"A Mouthful of Gravel or Shit"

Yep, I still exist. The good thing is that I have a bunch of topics to throw in here each time you read these now. I never set a certain time to get a blog in by. I usually judge it by instinct. The crew that reads these, you guys are usually good at letting me know when I'm way overdue. Either that or I'll wait till I have a nice selection of topics to ramble and rumble about. That's what it's all about anyways, just going with the flow of randomness and I love getting in these just for the pure fun of it. That or maybe I have nothing else better to do. Probably a little bit of both. You're asking, what does this issue hold? I'm going to tell you. We go to my first beach trip in six years, Kari and Matty Cakes' Bash, Echofon's greatness, Beavis and Butt-head returning (oh my!), another beach trip in the works soon, Jersey Shore, being a sucker for cheap t-shirts, Wade F. Maley Field, Whitman Creek, roid freaks, and whatever else we want to throw in the mix. Here we go, it's time to rock yet again!



The title of this blog? I threw up a FB topic the other day saying how I must be missing out on all of this Jimmy Buffett and/or Dave Matthews Band frenzy that a ton of people are into. I said that's definitely cool, I'm not a hater of those, but they just never appealed to me. That topic blew up and got tons of opinions on the matter, check it out if you already haven't. You get opinions from all walks of life on that one, with some agreeing, while others like one and not the other, and some like both. Anyways, Corndog gave me the idea to use one of those classic quotes from my FB comments as this week's title. Thanks to Chrissy DeMarco, she gets all credit for this quote. Also, bonus points for her being a Class of 97 member and one of my friends who has always kept things real and honest, didn't change a bit, I like that. Here is what she said exactly: "I like Buffett, he has some entertaining lyrics...if you like to drink lol...that's the only time I listen to him. I started liking him when I lived in Florida and went to the bars on the beach, go figure ;-] As for Dave Matthews Band, I absolutely HATE that guys voice, sounds like he has a mouthful of either gravel or shit lol.." There you go folks, that's your topic this week. Also in that mix of comments are words of wisdom from DerekHood and Corndog just to name a few, you can't go wrong.

Really, one of the greatest TV shows of all time may return soon? Say it ain't so! I hope it is so. What's that you ask? Beavis and Butt-head, what else? I know at least in my age group of old dudes, all of my buddies who have seen this are all about the possibilities and want it to happen. To this day, if Beavis reruns are on TV, I'm going to stop and check it out. That doesn't count for the fact that I have every episode here at the house regardless, but you know how it goes. Creator Mike Judge apparently has been working on 30 episodes. I may be an old man or on my way to being, but I'll never grow up in a lot of ways. Beavis is one for sure that hasn't turned old on me, so I'm all about this return if it's really going to happen. Thanks to TheAnswer, he provided us with this link, check it for yourself on the details: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/geekboymovienews/news/?a=19873.



Speaking of TV, I'm a TV junkie like no other. As everyone else would say, without DVR, we'd all be in trouble. It's a big TV time of the year for me. For one, we have July 29th being a huge one in my point of view. Jersey Shore, Season 2! Yes, this crew is cheesy, but it makes for great entertainment, even if they are characters more so than "reality". I'm also excited that the entire crew (minus Angelina) will be back for Season 3 as they will get $40,000 per episode, big ballin'. I'm a big supporter and it seems like it's been a long wait since the inaugural season. I may break down Big Brother in one of my upcoming blogs as well, this is a show I can't miss and even though I've just started getting into it over the past year or so, I'm hooked. It's a commitment though, as you have three nights a week to watch, but once you start watching, chances are you'll enjoy it, but what do I know. More reality? This one I have no reason why I watch, but Teen Mom on MTV. These pointless MTV shows suck me in and the people on this show are over the top. It's a drama fest, which I why I watch Jersey, Real World, Big Brother, etc, so it's in my wheelhouse. Kids having kids, ridiculous. There was a marathon on the other day and it's so bad it's good, so I just kept watching like an idiot. Thanks MTV for shrinking my brain cells.

