The Madhouse Of Bird33

"I Texted Before Answer Did! Winnar!!"

2011-10-05T12:02:00.001-04:00

Blog title today is courtesy of Corndog. For something random, I sent texts out to him and TheAnswer. Whoever wrote back first, got the title. Simple as that. And this is what we got, so props to Corndog for winning that battle, it was close, I know you were all waiting to see the outcome of that.. Onto the blog!

Time to put some gas back into this beast and get another edition up. I'm feeling that I'm getting back into the groove a bit. Fall has hit, it's football weather and you might as well relax by reading some useless words of wisdom that I type up. Well, unless you have better things to do, which honestly, you probably do, but I appreciate you coming to the Madhouse to hang out for a few. What will we breakdown in this post? Fantasy sports (imagine that being a topic in here), movie reviews, my trek to a Mounties game as a Notre Dame fan, Frontier Days in the big town, busting out the FBI 5K, and a whole lot more!

I'll start out with a movie review. I don't want to lose the non-sports fans so quick. I've been slacking on my movies lately and hope to get back on the scene to give reviews. Not that I'm a critic or anything, far from it, it's just something to do. Last weekend's movie of choice was Whitney's turn to hit up Redbox. Her pick? Something Borrowed. I actually liked this one and think it is worthy of a watch. If you don't know this one, it's the latest Kate Hudson movie. No appearances from A-Rod though about their breakup. Kate's second in this movie is Colin Egglesfield who plays the character Dex and does a good job with that. It's not a big name movie as far as huge known talent if that's something that sells you right away. Ginnifer Goodwin is in this. I didn't know much on her before, but the long haired version of Goodwin isn't too shabby at all in my opinion. The movie isn't 100% as predictable as you'd think and there are a few little turns. I'll give this a rank of 7.0 girls that A-Rod has slept with out of 10.

As most know I'm a Notre Dame football fan. I don't go crazy on my stance, but most also know where I stand on not being a WVU football fan. It is what it is and I don't really get into crazy arguments or bash WVU fans, I'm just a ND guy. For the crew not in our area, ND has a decent fan base mainly in Clarksburg/Shinnston/Fairmont due to the Italian/Catholic connections, but you can probably find them anywhere. I've been to a bunch of WVU basketball games, but this past weekend was probably my third or fourth WVU football ever. I know, that's a surprise to some with me being a sports fan and you don't have to twist my arm to watch a game, minus WNBA of course.

This was actually my first WVU football game since 1996 that I attended. Yep, true story. Which game was that? TheAnswer remembers this one like the back of his hand, AKA the Tremain Mack Game. WVU was undefeated during this game and led 7-3 with 30 seconds left. WVU had to punt, Mack blocked it and then hit a lateral to a teammate who scores a touchdown for the win. Tons of controversy on this play as some argue Mack was offsides as well as another violation. I was in the second deck during this and at the end of the game, I see liquor bottles and golf balls flying in the air at the Miami coaches. The WVU fans were fired up while TheAnswer was at home partying. As an added stat, this was my first game up there without The Pit where I've seen cars tipped over and all kinds of wild stuff. The younger crew missed out on that action.

The tailgate setup in Morgantown is legit though and the fans are rabid. It's a tough place for a road team to come into, I've always said that. LSU was just on another level this day, which is understandable since they're one of the top teams in the country and rocked it out. Their fans were classy people too, we had fun chatting it up with them. I do think Geno is the real deal and has a good shot at being a pro quarterback down the line, guess only time will tell. WVU's offense looked good, but I can't say the same about their defense and even worse for special teams. At least they don't make 55 turnovers a game like my Irish do, so it all evens out in the end. Food galore and the Posey Tailgate was the place to be. Corndog's boy Landau Murphy of America's Got Talent fame did the anthem and the poor guy didn't do a great job at all. He sounds great on the show, but when I saw he was holding his ear pieces from the start, I knew it was bad news ahead. They didn't show this on TV apparently which sort of surprised me. I did have a great experience and enjoyed myself and liked where our seats were, not a bad seat in that place. The only negative was getting out of traffic, it was nuts. It took us 90 minutes to go about 2 blocks before we even got onto Patterson Drive to move a bit.

Let's switch it up a bit and get to the running scene. I was due for a 5K, so this was my first attempt at the FBI's version. This is by far the biggest 5K of my area and not sure why I haven't done that one before. First off, there were over 500 people at this and it was serious and very well organized. It was a challenging course and had a few hills, so I was advised to add a few minutes to my normal 5K time on a flat course to this one and in the end, that sounded about right. My time was 26:01 on this course and I was satisfied with that. I ran this one with Clay Riley who was on his game with 24:00 or so and BMO came in with a strong 28:00 range and #3 in the 50-55 age group, he's a beast.You had all levels of runners at this as you'd expect with that many participants, but I highly recommend this race next year if you want one to try. October 15th may be my next one, but haven't committed to anything yet. On that day, there are two in the area. At 9:00 in the morning, Nate Dogg will have the Shinnston trail packed like no other with runners. Then that night, Fairmont is trying a new thing with a Night Glow 5K as they call it. Apparently you run the 5K with glow sticks, rave style. Who knew? I may have to give that one a try just because. Then on Thanksgiving morning, Shinnston's race of all races, the infamous Turkey Trot. If you don't hit that one up, you're straight missing out.

You probably don't care, but I'm going to fill the world in on how my fantasy teams are doing. Fantasy golf ended recently and it was quite the battle. I've said before this is one of my favorite leagues. If you've never done golf and I don't even play golf in real life, I say try it out. It's a low key league with not a ton of maintenance so it's not going to consume your time or have your wives threatening to slice your head off. I came 2nd in our league this year as I just missed out on 1st, a crazy close race. Congrats are in order for none other than Kasher who comes away with the big trophy to hold over his head in the annual parade. Football? In the Shinnston Fantasy Football League, I'm currently 1-2-1. Yes, a tie in the mix there against Commish Sweet P and just lost to Pill by 3 points, that's a killer. This is the league that I've already lost Jamaal Charles and Headcase Britt for the season, that's a rough, but we gotta move on. The A#FL, League Lobstah? I'm 3-1 in that one, 2nd Place at the moment behind Blahah and have Tom Brady carrying the way as far as he can get me. Week 1 I was already eliminated in NFL Survival, terrible. I picked Slider's Browns and the Bungals of all teams beat them straight up.

In bigger news on the fantasy scene, the baseball season is over. In our infamous A#BL Lobstah league that features 18 of the internet's finest, it's a crazy competitive and deep league. It went down to the wire, but I was in the championship against Kris3, straight outta Arkansas. Kris3 has been a beast in this league for years and I knew I had my hands full. It literally went down to the final night and I pulled out the victory by the skin of my teeth in WHIP as a deciding factor. Party time in Shinnston! I'll be hoisting the trophy in the annual Lobstah Parade of Champions on a big float, location city yet to be determined, stay tuned.

The big town of Shinnston is always rocking. Quite the metropolis we are. Recently we had our annual Frontier Days, a blast from the past so to speak. You get the carnies and the whole works coming into town and doing their thing.. Nate Dogg has done a good job with organizing it the past few years, so I'll give him credit where it's due. Everyone has a little something different they might like about the setup. The local musicians, just hanging on the streets, greasy eats or taking the kiddies to the carnival rides. For myself? It's an easy answer to what I look forward to. Yep, the Demus crew selling their Italian sausage or steak hoagies is where it's at, yum!

How about another movie review? Sunday morning I woke up before 8:00 for some reason, but somewhat enjoyed that. Getting a big breakfast going, so I decided to pop in a movie. Two movies Whitney wanted to get were both out, so I made the decision to go Jason Statham style and get action in. I ended up getting Blitz out of the trusty Redbox machine. I'm a huge Statham guy anyways and didn't figure this could be bad, even with reviews not so awesome. It was a little slow for Statham's normal movies, but it was worth the watch. The ending was very well done. Not as good as his usual movies, but I'm going to give this one 6.5 bullets to the face from point blank distance out of 10. There wasn't a big name cast to go with this one, but I did like the roles of Aiden Gillen who played Blitz, Paddy Considine who was Porter Nash and Ned Dennehy as Radnor.

New season of Real World started up last week, who's in? It may have been played out years ago for some, but I'm still on this train since the first year back in the day. This version is in San Diego, one of Matty Cakes and Kari's favorite cities to hit up. The first episode was promising and we could have some decent drama going down. Last season's in Vegas I gave a thumbs up to for sure, but the one before that in New Orleans maybe not so much. A quick rundown is that we have Alexandra (lives with boyfriend, graduated high school at 14, genius level), Ashley (the oldest of this crew at 24 and the model type), Frank (bisexual dude who already is in tons of drama and has great anger for TV), Nate (the typical frat boy), Priscilla (the youngest at 19 and lives in San Diego and first time away from home), Sam (the lesbian of this bunch and looks like a 12 year old boy), and last we have Zach (footballer of the gang, listed at 6'3" but next to the rest of them he looks 6'9"). The main drama storyline of the first week is that Frank wants Alex, but she doesn't want him as something more than a friend. He blew up out of nowhere and started beating on stuff and the whole deal. This guy is a loose cannon, can't help but see what's going to happen next.

It's been said all over and this may not be the perfect spot for it, but my prayers go out to the Mills and Larry families for the terrible cancer news on Monday night. I can't even imagine how tough that has to be, especially for someone as young as Matty who always seemed to be in a good mood and everyone enjoyed him. We can always say that the suffering is gone and while that's true, it's still brutal news for a family to go through. We've all been affected by cancer and it's a horrible horrible thing obviously, just keep your thoughts out there for each of these families.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This comes to us from the great Kasher, straight out of Montreal. It's a short clip, but a goodie. Surfer Talk supreme. This guy is a goofball, but definitely worthy to make the blog:

3 Quick Thangs:

1. How about the local Cougs? 4-1 and beat Grafton on Friday for Homecoming? I've not been to a football game in a few years, but good to see the boys rocking it out. Plus, supposedly there was a streaker at the game who was wearing a wrestling mask. I crashed early that night and people on Twitter were saying it was me, good stuff. I wish I could take credit, but that wasn't my doing.

2. Roughly one month until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3! November 8th, be there. Bird33WV on 360.

3. Time to end with some quick and random facts. Children apparently grow faster in the springtime.. The elephant is the only animal with four knees.. Cats sleep 16 to 18 hours per day.. One in 5000 North Atlantic lobsters are born bright blue. There ya go, see you folks next time.

"Before the Game and Had to Wilbur"

2011-09-09T10:34:00.000-04:00

Credit for this week's blog title goes to none other than Uncle Wilbur. The_Freak also gets some credit for putting it up on Urban Dictionary and getting Lobstah a lot of internet hits. Curious to what the meaning is? "A Wilbur is when you go into a place of business, a store, or restaurant for the sole purpose of dropping a #2 and then leaving.. I stopped by a sports bar before the game and had to Wilbur." Hey, I'm only reporting the news. What a way to start out the blog. Anyways, before that, let's give a plug to Wilbur's Twitter, doubt he'd mind the shoutout, hit him up for all kinds of randomness and some great sports chatter. http://twitter.com/blangfrd

September is here and to the surprise of many, I have yet another blog in the works. We can smell fall in the air, football has started up and I've been ready for hoodie and sweatpants weather for a long time now. What does this edition have in store for everyone? You get fantasy sports updates, jailbirds, podcasts, TV recommendations, 9-11, softball, flag football, Arnie Palmer, Tony Atlas, and some fun facts. Yep, it's about to get crazy and wild in here. Well, maybe not all of that, but we're still going to strap up just in case and see what beholds. Again, suggestions for the blog are always appreciated, I'm always willing to throw in random bits.

One thing that shows I must have nothing better to do but is enjoyable, is to check out the local jail site. I check this stuff out way too much. With how some bums are in my town and former students I've had, I can almost guarantee each day I'm going to know someone on there. Sad, but true. The locals know exactly what I'm talking about, but I guess you'll have that living in a town where everyone knows everyone. I'm not complaining though, something about that setup I've always liked. Anyways, it's a great time killer and you never know who or what you'll see appear on the mugshots. You'd be surprised how many people I know hooked on this stuff, I know I'm one of them. It's one of the first things I check out when I get to work each morning. For those not in the loop of the sites and a lot are, but you may want to check out some of West Virginia's finest, you can thank me later. North Central Regional Jail: http://northcentralregionaljail.info. And if you want the entire state's jails: http://wvjails.info.

Not that many care, but I always like to amuse myself. I know a lot are big fantasy sports fans, so I'll list some results. For as big as college football is, you'd think that there would be tons of college leagues out there, but nope. They have picked up the last few years, but I know at least locally, it's few and far between. Thanks to Commish Duce for rocking this one out, Heisman Trophy Fantasy League. It's a keeper league that features such legends as Freak, DerekHood, TheAnswer, ManDingo, Walz, Kasher, Duce, Cork, Chester, and myself. We're been doing this particular league since 2004. Kasher has won it a whopping three times, while Freak, Duce, DerekHood and myself each have one title to our credit. And here's my roster for this season, Team Tim Brown. I knew you were waiting at the edge of your seat for me to unveil this. Or maybe I'm talking to myself. Either way, here ya go:

QB Kirk Cousins, Michigan St, Sr
QB Kriss Proctor, Navy, Sr
QB MarQueis Gray, Minnesota, Jr
QB Ryan Katz, Oregon St, Jr
QB Brock Osweiler, Arizona St, Jr
QB Danny O'Brien, Maryland, So
RB Lennon Creer, LA Tech, Sr
RB Montell Harris, Boston College, Sr
RB Isaiah Pead, Cincinnati, Sr
RB Alvester Alexander, Wyoming, Jr
RB Stepfan Taylor, Stanford, Jr
WR Michael Floyd, Notre Dame, Sr
WR T.Y. Hilton, FIU, Sr
WR Phil Payne, UNLV, Sr
WR DeVonte Christopher, Utah, Jr
WR Mark Harrison, Rutgers, Jr
K Matt Eller, Illinois, Sr
K Carson Wiggs, Purdue, Sr
DEF Florida State Seminoles
DEF Georgia Bulldogs

What's in the podcast rotation lately you ask? You're probably not asking, but as you know around here, I'm going to tell you just because. If you're not a sports fan, this section won't be for you. I'm busy with my podcasts and listen to a lot on a daily basis. Here's the current list: The BS Report from Bill Simmons, ESPN Fantasy Focus Football, ESPN Fantasy Focus Baseball, Michelle Beadle Show, NBA Today, PWTorch Wrestling Livecast, Grantland that Simmons is behind, and Tim & Sid: Uncut. Jordan Breen's Sherdog MMA Show and The Herd from Colin Cowherd also can make the cut, but there's not enough time to listen to them all, wish there was.

Where was I at 10 years ago on September 11th? Everyone is asking that this week and rightfully so. I won't dig deep into this as everyone else can say it better or show the footage on TV. I was in my final semester of college in one of my history methods classes to prepare me for student teaching. Our professor came in bawling her eyes out and we didn't have a clue what was going on. This was around 9:00 and she talked to us all and let us know what the situation was and cancelled class. As we were leaving class, she hugged each one of us and not even being near New York, it affected tons of people obviously and still does. I couldn't imagine being there during that scene or know what those closer to the happenings have handled things. The servicemen and military always get my respect for the work done immediately and after that.

How's fall softball going? Not too shabby at all, it's been a blast so far. It's a shortened season, but gives us old guys something to do on the regular. It's one night a week and goes into early October so it's not taking up a crazy amount of our time. I'm digging our logo and gear for this league as well, our new shirts came in yesterday and they're fresh to death. My motto as always, even if you're not any good, you want the best gear out there and we always rock quality outfits for sure. As I type this, we're 2-4 on the season. In our summer season we started out 0-8 and turned it around after that, so we'll see what's going on soon after. It's a total blast though, we love it and have a good group of guys rolling with us. Tonight, come see the action at Windmill Park in Fairmont as we take on Health Care, they won't want any.

What's on my TV rotation this time of year? Again, not many probably care, but if you're reading along this far you're either totally bored out of your mind or you actually enjoy reading the writings. Either way, welcome aboard. Of course wrestling is at the top of that. 32 years old and hooked like no other, not ashamed to admit my wrestling side, it's a thing from my childhood that I may never let go. RAW on Monday, Impact Thursday, SmackDown Friday, you know how it goes. Sports are an obvious as I've loved every second of MLB Extra Innings yet again, you can't go wrong getting the baseball package, getting every team's every game essentially. "Regular" TV for the non-sports fans? I'm still on the Jersey Shore train and it's not jumped the shark for me at all. A new season of Real World starts at the end of the month from San Diego and it looks like great drama as usual. I also am not ashamed to admit I watch the mess of a show Teen Mom, yeah I said it, kids having kids. I could do without Farrah though, she's wasting my time on there. The season of Big Brother is about over and it's a show I watch three times a week and am a big fan. We're down to the final three. And one more I'll throw at you. Master Debaters on Fuel TV. I didn't know much of this channel until I saw an ad for this show that started this week and I'm glad of it. Jay Mohr and Eric Byrnes host (who is awesome) and it's a riot. Guys bringing up questions to debate that everyone talks about when shooting the breeze at home. It's only 30 minutes and flies by is the only downfall, I wish it were longer, but check it out.

Shinnston Flag Football League? I'd say this year has the most talent around in league history. It's getting serious indeed. I'm not on a squad this year, but will play spot duty defensive back if needed, should be suiting up for the Dola Dolphins this weekend. Two years ago I ran with the Green Machine and last year the Gypsy Hill Giants. Neither team is around now with players scattered everywhere. Word gets around quick and the college level talent and local legends are coming out of the woodwork this year. Commish Bart has done an awesome job with the website and we always keep the message board on fire. The website? https://sites.google.com/site/shinnstonflagfootballleague. And of course you want to weigh in on the message board. Message boards make the world go 'round. Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands and am easily entertained? http://shinnstonflagleague.proboards.com.Ok, more shameless plugs, I might as well get the Twitter out there for those who aren't following it to begin with: http://twitter.com/SFLTweet2010. Enjoy.

Eh, why not ramble about another fantasy league. I do way too many of these, but it's one of my favorite things to do. Yes I realize it makes me and all of my buddies into instant dorks, but we've known that for years anyways. This one is the Bad QB Fantasy League. We got this idea from Bill Simmons' Grantland website and it's as it reads. Dave Jacoby wrote the article, but in a nutshell you are picking an entire team and want the worst of the worst. You get that team's QB rotation and the thing I like about it is that aside from the weekly games you have a category of 24/7 points. You can get points for being arrested, suspensions, locker room fights, etc. We have eight guys from Lobstah in this mix, in order of our draft picks: Cork, Walz, DerekHood, myself, Answer, Blahah, Chester, and Trev. The four I have are the Panthers, Bears, Jets, and Eagles . We'll see how "bad" my QB crew turns out this year and hopefully it's so bad that it's good, although I'm sort of against myself by picking my favorite team of the Bears. Here's the Grantland article: http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/3686/introducing-grantlands-bad-quarterback-league. I've written enough fantasy this time around, I'll have to touch on the Shinnston Fantasy Football League on the next one possibly. This is the league ran by Sweet P and we drafted at my house, rocked out the draft board and the whole works. As usual, live drafts are an amazing time if you've never done one. If you have, you know what I'm speaking about.

Oh, so it's birthdays you are after for the weekend? You twisted my arm enough, I know it's been holding your suspense. Some people said they couldn't go on with their days until they had the birthday reveals. Now is your chance. Friday, September 8th? We have Mo Cheeks starting the charge, former NBA star, former head coach and now assistant with the Thunder, he's 55. The wrestler Raven, a good dude in person and also on my Celebrity Deathpool, he's 47. Former basketballer and PJ Carlesimo's buddy Latrell Sprewell, 41. Brooke Burke and David Arquette share the same, they hit 40. Footballer Amani Toomer, "it's not a toomahhh" is 37. Actor Larenz Tate, 36. Pink? She's my age at 32. Jonathan Taylor Thomas, better known as Randy on Home Improvement, that kid is now 30, dang. Saturday, September 9th? The infamous Arnie Palmer who gets a lot of money from me for his tea sales, 82 and ages well. Baseballer Randy Johnson, 48. Basketballer Big Ben Wallace, 37. 2010 National League MVP Joey Votto, 28. And lastly, let's hit up Sunday, September 11th just because. Director of Scarface, Brian De Palma, 71. Harry Connick Jr, 44. Ludacris, 34. Footballer Ed Reed, 33. If your favorite celebrity didn't make this weekend list and they do have a birthday in that time, I guess either I missed it or didn't feel they were important. Also happy belated birthday to Clark Riley (http://twitter.com/CRnote33), he hit the big 32 on Monday.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This is an oldie but goodie. Even if you're not a wrestling fan, that doesn't matter. Yeah, I'm obsessed with wrestling, everyone knows that but this one may crack up just about anyone. This was from back in the day of Tony Atlas all jacked up calling out Flair in a promo. Funny stuff!

3 Quick Thangs:

1. I guess the hype I bought into Google+ didn't catch on. I'm not saying it's dead, but it will need a comeback to get back on track again. Maybe we all just got into it early, but at least locally, hardly anyone joined in the madness. I actually like it a good deal as I said in the last blog, but with talking to a wall, not a lot you can do yet.

2. Apparently this is blog #441 that I've done. Obviously not as often as in the past, but 27,178 page views over that span? Who knew?

3. Ok, I know it's facts you want. Random they shall be. A row of corn always has an even number? I'll take their word for it, news to me.. Canada has the longest coastline of any country in the world.. While men represent 50% of the workforce in the United States, they account for 94% of all on-the-job fatalities.

Finally... The Bird Has Returned To Blogspot!

2011-08-19T12:31:00.001-04:00

Hellooooo? Is there an echo in this place? It sure seems like it, but yep, I'm still alive. Some thought this place has went up in smoke and it somewhat did. Was February really the last time I put up one of these? It went well past the point that people were bugging me to put up a new one. That's when I used to know that the bored readers wanted something new. After a while through the summer, nobody even asked, so we're back in action. I'm not sure how regular this will be, but why not, right? First, thanks to Corndog for the blog title, you'll see him regularly appearing as usual. I got out of the funk for a bit, so it's time to ramble on with nothing but pure randomness which has been my motto in life, the random stuff that most don't care about, I always get a kick out of. Anyways, it's time yet again to strap on the seat belts for this ride, hope you're along and don't jump out too early.

For the newbies and there will probably be a lot since the dry spell between the last blog in February, basically I'm here to ramble with too much time on my hands. You'll see that on how my posts since 2004 have been, a time when some of you were still kiddies. Wanting a quick refresher since the down time? I bought a new house a few blocks from my old stomping grounds in the middle of February (you know me, I don't want to leave E Shinnston), I've been engaged since April 9th, played a bunch of softball over that time, went to the beach, and now back to work. I surprised some that I moved out of the house before I was 50 and actually had time to draw myself away from NBA, wrestling and video games enough to meet a girl to propose to. Shocker, I know! Whitney has been putting up with me for about 2 years now, so she already knows she's stuck with a big dork anyways, but it works out great from my side of things, no complaints at all and definitely happy. September 29, 2012. Just about everyone reading this already knew that info anyways, so I won't preach too much on those subjects.

Now we'll get to what I'll call rapid fire since it's been a while. I'll touch on different things that some may care about and some may not. I always try to have a little bit of something for everyone and as always in the past, suggestions are definitely encouraged, just let me know. I'm not going to guarantee you will like everything in here and that's not the point, but give it a chance. First, to one of my addictions and it's been ongoing for a while is Twitter. I'm now near 9000 posts, which probably is more of a sad thing to admit than not, but I always say I could be addicted to worse. Time for a cheap plug alert! http://twitter.com/Bird33WV. Twitter has been out for a while, but even as early as a year ago, very few of my crew were on. Now everyone and their brother jumps into the game and it makes it a lot more fun. I know what you're thinking, what's in it for me? I didn't think I'd care for it either, but being a computer junkie, I figured I'd give it a try a while back. Some get tired of me hyping up Twitter and that's fine, but the only way to get word out is to be repetitive. Same with this blog, I'm a shill for making myself look like a goof to promote whatever, not above that.

If you have more of your clan on (think of your Call of Duty clan to the video game addicts) Twitter, it makes it ten times more interesting, just like playing COD is more interesting with your buddies than some average Joes. With Facebook, most are still on, as am I, but to me there's a ton of drama on there and it's stuck in the mud. If not that, someone is whining and crying like a little girl nonstop over and over. Negativity is one thing I've never liked being associated with. Myself personally, Twitter is more blog style and you can just post a bunch of junk that a lot won't care about, but it's quick paced. For sports fans, Twitter is no joke, you get instant news as it happens and you name a famous person of importance and chances are, they are tweeting like machines nowadays.

More on the social networking saga soon, I won't waste all my energy on that early on so I can keep the ones who are still reading along. If you're still with me this far, you get a cookie. What kind you ask? A Double Doozie from the Great American Cookies place. Now that's serious and not your average cookie, we go the extra effort around here for everyone unlike some other blogs. Either that or I'm just talking to be talking, something I'm not ever short of breath if you know me in person.

Softball season? We rocked it out like no other for this year's summer team. We were sponsored by Mi Pueblo of Fairmont Mexican restaurant fame. Props to Walz for setting up that awesome sponsor and our gear as it has been every year now for a while in softball was top notch. If we're going to lose, we're going down losing while looking good. However, despite a start where we lost our first 8 games (yes, pathetic), the Mi Pueblo Pinatas had enough playing around and got down to business. By the end of summer, our fielding specifically was on point. You all want me to get to the end of this story, I know. It's like a movie, you have to have a little build to it to get you on the edge of your seats. The outcome? Mi Pueblo, bum league champs! A trophy the size of Kofi Kingston was presented to us and that will be hanging out at Mi Pueblo for everyone to see. You know you want to get a picture with the trophy, admit it. But seriously, we came a really long way with our crew. We were good last year but had a ton of ups and downs. We did rock it in the playoffs and finished 3rd I do believe in 2010. This year though, we had at one point a 14-game win streak, went into beast mode with that thing. As another update, we're now in fall ball and are sponsored by town landmark, Hammer's Market! A big shout out to Bones and company for being generous enough to do that. More on that as the season gets underway.

I know everyone in West Virginia has been to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina a zillion times, but not this guy. Not until this year. When normally for ages I'd hit up Ocean City or Virginia Beach, this year I took the trek to Myrtle. I'd make the trip again, enjoyed myself for sure. The first thing that blew me away was how warm the water is down there compared to farther north. It was like bath water down there which made it easy to get into, almost too warm on the hot days. The waves weren't nearly as big as OC though and I've heard that before from others. Atmosphere, you can probably throw me on any beach and I'm going to like it. As a bonus to the trip, we got to hang out a bunch with the Riley clan, Sidelli, and Wes. As part of the trek down south, Whitney got to experience her first Waffle House journey. As all the blog people know, that's one of my hot spots. A good dirty and greasy Waffle House and I'm in. The dirtier the better which is my theory because usually that means good food. Yeah, I'm weird with that, but I like to roll that way on some food. It took me a while to get used to where everything was at, but a few days into it and I was good to go. I still don't get how some people in our area claim to get there in 8 hours though, it's closer to 10 for me. I usually cruise control about 5 miles above speed limit, maybe I have to go 100 to get down there in 8 hours, who knows. I won't get into drawn out details on this road trip since I'm getting back into the flow and have to get to so many other things, but thumbs up on the trip for sure, it gets a thumbs up from me.

Back to work last week, but no worries. I surprised myself and didn't sleep in till 1:00 all summer long, woke up at reasonable hours for most of the "vacation". I wish I could write stories of my students once they start classes, I'd have some stuff that people wouldn't believe. I'd be able to write a book each week if that wasn't confidential. Either way, I love my job and am not one of these whiny negative teachers who hates life every single second. Sure, I'd rather be home sleeping in and playing video games, but as far as work goes, it's close to home, I like everyone I work with and the whole deal. Plus my schedule is flexible and something different everyday. With me being hyped up with energy too often than not, I can't stay still the way it is, so I like to bounce around and do my thing. Now that I'm back to work, the heat can also stop and it seems like it has for the most part. I'm ready for hoodies and sweats type of weather and call me crazy, but I'm ready for some big snow, gotta love it.

I'll get more into my fantasy leagues in the upcoming blogs, but just a quick rundown of what I'm running with at the moment. For baseball this year, I'm in 3 leagues. One is Chin Music, the 30-team dynasty league with team salary caps and minor leaguers. It keeps you up on the minor league setup and I've even had a few players from the rookie league, it's insanely deep and a ton of fun. The other is the Lobstah version, the infamous A#BL, the 18-team keeper league. The Lobstah gang is about as competitive as it gets, you have to stay involved and it's not for lightweights. The third is another Lobstah league, an auction keeper league ran by Neon. This is only an 8-team league, but the setup is pretty solid.

For football, I'm going with three leagues. One is A#FL. Yes, the Lobstah league, how'd you guess? It's ran by Uncle Wilbur, an 18-team keeper league. The other NFL league I'm in is ran by Sweet P and has 10 members with a live draft to be held in a few weeks at my house, decked out with draft board and some of the area's finest foods (concocted by Chef Whitney with a tiny bit of help from the guys), can't go wrong with that. You also can't go wrong with a live draft either. The third is a NCAA league ran by Duce. It's a keeper league and you would think NCAA fantasy ball would be bigger by now than it is, but not sure why that hasn't caught on, we've been rocking that out for a while now. Then throw in a few quick leagues such as an NCAA Pick Em and Survival NFL and we're set. Also, fantasy golf which I still say is one of the least appreciated fantasy leagues out there.

Back to social networking. See, I bounce you guys all over the place. Not a lot are on the train yet, but how is everyone liking Google+ so far? It's a sweet format in my opinion and I've been along for the ride since it started up not that long ago. Who knows if it'll be an impact player (to the ECW crowd, Lance Storm and Justin Credible style) in the long run or not, but why not give it a try? Need an invite? Let me know or whoever else you know on it can also send invites, either way, I'll be seeing you on there, find me. Plus, what do you have to lose anyways? You just might end up liking it.

Movies lately? We've been out of the loop. There for a while we were either doing the Redbox thing or hitting up the theater. I know, I'm the only person in the country who doesn't have Netflix. I hear once I get it I'd be hooked but I don't think I'd use it enough at the moment especially with as much sports and a ton of other things I already have on the DVR. Smurfs 3D was our latest and we took Whitney's little cousin Alexandria to see it. Maybe it's me being a dork, but usually kid movies deliver as far as the factor that it's quick and worth your time. It's tough to give a grade on a kid's movie though, but I went with 7.5 Papa Smurfs out of 10. Also, Doogie Howser is even with a girl in the movie, crazy, who knew? Speaking of her, Jayma Mays is way underrated if you ask me.

The TV schedule over the summer? Outside of the usual wrestling and sports scene, not that anyone cares, but I might as well mention what I've been watching. Why? Just because. The season is over, but I really liked Franklin & Bash and it was good news for me to hear they are doing a second season next summer. Zack Morris is back in action and the whole cast plays their role well. At the moment I'm locked into Big Brother and have been for several years now. It's on three days a week for an hour at a time, but even with that much, it has you wanting more. I'll even admit to watching the mess of Teen Mom. Yeah, not many guys are going to admit that, but I'll check out just about any MTV show and give it a shot. Kids having kids and their drama, it's a car wreck, but you keep watching. Jersey Shore goes without saying, I could write half a blog on that and it hasn't jumped the shark for me at least. The Challenge on MTV? Even though my boy CT didn't make the final, he was the reason I watched, it makes for quality TV since he's my favorite Real World "character" of all time. I'm sure I could throw a few other odds and ins that I watch minus the obvious of RAW, SmackDown, TNA Impact, and MLB Extra Innings which is worth the money and then some.

I wanted to cram a lot more in here, but I have a novel going the way it is. I'll see what happens coming up and how often I get back into the grind of this place. Plus, as I mentioned, I'll try to work in any good suggestions I get to make it fan friendly. And to end things as only our staff can do, here we go...

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This was sent to us from Corndog. Wrestling fan or not, you might enjoy this internet sensation. Some have maybe seen before, but if not, let's just say Super Dragon gets fired up at a fan for repeatedly chanting his name.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. For old times sake, why not take a visit over to Zombo.

2. I won't get deep into it during this blog, but for those wondering, I'm still optimistic that the NBA season won't be chopped. The talks aren't going in a good direction at the moment and a lot of people have already jumped off the NBA board a long time ago, even when games were going on. Hopefully I won't have to shed any tears for missed games this year, stay tuned because I thought last season brought a lot of casual fans back into the mix.

3. Time to roll out some fast facts to chew on until I appear back in this spot. Hopefully it's not as long as it was before, but we'll see. Apparently ants never sleep in their life? Who knew?! The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.. And to finish up, the highest point in Pennsylvania is the lowest point in Colorado.

Minty Fresh!

2011-02-10T14:22:00.001-05:00

Did I disappear? Nope, I just made you wait longer on this latest situation to break down. It's probably my longest break ever, but it's more about quality than quantity or so I hope. It's way past the point of everyone bugging me and telling me to get on my game and make a blog post, which I like hearing that. Time to cure some boredom. We have a lot to talk about during that time, so I shouldn't have to worry about things to ramble about. Sometimes that is good for the reader, other times they probably want to strangle me for going on and on about subjects they could care less about. What will you get here? Twitter (imagine me writing about that), Celebrity Deathpool 2011, Jersey Shore Season 3, Charles Barkley, bloody accidents, Toughman Contest, podcasts, movie review, my boy Dru Down, and tons more! Whew, let's gear up for another piece to soak your eyeballs into, it's time to get your read on!

As we do every year with the Lobstah gang, the 2011 Celebrity Deathpool has been out now for about a month. This is our 7th season at battling and I've had at least one death picked in all years except for 2005. Yes, I realize it's a demented thing to do, but it's competition, so we do our thing. In 2010, George Steinbrenner was my only guy that earned points. Corndog and ManDingo tied to win the title by each having Ronnie James Dio. Commissioner Kasher was the only one of the league to have two deaths, he had Zelda Rubinstein and Ernie Harwell. That gained him 32 points, while Corn and Dingo had 33 to get the win. Steinbrenner brought in 1 point for my team. Now it's time to unveil my 2011 picks since I know you're all on the edge of your seat in anticipation. The moral as usual, you can't ever go wrong by picking wrestlers unfortunately. A new wrinkle to this season is that we have to have a "long shot selection". The rule on that is that you have to pick someone 30 or younger in that spot. The moral, you can't ever go wrong with a handful of wrestlers, they're a mess.

1. Bobby Heenan (wrestling)
2. Superstar Billy Graham (wrestling)
3. Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall (wrestling)
4. Betty White (actress)
5. Harmon Killebrew (baseball)
6. Courtney Love (musician)
7. Zsa Zsa Gabor (actress)
8. Zakk Wylde (musician)
9. Scott "Raven" Levy (wrestler)
10. Phyllis Diller (comedian)
11. Jerry Lewis (comedian?)
12. Amy Winehouse (longshot, although she's on a ton of lists obviously)

Christmas is so far gone that it'd be somewhat pointless to talk about it this far out of the game. People are already starting the countdown to this year's Christmas, so I won't ramble onto that. I did have a great Christmas though, not one complaint at all. During that time, I hit up the movies and I'm due for some new ones again soon. What did Whitney and I watch a while back? It's time to review How Do You Know.

