow of energy through my body and yours. This time we'll bounce all kinds of topics off of your heads to see if any of it sinks in. It probably won't, but at least that's an excuse for me to write about anything and everything. What do we have in store for you this time? We have a movie review which I haven't done in recent posts, thoughts on Big Brother 11, becoming a godfather, energy drinks where I turn into Cornholio, what commercial really gets on my nerves, a local animal abuse story that you won't believe unless you're in West Virginia, and whatever else we can fit in.



I'll start off with a movie review. It's not a movie that everyone is excited about, but as far as stats go, as I write this, it's the #1 selling DVD in the US at the moment. That fact surprised me and I'm still somehow doubting it, but whatever. What movie are we talking about? We're going to talk about 12 Rounds starring WWE's John Cena. If any of you have seen The Marine, you'll know it was one of those movies that was so brutally bad that it was actually fun to watch to joke around with. This has the same basic storyline. Cena's chick gets kidnapped, imagine that. Like you don't already know the outcome of this. Cena is given 12 rounds (or tests) to get through in order to get his woman back. His woman is Ashley Scott if you know her, pretty nice with long hair, not so much with short. I think I'm that way with a lot of girls' hairstyles though. Either way, this movie keeps you filled with some suspense I have to admit and it had me wondering what was next. It is way over the top stuff that would never happen in real life, but it is the movies after all. The end scene was extremely over the top, but don't let that fool you. It's better than The Marine, although that's not saying a lot. Final grade? 6.2 steroid injections from Cena out of 10.

I've still not made it to see Bruno yet, a movie I know I'm going to love. Spank was telling me that he went on Saturday and half the theater left. You serious? If people are that offended in a movie that they actually have to walk out, they have zero sense of humor in my mind. It'd take a crazy amount to offend me with a movie, so that review alone and other opinions I'm getting on the movie are making this a definite must-see for me. You throw in a movie with no major plotline other than being raunchy comedy and I'm in for that. Besides, the stuff you can see on the internet and people are offended at this type of movie? What did they expect when they went to this movie? It's not going to be some goody goody movie for the weak at heart. It is what it is. Also, I'm a big Harry Potter fan as far as the books go. You guys know that from reading the blogs over the years. Somehow, I've never delved into the movies of Harry thus far. I've only seen the first one, so I'm slacking there. I don't think anyone in my crew is going to be there this week watching, but I could be wrong? Shawna, I might have to make that Michigan trip just to watch or maybe all the way to Narita, hah. As usual, you people get with me if there's a movie that I need to see and maybe I'll put it in here.



Ok, away from the movie scene now as we jump to TV. Reality TV! Some of you are going to skip these next two paragraphs just because, that's fair enough. My cousins and some of my buddies have been getting on me for a long time to watch Big Brother. I knew it'd be right up my alley, but not sure why I never gave it a try in the past. Last Thursday, we had the new season starting up, Big Brother 11. After the first try, I think I'm hooked. I didn't know it was on three times a week, but what else do I have to do but rot my brain with reality TV? After the first week, I might as well give a quick recap on each person from my perspective. Of course a lot will get nicknames to help remember who they are. Braden, Surfer Boy, he seems laid back, but really weird. They haven't done much with him on TV yet. Casey, 40 years old and a 5th grade teacher. Dude also is a DJ by night and was a dancer in rap groups back in the day. By far the oldest of the house, he seems easy to like so far, he cracks me up. Drama Girl Chima. First off, who names their kid Chima? What is that? This girl can't handle anything, she whines all the time. Jeff is the guy that the chicks seem to be all about. Early on, he's staying out of the limelight and just taking in the rest of the drama.

Jordan is the chick I like as far as looks, plus she has the southern accent, maybe it's more of that. That can get me every time. Kevin is known to most as Gay Dude. He's going to put his two cents in and let you know what he thinks, but doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body yet. Laura, Fake Tit Chick, she's way annoying. I don't see her as a threat, I just want her off TV. Lydia, Tattoo Chick, I kinda like this girl. She's definitely unique and as far as the tats go, she pulls the look off. She just needs longer hair. Michele, she's the PhD of the group, but they don't know technically about how smart she is yet. She's cute in a secretary type way, I dig her. Natalie, she's lying about her age. She tells everyone she's 18, but she's really 24 or 25 to lead into the game. She's also a bronze medalist in Tae Kwon Do. Ronnie is the geek of the group, but I gotta give him props for being a big video game guy. He's also a national champ in persuasive speaking, so this could be a good setup for him. Russell the Love Muscle (he calls himself that which has me laughing) is a MMA dude. He's cocky, but I like his style so far. Roid Boy Jessie from last season's show, so he's new to me. This guy is freaky jacked up out of his mind and wants to be a WWE wrestler. Maybe he'll star in 12 Rounds Part 2. He's always flexing and being a goof and wants to be seen on TV. No way this guy acts like this all the time in real life.



How about UFC 100 last weekend? Good stuff right there and most people saw it, even if they weren't UFC fans. It's weird how they call it UFC 100 when it was a lot more than their 100th show. Oh well. The mainstream MMA fans are about as annoying as Laura from Big Brother though. They act like they've been fans for ages, have seen very few shows and watch 100 because everyone else is doing it. I guess that builds the sport up and that's the idea, but you know what I mean. We had a packed house high atop Tank Hill as Posey was the host with the most and invited us all up. The Henderson knockout of Bisping was one of the sickest I've ever seen. Bisping was out when he was hit standing and then Hendo dives, body flat out, and comes down full force and blasts Bisping, insanity upon more insanity. We also had GSP show everyone that Thiago Alves was no competition and I'm not sure there is anyone at 170 right now that can hang with GSP. Alves was so much bigger too, but that doesn't mean a thing, finesse prevailed in this one. In the main event, everyone has seen it by now, but Brock Lesnar made easy work of Frank Mir as Mir's face was a mess. The talk was of Lesnar flipping out after the match and it's quite the controversy. It was a punk move, I agree, but Lesnar knows how to sell himself. He's being the heel in wrestling (bad guy in other words) to have people hate him. This in turn will get more people buying his next fight just to see if he'll lose or not. It doesn't help the perception of the sport, but for the under 40 demographic, it's getting hotter and hotter. You might as well jump on board if you haven't already. Random, but a tie-in since Posey was host. A few weeks ago after softball I went with one of those Venom Black Mamba energy drinks. This tastes really good instead of being similar to metal like other energy drinks. I rarely have energy drinks, they're garbage I think, but I was bored and wanted to bounce off the walls. Not that I don't bounce off the walls all the time anyways, but these did the trick big time. Posey said I'm cut off from those ever again after witnessing that, so that had me laughing. I gotta have my sugary things, it's my weakness.

Here's one that has bugged me. Apparently it's been a huge hit online the past few weeks. What is it you ask? It's the Evian commercial with the dancing babies on roller skates. Luckily after talking to a few people, at least some agree with me. This isn't even remotely funny in my mind. It's kind of creepy if you ask me, yet some act like it's the funniest thing they've ever seen. I'd bet money on it that the majority of people who like this commercial also would be stuck up and walk out of Bruno. I could be wrong though. Even Mike Golic of Notre Dame fame and co-host of Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN walked out, boo. I'm not going to give a link to this dumb video, you've all seen it. If you haven't, consider yourself lucky.



I don't bring up religion much and this really won't get into it, but this past Sunday was a first for me. A girl I work with and her husband asked me a while back if I'd be the godfather of their little boy. I was down for that and was actually excited for it. I felt pretty honored. You don't get that chance too often, but everything on Sunday went great at Our Lady Catholic Church in the mean streets of Stonewood, WV. A few people asked me if I was nervous doing that, but I wasn't one bit. It takes a lot to get me nervous in front of people since I think I have a good mix of being able to joke around as well as being professional when need be. I just figured that was noteworthy since it's a first for me. A few firsts over the past couple of months: First time in a wedding, first time to NYC, and now some godfather action. We'll see what happens next to check off on the list.

Since I watch entirely too much TV, it's time for another recommendation. How many out there have seen Operation Repo on TruTV? It reminds me of Cheaters, but cars are involved. You are in for a treat if not. I caught I guess a little marathon on it the other night and let me tell you, it's hard to take your eyes off of. If you're into white trash type drama that is over the top, you gotta at least give this one a try. Basically it is what it is. You have a group of 5 repo workers, some of them scary looking, so they play their characters just fine. Then they go to pick up these cars that people aren't paying on and sometimes it gets intense. One guy I saw blew up his car right in front of them so they wouldn't take his car. Another dude they had a chase through town with as he tried to escape. One repo guy got his face all messed up on a raid after a car. Another had this couple that was just married and driving home with their wedding outfits on. The wife flips out on the husband and she had no idea he wasn't paying bills. I even wonder how much of this is put on, a bunch has to be. The thing that I love about this show is the excuses you hear from the car owners. They whine that they have bills to pay and all of this and can't keep up, like that is going to stop the repo guys from taking your car? You didn't pay your bills! If it was that easy, none of us would pay bills and just make up excuses and cry. I mean, I'm sorry it happens, but when they come, you have to know it's not their fault, they're just doing their jobs. If I'm behind on paying for my car, I'm not going to be happy if the repo guys come, but it's only expected and fair. Go watch this show, Mondays at 10:00 EST on TruTV. I watched a lot of it on Tuesday, so they must have it on a lot, who knows.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: Usually my plan in finding a weekly girl, I begin with random rap music pages on MySpace and go from there. This week, I landed upon Motley Crue's page somehow and then figured I'd branch off from there and go with a rocker chick this time around. She has tons of pics, so that always helps for this segment. She has tons of tats that had to take a crazy amount of time to do if you're into looking at that type of thing. She also like to show off the bod as well. Also, if anyone can come up with a new good creative name for this section, let me know, it's time for a change. Some of the people we put here don't really fall into either of those categories. Anyways, here is this week's girl, apparently she's the Queen of Hate? www.myspace.com/queenofhate

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This one was sent to us from Chrissy in Webster County, so she's getting all of the credit. We all know that cats are better than dogs, so why not a cat clip. This is a vid that you may have seen before, may have not, that's how it goes around here. In this one, we get an epic fail of a cat in search of a bird.





3 Quick Thangs:

1. Birthdays for Thursday, July 16th is what you want? Ok, I can deliver that. We start things off with the architect of the 90s Cowboys Super Bowl teams, Jimmy Johnson, 66. I would've guessed younger. Actor Mickey Rourke, drugged out and all, and apparently back in action, 56. How's he still alive? I'm glad he's not on any death lists though, so I gotta tip my hat to him. Plus a good movie in The Wrestler. Gary Anderson, who was a NFL kicker for all of time it seemed like, he's doing it up for his 50th. Actress Phoebe Cates of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins, 46. Hockey guy Claude Lemieux, 44. Will Ferrell, 42. One of the best running backs of all time, Barry Sanders, 41. Actor Corey Feldman, 38. There you have it, a pretty good list there if you ask me, solid.

2. Want a fact? Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time. I guess that means that some go both at once? Strange.

