Road Trip: Play Like A Champion Today

Road trip time! The road trip blogs are both easy and hard to write at the same time. What do I mean? The easy part is that it pretty much writes itself with the stories since things are always going on. The hard part is that it takes a long while to write up everything I need to fit in. Most of the time, there's stories that I leave out just so I won't have you reading for days. To some, I probably write too much the way it is, but hopefully I won't bore you away. Usually the road trip blogs people do enjoy, but as usual, it's time to check this bad boy out.



Where did we go? If you read last week's blog, this trip we took out to the midwest. South Bend, Indiana, home of the University of Notre Dame. We had cousin Ozzie doing the driving, Maria, Marc Anthony, and myself. To show how much of a world traveler I am, I've never been farther west than Cleveland, Ohio. This was my first excursion across Ohio and into the cornfields of Indiana. The first thing I noticed, is that when you cross the Ohio border from West Virginia or Pennsylvania, the hills and mountains are all but over with. It's fairly flat out there as most tell you and it's nothing but cornfields. I mean nothing for 75% of the drive at least. Nice scenery though and there wasn't much traffic, so that helped matters a lot. The total trip time was roughly 7 hours, it's not too bad of a deal if you ask me. If you're kind of shaky on this blog and thinking it's nothing but football for the week, you're wrong. I don't have too much football related talk in here as I think I hopefully have a way to get others interested. We'll see.

We rolled out on Friday morning at 6:00. Rise and shine, time to get things going. Around 6:45 we stop in Morgantown to tear into IHOP. We go to the door and they're closed. What?? On a Friday morning, apparently they don't open until 7:00. Most people are on their way to work by then, what purpose does that serve? They lost our business and a lot of others that were in the lot. We didn't want to fool around and wait on those bums to open the doors, so it was option 2. We drove 18 miles out of our way (up and back) on Route 68 for no reason other than IHOP. We turn around and get on I-79 and hit up Cracker Barrel ran by local legend Shakey Southern. I got some sort of apple drenched french toast which was awesome to go with some eggs, bacon, and OJ. I like the breakfasts a lot there, but no, their bacon can't even touch Waffle House.



We stopped at a rest stop near Dayton, Ohio. I was craving something as I ate junk through the trip. What's a road trip without that anyways? Ozzie always gets a kick out of the random things I get at gas stations. I came back with a Nathan's hot dog and the woman making it asked what I wanted on it. I didn't need anything special, so I just said chili and mustard. She loads it up and then puts it in a little cardboard box. I go out to eat it and it's actual dinner type chili with beans. Apparently that's popular everywhere but West Virginia? That's not hot dog chili at all to me, but I ate it anyways. It was way messy and Ozzie was outside pumping gas at the time. I go out and start to eat it, but the rain is pouring like crazy. I didn't want to make a mess in Maria's car, so I just stood outside in the cold rain with wind blowing and eating my food. I'm an idiot, but at least I saved the car's insides from getting filthy. I'm a neat freakk even when it's not my own property.

To show all of our dorkiness levels, we got hooked into the state license plate game. You've all played it on road trips, but we still do it when we're old. Surprisingly, it can be a good time. This is one of the best I've ever done, possibly ever. Ozzie once had 49 out of 50 states on a trek to Oklahoma back in the day, but we weren't able to beat that. We did impress fairly well though. Our final total? 43 of 50. Plus, add in a few Canadian provinces and Washington D.C. and we killed it. The weird part is that we only found one on the entire drive home. That means we found 42 of our 43 on the ride out, that was a little disappointing. We thought for sure we'd grab at least a few of what we needed on the way home, but only lucked into Wyoming out of nowhere at a rest stop. What'd we miss out on? Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Dakota is the list. RI was the only one remaining from east of the Mississippi. You know you're ate up when you see a plate from a distance and have to speed up when you think it's something you notice. Then you drive up to it and get bummed out when it's not the one you thought you needed. It's a good time killer though for sure.



Most when they came to read this post thought it'd be nothing but football talk. Not so fast my friends. I'll have some of that, but the majority will be road trip action as well as me talking about the campus of Notre Dame. First off, this now overtakes Wake Forest as the best campus I've personally ever been on, by far. It's not even close. I'm not just saying that as a biased Irish fan, but this is a total rich boy school and I can see how these little richies pay $35,000 a year to go there. I still can't fathom that price a year, that's just insanity upon more insanity. However, the scenery up there is beautiful. The place has a good old school/traditional atmosphere and the buildings are a sight to see. We got our worth of the trip just on Friday alone before gameday Saturday even hit.

Hockey is crazy in this area, that surprised me a little bit. I'm not from much of a hockey area, but like soccer, it's fairly big in the heart areas. They had a hockey game Friday night against Boston College and the place sold out. It was so wild that tickets were going for $300 and people were running around in a frenzy trying to find anyone that would sell. We did get to check out the rink area though and it's a nice setup. After checking out the hockey rink, at 6:15, it was pep rally time. The amount of people that show up for this would blow your mind and it's something you have to check out if you go to South Bend. We got real close to the stage to check out action. Golden Tate was pretty funny on stage when he talked and 3-time Heisman Trophy winner Ron Powlus (sarcastic joke the sports fans will pick up on) took a big part of it as well. Powlus is one big dude in person, I didn't realize. He still holds a lot of Notre Dame records, even though he didn't live up to Beano Cook's hype at the time. During this same time period, everyone also watches the band practice what they'll march through on Saturday. A huge crowd took part in that as well, busting out camcorders and whatever else.



Some are wanting to know what the chick scene is like out there. I thought it was nice indeed, nothing to complain about. You didn't see many trashy type girls out there at all. Why must they all feel the need to wear boots though? I know this has been around for a while, not that I know much on fashion, but I'm not a fan of the boot craze. The ones that really had me puzzled are the rubber rain type boots. I could see a 4-year old kid wearing these, but college girls? Eh. If that's all I complained about with them, then all is right in the world. You also didn't see hardly any people up there who smoked, always a plus in my book. One thing that we all picked up on, both guys and girls alike, was that there is far less of a problem with overweight people compared to West Virginia. Then again, West Virginia is always one of the leaders in obesity, heart disease, etc, so that shouldn't be a major surprise. People around here just don't care I guess about being halfway fit and have no motivation to better than themselves. Then they complain of how they look, imagine that. To each their own, but I won't go into that rant right now.