This one featured a big cast of characters. Who did they roll out on us? Jack Nicholson, Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Kathryn Hahn to name a few. If Jack is in the movie, I'm interested if nothing else. He knocked his role out of the park, but that should be no surprise to anyone. Reese doesn't get enough credit, but she got it done in this movie. Ok, I'm mainly speaking on the looks side of things there, she gets a big thumbs up, but she also acted things out well too, as did Wilson and Rudd. It was a bit longer than I'd like, and Whitney fell asleep for part of it, but it was still a good movie. I tweeted about it at the time, but I'm going to lower my ranking after thinking it over. Our final grade? 7.4 out of 10.

Random save the day fact. I tweeted a little about this, but why not make a bigger explanation of it. I had a recent Thursday off from work for a snow day (sweet!) so I took Whitney to work since she didn't have to start till 11:00. That same day, I had a work training that was still scheduled, so I killed a few by getting a milkshake at McD's and hanging in the lot with their free wi-fi. Anyways, out of nowhere, I heard a big scream behind my ride. I didn't know what to expect at first. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw nothing. Then I checked the side mirror and I saw this lady in the 65-70 age range laying flat on her back. She busted herself on the ice and was staring at the sky. I get out of the car and a few other nearby people jump out to assist, along with her husband. We pick her up and blood is coming out of the back of her head. It wasn't crazy gushing, but enough that it was covering her hair a good bit and all on my hands. People were ready to call for an ambulance, but she said she was ok. The husband got her in the car as quickly he could and they took off. Not only did I have one good deed of the day by taking Whitney to work, but I also had a bloody mess of a situation that was averted soon after.

The Big Atlantic Tip-Off in scenic Beckley, West Virginia. To some in the area, this is the former Coal Classic, a basketball tournament they have every year for the high school and younger levels. Some major talent has been through this tourney over the years and each time around, they bring in guest speakers. This is the same place where I got to fulfill a lifetime goal by meeting the Basketball Jesus himself, Larry Bird. This year? Sir Charles Barkley. Ozzie and Mudcat are huge Barkley guys from way back, each Sixer fans. I of course was in for a sports related road trip. We went four deep with Ozzie, Mudcat, Matty Cakes, and myself. With that gang, it was sports trivia up and down, my favorite kind of trip with the guys is when the sports almanac is busted out. Time flies when we do this and it's been a tradition with our crew for a long time.

We made it there early as each of us are people that always like to be on time. And by time, I mean be early. Yes, I'm one of those. Anyways, we were wandering around the halls and were just hanging out looking lost for a bit as we were one of the first few people in the building. This random guy asks us if we're with the news or what we're here for. We told him we were just there for the dinner and to hear Barkley speak. I then went to go in the bathroom beside us and the guy said hold on, it's taken. It took us a while to figure out what was up, but apparently Barkley was in there doing his stuff. A few seconds later, within 5 minutes of being there, out steps Sir Charles and he goes, "minty fresh!" That's a line we're going to beat into the ground for sure. He was a lot bigger dude than I expected, but more on that later.

A good crowd was there, but not nearly as many were there when I did the Bird trip. Others that have been in the past have been my boy Lou Holtz, Dr. J, John Elway, Tim Tebow, and a slew of others. We knew the talking segment that Barkley was going to do for everyone would be a riot and it was awesome. The stories he told were hilarious and we ate it up. He also did a Q&A session after he gave his speech, which he wasn't shy to answer anything of course. One that was asked is how the Original Dream Team of 92 would fare against today's team. He laughed at that comparison and said that today's team doesn't have any true big guys. He said that Ewing and The Admiral would dominate Chris Bosh to where it wouldn't even be funny. And that's without even getting into Jordan, Bird, Magic, etc. The best player he ever went against he said was Kevin McHale, he had high praise for him. And he votes Jordan as the best player of all time.

Ok, I'll wrap this Barkley segment up. Going in, we figured he would only sign things or have time for the VIP tickets. We didn't have that, but he was willing to meet and sign stuff for everyone in attendance, so I have to give props for that. Ozzie said, "This is a top three event in my life. The other two go without saying." To Ozzie, Barkley is his Bird if that comparison makes sense. Now he just needs to meet Bo Jackson and he'll be set. We all got an autograph, picture, and shook his hand. It surprised us how huge his hands were. He also took time to say a few things to people as they met him and legitimately seemed like he wanted to be there. On calling him Mr. Barkley, he told me, "Nah, no mister. Just call me Charles!" Good stuff right there. If you ever get a chance to hear Barkley speak and like his style, it's worth your time and then some, trust me. He's also very big on helping the kids out and stresses everyone to get their education, he spoke a lot on that.

Toughman Contest! You can probably go back to my January blogs in the past and get an idea of what I'm about to type here too. Friday is when I hit it up each year, I can't get enough of going to our local Toughman Contest. Why Friday and not championship Saturday? You get more fights first of all. Second, you get to see the bums who have no business being there get punished. Then on top of that is the crowd atmosphere. I've been to other local shows, but Clarksburg's is a completely different animal in my opinion. You see some of the area's finest, both literally and figuratively. Some have asked, how were the ring girls? They had six this year, the most in history. I'm not expecting any major quality, but this was bad times indeed. The dance moves they'd do were a laugh in and of itself and some girls got no reaction. Crowd fights? Of course. There was only one on Friday, which is a surprising. Someone ended up getting tased in that mix ("don't tase me bro") and the announcer kept saying, "The fight is in the ring everybody!" That cracked me up, but maybe it's just me.

As far as the fights, there were 35 this year, which is a lot lower than usual it seemed. A year or two ago, I remember being there when they had 50 total fights. The guy who ended up winning the heavyweight division was the real deal. He's an assistant football coach at West Virginia Wesleyan and 6'0"/280lbs. You wouldn't think at that size, he'd be agile and would tire out fast. Not this guy, he's a beast. He came in with that pissed at the world attitude, stared his opponent down like he killed his dog, and just busted him up for a few rounds. Somehow the guy he fought that night could take a punch like no other, this was on Friday. Another fight I enjoyed was in the light heavyweight class and this guy with a nickname of Deebo, straight from the Friday movies. He was doing Roy Jones Jr stuff in his prime out there, dancing around, doing whatever he wanted. In a first for me, after the fight, the opponent got on his knees and bowed because Deebo put on such a good performance. That's a major sign of respect there. Minus my back getting wrenched by sitting in those bleachers, it was once again a quality experience and one I highly recommend if you've never been.

Ok, the Jersey Shore freaks like myself are locked into this season like no other. I'm sure I lose brain cells watching, but it's pure entertainment times twenty. I always get a kick out of the people that early on bashed it constantly, yet now they're the ones that are watching like the rest of us. The new addition of Deena Nicole seems to be a great find. To me, what makes the show is still Situation's facial expressions and his quotes. So far we've also had the Snooki arrest segment, fake Ronnie (one of my favorite things they've done in a while), Sammy apologizing to the girls and the grenade whistle begins! Now they are going to be having Season 4 in the homeland of Italy? Count me in, although you knew that anyways. That should be an interesting dynamic and I'm glad they're keeping the original crew strong. Ratings wise, it's a no-brainer. Sit back and watch the ride.

Podcast time. Which ones have I been checking out on a regular basis since the last time I updated you? 90% of my iPod usage is strictly for podcast listening, love it. I have a ton of music on there too obviously and will use that for workouts and running, but podcasts get the first priority before I switch over. There are three main ones I'm on a kick of at the moment. What are they you ask? Be patient folks, it's coming. Actually, I can't see anyone sitting on the edge of their seats wondering what podcasts I listen to, but stranger things have happened. The go-to is still of course The BS Report from The Boston Sports Guy Bill Simmons, ESPN style. I've written about him a ton over the years, so not a lot else needs to be said. Another is a more recent addition to my list. That'd be Tim & Sid: Uncut. My boys from Canada hooked me on this. It's about an hour each day and it goes by really fast, that's how you know it's good. Sports, pop culture, and it's all uncensored if that makes you more interested. Check these guys out, you won't be disappointed. Third will pertain to the wrestling fans and I've probably wrote about this one before. This is the Pro Wrestling Torch (PW Torch Livecast) and they also go about an hour a day. I wish I could listen to more, but it's tough to fit them all in. I haven't heard much Tony Kornheiser or Colin Cowherd lately either, regular staples of mine in the past.

I have a lot of CDs to review one day, but today I'll just touch basis with one of my all time favorites. For those who know me, you know I'm a big Dru Down fan. A lot of this knew this from my AIM name when I'd be on there a lot more and didn't have a clue who he was. Then they'd ask and would get the connection. Time to break this one down for the rap fans.

Dru Down: Chronicles of a Pimp. This is Dru's first solo CD in years. Of course I was pumped up when I got word of this through the grapevine of Dom in Germany, one of Twitter's finest (@StripClubPapst) and a longtime blog reader. I'm sure I'm biased towards anything Dru related, but this is very good, one of my favorite recent CDs. For those wondering what songs to get off of this, I could list a lot, but I'll just whet your appetite. Rather Be With Dru, Old School, and Bout Dat Money are top notch worthy. For the people that might not know much on Dru, let me know what you think, bad or good. Check this out from one of Bay Area rap's veterans of the game. And yes, he keeps his same style from what you always have remembered him as, so that deserves a thumbs up.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Since the title of this blog is Charles Barkley related, I'll have to go back a few weeks on this video. Tracy Morgan is a character anyways, but his thoughts on TNT during live TV made the rounds and had everyone talking. Barkley even answered questions about this segment in Beckley. Anyways, if you're in the dark and haven't seen, here you go:

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Time for a cheap plug for a game I've been playing a few months now. I'm not sure if it's just for iPhone or what, but download We Doodle. My name on there is Bird33WV. Others of the crew that are in the mix are Corndog (corndogtaylor) and Sims (SiMZiLa), be sure to fire off a request to them and get your battle on.

2. More plugs you want? We'll go Twitter style. This time, here's a list of people you need to add on your list for no other reason than entertainment value, some quality post guys here and I don't say that lightly. Chester (@mchesher03), Uncle Wilbur (@blangfrd), and Josh Oz (@joshoz01). Get on it.

3. It's not too late to get your Valentine's Day presents. Just sending a friendly reminder for those who may forget. Enjoy!

Touchdown Jesus to Ric Flair to Apps and 5K Races... & More!

2010-12-03T12:00:00.000-05:00

Only one post in the whole month of November? It happens. Lazy? Busy? A little of both? Yep, but never fear, we're here to get the Christmas spirit going. As you look out your windows, you can see the trees lit, the houses decorated, and a buzz in the air as we all get pumped up. I probably should start the majority of my shopping soon, but it'll be finished quick enough, no worries there. We have a lot to talk about in this edition since I've last left you hanging. What is in this one for you to feast on? Hanging with Ric Flair, a trip to South Bend, another 5K, new apps to get, Call of Duty, and a surprise birthday party just to name a few to get you going.

I don't want to lose everyone right off the bat, so I'll hold off on the wrestling update. I'll start off with a road trip special. It was time for the Notre Dame trip to South Bend, Indiana. Last year was my first trip to the beautiful campus, not quite sure what took me so long to get out there. I hope to be there regularly from here on out. A big group of us had planned to go to the Michigan game earlier in the season, but after dragging our feet and ticket prices going higher and higher as it came closer to game time, we axed that plan. Instead, I rolled out with Whitney as it was just the two of us. It was her first trip out there, even in the state of Indiana if that counts for anyone keeping track at home.

We left town at 5:30 that morning and I like to get my road trips started as quick as possible. I don't want to screw around and ruin an entire day by leaving late. The drive out there isn't bad at all. It takes about 7 hours and 80% of the drive is flat cornfields with nothing else to see. We went up to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, cut off near Cranberry, north of Pittsburgh and then hopped onto the Ohio Turnpike. The drive featured nice scenery and luckily there was never any traffic problems, that part made things go even smoother. Between switching around to stations on Sirius, of course I had to bring along some DVDs for when Whitney would crash out in the passenger seat. On the way up for a bit, when I got closer to Indiana, I had to pop in Rudy just for good time's sake and to get me into the moment. I'm biased, but Rudy is a Top 10 all time movie in my ranks, maybe Top 5. On the way back, it was wrestling time with a shoot interview of Nikolai Volkoff which was good.

We stayed a few miles away from the stadium and had a great hotel setup. Not that we used it, but we had an entire kitchen, dishwasher, stove, full sized fridge, the works, all for a reasonable price. Friday night we hit up the pep rally, a tradition on ND football weekends. Rocket Ismail showed up unannounced and delivered an awesome motivational speech. I thought I had energy, but he was amped up like no other and the crowd responded. It was Senior Week, so that brought along some excitement to everything. 80,000 strong at the stadium and during the first half, it did nothing but pour the rain. Whitney was a trooper during this and sat through it all. I was out there getting my money and time worth, but luckily the 2nd half turned out a little sun for us. It was colder last year during September when I went as compared to November this year, strange. It was the leprechaun mascot's final home game and the fans really like this guy. At one point, he had a handstand contest with the Utah Ute ("Utes are a Native American tribe native to Utah. That is where Utah got its name, and what the University of Utah mascot is - a Ute." Thanks to Wiki Answers for that description) and when he won, the roof about came off the place, if there was a roof. It cracked me up, but guess you had to be there to appreciate how big the response was to something as silly as that.

At the time I got tickets, Utah was undefeated before losing to TCU the week before the Notre Dame game. TCU for those out in the dark, earlier this week decided to jump to the Big East for both football and basketball. The travel times will be interesting there, but I think it helps the football conference. TCU has the chance to bust some serious heads in the Big East, but you never know till games are played. I went into this game, not expecting anything to be close. I figured Utah would just crush my boys, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was shocked at the amount of Utah fans who came to South Bend for the game. That's a haul, but there was a fair bit of a sea of red in the stadium. They were classy fans too when we talked to them around campus, I liked that bunch.

Of course I can't do a long road trip without keeping track of the license plate game, I admit. By using the trusty Find Plate app on my phone, it's an easy way to mark off your states you find without having to write things down. This one, I was impressed with the number at the end of the trip. 42 total states out of 50, that was a solid get. We also saw a ton of Canadian plates too. Which eight were we missing? Kentucky, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, South Dakota, Nevada, Wyoming, and Delaware. I was a little surprised that we didn't get Kentucky since it borders West Virginia and I'm sure some people went through that state to get to Indiana. I figured I'd get South Dakota too once I had North Dakota, but nope. All in all, not too shabby.

Now to the more dorky side of things. I'm never above making myself appear as a dork with some of my interests in life, but that makes things fun. Enter Ric Flair. A while back, I had heard he was coming to our local Wal-Mart of all places to do an autograph signing that was sponsored by Coke. Wrestling fan or not, you know who The Nature Boy is without question I'd say. Stay with me, even if you don't like wrestling, I think you'll enjoy a few of these stories. I'm not much of an autograph buff, but Flair, next to my meeting with Larry Bird, was the next guy I wanted to cross off on my "must-meet" list. That list isn't big for anyone keeping track. I've also said it before, autographs aren't really my thing either, although I do have a decent bit, but I'm not the type to track someone down and go after them just to get a signature. Flair's though, I wanted that, but more on that in a second.

He was scheduled that night to sign from 6:00-8:00. The first 300 people were guaranteed a picture and autograph. I figured it'd be a crowd, but I was blown away by the turnout. I showed up at 4:30 and was already over 200+ in line at that point when I got my ticket, which was free. To say there were characters in line would be an understatement, but that goes without saying. Whitney joked that there were 3 teeth in line and I had them all. One of the funniest, yet strangest things we saw in line was this woman who literally locked the Figure Four Leglock on the floor of Wal-Mart on her kid, cranking on it. This was right behind me and people just stared. Another guy had his wife and parents along with their three kids. The kids were about 3, 5, and 8 if I had to guess. They were being impatient, of course you can't blame them for having to stand in line and not move for hours. The guy kept threatening them that he might have to make them leave with his parents and they'd lose out on the chance to see Flair. I'm sure they didn't even know who he was, but I guess he thought that was his sense of parenting skills to get them to behave.

The line was finally moving and I kept my patience, which is sometimes tough to do. To again show my sense of being an inner dork, I brought along my "Flair belt" as some know it as which I have in a bag. This is the big gold belt that replaced the NWA World Heavyweight Championship (which I also want in the collection some day) and is currently used today as one of the two WWE titles. I won't bore you with breaking down the history as much as I'd like to, so I'll spare you those details. I had it in the bag while I was in line and then someone noticed it shining as it was hanging out one end. To the people in line, this thing was a hit and it's one of my favorite memorabilia pieces. That might not say much for me though, but it is what it is. Anyways, people started asking to borrow it and wanted their pictures taken with it, which was cracking us up.

Now I finally waited out the line and made my way to the man's presence. For as many wrestling shows as I've been to over the years, I've never been to a show with Flair on it, so this was my first time seeing him in person. I don't get too starstruck, but I was with him, not afraid to say that. Hey, I'm a wrestling fan, what else do I have to lose by admitting that? I was surprised of how big of a dude he is in person. For 61 years old, his arms are still pretty big. Also, same age as my dad and Jerry "The King" Lawler who last Monday had his first WWE Title Match, another guy I've met this year. Flair seemed genuinely like he wanted to be there and gave people the time of day. Whitney got to talk to him for a few minutes as she waited near him to take the pictures. I brought along the belt to get signed as you saw in my Facebook pics and that's a deal I'll have to frame soon, would you expect anything different? All in all, it was an absolute madhouse up there, it even made the local news. Then again, not a lot happens around here, but still. The news guessed between 1000-1500 people, but that seemed like a bunch. Either way, it was worth the wait for me, dork and all.

A quick Call of Duty update now that we've all had the chance to play it for hours upon hours. I'm still big into Free-For-All as my favorite, mainly what I'm into most of the time. Last weekend, it seemed half of Shinnston was on till 6:00 in the morning doing it up big. We started out with FFA and then moved to Headquarters. I'm pretty good at FFA, no expert, but I do well enough. On the team stuff, which I rarely play, I'll be honest, I'm terrible. It'll take work though as it's a completely different strategy than FFA, but I somewhat liked Headquarters. I've yet to play any of campaign, which is weird to some I'm sure, but I'm strictly multiplayer and that's the reason you buy it in my opinion, simply put. Find me on Xbox Live under Bird33WV.

Last Saturday was another get-together of sorts. We had a surprise 25th birthday party for Southern at Via Veneto. This was our first time there and we came away impressed with the setup. The downstairs section is the banquet hall and it looked that night it was used for a wedding reception. It was funny how a lot of our crew walked in there first and people that were prim and proper looked at us like we were idiots and then directed us upstairs. The upstairs is all decked out, this place is fancy. As an added bonus, I got to watch the Notre Dame/USC game while up there and it turned out into a win somehow. The rain definitely helped in ND's side I think, it was an ugly game, but I'll take the win. Like with Call of Duty, half of Shinnston was at this surprise and party and it was a good time for everyone.

After that, we hit up The Ordinary in Clarksburg. What, hitting up two bars in one night? I know it's a rare happening, but I'll join the crowd and be social, I'm not above that. Plus these places didn't have smoke blowing in my face, thumbs up to that. You all know my thoughts on cigarettes, but I won't preach to the choir. I did my part in slamming down Coke after Coke on the night, but not Doc Gooden style of course. Chester, pint after pint, in your honor. It's always a funny reaction, especially when I'm hanging with people that I'm not around a lot and they see me ordering a Coke. Drinking was never my thing, nothing against it, just not me. At The Ordinary though, we got to jam out to Lincoln Class of 96 member and one of the purest jump shooters of our era, Daniel Jaggie. This was my first time seeing Jags and his crew perform live. Do yourself a favor if you're in the area and if he's doing a show, go see it. I'm not saying that because I've known him forever, but he's legit and does a very good job.

It's that time again to give some new recommendations on some recent apps I've put on the phone. It's not like I don't already have a zillion on there anyways, but I digress. The first is one that comes with high praises from Sims. I saw him trying it out at the surprise party and he's been trying to get me to download it for a while. What is it you ask? We Doodle. If you're a fan of Pictionary, or if you're in the Lobstah crew, Yahoo Graffiti. It's free and a ton of fun, go get this bad boy. I'm Bird33WV on there. The next is a game that is huge in Japan apparently, Mr. AahH!! It's rather addicting, although it doesn't look like much. It's a game if you just have a short time to fire up the phone, this is what you need. It's tough to put down though. Lastly, one that I'm not sure why I didn't a while back, but just heard it was actually an app. Tosh.0 and it's really good. A lot of videos, daily posts, etc. If you're a Tosh fan, this is a definite get.

Another 5K was rocked out on Thanksgiving Day. This was the Turkey Trot 5K that Stacia and Jason Talkington do such a great job of organizing. This is the second year of existing it and it was a really big turnout this time. The weather was actually pretty good for that time of year as to what it is going to be over the next few weeks. It was near 50 and you can't beat that. There was 125 people in this action, that was a ton more than the race not long before that when I was one of two people in. I was happy with my time. I didn't do nearly as well as I did last year, but going in, I wasn't quite training as hard as last year's either. I finished with a time of 24:30 in 24th Place and was glad I did that before tearing up two big turkey dinners later that afternoon that were awesome. It's always a good time at the Turkey Trot just to see people that you haven't talked to in a while, a nice get-together. Plus, I'm always down to ramble on with a good chat to just about anyone.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This comes to us from Felisha. The title says it all. Flamboyant Salesman Video. He's getting the crowd interested if nothing else. Dude breaks it down in the last 20-30 seconds, hah. Good entertainment right there.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. This comes to us from Devon McIntyre. In a fact I did not know, but everyone else may? I'm putting it in regardless since I asked for some help to the Twitter gang on some quick facts down here for this section. "in every episode of Seinfeld. There is a superman somewhere.." You can follow Dev at http://twitter.com/DynoDev.

2. The next fact also came to use straight from Twitter. The one and only ManDingo had this gem about our local weather: "Well, winter's here. Not forecasted over 37 for the next 2 weeks. I guess it's time to get used to it, but I'm really hating it right now." I'm not hating it, but I'm weird when it comes to winter time. Want to follow Dingo? http://twitter.com/CouchPyro.

3. Last thing to end on. Straight from Sims, we have Barron finally in the Twitter mix. Time to get addicted man! "My boy @CooKeeZ11 is on twitter!! Let's go!!" Hit Sims up too at http://twitter.com/SiMZiLa13.

Sitch, COD, 5K, & Windshield Wipers! Let's Go!

2010-11-10T10:05:00.012-05:00

Hola. Where have I been lately? I'm around, you know how it goes. Time to splurge a new blog on you for something to fill your days with to make it a little more exciting. Either that or you have nothing better to do as I always like to say in here. This is the first blog of November and we're getting closer and closer to Christmas time. Oh, there's Thanksgiving too? Apparently some people completely miss that holiday and skip straight to Christmas. As much as I love Christmas, we need to give Thanksgiving its due. Before that though, time to see what has been happening in the mean streets of my town, expect the unexpected.

It was time for yet another 5K race in town. This one was set up by the Super Strutters group where Alexis Huckles and Krissy (Anderson) McDougal, fellow class of 97 mates, meaning we're old. Only as old as you make yourself feel though and how you take care of yourself. The night before, I really wasn't sure if I was going to do this 5K. Then out of nowhere, I figured why not, wake up early and get this thing done. I go down there around 9:40 or so and there were flocks and flocks of people there. I wasn't sure I'd have enough time to register before things began at 10:00. Truthfully, I was the only one there at the time and wondered what was up. On the Facebook page, there were a good dozen or so people that said that yes, they would be there. That's how our town goes unfortunately. I'm the type of guy that likes to give my word to something. If I'm not going to be there, I'll let people know, but if I give a definite yes, count me in. Anyways, we had another runner show up and props to Sarah Cochran for coming out and supporting the cause. I know what you're thinking, only two people? Yep, but we both had to run that day anyways, so might as well get things done early and support a good cause. In the end, I can joke that I won my first ever 5K for whatever that's worth. Alexis and Krissy, keep everyone posted on the spring race and thanks for organizing everything. Also on Thanksgiving, gear up for the one and only Turkey Trot ran by Stacia and Jason Talkington. Word has it that there should be a really good turnout.

During the time I last wrote, Halloween was celebrated. I haven't dressed up in a while, but this was the year of the return. Before that, I did my yearly tradition of seeing my area of town become crazy populated on the streets for trick or treat. We had so many people show up at our place that you couldn't keep count, seriously. I know that seems hard to believe for out of area people when you think of my little town, but it's true and then some. After that, we had a big turnout at our house just to BS around, watch football, tell stories or whatever else went down. Pretty much our whole family was there along with Cork and Kristin. By the way, grape jelly meatballs are phenomenal.

After that action, it was late-nighting for a costume party. People gave us some ideas and Whitney and I decided we'd go as Snooki and The Situation. My "costume" was pretty easy to get dressed for. I already had a Situation shirt and the shades, plus I threw on a blinged out cross chain that Whitney had and it was go time. People say I look more like Vinny and I think so too, but my Aunt Linda and Kari had a classic thought on that. They said that if I went out as Vinny, since he's the most normal of the Jersey Shore guys if there is such a thing, then people wouldn't have a clue. So I went with the more exciting of the bunch and Kari had the running joke of calling me Sitch that night. Whitney had Snooki's stuff down to a tee, her side was more creative than mine. She put rinestones on her sunglasses, had the full Snooki wig even though she can pull off the Snooki look without it, the pink slippers, and a shirt we got at the beach, the I Love My Guido version. Surprisingly, where we went, we were the only ones that were Shore characters. I guess that shows the mentality we have watching that stuff, but you know I'm hooked to it like no other. A funny to us was that this girl from Jersey and her husband came up to us at the party and wanted to get pictures to show that we existed that night. I'm glad I can get people laughing a bit, we had a blast with our costumes.

Movie time. What will this review be on? Just Wright. We had wanted to see this one in the theaters, but never got around to it. Mix in Common, basketball, Queen Latifah, and it's a movie that was right up our alley. We both enjoyed this movie and I'd recommend it. The basketball scenes were fairly well done and featured a slew of actual NBA players such as my boy Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade, Rashard Lewis, Jalen Rose, Bobby Simmons and Elton Brand. You also had Marv Albert, Stu Scott, Mike Fratello, and Kenny "The Jet" Smith. On the actress side of things, notables were Phylicia Rashad and Pam Grier. It's somewhat predictable, but it still made for a good movie night in my books to go with popcorn and ice cream sundaes, yum. My final ranking is going to be 7.5 PCL injuries (what Common had in the movie) out of 10.

Here's one to make myself look like a goof, but I'm never above that for a good story in the blog. I left Whitney's on Monday night after watching wrestling, my usual schedule. Yes, RAW is my favorite thing to watch on TV all week, I kid you not, it's the dork in me I admit. I had planned to go for the midnight bash at GameStop and get Call of Duty that night. I was in such a coma that it didn't happen and I figured I'd be up the entire night before going to work in the morning. I was going to use Whitney's car to get the game since she needed gas anyways and it'd be easier that way. So I do the good deed of getting gas in her car and bring it back instead of heading up to the mall. I promise, this story will make sense here in a second, I'm getting into it..

Don't you hate waking up early in the morning before work and you have to either scrape your windows from all the ice or spray it down? Well, people that don't put their cars in a garage, you know what I mean. It's not a big deal to me, but it just saves a few minutes off your time so you can chill longer before work and not be crazy cold in the process. The option I have, and it's going to sound either primitive or stupid, is to get newspapers. Do what with those newspapers? Put them across your windshield before bed that night. When you wake up and go to work, take the newspapers off and like magic, no ice and you can just get your drive on. It's not for everyone, but it works. Well, as I was doing that to Whitney's car, I pull up her wipers to have it hold the paper. Bam, the wiper breaks off on me! Not good. Now what? Here I am at midnight trying to piece back a wiper blade where a bolt came off. Mix that in with me being one of the worst handy men as far as fixing things of that nature goes and it was a disaster. It's an easy task for most, but I admit that I can't even do a simple task of putting windshield wipers in the correct spot. The good thing? Whitney woke up the next morning and her windshield was as clear as can be. The wiper however, doh!

Fantasy basketball time! I've not commented on either of my drafts so far. I will now bore you into pieces on that and list my rosters for each bunch. First, I'll start out with the EDDFL that is going on 20+ years strong. Yes, you read that right. The 12-man cast of characters in this league are Riley, Spank, Cork, ManDingo, Sidelli, TJ, Mudcat, Fortney, Posey, Fleece, Ozzie, and myself. It is a straight style fantasy league with points, assists, and rebounds. We start 6 players per week, with one having to be a rookie. The next is A#BA, the league you hear me talk about a good bit that is our online keeper version. This one goes 20 deep and one of the most competitive leagues you will ever see. It's a 10-category league and is head-to-head.

E-Town Junkies (EDDFL)
1. Kevin Durant - Oklahoma City
2. Brook Lopez - New Jersey
3. Wes Johnson (Rookie) - Minnesota
4. Andrea Bargnani - Toronto
5. Andray Blatche - Washington
6. Joakim Noah - Chicago
7. JJ Hickson - Cleveland
8. Ty Thomas - Charlotte
9. Timofey Mozgov (Rookie) - New York
10. DJ Augustin - Charlotte
11. Marcus Camby - Portland
12. Andrei Kirilenko - Utah
13. Andris Biedrins - Golden State
14. Brendan Haywood - Dallas
15. Josh McRoberts - Indiana

Memphis Sounds (A#BA)
1. Carmelo Anthony - Denver
2. Dwyane Wade - Miami
3. Danny Granger - Indiana
4. Andre Iguodala - Philadelphia
5. Brandon Jennings - Milwaukee
6. Derrick Favors (Rookie) - New Jersey
7. Josh McRoberts - Indiana
8. Tiago Splitter (Rookie) - San Antonio
9. CJ Miles - Utah
10. Arron Afflalo - Denver
11. Jamario Moon - Cleveland
12. Nikola Pekovic (Rookie) - Minnesota

Busy week going down on my schedule, but one I'm excited for. Of course Call of Duty: Black Ops is released and I'll be sure to give reviews of that as I play it more. As of the first day of playing, I really like the graphics for one. The guns on this one, I'm a huge fan of so far and the gameplay, no issues on my end. It gets an early thumbs up on my side. There's only three days of work for me this week and I can't complain about my schedule with that ever. Thursday, Ric Flair is in the house! Not my house, but at our local Wal-Mart. I'll be there to fulfill one of my lifetime goals (yes, you can call it sad or whatever) in meeting him and hopefully getting my Flair belt signed. I'm not big on autographs as I've said before, but after meeting Larry Bird, Flair is definitely #2 on my "to-meet" list. Then Friday, it's off for the South Bend trip with Whitney to see my Irish take on Utah. Road trip! I can't see Notre Dame putting up a great fight, but I hope I'm proven wrong. Either way, I'm ecstatic for this week. Too much excitement in one week!

Time to talk about a few CDs I've recently listened to. The rap fans will want to know about this, the other 98% of the people reading this section, I'm probably talking to a wall anyways. I will entertain myself at least. Let's see what we have to talk about this time around, away we go..

Bun B: Trill O.G.: I'm a big fan of this one. Bun's style of rap has been one that you know what you're getting. He's kept his setup the exact same since he's started out. You won't get any mainstream club rap here or something that is just made to be catchy for a month only to die. If you're a rap enthusiast, this is for you. I can't just leave you hanging without telling you what songs are good on this bad boy. Trillionaire, Countin' Money, Ridin' Slow, and All A Dream are all worthy listens. Go get em.

Young Buck: Rehab. A former member of G-Unit, Buck is still around and doing his thing. I figured this album would be more bashings towards 50 Cent and the boys, but it doesn't feature any of that, which makes it even better because you get straight up rap minus the BS. The weird thing, through all of this "beef", he's still technically under their label, just not a main portion of it. What to get out of this one? This Is Mine, Ya Betta Know It, Hood Documentary, and When The Rain Stops. I liked Bun's album better, but enjoyed both.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. If you had November 3rd in the Christmas lights pool, you are this year's winner. I saw my first house decorated with the works, already lit up on that date. This was in Bridgeport on the hill near Go-Mart for the locals. Crazy.

2. Thursday is Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in the land of "Canadia" as the Jersey Shore guys would say. Be sure to go out of your way and send a message to a veteran, it'll be greatly appreciated by them, I promise you that. I know I couldn't do what they do and they get my full respect.

3. A few weird law facts from TheAnswer (www.twitter.com/TheAnswer310): "In Tennessee, it is against the law to drive a car while sleeping. Imagine that!.. Today we travel to Iowa where one armed piano players must play for free.. in Colorado if u let ur cat outdoors it has to have a tail light."

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Man on Bench time..

"Crocodiles Gonna Eat Me Yeahhhhh!"

2010-10-22T15:58:00.003-04:00

Fall is in the air. You know you can smell it. I'm glad since that means I won't have to mow grass except for maybe a few more times before I tap out on the year. It's not like I have a big yard, it's still the thought of having to do it on a regular basis. Oh yeah, basketball is soon too, but that goes without saying as one of the main benefits for fall kicking into gear. What does this edition behold? You get a big wedding with a few of our good friends, a review of Jackass 3D, pepperoni roll rankings, Japanese trip that was 14-deep, board game night, a music plug, a Twitter milestone, and you know that anything else is always possible. Suit up!

I've never been to a 3D movie before in my life. Yes, true story. Now that I've talked to people recently, some others have said the exact same thing. Enter Jackass 3D. You know I had to watch this joy of a movie, what else would you expect? Whitney and I went in on a Friday night. It was jammed packed at the theater. Movie night this time around was my choice and Whitney wasn't a fan of it, but I have to give her credit for toughing it out and sitting through it. My review? Excellent. I can't say enough about it. If you're into that lewd and rude comedy, this is right up your alley. For the youngsters, it's definitely not something you want to watch on family movie night with the whole clan together. However, just about everyone I've talked to has loved it.

The movie definitely has segments that are so over the top, but I'm the type that doesn't get offended by a whole lot, so I liked that aspect. When people in the theater are clapping on certain scenes, you know you have something worth checking out. The glasses aspect was better than I figured. I thought we'd get a pair of the 1980s style cheap bendy red and blue glasses. Nope, you get a pair that makes you look like Vinny of Jersey Shore when you put them on. The first few minutes, I thought I'd get car sick from this (movie sick?). That had me worried, but it wasn't a problem. I really enjoyed the 3D configuration. Not sure I'd want a ton of movies like that, but it was fun. These types of movies with no plot are hard to give a ranking to. Just to do it, I'm giving it 7.9 Wee-Man midgets out of 10 and I feel it has a good re-watchability factor. Go see it if you already haven't.

Wedding action in Fairmont. Abby and Pat's wedding was our latest one to hit up and pretty much half of our town was there. When your whole gang is there, it makes for a really good time. Who would've thought if you asked me years ago that I'd be saying that I don't mind going to some weddings? At least not in one like the setup they had, I thought it turned out very well. I know all girls love weddings regardless, but the guys here enjoyed things just as much. Abby, everyone loved your dress like we told you, even people who have no clue on that stuff like myself. Pat, nice touch with the fire department presentations.