3. I'm ending with a crazy story out of Marion County, WV. I'm giving credit to Walz on this great great find. This story is so messed up that it's actually going to give all sorts of reactions from being grossed out, some may laugh about it, others may be fired up, but it's worth looking at. Also, read some of the local comments under the article, priceless. One of the most creative I've found was "He is a PETifile". The one and only ManDingo says, "best comment is the lady who hopes they get an abortion for the dog 'if she is pregnant' to which our Canadian buddy TyLaw comes back and says "I think we can all agree that West Virginia could use some more abortions.". Good stuff. Check it for yourself, I can't make this story up. Only in WV. http://www.wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=62705

Cork's Cookout Celebration & Youngstown State Penguins

I'm going in with this blog knowing that I can't top last week's performance. I'm just being honest about it, but I think we'll pump out some quality readage for the people out there who are bored. You have nothing else to do with your time obviously, you're coming in here to read my words, whether good or bad. I'll see what kind of material we can bust out this time around. It's a week where we'll be all over. The road trip blogs are so easy to write, even if they take forever because it is basically written for you in a sense. This style when I hit all sorts of things, it's more of a challenge, but I like making it fun. As usual, I don't really do a whole lot of anything in my bum town, but to some people, it might sound exciting. We're going with a cookout bash, cornhole domination, random Ohio people, Michael Jackson, pregnant kids, softball, and much more! Here we go..



Where to begin.. I might as well start with the July 4th Weekend, why not. Wednesday night, my town's fireworks were supposed to go down. It was rained out, so they had to reschedule the festivities. My town always complains about having no money, yet they shill out insane money for the people to get all amped for fireworks. Put that towards the potholes everywhere or the rail trail next to the river that I run on that they have said would be fixed a long time before now and hasn't. Thursday comes along and the rain was drizzling all day (Big Drizzle Drew Gooden) all day and finally stopped around 5:00. Things were fine, but they cancelled that night as well, doh. When it all was over, my town didn't even have a night this year.

Friday rolls around and it's time for big action. It was time to head to the streets of Nutter Fort for Cork and Kristen's big bash. What a setup, a ton of people, and a quality spread of food. I could give the attendance roll call, but I'm sure I'd miss a few. I'd guess there were at least 30 people there. The funny thing was that everyone there was either married or with their chicks other than myself. Yep, I was the lone wingman of the night, the only one. I guess I wasn't a wingman so to speak, since I wasn't taking one for the team and no other singles were there. As Arizona Jas told me, she says it's like I was more of a condor, I'll go with that. I actually like it that way though, I'm used to it enough over the years, I can have my own schedule to do whatever with, plus I'm somewhat picky anyways.



For a little guy, I straight tore up the food that night. You name it and it was there, people brought over some great stuff for our crew and Cork was manning the grill. The hit of the night though was Abby's cheesy potatoes, we wiped those out like no other. I went back for more and they were gone. How can you go wrong with an Ann Riley recipe? Answer? You can't, that's how. For what it's worth, Ann makes the best brownies around, hands down. On the dessert side, I'm voting for Tisha's chocolate mousse cake or that's what I'm calling it anyways. It was legit and I'm all about trying the desserts out. The fireworks started going at the park which we had a great view of from Cork's yard and this was my first experience of the Clarskburg works. Needless to say, all of the people there gave a big thumbs down to Clarksburg's performance. I expected more from all of the hype over the years, but I wasn't mad or anything. Everyone said they are usually a lot better, so I'll take their word for it since this was my only time seeing theirs. Overall though, I'm usually not a huge fireworks guy one way or the other, but it was just good times getting a big crew together and doing our thing.

Game time and luckily we had a few cornhole boards on the premises. I saw them set up early and nobody was playing and I was getting anxious. I can't just let an open cornhole board go to waste, so we started choosing up teams and went to battle until the night fell. I wasn't on my game, but I went through a few stretches that I zoned out on, so I'll take it. Overall though, not one of my better performances. Fortunately, I had Spank on my side towards the end of the night and we ended up going undefeated against all opponents. He had to carry me on his shoulders this week, but I held my own and got the points in when needed. On a sidenote, Cork is the only person I've seen who throws overhanded when playing, everyone was commenting on that. Surprisingly, he does a pretty good job with this style. It was nice playing under the fireworks though. I felt like I was living in my favorite movie of all the, The Sandlot. Moving on to the next game..



Beer pong was set up next on Cork's porch. Since I live in a cave, I've only seen it played once before I think. Yeah, I know that's hard to believe for the party crew, but I rarely ever hit up a party to where that'd be played, not my scene at all as everyone knows. It wasn't too intense of games, but I figured I'd check out the scene first hand and watch around for some good competition, be a spectator. Spank, as he was in cornhole, was undefeated in this as well for the night, so he doubled up in the events tonight as the champion. That's bragging rights. Everyone was having 4th bashes that night to celebrate the fireworks. We noticed this bunch across the way and these two randoms just walk up on Cork's porch. It's all about being friendly, not how it is up north, but we're all about it down here.

Come to find out, we have an Ohio duo by the names of Dan and Savannah. We didn't know them from anything, but they wanted in on the beer pong action and sort of invited themselves up. They were great entertainment though, I'll give them that much. They had Cork bashing them with jokes and they would come back and bring something from their end. Cork finds out that Dan goes to Youngstown State or is from Youngstown, one of the two. Then Cork shows his trivia prowess by busting out that their mascot is the Penguins. That won Dan and Savannah over right away. Dan was a veteran beer pong player and knew all the rules that Cork went by. He was just happy to play and kept saying over and over that it's house rules and whatever Cork played by that he'd abide to. I guess that'd be the smart thing to say if you're a stranger and just roll up to a crew of 30. Savannah then decides to tell us out of nowhere that she has fresh nipple piercings. She teased showing them as a distraction for the game, but never got around to it. Not that she had much, but you know everyone, girls and guys both (oh, it's true), were going to take a peek if she showed. In blog news related to that, one of our regular readers who gets dap in here, Arizona Jas, she recently had hers done too for whatever that's worth to the fans. She'll sign autographs after the show. I left towards the end of the night and at that time, more of the neighbors just walk on the porch and invite themselves into playing some beer pong. That's some hospitality if I've ever seen it, so props to Cork and Kristen for having a nice bash to get the rest of us people out of Shinnston.



Tuesday, whether you were interested or not, you kept your eye on the Michael Jackson memorial service from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It's insane how many people were there, overflowing outside of the arena. It featured quite an array of talent in the House That Kobe Built, with people paying ridiculous amounts of money to get in. You all know who was there, I won't have to go over that list. I know nobody is in the middle of this MJ saga, you're on one side or the other. I didn't think it was cool at all for some people to bash him repeatedly still though. Dude is dead, come on. He might've been weird, but he was on a completely different level of stardom than anyone in the world if you ask me. I'm a fan of his stuff for sure. I didn't have much else going on that day, so I admit to watching most of it as well. When I was online talking to my buddies, the same thing can be said for them. Even if they didn't want to watch, they watched. One thing that shocked me during the show was when I looked up Reverend Al Sharpton's age. Really, that guy is only 54? I'm still not believing it, no way. He looks 74. He's another controversial guy, but I think he's an awesome speaker. I like how he took up for Michael's kids and then busted out that "there weren't nothing strange about your daddy, it was strange what your daddy had to deal with, but he dealt with it". I could give opinions on each performance, but time to get back to another topics.

Here's one that bugs me and I'll tie that into my next segment too. What is it? Why do people insist on showing ten zillion pictures of their kids? Granted, I like to chat it up with just about anyone and don't get offended. Show me some pics of your kids, that's cool and acceptable, but you know the type of people I'm talking about. I really don't mind looking at pics of your kids and giving my graces, but after you have seen the 534th pic of them, what else can you really say without it being awkward? I'm not directing this to any one person or event recently, it's just a thought in my head. I know everyone loves their kids and I have no room to speak on this since I don't have any myself. It's not about that since most people don't act in this fashion. Most people with kids like to show pictures off and that's how it should be, but I'm only talking about the ones who do nothing else but shove pics in your face and don't have enough personality to talk about anything else. Does that make me a mean person? I hope not, but as usual, just being honest. You don't have to agree with me.



Speaking of kids, it's time to branch off. I try not to laugh, but the new show on MTV, 16 & Pregnant is a must watch. It's such a horrible show that in turn, it's one that is so bad it's good. The drama in these episodes are way over the top, that a lot of it has to be put on. Either that or some of these couples are such idiots that what you see is what you get. I hope for the sake of these babies' future that a lot of it is put on, but I know better without asking that question. It's sad how often we're around kids like this, but it happens everywhere. Kids with no jobs, no clue how to take care of themselves and then they get knocked out by some other bum with no job who also can't take care of himself. I'm telling you though, check out this show, you'll get hooked in no time. I'm sure I have nothing better to do, but you can't go wrong with some drama on TV. Oh, and the latest episode that starts on Thursday night? BOTH the daughter and the mother are pregnant, that has to be worth checking out.

I haven't given many softball updates this year. Last year we had a lot more going on it seemed in the co-ed league as far as fun drama. Now that we're in an all guys league, we haven't had anyone kicked out of games or that type of deal thus far. Our problem this year is getting enough reliable people to show up. We always get enough, but sometimes just barely. You can play with 9 and it's official, but can play with 10 obviously. A few games this year we've had to go 9 and still pulled out a victory. We have probably 15 guys on the official roster, but three or so have already dropped out for the year due to moving away or job issues, mainly our best player. Since that we'll just pick up whoever. That's fine by me, I'm playing every game anyways, but on the opposite hand, we drive 45 minutes to play and sometimes the other teams won't even bother to show. We still get the win, but what's the fun in that? As of typing this, we're 7-4 on the season, but I want much better than that. We play till late August and I'm having a blast. Unfortunately on Tuesday night, we didn't get to crush skulls or call anyone our victims, we were the victims this time around. I'm locked in though, some fun stuff indeed for the Dyno Nobel gang.

One last thing before I get to the bottom pieces. I had more to write about this time than I expected. I guess that's a good thing, but if it's a bad blog, just be straight like you guys always are and let me know. Shinnston is back to normal starting today. How so? More true and real Italian food back into the mix. My town doesn't have much, but I'd put our Italian food up there against just about anyone. More firepower is back in action since Larry and Sheila are bringing A's back to the original foundations. Not only do you get the great food, but you get to hear some of town's best stories at the same time, it's the experience. Kind of like my legendary barber, you're paying for his wise words more so than the haircut. Mix my barber in with the other characters in town, plus the three awesome Italian joints around in A's, Pizza Express, and Jimmy's, and you got a nice little stop to make. Roll the dice and wherever it lands on, you're getting some great food and stories guaranteed, either way.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: We're going with a girl that goes to Arizona State and is from Orange County. We don't have a ton of pics this time and really nothing to make fun of her for overly much, but she gets it done enough. I'm not sure how dirty or the other that she is, maybe neither of each, but hey. www.myspace.com/sexxystephy

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This guy is just minding his business. Then a kangaraoo, yep, comes up and rocks him a good one. It's only 9 seconds, but I figure you have to like this one. To all the Aussie buddies, you'll crack up at me being a dumb American and being fascinated with kangaroos, but we don't have that over here. Hope ya enjoy, we'll see..





3 Quick Thangs:

1. Let's try some birthdays for Friday, July 10th. Tennis great Arthur Ashe would've been 66 today. Singer Arlo Guthrie, 62. Baseballer Andre "The Hawk" Dawson, 55 and one of the sweetest swings in the history of the game. Former 49er stud Roger Craig of NFL fame, 49 and looks like he can still go. Jessica Simpson, 29. Weight gain or not, she gets it done. For the people bashing her for that, you know you'd want to be all over that too, don't lie. Thomas Ian Nicholas, better known as The Rookie of the Year Henry Rowengartner, that kid is 29 too, dang.