The Hammes Bookstore is an awesome stop to make if you're an Irish fan. This is a two-story building packed to the gills of gear and anything else you can imagine. An incredible setup and you can spend all day in there. Throw me in there with some money and it can get out of hand. I spent less than I thought, but still came out of there spending a boatload, but it's all worth it. I figure I work and don't have many major bills, so why not spend it on some gear in the store? On Saturday, it was so packed in there that you were constantly bumping into other people and trying to shove your way through. Between the four of us, when we'd split up in there, we actually had to call each others' phones to update where we were and the path we needed to take to meet up since it was utter chaos. I was 5 feet from Digger Phelps as he was doing a book singing in there.



We stopped and ate lunch at Legends, a local place on campus. Anyways, while in there, we saw this dude who wanted to go to the bathroom. This place had a $7 food voucher coupon you had to buy at the door, regardless if you were eating or not. Basically, you're going to spend $7 on food anyways, so it pays for itself, but not for this guy I'm about to mention. He wanted to go to the bathroom, right? Instead of hitting up a dirty port-a-potty or even going to some nice building and take care of your business for free, he comes in there for a bathroom break. He pays his $7 to get in, does his stuff, and then walks right out. If you walk out and decide to come back in, it's another $7. A $7 wizz, go figure. I spend money on stupid stuff at times, don't get me wrong, but I can find better things to do with $7 than that option.

How were the people out there? I talked about the chicks a bit, but overall, everyone out here was very very nice. I didn't run into any punks like I would sometimes going up north. Yes, I'm talking to you New Jersey. Unfortunately they didn't have a clue what sweet tea was out there, but we always like asking for that on road trips to see their reactions. You met people from all over the country as Notre Dame's fan base is one of the biggest out there as a whole. The crowd is also great to be around. You're not around obnoxious drunken idiots in the stadium who think they know all there is to know about football and really don't. This is a much more respectable crowd (at least in my opinion), super knowledgeable of their football history, and fun to be around. The accents you run into are great as well with my favorite on this trip being the Wisconsin accent. We went a day without people picking up on our accent (or at least they didn't say it that day), but Saturday some guys picked up on it and got a kick out of it. Yeah, I know we sound like hicks. I say that on every road trip.



Time for the game and I said I wouldn't bore you too much on that. Two hours before the game, the fans line around the stadium and await the player walk-through. First, the Boston College buses pull up and walk in right in front of us. As they walk out, you of course have the fans yelling at them and all of that action. Then, a short while later, you get the Irish players all walking down the path of fans, decked out in their suits and ties. It's still crazy to me to think that I'm a good 10 years older than most of these kids, yet we root for him like it's a life or death situation. I don't get starstruck too often, but I was at times on this trip. One example was when Marc Anthony and I were running around the concession stand area. Nobody else was around for some reason and we see Mike Golic of Mike & Mike fame of ESPN Radio. I was surprised by his height and he was with his family as his boys are on the team. He seems like a very approachable dude, but I didn't want to bug him with his family around and get a handshake out of the deal. Autographs never were my thing, I'd rather just shake your hand, maybe get a pic, and talk for a few. I'm not asking too much. Regis was in the stadium, but I'm sure he was in some pimped out glassed-in luxury box.

I don't delve into religion often in my blogs and never make that a point. I know many don't want to hear about that, but I will say, if you're Catholic or not, you have to visit the Basilica. This is easily the most spectacular church I've been into. Unfortunately, our schedules weren't able to work with a time that they had masses in there, but I'll be sure to hit that up on a future trip. Another thing I noticed on campus was the lack of security. It's a trusting area in that you can practically walk wherever you want without people caring. Take for example the baseball field. The gates were open, so we just strolled right in. Not a single person was around and we got to take pics of the field, check out the dugouts, etc. Even on Friday when you could walk down the tunnel of the football field and be right on grass, nobody was there supervising.



The game itself was just icing on the cake. In all honesty, the Irish should've been taken out by the Eagles. BC turned the ball over like crazy and still barely lost. Either way though, a win is a win, even if it's ugly. I tried not to get into being too much of a Notre Dame homer in my writings as I know you either hate or love them (no in between as goes the same with my Yankees), but I've even heard from Notre Dame haters who have made the trip out there how good of a time they had and that everyone needs to go at least once. Hate all you want, you don't have to like them, but you can't argue the atmosphere and tradition you get out in South Bend. Also here, ushers that do the seating for the games aren't punks at all. You can walk wherever you want. If you want to walk into some lower section and take pics or just hang out, so be it. They're not gonna be all high and mighty and act like they have power. Also, Charlie Weis is a big fatty in person, although that's no surprise, but I still like the dude. End the season strong Charlie, keep that job, and work on that health.

I counted it up and figured out my sleep hours. From Friday night through Sunday night, I slept a total of about 12 hours. You'd think on two nights of not much sleep that I'd want to go to bed early on Sunday and gear up for work. I ended up going around 2:00 that night like an idiot and waking up at 6:00. Then on Wednesday night, I was up till 2:30 and woke at 6:00 again. I never learn. Check this out I found today, apparently West Virginia is where people struggle on sleep the most and don't get enough: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091029/ap_on_he_me/us_med_sleepless_states. However, over the weekend in South Bend, I liked that I was always the first one awake and ready to rock. Maria did pretty well in waking up early too, but the other guys, not so much. Either way, we woke at 5:00 in the morning on Sunday and were out and driving by 5:30, so nice time management. You all know how much of a time stickler I am and can't stand people ever being late. This trip was pretty much timed perfectly as far as nobody goofing around and screwing it up for the rest of us. Ozzie, props to you for doing it up big on driving and Maria for using your car. The goal for me is to make this trip every year from now on, it's that good.



Ok, time to get in a little bit of news in that doesn't deal with the road trip. On Sunday, it was the annual A#BA fantasy NBA draft. This one features the legendary crew from #basketball, the best the internet has to offer. This league has 20 members in it, it's intense. This year if you want a rundown, I'll give it. If not, you get it free of charge anyways: Don-G, Vertigo, Walz, Neon, TheAnswer making his long awaited debut, Cork, EJ, Morello, TMac, Commish TyLaw, DerekHood, Blahah, Chiphead, Big Play Ray, Kasher, Chester Cheese, Uncle Wilbur, ManDingo, Trev, and myself. We used to run our drafts over mIRC which took us a crazy while to do, but I enjoyed that. This year we tried Yahoo's setup and it's very smooth. It even set our keepers before draft time. I feel I have the best keepers in the league. Draft wise, I go with my normal strategy of nothing but youth. We'll see the potential develop or not, the chance taking is always fun. Plus free StatTracker this year? Crazy. I won't spend too much time on this, but I will reveal this year's Memphis Sounds. Of course, ladies and gentlemen.....