One of my favorite things of the wedding and this goes to show my taste of junk food was the cake. They had a cake from Bonnie Belle's (a local shop that rules) that was out of this world. It wasn't your normal plain wedding cake, those to me are boring. This one had tons of chocolate drizzled all on top plus all the icing you could handle. My kind of cake! The Shinnston Flag Football League was highly represented as players from the Giants, Raiders, and Chargers were all in attendance. It was a game day and we were all joking how bad we wanted to be on the field that day, but we rocked it out wedding style on 10-10-10. A few other things I liked at the wedding was that one of the table munch food was kettlecorn. Now we're talking! Sign me up for some kettlecorn anytime. Then later in the night they ran karaoke and that was classic. Some really good performances out there namely from Pat, Jeremiah, and Garth as ones I enjoyed. My favorite karaoke guy in the area though goes without saying, Danny Stout for those who know him. He brought his A-game and only did one song, but delivered.

Round up the crew. We rocked it out, 14-deep and had a quality night out at Shogun recently. There's never a bad time to eat Japanese if you ask my opinion. Plus we had our favorite hibachi grill master at our table and he's a total riot. The Shogun regulars know the exact guy I'm talking about. We had him launching food at people we knew at another table and he just was goofing off and doing his thing. I eat sushi a good bit here (surprise to some, but it's awesome), but tonight I went with the hibachi style and rolled with filet and scallops as my main course. Scallops are very underrated in my book.

After the Shogun extravaganza, it was off to Kari and Matty Cakes' with 12 of the 14 that ate with us showing up. The first part of the night, the guys went to the man cave and chilled out with college football games and baseball. How can you go wrong with that? I'm a big fan of the setup of their house, it worked out great. Late into the night, the board games were busted out. Scattergories it was, as that's a big favorite of a lot of our crew on board game night. Cork is usually the man at this one, but luckily I escaped and ended up that night's champion by winning by one point. This game doesn't get enough love. It's been around a while, but one of my picks for sure. We're due for Monopoly though.

Pepperoni roll time. A West Virginia staple. As I've always mentioned over the years, if you're from out of the area and haven't tried, you're don't know the taste you're missing. I know it sounds simple, but there's an art to it and you get the best there is in my area. If you've never seen Bob Heffner's page, this could help you out: http://www.bobheffner.com/pepperoniroll/index.htm. Now it's time for me to unveil my personal rankings on which are truly the best. You really can't pick a bad one I don't think, but these are the elite of the elite. Here is the top 6 in my mind:

1. D'Annunzio's: North View's finest landmark. If you pick these bad boys up when they're fresh and hot, look out, yum! Great bread and they put big sticks of pepperoni in there. My favorites. http://www.dannunziosbread.com

2. Colasessano's: I wasn't sure how to put them into the rankings. These are the only ones of the bunch that aren't the basic style of roll and these come loaded up with cheese, peppers, sauce and are prepared hot. This place is legendary and they've branched out to have several shops now. http://www.colasessanos.com

3. Fairmont Country Club Bakery. The original, as stated by a lot of people around here. When I was in college at Fairmont State, I'd love to know the number of these I ate during my time there. I've talked to a lot of people who rank them #1 and I wouldn't have a problem with that argument one bit. These ranks are all so close that it can be switched around in a second. These are very very good, go get em. http://www.bobheffner.com/pepperoniroll/history.htm

4. Tomaro's: The pride of Glen Elk (Clarksburg suburb for the out of area crew). Numerous people are all about going here early in the morning to pick up some steaming fresh pepperoni rolls. They also make a mean loaf of Italian bread if that helps your decision making process.

5. Marty's: Originally in the mean streets of Meadowbrook, West Virginia, they've since moved to Clarksburg in the Quiet Dell region. They may have my favorite actual pepperoni inside of anyone on this list. They used to be located across from my grandpa and uncle's store, so I grew up on these. http://www.martysbakery.com

6. Abruzzino's: It's Shinnston time! Well, technically Gypsy (home of the Gypsy Hill Giants), but close enough. I go by this place every single day on my way to work. As far as a softness and freshness of bread, they may be at the top if we're ranking solely on that. I like their rolls a lot, but the thing that didn't put them higher in my book is that they don't use the stick pepperoni. They go with the sliced and thin style instead. Their cheese versions get a thumbs up. It's crazy how fast these things sell at the Shinnston Pool during the summer.

Since I have too much time on my hands, I hit a Twitter landmark on Wednesday night. If you aren't on there already, I hit 3,000 tweets. I'm not sure if that's worth mentioning, but apparently I made it to the Hall of Fame, Pete Rose style. Corndog (http://twitter.com/corndogtaylor) writes this one, "Congrats Tweet King!" I'm not sure about all of that, but I know I really enjoy it. I know when I first started, I was hesitant and didn't think it'd be too exciting. Now? I'm ate up like no other and at the moment, I like it much better than Facebook, even though they're two different types of animals. Maybe it wouldn't be as great if you didn't have a lot of your gang on there to go back and forth with, but between my buddies and the celebrities you can follow, it seems like almost everyone has been jumping on board, not to mention my Tuesday morning chats with Dick Vitale. That leads into a great time to give a few random Twitter plugs. Mine if you already didn't have it is http://twitter.com/Bird33WV.

4 Random Twitter Plugs:

1. http://twitter.com/mauroranallo One of the best MMA announcers on the planet and great wrestling knowledge as well.

2. http://twitter.com/CRnote33 Finally, we have Clark Riley on board. Add The Governor as one of your followers.

3. http://twitter.com/kliu82 Toronto's very own TMac. One of the original members of #basketball and an all around good dude.

4. http://twitter.com/StephenCurry30 If you didn't get a chance to see Steph Curry last season in his rookie year with the Golden State Warriors, you straight up missed out. This year you need to do yourself a favor and watch a star in the making, should be fun as he becomes one of the NBA's elite.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Most people probably won't care, but since last night was the finale of Jersey Shore, Season 2, why not honor it. By the way, January 6th (my birthday) will be the day that Season 3 starts up. This is from the Bingo Players with their Jersey Shore mix. "Crocodiles gonna eat me yeahhh!"

3 Quick Thangs:

1. A disappointing stat now that the Shinnston Flag Football League's regular season is over: Over the past two seasons, I've been on winless teams. Last year with The Green Machine and this year with the Gypsy Hill Giants. The weird thing is that we had pretty good talent each year and could never put it together for the big W. Regardless, I love being a big part of this league and it gets better each year. http://sites.google.com/site/shinnstonflagfootballleague. Also, we just put up the season awards polls today on the message board: http://shinnstonflagleague.proboards.com

2. Quick facts time! Each year there are more than 40,000 toilet injuries in the US.. 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man.. The inventor of the waffle iron didn't even like waffles.. Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

3. We're bringing this one for the readers. When people give suggestions, we like to at least consider all aspects. Long-time blog reader Jenn Raines wanted to know if I'd put in her fiance's music page. Andy is really talented and has started to make a pretty good name for himself. I'm impressed by his version of the covers from I Alone and his unique twist to Poker Face. Check it out in his widget here that I have pasted, it comes highly recommended:

"It's T-Shirttttt Timeeeeee!"

2010-10-06T12:01:00.001-04:00

Today's blog title is sparked off by the recent Jersey Shore quote that you can't keep out of your head. You know you're saying that when you get dressed in the mornings, don't lie. Search for it if you haven't seen those scenes yet. Anyways, time to start moving with this project at hand..

Yes, the blog is still existing. Sometimes I have to blow dust off of it every few weeks, but I get it rockin' when you least expect it. That's what I'm about to do since the last time we talked. What will go down in this issue? You get the Shinnston Frontier Days bash, elimination dinner money, a bachelor party, celebrities tweeting to me, Neti Pot, NBA, weird facts, several other things, and something about how cookies can hurt. Some people have even been known to print off copies of this and take it to the bathroom with them for reading material. Whatever works, I'm glad that you're bored enough (or maybe even slightly entertained by the writings) that you keep coming back to crave more action. Here we go!

Surprise to some, or probably actually none, I've never been to an elimination dinner before in my life. There's always a first for everything, right? Well, hopefully a first for everything except for trying heroin, seeing Mo'Nique naked, or becoming a meth head, but you get the point. Whitney and I figured we'd try it out and hit up the Nutter Fort Fire Department's deal they had at the newly remodeled 4-H building. If anyone hasn't been there since they've spiffed it up, it's pretty impressive. On the money side of things, I lasted fairly long amongst our table, but close doesn't count. Whitney lasted a good while longer into the night with her number, but the only one on our table to win any money was Timmy. He was drawn as one of the 'every 25th number' gets $100. Once your number gets pulled, the night is basically over. It's fun to BS around with people and the food was good, but outside of that, you are there for one reason and one reason only, money. I guess the people that drink love that aspect of it, but all the alcohol you can drink doesn't pertain to me. Why can't they have an all you can eat lobster, all you can eat Skittles, or even all the Call of Duty you can play till your eyes bug out? Oooh, speaking of Call of Duty, 11-9-10 can't get here fast enough!

After the elimination dinner, later that night we head back to Shinnston for another bash. This was Pat's bachelor party at The Moose. It seemed like half of Shinnston was there and most of our crew, so that was an awesome time. I'm not a bar guy at all, but when your entire bunch is around, that makes things a lot better. Plus, when I got to mix in some table shuffleboard to go along with the action, of course I'm in. My defining victory was teaming up with Clark as we took down the legend of shuffleboard, Tosh (not Tosh.0 style) and A-Train. Those two held the table most of the night. After playing, I came to the realization that one day I'll need a shuffleboard table in my house. Everyone was having a great time, no knuckleheads around to cause any ruckus since we all know each other and we ended up leaving around 3:00 in the morning. I got to do my community duty as one of the DDs of the night (don't confuse this with Maryse of WWE fame) by driving some to them home safe and sound.

Another bonus was that we had a handful of the Shinnston Flag Football League members there that night. As I type this, the Giants playoff hopes were given a big blister against the North View Lions. We were up 28-12 for those who didn't see my Facebook post after the game and ended up blowing things in the second half. The North View boys always get my respect, some good dudes on that team, so I had to tip the hat in their direction for a great battle and nice comeback. Throughout the night, you could hear Clay Riley and Harmer shouting out for the glory calls of Raider Nation, since obviously they play for the Raiders. Clay with broken ribs and Harmer with a broken finger and they still play through it. I can't make this stuff up, they're animals. Tons of injuries in this league, but it doesn't stop these guys one bit. Also, to the Riley clan, some great words of wisdom you brought late into the wee hours of the night. It's always a blast and let's try to set up that big road trip we were talking about, I'm easy to plan around, you know I'm always good for a trip.

I've talked about this a while back in the blog before, but why not revisit an old topic, but it's a goody. My sinuses are beyond brutal. I get sinus infections left and right for those who know me, just something I've always had to deal with. The pressure I get in my eye and face region, not fun when they break out. I'm not a huge medicine guy unless it's really necessary, I try not to rely on loading up on that as a crutch, but I do have some of my favorite sinus medicine that I go to. It doesn't always work though. One option that isn't medicine is what is called a Neti Pot. Some have seen these before, some have maybe even tried one before, while others are asking, what in the world is this idiot talking about? I'm about to break it down for the confused folk.

Picture a miniature tea pot. You warm up some distilled water, throw in this sinus powder mix that comes with the kit and stir it up. Then you put the pot's end up one nostril while you open your mouth. Yes, stay with me. I know it sounds utterly wacky, but don't knock it till you've tried it. You then tilt your head and in a matter of time, water is going to be spouting out the other side of your nose. Then you do the opposite, with the other nostril and so forth until the pot is emptied. It's not the most pleasant feeling, but I stand by this thing for sure. Whitney got to watch me try it the other night, her first time seeing it and she was probably a bit weirded out seeing junk pour out of me, my eyes watering, and me spitting up who knows what. After I cleaned up, bam, I could breathe again, it's the magic in me. I promise you it's perfectly safe. Some girls have told me they saw it on Oprah. I guess if it's on Oprah, it's in the mainstream, so go get yourselves one of these bad boys, they've been out for a good while. An update, on Tuesday evening I went to the docs and they said I had a pretty bad sinus infection, just like I knew all along since I get them too much. I got a shot in the hip and by the time I left the room, it was tough to walk, must've done the job.

Time to stay in the big town. Last week, town was booming as only my town can. It's the city of dreams. Or city of who knows what, but for some odd reason, I love it here. Not much ever goes on, but it has a place in everyone's heart who lives here. How was town booming though? Enter the Shinnston Frontier Days celebration that lasts almost an entire week. The carnies come in to set up shop, do their rides and games for the kiddies (no, not in that way you sickos), and local vendors come in to sell their food, albeit overpriced. How can you pass up dirty fair food though? The answer? You can't, that's how. Just like at the recent Tally Rally in Clarksburg, my stop at this one was to our buddies at Demus who served up a beast of a tally sausage sandwich. They don't shortchange you and it's a massive hoagie with hot sausage, peppers, cheese, and sauce. Loaded up and well worth it in my mind, it didn't disappoint. This year I didn't get a chance to try DeMarco's on Saturday, as I heard theirs were even better. As a part of it, local singers and entertainers from all walks of life performed on the American Idol stage. Ryan Seacrest was supposed to be there, but he decided against taking a beatdown from some of Shinnston's finest and stayed home, scared of the mean streets. A big thanks goes out to blog reader Nate Drain for bringing life back into the town. He's really motivated and has gotten a lot of people and groups involved to spice up the area. Your work around town doesn't go unnoticed man, I've told you that before, keep it up!

I'll throw this one towards the end since it's probably not a big deal to anyone else other than the Twitter world. Then again, that's a good bit of people, so hard to tell, but I like to amuse myself. I don't have to mention again how hooked I am with Twitter, I think I've talked about it in every recent blog, it's a drug. I'll call it a brush with greatness, although not in person. Have you ever had celebrities tweet back to you? I've gotten a list from some of my boys and it happens from time to time, although not too often for bums like ourselves. My list is small, but hopefully it grows. Last week with my wrestling trivia knowledge to show my dorky side, I had to prove another fan wrong on the whereabouts of Mick Foley's first professional match. The other guy said Poca, West Virginia, when in fact it was in Clarksburg and I was in person for that as a little kid at the Nathan Goff Armory. Foley wrote back and claimed I was correct. As a side note, Foley's new book, Countdown to Lockdown came out a few days ago and is very good as I've already started it.

The other brush is Dick Vitale. Every Tuesday, Dickie V is on the Mike & Mike Show at 7:15, ESPN and ESPN Radio. That's during my drive to work, so I almost always catch it. I'm a big Dickie V guy, although some people aren't his biggest fans, his passion for sports I've always enjoyed. He did a baseball segment this past week and is a big Tampa Bay Rays fan, which only a handful of people can say, even though they have a really good team. Anyways, he broke down his season awards and predicted what he thought would go down during the playoffs. He's replied to my tweets before, but this most recent time he sent two things to me that morning. That's three replied tweets. Yes, that means practically nothing to some, I know that. But I get a kick out of it regardless.

As Corndog (http://twitter.com/corndogtaylor) said after the morning chat with Dickie V: "@Bird33WV is becoming friends with @dickiev via twitter. thats awesome." Corndog also has a daily morning question he posts that all of our gang seems to like a lot that we get going with our coffee. If you want in on some of that, then what are you waiting for? Get in there and follow him. He recently hit the 1000 tweet plateau, so be sure to congratulate him on that once you click the follow button. Five random accounts that I'm going to plug in which I follow that you may want to check out: @SiMZiLa13 (Sims of WV fame), @GarrettQD (NeonTheon), @lordsofpain (my favorite wrestling website, http://lordsofpain.net/index2.html), @StripclubPapst (Dom in Germany), and @LDAngeli (Sign Guy Dudley of the original ECW). No rhyme or reason to why I picked those five, but they're this week's worthy winners. For the computer illiterate, remember to type twitter.com before those names, taking out the @.

Speaking of Twitter, how does everyone like the "new" Twitter? It's just an upgrade more or less, the house was remodeled. I really like the web setup of it, but I think most people use it more on their phones now than an actual computer. I use both and have talked about the Echofon version I use on my iPhone. That version to me is pretty similar to what Twitter's "new" web version is like and it's really handy and easier to use. One of my favorite features and Echofon has had this, is that you can finally get a shortcut once you begin to type a name. After the @ symbol, and a few letters after, bang, it's inserted to the person you want. That's just a small feature, plus the sidebox showing all of your info rather than having to click and go to a different page. It's all there for you. One more mention on the phones. Download Words Free, it's a Scrabble setup in real-time. It's addicting and you can make your move in a matter of minutes or if you're busy, the game will hold with you and your buddy till you go again later in the day. My name on there is Bird33WV.

Basketball is in the air and I'm probably talking to a wall for this paragraph. NBA preseason has already started and everyone knows that's one of the things I absolutely live for. Most people around here and I guess most in the general population aren't the biggest NBA fans or care one ounce about it. I may watch more just in the preseason than a lot of people will watch in the regular season. People ask me all the time how I can be that into the NBA as they'd much rather pick college ball or even another sport. Mix in the Celtics who I bow down to and fantasy basketball and that's a good combo. I've already been into hardcore fantasy prep mode, just something I enjoy doing with my time. I guess that's not saying a lot, but I always say I'm in NBA mode 24/7, 365. October 24th is a huge day though on my calender. Earlier that afternoon, it's the infamous EDDFL Draft. That is a 12-man effort and a live draft. It doesn't get any better than a live, in-person draft with 12 of the areas finest. Plus, we always order a big draft board from FJ Fantasy Sports. I've dealt with this company for a long time and they're nothing but the best. If you've never held a draft with a board, you're missing out, I'm serious. Their prices are good and their service is top notch. Cheap plug time, yes, so check out their place at: http://www.fjfantasy.com and tell em the EDDFL in WV sent ya. Also on the 24th, that evening is the A#BA online draft that goes 20 members deep. It's not for the weak at heart, you better know your stuff to even survive in this one and I don't say that lightly. I'll of course break things down as the season goes, if not only for my own amusement.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Cookies can hurt.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. In the ask someone if they have anything to contribute to the blog, TheAnswer stepped up. He gives us this one: On Tuesday, it marked 13 years ago to the day that wrestler Brian Pillman passed away. One of the most underrated wrestlers and promo guys of all time. It's a shame the career that Pillman could've had if he didn't screw it up with drugs. He still had a nice one, RIP.

2. In the freaky stats category, this kid in Illinois went nutty last weekend in his football game. Kapri Bibbs, a Colorado State commit, had a whopping 520 yards rushing on 39 carries with 7 touchdowns. Really? That's video game stuff. Only one of his touchdowns came from less than 30 yards and four of them came from at least 50. Sick.

3. Facts to feast on as you finish up your reading material: A hummingbird weighs less than a penny.. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.. Crickets hear through their knees.. Only female mosquitoes bite.

"It is hard to take you seriously when you're a grown woman with a Kermit purse."

2010-09-18T13:45:00.001-04:00

Our topic this time around comes from The_Freak, he's getting all the credit on this one.

It's been a busy last few weeks. I've been places near and far. Well, mainly all near, none too far away to make it seem like I was outside of the mean streets for a while. Hopefully everyone has been enjoying the fall season, football beginning, and fair and festival time. What does this edition hold for the readers? We'll go over the Tally Rally, Jackson's Mill Jubilee, fantasy football, Gatorade, a Dougie dance gone wrong, Tanger Outlets, movie review, and reality TV just to name a handful.

I'll bounce back and forth on dates here. The Saturday of Labor Day Weekend I hit up the Tally Rally with Whitney. The Italian Heritage Festival if you will, it's a festivus for the rest of us. There wouldn't happen to be any of my fellow Italians at this place would there? Nah, who heard of such a thing. Anyways, the food here is a key reason people go, it's about as good as it gets. The stop we did this year was by getting Demus' hot tally sausage sandwiches. They were $8, but worth every bit of it. It was a lot bigger than a regular hoagie style in our area and was loaded up with tons of cheese, sauce, and peppers. I wish I could've tried more food that night, just so much to choose from. Another hit are the frittis, people make a killing off of these. Mom made these on Sunday for everyone, so we didn't have to worry about it on Saturday night.

Anyone and everyone was there that night. We joked that 90% of the flag football league were there in the streets. I even ran into a good bit of free agents making their push to get onto a team. Requests to hype it up online to get players signed and I was on a mission. You'd take two steps and you'd run into someone coming up to you, it was like that the whole time. A little crowded, but that's how it always is and comes with the territory. Around 11:00, the cops started to shut down the streets, which I thought was early. You could still be out there, just not in the middle of the street. That's when the crowds migrated to the bars and basically you're stuffing the entire late night festival crowd into two bars. I'm not a bar guy as everyone knows, but I'll make an appearance every so often, even if I don't drink. Kathy was so shocked she had to get a picture of me in one just to have proof. PJ Kelly's was so packed that you couldn't even move. We hung there with our crew for a bit, but figured since you didn't have room to breathe, that there would be better options at the next stop. Let's head down to The Ordinary. My first time in this place at night, I only remembered it as a restaurant back in the day however long that was, so that goes to show you. They were packed, but it wasn't to a level that it was rough.

Yeah, I'm getting to my story. If you read my Facebook post that night, you'll know where I'm going. The Tally Rally has always been infamous for drunken idiots getting into fights. It never fails and a lot of the same people are in them every year. As an onlooker, you see some sights. That night, I heard someone yell on the street that there was a fight. You know what my next move was. I'm going to get a little closer to see what's causing all the ruckus. As soon as I get there in my ringside seat, this Kanye West look-a-like rocks a big dude something awful. I compared it to Ronnie of Jersey Shore. It was the one hitter quitter, one shot and he was done. It was so bad that the dude was laying on concrete, blood pouring out from the back of his head, and he was out cold. Soon, you had the ambulance roll through and police all over. They had him laying on the ground for about 20 minutes until they put him in. I never did find out what it was over, but it was pretty intense and that was the excitement of the night.

Movie review and here we go. We were due for a theater trip as we've been slacking as of late. Never fear, I'm back to give another quick review. The movie in question? Easy A. We went to a Friday night showing at 9:25 at Meadowbrook. I was surprised at how packed it was for this movie, but apparently a lot of people were down for the action. Emma Stone is in this one and it also features a lot of other decent names in the flick. Who else? Amanda Bynes, Patricia Clarkson, Cam Gigandet, and Lisa Kudrow to name some, Stone looks great in this one for whatever that is worth to your eyes. Plus, she plays her role very well. Maybe my favorite character of the movie was the guy that played her dad, Stanley Tucci. I remembered him from The Lovely Bones which if you've been reading along, you know that I couldn't stand that movie. He played his role perfectly in that one though and this one he did here as well, in a totally different character. He had me cracking up good. It has a good plot to it and it isn't an in-depth movie that is going to have your brain filled with knowledge, but it's worth watching. If you want a good funny movie, this is for you. Early reports on IMDB has it at a 7.7 out of 10 as I type this up. The final grade I'm giving this beast? 7.0 tubs of buttery popcorn out of 10.

Lately it's been a tradition to hit up the Jackson's Mill Jubilee. I've written about this a lot in the past when I go over Labor Day Weekend, so you probably know a lot of what I'm going to say if you've been reading for a while. Each year, they claim it may be their last year because they're losing money, etc. Yet they always get it going, but they don't really advertise it as well as they should in my opinion. The food alone is enough to get me there. This trip I made with Whitney and my parents. It didn't seem like as much action as normal here, the past few years have been pretty low key. The back section if you're familiar with the music area, they had no vendors like in the past, so it was a smaller setup.

I do like how wide open their format is though. It's never overcrowded that you're literally walking right on top of someone. The main place we always hit up is Madia's and we tear into their Italian rib eye sandwiches. Once again, they delivered and it was top notch. Try their stuff if you're ever at a location they are serving at, I wouldn't steer you in the wrong direction with food. I also have to buy off the kettle corn lady, she doesn't mess around, doing it old school style. I got a bag about as big as my body for $4. I liked the experience, but I'm not sure the rest of the crew was big on the idea. Dad says this year may have been his last and he's usually a big fan of the Jubilee. We'll see what goes down.

Labor Day itself was a trip to Washington, Pennsylvania. Every other month, Whitney and I usually try to hit up Tanger Outlets. Just a weird schedule we have. It's not a bad drive from home and I've always recommended it up there. It wasn't nearly as packed as I'd expect since it was a holiday and everyone was having crazy sales. Then again, when do they not have crazy sales up there it seems? I didn't see any Ronnie punches thrown that day, maybe that will come on Black Friday, although I've only done that one time ever. I did that with the Posey once and it was a madhouse. I wanted to try it out once just to say I did. Watching the women go at it, push each other around for these items was awesome. At Tanger, it's a new place and very clean. Plus their store selection is worth the trip alone. Check it out if you haven't yet.

My last fantasy football draft of the year was completed a few Mondays ago. The site was at Ozzie's house which is a sight to see. Site and sight? Yep. This league has been going on for a while and is ran by Commish P. There's ten of us involved and I always like to give a roll call, whether you're interested or not, it's good for blog purposes. Aside from Commish P, we have Sims (http://twitter.com/SiMZiLa13), Bart (http://twitter.com/WESTFORKRAVENS), Ozzie, Mudcat, Pill, Matty Cakes, Maulberry, Fortney, and myself. Now time to unveil yourrrrr 2010 E-Town Junkies!

QB: Tony Romo - Dallas
QB: Matt Stafford - Detroit
QB: Jimmy Clausen - Carolina

RB: Maurice Jones-Drew - Jacksonville
RB: Ryan Grant - Green Bay (Peyton Hillis - Cleveland)
RB: Jahvid Best - Detroit
RB: Michael Bush - Oakland
RB: Steve Slaton - Houston

WR: Michael Crabtree - San Francisco
WR: Stevie Breaston - Arizona
WR: Jeremy Maclin - Philadelphia
WR: Mo Massaquoi - Cleveland
WR: Lou Murphy - Oakland
WR: DeMaryius Thomas - Denver
WR: Earl Bennett - Chicago (Nate Washington - Tennessee)

TE: Kellen Winslow - Tampa Bay
TE: John Carlson - Seattle

K: Stephen Gostkowski - New England

D: New York Giants
D: Buffalo Bills

I really like my quarterback and running back units. I think I'm deep on RBs for sure. Plus, we have the option in this league to start three RBs (2 for sure and we have a flex spot for a RB/WR/TE). Three of my RBs are solid, I'll get nice production there. Jones-Drew is ready to rock unless his knee explodes, Grant is behind a nice team and will get carries, while I look for big things out of Best. (After I wrote this section, Ryan Grant decides to get hurt, doh! So I picked up Hillis.) I actually think the Lions will be halfway decent this season, but we'll see. Mike Bush is banged up, but I can't see him not getting the bulk once they see that McFadden probably can't do it. I'm insanely young on my wideouts. This is where I'm hoping some potential rises through and I get a steal out of someone. If Crabtree isn't a knucklehead with his ego, which is very possible, he has a chance to be a stud. I look for Breaston to get some nice single coverages in Boldin's old spot since everyone keys in on Fitzgerald. Several of these guys I also have on my A#FL team that I wrote about recently. We'll see what the future holds for these youngsters.

Time for another family party, these never get old. Big Max had his 2nd birthday last Saturday and it was eats galore. First off, Gayle doesn't mess around when he makes his homemade pizzas. He was making them all night and was a machine at it. Ozzie alone put down 12 or 13 pieces, so props to him for being a beast with that. Mix in some football watching and this was during the Notre Dame game against Michigan. I've written about that already before in other outlets, but I can't be crazy disappointed over the performance of the Irish. Offensively, I liked their system as it's straight hurry up. When Crist got banged up, the backups didn't have a clue, deer looking into headlights look. I think they'll do fine, but nothing like the 9 wins a lot of people on TV have predicted, I'm realistic. I am a Kelly fan though. Rich Rod looks to have his system in shape here, we'll see if this is the year or if he's still on the hotseat. Denard Robinson, this kid is going to be something special on the college level. That offense they run is super fast. It was interesting that day in our area of the people that hate both Notre Dame and Michigan and who they were rooting for. Either that or hoping they played to a tie battle to the death. The end of the night featured storytelling of our family from years past and those stories have to be heard to believed. I promise you they're all true if you've heard some of them. Thanks to Jill and Gayle for having a big successful bash.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: It's probably not the greatest idea to try to Dougie in the middle a street with moving traffic. If you do, watch out for the ice cream trucks.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. 97 days till Christmas as of Saturday.

2. Here's some facts on Gatorade, just because I drink tons of it. 1998 was the year they switched from glass to plastic bottles.. 26 flavors have been discontinued since Gatorade's founding in 1967.. 1985 was the first Gatorade bath, done by Jim Burt of the football Giants to coach Bill Parcells.

3. The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and Great Britain in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

Wallace Wrecks, Gypsy Hill Giants, & 90210 Day

2010-09-02T15:44:00.003-04:00

Here we go. Let's call this the Labor Day edition. I know technically we're not at the date yet, but from here on out I like to say that fall is finally here. Too many 90+ degree days for me this summer, but if that's the worst thing I have to complain about, then I should just stay quiet. We have football here and some people have even started the countdown to Christmas. I heard from someone the other day that they know people who have a majority of their Christmas shopping already finished. Really now? I respect that they get it done early, but that's a little TOO early. To each their own and I'm a guy that absolutely loves Christmas. Anyways, it's nowhere near that time yet, we need to get into this week's topics at hand. What do we have? We have softball action, The Situation dancing, bashing my Jeep Cherokee into a moving truck, The Last Song review, flag football, and a whole lot more.

I've written a lot over the years how I'm not the world's greatest driver. I'm sure I'm in the bottom percentage out there and my buddies will back my claims up of that. Still, I (knock on wood) haven't had wrecks or at least of the major kind. Recently while in the mean streets of Wallace, West Virginia, it went down. I was backing out of the outfield side of the softball field road and had a blind spot. I didn't think much of it and just kept backing like I owned the place. Behind me was a small and narrow road. I hear a horn blow and the next I know I'm backing straight into this truck going down the road, tearing up his passenger side door and side. I ended up messing up my bumper pretty good, part of the quarter panel, and tore my light casing up.

It was all my fault and I couldn't pull some BS lie to act like it wasn't at the time. That's not my style anyways. Luckily, the dude I hit was drama free and there were no issues. We were in an area with no cell service. Yes, those exist still, imagine that. We had to knock on a local's door to use his house phone in order to phone the accident in. We sort of joked about it and not long after, Cork drives down for the softball game and probably knew right away what happened. He wasn't the least bit surprised. The good thing is that is why you pay insurance for, right? I can't cry over it, it is what it is and it's going to be fixed in no time for not much cost to me. Also, my ride is already paid for in full, so I'll just look at it as an extra monthly payment. I'm not in the market this soon, but am at least looking around for another ride down the line. If you had to put a gun to my head right now, I'd pick a blacked out Tahoe, but we'll see what happens.

I called Whitney on my way home to let her know what was up since I was heading to her house later that night. I told her I had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that I played softball great that day. The bad was that I backed into a moving truck. She probably just shook her head at me and like Cork, knew that it wouldn't be any shock to anyone. Back to softball though, if you've been reading along in the blogs for a while, you'll know the last Saturday of August we venture way out to Wallace. It's not really that far away from home, but it just seems like it is once you drive in that direction. It's an annual tradition for Cork's family to have a big reunion and to get the ball field rocking. I always go and have a blast, plus the food they have is top quality. As an added bonus, the church next to the field had a thing going on that evening where they had a band going. I was playing center field and right behind me the band was jamming as we played. That was a pretty good touch and I was rocking out while playing defense. And another mark on my side is that I got on base every time over the span of two games, not too shabby. It must've been all those wins that Gutta Connection put up over the summer that had Cork and myself doing our thing.

I've never watched much Dancing With The Stars before, but it seems that I may jump into it soon. Why's that? The Situation of Jersey Shore fame is supposedly going to be on the latest cast and you know I'm all about that. I'll give it a try for sure just due to him being on it to see what happens. That's also a great marketing tool the show did to offer him a spot because that will potentially get a lot of Shore viewers who might not have watched before (such as myself) to tune in. Some thought that the show was going to be a quick fad and fizzle out quickly, but it's still going strong and the ratings are very high for MTV standards. Season 3 is being filmed as we speak while Season 2 is currently being shown on Thursday nights. The Miami season that's on now has been really good in my opinion, but I know I'm biased anyways. It's a big hit between all of the Lobstah guys (http://ballsempire.com) which features some of the internet's biggest celebrities such as DerekHood, Blahah, DirtyKash, Corndog, Wilbur, The_Freak, and ManDingo just to name a few.

Movie review time. Friday night I went the chick flick route and I've always admitted I'm not above seeing those. Whitney picked The Last Song out of the Redbox machine and I knew she had been wanting to see it, so I was down. For those who are wondering which one this is, it's Miley Cyrus' recent movie. As a sidenote, how can you beat Redbox for just $1? You can't. Well, the only other option is to burn movies from the internet and go that route, but this is option B and it's really handy. I was pleasantly surprised by how good this movie was as it ended up receiving a really high grade from me after the credits rolled. Ironically, as it has happened a lot this summer, IMDB didn't agree with our thoughts. My final grade of this one? I went super high with an 8.9 and feel it's that good. Whitney agreed with my rating there. IMDB? 3.8. Ouch! It's also a big tearjerker if you're one of the weak at heart. If you've seen it, let me know what you thought, one way or another.

"Fly around mothas!" If you keep up with the Shinnston Flag Football League, you'll know those famous words from Commish Bart. The season is underway and I've been jacked up for this for quite a while. Well, the regular season doesn't start until September 5th (Happy Birthday to The Governor himself, Clark Riley), but everyone is zoned in and ready to rock. We've already been through mini-camps and this past weekend we had our preseason week of scrimmages. It's really organized and has talent all across the league that would open some eyes. A ton of the local legends are involved in this thing from roughly the ages of 20 through nearly 40. Our Gypsy Hill Giants are the oldest team in the league, but we're disciplined, have a great line, and still bring athleticism. I've written my season preview that is on the website, so I won't break things down here as well. As I said there, as far as my side goes, offense I can take it or leave it. I'll play some sets, but defense is my home. I've been playing safety and can't wait to roam the middle and stop the bombs from coming anywhere near my territory.

This past Sunday had a packed house at Timbertown Stadium in Lumberport. All teams were present for the preseason battles and it was intense. We had two scrimmages in our Giants jerseys, decked out from head to toe. As my softball strategy, win or lose, I want to look the best out there and our team looks sharp if I must say so myself. Farris ended up with a concussion, it gets fierce down there on the line in the trenches. That's why I stay out of that area as a little dude, I'll keep the secondary on lock. No major injuries thus far though and that's always a great start. Our first scrimmage we beat the kids from Bridgeport. They are probably the youngest team in the league and are a new addition to the league this season. We played excellent in that one and put up a shutout. The second game we played another youthful team (I guess every team is youthful to us, but these are the two youngest out there) and ended up getting beat by the North View Lions. I see a ton of promise from this team. They have that swagger, a bit of ego to go with it and they have been calling people out on the message board. It's good times, but I give my props to those guys, some of my guys I had in Liberty, home of ManDingo, when I subbed back in the day. They have a few guys who can flat out fly, we'll see what happens.