2. This link brought to us by The_Freak. With the tag line of "where dreams become heart attacks.. this is why you're fat". Most of us, myself included, aren't shy from tearing up some greasy fatty junk food. These creations here may multiply that by about 10. Here's a few examples: The Spamsicle is deep fried SPAM on a stick, Dorm Food Casserole that is "stuffing, ramen, ground beef, shredded cheese, mac and cheese, ramen, shredded cheese, garlic mashed potatoes, shredded cheese, bread crumbs, all topped with sliced onions and pound of bacon", and The Pizza Party which is "A DiGiorno pizza on top of a Jack’s pizza topped with Totino’s pizza rolls." Here's the link: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com

3. Today's fact? More Monopoly money is printed in a year than real money printed throughout the world.

BlogMania I: The Bird Novella

Thanks to The_Freak for this week's submission for a blog title. When I told him it was going to be my biggest/longest blog ever, he came up with that. Not counting this little part, I'm bringing 21 paragraphs to you, plus the bottom deals as usual. Hang in there, this is going to be one long ride filled with stories that will hopefully keep you awake.

This is a blog that can go one or two ways. One is that you might actually want to read it in sections and take some breaks. Print it off, take it to the bathroom with you, why not. Either that or you might not even want to read at all since it'll probably be one of the longer blogs I've ever written up, but hopefully you don't take that route. There's so many stories that I think I can do justice with to keep everyone focused though. Before I even begin, this past weekend's roadtrip now ranks as my favorite road trip of all time, beating the Philly ECW trip of 2000 that held the mark before. It's time to open this bad boy up and see how the hicks from West Virginia survived in the big city life of Philly and New York City. Get a pillow and make yourself comfortable, we're going to be a while.



Friday morning at 8:00 is where I begin with the storytelling. All true of course, nothing exaggerated. It wasn't a big crew road trip as we sometimes take, this time it was just Spank and myself. We leave Shinnston behind in our paths for a few days and journey northward. In Fairmont, we make our first pit stop to Cracker Barrel. You can't go wrong with some quality breakfast to begin the day with, it's very underrated. We get to near Gettysburg, PA and make a stop for some food. This is probably 3-4 hours away from home and out of nowhere when I'm in the bathroom, I see some people from our town. What's the chances? They were also going to Philly too, but obviously not for the same reason. For the locals, it was the Pulices. I then leave a message on the phone to mom that I just saw the Pulices and had a decent story about it and I'd call her later. A few minutes later, she calls and thought we had a run-in with the actual police from how I explained it. A good start to the trip.

On the way up, most of it was spent with a DVD popped in. I did the driving and didn't figure I'd be too safe as I drove and watched TV at the same time. Luckily, I didn't get into any fender benders for some reason. Mix that in with big city driving and that's a win in and of itself that I didn't wreck the ride. Along for the ride, we wanted a wrestling DVD to set the scene as we drove into Philly. What was it? For anyone who cares, it was the Rise & Fall of ECW double disc, one of my favorites if you want a nice history on the promotion. That made the ride go way faster and I was glad I brought it along. Much more on ECW later on in the trip, but first I will get the New York side of the trip down first.



The entire trip, we were spot on with timing. We were like chickens with our heads cut off, but made it to all of our destinations on time. I'm not about to be late by moping around slow and same with Spank, we can't stand that. Slow people that aren't responsible enough to be on time and want to screw around, forget that. Not us at all. We stayed right next to all of the Philly pro sports teams' arenas: Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles), Wachovia Center (Sixers/Flyers), and Citizens Bank Park (Phillies). One thing that really bugs me in sports is all of these corporate names for stadiums. I know they want to be recognized, but it just doesn't fit to me. I still call a lot of stadiums by their old names, it's easier to remember than some pointless name.

We throw our bags in the hotel, I put up my away messages on the computer and out the door we go. Gone for the weekend and you expected me to leave the computer at home? No way, I'm too addicted for that to happen. So from Philly, we start our journey to NYC. I left the car at the hotel all week, wasn't about to drive anymore than I had to. I'd just like to see the money we spent on transportation once we were going to all of our places, it was nuts. We didn't know much at all, but decided to ride the Amtrak from Philly to NYC. Bad choice. Why so? We looked online and figured it'd be anywhere from $45-$90 round trip. We figured we'd go that route, even if it was more pricey than the dirty subways. We go to pay for our tickets and it comes up to $87 a piece, one way, doh. Not good at all, but were a few minutes away from one train leaving, so we manned up and went Amtrak. Spank pulled out a quote in line and says "$45 my ass" in relation to what we expected to pay. Then the whole line turns around and are shocked or something since he said that. Like that's a big deal? We knew then and there that it wasn't a crowd of people that we'd be able to have fun with. The train was nice, but nothing worth what we paid. Inside it was mostly rich boy people that seemed so stuck up. We did sit next to this dude from Pittsburgh that I talked to for a bit, but nothing special.



Once we got in the city, it was time to jump off that terrible Amtrak setting and get onto a real sub with people that were alert and not sticking their nose up at you. One thing I noticed about when I go north, especially in New York, people aren't into the random chatter. Down here and especially way down south, it's rare to walk by a random person and for them to at least not say hey, ask you how you're doing, or acknowledge you. It got to the point that we knew it was weirding people out when we'd stir up conversations that we tried to do it as much as possible from that point on to amuse ourselves. I did enjoy the cheap subs there though, you run into some total characters and can pretty much say whatever you want. Despite the fact that we never really had a clue where we were going, we made it to all stops on time. I never have a problem going up to some bum and asking questions. If you don't ask, you won't find out.

It's time for the baseball part of the trip. Citi Field as we got to be in attendance to see the Mets host the Yankees. I've seen my Yanks play before, but never at home. This one wasn't at home either, but I'm getting closer. As far as the look of the stadium, it's very nice. It has a touch of PNC Park, Jacobs Field, and Turner Field all mixed into it. It was definitely different to be in a sold out stadium, it's been a while since that's happened at a baseball game before. You have to remember, we're normally going to Pittsburgh games and the last time we were there, it was lucky to have 15,000 in the crowd, sad. Here, you had the place rocking, the atmosphere is as electric as you have always heard from people who have been to games in New York. On top of that, it was Subway Series time, so it was even more jacked up than usual. Just the chants alone starting from the subways all the way into the stadium with Mets and Yanks fans going back and forth was worth it. It did surprise me how respectable each fanbase was towards the other for the most part. I'm sure it can get heated though. We sat beside this guy who has been to 12 games at Yankee Stadium so far and a few at the New Shea Stadium, so that made it fun. It was probably split in half of which fanbase the people were supporting. Atmosphere wise, PNC Park can't compete at all. Judging the stadium though, PNC Park is still easily the best baseball stadium I've ever been to and I stick to that. The two complaints I had from the New Shea was that the seats are really small (it'd be very brutal being a big dude in these seats) and every 2.3 seconds you'd have a jet blazing right overhead while watching the game. LaGuardia Airport is really close, so you'd get that action and it was fairly annoying. Shawna, I know you're immune to that by now, but it was giving me a headache and then some. Still, worthy to check out a game here, I had a blast.



After the game, it was off to Penn Station to head back towards Philly. We had time to kill, but not a ton. We got there around midnight and had a few options. Amtrak was an option, but they didn't have another ride the opposite way until 3:00 AM. Amtrak wasn't even an option on our radar anyways after that first trip, they can keep transporting the richies, forget those no-personality bums. Another option we had was to catch a metro to Trenton, New Jersey at 12:40. We decided to go walk the streets for a few to see what was up. As I was walking outside, it hit me that we were underneath Madison Square Garden, the mecca. Shows what this hick from WV knows about where he was in NYC. We hung in Midtown Manhattan for only about a half hour, didn't get much time to glance around. It was fun seeing some of the interesting bums and their spiels. One dude in particular was saying, "Dime, nickel, penny.. just a penny, just a penny.." It was like that over and over and over, yet somehow it intrigued us. I wondered then if he'd really act excited if I gave him just one penny. I got some street food too from one of those carts, loaded up on a chicken shish kabob that who knows what kind of meat it actually was. I do know though that it was good dirty food, so I was in for it. Bums were even bugging us for a bite of our chicken. Usually I'm a sucker that hooks bums up every so often, but I didn't on this trip. Spank gave some of his chicken to a dude though, he was pumped.

There wasn't much to report on the chick scene, but you'd see it all. It seemed that for the most part, they all like dressing up in the big city, something that doesn't happen at home much. Some had no business dressing up either, but to each their own. I'm not much about the fancy scene if it's overdone and cheesy, give me laid back any day, I'm easy to please. Girls can dress up nice without looking like clowns. I can see now though how people always say that dudes who look like total dorks can find someone way above their level on the hotness scale in a big city. You don't see it the other way around as much, but I'm sure it happens. One thing I did like as far as the populations overall in both cities is the diversity. Every culture you can think of and it's there. Back home it's fairly boring since the majority is the same, but up there, you can be whoever you want and nobody cares. More on the culture thing later on though when Sunday's report comes around.



It was time to head back to Philly. We jumped on the metro and it was only $12.50 to ride from town to Trenton, New Jersey. You can't beat that with a stick. On the metro we sat beside this older lady who was getting off of work and was heading home. She was really quiet and probably wanted no part of us when we sat by her, but I was at least going to try to get her alive somehow. After a few minutes of her being timid, she opened up a bit and knew we were just two idiots and had no clue on the big city life. She gave us the comment that we get on all road trips, "You're not from around here are you?" and once again, she picks up on the accent. Maybe that put her at ease that the hick accent we bring along gave her some of the southern hospitality feeling. When we got to Trenton, we faced a jam. It was about 2:45 AM and there wasn't another train going to Philly until 7:00 AM. I wasn't about to sit there for 4 hours, especially in this station that had absolutely nothing and it was straight up deserted. Luckily, we found another girl there in the same situation. The only people in the place and she was going our path. She had to be at the airport by 6:00, so the 7:00 train wouldn't do her a bit of good. Our only option was to get a cab and take that route. The chick was down since she didn't have any other ways. You gotta be hard up to ride in a cab with two dudes you've never met in your life and go along with the plan. Total cost of the ride? $125. We split it three ways, but that's insane. It was cool with me though because we had yet another person to ramble on to. This time, there was no escape since we were in the cab all together. She was a weird one, but things worked out fine. In the end, we saved probably 5 hours worth of time before we'd be back into Philly if we waited for the 7:00 train, so chalk up a win there.

One thing and it's no surprise to anyone, is the standard of living up there. I know what you're thinking, I'm coming from the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, so of course it'd be much higher. Another thing that would really bug me would be the lack of free time some of these people have. I'm spoiled in that I'm 15 minutes from where I work. I go there, do my business, come home and that's it. No traffic, no nothing. These people? They're riding trains for hours at a time each way everyday (like the old lady was telling us). I don't care how much money I'd be making, I'm not about to waste several hours of my day just riding around. Time is way too valuable for me to do that. Most of the time I realize I'm not doing anything special, but I still want all of the free time I can get. Back to Philly..



Now it's Saturday and we're at THE reason we made the trip. We were saying the baseball game was just a warmup and it really was. I know that's hard to consider when we just were at a Yanks/Mets game, but just stating the truth. How could the weekend get any better off of that? Well it did, multiplied by about 20. When I tell most people I'm going all the way to Philly to watch wrestling, they look at me like I'm a freak. Maybe I am, but I always say wrestling is a passion of mine and it's a soap opera for guys, it's entertainment. I've been to Philly quite a good bit of times, but the last wrestling trip I made there now ranks as my #2 road trip of all time. That at the time was for ECW CyberSlam 2000, which was an internet convention that had fans from almost every state and a ton of different countries show up. I could write a blog just on how I feel about ECW related things (the original version of course), but I'll try to condense it down to a few paragraphs, although that'll be tough for me to do. It's right up there with my Celtics love, which is saying a lot.