Family bash a few weeks ago, hosted by Kari and Matty Cakes. I'm a family guy and it never gets old hanging around my fam. Dad always jokes that a "family man" is one that has a family here, a family there, something you don't want to be, but I'll be the other kind of family guy. Shawn Kemp style. No stray kids for me running around the streets, forget that mess. Anyways, the food as usual, top notch. You've heard my speeches before, I'll put my family's cooking up against anyone out there and fairly confident it's going to hold up to be legit. The winner of the cooking side of things this time was my Aunt Linda. She was presented with the golden engraved trophy and gets to hold onto it till the next family eating celebration. The question is, will she hold onto that trophy and remain champion or will someone swoop in out of nowhere and snatch it up? A new one to me were meatballs she brought in that were cooked in grape jelly as one ingredient I know for sure. It sounds weird, I know. I said the exact same, but I'm never above at least trying different foods. It's a good thing I did, because these things were out of this world! I'm not joking either, I could've made a meal just on that alone. Another hit of hers was the spinach dip she made. A few were asking for the recipe on that one. That's not even mentioning the other great food the rest of the fam brought in, mmmm mmmm good! Also we had cornhole excitement happening in the back yard. I love Kari and Matty Cakes' house, it's an awesome setup. We had several couple duos and Whitney stepped up on my side and showed she has some quality cornhole skills, so we'll continue our run. We won our first matchup by a pretty big margin, but ended up losing in the 2nd Round. After that, it was go time since I had to wake up for the beach trip at 4:00 in the morning.



I hadn't been to the beach since 2004. Yep, six years. I used to go just about every single year and then after a while, we stopped going. Dad and myself aren't really beach bums, but we know Mom has been wanting to go back for a long time now. Out of nowhere, Dad said that we should take Mom and make it a family trip. I was down, so why not roll with it. The destination? Ocean City, Maryland. I think I'm the only person in Shinnston who hasn't been to Myrtle. The way I look at it, I'm sure Myrtle is awesome, but I've always been a big OC fan and it's a much shorter drive. I've done Virginia Beach too and liked it there as well. It's a bit over 6 hours and we went in a new way this year. We came in on the Delaware side, ending up in the Fenwick section and coming in at North Ocean City. We stayed on 126th, so that was to our benefit anyways. TomTom was at our side and good ol' Tom got us there exactly. Even when we had a detour due to a big wreck, that ended up taking us on the Delaware side and that's the direction I may go from now on, a lot of that drive on that side is easy. That part of Delaware was all country for the most part, farm lands and had a redneck feel, I liked it.

The amount of food I ate that week, no clue how I'm not 400 pounds. Luckily, I'm glad of that and my high metabolism, but I'm sure it'll catch up to me soon enough. By far my favorite place to eat at OC is The Bonfire, on 71st Street. It's an all you can eat seafood/prime rib place and it booms the business. I was a fat boy and had a few prime ribs and enough crab legs to feed Zimbabwe, not to mention salmon, shrimp, and whatever else you can think of. If you leave this place hungry, something is definitely wrong with you. It's a place I'll hit up on every trip here and I highly recommend it if you're in the area.



As far as the beach side of things is considered, we couldn't have asked for a better week. We didn't have one single day where it rained during beach time. It rained one morning lightly and then one evening around 5:00 it was a little downpour, but nothing else. We were as lucky as you could get there. Plus, the water temperature was just about perfect. It didn't feel like warm pool water nor was it on the way cold side, it was right in the middle, refreshing. The waves were also rockin' this week too. We were in high tide levels for many parts of our days and some warnings were out, so that gave us some big ones to fight through. As Walz said on Twitter (http://twitter.com/mwalz9) that week, "Enough sleeping in...@Bird33WV needs to get up and show the waves who's boss!" That I did too. Speaking of Twitter, more on that here in a bit.

On the workout scene, I hit up Gold's Gym a few days and really liked their setup they had in OC. I would've hated myself by missing workout time, always have been that way. I know I'm a little dude, but one thing I've been dedicated to for a long time is working out and staying in good shape. The area we were at, there weren't many so-called in shape people like you'd expect on the beach. Gold's had just about all types of people working out, so you didn't feel out of place, but they had some insanely roided out freaks too. Heavy juicing going on with some of these guys and not that I'd ever wanna be on roids, but these dudes were literally oozing, freaks of nature to see. They could floss their teeth with me, not like that is saying much, tipping the scales at 158.3 today, beastly. It'll be interesting to see what they are like years down the line, to if they are injured somehow. I hope not though for their case. Or they may end up like some of the old local roiders, looked great back in the day, but when they got off the juice, turned into a complete mess. It's sad to see happen, but just how it goes a lot of times.