I'm just about done rambling on flag ball. This Sunday, we play the Raiders at 2:30, the second game of the day. They feature one of the best players in the league in Harmer. He had some awesome plays in Sunday's scrimmages, so he's going to be a force to be reckoned with. This team is quick and are manned by a few really good receivers with height to put our shorter secondary to the test. Again, for a cheap plug, visit our league's sites. First, we have the home page at http://sites.google.com/site/shinnstonflagfootballleague. Then we have the message board which has been rockin': http://shinnstonflagleague.proboards.com. Visit them both, you'll not be disapppointed, I can promise you that.

I sent out a tweet and asked my buddies if they had any input this week for the blog. I always like to get people involved just to switch up things and go different directions. We have a few guys who made the worthy cut and here are their exact words..

Answer: "Fun fact of the day. Answer has been to 5 of RAW's 900 episodes. Calculate that percent if u can or want." If you're lost, Monday was the 900th episode of WWE RAW for the wrestling folk out there. http://twitter.com/TheAnswer310

Walz: "Since college football starts tomorrow, throw this quote into the blog from me. I've heard WVU fans say their team will win 10 games this year. Those dumbasses are about as sharp as a pound of wet liver!" As a guy that doesn't root for WVU football, I actually think they're going to be pretty good this year. The running back crew is one of the best in the country I think and the defense all returns. Not sure I'd go 10 wins good though, we'll see. http://twitter.com/MWALZ9

Cork: This one I absolutely love. This is a tweet from Cork as he was venturing the mean streets of Clarksburg, Stealey section for this. The locals, you know the tobacco store that is located in the building that was a former house? The one near Dairy Queen and Vito's. "Taken in Clarksburg tonight. This shows in more ways than one why WV is last in everything. EGADS!!" http://twitpic.com/2k3r1r http://twitter.com/corkzillaWVU

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: An oldie but goodie. This never gets old to me and I'm sure you've seen it before, but you know you want to watch it again. A simple punch to the face.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. For a little random info, the date today is the only time it will happen. Yep, it's 90210 Day. I'm talking about the original series, not the most recent chapter, which I watched as well, but you can't compare to the original. Still lost? 9-2-10, September 2, 2010. In honor, I'll do my best Brandon Walsh impersonation by going back to 1990, greasing back my hair, and acting like a rich boy.

2. I'm itching for a new video game to buy. Why I'm bringing this up in here, who knows, but I like to just ramble even if it's to myself. I know for sure Call of Duty: Black Ops will be in my hand on 11-9-10. That's not even a debate. I may get another to hold me over and have my eye on FIFA Soccer 11 on September 28th. My theory is that there are rarely any bad soccer or hockey games. I'm not a huge "fan" of either sport as far as being dedicated, but video game wise you can't go wrong.

3. Let's end with some more fun facts. Apparently termites eat wood twice as fast when they listen to heavy metal. People really studied that and got paid for it? Amazing. Another? In New York City, approximately 1600 people are bitten by other humans each year, Tyson style. Ok, one more. Rats and horses can't vomit. You heard it here first people, go educate the world and I'll see you at the next blog!

Edge Boggess Spearing From The Boardwalk

2010-08-18T17:35:00.001-04:00

Thanks to MrsAnswer for this week's blog title, I dig it a lot. Since I'm an admitted wrestling geek who follows it way too much, MrsAnswer thought this was fitting when she saw my name and then put that connection to it one day. As usual, we like when the readers submit things for the blog to give us some ideas. If you're not a wrestling fan, and that's basically all of you, then just keep reading and forget what I just said there.

Well well well, it's been a while and I know that. We're ready to rock and now that I'm back to work, it's time for a different schedule. I'm pumped to have things cool off a bit, but it still doesn't seem like anything is cooling considering it's early August. This is the earlier I've went to work in the year, but no complaints. I like my job a lot actually, minus waking up early, but if that's my only problem, then I have it made in the shade. TheAnswer said the other day that "I'm about ready for a trip to the Madhouse of Bird33". You can visit him at http://www.twitter.com/TheAnswer310. When people speak, I have to pay attention because this has been a drought. What does this blog have in store for everyone? You get another beach trip rundown, a movie review, flag football, CD reviews, fantasy football, dirty boardwalk time, and who knows what else is gonna go down. With that said, let's get right to it.

I must be a beach bum this year because this is the first time I've ever made two trips during the same summer. Back to Ocean City, Maryland it was. You really can't beat the drive there. 6-6½ hours is all it takes, so you're not miserable driving that distance. Plus, I'm a big fan of OC's setup and know my way around there well, so it's a winning choice and I recommend it if you've never been. For what it's worth, Cork says it is his favorite beach. Along for the ride on this trip was Whitney as it was just the two of us. I did the driving and don't really mind doing that for road trips. It's easier to ride, but I made it safe and sound. Whitney either trusts my driving by now or just accepts that I'll never be great at it, so she's locked in.

Riding along was of course our boy TomTom and Sirius radio. We had a nice mix of radio on the way down and back home. I got a big dose of my rap in, you know I need that on my road trips or I might not be able to function, Hip Hop Nation 40 and Shade 45 to be exact. Also in the rotation was Sirius Hits 1, which is a Top 40 type station. We even threw in some of The Highway in there, channel 60, country redneck style. Yes, I know I don't do hardly any of that, but some I can handle for periods, no biggie there.

As a side fact, it probably wasn't the safest thing that I brought wrestling DVDs along for the ride for when Whitney would fall asleep, but I was prepared. These were the documentary pieces more so than actual matches, so that made the drive safer than the alternative. One of my favorite wrestling DVDs of all time is The Rise and Fall of ECW. I'm obsessed by the original ECW as most know and it's probably my favorite period of wrestling ever, both to attend and watch. I watched all of it on the drive down. One of Cork's tweets while I was making the drive was this gem: "it scares me that you are driving and texting AND watching a dvd, hah". To visit Cork's Twitter, here you go: http://twitter.com/corkzillaWVU. On the way back home, I watched Straight Shootin' with Ron Killings, the artist known now as R-Truth. Probably not the safest thing to play with your phone while driving and watching DVDs, but there ya go, it made for nice drives. Plus the road trip I had random tweets and pics added on out of pure boredom: http://twitter.com/Bird33WV. Seeing a trend with all of these Twitter plugs? That's what I do.

Also along the way, it's never a bad time to do the license plate game on a road trip. It's simple and something about it, even if it is pointless, gets me interested every single time. I found a good app on my phone for it, so that was just an excuse for me to use it on the setup. The total number up and back that I counted ended up being 30 total states. This thing doesn't have Canadian provinces listed, but I did see some of those of course. Everyone has a different style with this it seems, so here's the deal and it might create some discussion. When you are on a trip, do parked cars count? I've heard both opinions on this, but I personally count the parked action too. Ozzie, I know agrees with me on this. The way I look at it, the obscure states are tough to find anyways, so you have to go that extra effort, even looking when you're not in the ride. Some of my favorites on this trip included: Colorado, Maine (Blahah territory), Minnesota, and Washington (Wilbur style). Hawaii was nowhere to be found, imagine that.

The weather on this trip was downright amazing. Once again, like the trip I had to OC a few weeks before this one, we had zero rain during the daytime. That's the most important time for the beach obviously, so we were out there doing our thing with no worries of rain. As Walz would say on his tweets, we showed the waves who was boss. Check out Walz's stuff at http://www.twitter.com/MWALZ9. I like cooler water, but this week seemed much cooler than the other recent trip I made. I liked it though, but one day a lifeguard said the water was 66 degrees. I believed it too, but it didn't keep us out of it by any means. The day after that, things warmed up in the water and it was fine. Cool, verging on cold, but that's definitely more refreshing than pool water that is as warm as wizz or however the saying goes.

Josh and Cill came down the day after we got there and stayed in the same hotel. We got to hang with them on the beach everyday and hit up some places with them at night. It worked out great and we had a blast with those two, so no complaints here. One of my favorite things to do at the beach is just to people watch on the boardwalk. Luckily, we were right on the boardwalk this time. Neither of us had ever stayed on the boardwalk before, so we were down to try it out. The place we stayed at I'd highly recommend. Safari Motel on 13th Street, it's oceanfront and was super clean. The staff went out of their way to make sure we had a great stay. If you know of OC, we were at the place with the infamous gorilla on the 4th floor balcony. That's the floor we stayed on, so that's the balcony we got to rock and people watch. We didn't see Ronnie roid rage and claim out, "One shot kid! One shot!", but it was still an entertaining experience. Speaking of the Shore clan, when we had our Shore shirts on one day, so many people kept asking us if we were from Jersey. You couldn't tell we sounded like hicks? Who knows, but we got a kick out of that.

I'll end with eats and I'm always down for some quality eating. As usual on this trip, I had to hit up my favorite place there, The Bonfire. I've talked about that before. Another place we enjoyed was Yokozuna, not to be confused with the former WWE Champion, rest in peace. This was a sushi house and all four of us hit this one up. The prices really weren't that much crazier than home, and I've quickly turned into a big sushi fan. This place is at the Gold Coast Mall, 114th Street. I'd recommend each of these. Those were my big two places, but we didn't have any bad food the entire stay. Thanks to Whitney's Grandma Lil, she loaded us up with tons of homemade pepperoni rolls. That was our beach food everyday and we could've sold those things down there and made a killing. The fellow West Virginians know what I'm talking about there. Mix all of that in with some dirty, greasy boardwalk food and you feel like a fat boy. Big props to Candy Kitchen. These stores are like a Waffle House in the south, you see them every two steps. Between the four of us, they loaded up on business that we gave them on the trip. Candy is one of my weaknesses, but I could have more addicting vices.

Movie time and this week we feature Charlie St Cloud. Yes, not a typical blood and guts guy movie, but I was down, so I went to see the action with Whitney. I wasn't sure if it'd be much of a movie or not, but you never know till you give it a try. Surprisingly, it ended up being a good movie. It was a very slow movie as far as movement, but that was probably my only complaint. The first part could've been a little shorter, but the last half hour was great. I'll warn people that it's a tearjerker, so this one may test your abilities to hold it in. IMDB at the moment has it at a rough 4.8. Dang, hard judges out there! Aside from Efron as the main star for the reason the chicks want to go see it, you also had Ray Liotta and Kim Basinger as other names. I also was surprised at Efron's age. Dude is gonna be 23 in October. My final grade? I'm dropping a big 7.7 on your heads for this movie, it's a good watch.

Football is here, so I'm going to break things down into several subtopics. First, we'll tackle (no pun intended) some flag style. That's right, the Shinnston Flag Football League returns! For those in the league last year, you know it was a great time. Plus, we also did our thing on the website as well as the message board. I'm all about message board ramblings, so that has me written all over it. This season, I signed my contract with the Gypsy Hill Giants. You can't go wrong with a team based out of Gypsy Hill, that equals toughness times twenty. The G-Men have a solid roster forming, so it should be a fun year. I played for the Green Machine last season. We had some crazy athleticism out there, at one point having the most college athletes, but it didn't mesh well and we got rocked, I won't lie. The crew we have this year, I'm just as excited about. Myself personally, I'm just ready to rock out some secondary play. This old man still has his quickness and endurance, hopefully that sticks with me for a bit longer. It's always fun to see who has zero cardio shape, even though they may have the athleticism, this league will test those types. I like playing defense much more than offense. It's definitely a speed game, but our lineman aren't left out in the hunt. If you want to get in the trenches, these guys are bringing some serious punishment. They literally get to bust each other up and blood will be a flying. Hopefully this year doesn't have many injuries because last season had quite a few, namely Big E Ferris' ACL tearing which was rough to see in person. Most of you have seen updated through Facebook already thanks to my posts and Commissioner Bart doing his thing, but I'll be sure to provide commentary as we go. Tickets are already on sale now. Come see the games at Lumberport Middle School's football field, it's Timbertown ready. Visit the league website at https://sites.google.com/site/shinnstonflagfootballleague and our message board at http://shinnstonflagleague.proboards.com. If that's not enough, we even have a Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/SFLTweet2010.

Speaking of football, let's now focus on fantasy football. This year I'm going to be in three fantasy leagues. I don't like being in a ton, that way you can give focus to just a few and really concentrate. The guys that end up doing that, in my opinion, don't put as much effort into the individual league if it's too much to handle. On the NFL side of things, I'm in the infamous A#FL that consists of 18 of the internet's finest. This is ran by Commish Uncle Wilbur as he's one of the quality people out there. Wilbur is also a regular reader and contributor to this very blog, so it's much appreciated. That league is already drafted and I'll post my roster in a second, not that you care. The second league I'm in is Shinnston Fantasy Football. Our draft for that is on Monday, September 6th. This is a super rare case that I won't be watching wrestling live as it happens. I know, shocker to anyone who knows me. Life isn't easy sometimes, but we all have sacrifices to make. That is a 10-man league and we draft that one in person, ran by Commish Sweet P.

To give a rundown of A#FL, here is your list of internet celebrities and local legends making up this beast of a crew. In no particular order, we have Kasher (Canada), Neon (Canada), TMac (Canada), Blahah the Great (Maine), Trev (WV), Posey (WV), Duce (Philly), Cork (WV), MrsAnswer (PA, formerly Vegas), The_Freak (MD), Don-G (Canada), TheAnswer (PA, formerly Vegas), Walz (WV), Wilbur (the state of Washington), DerekHood (Arkansas), Bono (Houston), Corndog (WV), and myself. We always joke that our online leagues are West Virginia and Canadian dudes, mixed in with people from all areas scattered in between. Also, our leagues are competitive, so you better be on top of your game to win these things, it's not for the weak at heart.

And now.. yourrrr 2010 Cincinnati Celtics! Yes, the A#FL comes from the AFL and our team names are based on former AFL league teams. I knew you were wondering. Remember, it's a deep league so you gotta dig after a while late in the rounds to show you know your stuff in order to succeed. The third league I'm in is our college keeper league and it's pretty intense. Duce Heisman Trophy League is what that one runs as, but I'll talk about that at a later time. Anywhere, here are your Celts!

QB: Tom Brady - New England (keeper from 2009-2010)
QB: Matt Leinart - Arizona
QB: Jimmy Clausen - Carolina
RB: Beanie Wells - Arizona (keeper)
RB: Matt Forte - Chicago (keeper)
RB: Marshawn Lynch - Buffalo
RB: Glen Coffee - San Francisco (retired at age 23?!)
WR: Mike Sims-Walker - Jacksonville
WR: TJ Houshmanzadeh - Seattle
WR: Demaryius Thomas - Denver
WR: Brandon Gibson - St Louis
TE: Kellen "Soldjah" Winslow - Tampa Bay
TE: Anthony Fasano - Miami
K: Stephen Gostkowski - New England
D: Tampa Bay

You want a few CD reviews? Ok, since you asked nicely, here you go..

Eminem: Recovery. This couldn't possibly be any worse than Em's last release. His last one, we'll pretend that one didn't even exist. Now he's back with a vengeance and this one is impressive in my mind. Lyrically, Em speaks it this time instead of going with the comedy route and tells a good story on his recovery. I'm not sure there's any I disliked much on this, so you can't go wrong. Ones to get are Talkin' 2 Myself, Going Through Changes which features a mix of Ozzy, No Love with Lil Wayne, and a slow down with Rihanna that has been relased, Love The Way You Lie. We're giving this two thumbs up, a nice "recovery" from that last CD which was garbage.

Nas & Damian Marley: Distant Relatives. Going into getting this CD, I was confused at this mix of talent. I'll be honest, I know basically nothing on Damian Marley other than who he is and having heard just a few songs. Nas on the other hand, one of the best that has done it if you ask me. Apparently from the Damian fans, he's solid too. It seems like a weird concept on paper, but it actually worked very well. I enjoyed this change of pace here and they fit in together. How about trying to find Leaders, As We Enter, and Count Your Blessings. Nas kills it on his verses of Count Your Blessings.

Rick Ross: Teflon Don. This is solid here, although I've heard some of my buddies say he comes off too soft in this one. He's cheesy, but plays his "character" great I think, even if he's been called out for it numerous times. I still like his jams. Every song features someone with him, so not sure how I totally feel about that, but it works for the most part on this album. Who is on this to give some examples? Jay-Z, T.I., Gucci Mane, Jadakiss, Kanye, Cee-Lo, Ne-Yo, Trey Songz, Diddy, Styles P, Drake, and Raphael Saadiq. That's power. Ones I like best on this are: Tears of Joy with Cee-Lo, Live Fast, Die Young featuring Kanye, Free Mason with Jay-Z, and the banger known as Blowin' Money Fast that you've all heard with Styles P, "I think I'm big Meech Larry Hoover, whipping work, halleujah.."

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: We go to DerekHood for this week's submission. If you're an internet freak, you're familiar with the "no homo" comment and how you use that line. If you're not, then maybe this video won't be as funny to you, but this one goes with the "no racial". Good stuff.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Did you know that Brett Favre cooked honey chicken tonight? Did you know he tied his shoes four minutes ago? Did you know he sat on his couch? I crack up how ESPN reports every single move this guy does and I'm a person that doesn't mind Favre. Corndog is pumped up though like no other. I think the old man still has game left, just don't update me every 2.3 seconds.

2. Polls show that 40% of dog and cat owners carry a picture of their pet in their wallet.. In Los Angeles, there are more cars than people.. An average person laughs 15 times per day.

3. Did You Know? In the epic movie Scarface, the f-bomb is thrown a total of 207 times. That's an average of 1.22 per minute. And my theory as always here? The censored version of Scarface and uncensored versions are two completely different things. The censored version doesn't exist to me.

"A Mouthful of Gravel or Shit"

2010-07-23T12:12:00.001-04:00

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.

Real World: West Virginia, July 4th Bash For Sodahead13!

2010-07-07T18:23:00.003-04:00

Maybe I just take breaks between blogs so I have a lot of stories to write about. Who knows, but that sounds like a good enough explanation. July 4th has passed and technically, over half the year is over with around this time of year. That means it's the prime time of summer and we've been getting scorched. Get your sunblock ready because this is gonna be a ride along the road of a variety of topics. What are you getting in this edition? Here's a quick preview: Two movie reviews of Valentine's Day and Eclipse, Tosh.0, Real World: New Orleans, two July 4th celebration bashes, Sodahead13, UFC 116, and whatever else we deem worthy. Away we go!

I'm going to start off with TV action. Come to think of it, I write a lot about TV stuff, guess I have too much time on my hands. I think that's a good thing though, it could be much worse. We're going the Comedy Central route. For being a guy that likes to goof off and laugh, I surprisingly don't watch a lot of that channel. Some things I will, but it's surely not in my regular rotation like it is to some other people. This one comes to the blog with a recommendation from Abby and Pat and it's one you have to put on the DVR circuit. Tosh.0. Daniel Tosh is the host if you know of him and the concept of this show is right up my alley. It uses a lot of internet clips and spins it in a hilarious way. Some of the things on here are over the top, but that makes it great. Think of a web version of Talk Soup. Why didn't I get to this job first? Each week they also do a segment showing a web redemption. These will feature popular internet vids we've all seen and watched a zillion times of people failing. Tosh brings these people in and recreates the vid and gives them a chance to make good of it. There's been a lot, one of the better ones was having Afro Ninja appear. You all know him, the dude who tries the backflip with his nunchucks and gets mangled. Wednesday nights, 10:30 EST.

Let's now jump from TV and hit the movie scene. Don't worry, we'll get back to the TV talk before we're finished up. Two movies to talk about and give my review, both of which receive big time grades from me. The first was a rental as I didn't see it when it came out in theaters, Valentine's Day. Yes, a chick flick, but you know my theory on those. Maybe it's not super manly of me to admit, but I don't mind a good chick flick at all, I'm down for that. The cast of this movie alone is pretty impressive as there are names upon names. Who? Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, George Lopez, Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah, Jacob of Twilight fame, Taylor Swift, Shirley MacLaine, Julia Roberts, and that's just some. The storyline of this I thought was really good too. You had a mix of things going on with all of these characters and they all got nice time throughout the movie. I'm going with a high grade on this one. IMDB at the moment has it at a 5.7. I'm going much higher and Whitney would agree. How about 8.5 Hollywood stars out of 10?

We now hit up the theater. On Monday afternoon, Whitney and myself trekked it to our mall to see the action known as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I'm a person that has wrote about the books before and even the movies. The books were great. You may enjoy them even if it's not a topic you'd think you would be into. I thought the same, I will call it the Harry Potter theory. The Harry trailers are great as well if you haven't seen yet if you're into that type of thing. Now onto Eclipse, not to get sidetracked. I'm going to start off by saying this is the best of the three released movies so far of the Twilight group, at least in my opinion. The second I didn't fully see though as I fell asleep through a lot of it, but did wake up for the ending scenes. This one is legit and even if you haven't read the books, you'd be able to follow along for this movie. The fight scenes I thought were very well done. Outside of the wolves looking cheesy to me, everything else was smooth as all gets. A woman answered her cell phone during the later part of this movie and people weren't happy. She soon told the person she'd call them later, smart move. Her phone almost got smashed into pieces. Also, if you've yet to see the Jersey Shore parody of this, you have to search for that video, it's awesome. July 29th, Season 2 of Jersey Shore! Anyways, for some reason this one got ripped apart on IMDB, a 4.5 as we type this up. In my ranks? I'm going to actually double this thing up. Yes, I'm not kidding. We're going 9 bloody vampires out of 10, go see it.

How'd the fireworks of July 4th treat everyone? Since I'm in a booming metropolis, we not only had one, but two fireworks specials in my area. The population is so huge, that's the only way they were able to do it. Friday night, the crew rolled up to Nutter Fort, home of Cork and fellow internet celebrity ManDingo. The name of the event? The Cork and Kristin Rife Nutter Fort July 4th Extravaganza. It's never a bad time when you get the gang together, mix that in with some great food and you're set. I was there to retain my cornhole title from last year that Spank and I won. Due to that, we rode through the streets of Nutter Fort on a golden float and hoisted our trophies for the world to see. This year? Spank went bigger city and went to the Bucs game to watch the fireworks, so I was in need of a partner. In steps Big Zo Daddy, always one that will get the party laughing good, so we became the Italian machismo as we teamed up together. We didn't play bad, but not anything worth writing home about. After the loss, I walked down to the park which is only a little over a block away from Cork's house which makes it easy. It was a madhouse down there with booths upon booths of vendors and people running galore. Our mission was to hit up the funnel cake stand. Can you ever pass up a funnel cake? Nope, you can't. These people made a killing! Not only the funnel cake people, but every other booth was jammed packed. How much? $5 per cake. Ouch! Since it was a special day, you pay that for the cake and get on with it. The crazy thing is that you waited in a line to pay and then after paying you were sent to another line to pick it up. It was a good 30-45 minutes waiting on that beast, but yum!

As we walked back, the fireworks had started up. No hands were blown off that I know of, so chalk one up for the good guys this year. Last year at Nutter Fort, the fireworks side of things, everyone was a bit disappointed about. This year, upon hearing the criticism of the year before, they brought their game and flexed their guns. A very solid display and everyone went home, happy due to it. The weird thing and maybe since it's more city limit type thing, I didn't hear hardly any redneck shotguns going off during the night. You hear that a lot closer to my town though, but more on that in a second. The night was ended with beer pong festivities. I played a game, but since I don't drink at all, it was kind of pointless for me since there were no consequences to myself. It wasn't like my basketball shooting ability, I wasn't anything special during this and I'll retire from the sport after one game. However, the big war was Cork and Trev teaming up against Ozzie and Matty Cakes. That was epic stuff while the fans watched as you had Cork and Trev on fire for a while and doing some major trash talk. Then you'd have the other side get on a run and out would come the infamous Ozzie Dance. You know it's a serious series of games when you have the trash talk on one side and the dancing on the other. Needless to say, the fans watching were the winners here. Cork and Trev were on a massive run to where they were almost unbeatable and then Ozzie and Matty Cakes pulled the rug under their feet to swoop in for the series win. They are this year's winners and will ride in the parade. All in all, a great time and the blog would once again like to thank Cork and Kristin for throwing the bash.

If Friday's fireworks weren't enough, how about Sunday? That was the actual July 4th day, so the pressure was on. Nutter Fort set the bar and basically told Shinnston to beat that one. Since Shinnston is now considered unsafe and ran by terrorists, anything was bound to happen on this night. By the way, that's a little inside thing that nobody outside of our area is going to pick up on. Fellow blog readers from lands of afar, I always say, there's something in here for everyone. The good of this night was that it was walking distance. Our fireworks are always in the mean streets of East Shinnston, my territory and my house is about a block or two away from the park. Yep, you get a great view without even walking out to the park from where we are. Another good thing, four houses down was Whitney's family bash, so we had two spots within a few steps from each other. You can't beat that with a stick. I may have ate the best ribs of my entire life that night, thanks to some mix of them being soaked in Coke and then the ultimate was put on, Sweet Baby Ray's. This night also featured cornhole action and we had some great battles. I teamed up with Big Ev and during one game against Simzilla and Ski, we were up 18-0 before we pulled the win. Another game we were down 19-9 (playing to 21 of course) and came back to get the epic comeback. I think after we stuffed ourselves with food, our cornhole mentality of wanting to slice the opponents' throats died down a bit. We started out as Kobe and ended up as LeBron I guess you could say.

The fireworks in Shinnston are almost always good. I think that's where we spend a lot of the town budget on. As of a few years ago, I'd definitely say that as we had very little, but our park is pretty nice and then we finally got our new basketball courts a while back that we've desperately been in need of 20 years prior. I'm giving the slight nod this year in the battle of fireworks to Shinnston, but Nutter Fort put up the valiant fight this year as compared to next. For what it's worth, the town of Enterprise didn't get blown into little pieces this year either like it did last time around. Word has it that they may be doing it there this weekend? Ouch. Should be interesting. Anyways, like we thanked the Nutter Fort bunch at Cork and Kristin's bash, we'd like to thank the Boggess and Southern clans for doing it up large in East Shinnston.

Let's flip the switch back to TV. I told you we'd be here soon enough and you were patient to wait for it. Real World: New Orleans started up last week and after the first episode, it's time to rock. It can't be any worse than last year, so that's a plus if nothing else. I'll give a real quick character analysis not to bore everyone with. This is a show that I watch every single season and still haven't lost my luster to want to stop doing so. I'll list them in the order they were presented on the first episode. Knight (his last name, but he wants to go by it) is 23 and from Wisconsin. He's a hockey player who got hurt and then addicted to pain pills. He's been through drug rehab. That is a great mix for a Real World character, he should fit in just fine for our weekly TV watching. Then we get Jemmye, who is 21 and from Mississippi. Yes, it's a girl's name, but it's pronounced like the name Jimmy. Strange. She has a crazy accent which I love, but the rest of her, thumbs down. She, at least on first appearance, is the slutty chick of this bunch and has been called out for that already. She's also been called white trash and has her unknown parts pierced is what I'll say. McKenzie, 21 from Florida. She's the typical beach girl. She's cute, but seems like a cookie cutter blonde to me. I don't know much on her actual character thus far into the season though.

Next up is Preston, 22 from Boston. He's the gay dude of the bunch and has been getting reviews online for looking a whole lot like Rajon Rondo. I'd agree to that too. Sometime this season, apparently he wizzes on Ryan's toothbrush, scrubs it around the toilet bowl, and then puts it back. Ryan gets sick and then it breaks bad? I dunno on that, just internet rumors I've heard. That's messed up, but again, that's awesome TV. Ashley, 23, also from Boston. She's originally from Jersey. She's a basketball chick, sells power tools, and has Jolie lips. She's not blow away gorgeous, but she's cute on a scale that she seems like a regular girl hanging out. Eric, 24 and from Virginia. He's the grandpa of this group. He's an international diplomat that is part of security, whatever that entails. He's also supposedly a comedian, but early on hasn't been funny. He hasn't generated a huge character yet either. Sahar, 21 from Michigan. She's never lived away and is one that has somewhat of a man back home. That basically means she'll cheat on him and it'll be crying on the phone with this guy. Those types of characters are brutal, but she's my favorite one so far based on looks if nothing else. Last but not least, Ryan, 21 from Arizona. He's a hair stylist and has already created so much hate that it's been awesome for TV. He bounces off the walls more than I do, way hyper, and has been drugged out before. On the first day, he already had the house fired up with him. He acted like a baby because he didn't want to stay with Knight, bashed Preston for being gay, and called Jimmy a white trash bum in other terms. Jump in on this season, it's a must!

It's past the fact, but UFC 116 was awesome. If you saw my FB posts during the show, it was in my opinion, one of the better all around UFC shows in quite some time. There wasn't a bad match on the show in my mind and there were three that ended up being off the chain good. The main event was why everyone got it, but it was only the third best fight on my ranks and that's saying quite a lot because the main was amazing. Fight of the night to me was my boy Chris "The Crippler" Leben going at it against Sexyama. These guys went at it like no other. The crazy thing was that Leben did this fight on less than 2 WEEKS notice. That shows how nuts Leben is and he won this thing on top. Afterwards, he called out none other than The Axe Murderer himself, Wanderlei Silva. I'm not quite sure that's the smart move to make, but I'm a huge fan of both of those dudes and want to see this fight happen. Another that could've been fight of the night was Stephan Bonnar being yet another bloody mess by winning against Krzysztof Soszynski. Bonnar really is the American Psycho. This dude takes a pounding and keeps going forward like no other. Then we go to the main. Lesnar was absolutely mangled in the 1st Round, taking a crushing and if it weren't Lesnar, it would've been called. 2nd Round, Carwin was gassed and then got locked up in a submission and it was all but over with. Carwin got some major respect after this one, but Lesnar shows again that he's a beast. Time for Velasquez/Lesnar.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Sodahead13 makes it on Tosh.0. In this one, he's chugging his Coke. One weird looking dude and his expressions and saying are quality. "That was Sodahead13 and he likes to crank music and chug soda." Ok, here we go. "YEEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHYUH!" It wouldn't let me embed from that vid, so here's just the regular link, click on this thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLosTy6nOj8&feature=related

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Gutter Connection softball, only a few more weeks left of play for some of Shinnston's finest. I'll be sure to keep everyone up to date as I have all year long, with FB and especially Twitter. Yep, time for another cheap Twitter plug: http://twitter.com/Bird33WV.

2. Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory, Season 3: Monday, July 12th on MTV. Of course, that's on wrestling night for me, so it'll have to take the DVR seat because nothing trumps WWE RAW for me on Monday TV. Yes, I realize I'm a dork, but to me, that's what Mondays are all about.

3. As if the world hasn't already been waiting for it, both Mike Tyson and LeBron James finally have Twitter accounts. Get on that.

Hangin' With The King in Charleston

2010-06-22T20:24:00.002-04:00

Hola to all who are sitting around their computers and reading this action. We're due for a post and I know that, but with the few week absence, we have a ton of good stories to tell. Quickly, our stories this time include the Charleston trip with Whitney and Corndog, hanging with Jerry "The King" Lawler, Cupcake Pebbles, World Cup, vuvuzelas, Gutter Connection, podcasts, iPod games, Lakers/Celtics, possibly the best CD of 2010, and a ton more! Gear up, here we go for this ride!

I'm going to start off road trip style. As you all know by now, these blogs are easy to write up when a road trip is concerned. This one takes us to scenic Charleston, West Virginia. The reason we went was to see a West Virginia Power baseball game. If you remember from last summer, this was the team that we saw last summer where Corndog and myself got to meet and hang with none other than Mr. Belding of Saved By The Bell fame. This year another celebrity was involved, wrestling legend Jerry "The King" Lawler, but more on him in a bit. First, I have to set the tone, right? Along for the ride was Whitney and then we were to meet up with fellow internet celebrity Corndog. You know a good time is about to ensue when Corndog is involved. Whitney had never met him in person before, so she was in for a treat as Corndog is one of the true good guys out there. Plus, it doesn't hurt that he makes our redneck accents sound tame and he's a funny cat on top of that. He's a big goofball like myself.

With our Lobstah message board crew, which is my #1 bookmark that I check every day about four zillion times, Corndog has an idea he wants to start up. I'm not sure how well it'll work, but I think several of us would be on board. His idea is to have a Lobstah cheap t-shirt trade of sorts where you send out random shirts true to your own area out to others in the crew. Just off the top of my head, and the locals bear with me a second while I go through a few things for the internet guys, I think these guys would be interested right away: DerekHood, Wilbur, TheAnswer, ManDingo, Walz, and Blahah. I'd also guess that blog residents The_Freak and Kasher would be on board possibly. Corndog hooked me up good with a "Jersey Shore Fist Pump Champ" shirt that I'll proudly rock. In turn, I came in with goodies too as I brought in four Goodwill shirts that I got earlier that week in Corndog's size just because they are out there and weird. One was for some ATV run in our area, another was a challenger's division of Little League around here that is the handicapped league in Bridgeport, a book shirt that said something about just saying no and it was just strange, and lastly I had a local basketball shirt in the mix. Maybe I'm easily entertained, but I like going to Goodwill every so often to get random shirts to cut up to workout or play ball in. You never know what kind of reactions you'll get wearing these shirts. A new one of mine for example? It says Old Bats up top and ladies softball at the bottom with girls crossed out. In the middle is a logo of two bats crossing and a walker next to it. On the back, #6, Bill Russell style. Yep, I have no problems wearing abnormal stuff out like this in public.

We drive to Appalachian Power Park, which again is beautiful. Another trip may be scheduled next month. We arrived by the Corndog Navigation System as he got us right on point. Outside of that part, TomTom was my buddy. While at the game, we at first wanted to meet up with Lawler. I'm not a huge autograph buff, but since it was a bit different, I had him sign a baseball for me. Corn steps up first in line and chit chats it up. First off, Lawler seemed like he really wanted to be there and wasn't being miserable as a guest. He gave everyone time to talk and is super personal. Corndog told Lawler a story from years ago to see if he remembered. In a nutshell and I may be off a bit, but Lawler was at an indy wrestling show in Corndog Land at the time. One of Corndog's buddies was running the sound for the show and nobody brought in Lawler's music. A call to Corndog and that was fixed, he saved the night. Of course, Lawler remembered the action.

This was the lead in for the conversation and then Corndog asked the ultimate. I told him I doubt he would let him, but he asked Lawler if he could get a pic with the infamous crown. He obliged and it wasn't a problem at all. Meanwhile, as Corn had the crown on, Lawler was messing with him and telling him how huge of a head he has. The crowd in line got a big kick out of that. I took my turn next and needed a way to bust into conversation too, I'm never short of that. I've been reading Dirty Dutch Mantell's new book (which is great) and asked Lawler if he had read it yet since they are buds. In the 80s while in the Memphis territory, these two wrestled a ton and had an awesome feud that drew big money. Lawler hadn't read it yet, but I told him that Dutch had nothing but good words to say about him in the book. He then asked if Dutch mentioned in the book that they both have the same birthday and yes he did. To make a long story short, meeting The King was something I really enjoyed.