This year's event? Legends of the Arena. At the corner of Swanson and Ritner Streets, it's the infamous ECW Arena in South Philly. It doesn't look like much on the outside, I know, but if you've ever been, you know it is hallowed grounds. The talent that has been in that building over the years and what has gone down is straight up legendary. In my opinion, I'd rather be inside this arena than any sports arena in the world, no joke. To the non-wrestling fans, I know I've lost you, but I'll get you back soon enough, be patient. This show was set up by "The Queen of Extreme" herself, Francine Fournier. A lot of the money into the show went towards the fight against cancer. Last September, Francine lost her father due to pancreatic cancer and then only four days later, her oldest sister passed away from cancer of the bile duct. Then, a month later, another sister of hers found out that she has kidney cancer. She was able to beat that one. Due to that cause, most of the original ECW roster was in attendance for the show. Also, since we were two of 80 to have front row seats at this event, we got some big hookups. What'd the front row price get us? Starting at 1:00 that afternoon, we were able to hang with all of the wrestlers, get pictures, eat with them, walk around everywhere in the arena unattended, be part of a Q&A session with the wrestlers, autographs, and were able to take our chair home which was a commemorative version. The fans not in the first three rows had to wait till the show started. To most people, what we paid to be able to do this might blow your mind, but in my book, you can't put a price on that at all. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.



Within minutes of being there, we had already received more than our moneys worth and then some. Most have already seen the MySpace and Facebook pics from the trip, but check them out if you're behind everyone else and are bored. I could give story upon story about hanging with each wrestler, but I'd probably be talking to a wall. Write me up one day and ask if you want to know more details on the wrestling side. 95% of these guys are as down to earth as it gets and gave us all the time in the world. You could tell they really wanted to be there, didn't mind getting pics taken with you and were totally professional. We got to hang with everyone there, but some names just to name a few: The Legend Terry Funk, Raven, Sabu, Lil Guido, The Sandman, Al Snow, Rhyno, Spike Dudley, Justin Credible, ECW founder Tod Gordon, and many others. Paul Heyman wasn't at this show, but I've been near his presence before. Heyman has near god-like status to me.

If you've ever been to an ECW show back in the day, you'll know it's the best crowd ever, bar none, no questions asked. I'll match it up against any sporting event, seriously. The baseball crowd on Friday was great, but this is on a completely different level being inside the ECW Arena. The most knowledgeable and respectful wrestling fans there are, yet also the lewdest and crudest as the saying goes as well. If you are a great wrestler, the crowd will let you know and you'll be a hero. If you can't hang, they'll get you out of that arena so fast you won't know what hit you. The chants alone in there are something to behold, stuff that kids need no part of. The event itself, amazing, off the charts good. As a side note before we got into the building, we were in line waiting to get in. That is where we saw the woman from Massachusetts who had the Larry Bird tat in my pics which was one of the greatest tats I've ever seen. I've come a long way on tats lately. I wouldn't get any myself still, but if you're creative enough, you can pull off the look nicely. It's just the ones who aren't creative at all that bug me. Get something different, not what everyone and their brother already has. Just saying, but I don't mind them now too much in most cases. A lot of these people had ECW tattoos all over them and of the wrestlers. Yep, adding to the dork level of the crew I'm associated with, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Speaking of the Larry Bird tat woman, she had an idea that she wanted to slice her head open. She climbs the arena fence that has barbed wire all around it. It's not sanitary at all, but then she takes the wire and starts raking it across her forehead. Blood gushing out, I kid you not. After that, she took singapore cane shots to the head for the fans and got crunched with them. Of course I watched and loved every minute of it since it was so out there. Somehow I only wrote three paragraphs on the ECW part of the trip, but I'll stop now as much as it hurts me to, really it does.



We get back to the hotel and that night a Kenny Chesney concert was at one of the stadiums. I thought I left WV to escape that mess, but apparently it followed us up. It was really weird seeing a bunch of rednecks and big trucks in Philly. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just the setting was weird to see and I come from an area like that. Not my cup of tea. I'm in hick land and still feel uncomfortable around country music fans for some reason. A lot of them stayed at our hotel and even though most of the chicks were obliterated out of their minds and would have done anything and everything you asked I'm sure, it just wasn't appealing at all to me, so they got a thumbs down on my end. Just being honest about it. It was nice seeing cornhole busted out in the hotel parking lot though, never seen that up north before. Some aspects of the redneck life I can handle and take part in, but never could do a whole lot with country music. Maybe some day.

Whew, I'm running out of breath here. Sunday arrives and that's our day to come back home, but not so fast. For breakfast, we do the "touristy" thing and head off to Geno's Steaks for some cheesesteak action. The night before after the show we tried some dirty mom and pop cheesesteaks and they were pretty good, but I'm still a fan of Geno's even though it's mainstream and not cool to people that are up there a lot I'm sure. We went to Geno's after the ECW show on Saturday and it was so packed it was going to be a 2 hour wait, doh. That's when we decided to get one elsewhere and then go back in the morning. After we tore up some cheesesteaks, it was time to rock it out to see the city. In count, Spank ate 5 cheesesteaks on the trip, 4 in one day, good get man.



We start walking and we're not the lazy type, we'll walk just about anywhere if we have to and not complain. Plus, it gave us more chances to talk to random bums and see what was up. We got to walk through each community and I liked that as much as anything. Little Italy, Chinatown, the hispanic section, and on and on and on. We got to Chinatown and that place was pimped out. We went to an acupuncture place to check out the deal and what they had to offer. We were almost sold, but decided instead on a massage shop. Ironically, the prices here were about the same as in my area, we were pumped for that. This had to be the best massage I've ever had. This little asian woman brought the pain and knew what she was doing. No, not what you're thinking you pervs. She couldn't have been 100 pounds, but she had some force, but more on that place in a bit. Chinatown has some shady places, but we were all about that. A few we walked into that had steps from the streets and would go way down into a little area. How some of these shops stay in business is beyond us. A good bit have to be fronts for another type of business.

After that, we rolled back to the opposite end of town, towards the hotel where the car was at. Just for that stretch alone, we walked over 10 miles and I'm not making that up. We figured we'd get to check out some areas, shop around, and save yet another cab fare to get us to the hotel, we could walk it out. On the way back, we hung out in Little Mexico as I'll call it. Little Italy and Chinatown have names for their areas, but why not this place? I was just rambling on and looking for lucha libre wrestling masks in these shops. In one of the last places I checked, they had a ton of them and I was in heaven. Hey Cali Jas, I'm one step up on you now, it's time for you to get that lucha mask. It still is crazy to me that nobody in your fam is into lucha, a religion in Mexico, but I won't hold that against you, never have. :) I've talked to you about it already since I put the pics up, but you're a blog diehard, so I had to send the props out. Just being a goof, I figured I'd get a few pics in front of a store there and then I kept it on for a good while after that. I was walking through the streets of Philly in a lucha mask and the looks people were giving me as they drove and walked by was worth it alone. The things I do for fun, I'm different, I know.



So after walking 10+ miles, we made it back to the car.. only we had a problem. I was searching around and said that I didn't have my keys. I freaked out for a few minutes. Luckily, I did have a spare in one of my suitcases in the car if we needed to bust in. Then I thought things over and maybe I left the keys at the massage parlor. Ironically, I asked for a card from those people on the way out just because. We call them up and whoa, they have the keys! Now what? For all of that walking we did to save money, we now have to go back in that direction to get the keys. It was Sunday, the stupid soccer game was going on at the time (are Spank and I un-American since we rooted for them to lose to Brazil so we wouldn't have to hear as much soccer talk for a while?), so it was tougher to get a taxi to come get us at the hotel. We were getting impatient when they'd call cabs for us and none would show. Then out of nowhere, this guy drops off his buddy who was a hotel desk guy. Since the cabs weren't coming anytime soon, we run up to this stranger's car and ask him if he wants to make some quick money. Nice way to start the conversation huh? Then we explain that we need a ride to the massage shop and back to the hotel and we'd hook him up. What are our chances he says yes? Sweet, he said yes, he must be bored to death or not sure what else. So we jump in stranger's car and he ended up being a funny dude and wasn't freaked out. He was a big stoner, nothing I condone, but in my opinion, stoners cause no problems for the most part. They're always laid back and aren't all into the aggression. Plus, he was a big rap fan and was jamming away, can't beat that. And an ECW fan too? We found a winner. We made it back safely and the guy was pumped when we hooked him up with some hard earned cash. Now he can go buy some dope with it, good job buddy, but we did appreciate the ride.

Dang, that was a lot of work. Hopefully I did the road trip some justice instead of boring everyone, but we'll find out soon enough. I wrote this up mostly in one sitting and it took ages. Usually I do pieces at a time, but for some reason, I zoned out and just kept typing away. That's why I value my time so much as I wrote earlier. The people in NYC, they might not have enough time to have nothing else to do with their time and write random blogs about living in the middle of nowhere. I didn't really get to tour NYC at all either though except for that short bit, so my answer might be a bit biased, but in my dealings and a final verdict? Philly > NYC.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: This week's submission comes to us from Arizona Jas. Here is what Jas has to say: "whatcha think of her? not that many pics... but some def. quality ones.. well.. lemme see.. if i can find a better one first.. dirtier. cause shes.. actually kind of pretty.. just slut-tastic" I decided to use that one. Plus, the girl says she is "MISZ B THEZ BOYZ JUST WANT ME!!!" and "Your man was not in my plans-his cash was!". Hey, I can't make this stuff up, these are real people. Here we go: http://www.myspace.com/miszb09

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Of course I'm throwing in an ECW vid in here for history sake. Here's a tribute:





3 Quick Thangs:

1. Weird Fact #1: Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color.

2. Weird Fact #2: An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

3. Over 5200 words in this bad boy. If you made it to the end without hating yourself, you're a champ. Don't expect a novel each week, but that was fun.

Narwhals, Wedding Bells, & Best Day Evarrrr

Ok, we're back to deliver something for everyone to read. In this edition we get Ozzie's wedding, preparation for my favorite day of the entire year, bashing Donte Stallworth, dog groomers, when not to leave your sunroof open, a big Philly/New York trip planned for the weekend, and who knows what else. It's time to relax for a bit, put your day at ease and read some of my latest ramblings. Whether they appeal to you or not, I guess we'll find out soon enough. If you've fallen asleep on me, I guess that's my answer.



This past weekend, Ozzie and Maria decided to tie the knot. Usually guys would care less about going to weddings and it's mostly all for the girls. I was excited for this one and I'd be honest enough to let people know if I wasn't. The reason might've been that this is the first time ever I've both been in a tux and in a wedding. I know what you're thinking, I didn't do the prom thing in high school and all of that? Heck no, dances weren't my thing. I can remember being on the court for some dances and one in particular was on Opening Night of the NBA season. That's major conflict. Luckily, they did the court things within the first half hour of the dance. I did my escorting, played the part, and once the voting was over, me and my crew were out in record time. Come on, I had a Celtics game to watch, the first one of the year and I'm going to miss that? So here I am, finally in a wedding and we did it up big. We rocked out the red, white, and black as the colors for the guys. I felt snazzy in them, but they were ridiculously hot. I felt like I'd ran all day long, we were dripping sweat nonstop and couldn't wait to start shredding layers off at the reception.

I'll back up to Friday. This was a big wedding crew, 9 dudes on one side, 9 chicks on the other, more on that in a bit. During rehearsals, the girls seemed to be on the ball of course since the wedding thing is right up their alley, while us guys were beyond clueless. We went over things twice, but figured we'd find some way to screw it all up when it was go time on Saturday afternoon. After that, we got the crew, family, buddies, and whoever else to hit up some catered food that rocked from Big Frank's. Good get on that one Maria, the food that night, thumbs up. How can you go wrong with zitis and meatballs? You can't. After that, to even top things, it was cornhole action! I've written about cornhole before in here, so I don't have to go over that, but if you haven't tried it before, you're definitely missing out. We battled until it was dark and couldn't go anymore. My game that night, not up to usual par, a bad performance, but fun nonetheless. Mudcat and myself also might have set a sweet tea record as we went wild on that on Friday and Saturday both. Yeah, we're rebels let me tell you. An open bar at the reception for people to go nuts on and we're the guys who get sweet tea. Whatever works, right?