1. Dwyane Wade - Miami (Keeper)
2. Danny Granger - Indiana (Keeper)
3. Carmelo Anthony - Denver (Keeper)
4. Andre Iguodala - Philadelphia (Keeper)
5. OJ Mayo - Memphis (Keeper)
6. DeMar DeRozan - Toronto
7. Marc Gasol - Memphis
8. Brandon Jennings - Milwaukee
9. Anthony Morrow - Golden State
10. David Andersen - Houston
11. Earl Clark - Phoenix
12. Eddie House - Boston



Bird's Dirty of the Week: We're hitting up Plano, Texas this time around. As usual, I like to post some actual quotes from these pages I find. How do I find the pages? I can't give out my dark secrets. Here's one: "It's not easy being awesome all the time. My name means "wealth" and it makes no sense at all, kind of like my life. (Where the hell is all my money?!)". Again, I can't make this up. You haven't even made it to the pics yet. We go with 12 different pic folders consisting of 363 total pics. That's a pic for each day of the year basically. One folder is "Down for my dawgs like a white lady at the vet" and another you get is "drunken photo session". www.myspace.com/pantera07

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This isn't new, but it's going in anyways. For those who haven't seen much Pimpin' Money Mike skits (Katt Williams), it's time to throw one in for the sake of comedy. This is his skit he did on Shaq, plus some other things in there as well. His thoughts on Shaq when he had his stint as a "cop", babies mixing steroids and crack, and his gangsta baby. Enjoy:



3 Quick Thangs:

1. Early in the summer, I was rockin' out the movie scene. Lately, I've been slacking like no other. I'm not a soccer guy at all, but Invictus coming out on December 11th looks great. Why so? It has Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman in it. Those guys never make bad movies. Plus, Clint Eastwood is the director, that's a must see. I'm wanting to see Ninja Assassin for sure though, that's another on the radar. And who is going to see New Moon? Yeah, I admit I'd watch it, but I'm not gonna go with any of my boys, hah. You just don't do that.

2. Quick sports predictions.. World Series predictions (I'm typing this section up on Wednesday before Game 1), I'll go with the homer pick of the Yankees in 6 games. In the NBA, I have the Eastern Conference Finals as Boston over LeBron. The Western Conference Finals I'm going with Kobe over the Spurs. In the Finals, I'm picking the Lakers over my Celtics, 1980s style. Or actually, 2008 style if that's better for you. LeBron will be your season MVP and Ty Evans your Rookie of the Year (be on the watch for this kid, seriously). There ya go, book it.

3. Want a few things to focus on while you wait till the next blog? Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and can't find a mate.. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Balloon Boy, EDDFL, & Mudcat Goes MMA

What do I have whipped up for you in this edition? A mixed batch is what it'll be. I'll start off with Balloon Boy, John Mayer's relation to that, Taco Bell and how annoying their new stuff is, board game action, an epic comeback in Catch Phrase, EDDFL, the unveiling of this year's E-Town Junkies, Mudcat doing some MMA ground and pound to Fleece, a South Bend trip on the way, and who knows what else.. A good enough preview for you? It'll have to work because it's go time!



I know it's old news, but I'm going to talk about it anyways. Balloon Boy. Why in the world did this get national news coverage? While this was going on, everyone was glued to their TVs. The next day, all of the shows were talking about this "story" and they're still talking about it a bit today. Then when they asked the boy why it happened, he basically gave away his dad's plan of fame. He more or less said it was for TV. Really, a 6-year old kid is going to be trusted enough not to give a plan away? Come on, they're kids. You can ask them anything and get the truth out of them eventually.

I get a kick out of that they call him Balloon Boy though and he'll be known as that forever. John Mayer on his Twitter had a good one relating to that. "Why are we calling him Balloon Boy if he wasn't in the balloon at all? Isn't he just Attic Boy?" Yeah, I know it's weird that I follow Mayer's Twitter, but it's actually not bad. No, it's nowhere near the level of an Ocho Cinco, T.O., or even Rev Run, but it works. I know basically nothing about his music, but he isn't quite the dork he used to be due to his appearance on Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory and the song they made together, Rob's Mom. And who knew he's covered with tats. I sure didn't, but I guess I'm living under a rock on my John Mayer trivia. Maybe that lessens his dorkiness level as well with the arm sleeves, who knows. To end, how could someone even fit in that weird balloon anyways? It reminded me of one of those old school style popcorn tins, Jiffy Pop if you will. Now the dad is facing charges, this is too funny.



Here's another thing that is weird to me. Seen the latest Taco Bell commercials? First, to me, they're very annoying. You know the ones I'm talking about. "Black boots. Black pants. Black taco? Black dress. Black dog. Black taco? Black eye. Black sheep. Blackjack taco. Pepperjack sauce!" I don't know about all of you, but that definitely makes me not even want to buy that stupid thing. Does it even taste different or it is just the sauce that makes it different? I don't go to Taco Bell much at all, but if nothing else, they have good prices. Terrible commercials though and that goofball in the new commercial needs put into a balloon and sent away into no man's land.

Saturday night it was time to hang with the fam and our buds. I rolled to Ozzie and Maria's and we were due for board game night. Yeah, we're true rebels let me tell you. Some wild party animals. Anyways, in attendance for the action were the hosts of Ozzie and Maria, Matty Cakes and Kari, and the soon-to-be married couple of Cork and Kristin. I played my usual role of wingman which I don't mind one bit to make the sides uneven at seven. I of course brought the liquor. Well, you all know that isn't true, I brought the junk food, that's what I can provide. A little junk food and candy won't hurt anybody. I had it made, at least for me. The Yankees game on the big screen, eating junk food like no other, and board games? I'm in. We started out by playing Battle of the Sexes. This was my first time playing and it was ok, but I wouldn't personally rank it that high. This game definitely proved that Ozzie, Maria, Kari, and myself have about zero ounces of common sense between all of us combined. I'll admit, this game was harder than I expected and I was awful at it.