Now it's time for the game to rock. Our seats were great, as pretty much wherever you sit in a minor league stadium, you're going to get quality seats. We were 6 rows directly behind the plate and sat right beside the dude running the radar gun. Our view was about as good as it could get. Outside of it being insanely hot that night as we were dripping sweat, the action was a blast. The promotions for minor league baseball are at times cheesy, but I personally love how they do things. During one inning, they had Lawler go after one of the visting players, put him in the Airplane Spin and the crowd was all about it. Of course, Corndog and I were all about that part too. Then another inning, they turned the press box into a rave with the lights and all. Fist pumps start going and even Lawler is in the mix. Be on the lookout on Corndog's FB page for the video of this scene.

Between the works of Corn and Whitney, they had me listening to some country music. Yes, I know what you're all thinking, rare stuff. Don't worry, I'm going to review rap CDs down low, but here's my take. I figured, we were driving south anyways and we needed a little bit of a country feel for part of the ride, so why not test out the Sirius and see how the redneck side of things roll. If it's true country, I'm down. The whiny love song type country stuff, not for me. I'm not sure what country type is for me actually, but I did listen to a good bit on the ride, I will admit that. Corndog was surprised when we he rode with us and country was on. I also want a good story to be told and not just random blabbering. No reason to faint though, rap was a big part of the road trip too.

Cereal time. Yes, we hit all cylinders around here. One I've heard nothing but rave reviews about and I finally got to try it out. One of the biggest fans of this is wrestler Shawn Daivari who tweeted on this recently. Cupcake Pebbles! I'm telling you, these are really good and a definite must purchase. Believe it or not, I ate an entire box in one day, no joke. They're that good. I had one bowl with milk and ate the rest of the box dry. I was a beast with that. Fruity Pebbles are my #1 cereal of all time probably, with Lucky Charms a close second, but these have to go in the debate. Maybe it's a kids cereal, but if it's good, I'm going to give it the trusty try. Go get these bad boys, you won't be disappointed.

World Cup huh? I'm not a soccer guy at all as most will tell you. Most of my buddies are in the same boat, but World Cup action? That's what it's all about. It seems like even the non-soccer fans like myself get amped up when the Cup hits its stride. I watch hardly no soccer during the regular seasons of these clubs, but I've watched tons and tons of Cup already. Another fascination with our crew is the vuvuzelas. You've surely heard these by now, even if you don't know the actual term of vuvuzela. It's the horns you hear in South Africa that the fans crank the entire time. If you've watched ANY soccer at all these past few weeks, you know the buzzing sound you hear. Not only that, but our crew is talking about ordering a few of these just because, partly to annoy people and partly to entertain ourselves. Thanks to Walz, or more so Big Ben, we've all downloaded the vuvuzela app to our phones. This thing is addicting and then some. As Walz gracefully tweets, "Vuvuzelas all day!" Yes, everyone needs in on this fad. My Italian boys need to get it going, Sunday's tie with New Zealand of all teams is not acceptable. Cali Jas, I know you're proud that all of us out here are getting the soccer going for ya. I even see some luchadore masks in the crowd, that's always good times.

How about your ol' Gutter Connection? The boys were hot recently and got their first win of the season. Not only that, but the two games following, we took the doubleheader and swept that thing. Morale is as high as it's been all season for the Gutter Sluts and we have a lot of ball left to be played. One night Spank had four homers and 12 RBI, he was in a zone like no other out there. I'm still not totally happy with my bat this season, but it has picked up quite a bit. I have a blast each and every game and just being part of the action. On the crowd front, we're getting people to come. Either they're bored to death with nothing to do or they just like seeing the ups and downs of Gutta. We don't play at all this week, an off week, but next week it gets serious! Next week we play on Monday, Thursday, and Friday nights, with all nights including doubleheaders at 6:00 and 7:00. Come to Windmill Park, I can guarantee you'll have a blast watching the games and being one of the thousands upon thousands of fans we have attending each game.

Not that many care, but every now and then I get people asking what podcasts I'm listening to on a regular basis. Right now, I have five pods that I download everyday through iTunes. These are all free of course and if you're lost in the dark on podcasts, give them a try. There are pods for any kind of topic you can think of, but I go strictly sports to nobody's surprise. My favorite pod is probably The Tony Kornheiser Show. Yeah, Mr. Tony from PTI fame. He does a daily show through the week and talks about anything and everything: sports, TV shows, celebrity news, whatever the hot topics at the moment include. Another is Bill Simmons, the Boston Sports Guy who I've hyped countless times over the years. I've been a BSG guy since before he hit it big, when he was doing his online articles in the 90s. His show is titled The B.S. Report and it's through ESPN. He'll have a few pods a week usually and is really good in my opinion. A third is Colin Cowherd's show, The Thundering Herd. Fourth? NBA Today, self explanatory. Last is a wrestling pod from the Pro Wrestling Torch guys if you're familiar with those. Their show is through the weekday and is titled BTR: Pro Wrestling Torch Livecast. Again, not that anyone cares, but that's what I listen to more than anything on my iPod when I'm working out or just laying around the house.

Speaking along that line, what games have I been into lately on my phone? I'm always adding things at random times, so here's your chance to get deep into my mind and see what pointless games have my attention at the moment. The main one at the moment would be Coin Dozer. You know those machines at carnivals with the bed of coins? You drop a coin in and the piece pushes the rest of the coins across and you get whatever falls off? This one is that style and for some reason it's addicting to gather up your prizes and unlock things. Second, we have Angry Birds. This is a very fun game that is one of the higher ranked iPhone apps going the past few weeks. The concept is that you shoot different types of birds (think Kitty Cannon if you've played those style of games online) into structures with green pigs. The object is that you want to kill the pigs with the birds being fired off from the slingshot. Weird, I know, but it's worthy. The last I will hype this week is called iMorra. I was looking for an Italian style of the game Morra, but wasn't able to find the exact thing. Instead, this one is more Rock, Paper, Scissors, which in a sense is the same basis of Morra. Another game that can consume you and have you wanting to get the high score. There you have it, now get on those phones and download these games as soon as possible.

Two NBA topics to finish up on. One is the Finals and the other features my favorite day of the year. It's after the fact, but if anyone didn't see on FB or Twitter, I sent the congrats out to all the Lakers fans out there. That's tough for me to do as a Celtics fan, but I try to never be a sore loser and give credit where it's due. At the beginning of the year, I predicted that Kobe and the boys would get another title and they did. Unfortunately, it was to my boys' expense. I'll be one to admit that I never expected my boys to make it nearly this far. One, they beat up LeBron and the boys without homecourt. The next round after that, they beat up the overrated Dwight Howard and his Magic without homecourt. Then they stole one in Kobe Land by taking homecourt away. That ended shortly though as LA won it in Game 7. Some people cry that officiating cost them the game. Get out of here with that nonsense. You will never hear me blame the refs for costing any of my teams I support. I always say, if you play bad enough that you're blaming the refs, your team didn't play hard enough to win. Simple as that. Sure, there is human error and we can argue that till the end of eternity, but the Lakers beat the Celtics and that's that. Ray Allen, what a total bum you were this series. Outside of the game you went into a coma launching threes, you were not a factor at all, you took off the table.

To end, Thursday marks THE greatest day of the entire year for me. What's that? If you haven't seen the FB posts, it's the NBA Draft. I've had this date marked since probably this time last year and can't be anymore excited for this than I am. It's a tradition for me since as long as I can remember, but I get locked into a total zone during this action. I might scare some with my schedule during this day. I still write out the picks by hand, pencil and paper style. Yes, I can get the picks instantaneously online as they happen, but I'm a creature of habit for the most part. I am in NBA mode 24/7 anyways, regardless if it's NBA season or not, but I like getting into this and researching it till no end. I so much just want to ramble and ramble and ramble on NBA stuff, but I'll stop now before I lose every single person. How I wish more true hardcore NBA fans existed in today's world, it's a rare breed.

Drake: Thank Me Later. I wrote about this on FB a few weeks ago, but I'll mention it again. The online reviews are correct, at least from my observation. I like Drake as a mixtape guy and think he's talented, but this album, not so much. The release of this was so overrated and it didn't deliver in my mind. I don't recommend this unless you want to complete your Drake collection. I will throw out a few songs to get though if you're wanting to test the waters. Light Up with Jay-Z, Up All Night with Nicki Minaj, and Miss Me featuring Lil Wayne.

Devin The Dude: Suite 420. You know what you're getting with Dev. Lyrically, I think he's always been pretty good. He has his own VERY laid back style and the 420 reference in the album's title will show where he's coming from. The stuff he raps about doesn't pertain to me at all, but I've always liked his flow. This CD, my complaint was that they put too much emphasis on bass and it drowns out some of the good lyrics. A few things to get are That Ain't Cool, What We Be On (love this beat), and All You Need.

8Ball & MJG: Ten Toes Down. Now this one comes hard. As with Dev, you know what you're getting here, straight gutta with this great duo. These guys should come and perform live at Gutter Connection softball games. This I'm definitely giving a thumbs up to and you need to get it. Without keeping you waiting much longer, it's time for you to check out some of these tunes: It's Going Down, Ten Toes Down with Lil Boosie, and What They Do featuring T.I. You can almost recommend the whole CD here, but it still pales in comparison to our next and final review..

Reflection Eternal - Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek: Revolutions Per Minute. This may be a bold statement, but it's surely in the argument for me if it isn't my winner. This could be my pick for best CD of the year so far at least on the styles of music that I listen to. I'm a huge Talib fan and have been for a good while anyways, but getting him and Hi-Tek back together makes things even that much better. Really, you can't go wrong with anything at all, the whole track listing jams. Talib is one of the better lyricists out there, plus he's great at telling a story in his raps and not just making up stories about his bling, the club, and his cars that nobody cares about or will be out of date in a few months anyways. Recommendations include In This World, Midnight Hour with Estelle, Ballad of the Black Gold, and Ends featuring Bilal. Ladies and gentlemen, this is some true hip hop at its finest.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This comes to us from one of the blog's best contributors, Kasher. "Best of the week: Haspop. I see robot impersonations all the time, but they're always great" Well said Kasher, well said. I was impressed with this dude. I don't watch any America's Got Talent, but guess I'm missing out. Plus, how can you go wrong with a name like Haspop? What's that? Enjoy, dude breaks it down.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Not along the same tastes as the epic Cupcake Pebbles, but another snack thing I've been big on lately. What's that? We'll go the healthy route for those who want that. Blue Diamond almonds, whole natural. I'm tearing these things up like no other. Why do almonds have to be so expensive though? I mean come on. But they're good!

2. Let's stay on food and go back to the unhealthy route. What's the worst burger in America? Apparently it's the Denny’s Smokin' Q Three Pack. It has 2020 calories (ugh), 110 grams of fat (what??), and 3570 mg of sodium (for real?!). I found this on the Yahoo front page the other day. Here's a breakdown of the seven worst as well as alternatives: http://health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/worst-burgers-america-2010. Also, I saw an updated thing on the news the other night in how West Virginia is once again the most unhealthy state according to one poll. No surprise.

3. Quick Jerry Lawler facts to finish up with: Hulk Hogan has never defeated Lawler in a match.. Overall, he has held more titles than any other current WWE star.. He is an accomplished artist.

Sticky Icky Icky, Oooh Weee!

2010-06-03T16:12:00.001-04:00

Hey people, what's happening? Our first post of June and it's time to get things done as only we can. The heat is beating on us and it feels like Atlanta in August. Sticky icky icky. And not the ooooh weeee Snoop Dogg kind, the weather style I am referring to. I won't complain a lot though, even though I'm a winter guy, for it's almost time for me to be a bum all summer. Just a few days left with the kiddies and it's time to kick back and sleep in while getting paid for it, I give a big thumbs up to that for sure and then some. I like my job a lot actually, but time off in the summer is where it's at. What's on tap for this edition? Bingo, Idol thoughts, TomTom, Red Dead Redemption, Chrome, Part-A for Big-A, Celts/Lakers, and much more!

My thoughts on the end of American Idol? Of course I watched every episode as usual. This season, as a lot have said, it didn't jump out at me. I didn't think it was very good, but just out of habit, I continued to watch. It wasn't beyond brutal, but it didn't have that spark I was looking for I guess. Next year is going to be really weird now that my boy Simon won't be on the show anymore. He made the show if you ask me. Also, with Lee winning, he's good, but I don't see much charisma there. He might prove me wrong with some star quality, but we'll find out what goes down. We now go to the expert opinions of DerekHood. What are Derek's thoughts on the season ending?

Lee DeWyze won and Simon's leaving the show - just thought I'd put this in here for historical purposes in case the world blows up but the eBays live on and some creature stumbles upon this thread in 2172 and wants to know how the season concluded after reading all the exciting buildup we've put here.

The season finale had a lot of shitty, unfunny tributes. Joe Cocker looked like a paranoid drunk who had no idea where he was. Casey James and Bret Michaels was pretty good – most of the other stuff was not. David Cook was the only past winner smart enough to realize how big a pile of shit it was going to be and stayed the hell away. Janet Jackson once again put on display just how weird the Jackson family is, showcasing for the world that they had Michael's voice taken out and inserted into her body. There was way too much Siobhan Magnus on display - and not enough Carrie Underwood.

Mercifully, it ends. Now Lee DeWyze can look forward to selling thousands of albums.

I haven't bought a different video game since November. Crazy I know, especially with the collection I have over the years. That's how addicting Call of Duty is each year, it can last a long time without getting bored on it. I'm not bored with it now at all, but I wanted to switch things up for the summer when I'll have more time to be a bum. Enter Red Dead Redemption. For all the hype you've heard on this game, it truly delivers. It's very addicting, I'll warn you on that, but I guess that's why it has received several perfect scores from magazines, which is fairly rare. Both the storyline single player mode and the multiplayer online action are great in their own ways. Rockstar Games is the developer of this, so if you're familiar with the Grand Theft Auto styles of play, you're going to love this one from the same maker. The graphics are great and the setting of the game is worth it and then some. Stop wasting time, go buy this game and begin your quest on a horse. I know it might not sound addicting, but let me know what you think once you play if you already haven't. It's getting the blog approval and we're not easy judges when it comes to video games.

I've been seeing countless ads for Google Chrome. At first I wasn't interested in trying out a new browser. I've been using Mozilla Firefox for years now and still love it. The other day I was bored though and went to download Chrome just for the fun of it. First off, it's a very quick download, especially considering when you download other browsers, they're huge files. Not this one so much. It's also really basic, but rather quick as the ads hype up. It has a clean look and doesn't have a lot of junk attached to it that you don't want to see around. I still am using Firefox as my default, but I'm playing around with Chrome some as well too. If you want something that is simple to use and you're wanting to switch up browsers, it can't hurt to give it a try. A good recommendation I am giving.

Speaking of things I got just for the fun of it, let's now move to a new GPS purchase. After using some others from buddies on road trips, I figured I needed one for myself. The other day I loaded up and went with a TomTom XXL 540 TM. This thing is a beast and I'm hooked on it already. It is probably more than I needed, but I'm a technology dork and want to have quality stuff with that. I guess that's always been an addiction of mine whether it be with video games, computers, phones, music, whatever. This thing is the real deal though. It has a 5-inch touchscreen and free lifetime updates. The options this thing has are pretty impressive. It's crazy how exact these things are. It's also funny to me how they have the tiniest places listed, such as my alley on the backside of the house where our basketball court is. The locals will know what I'm talking about. If it has that, it has anything. Go get ya one, why not? Another recommendation from the blog this week. That's three recommendations in the last three paragraphs, w00t!

Bingo huh? Yep, it was time for yet another Bingo trip to Village Square in Clarksburg. We had planned to get a big crew to go, but that didn't line up. Regardless, we rolled three deep, Westside Connection style (you're not a true longtime rap fan if you don't appreciate that) and went to take old ladies' money. In attendance was Cork, Kristin, and myself. We did this on Saturday night and I know it may sound worthless to try, and maybe we have nothing else to do, but you can't go wrong with some Bingo action. The end result was that the old ladies ended up taking our money, doh! Even when you lose though, you still have a blast playing. I was close several times, but that doesn't get us anywhere. Kristin has never won and has the worst luck it seems when we play, she's due for a big hit. It's always fun (or not so fun) when someone calls out Bingo and the rest of the place gets all fired up. We even had an old lady near us dropping f-bombs, that's some good times right there. You may bash Bingo, but give it a try, jump in with us the next time you go, I promise you'll enjoy it.

A few weekends ago was the "Part-A for Big A" as it was advertised all across the Facebook world. Yep, cousin Big Ashton's graduation party from the infamous Sunny Days Nursery School. As a side note, way back in the day, I was in the first 3 year old class they had, so I'm down in the record books if you're keeping track at home. Anyways, that night featured some quality cooking as always when our family gets together. The feast of the night was from a past blog's choice Dad of the Year, Gayle. Once you're Dad of the Year in the blog, you're set. So far we've given out two of these awards. One to Gayle as he won the original, and last year we gave one to the one and only Dave Posey. Speaking of Posey, Lil Kierstn Posey is soccer phenom of Shinnston. She dominates her league like no other and had a whopping four goals in a game last week. That's getting things done. Oh, I had another story to tell. If you haven't tried any of Gayle's homemade pizza, you're straight missing out. We were joking that he was probably sick of my dad, Uncle Bill, Ozzie, and myself for literally tearing that pizza up to where he had to keep making new. Mix that in with being able to watch both the Yankees and Celtics games that night and it was a good night indeed. Thanks again to Jill and Gayle for putting up with our gang, much appreciated.

Everyone is asking me the thoughts I have on the Celtics/Lakers series. I can't be anymore stoked. First off, myself included, I never imagined the Celts would make it to the Finals. They were underdogs, at least on paper, the past two series matchups. They didn't have homecourt on either the Cavs or Magic games and ended up rocking things by sending LeBron and Dwight Howard home. I'm not the type that brags, but I've heard a lot of trash talk to my boys this year and how they were old, washed up, injured, the whole works. I'd even agree to that for most of the year. They didn't have that same passion and motivation that they did in 2008 when they won it all. That's until the playoffs started at least. Something clicked in, whether it was the old boys just coasting during the regular season or they weren't quite as banged up towards season's end, who knows. As an NBA nutcase, Celtics versus Lakers is the mecca. I'm also realistic. I think it's going to be a great series. Two fairly deep teams who play solid team and fundamental ball. Los Angeles is super tough place to pick up wins though and that's one thing Boston has to do if they want the title. Plus, Kobe doesn't lay down and quit like LeBron and Dwight Howard, no way. Yeah, I said it. I've been saying all year how I think LA wins it all. Now that it's Finals time, I surely hope I'm wrong, but Thursday night it all begins! Good luck to all the Lakers crew, and even for as big of a Kobe guy I am (ironic from a Celtics fan), I bleed green.

I'll keep to the sports theme. On Saturday after Bingo, we rolled to Posey's for UFC 114. In attendance for this action? Posey, Scherri, Kaiden, Kierstn, Spank, Pimpin' Money Mike, Porter, New Dude, Tyrus, Whitney, and myself. I haven't seen the last few live, so I was due for a pay per view outing. I don't miss too many. I had predicted Rampage to knockout Sugar Rashad Evans in the 2nd round, but I was off on that. It wasn't an exciting fight, but Evans took things by decision. The highlight of the night for me was when Mike Russow, who had been getting rocked by Todd Duffee who was ripped out of his mind, knocks Duffee out into another world out of nowhere. I'm also hoping that Diego Sanchez after this loss drops back down to 155, but he's had troubles in the past of making weight there. Dong Hyun Kim! UFC 115 is on June 12th and it's not a card I'm excited about. The main is Chuck Liddell against Rich Franklin, ugh. My boy Cro Cop doesn't have much left anymore, but he's facing Pat Berry in the semi. Big Ben Rothwell against Gilbert Yvel could be a nice darkhorse match for something that can deliver. I'm also looking forward to Mac Danzig versus Handsome Matty Wiman.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: In the 'it's definitely strange department', this one wins hands down. I'm all about the random vids and have seen a ton of stuff out there, but this is brand new to me, maybe not to you others. It's worth posting though. All credit goes to Arizona Jas. It's so messed up and weird that I'm not sure how to react to it. Do you laugh or not? Usually I'm a wuss when it comes to seeing handicapped folks and what they go through, but at least they're having fun here? Bizarre if nothing else. I will go on record and say the dude in the back in the black shirt, he's all about it. 20 seconds in with the howl. Then we get him again at the 35 second mark and apparently he likes to make werewolf movies.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. I've debated it with my buddies, but I'll give a very quick blurb here on it. Thanks to the controversial "almost" perfect game of Armando Galarraga, umpire Jim Joyce screwed up a call with one out left for Galarraga's perfecto. I still am in the minority in not wanting baseball to go an instant replay system. I love human reasoning and am a weird traditional fan. Plus, baseball games are long enough. I love baseball (it ranks #2 to my love of basketball), but the average fan complains that they are too long. I vote no to instant replay.

2. What's the whole fascination with these silly bands? They're becoming enormously popular. Guess I'm too old to get it, even though I act like a kid most of the time anyways.

3. Tweet of the Day: This one comes from Roy Johnson, editor of Men's Fitness: "Just 'cause u go 2 gym dsn't mean you workout. 2 women 2day spent 20 mins getting on bikes and talking. But they'll say: We went 2 the gym!"

6 Years of Debauchery! The Madhouse Still Lives!

2010-05-22T14:14:00.001-04:00

Yes, I know exactly what you're thinking. I don't even have to say it. With that thought in your head, we can't waste anymore time than we already have. We have a lot on our plates since the last time we wrote out a blog, so that should make for an easy one to write out hopefully. It's just the idea of actually sitting down and taking time to do it when half the time I'm lazy about it. I'm not sure what it is either. I'm still online way too much, but sometimes I just end up wandering onto other things and not focusing on the blog. As an added note, we've made it to 6 years that this blog has been in existence. Time sure does fly, but I'll pat myself on the back for that. For some reason, you folks continue to read my ramblings about whatever and always give nice feedback, so it's much appreciated. It's time to focus now though, the fans are getting relentless. In this one, we talk about the new Shrek, bonfires, Gutter Sluts, Pittsburgh weekend getaway, Derek having me in tears laughing, another 5K run, and a lot more. Time to get to it!

You want an update on the fingernails huh? If you've been keeping along, I went about a week or so without biting or picking at my nails. Let me tell you, that was surprisingly very tough to do if you've never had the habit. Maybe I can relate that to smokers or people with other habits that always say it's tough to stop. It was eating up at me, so one day at work, I started going to town. Going to town on my nails and biting them like a madman. It was sort of stressing me a bit by trying to not bite them when I'd want to. Now? I am back to biting them, but doesn't seem as stressful. The downfall is that they look ugly again, but I guess guys aren't supposed to have pretty nails anyways unless you're Adam Lambert.

A few weekends ago I did my first 5K run of the year. This one was sponsored by the Relay For Life and done through scenic Shinnston, West Virginia. The turnout wasn't as good as I'd expect, but that didn't stop the diehards from showing up. I'd guess there were 30-40 people doing their duty and getting the run on. When Stacia organized the Turkey Trot last November, she had a lot bigger turnout for anyone keeping track at home and I know you are. It was a windy day, but it was about 60 degrees, perfect to get some good runs in. This ended up being my best 5K time of all time ("I'm the greatest of allllll time!"- Rickey Henderson) as I beat the trail up to the tune of 22:24. That actually was a little bit of a shock to me, I didn't go in expecting a time that good. I went in thinking anywhere from 24 to 26 minutes and I'd be a happy camper. 5th Place is what it was and that's how it goes. Spank rocked it if you didn't see on Facebook already. He was a bit over 20 minutes and came in 2nd Place, dominating that stuff, nice job man, you're on another level than the rest of us on the running scene. I hope to get in a few more races as the summer season begins, but I'll keep people posted. Even if you aren't an awesome runner, give a 5K a try one day soon, you'll feel much better about yourself once you complete it. Plus, it's not a distance that is going to make you feel miserable as something a lot farther may.

The day before the 5K we did it up bonfire style. To switch all over the place on times, I ended up running that 5K on 5 hours of sleep, like a champ. 5 hours for me? That gets me bouncing off the walls, don't need much more. Site of the bonfire was in the mean streets of Enterprise, West Virginia. We here at the blog give the big thanks for the bash to Pat and Abby. It was a real big turnout and a nice night for it. Cornhole was even involved, can you go wrong with that? And no, not the cornhole you pervs are thinking about either, the actual game. That's also not to be confused with resident blog celebrity Corndog. After that, it was a late night Denny's trip, reminiscing the old days that we'd go there all the time with nothing else to do. From the bonfire, we split up into seven of us along for the action: Cork, Kristin, Trev, Meg, Derek, Whitney, and myself. I order my traditional mix of pancakes with strawberries, bacon, and cheesesticks.

The highlight of the night at least for me was the fact that I was basically in tears from Derek's words of wisdom. Tears of laughter that is, not that he was kicking my face in with steel toe boots and I was crying tears of hurt. Basically, if you're a local and haven't heard Derek tell the story of cropdusting the elevator, the little kid cussing, Derek blaming an imaginary old lady who just got off the elevator, and the mother getting fired up at the kid, then you haven't heard one of the all time classics. Your homework assignment if you're in Shinnston for the week? Track down Derek and have him tell you this. Words can't do it justice, so I won't even begin to tell it in here. I guarantee you're gonna die laughing. I heard it several times that night and it didn't get a bit old. Also, within the next month, Derek and Meg will welcome in Baby Fonzie to the world. Everything is healthy and ready to rock, the town is just counting down the days, so send the congrats out when the time comes.

Gutter Connection you say? Yes, it's time to give the softball report from your world famous Gutter Sluts. The Sluts have been hampered by two nights of rain delays (4 games total), so those games have been rescheduled for July. We have four games in already on the season and how many have we won? Not a single one, that's bad times indeed. To our credit, we played two of the better teams in the league apparently, one team particularly that just killed us that should be in a higher level. We may be starting out like the Pirates, but the squad we have this year is a blast. The way we look at it, if we ever have to lose games, we're at least going to look the best in this league as far as gear goes. We're black and orange. The hats are custom made New Era style fitteds with Connection on the back and a big Olde English G on the front, it's sharp. The shirts are black with a roided out dude swinging a gutter. Mix in some black, orange, or white knee high socks with some eye black and you're ready to rock. The team is loving the new bats, but so far, they haven't got us far enough. The first game of the season, we took to extra innings and lost by 1. The doubleheader last week against that should-be higher level team, they annhiliated us. I won't lie. My game personally? I'm doing ok at the plate, but not where I need to be. In the outfield, that's my home. There's a lot of ground to cover, but the old man legs still are as good as ever here. Posey and I, despite the age on paper, feel we're one of the fastest in our league at running the bases. I'm not the type that is going to run a good 100 meter dash or something of the like, but I like my chances in softball/basketball quickness. If you're bored, come on and cheer the Sluts at Windmill Park in Fairmont! I can guarantee you it'll be a good time.

This past weekend we needed a getaway of sorts. What did that entail? Whitney and I trekked up to Pittsburgh to stay for a few nights from Friday through Sunday. I even took a half day off work to head up there, as I've only used 1½ days the entire year at work. I'm not the type that misses too much unless I have to. We couldn't have asked for better weather during the weekend. Saturday's festivities was a trip to the Pittsburgh Zoo. If you've seen our Facebook pages as most have, you'll see the pics we threw up there. I haven't been up there since I was a wee little kid, but was willing to see what they had to offer nowadays. My excitement of the zoo was wanting to see my boys, the zebras and giraffes. Unfortunately, the zebras weren't out that day, but never fear, the giraffes held me over and did it up big. Whitney and it seem like a lot of people who told us, were all about the polar bears, those things are huge in person. Overall, it's a trip I'd recommend for sure and would do again, it wasn't anything that was miserable, at least on my end.

That night, we hit up the mall at South Hills Village. Before we get to the mall, this area is one of my favorite areas of Pittsburgh. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza here across from the mall and the room setup was pretty impressive, I'd recommend staying here. It was by far the quickest check-in and checkout I've ever had at a hotel, the service was top notch. The bathroom was huge, you can't go wrong with a king size bed (although I didn't get to make any dives a la my Cleveland hotel pic on Facebook), and of course I had to take my laptop around. Like I'm going to survive a few days without internet? Speaking of the mall and technology, at the mall, we got to play with an iPad for the first time. I have been skeptical of these, but now that I've had a chance to play around with it for a bit, I come away with high praise and then some. They're the real deal. I'm a technology freak with a lot of things and could see me wanting one of these, but I'll probably hold off for a bit. Another thing I don't have that a lot of people said they are surprised I don't, a GPS. We borrowed one from Whitney's bud Jess, so it's time to send out the thanks. We rocked a TomTom and I was loving it. On trips, especially in Pittsburgh with all of the roads being a detour half the time, it's solid. I'm one that gets very impatient driving in traffic, but this thing kept me in check. I now need to decide if I want to buy a GPS just for the fun of it. I don't really need it, but they're fun.

On the way home on Sunday afternoon, it was time to hit up the Tanger Outlets in Washington, Pennsylvania. I talked about this place the first time I had went a few months ago, so I won't bore many with tales here. The moral is, basically I get stupid when I see bargains, so this place sucks me in like no other. The two of us together on a shopping trip is never good. Good for the stores because they see us coming, but you know how it goes. Still, if you're in the area and are one of few who hasn't been up there yet, it's worth the trip.

A movie update. During this time, we've been slacking on our movie watching. It happens, but we did get back on track Friday night. We hit up the local drive-in as it's one of few left in the entire state. The movie this time around? Shrek Forever After. If you're a Shrek fan, you probably already went out to see this weekend. Iron Man 2 was playing afterwards, but we had no desire to watch. I still have yet to hear a bad report of Iron Man 2 though, but just not our type of movie I guess. I'm sure I may see it one day, but I've never seen the first either. Half the place left after Shrek. Anyways, this Shrek wasn't nearly as funny as the others, but it has moments definitely. The new little fat boy in this movie was our favorite part, they needed more of him. "Do the roar!" His voice alone is enough to have you cracking up. My final grade? 7.5 big ogre roars out of 10.

I'll finish things by mentioning some action that was happening six years ago. Why six years? If you were still paying attention from earlier, you'll know that I'm doing this for the sixth anniversary of this very blog. How about 5 notes of importance (or not?) that I'm going to throw at you.

1. Highest grossing movie? Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. As a little unbelievable fact, I've never seen any of that series of movies. 2nd that year? The Da Vinci Code. 3rd? Ice Age: The Meltdown. If you want crazy, I've only seen one of the top 10 grossing films of 2006, fact. That movie? Cars.

2. 2006 sports teams who ended up being kings of their mountain? Miami Heat (the year they let Dwyane Wade get a zillion phantom foul calls to win the series over the Mavs) with NBA, Cardinals over Tigers, Steelers took the Super Bowl, Florida over UCLA in college hoops (the George Mason year), Florida over Ohio State in college football, Roger Federer won three tennis majors, and Tiger Woods won two golf majors.

3. Billboard top songs of the year? We start with #1 of Bad Day by Daniel Powter, #2 was Temperature by Sean Paul, and #3 ended up being Promiscuous from Nelly Furtado and Timbaland.

4. Some of the better video games? The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii, Gears of War for 360, New Super Mario Bros for DS. Madden 07 for PS2 apparently sold the most that year (PS2), New Super Mario Bros #2, and Kingdom Hearts II for PS2 coming in at 3rd Place.

5. Notable deaths from 2006? Saddam Hussein, President Gerald Ford, and Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: You can't go wrong with cheesy commercials. This one is for The Red House, a furniture store. In it you get Big Head and 10 Gauge. "I'm white and the Red House is for me.. I'm a black woman and I love the Red House.. At the Red House, where black people and white people buy furniture!" I can't make this up if I tried. It's getting a good buzz online for being creative, but some people aren't big fans of it. Straight from High Point, North Carolina.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Since we talked about deaths of 2006, you're probably wondering, 5 months in, how is the Lobstah Celebrity Deathpool going? With the recent death of Ronnie James Dio, that put both Corndog and ManDingo on the list with 33 points. ManDingo is a machine at this, he's on a streak of picking a death in every single year since 2005, crazy. Corndog has a death in 5 of our 6 years of playing. Blahah is on the board with 32 points for Ali Hassan al-Majid and Kasher is the only person to have two deaths with Zelda Rubenstein and Ernie Harwell, 32 points as well.

2. Oh my, getting into a zone right now with my Celtics. I didn't expect them to get nearly this far and I've watched them all year long. I'm pleasantly surprised though as they put LeBron in his place and thus far are doing the same for the vastly overrated (at least offensively) Dwight Howard. Howard is a defensive freak, but outside of a dunk, he can shoot the ball anytime as far as I'm concerned outside of 5 feet. Here's hoping they don't blow the 2-0 lead and get to face Kobe and the Lakers, the team I have been predicting all along to win it all.

3. Facts to end the day on? An elephant has no bones in its trunk, but 40,000 muscles.. Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.. Dolphins sleep with one eye open.. Did you know that there are no ants in Iceland, Antarctica, and Greenland?

"Lenny Kravitz, only with cholesterol added and talent subtracted."

2010-04-29T15:35:00.001-04:00

It's time for another edition for the folks to read upon. This will be the last of the April blogs. Next month we'll have hit six years, but I'll talk more about that when the actual date comes. Anything else happening? Of course we're going to start out with a movie, then get into Idol which I haven't talked about much this year. This Idol report features some classic comments from a buddy of mine on last week's talent, the ever imfamous DerekHood. Even if you're not an Idol fan or don't watch, his stuff will have you cracking up. We'll also touch base on softball season opening soon for our crew and thoughts on Ben Roethlisberger, even though that story has been beat into the ground. Not beat into the ground Jersey Shore style by beating up the beat, but you know where I'm getting at. I'm not biting my fingernails now? Upcoming movies? We hit all of that, it's time to get business started..

It's time for another movie review. Saturday night at the scenic Meadowbrook Mall's cinema. What'd we end up seeing on this night? The Back-Up Plan. You've seen the previews if you aren't sure of the movie based on name. It's the Jennifer Lopez flick with not very many others I recognized in it. This is also going to be a tough review for me to do. How so? I'm not even sure how to classify the type of movie this is. Whip and I agreed it wouldn't be in the chick flick category, I can handle those. This one is a total girly movie though for the most part, I can't see too many guys being pumped for this one. A quick plot rundown is that J-Lo can't find the right guy and has been wanting a baby, so she goes to a donor shop to become pregnant. I didn't think it was bad though, but I'm sure girls would like it much more than I did. A funny cameo in this one was Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. He had me laughing good in a few parts. Another role I was big on was Anthony Anderson. He didn't have a huge part, but you can't ever go wrong with his comedy, one of the funniest guys out there if you ask me. J-Lo looked good and she'll be 41 in July, kind of surprising. During this movie a few weird things went down. One couple brought in a tiny baby. I could see if this was an early movie. This movie started at 10:10. Yep, you guessed it, this baby was crying its eyes out, imagine that. Come on now. I don't even have to give my thoughts on that one. Another piece in the crowd was this guy behind us a bit who was out cold for practically the entire movie. Everyone could hear him snoring too, I'm surprised someone didn't walk up the aisle and crack him in the teeth, but I kept my patience as good as I could. Again, from a guy's perspective, this is a tough grade. I'm going to go 6.2 artificially inseminated girls out of 10. IMDB is bashing it, they have it at 4.2 out of 10 as of Wednesday. Ouch.