Wedding day comes and the guys get together in the mean streets of Glen Elk to get some pictures taken. Ozzie or the camera chick, one of two, wanted us to wear sunglasses during this. Funny thing is, Cork, Mudcat, and myself didn't even own a pair of shades. Seriously, that's how often I wear shades, never basically. I know, that's hard to believe, not many others could believe us three either on that. Me and Cork got a cheap pair of what we called cop shades, the bigger cheesy ones. Not the cheesy bumblebee glasses the chicks like to wear that cover their entire face, but you what I'm getting at. I can't wait to see some copies of these. Dad was joking that in 20-30 years when we look back on those pics that we'll be dying laughing because they were so cheesy. I'm all about being cheesy, I think that's the fun part of it. Picture a group of 10 guys (10 when you include the groom himself) in random settings throughout that area. We're doing the mafia looks, the Reservoir Dogs walking scenes, shots near the train tracks, and the whole works. I wanted to get some pics with the characters in town on the way in, that would've been a treat. After we did the morning pics, we were all starving and no way could we go through a wedding and then wait till reception time to get food in us. The plan? We rolled to a nearby Wendy's. Seeing the look on people's faces when we rolled up in there wearing tuxes was worth it to me. I went with the Baconator to clog up my arteries.

Off to the wedding itself and things went very smooth. The church Ozzie and Maria had it in, a pure old school Catholic setting, so I was down for that. I was impressed with the setup and all for sure. I was even more impressed that the nine guys didn't screw up anything out of the ordinary while out there, that's a feat in and of itself. Of the wedding bunch, only Big Wes and myself had never been in one before. Mudcat counted up that he'd been in 6 or 7 over his career, dang. Get at it Mud, nice work. The question some are already asking, how were the chicks at the wedding? The bridesmaids alone, and I'll go on record on saying this, might be the best collection I've ever seen in person as far as quality goes. I haven't been to many weddings, but I'm confident to put this group up against what you have to offer. Most weren't single of course, but I'm still allowed my opinion. Maybe I'm crazy, but there wasn't one girl on that side who someone would consider ugly, not even close. Ugly might be harsh to call someone as, but even if you don't say that and hopefully you don't out loud, you at least have thought it on some girl or guy, whatever your preference. It's just how it is, the reality of it. No I'm not going to give any rankings, but I think a lot that were in or at the wedding would agree with my assessment.



I'm near ending on the wedding talk, but I enjoyed myself. I also got to experience being in the wedding party and when that happens, you're the first to be served food. I didn't even have to go get it is the better part to it. I know when you're not in the party and you're waiting for ages at the reception, it's brutal. We've all been there, just something you have to do. No waiting for me during this though, I can't complain about that. Ozzie even threw up a group shot of the EDDFL fantasy basketball league for all to see on the PowerPoint presentation, that had me pumped. It took me 30 years to get in a wedding and in November I'll be in yet another one, the madness around here. This time, we'll get to celebrate Cork and Kristin rocking it out, that's big news indeed. Anyways, they've already been told, but I'm sending the congrats out once again to Ozzie and Maria for now being officially labeled as an old married couple, even if they're not old. I'm now the last of my first cousins (6 of us older ones) to tie the knot. I keep joking that people can wait a while for that one. I guess once they have all tried the wedding deal before me, I really have no pressure to do it anytime soon. From the wise words of my Aunt Juanita at the reception, one of the funniest people I know, she says to never get married and got all mean when she said it. That had me cracking up. And also to my aunts and uncles who helped set things up, you can go ahead and chalk up a success to both the wedding and reception in my book for whatever that is concerned, good times.

Thursday marks my favorite day of the entire year. Best day evarrrrr. Yes, evar, look it up. I've been saying that for years and people can look at me as weird as they want. What's so big about Thursday? It's the NBA Draft, what else? This is a tradition of mine to get so jacked up for this night that I zone into a completely different level. It's a night I want no phone calls so don't even try because I'm not answering and to let me get all ate up with this. I'm still old school in the fact that I like to write the draft down by pencil and paper even though you can get the results online instantly. I like this night so much that I'm taking my first game off in softball for the first time in three years, the last of the bunch to take a game off. Maybe I'm the Cal Ripken of softball, who knows. I still have papers from when I was at a basketball camp when I was 7 years old. In those days, the draft was held during the day and there were many more rounds than they have now. Mom took the time to write down all of my stuff so I'd have it when I returned, even at that age I liked having the guy's name, the team who drafted them, the height and weight, as well as the college or country they came from. This continues to today and is probably one example of me having some signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, nothing wrong with having a passion, and mine is the NBA.



If all goes right, I should have a pretty big road trip blog next week sometime. After the greatest day of the year, it's time for another road trip, this one to Philadelphia. I've been to Philly a lot and love it there actually. In fact, that setting ranks as my #1 road trip of all time, taken in 2000 for ECW Cyberslam 2000. Yes, at the time, that was a big internet wrestling convention that we stayed all weekend for with people from all over the world showing up for. I could write on stuff just from that, but I won't bore everyone too much this time with wrestling. In other words, and I've probably told those stories countless times, but that was when we got to hang with almost the entire ECW roster. They are as down to earth as you can get, would eat with us, hang in our hotel rooms, and the whole works. It's a weird little cult following family and they're at it again. Saturday, they bring to us Legends of the Arena. This is getting just about all of the old ECW roster back again for one more time at the historic and legendary ECW Arena. If you're a true wrestling fan and haven't been to the ECW Arena before, make sure you put that on your list to do soon, trust me on this. I'll save storylines on this for the next blog, but my boy Spank will again be in tow for this trip, just as he was in 2000. We have special tickets that gives us the chance to be one of few who get to hang out with the wrestlers all day, eat with them, get pics and autographs, a Q&A session, a Hall of Fame induction ceremony, front row seats, and even get to take our chair home that will be signed by everyone. I know what you're thinking. Yes, I'm a total dork, but I'm not about to pass up the opportunity to be part of this event.

If that's not enough, Friday we'll have wide open for the most part to gear up for Saturday's excitement. We looked to see if the Phillies would be home that night since we're staying at a hotel right next to the stadium, but no luck there. We're going with Plan B. What's that? New York City. I've been on the Buffalo side of New York, but not this side where the action happens. I realize I'm years behind the times compared to everyone else since. Everyone reading this has been to NYC before but me, I know, but I'm testing it out for the first time on Friday. As an added bonus, I get to see my Yankees in action. I've seen them before, but never for a home game. This one won't be a home game either, but who cares. It'll add another baseball stadium to my list, this time as the Yanks visit the Mets at Citi Field, aka the new Shea Stadium. Too much excitement in one weekend for a dude in my bum town, but I'll take what I can get. Philly and NYC, get ready for the hicks to invade for a few days.



It's time for a rant. For those who don't follow football, you might not know the Donte Stallworth story. In March of this year, he was driving in Miami with a blood alcohol level of 0.12 when the legal limit there is 0.08. In his path was a pedestrian. Apparently Stallworth says that he flashed his lights before he hit him. No excuse. In the end, he kills the guy and gets busted with a DUI. First off, I'm a huge advocate against anything DUI related, yet it happens way too much. People I know have had them and I've told them the same thing, they know my thoughts on that. Anyways, what kind of sentence does Stallworth get? 20 years? 30 years? Life? Nope, guess again. 30 days! What? You freakin' kidding me? Seriously, dude gets 30 days jail time, 1000 hours community service, 2 years of house arrest, 8 years of probation, and a life-time suspension of his license. A lot of those other things are significant, but he killed a person. Yet he gets a slap on the wrist? Pure garbage if you ask me. I could keep going on this for a long time, but I might as well get onto something that will get me in a good mood instead.

I'll end with a story to make fun of myself, but might teach a valuable lesson. I don't mind making fun of myself by any means, so here's a story from earlier last week. We had a big storm last Wednesday night. I woke up early on Thursday since I was a nice enough guy to teach a day of summer school for someone who had to take a day off. I go out to my car and it's soaked with water. Yep, on the inside. What happened? Me being the idiot that I am, I accidentally left the sunroof open all night. Luckily since I'm a neat freak, I rarely ever have anything on the floors or seats of my ride. That night I didn't, but there was so much water inside when I got in, that it was a disaster area. Somehow, nothing got ruined at least, but it was a few days of cleaning it out until it was back to normal in a way. The moral of the day? Have more common sense than I do.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: I try not to go the model route too often since regular people are more fun in this section, but we can switch it up. This chick isn't really what I'd call dirty though. Apparently she calls herself The Girl Next Door. Hmm.. who's door would that be? She doesn't have a ton of pics of herself, but enough to get the job done for a look. Also, not too revealing, but once again, enough to get the job done. And for added bonus, she has a pic in there with a fake Rambo that is pretty good if I must say so, the cheesy level again. We needed that guy in Glen Elk. http://www.myspace.com/misskristinmarie

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Narwhals! The YouTube junkies have already seen this, but it's a good one. Sent in by Arizona Jas, we get this from the creators of Badger Badger Badger.. It might not look like much at first, but I bet the song sticks in your head and you watch it a few times.





3 Quick Thangs:

1. I'm sure the girls and dog lovers will be all over this show, but I've never heard of it until I saw a commercial. Animal Planet has a reality show called Groomer Has It. I'm not even sure of the whole basis, but it's some kind of competition between people that are grooming dogs. Dad was all amped up and wondered if people really watched this show. He was asking if it was really a show of people just cutting dog hair. Then he was saying that unless someone accidentally jammed a pair of scissors into a dog and causes problems, then he can't see any other reason to watch that would get people excited. And he's a guy that somewhat likes dogs. I don't get the fascination of this show either, guess I'm missing out.

2. Speaking of reality TV that isn't that much "reality", for anyone who cares.. Wednesday night, get ready! Real World: Cancun! The 22nd season and it's on at 10:00 PM EST on MTV. Be there.

3. Today's fact machine? In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers. Another? In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones, Bhutan. I'll be honest. My undergrad was in Social Studies and I had no clue where Bhutan was until I just looked it up.

Malaysian Babies, Death of T-Pain, & Pittsburgh!

A quick preview for this edition: Pittsburgh road trip, Waffle House, Gabe Morency, hockey madness, a Twilight update, Jay-Z putting the notice out on T-Pain and his bums, and what Malaysian babies bath in. It's go time!



It's time for yet another road trip. This one is the first baseball trip of the year, a little late in the year for it to be my first, but that's how it goes. Friday was the lucky day and we had 5 in attendance: Cork, Kristin, Spank, Alicia, and myself. I played the role of the wingman as the other two are couples, something I've been very good at over the years. I again did the driving for another road trip, taking the passengers' lives in my hand. At this point, I guess they're willing to take that chance for something different happens everytime. That's my strategy at work and why I like my building so much. I have some characters in my building, but it keeps my day going and you never know what's going to go down. I could write entire blogs just on those kids, stuff that would blow your mind, but I'd feel a little weird exposing that, so I've always stayed away from writing about work happenings. Speaking of work, I've now been on bum time for the past week which means sleeping in till deep in the afternoon, fun times.