Dirty boardwalk time. I'm a fan of the boardwalk scene. I know it's mainly cheap shops and the like, but you also see some true characters down there. I'm a total sucker for cheap and goofy t-shirts too and loaded up on more than I need while there. Like I need anymore clothes. Since I brought up Jersey Shore, I got several shirts of that line being the dork I am. One of my faves is one of The Godfather logo, except this one has Italian colors and The Situation on it instead. A fist pump shirt or two, some Italian soccer tees and you see what I was after. And I had to a classic Italian Stallion shirt just because it's funny to me in my weird sense of humor. The only non-Italian shirt I got on this trip was an old school Legend of Zelda creation. You know you're whistling the theme music right now for Zelda. What else was I a big fan of on the boardwalk? Since everyone needs a little bit of a kid mentality at times not to feel old, say hello to Candy Kitchen. These stores seemed like they were every two feet in OC and they saw me coming. Yes, I'm a total candy freak as everyone knows, good stuff. I could be hooked on worse I always say. The beach trip was well overdue, so much that Whitney and I are hitting it back up during the first week of August, the week before I start back up to work, that should be a quality trip, more on that as it happens. I'm pretty pumped up to say the least on that one, it'll be even better than the first I predict.

Everyone is probably sick of my plugging of Twitter, but I'm zoned into that like no other. I'll branch a different route and give my favorite Twitter app. What is that one? Echofon. There are so many out there, but this in my opinion gets two big thumbs up. I even have a version of Echofon through the Firefox browser if you use that. The thing I like about the phone version is that you can do a "nearby tweets" search. In my area at home, Twitter use is fairly low scale and not much happens as far as tons of people using it. At the beach, I clicked the nearby thing and tweets pop up all the time. It pinpoints the exact area to the street if you're nosy and for some reason, reading random tweets and going back and forth with bums was highly entertaining to me. To the locals, the pinpoints of my area even shows such landmarks as Wade F. Maley Field, Stydahar Field, and the Barnes Cemetery. It lists them exactly as that through, which cracks me up. Wade F. Maley Field, home of the infamous camel we have in town named Punjab. Yes, a camel in Shinnston. Well, Bethlehem if you want to get technical, but less than a mile or two from my house.



Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Corndog is providing once again. He texted me and says, "Did u see the logan county water slide?" We're going to scenic Logan County, West Virginia for this one. Apparently someone (Corndog probably even knows them since he's the Mayor of Whitman Creek and a popular internet commodity) made a homemade 100 foot water slide. Only in West Virginia, but I have to admit, I'd get on that "slide" and would have a blast. I'm not sure what that says for myself, but I bet most of you would too. Here is the short clip:



3 Quick Thangs:

1. I asked The_Freak if he had anything to contribute to the blog this week. Right on cue, he says..

The_Freak: There's a dude I know of. I went to high school with him. He is a cheerleader for a professional team. He always refers to them as "we", and has actually referred to himself as "part of the team". Dude, you're a cheerleader, not a guy on the practice squad, or even on special teams.
The_Freak: I hate when people say "we" when they're NOT on a team.
Me: I fall victim to the "we" thing too much too, guilty.
The_Freak: yes but you didn't put a big status with "this hurts so bad, it's the hardest part of being a part of this team. i'm sick to my stomach".

Zing! I laughed anyways.

2. The one and only Slider the Great is getting excited for this day and glad I can be a part of it. In his latest tweet, he pulls out this gem: "New Simmons mailbag and a possibly a new blog from @Bird33WV in the same day?! This is going to be a good Friday." I hope I have a worthy blog for him this time around, it's a tough judging panel to make proud and filled with pressure, but they still crave the action. Slider's Twitter can be found here: http://twitter.com/mchapman3.

3. I might as well keep the trend and roll with the basis on a lot of my regular blog readers/buds/Twitter posters and give out another plug. You've all heard about the smooth and clever DirtyKash. If you haven't, either you're living under a rock or haven't read many of my blogs. We go all the way to northeast Canada for his stomping grounds. I may have even plugged it before, probably so, but that shows it's packed with goodness. Check it out at http://twitter.com/notdirtykash.