I haven't commented much on American Idol this season. I'm watching every episode still, so no worries there. Now that we're down to a handful of people, it's time to give an update of what I think of each and if they have much potential to win this thing. I'll also list some comments from the infamous DerekHood about last week's episode, as he's unique in his style and will let you know what he thinks in a humorous way. Also, his comments are uncensored, be ready. Consider yourselves warned. Even if you don't like Idol, you still might enjoy this little section before I move onto other things.

Bowersox: To me, she's on a completely different level of talent than the rest of this bunch. She's not your typical Idol style potential winner though, but I think that will be able to help her as we get to these final weeks. She's been my #1 seed since the beginning of this thing, so we'll see what goes down. It seems like they've done a little coloring on her teeth. Early on, her teeth in HD were all yellow and ugh. Derek, what do you have to say? "Bowersox was decent, but that decent was the performance of the night. She rolled out the 4/20 special mic stand, cried a little, had some forced cleavage and revealed a shitty back tattoo and paraded her white trash dad in front of the cameras. It was all a pile of shit."

Casey: All the chicks seem to be rooting for this dude. He has the greasy long hair and a guitar, so apparently that gets it done. Kara also drools over this dude or did in the beginning. I think he's a good talent, although his last few weeks he's slacked a bit on his song choices. I don't see him winning the title though, but there's enough time that he can change that around. I like his songs better with the guitar as with not. Derek's thoughts on Casey last week? "He was probably busy huffing smoke out of tubesox's mic stand bong all week to give a fuck to try to pick anything that required effort. But hey, he's good at playing electric guitar so leave him alone, dudes."

Lee: I never realized how tiny Lee was until he was next to Alicia Keys last week. Alicia was looking great by the way, even if she is way tall or so it seemed on TV. Talent wise, I think Lee is very good and seems to have a legit shot at this when all is over with. He has that rough gravely voice to an extent and plays it off well. Definitely not the same look, but I see a bit of Daughtry out of him or maybe Nickelback, Pearl Jam, or groups along that line. Derek? "Lee DeWyze got his coin purse licked by all the judges and all he did was go up there and sing "lalalaliellliillilillili there's a boxer lalalalallililililili" for two minutes. That's a moment? A moment I would like back."

Big Mike: Musically, I don't think he's top notch. He's good, but not going to shock the world with his voice. Personality wise, this dude has the tools for sure. I, like a lot of other people were surprised when he got booted a few weeks back, but they did use the save on him. I'm also convinced Big Mike's arms weigh more than my entire total body weight. That doesn't say a lot, but still. People like this guy. Derek with some choice words about Mike: "Titties Lynche went off the rails trying, for some god-awful reason, to recreate a Chad Kroeger/Nickelback/Whatever shitpile. That wasn't very good at all. It could have been, if he'd kept it simple and soft but no sir ... he had to show us he's a fucking rocker. It's like Lenny Kravitz, only with cholesterol added and talent subtracted."

Aaron Kelly: R. Kelly? Well, he did a Kells song last week if that counts. This kid is 16 (17 now, he corrected the judges this week) and he's an annoying little midget to me. I'll give him a bit of credit that he does have a voice. He doesn't have much else however. I just hope this goofball doesn't go much farther, he doesn't bring much to the table in my mind, but I could be in the minority. Derek gives his candid comments on Aaron, not for the weak hearted folks: "What's up with his hair? He looks like a goofy cloning failure of Brandon Walsh that got left in the dryer too long and shrunk up. Get a haircut, lose the gel, lose the makeup, lose your virginity to a man, and leave the fucking show. But hey it's country time next week, right in his wheelhouse, and Tim is gone so he'll get a larger chunk of the 'tween votes and the votes from fat old women who are reminded of their grandson when they see his AIDS-in-waiting ass up there on stage. So hooray for more Aaron."

Siobhan Magnus: Is this a made up name? It has to be, right? Anyways, this chick scores insanely high on the unique factor. It doesn't seem like many people care for her at all, at least of my crew, but she's hanging on each week. Singing ability, I think this girl is one of the best of the bunch. That's probably not saying much though. She's a weirdo though, but to each their own. Derek, you still there? "Magnus ... whatever. She needs to STFU. I don't want to hear her talk for five minutes after the judges have talked for 10, only to have the rest of the show be done in double time to make up for it. Don't let that weird bitch talk. She has nothing worthwhile to say and her lisp is irritating and her eyes are creepy as hell. And she has fangs. There is a pentagram tattoo somewhere on that girl's body." *Last night, she was the one cut for anyone that hasn't seen or is in a cave.

It's almost softball season, it's right around the corner. The past three years as you know, I was part of the Morgantown leagues as I played for Mario's Fish Bowl for a year and two years we were sponsored by Dyno Nobel. This year, we're moving shop to Fairmont and going to rip Windmill Park apart, or so we think anyways. We're sponsored by Gutter Connection and have a lot of the same crew we've been running with for the most part and then added some youth to the mix this season. I'm sure I'll have updates to bore you all on as the season goes on all summer long. If nothing else, we're going to look the sharpest in the league with our custom made New Era fitted hats, jerseys with a roided out dude swinging a gutter, and gear is pimped out. The past three years we've been in leagues where we had restrictions on the bats we can use. I'm excited this year that those restrictions are now pulled. I bought a few bats this year and one I'm loving as it's a green Easton Synergy Reveal. 34 inches, 27 ounces, it's crazy light and twice as good as the bats we've used in the past. I do miss the first year where we played in a wooden bat format though, that was fun. The other bat I have is a green Easton Cyclone, 34 inch, 27 ounces. It's a cheap bat that I bought just for the fun of it, but the Synergy is the real deal. Anyways, next week, season opens for the Gutter Sluts!

It's well after the fact, but I might as well give some opinions on Big Ben Roethlisberger. Is this guy a knucklehead? Sure. Has he made mistakes off the field? Definitely. One thing I don't get. You're a pro athlete. I don't care how ugly, weird, or whatever a person may be, you should never have problems getting chicks, ever. To the point that you have to get a chick in the bathroom and have your boys stand in front of the door on guard at a club? Get out of here. I don't have the issue with him hanging with college girls. It's not like the dude is 50 years old. He's 28, more likely than not, he's going after younger chicks, and college chicks aren't that much younger than him. I see you working there Ben and I can't argue. I think the suspension was warranted and he deserved it for his conduct. Take the girls home next time, it's not tough Big Ben. You're famous and are always going to be watched.

Also, it'll be fun to see how much trash talk he takes from visiting teams, that's going to be worthy indeed. All of last week's "rumors" of the Steelers trading this guy? I never believed that for a second, although I guess it could happen as with any player. Some sports fans act like a 2-time Super Bowl champion who is durable, accurate, and a consistent winner grows on trees. If he keeps this behavior up, maybe down the line, but for now, I personally think Pittsburgh would be stupid to trade him. It's football, not a choir group. Maybe my thoughts will change on this, but on the field, the guy delivers. He's just got to grow up off of it.

I'm currently on one of the longest stints of my life of not biting my fingernails. It's a terrible habit I've had basically for as long as I can remember. I can't stay still the way it is, so I'm always going to town on my nails. I've heard all the suggestions of what to do to beat it (like I'm a druggie in rehab or something), but none seem to do much. I've heard people say to put that gunk on my nails so when I bite them, it'd taste nasty. That wouldn't change much on my end. If I'm not biting them, I'm constantly picking at them like I'm nervous 24/7. I don't feel nervous anyways, maybe I'm just tense all the time and don't relax well. Either that or way hyper. To my knowledge, I've not used nail clippers ever on my fingernails. Yes, hard to believe I'm sure. Right now though, I'm moving in on a week without biting them, easily an all-time record. It's been a challenge for sure. By the time you've all read this, I'll probably have bitten all of them down to little nubs and blood coming out, you know how it goes.

It's been fairly quiet lately as far as movies that I'm wanting to see, but the upcoming ones seem worthy. Here's just a small list of things I'm interested in. Whether I see them or not before they come out on DVD, it's hard to tell. What are they? Robin Hood, just due to I doubt Russell Crowe can make a bad movie of that type. Just Wright seems decent due to the basketball tie-in, plus it has Common in it, hopefully he delivers it up. I can't see this being a big seller though, but who knows. Shrek Forever After. Yep, everyone has seen Shrek and has probably liked at least a bit of it. I admit, you can't really go wrong with those types of movies. It's a good change and this one looks interesting for sure. Those are all in the next month. The Karate Kid opens on June 11th and the Twilight people, Eclipse busts out on June 30th. For seeing both of the first two movies and reading all of the books, I've never seen one of these movies at the theater though for whatever that's worth.

Bird's Dirty of the Week: I haven't put these up on a regular basis lately. One is that not many people it seems anymore are hardcore into MySpace. I know I'm not, I rarely ever even log into mine anyone and haven't made updates in ages, so I basically don't use it. It's more of a Facebook and Twitter era now it seems, although I'm sure that will jump the shark eventually too. Either way, we have a submission and it comes to us from a regular, Kristen in Florida. That's the same Kristen in Germany and soon to be Kristen in Alabama. Yep, confusing. This girl in the submission is from Panama City, Florida. She says she's ready for a new start. Is the new start as a stripper? What was the old life like? I digress. Some interesting pics to say the least. She's not shy. I just wish we had some classic quotes to go with this page to make it even better. Here's the link: http://www.myspace.com/508230550.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: I was talking to good ol' Corndog and he asked if I've ever seen the Chapstick video? He sends the link and I've never seen it before and he was wondering how we've never seen it as much as we're online. Some slip through the cracks. Hopefully not everyone has seen it already, but who knows. Anyways, this is so bad it's good. "Where's the Chapstick?!" Yes, you know you're doing those stupid sounds as you sit next to your computer. And as this chick says at the end as she finds it, "I need to get a life." Apparently we do too, but anyways, this is good stuff. Or maybe it's our weird sense of humor.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Random, but I'm becoming a bigger fan of sushi by the day. I'm willing to try most kinds of foods at least to see how it is. I like to switch it up when I order at a restaurant too. Sushi has been a hit lately and I see that staying in the regular rotation. Opinions on it are either you hate it or love it, no in between. My favorites early on are the Spider Roll which has soft shell crab inside mixed with other things and also an Alaskan Roll. Mmmmm, good stuff right there.

2. A month after Easter and I still have a ton of Cadbury Eggs left. Gotta stock em up like crazy since they don't sell them all year long. I never understood that one. Put em in the fridge and you can't go wrong, quality eats. Yep, I'll never grow up with my love of candy.

3. Tweet of the Day? Our winner is going to be Joe Rogan, comedian and UFC announcer. "Top 10 worst staph infections in MMA history: http://middleeasy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2056. FUUUUUUCK!!" http://twitter.com/joerogan. If you have a weak stomach, some of these pics might not be the best for you. These are messed up.

Hot Tub, Snakes, & Dark Cherry Mocha

2010-04-18T14:26:00.001-04:00

Yes, I still exist. I guess I'm a busy guy or sometimes I like to think that way at least. Since the last time I wrote, I should have some goodies to throw into this edition. What will I be rambling on? I'm glad you asked. We will review another movie, which is becoming a regular part of the blogs now that I'm back on track to seeing regular theater movies again. Also, you'll get my 4-day getaway to the mountains on the annual Spring Break tradition. A few other things? MLB Extra Innings, my encounters with snakes and how I react, new Call of Duty maps, the end of EDDFL season, board game action, and the other usual things to toss in. Let's get it done..

I'll start with the movie theme yet again. It seems to be an easy way to get everyone's feet wet before we touch on other subjects. I had wanted to see it when I first saw previews and what is it? Hot Tub Time Machine. If you're not into cheesy comedies with not a lot of plotline, this probably isn't for you. If you're like me and like that goofy off the wall laughter, you should enjoy it. The casting of this movie was well done and the two guys I thought who did the best were Craig Robinson who played Nick Webber and Clark Duke who was Jacob. Team Edward versus Team Jacob? The "names" in this one are John Cusack and Chevy Chase if that does anything for you. Cusack has a big part, while Chase does not. It's a quick watch and won't take up too much of your time. That night, Whip and I were both almost falling asleep in the theater, we were in comas. However, the theater had a pretty good crowd and it was worthy enough. As I type this part up on Sunday, IMDB has it at a 7.5 out of 10. I personally find that a bit high and this is coming from a guy who likes these types of movies. My final grade? I'm giving this one 6.6 black Michael Jacksons out of 10. It's worth seeing, but it's not going to have you jumping out of your seat. Funny for sure though. As a side note, Corndog said it was hilarious and approves. Cork, in one I can't figure out, says it was way better than The Hangover. He's one of few who I know who wasn't too big on The Hangover.

There's a few things that I admit scare me and mine are fairly common with a lot of other people. Heights and spiders are two of my biggies. Not that I'm terrified completely of them, but they each make me uneasy if nothing else. The third? Snakes. I'll admit, I'm a big wuss when it comes to snakes. I'm not the type that is going to run and scream bloody murder when I see one as Mom does, but they will have me going in the other direction and it gets the heart pounding. I've seen two this year, which I guess isn't too bad considering our area. One was on the trail last week on one of my runs. It was a longer greenish snake, but wasn't thick. I didn't stay around to inspect it much further but as I was getting the run going, I look down and it's going all across the trail, ugh. Goosebumps and I did a little jump over it and kept going like a chicken with my head cut off. The other? I was in the mountains over Spring Break and was about to head into the stream to hit up another fishing spot. As I look down, I notice something wrapped around a tree and I kept glancing. The next thing I know as I make a step down the hill, this snake slithers (hey Corndog, it was Randy Orton style) its way down the tree and goes into the water where I'm about to stand. I still wanted to hit up that spot, but I stayed back for a minute to get my focus in order until I went down. I know people say they're just as scared as you as you are of them, but still, snakes, not good times for me.

Speaking of snakes, that gets me to the next topic. Since I was about 6 or 7 years old, it's been tradition to go with my parents over Spring Break to the "mountains" as people in my area call it. They have a place in Harman that we stay at a good bit. If it were up to Dad, during trout fishing season, he could live there and be totally happy. We stay there a good bit and like it, but during this week, we usually rent a place and all pitch in on it. This year we picked a quality setup in Timberline in the Canaan Valley area. 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, internet, a hot tub time machine, a big kitchen, deck and grill, all sitting with an awesome view of a lake. Come on people, you expected me to be gone for three or four days with no internet? I might not make it alive if I did that. You remember in the past when I've been gone that long, that I'd actually drive 20 minutes or so out of the way, park in a wi-fi area and get my web on. Yes, that's pathetic I know, but I'm an internet junkie, have admitted that for many many years.

We couldn't have asked for any better weather than we had. I'm talking 80 degrees plus every single day with no rain at all. The funny thing about it all was that there were areas up there that still had snow on the ground. My area got dumped big time this year with the snow as did just about everyone who lives in the eastern part of the country. Our mountain area of the state though, it's a completely different world up there. If you're not from around here, only words can say how bad it gets up there when it snows. Some of the biggest snow areas in the country are located there, but as far as scenery, it's a great place to stop. West Virginia gets a bad reputation, I know, but this area we go to features some of the best views and sites you'll see.

I won't bore people with too much of the trip though, but a big part of the trip is to hit up some good trout fishing. Some people say I don't look the part to be much of a fisherman, but people also say I don't look the part to be a huge rap fan either. The way I look at it, if I like it, I like it. I don't have to look any certain part, but those comments always get me laughing a bit. I'm not the type of fisherman to make up stories just to make them up. Many times, just like the rest of you, I've been out and not even had a bite. This week I did pretty well. We were there when they stocked all of our favorite streams, so that always helps. I ended up catching 15 in three days, so I'm happy with that for sure. Most of the ones on this trip were brook trout and I also caught a few rainbow trout. The bait of choice on the streams for me, almost always, minnows. For the locals, my favorite place to trout fish is either in Riverton on the North Fork, if not there, it'd be in the Franklin/Upper Tract/Smoke Hole area. I do hope to get some bass fishing going this summer though, that's easy fishing right there.

On Saturday it was time for the crew to get together to go out to eat and rock out some board games. We rolled 11 deep for a Shogun trip for great Japanese food. Since people like the roll call, who was in attendance? Ozzie and Maria set the night up, Kari (minus Matty Cakes who was sick), Cork and Kristin, The Fortneys with Gracey, Mudcat, Whitney, and myself. I'm the type that changes up my order a lot when I go out to eat, but I don't change too often at Shogun. You can't go wrong with filet and scallops if you ask me, so I went that route again and it received a big thumbs up. Fortney joked that he set the tables up so he'd sit beside me because I always have leftovers for the crew. I'm generous like that I guess, hah.

After we were done with Japanese, some of us made a quick coffee run to Starbucks on the way there. I wouldn't say I'm a huge Starbucks guy, but it has grown on me some, so a stop I hit up every now and then. I tried a new one, the Dark Cherry Mocha. I'd recommend this for sure. You can get it iced or hot, I chose hot for sure. The cold coffees, I'm not a fan of that. When it comes down to it, I'm not a huge coffee guy in general, but a cup or two here and there is no biggie. At work, I get a few cups every morning cranked with sugar just to get me going and get my teach on.

Then it was off with the entire gang yet again for board games, hosted by Ozzie and Maria. I'm very simple and low key, so a night like this is always great in my book. You get to BS around and plus we flipped between a few NBA games, so you know I'm in. If NBA is involved, I'm easily swayed to be a part of whatever it is. The game of the night? As the last time we played, we busted out Scattergories. A very underrated game if I must say so myself. Especially when we have that many people involved. Erica joined later in the night to bump our number up one more. Was it a repeat from the last time? It seemed to be. Cork was yet again crowned champion and gets to ride around in the next parade in town on his float as Scattergories King. Or something like that. Coming in second? Just like last time, Maria nabs that spot. These two own the game, no doubt. Ozzie and myself? Not so much. We both were at the bottom. I did well last time, but this one, brutal. Either way though, I'm a board game dork and had a blast. Thanks to Ozzie and Maria for having us all out again, much appreciated. Fortney and Ozzie, let's get to work on that Michigan/Notre Dame game this year, I'm down, regardless of price. We should bust out the van, Atlantic City style trip and relive it.

The Notre Dame comment has me in sports mode, but I'm always in that mode anyways. Now that baseball season is here, I'm super pumped up. At this time of year, at least for me, it's one of the better times for me as a sports fan. You have the NBA regular season ending and playoffs are already here. Also, we're a week plus into the baseball season. Every single year with DirecTV, I always make sure to order NBA League Pass, which basically gives you access to every game for every team all season long. That's the best money I spend every single year and this marked the 13th year in a row I've bought the package. For what you get, it's a steal at that price. I'm ripping DirecTV off big time it seems. Baseball I had never bought until this season. I'm not sure why either. I get a ton of Yankees game anyways nationally and here in this area we get most of the Bucs game. Now? I'm going the whole boat and ordered MLB Extra Innings. It's been amazing and I've only had it for a short time so far. One of the key features I love is Game Mix on the DirecTV setup. When you go to that channel, you have 8 screens up at once. When games are rocking, it's filled up with nonstop action that you can track all at the same time. If you want a closer look, just go to the channel that the actual game is on and you get full screen HD. Money well spent!

After a long wait, they've been here now for a few weeks. What's that you ask? Yep, the new Call of Duty maps, the Stimulus Package if you will. I'm not sure what took them so long to release these as we've all been itching to get some new maps to battle with online. I'm a big fan of these new maps and I like how they added a few of the old maps from the first Modern Warfare, Crash and Overgrown. Bailout, Storm, and Salvage are also part of the mix. There's not a one of these I dislike. I know I've written about these when they first came back, but that was pretty much before I had played them. My favorite of the bunch if I had to pick? That's a toughie, but I'm going to with Crash or Salvage since it's a smaller board. Since I play 99% Free-For-All, I much prefer the smaller boards that are tight instead of having a zillion miles to run arond. You know how it goes. Hit me up on 360 and look for Bird33WV if you want your head shot off with the P90 or any other gun of your choice.

To end, I'll get another sports piece in. My passion of fantasy NBA is now over for the season. I might even shed a tear. Our league that I run, the EDDFL is going as strong as ever. We ran 12-deep again and I'd still put it up against any league out there not automated by a computer. It takes an insane amount of work to do, but I still love each season we rock it out and I've been doing it now for roughly 20 years, true story, been doing stats by hand since I was 10. I have all records back on paper and computer from the 92 or 93 era, but nothing the previous few years before that. We'd like to send the big congrats out to Spank who had one of the best EDDFL seasons of all time. Coming in 2nd was Ozzie in his best finish ever and since he's joined our leagues, he gets better each season. I took the last money spot, 3rd Place as it's my third straight finish in 3rd Place, the irony. I'm due for a 1st Place win though, but still hold the mark for a 3-peat a while back. The rest of the gang? 4. Riley, 5. TJ, 6. ManDingo, 7. Mudcat, 8. Sidell, 9. Cork, 10. Fortney/Posey (TIE), 11. Fleece. I'm already awaiting October's EDDFL Draft Day, thanks to the guys involved for making it a blast for me to work on still.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Kasher tweeted about this the other day. It's a short hockey clip, but to me, it's good stuff since it's so random. Yep, it's time for green men upside down..

3 Quick Thangs:

1. I try not to bring much religion or politics arguments into the blog. I will mention something from church the other night, although not religion related. Most know my stance on not caring to see people out and about all over each other. Get a room, but I saw this couple doing basically that during the church service. Really? Really?? Yep. I mean, they weren't all over each other, but they had their arms around each other, holding hands, and the dude gave her a kiss while stuff was going on. Maybe I'm wrong, but thumbs down to that couple, they fail.

2. Want a few weird facts? A crocodile can't stick out it's tongue.. many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.. Until President Kennedy was killed, it wasn't a federal crime to assassinate the president.. To sell your home faster, and for more money, paint it yellow. Who knew??

3. Softball season is back in gear very soon. Come May, our team moves from its Morgantown roots and now we'll be ballin' at Fairmont's Windmill Park. We're now sponsored by Gutter Connection and will be the Gutter Sluts, decked out in black and orange. I'll have reports through the year I'm sure.

-Honey Pecan Salmon-

2010-03-30T17:15:00.001-04:00

I kind of held this one out for a while mainly because for about a week, there weren't many worthy stories in my opinion. I could've winged something together, have done that many times in the past, but maybe I was just being lazy this time. Either way, it's go time and we're ready to rock with a bevy of the latest action in and around North Central West Virginia. I know you've all been holding tight to your seats, wondering what has been going on lately. Well, you probably haven't, but at least you're bored for a few minutes today to glance through this and get a quick read in. What do we have in store for the good folks of ye ol interwebs? We'll get things in order with March Madness, fighting the flu, WrestleMania 26, Call of Duty news, Eazy-E, yet another movie review, fantasy baseball, a mini road trip to Pennsylvania, and whatever else we find interesting.

It's movie time and that seems to be a common theme that most can relate to. Whether you're into the other things I ramble about in the blog, you at least are interested in the latest movie selection or most of you are. What was the latest? She's Out of My League. This, from the previews, looked like my kind of movie. You know the drill, give me some pointless comedy that will get me laughing and that's my favorite kind of movie. How did this one end up? One I didn't know until I started watching was that the movie is based in Pittsburgh. For the locals, it's real neat to watch a movie filmed in places we go to all the time, maybe that will have me a bit biased. Anyways, this is one you'll enjoy seeing. Cork gave me the recommendation as him and Kristin watched it earlier in the week. The girl in this one, Alice Eve, gets a big thumbs up from me. Apparently that's her real name, but I find that strange. As a trivia note, she has one blue eye and one green eye. Jay Baruchel, the main male character, he's hilarious in my mind. Maybe the best cast of a character was TJ Miller who played the role of Stainer. You don't like him at first, but he eventually grows on you. IMDB currently has it at a 6.6, but I'm going to go a decent bit higher. My final grade? It's getting a score of 7.7 dorks who end up with the hot chick out of 10. Go see it, you'll laugh.

I don't usually get the flu too often, but it hit me a few weeks ago. Out of nowhere, I wake up for work as usual. Except this time, at 6:00 AM, I'm in a sweat and know it's about to get bad. You all know the feeling. I won't make it too detailed for the weak at heart, but started throwing up then. For some reason, I tried to be a champ and tough it out at work despite doing that and feeling brutal. I was a zombie that day at work, but luckily the kiddies stepped up and were on good behavior as usual. However, around 9:30, there I was at work throwing up some more. I manned up and dragged on until lunch time and then had to tap out and go home. I get home around 11:30 and slept all the way till 7:00 that night. I get enough energy to get a shower and munch on some crackers with jelly and then go back to bed around 9:00. When do I wake up? I sleep around the clock almost and wake up at 8:00 in the morning. Later that day I slept another 3 hours from 3:00 until 6:00 for a nap. Needless to say, I missed all of the March Madness games as well as NBA action that night for the entire Friday. I must have been down and out. In a 31½ hour stretch, I was asleep for 21½ of those hours, not too shabby if I must say so myself. Seems everyone is getting it this time of year. Then the week after, my sinuses were brutal, but I always have problems with those. No biggie, we're back in action now and ready to bounce off the walls.

March Madness has been nothing short of nuts lately. Especially in my area, unless you live under a rock, West Virginia is now in the Final Four. If you remember my prediction in one of the previous blogs, I had a Four of Syracuse, Baylor, New Mexico, and Ohio State. None made it in there, ouch. Up until Cuse was still alive, I was doing very good in the pools, but then the wheels fell off the wagon. I'm glad that WVU is doing well in hoops. For those who know me, I have no problems whatsoever with WVU hoops and actually hope they do well. Huggins knows how to recruit and has a nice squad indeed. It's WVU football where I definitely have my problems, but no reason to get into that to cause any arguments in the offseason, you know my stance on that as a Notre Dame homer. I like the fact that the area is buzzing and people are going insane for the season that the Eers have put together. It will at least give them a national name and give the state a little bit of something good for people to talk about rather than always bashing us. Maybe people will realize we're an actual state, but I doubt that happens anytime soon. Also, it's been out there on the internet, but I can't get enough of the hotel room videos some of the basketball team has thrown together. They're acting like kids, but then again, I'd be doing the same thing probably if I was cooped up in a hotel room, not like they were harming anything. The pillow fight video had me rolling, maybe it was just me. Check em out if you haven't yet.

Speaking of the area, on Saturday I pulled a mini road trip. I guess it's not actually a road trip when it's less than 2 hours away, but to me, that feels like I'm getting away from the big city of Shinnston. Where was I off to on Saturday? I rolled to the mean streets of Washington, Pennsylvania. I either had too much time on my hands, or for a guy, I don't actually mind to shop a bit. Yeah, I can admit. I know I'm in rare company as a straight guy that actually likes to shop. I had Whip along for the ride (Whip in the whip?) and we hit up the Tanger Outlets. I've never been to these outlets, but most people in our area I'm sure have. They've only been there a few years, but it's a good trip, I was impressed with the setup. One thing that fired me up was the Adidas store. As I came upon it, they had a huge Kevin Garnett poster up in the window. For those who don't know, Adidas is the gear sponsor for the Celtics. I figured, I'm going to spend stupid money on Celtics gear, like I need anymore of that, but I can't ever have enough. I go in and that's the first thing I ask for. Dude says they have none in the store. Get out of here, really? That put a little hamper on me for a few minutes, but I got things in order and kept at it.

I wouldn't have had time to get home before the WVU game started, so off to TGI Friday's it was for some good food. This was my second time at one of these and they're not too bad in my mind. I ended up watching the first half of the WVU game here and listening to updates on the radio on the way home, so all worked out on the basketball scene. My meal? I ended up getting the honey pecan salmon that was awesome. If you can cook salmon the right way, I'm in, a big fan of that stuff. I'm going to bounce around and then get back to a food update on the negative end. Washington was just insane with Penguins fans. You all remember my blog when I was in Pittsburgh as the Pens won the title last year and all pandemonium broke loose, but these fans are hardcore. I'm not a hockey guy, but I love seeing their passion. Everyone that day it seemed had Pens jerseys on and were all about it.

Speaking of food, this annoying chick beside us was rough. She first ordered chicken and took a bite and said it was sour. The waiter took the plate away and she ordered steak the next time. They bring that plate back and they apparently cooked it wrong for her taste. Yep, you guessed it, she sent that back too! I can see maybe sending something back once, maybe, but twice? No way ever would that be possible in my mind even if it didn't taste good. The waiter should've handed her an apron and told her to go back there and cook it herself after that fiasco. I find it hard to believe it was THAT bad for her to take back twice, but stranger things have happened.

I waited till later in the blog to bring up this next topic. Fantasy baseball is upon us! It's not quite on the range of fantasy basketball to me, but it's a close second if nothing else. The only thing I don't like about baseball in my area, it's few and far between for some true hardcore baseball fans who really know their stuff in detail. With that in mind, Sunday afternoon was the infamous A#BL fantasy baseball league ran by Commish Kasher. This is the league that I say hands down is the most competitive baseball league out there and I don't say that lightly. I'm talking an 18-team keeper league that has been going strong now for a while. Not that you care, but I'll give the roll call, it goes all across the continent. We have West Virginia bunch of Cork, ManDingo, Trev Daddy, Walz, and myself. Canada features Commish Kasher, TyLaw, Neon, and TMac. Then we go to West Virginia's long lost brother, Arkansas, with the trio of DerekHood, Kris3, and Big Arlo. We also have Wilbur in Washington State, Answer in Vegas, Blahah in Maine, Duce in Philly, Dack in New York, and Big Play Ray in Parts Unknown. To make a long story short, we each keep five players to carry over. I personally love my keeper set and roll with Prince Fielder (Brewers - 1B), David Wright (Mets - 3B), Justin Upton (DBags - OF), Brandon Phillips (Reds - 2B), and Johan Santana (Mets - SP). Now, it's time to unveil yourrrr 2010 St. Paul Apostles, which is the draft results after the keeper action:

6. Elvis Andrus (Rangers - SS)
7. Ricky Nolasco (Marlins - SP)
8. Nyjer Morgan (Nats - OF)
9. Nolan Reimold (O's - OF)
10. Clay Buchholz (Red Sox - SP)
11. Erick Aybar (Angels - SS)
12. Dexter Fowler (Rockies - OF)
13. Akinori Iwamura (Bucs - 2B)
14. Joel Piniero (Angels - SP)
15. Charlie Haeger (Dodgers - RP)
16. Andy Pettitte (Yankees - SP)
17. Jeff Clement (Bucs - C)
18. Matt Guerrier (Twins - RP)
19. Michael Wuertz (A's - RP)
20. Willy Taveras (Nats - OF)

Yes, as you can see, it's a very deep league. The message board of our leagues are what separates things aside from the fact that the knowledge level is about as good as it gets. To me, you can't beat some quality sports fans that are on top of things. On the baseball front, I think this year I'll have to finally get MLB Extra Innings on DirecTV. I get tons of Yankees games the way it is and practically all of the Bucs games, but since I have the entire summer off, why not just get every game of every team. On the basketball side, NBA League Pass is the best money I spend all year long, no questions asked. I will always bow to the NBA, but I'm so excited right now for fantasy baseball to get here!

You know what else I'm excited about? The new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 maps. Yes, I can barely contain myself around this time of year. On Tuesday, the newbies came out and they were way overdue. We get three new maps (Bailout, Salvage, and Storm) as well as two from the first Modern Warfare (Crash & Overgrown). A special thanks goes to Corndog for sending a 1600 XBOX Live card up to my mean streets for the annual #basketball internet Christmas exchange. That will definitely get used for the new maps, basically letting me download them for free. You can't beat that with a stick. If our crew isn't already ate up with COD, it's about to take a turn for the worse this week I'm sure. As I always say, I could be ate up with much worse.

Last Friday I brought up a topic on Facebook. It didn't blow up like the Notorious B.I.G. one did previously, but it was along that same line. Last Friday marked the 15th anniversary of the death of rap icon Eazy-E. Eazy meant a lot to the rap game and doesn't get nearly enough credit in my mind. First off, he was a pioneer to the gangsta rap sensation. He brought that style to a huge spotlight and ran with it. In 1991, for whatever it's worth, he even ate at a White House dinner with President Bush. He rolled up into the White House with the Compton hat, one of my favorite clips. Also, he should get a huge amount of credit for being one of the first to break through and branch out with an independent label that made it big, giving others the chance. He was a founder of Ruthless Records and of course, most know him as the founder of the infamous N.W.A. Eazy was very talented, sometimes he got a bad reputation, but I feel that he's so underrated.

I will end up on the main part of this with some wrestling chatter. Yes, I'll never grow up and I'm cool with that. Wrestling has been a vice of mine forever and it's something that I'm probably a bit obsessed with it, but so be it. Anyways, this past Sunday was the mecca, WrestleMania 26, from Phoenix, Arizona. Personally, I thought it was a very good show and I thought it was worth the money and then some. I could write an entire blog on wrestling, but I know I'd lose just about everyone, so I'll keep most of it to myself and touch base on a few things I thought hit home. The Randy Orton face (good guy) turn? I'm into it and normally I like a heel (bad guy), but Orton plays his character so well it's not even funny. I like the "viper" aspect of it and him "slithering". It's a running joke that Corndog and I have every week. I really wished the CM Punk vs Rey Mysterio match would've received a lot more time. It could've been off the charts. It was still good, but too short in my mind for how good these two really are. The Bret/Vince stuff, eh. I guess it was expected that it wouldn't actually be a "match". Still, Bret gets a lot of respect from me. My second favorite match of the night was my boy Jericho keeping his title against Edge. These guys can go and it's nice to see Edge back in action and healthy. Jericho might be the best in the world at what he does, he's in the argument for sure. The main event is what everyone is talking about. Shawn Michaels put on a clinic against Undertaker and it was very impressive to me. A great match, especially considering Taker can barely move, it shows how awesome that HBK is. The next night on RAW, they had his farewell and it was well done. Wrestlers never really truly retire, so we'll see if this sticks.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: We go to a video this week from Corndog. He's sending us one from Little Shrunken. Needless to say, Shrunken is fired up at his boss and lets us know what he really thinks. Here is some stupid humor, enjoy.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Despite Erin Andrews bouncing around being all hot and Ocho Cinco being Ocho Cinco, I've yet to even give Dancing With The Stars a chance. I know it'd be something silly that I'd be into, but I already have enough TV going on. Plus with Monday nights, that's wrestling night for sure, nothing is going to trump over wrestling action.

2. So Hedo Turkoglu of the Raptors is having a disastrous season. He signed a 5-year $53 million contract and left Orlando for Toronto. The other night he was 'sick' and sat out like a little girl. That's fine and dandy I guess, even though he should've toughed it out, but later that night? He was out partying like a rockstar. How'd he get busted? Thanks to the internet. Fans were fired up he was being a little girl, so sent emails to team officials. In the end? He was fined and benched for Saturday's game against the Heat. In other news, he's a Facebook buddy of our very own Clark "The Governor" Riley.