The next game we played was Catch Phrase. Again, this was the first time I had played this as well. Yeah, I know. For a guy that loves board games, I haven't played either of the two we battled in on Saturday. This one is legit and I'd definitely play more of it. We played a few rounds of this and switched teams up a bit. The last game, Ozzie, Maria, and myself as a team were able to pull an epic comeback to go home victorious. This isn't a game that you can eat and play at the same time though. It's hectic and I was trying to force down a bag of Burger King Ketchup & Fries while playing. If you haven't had those before, you're missing out, they're amazing. That night, the Yanks game didn't end till around 1:30 in the morning, good times. Even better times came to us on Sunday..

Oh my! Allow me to go into a total zone that not many will care about, but I'm going to write about it regardless. It's fantasy NBA time and that means one thing, the arrival of roughly the 20th season of the infamous EDDFL. That'd be the E-Town Diaper Dandies Fantasy League. This is a day that my boys and I wait on for quite some time. We book it far in advance. We normally go somewhere and rent a place out, but I switched it up this time. I had it at my house and it turned out to go rather well. I could literally write about NBA for ages or talk about it as most people know about me in person. I know I'm too obsessed with NBA, but I wouldn't have it any other way, I've been like that all my life. By the time I post the next blog, the NBA season will be underway. I may be in need of a breathing machine come Tuesday night due to excitement. As I type up this section, I'm currently watching my Celts take on LeBron in some preseason action.



The food spread was out of this world. We had my mom's sausage and peppers, Ozzie's meatballs and peppers, the Ann Riley special brownies (thanks Ann!), two dozen D'Annunzio's pepperoni rolls, three loaves of D'Annunzio's Italian bread (no, not the soft white regular junk that many of you think is Italian bread because it says on the label), Posey's big stash of Lay's, and whatever else. Then the draft was about to begin. We set the draft board up and if you ever do any in-person drafts, you must have a draft board. It makes your draft experience about twenty times better, I highly recommend it. I'll even link you to the best place you can get these boards. We've been dealing with these people for a good while now and they treat you like kings. We've even had testimonials put up on their page. I don't give out plugs lightly, these people deserve all the credit they get. FJ Fantasy Sports, check them out here: http://fjfantasy.com.

The best part about a live draft with the crew in attendance is that you get some major trash talk and stories galore. There may have been an f-bomb record set that day with our crew. Also, one of the most memorable incidents went down during this year's draft. Fleece had an idea for some middle school style humor. Of course, all of us are going to laugh since that's how we are. He has this idea to shank Mudcat. As he goes to do so, he moons Mud and then a melee ensues. Mudcat in a split second, as Flee was sitting on the ground got stomped/kicked a few times and then a few punches afterwards. Mudcat showed his ground and pound mixed martial arts skills by stomping a mudhole into Flee, a la Stone Cold Steve Austin in the early late 90s. We all watched in shock and then had a great laugh at the action in my living room. It was definitely epic, Mudcat broke bad out of nowhere, good stuff to see. Where else do grown men do this? Sidell, you need to make an appearance in person next year. TJ's stories alone are worth any draft, but you'd make them that much better.

Ok, I'll get to unveiling my team. Not that anyone cares, but hey, it's what I do. As always, it's all about the youth/potential movement. Ladies and gentlemennnn, here are yourrrrr 2009-2010 E-Town Junkies:



1. Kevin Durant: Oklahoma City
2. Kevin Martin: Sacramento
3. Brook Lopez: New Jersey
4. Rajon Rondo: Boston
5. DeMar DeRozan (R): Toronto
6. Shawn Marion: Dallas
7. Anthony Randolph: Golden State
8. Kevin Love: Minnesota
9. Channing Frye: Phoenix
10. Omri Casspi (R): Sacramento
11. Jason Thompson: Sacramento
12. Shane Battier: Houston
13. Anthony Morrow: Golden State
14. Chase Budinger (R): Houston
15. Roy Hibbert: Indiana

Next Sunday, it's time for the other fantasy NBA league I'm in. It's the 20-man keeper league that I've talked about countless times before. As far as online leagues go, there's none out there which can compare. I'll put it up against any out there, no joke. The A#BA is where it's at that features all of the #basketball legends. I'll hold off on rambling about it until the next blog. Also in the next blog, it'll be a huge road trip. It took me 30 years to get out there, but I'll be making the trek to South Bend, Indiana. What's out there for any knuckleheads that might not know? I'll be going with Ozzie, Maria, and Marc Anthony. The Italian/Catholic foursome of Irish fans, that sounds like a great trip to me, I'm more than pumped. I'm just not sure what has taken me so long to get out there. Also, as an added note, this will be the farthest west I've been. Some world traveler I am huh?



Bird's Dirty of the Week: We go out west this week. We close our eyes and randomly pick and we end up in Sacramento, California. With Halloween on the rise and most girls going to get all dirtied up for that night by wearing nothing, she has pic folders of that. You also get a folder that she titled "ma body". Again, I can't make this stuff up. Answer, she's even wearing a Miami jersey in one for you in her main folder. Apparently she's making between $60,000 to $75,000 with just one year out of school. Uh, no you're not. I guess you "could" be, but I'm highly doubting that. I'll give her the hotness though, I can't really argue that much, but the rest of the page will make it. Here ya go: http://www.myspace.com/117078161

Bird's Video of the Week: In honor of Balloon Boy, we get to see him puke on national TV. Yep, that's what I said. And they really named this kid Falcon? Come on people. To me, that's funny, but he has to live with that name forever. Well, I guess that'd be better than Balloon Boy, but either way you look at it, rough times. "Hey Falcon, come get your dinner!" The other kids would eat that up. Then again, they're all probably little rich kids anyways. Here is Falcon Boy, Balloon Boy, Attic Boy, whatever he is to you:



3 Quick Thangs:

1. Let's try some birthdays for Thursday. That'd be October 22nd. We've been on a streak of solid birthdays during that time, so we'll see if that date can continue things. Howard Stern's mother Ray, she's 82. For what it's worth, Stern's Private Parts movie is one of my top 5 ever. Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future fame, 71. Wrestling stud Bad News Allen/Brown would've been 66. He was one of the best judo guys of all time and had a great wrestling career as well. Actor Jeff Goldblum, 57. US Olympics figure skating 1988 gold medalist, Brian Boitano, 46. Ichiro, who should go down as one of the best pure baseball hitters of any generation, 36. Zac Hanson of the Hanson Brothers (yes, that dorky band), 24, dang. Jonathan William Lipnicki of Jerry McGuire, that kid is now 19. We're all getting old.