Ok, back to the trip. Luckily on this one, as compared to the LeBron trip recently, there were no malfunctions with Sirius. It pretty much stayed on five channels, none of which I'm sure the girls liked one bit. Usually I try not to rap people out too much since I'm one of few of my bunch who likes it, but Spank and Cork are also fans, so this trip I needed some to help my sanity. A road trip without rap for me is tough to handle. I let Spank handle DJ duties and we'd either have the channels of Hip Hop Nation and Shade 45 as newer rap, Backspin for old school jams, ESPN Radio, and Hardcore Sports 98. If you've never heard Gabe Morency and his Sports Rage show on Hardcore Sports, you're missing out. When he goes on a rant, it's like no other. He easily sets the f-bomb record for sports radio and will crack you up. I highly recommend it, the guy is a total nutcase, but he's so entertaining.



Our lone stop on the way up was off the Waynesburg, Pensylvania exit. Spank was craving some Dairy Queen. I wasn't that hungry, but how can you pass up DQ? They only have the best burgers known to man. Their DQ is big time and my town has one register. This place, uh oh, they have two! I hyped that up to the workers up there like it was a big deal and they got a kick out of it. More on Waynesburg in a bit. So we get into town and remember this is the same night of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, as Pittsburgh was at Detroit for the festivities. Ironically, Pittsburgh and Detroit were playing baseball on the same night in Pittsburgh. What's the chances? We ended up getting my favorite seats in PNC Park, the leftfield homer seats. I've sat just about everywhere in that place, but I'd take those seats anytime over the others. Besides, they're dirt cheap too.

I was surprised how many Tigers fans were at the game. The attendance was so rough that they didn't even give a number out while we were there like they normally do. We all guessed around 15,000 if that and this was a weekend night, interleague game, with it being free hat night. You serious? You really can't pack the house for that? Terrible. I know the Bucs are the equivalent of a minor league team, but you'd think the attendance would be a lot better considering it is an awesome stadium, the best I've been to anyways and I've been to a decent bit. We were saying though, look at that roster. They don't have one true power hitter and not a single go-to player. It's true, I'm not exaggerating. Being right on the wall in the outfield though, it gets no better. You're right on top of the action and get to yell at the opposing players and mess with the home guys. We were right behind Nyjer Morgan who seems to have a blast out there. He'll chat it up with the fans and goof off, something you don't see many do. On the other side, for the Tigers in leftfield was Donnie Kelly. This guy took a major verbal beating from the Leftfield Loonies, it was worthy of the seats just for that.



As the Bucs game was going on, so was the hockey game as mentioned. I'm not a hockey guy. I know what's going on, but it's not a sport I'm hardcore about like I am the others. Being in Pittsburgh that night, you couldn't help to feel the atmosphere. The Bucs crowd was quiet for most of the game, but if the Pens would score a goal, the baseball crowd would blow up and go bonkers when they found out. Nyjer was even getting into it by yelling at our section for score updates when he could. The Bucs ended up losing the game, but as usual with all trips, you get your moneys worth and then some. When the game ended, and it was one of the quicker games we've been to (it flew by), it was in the 2nd period of the hockey game.

Before I go into the hockey maniacs, I'll give a side story on our trip. We always joke around and come up with a percentage that we'll see someone we know at the game. Usually it happens, even though we're not that close to home. Spank set this trip at 33% to which I said I'd agree with that if not a good bit higher. We're in the Pirates team shop and loading up on shirts and things and the percentage gets broken fairly quick, before the first pitch. This is where I get back to Waynesburg. Out of nowhere in the hat section, I run into a Felisha, a long time internet buddy of mine from Waynesburg who is also one of the biggest Pirate fans I know and one that is legit with the rap game. There's not many in my circle that I can have some good rap chats with and knows the history and the whole works. She was with Big Vince, the Greg Maddux/John Cena look-a-like and I got to chat it up with both of them. For as many Bucs games as we've been to at the same time, for some reason we've never ran into each other. That and we're both in Morgantown a good bit around some of the same people and paths never cross. I figured that was story worthy for something different to add to the PNC Park trip. I'm only an hour south of Waynesburg and still sound like a big hick to those people, it's crazy. Felisha I'm the hick, but you're still a midget, hah.



We decided to stay in town until the game was over to see what madness was about to ensue. We bounced around between a few bars near the stadium and you could barely get in due to the hockey uproar. The streets were jammed packed and the crowd was getting rowdy. Cops were out like no other. The hardcore hockey fans, that's a totally different breed of fans. These fans are borderline psycho and definitely get my respect for how much they support their teams, it's off the charts. In town, there were a lot of Red Wings fans around too and it made for a good mix. Once the final buzzer hit, it was pandemonium. I've been lucky lately to have been part of some really good sporting events live. We decided we were hungry and got out of town fairly quick. I guess we missed the cars being flipped over and fires starting for the riots, but that's how it goes. I can remember being in Philly during hockey playoff time and it's just another world during that time of year with hockey fans. I couldn't even imagine what it'd be like in a Canadian city, that'd be fun just to be part of to see what would go down.

So we get back on I-79 South and need something to get our appetite crushed. There's only one answer for that on the way home. You guessed it.. Waffle House! I think they should start giving out free passes to us as much as we hit them up on road trips. That and they're getting free plugs in the blog, that has to count for something, come on now. Anyways, as Cleveland was the very first time Matty Cakes hit up a WH, it was time for another person to break their WH virginity. Alicia had never been before and this shocked the rest of the clan on the ride. I explained that I enjoy the dirty and filthy Waffle House places much more than the newer versions. It's like a baseball glove, you need to break it in. Mix in some of that grease, don't clean it so much and you're guaranteed for good food. I've said that for years in here. I dropped a piece of bacon on the floor there this time and it was on the ground for probably 10 seconds or a bit more. Now, WH has the best bacon there is, of course I'm not going to let that go to waste. It can't hurt, so I pick it up and eat it. I said that probably half of that piece of bacon wasn't even touching the floor, not like most of you haven't tried that one, no big deal. This time I loaded up on a ham and cheese omelette, 2 orders of bacon, hash browns covered and chunked (ham and cheese), the best sweet tea, and some toast that I wasn't able to touch. Yum yum yum! We didn't get hardly any pics on this trip though, boo.



It was time to get back to the big town. We ended up getting home around 1:30 in the morning. A quick update on the sleep pattern and this one wasn't safe at all, but I survived. When I went to bed at that night at 2:30, I had been up for 39 of the past 40 hours. I drove 2 hours to Pittsburgh and back on 1 hour of sleep the night before. I went to bed at 12:45 PM and woke up at 1:45, stupid. I rocked it out like a champ, but when I got home, I was done for. Nothing I'd recommend doing, but as usual, I never learn.

For the book fans, it's time for a movie review. After getting sucked into the Twilight series, I figured I might as well watch the movie after I finished the first book. As everyone knows, the movie never lives up to the book, that's almost a proven fact. Going in, I had to take that for what it was worth. I tried not to get mad at details left out of the movie that I thought should have been in, but they did what they could to fill 2 hours. I know I'm behind the times on reading this stuff or watching the movie, but I'm at least getting around to it. Time to rate this bad boy. Despite it not living up to the book, I'm going to give the movie 8.1 vampire bites out of 10, which is pretty good. I'm already a good bit into the second book, New Moon. It started out slow, but now it's picking up a good deal and I'm still hooked. The waitress at Waffle House we had was reading that on her shift, so I had to hype that up. Plus, it's always fun to get my buddies all worked up when they know I actually read this stuff. Cork, it's time to start reading. You know you can't wait.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: Hey Ash, I took your advice and went on Richard's page to find this week's girl. You're right, he has some to pick through in there. This week's winner comes straight outta Wyoming. For as much as I'm ate up online, I don't think I've ever talked to someone from Wyoming and that's saying a lot. This one has me impressed as she's not one we're going to make fun of or all of that, she seems quality to me. I could be wrong though. Everyone does a good enough job of commenting on this section, so if I'm wrong, let me know about it. Danielle, step up and accept your award: http://www.myspace.com/413811316

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Maybe it's just me, but that's funny..





3 Quick Thangs:

1. A new video game in the house. After eating myself up with Call of Duty, it was time to switch it up. I got UFC Unleashed last week for 360 and it's worth the purchase. The game is so realistic and the graphics are top notch. Just about every fighter you can think of on the roster is there, you can make your own guy for the career mode which is great, and even battle online. Prepared to get absolutely dominated online though, you see some straight up studs on there, it's nuts.

2. Finally! Yep, finally someone is here to shut up the T-Pain synthesizer garbage that everyone and their brother likes to use these days on songs, also known as autotune. You've all heard it, rap fans or not. I guess the mainstream club rap type of fans think this junk is good, but not in my book. I'm normally not a huge Jay-Z guy one way or the other, but he's upped his status with me after releasing this song. Here he is with D.O.A., Death of Autotune, lyrics included if you click the link too. If not, just check the song:



3. A few facts to end up with.. Did you know that Malaysians protect their babies from disease by bathing them in beer? Did you know that the world’s longest street is in Canada? Toronto’s Yonge Street runs 1,190 miles. Now you know.

Joel "The Vanilla Guerilla" Przybilla

Here we go! We're back in action for another edition. You were waiting all week to see what was going on around town and now it's time. Well, that just sounded good, you probably weren't that pumped to read the latest, but it is a good time killer you have to admit. What do we have in store? We have Posey's birthday bash, reading something that will surely drop me a level on the manhood scale, a Sandlot kid beating up his chick, a sleep schedule that has been a mess, a few new CDs, and a lot more as usual.



Thursday night it was big action in the mean streets of Shinnston. How so? It was a celebration for Posey's 31st birthday. The setting? None other than The SportsCenter, not to be confused with the ESPN version. Scherri had planned the big bash for a while now and told me the time to show up and all of that. Everyone knows that I'm not a bar guy whatsoever. Normally it's not my crowd at all and I feel real uncomfortable most of the time in one. Usually I just hate being 2 feet away from someone and having to scream and yell for them to hear you, standing on top of other people, being around drunks when I'm one of few not drinking, or having smoke blown in your face. This night however, and I'd admit if I didn't have a good time, it was actually way better than expected and I enjoyed myself. You're probably wondering why I had fun in a bar, but I'll explain myself..

First off, when I walked in and my crew was there, they didn't know what to think of me actually showing up in the first place. I told Posey he's a good buddy and I wouldn't do that for too many people. I was glad that my buddies were excited I showed up rather than me feeling out of place. I know, for those who know me I can ramble on and talk to just about anyone in most settings. A bar never was one of those places, but I manned up and went to the bash. Not that I'm too good to walk into a bar, but most know that's not my environment. The SportsCenter was totally different. For the locals, I hadn't been in there in probably 20 years when Patsy was running the show and I was a little tyke and it was totally changed. There's a ton of room in there and you don't have music blaring to where it stops you from having a conversation. This was more of a pool hall, old school style, taking you back in time. Ward was running the show and he was quite the host. Yep, the same legendary Ward from the old East Shinnston Gang way back when, a good guy indeed.



We were saying my town needs a reality show and this place would be a good scene for it. In our little hole, this place had guys showing up from 45 minutes away or farther just to shoot pool at Ward's. I still never quite understood while they migrated here of all places, but that's the irony. I had fun just seeing some total characters and I could write a book just on those guys alone. There were some legit pool sharks though and it cracks me up that people pay $15 a month to lock their pool sticks up here. Apparently I also learn that people can pay $2000 for a stick. I'm also the only West Virginian that hasn't played pool before, imagine that. A big plus for me is that the place wasn't packed, wasn't loud one bit, and I didn't have to put up with babysitting any drunks, it didn't get out of hand. Just a quick guide, some characters we had in the house was a strung out old school druggie, a group of serious pool sharks that wouldn't say a word to each other as they played (I found that strange), a legitimate Mexican in Shinnston of all places that randomly fits into our crew, and even an Italian (Clinten) that was thought to be of Mexican descent by the Mexican himself. Confused yet? You should be.