3. This aren't too "quick" this week, but so be it. We're going to end with Corndog's Wise Words of Wisdom..

Corndog: "Its ok for a grown man to be afraid of a bird"
Corndog: theres a story behind that lol
Corndog: i have a hole on the side of my house where this light was....
Corndog: and a bird got down in there...
Corndog: so i had to take off this whole big panel of wood to free the bird..
Corndog: all at the same time i was afraid of the bird attacking me or something when it came out
Corndog: but i was thinking...hey, i bet alot of people would be afraid..and thats ok
Corndog: it was scary...but its over. the bird is free

Cleveland: Where Kids Eat Free!

2010-03-17T20:16:00.001-04:00

You know what I always say, road trip blogs are always fairly easy to write. This one will be the Cleveland trip to where we rolled eight deep, piled into two cars and made a day trip of it. Needless to say, I was in a coma by the time I got home late that night, but I went to work the next day like a champ, no biggie. I was excited for this trip and it turned out to be a good one. I better get to breaking things down, don't want any impatient blog readers coming to slice my tires. Before that, a quick tease to what will be included. Here's a few topics: hanging with Ralphie, rap on the ride, buying snuff can save you in gas money, mac n cheese shakers, NBA action, my 64 tourney predictions, a movie review, and whatever else we feel worthy to throw in for your enjoyment. Or maybe there won't be any enjoyment, I guess we'll find out when I get things underway... starting.. now!

Who was along for this trip? It's roll call time. Car #1 featured Matty Cakes at the wheel, Kari, and the baby-expecting couple of Ozzie and Maria. If you haven't done so thus far, make sure you send the baby congratulations to Ozzie and Maria as they recently got word that sometime in the fall will make my Uncle Jeff into a grandpa. That will be good times indeed. Technically I can't be an uncle until I get married and we know that's ages away if ever, so all of my younger cousins hopefully will continue the tradition that Jill started with her kids of calling me uncle. I get a kick out of that for some reason.

Car #2 I took charge of and had Spank, Cork, and Trev all doing their thing. I've always mentioned, I'm not the world's greatest driver, so you never know what to expect on longer road trips. On the way up, it was smooth as all gets. For as many times as I've been to Cleveland, this is the first trip that I went north to get there, as that would be up I-79 and through Pittsburgh. Normally I'd go west and hit Route 50 and then straight through to I-77. Matty Cakes and Kari are veterans of the game of driving to Cleveland, so they suggested the north route is about a half hour quicker. I'm down for that and it wasn't a bad drive across the turnpike. I think I still prefer going on Route 50 because it seems 85% of that drive is in the middle of nowhere. Both ways are easy drives though and we didn't have traffic. On the way home, I'm terrible at changing lanes and Spank knows this for sure on road trips and he just kind of shakes his head at some of my moves. I didn't see this one car coming and about whipped it into his lane and took us out, to which Cork said "You've almost hit three cars on this trip." As they always say, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Fortunately, we made it home safe and I always am thankful for a safe trip to where no problems go down. We were all successful on that end.

I don't get a ton of road trips where we have a car full of people that agree that rap is the way to go. We switched between old and new and that was a big part of our ride. You can't really go wrong with that if you ask me. If it wasn't rap, we had sports radio on, especially after the tournament selection later that night. More on that part later of course. Also, between Spank, Cork, and myself, we were all going through Call of Duty withdraws and would picture things in real life to imagine how that would translate to COD along the ride. I need to buy an adapter so we can play on my screen in the car, then we'd be set. We stopped at a gas station along the way, not sure of the exact area, but they had a promotion that I've never seen. I've never even seen it in my redneck area, let alone up north. Apparently if you buy a can of snuff of a certain kind at that store, you save three cents per gallon of gas. I kid you not, it was on their signs. Maybe they don't do that promotion in my area since every store would be losing money on their gas. Not like it's not already jacked up and overpriced, but that goes without saying. I always say, overpriced or not, it does no good to complain about gas prices. Sure, you can be tough guy and say you're going to walk, ride a donkey, or take a bus, but when it comes down to it, the majority here aren't going to do that. You're going to pay that gas price and like it. It's only going to go up as the weather gets warmer, just how it goes.

As we're driving along, we get closer and closer to Cleveland. Spank and I were saying this might be the only time we've went to the town together and didn't have some Bone Thugs playing in honor of the city. It's just a tradition with us, call it weird or not. Speaking of Bone Thugs, later this month I should have a nice Facebook topic on Eazy-E to gain some comments. My Biggie post seemed to have opinions from all over, I liked that. Anyways, we were going through this one area and it smelled awful, sulfur water style but not sure if it was that or what and it was in a rough section. Trev then said the line of the trip as we called it while driving in this area, "I can't see why LeBron would ever want to leave this place." That needed a picture to go with it, but maybe it was just one that you had to be a part of, but we all thought it was pretty creative.

Back to LeBron in a second, but let's take a detour. Part of the basketball trip was also to check out Ralphie. Yes, that Ralphie from A Christmas Story. Like it or love it, you all know it as the movie they play ten bazillion times during the Christmas holidays. I personally am a big fan, but not quite as obsessed as Kari is with it. This was the reason she wanted to go on the trip, the basketball game she could take it or leave it. Not far from the arena, we went to see the Christmas Story House and museum. They do half hour tours and the tour guide tells you all kinds of interesting things from the movie and how they filmed the movie in that area. All the outside shots were done at the house we were at and on that street. The inside house activities and department store scenes were done in Canada, but they restored the Cleveland house to make it pretty much exact. At the museum and gift shop, you could buy just about anything associated with the movie. The leg lamp? Sure, all sizes are there for that. The bunny suit? Yep. The Flick hat? You know it. I could go on and on. If you go to that area, it's well worth the stop, I enjoyed it.

If you've read my Cleveland stories before, you know a few things hardly change. One is the food stop. Alesci's in Downtown Cleveland. I've mentioned this place time and time again, but it's out of this world, at least in my opinion. I've tried a lot of their items, but I'm hooked mainly on their calzones. Yum yum! It's a small Italian place that is setup somewhat like a deli. I'm telling you, you can't go wrong with this place. This is the place that Ozzie says that he'd drive to Cleveland just for their food and drive back home if he had to. If that's not high praise, I'm not sure what is. Spank did say that their sausage and peppers can't even be graded against my Mom's homemade style, so Alesci's can't hang on that end, they lose that one. As we were leaving this place, there was a bar that had a promotion going on. In front were a few guys and they'd be yelling at people walking by, telling them the deal. What was that deal you ask? They had signs and were screaming, "$2 domestics, $3 bombs, and kids eat free!" Really? You're serious? Why not hold up a sign that says, "Hey drunkies, come on in with your kiddies and get wasted out of your minds and then get behind the wheel of a car." As this guy was doing his spiel out front, he shouted the domestics and bombs part and Spank finished up the part about kids eating free and the dude was all about it. It's another one that I guess you had to be there, but another one of my favorite things on the trip.

Now it's time to get into the area. The House That LeBron Built. I can't call it the Quicken Loans Arena, nobody calls it that. The Q? Eh, I guess we can roll with that if we had to. I miss the times of arena and stadium names that had actual thought behind them instead of some corportation just paying for the rights. This is the first time I've seen my (yes, I realize I don't play for the team, but I still am saying my) Celtics in Cleveland if memory serves me right. I've seen them play in a lot of other arenas, but not Cleveland. I've been to quite a bit of LeBron games and they never get old. The dude as I've said before, they treat him like an absolute god in that city, it's unbelievable to see in person. Watching on TV only does it a bit of justice and doesn't tell the entire story. Remember the last Cavs games I wrote about that I went to? That was the trip with Matty Cakes, Spank, and myself to where LeBron hit the buzzer beater three against the Magic in the playoffs. The atmosphere that night was off the charts. That trip also featured one of my favorite all time pictures, the one where I did the big leap off the ledge in the hotel onto the bed.

The game wasn't as close as it ended up. My boys took a beating for most of it, but the actual number wasn't too far off. Cavs ended up winning, 104-93. LeBron had an "off" game of 30pts/8rebs/7asts and shot a rough 9-21. Even with that, he still had a near triple double, dude is a freak. My crew? They're good in the East as they keep it going, but aren't a contender anymore. They're old, beat up, and just don't seem to have that defensive intensity that can intimidate teams anymore and motivation of a few years ago seems to be lost. It's been tough to watch the past month or two, but I'm still along for the ride, no questions. I live for the NBA. As I type this, they're 4th in the East, although that's not saying much at all. TJ Book could round up his Shinnston Jerry West team and land a playoff spot in the East practically. Or is Big T just that good of a coach? Hmm.. Anyways, our seats were way up this time, but I'm not one to be picky for seats. When we got our tickets in December, this game was a hot one and we had to pay fairly steep to get into the building because at the time, both were contenders. Even up high, we weren't far from midcourt and had an awesome view. I'd take them again with no complaints.

One thing that surprised me was a promotion they had. I can see promotions for the Pirates baseball games I go to, that understandable. As a little piece of info, they have the most promotions in the league. They have to with the roster they put out on the field. The Cavs? They currently have the best record in the ENTIRE NBA and they pull this one off. What is it? Kids Day we were part of and when we walked in, they handed everyone a box of mac and cheese. I can't make these things up. The deal was that you were to shake your box to make noise and it'd get the arena hopping. I didn't see one single person doing this and I was glad of that. The good is that it's free mac and cheese and I can tear those up like no other. At the end of the game, there were tons of boxes just laying around in the seats as people left. I know it's not filet mignon, but come on people, were you too good to take them home? We loaded up on some extra boxes to take with us, why not? It beats throwing them away. Think of all the needy people out that have nothing and how they'd appreciate just one box of that. Remember what you have and be thankful for it, most don't know how good they truly have it.

On the way up, we tore into some Cracker Barrel in Morgantown as a group. That was the big thing of the trip I wanted was a breakfast stop to get us going. That gets the day off on the right path. I ended up getting some french toast with peaches, hot apples, and bacon. It hit the spot for sure. On the way home, we went our separate ways and Car #2 made a food run to Smokey Bones. I've never been there before, but we went on Cork's recommendation. I guess they're known for their ribs, but I didn't go that route. The place is pretty big and it has a sports bar type atmosphere. I liked the look of the place. I did not, and Spank agreed with me, care for how crazy loud it was in this place. When it comes to eating, I want some semblance of peace and not to have to scream at each other sitting in the same booth. Spank said it reminded him of a club, thumbs down. Once the food came though, the thumbs up went way in the air. I ended up getting salmon which was amazing and I'd definitely get it again here, a salad that wasn't bad, and and you guessed it, hot apples. I loved the food.

Tomorrow begins the college basketball tourney and it's time for me to give my picks out to the world. I'm sure these will be mangled within a few hours time, but do with them what you like. Last year I was lucky enough to win Ozzie's big money pool, so I have to retain my title this year. You've all heard enough things about the tourney this week, so I won't keep you long. Here is my breakdown in a nutshell..

Elite 8: Michigan State, OSU, Cuse, Xavier, Texas, New Mexico, A&M, Baylor.

Final 4: OSU, Cuse, New Mex, Baylor

Championship: Cuse vs Baylor

Winner: Syracuse

1st Round Upset specials: Northern Iowa, SD State, Cornell, Louisville, Seina, ODU, St. Marys

Movie time once again. Theater this time and not a rental. This one to mention is Remember Me. Yes, a chick flick, I know what you're thinking already. It's not as bad as some of the guys made it out to look actually. The theater was fairly crowded and as you could guess, there were very few guys in attendance. You've all seen the previews, but it's the new Edward Cullen movie. It's the Stifler theory, he's not Robert Pattinson to me, he's Edward Cullen no matter what role in a movie he plays again. The same way in how Stifler is not Seann William Scott, you know what I mean. IMDB wasn't kind to the movie, I was a bit surprised, but they have it at a 5.8 out of 10. Cullen played his role great and made it seem he can play other parts other than Twilight stuff. Another that played their role was little kid Ruby Jerins, who was Cullen's sister in the movie. You'll instantly like the role that she plays. Tate Ellington, not to be confused with basketballer Wayne Ellington, he wins the award for biggest douche in a movie in a while. They casted him great for that because most of the movie you don't care for him, even if he's boys with Cullen. My final rating? Be ready for it because this movie was more than I expected as well actually, 8.4.

Bird's Dirty of the Week: Kristen in Florida is back action with more action for us to check out. This apparently is the "THA REAL BO$$ BITCH". I just call it as it's printed, it's there. We go to Georgia for this girl. What does Kristen think? "and while you're at church...here's a sho' nuff dirty for ya! even from atlanta....not a whole lotta pictures, but enough to make her qualify for sure" "her pictures are of her being all nasty though" "considering there's not one where you can honestly see her face clearly yea...that's a good indication.." Check it out for yourself at http://www.myspace.com/ashli404.

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: We're going to a kids dunk contest from 2005 at a Wiz game. The kid that can't dribble at all cracks me up, plus the fourth kid seems to have some talent. Watch him do the oop off the backboard dunk and then you get the brush off at the 1:50 mark. The only thing this is missing is sound, but it's getting put up regardless.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Let's go with some birthdays for Thursday, February 18th. We haven't done these in a while. We start out with Yoko Ono, former wife of John Lennon, she's 77. Actress Cybill Shepherd, 60. Director John Hughes of Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller fame, he's also 60. Speaking of movies, let's go to John Travolta, 56. Wheel of Fortune chick Vanna White, 53 and still looks decent. We're going back to movies and hitting up Matt Dillon, he's 46. A guy who gets my utmost respect, the greatest rap producer of all time and also the man of the greatest album of all time in The Chronic, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Dre is now 45. Actress Molly Ringwald, 42. If you ask me, that's a solid group indeed.

2. Want some facts? Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting. Somehow I'd want to see that to believe it.. In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi. Who knew? When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby. Yet another one I'd have to see to believe.

3. I don't have anything to end on, so I'm just going to give a basketball opinion for no other reason. Best current in-game dunker? My vote goes to Josh "J-Smoove" Smith. This guy is just so nasty, yet doesn't get his credit due. LeBron, JRich, and Amare are all up there for sure, but Smoove gets my pick.

The Laziness Ends!

2010-03-08T17:39:00.002-05:00

Lethargic. Idle. Indolent. Languid. Sluggish. Slothful. What are all of those? Those are words that are synonyms for the word lazy. I guess that's what I've been the past few weeks on the blog. The people were getting restless, so it's time to crack the fingers out and get to typing up what has been going down in my world. Sometimes, there aren't many huge stories that are going down, other times you just turn into a bum and don't feel like writing things up even though you're still online 24/7. In this one, I'll talk about a top 10 list of things I dislike, Undercover Boss, a movie review, Jersey Shore DVD, Chatroulette, food frenzy on Friday, a supplement update, new CDs, and other things that we can pile in. We'll see what the stories hold this week..

As you wait around for the second season of Jersey Shore, you have something to keep your interest until that. Earlier last week, the DVD of the first season came out, uncensored if that does anything for you. There's a lot of extras on this thing too. I got it on the mail and have already watched a good bit of it. I open that bad boy up and what is inside? Not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR discs. How can you beat that for a price for about $16? You can't is how. You get all nine episodes uncensored, deleted scenes, the reunion special, tips from The Situation and Snooki which I'm sure might alter your life, Before the Shore, and the makeover of Michael Cera into a guido. If anyone is interested in a Jersey Shore DVD viewing party, you know I'm easy to convince for that.

It's time for a movie review. I've been slacking lately, but we're here with a chick flick for anyone that cares. The Time Traveler's Wife. I didn't even know much about this movie, but figured I'd give it a try when Whip rented it. First off, I'll start by saying it's a bit of a confusing movie. After a while things start to tie in. I'm sure it didn't help that I was half asleep and nodding off in some parts, but that shouldn't stop you from watching. By the end of the movie, you're going to get into it quite a bit and it's going to grow on you. If you're a wuss during these types of movies, you may even shed a tear or two, who knows. It's that kind of deal, but a pretty good movie minus the confusing parts. The main people in this are Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. They both play their parts well, although McAdams' is a bit easier to play in my opinion. Funny thing on her IMDB, it says "formerly a vegetarian". Why even put that? Like she beat a disease or something? On druggies, do they put in their info, "formerly a crackhead"? Nope. IMDB gave this one a 7.2 out of 10. I'm going to give it.. let me think for a second.. I'll go with 6.7 time travels out of 10. It's a good movie, but I doubt it's one that I'd watch a lot of times over and over.

More TV you ask? Here's one I will recommend if anyone hasn't seen. It's been on for two weeks now. Undercover Boss on CBS, 9:00 on Sunday nights. The basic storyline of the show has a big wig for a company that goes undercover, works with the common folk and to see how their company really operates. The first two weeks have been on 7-11 and White Castle. They see both the bad and good as people give their honest opinions on how they think the company is treating them, what opportunities they have, and the whole works. As the big shot get to know these people over a short period of time, the ending is what makes the show. He brings these people in to speak with them. These people have no idea why they are being driven to some corporate office. When they are sitting there waiting, the big shot comes in dressed in his suit and all of that instead of the work clothes they saw them in recently. As he breaks down the reason he was there, he tells how he connected to them and due to their struggles or what they have been good at, he will usually hook them up somehow with a bigger job opportunity, money for their families, or a charity fund under their name. It doesn't sound like much, but you get sucked into the stories and the end will have the weak at heart getting emotionally possibly. Check it out, you may enjoy it.

For anyone big into Twitter, you've probably noticed that a thing called Chatroulette is gaining some steam in a lot of posts. Yes, I realize I plug Twitter way too much, but I'm ate up with it, I can't help it, so that's what you get. Has anyone tried this yet? It's not as good as it seems, but can be a good time killer. I'll let Wiki describe what this thing really is all about: "Chatroulette is a website which pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online stranger chat (video and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat and initiate another random connection." You see some characters on here for sure. The 'next' feature is what makes it interesting. If you don't like it, move on to the next bum. I don't see it as something that a lot would be into, but like I said, it's a good time killer if nothing else. That's why we're online anyways, right? Being bums and killing time.

I now want to jump into a Top 10 list of sorts. I've done these things a bit in the past to list a few, but don't think I've listed ten at once. What am I going to list this week? I present to you, 10 Random Things I Dislike:

1. Slow drivers in the snow.

2. Grown women who argue over pointless things and hold grudges forever. Guys? If they have a problem, they hash it out, and the next day they're boys again. It's simple. Girls, they get all evil on each other.

3. Red lipstick.

4. Drunk drivers.

5. Jimmy Buffett. I really don't know much on this guy, but I never really understood why he's as big as he is. He doesn't do a thing for me personally.

6. Rednecks in big trucks who sit side by side with their boyfriend/girlfriend as they go down the road, half making out the entire time.

7. Speaking of all over, another dislike would be people who are all over each other in public.

8. People who cry and whine nonstop on their Facebook status updates. Come on, your life can't be THAT miserable. If it is, you don't have to let the rest of us know every 3 seconds. Post some good things every now and then. You can post some whiny things, but don't go overboard.

9. Mushrooms.

10. Sticks in sunflower seeds. If you're a fan of these, you know what I mean. You get a big handful and crank it in your mouth and you find a stick. It doesn't happen a lot, but does every now and then. What I'm talking about is the sticks or bark as I like to refer it, as gets jumbled into the mix. Bad times, as are rotten sunflower seeds when you get a hold of one of those.

Last Friday I'm going to post how I ripped up the food like no other. I wake up for work and we just had teacher meetings that day, so it was easy. I didn't have to leave quite as early, so that's always good. At the house, at 7:00 in the morning I had a pancake, bacon, and orange juice. At 9:00, our cook at work who is the best at any school in the county, bar none has me set up with a plate-full of food. Biscuits and gravy, cinnamon roll, tater tots, and chocolate milk. I had just ate a few hours ago, but I can't pass up her food, it's legit. At 12:30, I made a stop to D&P, a local joint that booms the business. There I got a cheeseburger, antipasta salad, and a grape pop. The grape pop seemed to hit the spot. At 6:00 that night, it was time to take my parents out to the Wonder Bar. There I started out with some crushed red pepper garlic bread combo, a salad with raspberry vinagrette, a filet that was out of this world, a side of spaghetti, and a bunch of tea. For some reason, I didn't eat again till 3 in the morning. Then I had a bowl of Cheerios and a glass of orange juice. 4:30 in the morning rolls around and I'm going through handfuls of honey roasted peanuts. Around 5:00, I finally tap out to bed. I felt like a 155-pound fat boy that day, but it was good stuff. As I always say, just go to the gym and work it all off, that's my theory.

Speaking of working out, it's time to bore some with new supplement talk. Others are wanting to hear this though, so there's a little for everyone. I like to switch things up, so that's what I did this week. Gold Card Week, so I had to load up. I'm taking a few weeks off from Jack3d, which is an awesome supplement. In its place, I'm going with MuscleTech's noNO Hardcore x9 tablets. These are pretty nice and seem to work, but I still prefer Jack3d or No-Xplode over that. Protein I'm still rocking the Muscle Milk or course, great taste, easy to mix, and loaded with all you need. On the creatine side of things, I'm still sticking with the Amplified Creatine 189 tabs, a big fan of those. Two newer things added to the latest purchase. One is an amino acid powder mix called RapidDrive BCAA 5000. I have fruit punch and the taste is pretty good. Back to the Jack3d, which is made by USPlabs, I went with a newer product they recently put on the market. It's called Anabolic Pump and is a muscle builder/fat burner that you take one tablet 15 minutes before a carb containing meal. We'll see how it goes, I just like switching stuff up. I love the winter as all know, but I am excited this week that it starts warming up to get some outside runs in. Treadmills, ugh. I still get on the tread, but it's not the same to me.

March is a busy month for me, so I should be able to ramble off some blog topics over that time. Next weekend, I make my first NBA trip of the season. Yes, I know this is way late for me and I should've already been to a few this year, my fault. Anyways it'll be off to Cleveland as we roll 8 deep to see my Celtics get punished by LeBron. That's a trip I always love doing. The week after that? We're off to Ohio again, this time to Dayton. I've never been to Dayton, but this one is an MMA trip to see one of our boys fight for a title. The following week? The afternoon will feature the A#BL fantasy baseball draft that features 20 teams (or is it 18?) and then the night will be huge. For the dork I am, it's WrestleMania 26! I'm not missing that for anything and we'll have a ton of people watching.

I might as well review a few CDs, why not?

B.G.: Too Hood 2 Be Hollywood. This is a very good one in my opinion. If you like some harder grimey rap, this is for you. I've always thought B.G. has been underrated and doesn't get the respect due. Maybe it's because for the most part, he hasn't jumped into the high level of mainstream and stays to his style all along. My Hood was one of my favorite songs of 2009, so that gets a thumbs up. Others to check out? Ya Heard Me featuring Juvenile, Lil Wayne, and Trey Songz. I Hustle with Young Jeezy. Back To The Money with Magnolia Chop. Find this one if you can.

Fozzy: Chasing The Grail. A lot are probably wondering, who is Fozzy? That is Chris Jericho's band. Yes, Chris Jericho the wrestler, one of my favorites. His first album wasn't anything special in my mind. This isn't rap either, it's a rare non-rap review I'm doing. This one is much better than his first edition. The main song on this one is Martyr No More, good stuff. Others to load up on are New Day's Dawn, Let The Madness Begin, and Grail. Maybe I'm biased since it's Jericho, but I like this album.

Bird's Dirty of the Week: We're going with one of our oldest girls in a long time. We're branching out and going to Panama City for this 37 year old. We also get this submission coming to us from Kristen in Florida. She hasn't sent in a submission in a while, so she was due. What does she say on this? "i think we found you a ho though..lol" "but this girl's got some pics in her album that'll seal it.." "page 2's good stuff" "you see her age? not bad i aint hatin on her...just fits the bill". I figure some can't see these, but make sure you log in if you have an account over there to see the pics. Otherwise, it'll say private. Just saying. http://www.myspace.com/433660669

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: I caught this on Rob Dyrdek's Twitter. I'm not a skater dude, but I kinda like watching some of that stuff from time to time. This one I've never seen before. Daniel Pelletier, 25 surgeries and paralyzed from the waist down. This kid is a paraplegic and rocks it out. Some impressive stuff he's doing, check him out:

3 Quick Thangs:

1. It looks like this week won't have any blizzards like we've had for a while now. Temperatures into the high 50s? Dang. That's heat wave style. One day last week, I was shoveling snow at 2:30 in the morning. Yeah, weird hours around our house. The parents would do their thing and then I'd shovel late at night or late in the afternoon and it'd cycle over. Team work, that's how it goes. 1986 Celtics style.

2. Girl Scouts Cookies are out! This is a good time of year for junk food fans. I've already started on the greatest of these cookies, Samoas. I always stock up with boxes upon boxes of these things to last me for a while. We've all ate an entire box of GSCs in one sitting, don't lie and say you haven't. I gotta admit, the past two days I've had a box each day. That's not good.

3. I don't get McDonald's stuff a whole lot, but I was craving the other day on the way home from work. I knew I wouldn't be eating for a while on that particular night, so I needed something to hold me over. Why not some nuggets? I've seen all the commercials on the sweet chili sauce. It's more like a glaze to me than a sauce. It's ok, nothing I'd be jumping for joy over. I prefer the BBQ sauce there. Final rating of the sweet chili sauce? 6 out of 10.

High Top Fades, Eskimo Pies, Oreos & Intoixicated Ants

2010-02-17T17:19:00.001-05:00

We're back in action and ready to get with it. What do we have in store for the readers this week? I was off work for the entire week, so I should have some things to ramble about, so we'll see what goes down. A quick preview as I normally like to do. I will give my NBA All Star Weekend thoughts, a Dear John review, way too much Call of Duty, stupidly being up till 1:00 in the afternoon, blizzard fun, junk food, and other things that will mix and match, criss and cross. Away we go..

Movie time as that's always an easy place to start. I've been on a roll lately, so I'm back on the grind with my current movies. The latest was one I meant to see a few Fridays ago, but it didn't go down due to the snow. I was out and about that night as you already know, but we had to be sent back to Shinnston as we couldn't get through. Thanks FedEx. Anyways, Tuesday night it was movie time and some say I was taking one for the team. Either way, the movie in question is Dear John. Every girl out there turned into a 12-year old bouncing off the walls from a candy high. Hey, I do that now, so maybe that's not a good analogy. The guys did their part and went along for the ride. I don't mind chick flicks, I've went on record of saying that before. Comedies are by far my favorite movies, but I wasn't opposed to seeing this. I did not read the book though, so my review is strictly on the movie end of things without knowing anything else in the storyline other than previews. Keep that in mind.

A lot of you have went to this too, whether you want to admit or not. Every girl had a Facebook or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/Bird33WV) post with their excitement. That also gave me yet another place to cheaply plug my Twitter account. Facebook I enjoy like most of you just to see what's going on in the area, to get some gossip and kill a lot of time. The past few months, I've been tons more into Twitter though, it's a total blast, at least for me. It makes it a lot better when many in your crew take part in the action. Ok, I was sidetracked there, now back to your regularly scheduled program. I actually liked this movie, it's worth seeing and this is a guy saying it. Maybe it makes me less manly to some that I went, but a lot of guys reading did the same thing, so there ya go. It may have ya breaking down in it, but I held up pretty well. I figured this would be a crying movie, but it wasn't for me, some it was and usually I'm easy to get. The part that got me was when Channing Tatum was at his dad's side when he was in the hospital bed. That had me holding back much more than any of the stuff between Tatum and his chick. As far as the chick, I'll be honest, I think he should've forgotten about her in the end and walked out of the house. That's just my thought, but I'm probably in the minority there. This is worth seeing though. My final grade? I'm giving it 8.1 Afghanistan war stints out of 10. Whip gave it a 8, while IMDB somehow has it at a very low 5.3 as I type this? 5.3, seriously?

Our message board talks about anything and everything as we noted last week. We have a little junk food discussion going in one thread and it may have you thinking. The poll that is up there, Chewy Chips Ahoy versus Oreo. As I type this up, Chips is in the lead in a close one. I voted Oreo and why? Well, one because I love Oreos. Two, I've never tried Chewy Chips Ahoy that I know of. I've tried regular, but not chewy. Apparently the boys don't know what to think that I've never tried these. I guess I better get on that soon and see what the hype is all about. What does DerekHood say on this matter? "oh, Chips Ahoy all the way. If it came right down to it, I could plow through a whole bag at one sitting. Oreos are at best average without milk and even with are a little too much after the first fistful. Maybe if the cream wasn't in there giving you the diabetes it'd be a different ballgame. As it stands, I'm an Ahoy Boy."

Speaking of junk food, I gotta send the thank you props out for the package in the mail the other day. Felisha, I've already talked to you, but you and your mom threw it down this year for the cookies and fudge, no joke. The sprinkled sugar cookies can't be topped and Dad says that's the best fudge he's ever had. I owe ya big, but don't think you want that in the form of cookies, that might turn out disastrous with me getting things going. I can cook fairly well for not doing it as often as I should, but baking I'm sure I'd be a total mess at, wouldn't have a clue. Bucs season is starting soon though, I'm sure I'll see ya around for a few games. You know I'm in for that action, gotta see my boy Akinori Iwamura straight tear things up.

How'd NBA All Star Weekend go? I'm not about to miss that quality TV entertainment. Friday I enjoyed, even if it doesn't get as much hype as the rest of the weekend. That's when the rookies beat the sophomores as it was run and gun ball at it's finest. Rusty Westbrook blew up for 40 points in a losing cause, while Ty Evans and DeJuan Blair did their thing for the kiddies by becoming co-MVPs. It still amazes me how Blair plays that well with no knee cartilage in either knee. My favorite to watch was my boy Brandon Jennings. He was nasty out there, smooth as all gets with a little streetball feel and of course the high top fade, old school style.

Now onto Saturday, the biggie. I haven't missed this in I don't know how long, I can't even remember, seriously. HORSE was somewhat entertaining as compared to last year's debacle. Durantula won again, but Barkley's live commentary on the court more than made up for any down parts. It was pretty impressive to see Durant (already the 3rd best player in the league if you ask me and he's only just starting) and Rondo have the long range shootout, who knew Rondo had that in him? I've ranted on it for a while, but if you're a true NBA fan that doesn't watch many games and that's a lot of people out there unfortunately, do me a favor and watch Durant, he's the real deal and then some. The Skills Challenge, eh. Nash did his thing and I love his charisma. He's great for the game, even if his defense is some of the worst the league has seen, he's still one of the best point guards of our era. Go Pierce go! I personally, even as a Celtics fan didn't give Pierce much hope to win the 3 Point Shootout. I figured he wasn't an off-the-rack shooter and more of a clutch bomber in games. He proved me wrong as I had predicted Steph Curry to win it. I definitely was glad to see Pierce get it, more recognition for the Celts, I'll take it however it comes. To the locals, we need to try this one day with racks just because. The Dunk Contest? Ugh, just beyond brutal. You've all read the reports or even seen the footage, but awful. The fans shouldn't have that vote first of all. DeRozan really won the thing though, not Nate Dizzle. Still one of my favorite weekends of the year and the Sunday game was a great battle as well.

Does this snow ever end out here? This is insane, but I'm one that isn't complaining a bit. I've said it countless times, I love my job, but if I can get paid to sit at home on a snow day, sign me up. I was off all of last week and already have a few days off this week as an added bonus. During that stretch, the earliest I woke up was 11:00. Yep, total bum. It's back to the hours of being up till stupid hours of the day and then doing whatever. The snow wasn't about to keep me off the roads though, I'm all about driving in that mess just because. It also didn't affect any of my workouts, got those in too. Saturday night/Sunday morning was one of those stupid ate up time killers. That night I played Call of Duty for 5 hours and then got back on here around 4 in the morning and stayed up till 1 in the afternoon. I then got a two hour nap. Yes, I'm an idiot. I got in a big amount of COD each of those days off, nothing else was happening.

Speaking of games, let's go to the online version. It might not sound like much to some, but when my boys and I get into online game battles, it ensues into some good trash talk and overall fun. Either we'll never grow up or we're easily entertained. Who am I kidding, the answer is both to that. If it's not Yahoo Graffiti, it is Monopoly on Pogo. You can play up to six people in Graffiti and four in Monopoly. We wish Monopoly would hold more than that, but the way they have their setup is really slick and easy to use. The games usually aren't crazy long is another plus if you're one of those people who are worried about that. In the past two games for me this week I've came in 2nd Place. Still, that's not in the winning column. In those games, not that anyone cares but Corndog and TheAnswer brought home the trophies. If you're not doing much else online, and chances are you aren't right now at the moment, bust out some Monopoly on Pogo.

Before we get to his video, Corndog appears again. He posted this the other night, so I figure it's worth a read for everyone else too: "I just saw a guy almost walk in the womens bathroom at wal mart, it was funny. Then later I saw the same guy standing by the jewelry counter smoking a cigarette. That was a very weird thing to see. The lady told him he wasnt allowed to smoke in the store because this is a smoke free county. Really? Are there counties where its ok to smoke in wal mart?"

Bird's Dirty of the Week: We're hitting up Pharr, Texas this week where everything is big or however that cheesy saying goes. Speaking of Texas, we'd like to wish our boy Bono a Happy 31st today. You can visit him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/scrodieodie. Back to the chick now. She doesn't have any memorable quotes or anything really to laugh at this time. It's not one of those. From opinions of others too, this girl gets it done. Apparently her friends do too, who knows. Anyways, here's this week's girl: http://www.myspace.com/63544089.

Bird's Video of the Week: Corndog said this one was blog worthy. When Corndog talks, the blog nation listens and at least checks it out. After further review, this is legit and we're going to use it this week. It's the Turtleman! Tons of quotes to use in this thing. Some people have no sense at all, but he's entertainment in his own way. "They think I'm crazy, but they can't help but like me." The rebel indian yell is classic too. Good ol' Kentucky, it's pretty much West Virginia. Sad, but true, these people exist, but you know you're going to watch. He also doesn't smile much since he got his teeth knocked out by a chainsaw.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. A quote from Kasher the Great's Twitter on Monday: "On this date in 2005: YouTube is launched. One of the greatest non-porn sites on the net." Visit Kasher at http://twitter.com/NotDirtyKash.

2. Pitchers and catchers have reported to baseball camps this week. Oh my, just around the corner! Between my Yanks ready to rock, going to see a good bit of Pirates games this summer as usual, and the two ultra-competitive fantasy baseball leagues I'm in (Chin Music: 30-man dynasty league, 55 man rosters, minors and salaries included, A#BL: 18-man keeper league with the Lobstah gang that is ran by Commish Kasher), I'm started to get excited.

3. Here's some facts to end up on, let them soak in your brain. A snail can sleep for 3 years.. An ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated. Uh, that's really a proven fact? No clue, but I found it anyways.. One car out of every 230 made was stolen last year.. The Philadelphia Mint produces 26 million pennies per day. Forest fires move faster uphill than downhill.

Blood, Guts, Snow, & Exploding Toilets

2010-02-08T17:23:00.001-05:00

Ok, February is upon us. We have a lot going down this month. One, for all the sappy lovers out there, you get Valentine's Day of course. Two, Super Bowl time which ended yesterday. Three, for the cultural side of things, it's Black History Month. Four, we get one of my favorite weekends of the entire year, NBA All Star Weekend. That's a trip that is on my list one day, mark it down. Outside of that, I promised the usual movie reviews and the action that went down during last weekend's Toughman Contest in Clarksburg. Plus, a biggie just added is the snow blizzard report, a few good stories from Friday night on that. You're already being impatient and wanting me to start, so we'll start to break things down..