2. To the locals, there aren't many better time killers than checking out the local jail site. Want to know which of your buddies are locked up? Bingo. Want to find out if someone you may know got thrown into the slammer last night? It's up there. You'd be surprised how many people you know are going to be on there. Here are two sites to check, although most of you probably already know and kill time the same way. Also, it's interesting to see a height/weight listing of these people and their ages. Some are going to surprise you and there are definitely some characters. Just in case, go here: http://northcentralregionaljail.info and here: http://wvjails.info.

3. It's time to end with some did you know thoughts.. Did you know that it is illegal to pawn your dentures in Las Vegas. Don't do it Answer. Also, the longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds. Another one? Armadillos, opossums and sloths spend up to 80 percent of their lives sleeping. There ya go, see ya next week when I return from the hallowed grounds of South Bend.

Boll Weevils, Lucha Libre, & Crazy Martians

Saturday was the site of Kari and Matty Cakes' bash they had for the fam and our buddies. A good time to be had by all, we had the place packed. The setup of their house is great and I've always liked it, it's impressive. The food, I tore some of that stuff up like no other. How can you go wrong with a bunch of crazy Italians that bring over homemade food? You can't is the answer. The aunts and girls definitely did their thing on that end of the party. The talk of the night was my dad being out late, which rarely happens, so they made sure to prove it by getting some pics of him next to the clock at different times. Props to Maria for getting some great pics of the locals haven't seen on her Facebook yet. The hit seems to be the one with Maria, my dad, and BMO. Then at the end of the night, Ozzie had the foursome of my Uncle Bill, Uncle Jeff, BMO, and my dad to recreate their old summer league basketball team where they'd win it all on a regular basis.



Things started to get rowdy, which is always entertaining, you never know what to expect with our fam. My Uncle Bill joked that it felt weird for a few of us that weren't drinking. Hey Gayle, I'm not sure if we ever got a ruling for who won The Award at this party? We had some candidates for sure. Even Big Ashton got in on the action as I walked downstairs just as he was throwing up chunks of weinies all over the kitchen floor. You could hear the splattering, hah. Poor guy, but he toughed it out and made it through. Spank and myself hogged the TV room, which Cakes has it going on in that section of the house. Between the college football games, it was buzzing up there and I was away from the loudness downstairs a decent bit. Being around way loud commotion for a long period of time doesn't mix with me. Then, we found some NBA preseason on that night and the rest of the house didn't know how to take that. I think it ran most of the sports fans out as NBA in my area is basically nonexistent except for the guys in my fantasy league. For shame though, but we watched the Warriors take on the Suns in an outdoor game. They need more of that for sure. And on an added note, the Warriors are going to be a West Coast team I watch a lot of this year. Why? Two reasons, one is that they just run around like chickens with their heads cut off and have no rhyme or reason to their offense. The other is that they have a lot of headcases on the team and it can implode at any time.

You've heard me talk about the Shinnston Flag Football League for a while now. The season is getting towards playoff time and it's been nothing short of a blast. I'm still baffled by how many serious injuries this league has produced. Talent wise, this league is pretty legit. It has some of the area's finest athletes and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that. It's not that way at the moment, but my team had at one time the most college athletes on the team and we still can't do so hot. Either way, it's some good entertainment as I wait for pickup basketball season to begin shortly, that's where the real action is at. Anyways, has anyone in town picked up the latest Brown & Gold News? If you did, you'll get a nice chuckle at our league being featured.



What do I mean? Thanks to Commish Bart and the rest of us for working on the league website and message board, we're getting some local recognition. As I've said before, there must not be anything else happening in my area for this to get reported on, but we can't complain. Editor Jim Tichenor gave us two full pages and a lot of people in town have been asking about it. One page shows some pictures from the action on the field as well as snippets from the website. The other page shows the team photos that were taken on Opening Day. It's time for some cheap plugs, why not, that's what I do best. For the league's website, go to http://sites.google.com/site/shinnstonflagfootballleague. There's a ton of interesting things to check out there and we frankly have way too much time on our hands. Also, if you are out of the area and didn't get to see the paper, I threw in a few scans of that into our message board. If you're reading this, you have plenty of time to burn, so why not get in there and make some posts? You know you want to, anyone is welcome. http://shinnstonflagleague.proboards.com

Most people know that I'm way too hooked on wrestling. I'm not afraid to admit, so be it. I always say that it's a soap opera for dudes anyways and I like what I like. If you remember the Philly trip when I went to the ECW Arena show in June (best road trip evarrrr), you read about me being in the Mexican section of South Philly and buying a lucha libre mask. I like to collect odds and ends like that, plus I figured I'd run around the streets of Philly with it on. The looks I got from people were enough from me so I had to get some pics. I'm never above making myself look like a goofball to have some fun. Anyways, Cali Jas (who you will see more of later on as she submitted this week's video) made a trip to Mexico not too long ago. While down there, she was joking that she was going to buy me a legit lucha mask from Mexico City.



In the mail on Tuesday, it arrived. She was able to nab a Mexican colored special Rey Mysterio mask. The material is nice and gives me and my buddies something to joke around with, showing that we need better things to do. If you're a true wrestling fan though, you know that it's a part of tradition and a big honor to the Mexican wrestling community to what the meaning of a mask is. A lot up here think of it as a joke sometimes, but down there, lucha libre is practically religion and I respect it. We'd also like to send a belated Happy 21st out to Cali Jas as she did it up huge, Vegas style for the celebration. Hey Jas, a huge week for our sports teams. My Yanks get to battle your Angels starting on Friday and the same goes for Saturday when my Irish get to face your USC Trojans. I don't mind your teams, but I can't root for ya this week, sorry, hah. Also, in the letter ya sent with the mask, tell your buddy I got a good laugh at her thinking I was only 18 years old in the picture sent to your phone. I'll take what I can get because I'm sure the hair will fall out soon and I'll have a full head of gray, but neither has started yet, so thanks to that. Either way, just wanted to send the thanks out there to ya and make it known, even though I've already talked to ya about it. Much appreciated!