So I'm laying it on the line. Aside from coming home and having to shower again after smelling like a dirty smoke factory, the birthday bash was a successful trip. If you're driving through our town out of nowhere, feel free to stop in and see the characters that Ward has to offer at The SportsCenter. When a guy that almost always hates a bar scene is recommending a certain bar, it must be pretty unique and worth at least one trip if not more. I joked with Scherri that we needed to set up a Monopoly game at The SportsCenter and I'd be a regular. We did bust out the checkers and chess boards though, I didn't expect that. Even if I don't drink, I'm not above making myself a dork by drinking Coke and Mountain Dew while eating birthday cake in a bar. Posey, good times you old man, hope you enjoyed the birthday!



Ok, it's time to admit something. This will take the manliness level down in half, but I'm not afraid to say it. If I worried much about what other people thought, I'd turn into someone so miserable like a lot of people do, but that's not my style. I took heat for getting into the Harry Potter saga late in the game. I was wondering what all the hype was and then once I started reading the series, I couldn't put it down. Now enter Twilight. Yes, I know what you're thinking already. You can't wait to bust my balls on how I've given into what is thought of as a girly book series. I'll admit, when it was first out and people were all about it, I didn't think I'd like it one bit based on the storyline, the same thing I said about Harry Potter. Now? I picked this thing up on Friday and haven't been able to put it down. I've heard some other guys who have actually ventured into reading it say the same thing. I say if you're into reading, give it a try. I haven't seen the movie yet, but the book is top notch thus far. Normally it's sports and wrestling books for me exclusively, but I can branch out if needed.

Who all has been keeping up with The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Duel 2? If you have, you've been getting drama week in and week out. It never stops, you get some high quality entertainment. This week coming up is the finale and it can go a lot of different ways. I won't bore anyone too much with this, but if I had to pick a winner? I'm going to put my money down on Evan. I also want the percentage of these guys that are juicing. I think MTV makes it a must that they need to be oozing of roids before getting on this show. Some of these guys are animals, I just wish my boy CT would've lasted a few more shows. That leads me into saying that you better gear up for June 24th or else. Why? New season of Real World and this one is based in Cancun. I'll be sure to bore you with my opinions of the cast once the season starts.



If you've read along in this spot for a while, you'll know my favorite all time movie is The Sandlot. After a while, you begin to wonder every so often if any of those kids made it big. Most didn't when you search around. A few had some ok roles through the years, but nothing major. They've been keeping low key for the most part. That is until we get to recent news from the character known as Yeah-Yeah, Marty York. This happened on Easter Sunday, so a lot of you may have already heard about it. I haven't though and was sent this link from Chrissy in Webster County. Sure, the girlfriend hit him with her shoe, but that's still no excuse. When that happened, he wanted to play Chris Brown and bust up his chick. Get out of here Yeah-Yeah, go do some more roids so you can be a tough guy and punch out chicks. I can't have much remorse at all for a guy who does that, but figured I'd pass along the story: http://www.tmz.com/2009/04/20/sandlot-kid-arrested-for-smacking-gf

As I write this part, I have two days left of work. The kiddies have been finished for a few days, but I have a couple left to tough out. No biggie, it should be easy days and then shut down shop for the summer. Then I'll be pumped to sleep in and have too much time on my hands. The sleep schedule is still whacked out, but I'm used to that. Thursday night with work in the morning, I go to bed at 3:00 to start things off and wake up at 6:00. I passed on a nap after work and just laid around, figuring I'd get one later in the evening. That didn't happen. If reading Twilight wasn't making myself weird enough, how about the fact that I finally went to bed on Saturday afternoon at 1:00. Yes, you read that right, I never learn. I had been awake for 31 hours before I went to bed and had been without sleep for 52 of the past 55 hours. That's not healthy. That's something a person strung out on meth would be capable of. It wasn't like I was doing anything major. Between watching some games on TV, reading, and being online for that stretch, that's about it. Although I was doing other things at the time, I was still at my computer chair for the whole ride. From around 7:00 on Friday night until 1:00 on Saturday afternoon, I was online. 16 straight hours. That has to be up there with one of my all time records, although nothing to brag about at all, there's not much else happening in my town. The moral of this story, I'm online entirely too much, but there's always something to get into.



Not that many care, but some are into the exercise gig like I am and so I'll mention a new supplement purchase. As usual, if you could care less about this, just go to the next section. It was time for a trip to GNC and I wanted to switch some things up. I was off for about a month or a little less of taking anything and now we'll cycle some new in. I'm talking like I'm on the juice, Yeah-Yeah style, but that's another thing that I'd never touch, so I stay with the basic supplements. I got some fish oil gel tabs that is more of a vitamin as opposed to strength gains. It helps with fatty acids, a chance to reduce heart disease, healthy cholesterol and blood pressure, supports joint, brain, and skin health. The next I got was L-Glutamine. I've been wanting to get this for a while, but never have for some reason. It's a balancing amino acid that helps with alertness, retaining energy and muscle production after a workout, and immune system help. Lastly, I got a huge jug of amino acids. These are by far the biggest pills I've seen, they're monsters. I have to crush them up to take them. Even if you cut them in half and take them that way, they are still too big. With the older stuff I've mentioned in the past month or two, I'm still on Taraxatone which I love and finishing up Aplodan, while using chocolate Pro-NOS as my protein.

Time for another visit from Corndog (that's your boy Ashley) as he sets an internet law:

Corndog: When referring to your own myspace page, should you refer to it as "my myspace" or can you just say "my space"
Bird33: I wondered the same..
Bird33: I think we'll just go one my.
Corndog: when i just said "there are pictures on my space"
Corndog: you knew what i was talking about didnt you?
Bird33: You got it, there's your answer.
Corndog: Sweet. we just made up an internet law!
Corndog: Internet Law 3,334,694,231: When speaking of your own Myspace page, it is totally acceptable to refer to it as "my space". 05/30/09 submitted by Corndog and Bird33

Just a few CDs to mention this time..

Eminem: Relapse. For me, there's both good and bad about Eminem's latest after not having anything out for 4 years. The good is that for the most part, lyrically he can still bring it. Being away that long in the rap game, for a lot of people, they wouldn't be relevant anymore. Some say Em isn't relevant now, but he's still a big name and people are interested in his stuff. Another good is that Dr. Dre is involved and when he's around, it bumps things up to a completely different level. The weird part to me is that just about every song on this CD talks about how Em used to be a big druggie messed up on pills and doesn't seem to rap about much else. If you like the dark and demented raps, it's still here. You also get Em calling people out and for some reason he still bashes Christopher Reeve as much as ever, even when he's dead. Some of my favorite songs of this setup? Insane (lyrically the best on the album in my mind), Bagpipes From Baghdad (the Mariah Carey diss in where he trashes her and Nick Cannon something awful), and Old Time's Sake that even has Dre rapping some in it.

Freeway: Philadelphia Freeway 2. Three years since his last CD and I can't be anymore happy. For those who know me, I'm a huge Freeway fan and feel he's never got his respect due. I'd put the first Philadelphia Freeway CD in my top 10 ever, possibly top 5, it's that good. How does this one stack up? He stays true to his style and I'm giving it a thumbs up. If you've never given Freeway a time of your day, now is the chance, don't miss out. I'll even steer you in the right direction. Crack Rap is the best on this CD and you can also try to find Gotz 2 Be Tha Bomb and Streets Won't Miss Em.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: We go to Arizona Jas again for another. What's she have to say on this one? "this is my vote for dirty thug ho. She isn't the dirtiest, and she's mildly attractive.. but she's got some skank in her, fo sho". Here is our girl this time around: http://www.myspace.com/omgwilder

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This one comes to us from Jodine in the mean streets of Jersey. She sends us a Dating Fail video that is worth the watch. Apparently this dude is very romantic, wants to tie his chicks up, and designs video games. Enjoy.





3 Quick Thangs:

1. Birthdays for Monday, June 8th. We start with Joan Rivers, who might be walking dead for all I know at 76 with plastic surgery gone bad. Nancy Sinatra, the first child of Frank, she's now 69. Boz Skaggs, known for being in the Steve Miller Band apparently, he's 65. Keenan Ivory Wayans, the second of ten Wayans kids and oldest of the famous ones we know, he's celebrating his 51st, dang. Baskeball ogre, Big Country Bryant Reeves, 36. Tennis chick Lindsay Davenport, 33. Rapper Kanye West, 32. Hottie Maria Menounos, 31.

2. Today's fact? "Two-thirds of all the men and women who have ever lived past 65 in the entire history of the world are alive today. On a sidenote, Florida, Montana, and a few New England states seem to have more of this group of people."

3. Another fact? "In late-1600s Puritan society, a child over 16 convicted of cursing at a parent was sentenced to death. Being a stubborn or rebellious child also earned you a death sentence."

Road Trippin': The Shot That Saved Cleveland

It was road trip time last weekend and this one should be filled with stories coming to you from all angles. I think Spank said it right, this was probably a top 5 road trip for our crew of all time. Today's blog takes you from the hills of West Virginia into Cleveland, Ohio, the land that LeBron simply is a god of. Even if you're not a basketball fan at all, this edition is going to have a little something for everyone, the point of every blog I write or that's the plan anyways. It really doesn't even have that much basketball talk, but I'll fill your brains with such things as Waffle House, driving through random neighborhoods, druggies out of nowhere, pineapples on burgers, another brush with greatness, and a whole lot more.



I took the driving duties for this one and along for the ride were Matty Cakes and Spank. I'm not the best driver which I've admitted before, but I guess these guys don't mind having their life at risk. Luckily, I brought everyone back in one piece and didn't make any dumb wrong turns or near crashes. I'm always down for a trip if given enough time to get something in order, especially if it deals with NBA. A downfall to the trip was that my Sirius radio was messing up and people have been having problems with that last weekend. Now it's back in order and everything appears to be fixed. We still got a good bit of sports radio and rap cranking to last the trip up and back.

After starting the day right by playing some Punch-Out in Shinnston on the Wii, it was time to roll out. We planned to bring the Wii in the ride with us to play on the screen, but I need to buy a plug-in adapter of sorts for that to work. Maybe that's an option for the next trip. We left around 1:00 and ended up getting into Cleveland at around 5:30 on Friday evening. This is one of the few trips that I didn't have any Bone playing as I pulled into Cleveland, always a tradition for me to go into a city on a road trip and play that city's rap music to get the feel. Yes, I'm a dork, but it's something I will admit. For being Memorial Day Weekend, the traffic wasn't too horrible, which half of our trip is straight up in the middle of nowhere, an easy drive in my opinion.



We get there and have a nice hookup from Matty Cakes. Due to the joy of flying miles, he gets us a free hotel room, so major props are sent to his direction. When we get to the room, it's a pimp setup and we are fans of it instantly. We were on the top floor and this place had the highest ceilings I've ever seen in a hotel. Instantly I see a ledge of the wall separating the beds and the living room that stood about 3-4 feet high. I test out the durability of the bed and what else should a person do? As I say, I'll never grow up, I had to at least attempt some dives onto the bed. I stand up on the ledge and get some major air and start leaping onto the bed. If someone would've walked in, they wouldn't have known what to think of someone 30 years old that still does this, but hey, it's entertaining to me. I'm easily pleased. Cakes got the idea to get a picture of it and it turned out that it's my favorite pic in a long time. Most have seen it on my MySpace and Facebook pages and have had some funny comments to send in. I wanted to attempt a backflip off the ledge, but I was too chicken and scared that I'd crank my head. This is an issue I have on flat ground too. I know I can pull a backflip off, but still in my mind I'm feeling that I would mess it up and crank my head. Even for an old guy, I'm still as agile and flexible as ever, so I hope that doesn't falter off anytime soon. As a site note, the pillow cases here had me laughing. They said either "soft" or "firm" on them. I liked the touch, but even a dude like me with no common sense can tell which pillows are soft or firm. Good times.