If you're a TV person, you've seen these new T-Mobile commercials. It's on every 5 seconds, so it's kind of tough to miss. Have you seen who all is in this commercial for the My Touch 3G phone they are marketing? Who are they trying to sell with this one? It's a bunch of old people in this commercial. Call me crazy and I know a lot of people of that generation are getting better with technology, but I can't see a whole lot of older people using a touch phone. Not using, let alone even wanting. I know that we're all hooked with our touch phones, but I don't get the connection that T-Mobile is trying to branch out to. I think it would be much more successful if they had some current celebrities to be on the commercials. Phil Jackson, Chevy Chase, and Whoopi Goldberg to name a few? Really? I will give them one thing about it though, the Cat Stevens song they use on it is catchy. I could see that hooking some people, but I just don't understand the people they used in it.



Oh yes, it's becoming my favorite time of the year. I'll try not to knock it into your head too much, but NBA season is in the very near future. I've already been watching a good bit of preseason ball and last Sunday we had our local fantasy NBA league's draft lottery. I've been running this league now for a good 20 years (no lie, since I was 10) and it's a great setup that has our crew with so much competition with each other that we've become obsessed with it to scary ends. Still, we could be hooked on much much worse. The E-Town Diaper Dandies Fantasy League (EDDFL) is ready to rock with a 12-man ensemble. A week before our draft, we get our pick selection down by a draw of cards and make a festivity of it. The tradition lately has been to hold that at the local Chinese spot. We even put YouTube vids up of this year's extravaganza. More on the actual draft in the next blog, we draft this coming Sunday, but I'll ramble one more paragraph on the lotto itself.

First off, this is the same group we've had now for several years. The twelve we have and I'll just go by order of the lottery outcome: Ozzie with the first pick, then myself, Cork, Flee, Mudcat, TJ, Spank, Sidelli, Fortdog, ManDingo, Posey, and Riley. Ozzie had been on a string of getting the last pick for several years, so we made it a rule that he couldn't get it this year. We were all joking that it would've been funny if he landed the 11th pick, but he lucked out and is high on life by having the chance to start off the draft with a stud. Riley says that Ozzie's fantasy numbers will fall now that he's recently married. I'll probably go more in depth with the league's setup during the next blog when I talk about the live draft festivities. I've been doing this league by hand the entire time. I have some guys on a waiting list, but anymore than 12 right now is an insane amount of work. It already is, but I love doing it, so I keep marching through.



Maybe it's just me, but what's the whole fascination with people claiming to see UFOs and things like that? Yahoo had an article today on the front of how there was a big halo over Moscow. This has people in a craze wondering what it was. "When the cloud initially formed, some UFO enthusiasts declared it to be a true mystery. Some even compared it to the giant spaceship hovering over Earth in the movie Independence Day." Really now? These people are on some good stuff. Then a report comes out saying it was an illusion and it was the sun shining through clouds. Hey Arizona Jas, you're out there near Area 51 and probably hear enough of that garbage on a daily basis. I just don't understand some people's reasoning. Until little green martians are running around, the people into this are just a bunch of crazy people living in their own little world apart from the rest of us. Or maybe I'm the crazy one for not believing in that.

You eat many weird foods? I randomly will send a message to someone and ask if they have any blog topics to ramble on and on about. Arizona Jas (both Cali and Arizona in the same blog, the madness in here!) asked me what I thought of corned beef hash? I guess that's what it's called? I've never had the stuff before believe it or not. Then we got onto different things and brains came up. I've tried both cow brains and squirrel brains. Cow brains aren't bad at all actually. Not that I've had them much, but you know. My 99-year old neighbor who I call an aunt rocks out the stuff like that. I tried both of those through her suggestions back in the day. Liver I haven't done though. Frog legs would be a yes. They taste a bit like chicken, but it's WAY salty. Like insane salt on those, at least the time I tried. I'd probably try most foods at least once, but can't guarantee a second time.

Here's a few new CDs for you to check out if you're bored for some tunes. Of course, as almost always, it's rap related as you could've guessed. Let's see what presents we have wrapped up this week..



Lil Boosie: Superbad. Hey Jodine, you get to hang with this guy when you move to New Orleans soon. This guy is 25 and looks about 14. He's been around for a bit, but if you're unfamiliar, to me he sounds like a mix of Crucial Conflict and Juvenile. I'm a fan for sure, plus he's funny. The song out now that you've heard is Better Believe It with Young Jeezy and Boosie's boy Webbie. Some recommendations here would be My Avenue, a weird mix with Bobby V that is called Who Can Love U but it works well, another that is out now is Loose As A Goose, and lastly go get Miss Kissin' On You that has Trina. This is pretty good in my mind, better than the next CD I'm about to review.

Mack 10: Soft White. Mack is back with his 9th album. This isn't as hard as old Mack 10 stuff, so that disappointed me a bit. It's not bad though. It doesn't live up to many of the other big rap CDs of 2009, but it's worth a listen. Maybe since I'm biased towards his stuff anyways I'm going to automatically like it to an extent. I was bummed that neither Ice Cube nor WC was on this CD. My favorite track on this would be It's Your Life with Anthony Hamilton. Hamilton is so underrated and mix him with Mack 10 and you have something hot. Others to check out are Big Ball with Birdman and Glasses Malone, and Dedication.



Bird's Dirty of the Week: We're going to San Marcos, Texas for this week's girl. She's a 21 year old blonde. She comes to us with 13 different folders of pics. In those folders you get the traditional dirty Halloween pics, party pics, being drunk pics, and even a lingerie party. Pretty hot actually, I'll give her that, even if I normally prefer dark hair. What does she have to say on all of this? Let's speak to her and find out: "hey yall... names savannah :) (and just in case you're wondering...no im not from georgia and yes it is my real name lol) basically im a junior at txstate just trying to finish out my last year... i work at a really fun place called Bikinis sports bar and grill.. its a lot of fun and if you haven't visited it yet you need to lol!!" Bikinis. There ya go. http://www.myspace.com/savannaheddy

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This week's vid is sent in to us by a long time blog reader and frequent contributor. That would be Cali Jas, who approved last week's blog with a good comment. Due to that, she's found a good one that we're going to use. If you know much on Jon Lajoie, you know he's somewhat of an internet legend with some of his videos. Dude is creative and this one I'm a big fan of. I'm not sure what is my favorite "character" of his in this vid. Would it be MC Fatigue? Chorus Guy? MC Lethal Weapon 4? Who's your pick? Again, props go out to Cali Jas. Keep sending in the vids people, we'll consider it.

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3 Quick Thangs:

1. Since we had some huge birthdays last week, let's try it again. Thursday, October 15th. Can it compare to last? We'll see.. We start out with Penny Marshall of Laverne and Shirley fame and big time Clippers fan, 67, dang. Baseballer Jim Palmer, 64. Tito Jackson of the Jackson 5, 56. Maybe I've done these birthdays before? It seems like I have in years past somewhere. Tanya Roberts of Charlie's Angels and on those horrible commercials nowadays, 54. Emeril cooks it up for his 50th. Hottie Vanessa Marcil, 41, whoa. I wouldn't have guessed that age at all. For basketball fans, we'd like to wish Fred "The Mayor" Hoiberg a happy 37th. A solid group there, it can compete with last week's list, but it doesn't win.. Also, a very special blog birthday is going out for October 15th as well. We go allll the way to Yellowknife in Canada to wish Carolina, a long time loyal blog fan, a Happy 30th!

2. A few facts you may or may not know.. Crocodiles can't stick out their tongues.. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.. You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than a poisonous spider.

3. Rev Run has some pretty good tweets if you haven't seen before. Just some good daily living advice. Here's a few to end the blog with from Run: "Good morn! Take action 2day!! The poorest ones aren't those without a cent, but those who WONT work!" "The biggest mistake u can make is to keep worrying about the ones u've made! Get up! Go fwd! Be happy!" "Give it all u've got everyday. That alone will destroy worry!" http://twitter.com/RevRunWisdom

"Bam! Hit Em With a Freeze Pop!"

Today's blog title was sent in to us by none other than Corndog. It's a quote from the great Mr. Chi City who we had a vid on a few weeks back.

I'm never sure what direction to start some blogs out with. Why not start it out with Saturday night? I wanted to open up with the Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins, but I know that most reading probably aren't nearly as into that as I am. I'll get to that of course, but for now we'll branch out into Mexican food. After watching Notre Dame barely eek out a win against Washington, I get the call just as my stomach was craving food. I went to the infamous El Rincon with Cork and Kristin (who are gearing up for the big wedding next month that I'm in) as well as Kari and Matty Cakes. I'm always up to go out and eat with the crew.



Kari and Matty Cakes tapped out after food and socializing action, so the rest of us were bored and didn't want to call it a night. Word has it that we're getting together this Saturday night for a bash at their place, should be fun. Anyways, what saves the day? Mini golf, that's right, is there ever a bad time to battle in that? We cruise down to Fairmont to Coal Country. I think I'm the last person in this area who hasn't been there, believe it or not. The setup there is really good I think and for the price, you can't beat it. I did my usual role of playing wingman and we had a tight 18-hole matchup. I was getting my brains beat in on the front 9, I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's a fairly tough course and not your average mini golf layout. Then I started zoning out. I ended up winning the back 9, but still fell short in the fight to glory to bring home The Masters green jacket. Cork and Kristin ended up in a tie and I was 2 strokes back. Then the rest of the late night went down by Cork and I dominating folks online in Call of Duty. About a month away till 11-10-09! That's right, that's the day us video game dorks all across the land will be shooting heads on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I literally can barely contain myself in anticipation, no matter how weird that might seem to those who don't play it. My buddies and I are ate up way too much with these games.

It's time for another TV update. Last week started an epic show that you have to love. If you watch every year like me, you know what's up. That would be Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins. I could write a blog just on each character this season, but I'll try to condense it down to just a few paragraphs. If you're about crazy drama breaking bad for some good TV watching entertainment, this show is definitely for you. The thing that cracks me up with these people is that after their Real World/Road Rules seasons are finished, they say they are on the right path to life and all of that, it's their stepping stone to something bigger and better. Apparently not. Why? Because we see them on this show till they're 40, so I guess that's their life ambition, just be reality TV junkies. Not that there's anything wrong with that I guess if MTV keeps paying them. There's a whopping 28 people on this year's edition and what a mix we have. It's such a craze that one of the one and only Boston Sports Guy, aka Bill Simmons on ESPN did a podcast on this last week with his boys. They had a fantasy draft of this show and are giving points for hookups, fights, threesomes, etc. They are taking away if someone cries, talks about someone back at home, throws up, among other things. BSG also is petitioning for this to be the 4th major spot and wants to throw baseball out in its place. Let's throw hockey or football out before baseball. Then again, I'm one of very few I know who prefers baseball much more than football. Come on, it's playoff time.



Most of the guys come into this show all dieseled out. If they're rookies, they learn soon enough to roid up and become beasts the next time you see them. Mix the roids with their already crazy personalities and you get eruptions. Wes looks to be the focus this season as he's already throwing his own teams' challenges. He acts all big and bad when to me he's more funny than not. He's now with Kellyanne, but she used to be shacked up with Johanna. Johanna hooked up with Kenny who is also on the show. Cohutta is on the show and used to be with Kellyanne. Confused yet? Another we have is Shauvon. She hooked up with CT last season on the roof. As a side note, CT is easily my favorite Real World character ever and it's a shame he's not on this year's challenge. CT's ex Diem is on the show. Dunbar, he might be the first person to commit a murder on this show, he's totally unpredictable. He was also a part of a love triangle with both Kimberly and Paula. Tonya is a total mess. She used to be hot back in the day, but now is a messed up alcoholic with other problems going on too and it makes her look 50 years old. Oh, how I could keep going on this. I'll stop this week though and just give my picks. On the dudes side, I'm choosing Evan to win, with the chicks, it'll be Evelyn who is just on a completely different atmosphere than the rest of these girls as far as physical ability goes. After one week, Chet and Diem were sent home. I'll keep you updated.

One person I never quite understood is Andy Dick. What's he point of this thing? Maybe he's (it?) hilarious to some? I have no clue, honestly. He's more of a nuisance to me and makes you want to bash him in the face at the sight of him. Does he even have any relevance? Why am I talking about this guy? No other reason than I wanted to throw some random opinions in here, why not? Reading up on some of his stuff since I'm bored, I didn't know he was (is?) a cokehead among a lot of other drugs. If you're a fan of this thing, more power to ya. I'm just interested in that if you are what is your reason, what is so good about him, nothing else. He's just strange to me.