Before the game started, we had a little bit of time until the gates opened. That of course gave us time to go to my favorite place in Cleveland to eat, Alesci's. It was so good we ate there twice in the same night. Looking at the place, you wouldn't think it's anything special, but looks can be deceiving. I've written about this place before and it's top notch. I ended up getting a calzone with some sauce which was amazing and then ate half of Spank's stromboli. That might be the first time Spank has given me food. Usually when our crew goes out to eat, I'm the one giving everyone else food and they love that. It's just a small Italian type food/deli place, but it gets rockin' and that place makes a killing. If you're in Downtown Cleveland, you won't be disappointed at all. Ozzie likes it so much that he's been known to say that it's worth it just to drive there, eat, and drive back if he really had to. Cakes texted him and told him we were there and Ozzie's reply? "That place rules." That's high praise.



Finally, it's time to hit up The Gund (The Q, for Quicken Loans Arena as it's known now, stupid name changes) and get inside the arena. Our seats were in the upper deck, but we lucked out and had a great view. We were midcourt and I'd take those seats again for sure. Within minutes of being in the place, we had already more than gotten our money's worth for our ticket price. I've seen several LeBron games already before, but this was my first NBA playoff game and it's a completely different animal. The way those fans worship him has to be seen at least once in person to appreciate it because TV doesn't do it nearly enough justice.

How were the fans in my area? Both good and bad. The guy directly to my right, I was ready to put in a crossface chickenwing and have him tapping out, but I decided against better judgment and figured that'd get me kicked out of the game, so I kept my cool. This is the type of guy that doesn't have any buddies and wants to try to be your best friend. I'm all about talking to whoever to get random conversations going, but not like this. He would get 2 inches from my face and start talking. Cakes and Spank picked up on this idiot and were giving me a hard time about it. After a while, I couldn't really acknowledge the guy and tried to keep my distance, although that's tough when he is doing that garbage. He also is one who thinks he knows it all on sports, when actually, he doesn't have a clue. The good thing? The fans in the rows in front of us, great comedy. Picture a mini And1 group of fans that storm the court after a big play and after every LeBron dunk or big play, they'd go bananas. This one guy, who we hate not getting a pic of, would stand up and flex everytime LeBron would do something of note. Then two other guys in front of us were selected for a halftime competition to where one ended up getting $500 worth of new tires and his buddy got a free tire alignment. They were treated like celebrities when they walked back up to our section, which had me cracking up.



With a minute to go, it didn't look great for the Cavs and they were on the verge of going down 2-0 in the series. People actually started to leave around this point (what!?!), even though it was just a few point lead for the Magic. First off, you don't leave games early. People think they can beat traffic or whatever, get out of here. I can be at some bum game and still want to be there till the very end, but a playoff game where you pay big bucks? It's a no brainer, you stay. Turkoglu hit his big shot with a second left to put the Magic up by 1. With one second left, the fans needed a miracle. Inbound pass to LeBron at the top of the key for a three, he hits it and pandemonium goes down inside The Q. I don't think I've been part of a better crowd moment ever when it comes to sports and I've been to a lot. As for now, this is the shot that LeBron will be known as that you'll see a zillion times already for the next 20 years. The Shot That Saved Cleveland.

After the game, we made our way to the TNT set where none other than Ernie, Kenny The Jet Smith, Reggie Miller, and the great Charles Barkley were doing the postgame. Security let us walk right down to their area, no questions asked. We got some great pictures of that and were literally right beside these guys at a few points. Barkley has to eat it up with the heckling the fans give him during this. Cakes' dad texts the next morning and asks if we were near Barkley and the guys after the game. We were wondering why he asked that and come to find out, apparently we were on TNT for a short period when they would show the crowd in that area going insane. I guess that's our minor brush with greatness. We wished Ozzie could've went on this trip, but he wasn't able to make this one. When he saw our Barkley pics, and that's one of his childhood idols, he was hating himself. It happens.



The night isn't over. When we finally got out of the arena, the town was an absolute madhouse. After walking a bit, I found a spot in the middle of town to sit down on this wall. Here it is, 1:00 in the morning and three rednecks from West Virginia are in Downtown Cleveland sitting on a wall. Why you ask? You see characters from all walks of life. What better spot than to just sit back, watch the action, and talk to a few of these randoms? Of course I was in for that. Things went in cycles. We'd have a new character stop by every few minutes and would keep the night going. Want some examples? One dude came over wanting to sell us weed and he had this big spiel all lined up to sell. We just looked at him and let him ramble without saying much in return. Get down the road you druggie, but it was funny for a few seconds as he busts the weed out of his pocket right on the street like it was nothing. Then comes a drunk chick by herself, stumbling around. She was obliterated and looking for a ride to come pick her up. In all of this, she was trying to talk to her ride and direct them to the area we were in. After navigating them to the point, she stumbles around and finally sees a truck to pick her up. Inside? 4 dudes and her being the only chick. Chances are, she ended up in someone's home video that night. It made for a good 5-10 minute chat with this girl though who you could've told anything to and she wouldn't have had a clue what was up. I'm not a fan of being around drunks much, but for a few minutes, they can be funny as long as you're not the one babysitting them. It was continuous action like that all night. That's free entertainment and I could keep going with the idiots we encountered.

So Saturday rolls around and it's time to prepare to head back to WV. The drive back on trips are always a bit more depressing, but we make it happen. First, we had time to kill. I just started driving around Cleveland on the outskirts and to see what kind of neighborhoods we could find. We ended up getting into some fairly ghetto places and that always makes for interesting sights on a road trip. I'm always down for that. Spank got this idea of how he wanted a pic in front of some random house. As he was there, I saw these two kids riding their bikes a few blocks away. I put two and two together and why not ask those guys to be in the pic? For no reason, we ask these kids if they want in the pic and they didn't know what to think. After a few seconds, they didn't care and we set up the mean muggin' pic, one of my favorites of the trip. In the pic we had a whitey from WV, a black kid, and a latino. That's some good random diversity, nice to see. It was time to get out of Cleveland and off to Waffle House we went, the trip isn't over yet when that is still on schedule.



Waffle House! There's only two on our entire drive. When you're in this section of the country, you're few and far between from some filthy Waffle House restaurants, so you don't have many options. This isn't Tennessee, where you see them every 2.3 steps. Believe it or not, Cakes has never been to one in his life (what?!). Oh no! We had to change that immediately. That's almost as unbelievable as my laundry statistic I'll have about myself at the end of the blog. Anyways, as usual, we got some great eats. Maybe some of the best bacon and sweet tea you'll ever get will be at a WH, take my word for it. I was due for an updated WH pic for no reason other than I just have enough in the collection from the past that why not. I was trying to figure out some props to use since I've busted out the spatula, wet floor signs, etc in the past. I just straight up asked one of the waitresses if some of them would mind being in a pic with me. I don't think I've ever met a mean waitress at one of these places, so these girls were all about it. That part cracked me up. They had ideas to get most of the crew in the pic and even busted out the goofy hats for us to wear. The girl that took the pic, she was serious about people being in the right spots and all of that. People always say I'm random, but you definitely get some stories if you just talk to whoever and see what's up. After leaving, we didn't get in the car yet, we walked down a few blocks across the highway to scope out the neighborhood for pic ideas. While there, we found a cheesy van that Spank got a pic in front of, the traditional pic in front of WH, and a dog posing for a pic while he was taking a dump. Again, as I say, I'll probably never grow up on that side of things. I can be really professional when I need to be and take care of my business, but you have to have fun with things and just goof off or life wouldn't be any fun.

If you're still reading along, you're a champ and I commend you. We're winding down, I promise, but we're not finished yet. Outside of the LeBron trip, I have a quick softball story to mention. Thursday night and we had a game scheduled at 10:00 in Morgantown. Yeah, a nightcap game about 45 minutes away from my town. We had a big storm going down in the area a few hours before that and were wondering if we'd get in a game or not. With no call of cancellation, we drove up anyways. We get there and find out that the games are not on pace and we'd have to wait about 45 minutes since a game before us was just starting at 10:00. 11:00 and we get on the field. By the time it was over, it was 12:30 in the morning. This was our second loss of the year and it was a video game score of 23-19, dang. 42 total runs, ricockulous! Anyways, after taking Big Rick and Posey home, I got home around 1:30 on a work night. I showered up and of course I couldn't go straight to bed, I was bouncing off the walls. I have enough energy the way it is, but it'd be tough to go to bed then. I stayed up till 3:00 and woke up at 6:00. Lucky thing it was Friday, but I have a weird sleep schedule anyways. Monday before work I went to bed at 4:00, another dumb mistake. I went to work and did my thing, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I wasn't tired until I got home that evening since I rarely sit down at work, but I passed on a nap. After eating Chinese and watching Ric Flair DVDs most of the night, out of nowhere I crashed on the couch at 9:30. The next thing I know, I wake up at 5:00 and didn't have an idea where I was at. As I type this part, it's 6:15 on Saturday morning and I'm pretty sure I'll go back to bed sometime to gear up for another softball game at 3:00.



Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: Speaking of Tennessee, that's where we end up for this find. A ton of pics? Check. Hot? Check. Some borderline slutty pics? Check. Not that we're complaining here around blog land. http://www.myspace.com/__casey

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This is one that comes to us from Kasher. He put this up on Lobstah a few months ago, but don't think I've used it in here. This one features Nancy Grace who scares me when she gets all mean and they're talking about the Duke lacrosse rap scandal. She wants stats on the scandal and the guy busts into sports stats. 30 seconds, but one I got a kick out of:





3 Quick Thangs:

1. As a good time killer, we all like being nosy and reading up on other MySpace/Facebook status messages. Most aren't that good, but you do find some gems every now and then that can get you laughing. It's probably just me, but I enjoyed this one considering Uncle Wilbur's temper that he can get when he blows up. He's calm most of the time, but then he can just let it go and flip out, it's great. What'd he have to say earlier this week? Here we go, word for word: "went to go swimming with the stepkids, but couldn't BECAUSE SOME ?'.$!.*#!$,'* LITTLE KID POOPED IN THE POOL!!!!" I guess that'd make anyone mad.

2. Here's one I probably shouldn't even admit, but I'm never one to really mind if people joke with me or what some opinions may be. If I'm right on this, I did laundry for the first time ever the other day. I know, that's insane to think, but it's true. Sad, but true. However, that's one more time than Dad has done it, at least while I've been alive. Most people have done that when they were like 5 years old, but I'm weird, you don't have to tell me that.

3. I'll end with a food recommendation. While at the big cookout bash for Memorial Day with the family all together, it was time to bust out the grill. Gayle was straight up rockin' the grill out like no other and threw some pineapple slices on board. He's not a fruit guy at all, but I'm huge into it. I was eating some grilled slices as they came off and that was good enough, but why not on a burger? It sounds weird, I know, but put a grilled pineapple slice on your burger and it's some high quality eats. Don't knock it till you try it. I'm running long as this isn't actually "quick", but Webster County Chrissy put sour cream on her spaghetti the other night. What in the world? Now that's bad times. She ended up not liking it, imagine that one. I won't hold it against her though. Until next time..