Here's another thought for no reason that I saw a few of these in the local paper the past few days. Suicide. I guess it may be a bit different if I was one of these people who are constantly depressed and hating life. Even then, I can't comprehend it. What is ending your life going to prove? You're basically just calling it quits and saying you can't do it anymore, which I'm going to say is total BS. Am I mean for saying that is a cop out for someone that takes this path of life? Even worse is when you see people kill themselves over their girlfriend or boyfriend. You kidding me on that? Really? This week's finger of shame definitely is going to go out to suicidal people and even worse to people who actually carry that act out. Get some help, seriously, don't just give up on life.

This is a site that has been around for a while, but some might not be all up on it. What would I be talking about? Topix. If you're all about Facebook, which everyone and their brother is, you'll be into this if you haven't given it a try. Why do most go on Facebook anyways? We're all nosy and just want to see what's happening in the gossip world. Either that or it's just a great time killer. Those are the only two reasons, rarely any others will be accepted. Now Topix has your individual town in there and you'd be surprised what people are talking about. I'm in the middle of nowhere where everyone knows everyone, so it's kind of funny to read some of these things. People have too much time on their hands, but you get to read who is sleeping with who, what people's real opinions are on some things without holding back, and even some actual decent topics, imagine that. Either way, it's like a mini version of your town's Real World episode, some real and some not so much. Half of this stuff probably isn't even true, but if you're online 24/7 like me (and most reading this probably are), then it's worth checking out. Here's the link: http://www.topix.com. Also, for the iPhone owners, there's a free app for this as well, search for it, it's great. On there it's called Topix Aura.



Cali Jas texted me and told me to write on this next thing.. What's the whole fuss over the David Letterman story? I get it. What he did was definitely wrong, but like this surprises anyone with celebrities? Or even regular random bums for that matter. The blackmail part I have a problem with though. I'd imagine his wife knew what was up for a while anyways, but color her stupid if not. How dumb was the guy who threatened him with a $2 million payout not to turn this into a movie? I like how Letterman called his bluff, checked with the court system and had this guy collect the fake check anyways, basically getting caught. I think I'm right on that part of the story. If not, correct me and let me know the deal. I do have to laugh how Letterman just aired his garbage on his show and came out and said he banged some of his staff members. What gets me is these news shows each night. I guess they have nothing else to report on or maybe I just don't watch them enough, but they talk about the same story for a month. I guess people watch? My parents like watching Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell, but both of these chicks scare me like no other. They look mean to begin with (at least in my opinion) and just try to scream and yell, but apparently they have a lot of fans. They're all over the Letterman story though. I'm a Letterman fan, but to me, I could care less about this story. It's a meaningless story in my mind.

Hey Dom, I think you're right on your Twitter post the other day. I've been saying that all along. If you're seeing it now, wait till ya get to my age. Rap is a fad to most people and they grow out of it. That's not the true fans at all. You know I'm still with it as much as ever, but we're one of few of our crew. That gives me an opening to give everyone two songs of the day. One is Addicted To Money by Lil Scrappy and Ludacris. The other? Beat It Up by Gucci Mane and Trey Songz. Ok, one more. I Got This by Young Jeezy. Go load up your iPods, there's your recommendations. Dom, get back with me for some non-mainstream type stuff and we'll compare some things. Since I'm a shill for cheap plugs and nobody else is going to do it, if you're not on board, add me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Bird33WV. Randomly I'll throw in a few other Twitter pages every so often for you to follow of my buddies. For example? Kasher the Great's page/nickname is kingdomofchris, Dom is StripclubPapst, and Corndog is corndogtaylor. Just add those at the end of the Twitter address obviously, they're good reads.



Bird's Dirty of the Week: Apparently this is the Queen Pimp. She's 35 and in San Diego. And in her little blurb thing: "IM JENNIFER I HAVE 3 KIDS IM MEXICAN IM A BIG MOMMA DONT LIKE IT 2 BAD, BISEXUAL AND AINT ASHAMED AT ALL..." Who would she like to meet? "WOULD LIKE TO MEET PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT SHALLOW TOWARDS BIG PEOPLE, YES I LIKE MEN BUT I PREFERE WOMEN MORE WANT TO TRY A ASIAN WOMAN ONE DAY". Hey, I just post on it, these are actual sayings. She has a lot of pic folders for everyone to check out. Corndog, the one you sent in this week turned into a private profile or it would've been an epic one to use. However, I think I found a good replacement. Check Queen Pimp out here: www.myspace.com/bibbw46806

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Since mini golf was our opener, why not keep that theme going? Not quite mini golf, but Uncle Wilbur brings us this submission. Shotgun Golf. It is what it sounds like. It's cheesy funny, but something about the peoples' reaction makes it that much better to me. Thanks again to Wilbur for getting things done around here:



3 Quick Thangs:

1. I haven't done any birthdays lately, so here we go.. Thursday, October 8th. We start out with David Carradine of Kung Fu fame, he would've been 73, but passed away in June. The first living guy we have is Crocodile Dundee himself, Paul Hogan, 70. Reverend Jesse Jackson, 68. Comedian Chevy Chase goes for his 66th and so does author R.L. Stine. Actress Sigourney Weaver, celebrating her 60th. Robert "Kool" Bell of Kool and the Gang fame, 59. NECKCAR driver Bill Elliott, 54. Former NFL quarterback, Boomer Esiason, 48. Now we're getting to some younger people now. Actor Matt Damon, one of the best out there if you ask me, 39. Nick Cannon, who someohow lucked out and is with Mariah Carey now, he's 29. As Dave Chappelle's son would say, "Nick Cannon is hilarrrrious!" That's a very solid group if you ask me, fairly impressive.

2. It was time to switch up Muscle Milk flavors. Maybe my favorite so far and that is strawberry banana. This stuff is like candy to me once I mix it, I'm hooked, it's that good. At least to me, I guess not to others? I had Dad try some the other day and he had the opposite reaction. He tried one of my protein shakes I mixed up and said it was the worst thing he's ever tasted in his life and almost puked. That had me laughing a bit and I was surprised he didn't like it. I was on chocolate for a while, but the other day picked up a few jugs of strawberry banana and vanilla creme. I'm still going to recommend it though.

3. Shhhh... only 20 days till NBA OPENING NIGHT! I can't even hold in this excitement. Answer and DerekHood, you should be ashamed of yourselves, hah. It's time to gear up for the greatest sport known to man. See you guys next week.