All week long, people were freaking out at this big snow we were supposed to get. It's not like we can do anything about it, but some think the world is going to end once a snowflake hits the ground. You better get your milk and bread because you might be locked inside your house for 2 months, please. Anyways, I get let out of work early on Friday, that's always a fun thing. Friday night, it started to bring it down hardcore. Four of us had movie night planned, but two dropped out. I was going to take one for team and see Dear John on opening night. It was the 10:00 showing and Whip and I were going to trek the snow regardless. I'll probably see it later in the week. If Cork doesn't mind me letting the world know that he manned up and saw it on Sunday, he said it wasn't too bad. I personally love to get out in the big snow and just rip through it. Some people freak at the thought of getting their cars in it, but come on. It was really bad, but I didn't have any problems, and that's a fortunate thing.

On the way there, I'll describe some areas for the locals. Going towards the mall, a little bit past the infamous Tate's Fruit Market was our first wreck we came upon. Somehow, a car was practically on its top in the ditch. We couldn't figure out how it was possible they even wrecked like that. He had to have been going like a madman, so props to him for at least not going 2 miles per hour. I guess he was the loser in the end of things though. Speaking of that, I have zero patience when it comes to people who have no clue of driving in the snow. That's one thing I need to work on for sure and then some. So we're driving along Meadowbrook Road and get to an area past the FedEx shop. What do we see? None other than a FedEx truck stranded. He was ditched as well and was waiting on help. He busted out the trusty flashlight and guided us through on our way. So far so good, right?

We're going up the road a bit more and come to where the massage place is at. Then we see yet another FedEx truck. What gives? We're the lead car and not many are behind us. We saw a state cop behind this truck and drove fairly close to it. Maybe I was being an idiot, but the other cars stayed behind a good distance. I just wanted to see what was up. After about a half hour or so of waiting and already being late for the movie, the cop backs down the hill a bit. "Uh, if I were you, I'd back down the hill a bit. If that trucks starts sliding down it, it's not gonna slow down." Probably good advice there. Then a bit later, the driver of the truck comes down the hill. They weren't having any luck towing the FedEx truck up the hill. He comes to talk to us and let us know the deal. He said it'd be at least another half hour because they had to get a bigger tow truck to get him up the hill. He told us we might as well turn around. By that point, it was well past time to go to the movie anyways. We get back into town and half of town had power out. Luckily, it came on a few hours later, so no biggie. My area got about 15 inches, big time, but not as big as some areas on the East such as blog contributor The_Freak who got about 30 inches and Philly got bombed too. Bring on the snow! Apparently, we have more coming on Tuesday and Wednesday, who knows.

Speaking of breaking things down, faces were broken, bodies were in shambles, and you always end up with a great time. Where's that? The 31st Annual Toughman Contest at the Nathan Goff Armory of course. Friday night has been a tradition for me to hit up for quite a while now. That's when you get to see it all. There were nearly fifty fights that night, how can you put a price on that? Plus, you get to see the bums who have no business being in the ring, then come in and get their block knocked off. It's always interesting to see the guys who think they are big and bad and then they get punished once they are in the ring. This was the first year in a while that I didn't get floor seats, I tried to get tickets just a bit too late. Either way though, I still nabbed some good seats, first row of bleachers. However, there were some not so good parts of these seats we had too. Cork and Spank joined the festivities with me, as I'm not sure why a lot more of my buddies don't get into this. It's one of our favorite things of the year.

Anyways, back to our seats. Behind me sat a dude that was every bit of 400 pounds, I kid you not. 400 is actually being generous, but I'll be nice for the blog. When you sit in bleacher seats, your back is going to become obliterated by night's end regardless. Then put a guy that size directly behind you to where his gut is literally hanging all on your back and it's not pleasant. Basically I paid to sit in a third of a seat as I was bent over most of the night with my neck and back getting sore as the night progressed. Not only that, but it seemed that 75% of the people here do nothing but get up and down, walk around, and be knuckleheads. For the entire night, I missed one round when I made a quick trip to the concession stand. I'm there to watch fights, call me crazy. Cork and I about lost our voice screaming at these idiots who would walk right in front of us and spill their beer everywhere. Spank was probably shaking his head, thinking he'd have to eventually protect us dorks for running our mouths. Hey, we just wanted a good view. Luckily, we were tame and didn't push anyone's buttons too bad, but it was fairly annoying.

I'm going to start by going into a crowd fight before I even mention the ring wars. To set up the scene, this was a few rows back from us, diagonally. I hear something going on and of course everyone looks in that area. The next thing I see is this dude doing ground and pound and just crushing another guy's face in with punches. He was laying the hammer and not in the porn sense of the nature, we're going fists this time. Not long after, the cops were all about it and did their job to break these guys apart. As they walked the one dude down, he was bleeding like Ric Flair, it was a mess and flowing like a faucet. It was dripping over the stands, on people, you name it. I can't make this up if I tried. They actually had to come over and mop up that section since blood was everywhere. You never know what you're going to see in this crowd. For those who have been to other Toughman Contests in the area, I've said last year, the type of crowd at Clarksburg and Morgantown are totally different worlds. Morgantown is more wide open with seating and less of a redneck/racist feel to the night. I've ranted before on how racist people around here become one of my huge things that get me fired up. You can't change people's opinions and it was in the air that night.

How'd the action in the ring go? It was pretty solid. With that many fights in a night, it's nonstop the entire time. As soon as one fight is over, the next fight's matchup is already waiting ringside to jump in. The kid who won the heavyweight, he also won last year too and is only 19 years old. Dude is 6'7"/260 and is the real deal. There weren't as many knockouts this year as compared to years past, so that was somewhat of a bummer. It does make it fun when you know a decent bit of the guys that are in these things. All in all, it's always worth the money to attend if you've never been. You see some characters and it's definitely a fun experience, at least I think so.

The ring girls you ask? I'm rarely ever much of a big fan of these in our area at least. Hear me out. Maybe I'm too picky or unlike most guys, but these girls are all the same to me. They're 90 pounds with ribs sticking out and no bodies to them. The anorexic chicks, someone else can go that route. The one we liked was some ethnic girl and I wasn't quite sure of what ethnicity to be honest. The other three didn't quite hit the spot, at least for me. Another girl didn't have an outfit all night that actually fit her. That'd usually be a good thing, but her bikini bottoms were baggy on her and she didn't have anything in there anyways for it to form to, thumbs down. Baggy bikini girl also got frustrated late in the night or so it seemed to us. The last hour anyways, she'd just do a quick walk around the ring and nothing else. Seeing some of these girls try to dance is always good entertainment though. I call it how I see it. Props to them for getting up there, but we need a variety of girls if you ask me, not the same cookie cutters, but what do I know?

Ok, now it's time to talk movies once again. Get your popcorn ready as Terrell Owens would say. He would've crushed Jerry Rice's records if he ever had a good quarterback with him, or so he recently mentioned. What's the movie of choice this time? It'd be When In Rome. This one is a quick 90-minute movie and I actually enjoyed it. It's a ton better than The Lovely Bones from the previous week if that counts for anything. Kristen Bell was looking great in this one and played her part just fine. The people that made it for me in this movie were Napoleon Dynamte and Dax Shepard. I thought each of them were hilarious and if you saw their characters in this movie, you'd probably think the same. The storyline is easy to follow, although predictable. It's nothing you'd have to give deep thought to while watching, it's fairly relaxing. My final grade for this movie, I'm going to give it 7.7 large buckets of popcorn out of 10.

This next story was brought to our attention from field reporter Kasher. He's always finding some quality stuff for our message board. You know you want to be part of it and I've talked about it countless times over the years. That means it's time for a cheap plug, it's what I do best. Of course we talk about all sports and have some of the best sports fans the interwebs can come up with. If you're not a sports fan, that's fine, we have a ton for you in there too. We have an Anything Goes forum, one on Music/Movies/TV/Video Games, and a Girls forum. The Anything Goes forum is enough to keep anyone busy. You name it, we talk about it. It's Lobstah, The Balls Empire. Get a login name and wait for TMac to approve and you're good to rock: http://www.theballsempire.com. So to the story I wanted to mention from Kasher. You knew I'd get back to it eventually. It is about a woman who is suing a train company after a toilet explodes. I kid you not. The opening paragraph has me cracking up. Maybe it's my middle school type humor and nobody else will like it, but I enjoyed it. Here is a quick preview: "A woman is suing Metra claiming the contents of a toilet 'exploded; and splattered her as she rode a Joliet-bound train." Yep, splattered. Here is the entire article for your enjoyment: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/metra.train.lawsuit.2.1457755.html. Thanks again goes out to our buddy Kasher.

I bashed the Saints "fans" for a bit now. I never had a problem with the team. It's still funny to me how you never hardly saw a Saints fan in your life and then the past few weeks they're out of the woodwork and say they've been there the whole ride. I guess you get that with every team that starts winning, so I can't fault the system. I will admit here that my prediction was way off. I never gave the Saints credit all season and didn't think their D would hold up. I figured Manning would just pick them apart and mangle them something awful. Yep, I was wrong on that one. Somewhere out there, Frankie Saporito is partying in the streets. He's the only true Saints guy in my area that I can think of. Frankie even has a Saints tat, gotta respect that. Good to see a team that has never won it before go down and win it though. I was pulling for Manning a bit since I always felt like he's done it the right way, isn't a knucklehead, and just does his thing. Apparently a lot of people hate him and his bro though, maybe because they (he?) gets too much credit, hard to tell. The Saints won me over though when after one touchdown the players were dancing on the sidelines. What were they doing? I'll let our boy DerekHood tell us from a text he sent, "I think the Saints were just beating the beat back there coming back from the commercial." That's right, they were fist pumping, Jersey Shore style.

Bird's Dirty of the Week: 585 total pics. Is that enough for you? We get a big variety from this college chick in Indiana. What doesn't she like? We'll ask her and find out, "don't like *liars, *backstabbers, *two faced people, players, or *fakes. I hate when people try to be someone their not to please everyone else, be yourself who cares what people think. I don't put up with girls who think they are bad asses... Because more then likely they aren't. I think rumors are stupid, they SUCK. But the people who start them AND believe them are dumb and all I have to say is thanks for making me the center of your world!!!!! Drama is so overrated it's not a part of my life now that you're gone.. I LOVE how when girls get jealous because of what I have that they can't have they talk shit, I kinda just sit back and laugh bc if you know me you'll realize I don't care, and if you don't KNOW ME, you might think things that aren't right. But if you take the time to believe it and not the time to get to know me to know it's not true you're simply a waste of time!" That's a book, but that's what she said anyways, so we might as well post on it. Here ya go people, http://www.myspace.com/21986785.

Bird's Video of the Week: I had a Jersey Shore vid to post this week that is getting huge reviews, but I'll hold off onto that for later use. I talk enough about that show anyways. No worries, I'll get enough of that in soon, I'm always in Shore mode with those characters. Instead, to keep with the snow theme, we'll go to a vid that the great ManDingo shared with all to view. It's the Meteoreologist Freakout, not to be confused with The_Freak, although this was in his area. "Oh boy. I'm AccuWeather meteorologist Jim Kosek. Our paralyzing, crippling, RECORD BREAKING STORM COMES TODAYYYY!" "14 to 22 inches of SNOWWWWWWW!" His thing on shoveling the snow is awesome. This guy is great, trust me and watch for yourself..

3 Quick Thangs:

1. My favorite Super Bowl commercials this year? There were quite a few I liked. Doritos straight killed it though, no comparisons if you ask me. They nailed all of theirs (funeral, little boy talking to mom's boyfriend, in the gym, etc). Another I liked was Coke doing its thing with The Simpsons. There were definitely some cheesy ones out there, but those were a few I was into.

2. NBA All Star Weekend is upon us. Saturday night the action begins! I can barely contain myself. It's right up there on days of the year I love, to go along with the NBA Draft (greatest day of the year for me, hands down), the EDDFL Fantasy Draft, A#BA Fantasy Draft, and NBA Opening Night. Do we see a pattern here? The day that Call of Duty comes out as well as Christmas, each Monday at 9:00 for WWE RAW, and Opening Day MLB are high on the list too.

3. Time to end with some quick facts. Did you know that one quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet? How about the fact that you'll eat 35,000 cookies in your lifetime? The average American/Canadian drinks about 600 pops (sodas) a year. More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.

"That's Like Hating Corky Thatcher or Radio.."

2010-01-31T16:52:00.003-05:00

Where have I been for almost two weeks? Hey, it happens. This is one of those weeks where we'll just bounce around topics to where it might make your head spin. There wasn't many truly huge stories happening around town, but we make it work as usual. I like it that way at times. This will be the last blog of January as one month of 2010 is about to be dusted off. In this one, the movie critiques continue, American Idol thoughts with great things from DerekHood and Corndog, Marky Mark, an update on the deathpool, Jersey Shore returns for a second season, and much more. I already have a movie held over that I watched on Saturday that I'll put on the next blog and the Toughman report will also go next week. As a little tidbit, I'll feature a bloody crowd fight from Friday that they actually had to mop the blood up with. I was a few rows in front of it. It'd be way too long for this week if I put both of those in this post. Away we go..

I'm still in the middle of my world movie tour. I've been lighting it up lately as far as seeing some of the newer features. It's time once again, you guessed it, for yet another movie. Theater time for this one and it was off to see The Lovely Bones. I still haven't seen The Book of Eli or Youth in Revolt yet, as I think both would be good. Bo from #basketball fame, one of my Chicago buddies, and esteemed movie guy himself, he has a perfect rank to mention to the fans. Perfect?? Really? 10 out of 10, yep. That's rare company indeed. Apparently so, because that's what Bo gave the movie Hurt Locker. It's getting a crazy amount of awards, but one I haven't seen yet. I might have to watch that bad boy online.

Oh yeah, the movie I meant to talk about. I haven't forgot about the readers, just wanted to pass on some good information if anyone wanted it. This was the first movie recently I've been to that had an actual crowd at. It was fairly packed, that surprised me. My boy Marky Mark was in this one, so I was at least halfway intrigued based on that. He usually does a nice job in his films. Everyone knows how great I think Boogie Nights was from 1997 (grad year, sweet, go Cougs), it's a definite top 5 movie of all time for me, honestly. This movie though? It was getting bashed online by reviews, but that didn't stop me from making the trip. It wasn't a total disaster, but I'm not going to recommend it to anyone. I wouldn't rent it to watch a second time. My boy Bo who I talked about a bit ago, he watched it online after I told him about it. He wanted to see for himself and he said it was miserable. It could've been better if it wasn't quite as long. It was a slow movie and didn't pick up for a while. Also, if you've seen the "heaven" scenes, you'll quickly see why I think people were on acid making those parts. It's more than bizarre. I thought Marky Mark played his role fine, but I was deep down wanting him to break all kinds of bad in this one and it didn't happen. Susan Sarandon, usually good in movies, they casted her horribly in this one as the grandma. The bright side is that the villain, Stanley Tucci, he was very believable in his role. Nikki SooHoo (real name) in this movie was strange. Somehow she's 21 years old, but looks about 8. As I type this part, IMDB has it at a 6.8. Time for my rating, drumroll please.. I'm going to give this 6 Sour Punch Strawberry Straws, great candy by the way, out of 10.

It's been a regular topic in the blog the past month or so, I might as well get another rambling in about it since it's still fresh in our minds. Last week was the Jersey Shore finale. They're milking this for all it's worth. The question remains, should they bring this crew back for the second season or will they bring in a brand new crew? I could see advantages both ways, but me personally, I want this crew back rather than having it be Real World style. Sure, they'll ham it up for the cameras even more since they know the drill, but they did that already in the first season and it turned out with great ratings, so I can accept that. Apparently, the crew has all agreed to rock it for season 2, we'll see more on details soon enough I'm sure. The whole Ronnie/Sammi breakup on the reunion was strange and why was Angelina even there? A few extra things to plug for ones who still can't get enough of the show now that's it's over. Podcast fans, make sure you check out one Bill Simmons' latest. The sports fans already know him as the Boston Sports Guy, but he does some great reality pods as well. His latest with the czar of reality TV, Dave Jacoby, is a must listen. You won't be disappointed, I promise, just search Bill Simmons in the pods. Also, thanks to Kasher, he found something that may never get old. You know how we all joke around with the amazing quotes from this show, right? Well, here's a soundboard that is epic. You'll have some fun with this creation: http://www.complex.com/blogs/2010/01/21/the-complex-jersey-shore-soundboard-click-on-it.

This week's two nights of American Idol weren't that great in my mind. The amount of commercials they push into that hour of TV is rough. On both nights, they showed one performer before the first commercial break. The next, you'd get maybe three or four. How can you get any kind of rhythm with that? A lot of the "singers" they showed weren't that interesting either. I'm not going to miss an episode regardless, so I guess it doesn't matter a whole lot, they still get insane ratings. The first night kept me awake though, just for the sole reason that Katy Perry was on there doing her thing, falling out of her top like she always does. Avril Lavigne though, ugh. She was scaring me in HD view. I don't get the appeal some see in her looks, but I could be in the minority. The second night's guest judges were Doogie Howser and Jonas Brother, whichever one. Doogie I thought was entertaining, but Jonas had no personality and it was like he wasn't even on the show.

There wasn't a lot to pick from, but I'll run down a few people that I thought did a good enough job to keep me intrigued for Hollywood from this week. I think the best this week was the Mexican guy whose parents were gangbangers in the mean streets of Compton. He's doing it all for his little kid and his parents are glad they are out of the hood. Of course if they break it down and give a big storyline, normally that means they're going through, but not always. This guy though, he's legit. On our message board, Corndog says that he really hates Randy Jackson. DerekHood replies with this gem: "How can you hate Randy Jackson?!? That's like hating Corky Thatcher or Radio or any other famous ritard." Derek is one of those fans of Avril though, but here's his comments on Tuesday night, another entertaining moment: "I've always thought Avril was trailer park hot, and tonight did nothing to change that for me. Katy Perry, on the other hand, was making her case for the Butt Pee All-Stars. God damn." I'm not quite sure how you get on that team or what it even consists of, but there ya go.. Also, I thought that Big Sexy and the pimpin' R&B guy who made his own song are worthy candidates to make names in the next round. I thought the girls last week were better singers as compared to this week. This week, the guys took the crown, but what do I know.

I'm not a politics guy whatsoever. I know what's going on and it's not that, but as far as arguing pointless details, count me out. I read the paper everyday and keep up with things, but eh. I much prefer local politics since you know a lot of the people and they can actually have a direct effect on your situations. That to me is interesting, maybe I'm weird. Nationally, take it or leave it. It's the same all the time with that. If a Democrat is in, the Republicans think he's the worst human in the world. If a Republican is in, the Democrats think he's the worst. Each side thinks the other is dirty and lying and it could be true, but it's somewhat amusing to me. I think it's similar to sports teams, but when it comes down to it, the majority of people have no clue on politics, and I'll risk saying it, national politics don't affect the little people as much as people make it out to be. Needless to say, I didn't watch one second of the State of the Union Address on Wednesday night, I admit. Am I un-American for that? Who knows. I vote in every single election though and have never missed in 13 years, even the wee tiny city ones that don't mean a whole lot. Nationally, I'll leave those arguments for everyone else and I'll just stand back and watch the drama.

I'll bore everyone with more exercise talk, that's what I do. I gotta fit it in somewhere. I've been researching resistance bands for a while now, but haven't made a purchase until just recently. I'm still a huge proponent of free weights and that won't cut back on that aspect, but this will provide a different type of workout and burn for muscles that might not be hit on a regular basis. I ended up buying from Ripcords and these are very good. I got them in the mail this week and love the setup already. The price isn't bad in my mind and I'm giving a big stamp of approval to try these bad boys out. You'd be surprised the tension and weight feel that they have and you can do a crazy amount of exercises with these. The good thing is that they're handy for around the house or if you wanted to take them somewhere, easy to transport. Check em out here: http://ripcords.com/ripcords-packages.html. The little kiddies will like that Jacob of Twilight fame uses these as well as a lot of military groups since they're easy to take on duty for the troops. The wrestling guys will know these things as what Scotty "Big Poppa Pump" Steiner uses in his promos backstage when he's being a goof. The football fans might know a similar product from Terrell Owens. His is a bit more expensive. I haven't tried his yet, but I might as well throw in that link too, why not: http://www.tobands.com.

Bird's Dirty of the Week: We're going with a user submission this week. I like to get everyone involved as you know already, so it's handoff time. Kristen in Florida is going to take her turn and that's the same person as Kristen in Germany. Confused yet? Good. I can explain, but we have business to take care of here instead. The link sent, Kristen says for us all to look through this person's mobile folder. There's an insane amount of pics in there. Some are way out there and revealing. It'll open your eyes for sure. Here you go, http://www.myspace.com/rawyaltie.

Bird's Video of the Week: This has been out there a bit, but it never gets old. Ninja dude goes into stance to a guy running his mouth. They laugh at the stance and then at the end, he goes Jersey Shore Ronnie style. "That's one shot kid!"

3 Quick Thangs:

1. I'll probably have another blog in before the game anyways, but I might as well throw in an early Super Bowl prediction. As usual, I'm sure I'll be way off, but that's the fun of it, right? I've doubted the Aints defense all season, but it's proven me wrong. I'm going to doubt them again and taking the Colts to win, 35-21, Manning etching another notch into his Hall of Fame career. I think it's funny (and annoying) that Brett Favre is getting more talk around this time of year than the Colts and Aints. He's done for the year and they're alive, go figure.

2. I'm old school and still like to use pencils a good bit. You need to go to the store to buy some pencils, think of that scenario. Don't worry, there's a point to this and I'm getting there. You look at a box that has every pencil unsharpened. Next to it, you see a box that has every pencil sharpened already. Now, the sharpened ones look all neat and ready to use, which they are. You're also paying, not for the pencil, but for the process to already be finished for you, so you're paying more for the sharpened ones. We're that lazy to where people get suckered in to not sharpening them on their own? I like stuff as easy as possible too, don't get me wrong, but sharpen your pencils. No clue why I thought that was worthy of a blog topic, but since I just sharpened some pencils, it was in my head. You never know what you'll see.

3. January is over, so it's time for an update on the #Balls Celebrity Deathpool. Blahah and Kasher are already on the board, incredible. Blahah is leading with 32 points as he had Ali Hassan al-Majid go down by hanging. Kasher is in with 24 points as he had Zelda Rubinstein tap out on us. There are talks of next year's league to have bonus points for how they die, but that's just a work in progress. We're demented, but yes, you're interested just like we are to see how this plays out.

"That's One Shot Kid!"

2010-01-19T16:39:00.001-05:00

Here we go, this is the 418th blog in my collection, time flies. Happy Belated MLK Day to all, hopefully you got work off and got to rock it out. If not, it's already over anyways and it's time to relax and read up on the latest words of randomness around North Central West Virginia. Remember the reason we had the day off, a lot of people don't appreciate it. As usual, I like to give a little lead-in to what you should expect. Whether it entices you to read farther or not, who knows, I'll do what I can for you. You get two movie reviews to start this beast off with. Also in this section, I had an unexpected call at 3:00 in the morning and in that, a mini road trip is planned. Count that in with the good deed and it ended up working out for everyone. Yes, you don't have to ask, thoughts on Jersey Shore are definitely in here and I have to do my best The Situation impression. I can't leave you hanging, plus you get some great quotes from last week's episode. More TV you want? American Idol is in here. How much TV per day does the average American watch? Also on the agenda we have more CD reviews, a new laptop and iPod after mine were on the fritz, and how well a new supplement on the market holds up and whether you should buy it or not. Ok, that's a long intro, it's time to get things started like we do around here..

It's becoming a recurring theme of the blog. That's right, my movie reviews with a ranking system. You know the drill by now. It's nothing formal, but just my thoughts on the movies I've been watching lately. Saturday night I was able to double up. Props to the Redbox $1 nightly rental machines, those things are handy. Not theater movies this time, we're hitting up some rentals if you didn't figure that out by now. I figured with my regular movie partner, I'd pick one and Whip would pick another. She picked out Fame, which I had zero clue about going into. I'm down for whatever, so I was in to check it out. The one I picked out was The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. Let's get right to the action and let people know about these bad boys if you haven't already seen..

First off, we go to Fame. Apparently, this is a big hit with some people. Girls seem to be all about it, but once again, I've never even heard of it. Back in the day, they had an original version and this is the modernized platform. Outside of Kelsey Grammer and Charles S. Dutton (aka Roc), I didn't know anyone in this. Megan Mullally is in it, but I don't know her since I've never watched Will & Grace or anything else she's been in. This follows along a group of high schoolers, which in reality we know they're pushing the ripe age of 30 years old. They are all enrolled at the New York Academy of Performing Arts and it follows them in their path to make it big. The storyline is easy to follow. From knowing basically nothing about this going in, it reminded me a bit of Glee. That's not normally my element, but then again, I got hooked like no other on the season of Glee this year. My favorites in the movie who I thought played their roles the best were Denise Dupree (real name Naturi Naughton), Malik Washburn (Collins Pennine), and Jenny Garrison (Kay Panabaker, almost 20 but looks 8 years old). I thought it was a pretty good movie and I didn't have any problems with it, it was fun. Naughton and Pennine are very good together in their duets, Naughton having the R&B voice mixed in with Pennine's hard raps. I wonder how many of these "kids" actually did their musical parts though. Review time and the online reports aren't being kind to it. IMDB gave it 4.3 out of 10, ouch. Maybe I'm being too lenient, but it gets 7.1 mid 20-year old high schoolers out of 10. I liked it.

The next movie on deck? The Goods. This is my kind of movie right there, just your easy to follow stupid humor comedy. It's probably not a movie you want to watch with younger kids as the cussing flies, which doesn't bother me, but just letting you know if you're concerned on that at all. The cast they had for this was awesome I thought, everyone played their parts very well. Jeremy Piven of course is the main guy behind this and his character as Don Ready is excellent. My favorite guy in this one though was Charles Napier who played Dick Lewiston. The off the wall remarks out of nowhere this old guy pulls are hilarious. Noureen DeWulf, wow. The dentist from The Hangover (Ed Helms) and the cop (Rob Riggle) are part of this movie. If you're wanting a good comedy to have you laughing and one you won't have to put full focus in, this is right up your alley. IMDB wasn't as nice as I am on my rating, they gave it 5.8 out of 10. Me personally? I'm going to throw out 7.4 f-bombs out of 10 for this one. I enjoyed it for sure.

After the movies were over, I was about to crash. That's when my phone rang at 3:00 in the morning. I was thinking, who in the world would be calling at that time? Around here, you never know. I look on it and it's Cork's girl Kristin. I didn't put two and two together, so answered to see what was up. She said she needed a huge favor and wondered if I could drive to Waynesburg, about an hour away, as they were stuck on the interstate with a flat tire. I'm always up for a late night mini road trip and since we were the only people awake of our crew at that time, we'd make the trek. It was Maria's car that had the mangled tire. It had five lugnuts on it and one of the lugs was way off kilter and didn't match the others. Either it was stripped, on backwards, or something else. Plus, no tow trucks in the area came to assist. Good deed of the month time at your service. At 3:30, we leave Shinnston and head up the road. I was in a coma, so glad that I didn't have to go alone as it kept me awake. When we get up there, we stuffed six in the Jeep with Ozzie jammed in the very back, Maria, Cork, and Kristen in the middle, and Whip riding along since she didn't want me going alone, so big props to everyone involved. No traffic out that late either, imagine that. We made it home safe and I took one for the team. It's just what you do for family, no biggie on my end. As for Maria's car, it's back on the road and ready to rock like no other. We got home around 6:00, went to bed at 7:00, and woke up at 11:00. Champs.

A week or two ago, my laptop that I've had for 2 or 3 years was dying on me as well as my original iPod. I've had that one for about 3 years, it was a beast. It's not good times when both are spazzing out, but that just gave me an excuse to buy myself some belated birthday presents. They weren't dead so to speak, but I wasn't about to test things and have them really screw up on a day where I'd need them. The laptop's screen color is mangling bad and it has gotten worse over the past month or so. I turn the contrast down and that helps some, but every few days it'd get worse. Now it's green a lot of times and just not worth fooling around with. It works fine, minus the color, so I'm going to use it as a backup and put the old Dell desktop in the corner. The iPod? It'd be fully charged and then I'd take it to workout with me. On some days, it'd only stay on for about 30 minutes and then go all wacky.

On the laptop scene, I picked up a 16 inch Toshiba with a 500GB hard drive, 4GB of memory, Windows 7, and all of that. I wanted one a little smaller than the other laptop I have, which is an 18 inch HP. I have literally no clue what I'm going to do with a 500GB hard drive. No way I'd ever come close to using that. My other laptop has a 160GB in it and I still have most of it free, but since most newer ones today come with insane space, I might as well load up since that's pretty much a basic feature. So far after a few weeks, I'm loving this thing, no complaints yet. That was my theory on the iPod too, the space, more on that in a second.

Is this week really the finale of Jersey Shore? That's going to put me to tears since I'm so hooked on this show that is so bad that it's good. As Kasher says, they could've stretched this out a bit longer and not done a few of the 2 hour nights they've done a few times. Let's touch on last week though. I could type up a blog just with my thoughts and quotes on this show, but I'll try to make it halfway short into one paragraph. This will seem all jumbled up, but I'm going rapid fire speed here. A few Vinny moments for me that I liked. When The Situation was getting his chick in the hot tob and took her down the steps, she busted herself and Vinny is literally rolling on the ground laughing. Then his impression of The Situation was dead on.. How about Pauly D's phone call to the Jewish/stalker girl. He ripped that girl apart after she didn't get the hint. DerekHood posted a photoshopped version of that shirt on my FB wall for those who didn't see, a job well done. Pauly D's Jewish girl would show up everywhere, that was a bit strange.. The main part of last week to me was Ronnie roid raging once again. I love how he acts that he doesn't want to fight and then shortly after, he rages and goes at the guy. Another guy was running his mouth, a bad bad mistake. Ronnie is probably only 5'6" as all of these guys are little, but he's straight diesel. He rocked that dude in one punch and he was laying there a complete mess.. Random, but I've been growing my hair out, mainly due to boredom and I haven't done that in a while. While playing ball last Tuesday at The Lighthouse, the hair was up and everywhere after a while. That's when Buck started fist pumping and started calling me The Situation. I had to crack up at that and it became a good running joke. I might have to run with it just to be stupid. Based just on last week's 2-hour show, I'll paste some quotes that were said, some of these are golden.

"Honestly, all we care about is getting girls and going to the gym."- The Situation

"Ditched the zero and and went with the hero."- The Situation when he stole Vinny's girl

"Get the fuck outta here bro! That's one shot! That's one shot kid!"- Ronnie when he buckled that guy

"You have no game at all."- The Situation
"That's not what your sister thinks."- Vinny

"Me and Sammi, we left at 4:00. You know, I just couldn't take it anymore. We've been here since 12:00. You know. 5 hours, that's like enough." - Ronnie showing his math skills

To the Twitter fans, enjoy if you haven't already been following this: http://twitter.com/JSQuotes

The first iPod I had and it lasted me a while was a 30GB classic. At the time I got this new one, I had about 20GB free from that 30. More space than I needed, but I like being more safe than sorry. The new one? I could have used my iPod on the iPhone, but I'd rather not. I don't like running the battery down crazy low all the time, don't want to bang it around when I run, and wanted more space than it has mainly. Most people like the wee little fancy colored ones, but to me, you're just paying for the color and look. The way I look at it, I might as well go with the classic I know and can end up getting like ten times more space if not more. It's small to me, plus it has the video if I need that. I ended up going with a 160GB classic. In my mind, for the price of the 160 as compared to the wee little ones, it's a steal that I couldn't pass up, practically giving it away. I doubt I'll have 40,000 songs to fill this thing though, hah. So far, I'm liking it a lot and it's a good bit updated since the other classic I had.

Speaking of working out, it's time to hear me ramble on some of that. You know how it goes, I bring it up at a regular pace, but try not to send you into a bore fest. This won't pertain to many, but it's going in here anyways. To my crew in Lobstah and Twitter, you've heard my reviews of this already, so it'll be much of the same. New supplement time. I'm still taking mainly the same stuff outside of this new purchase. It's a pre-workout nitric oxide mix from USP Labs. It's called Jack3d and it's similar to No-Xplode and Altered State. Both of those are great products too, but I like switching things up from time to time. This stuff here is a little different than those. How so? You notice it kicking in within the first minute or two, no joke. It's scary how it kicks in, the first time will surprise you a bit. It's real easy to mix too. You put a few tiny scoops in 4-8 ounces of water a half hour before you workout and you're good to go. The price isn't bad either if that's a factor you're wondering about on the buy. It gets a big thumbs up from me after a few weeks in.

Like everyone else out there, I'm on board with the American Idol bandwagon as usual. Some people watch this time of the season just to see the bums. Others wait till the bums finish before really getting into it. I like both sides actually. Atlanta last week was pretty strong I thought. Boston was ok. I'll probably be rooting for the same as most people have been talking about already. The hick girl that likes to "jump off bridges", she surprised me. I thought they'd have her on to be brutal, but she's actually good. From Boston, Amadeo Diricco would fit in perfectly on the Shore. Plus, he has talent, he could be interesting. A lot of people seem to like the cop too with his voice. I like Jermaine, the guy who takes care of his sick mom. And what's up with Guitar Girl (the one dressed up as a guitar) doing well? That was a shocker, even if she is a goof. The talk of last week was definitely the old man, Larry Platt. Don't know his name? You know the song for sure as it was on YouTube in a matter of minutes. Pants On The Ground. "Lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground! With the gold in your mouth, hat turned sideways.." Yep, now it's stuck in your head too.

It's time for more rap CD reviews. With no time to waste, here we go..

Gucci Mane: The State Versus Radric Davis. We hit up the ATL with this one as Gucci has been all over the place the past year or so. He loads it up with 20 tracks and pushes the minutes in, good to see. First, you want to know who is on this beast. We get Lil Wayne, Cam'ron, Rick Ross, Soulja Boy, Waka Flocka, Urshhher, Keysia Cole, Nicki Minaj (who I think is real hot when she's not trying to be super slutty), Trina, and Bobby Valentino. That's loaded up with talent. You've all heard Spotlight with Ursh and I'm a big fan of that, even if it is clubby. Ursh still gets it done. Others to get that I can recommend are All About The Money with Rick Ross, Bad Bad Bad that has Cole, and Volume. Gucci does a nice job of mixing the rough lyrics on some songs then bringing along a chick or R&B dude to do a chorus to give you that feel. Good CD here.

Tony Pacasso: Memphis 10-A-Key To NYC Mixtape. Here's one of those CDs that I get just because. When it's someone you really don't know much about, you take a chance and go with it. This turned out to be not bad at all. It comes hard and grimey, so if you're into that style of rap, you'll like this if you can find it out there. It's also not an annoying mixtape to where you're hating it because an untalented DJ is screaming his name over and over the track. This is more like a preview of things to come as it's straight raps.

Snoop Dogg: Malice N Wonderland. A few people were asking me about this for a while. I was hesitant on getting it. One is that I always expect the 1992 Snoop Dogg to make his return. In 2010, I've realized that isn't going to happen, so I'll keep those expectations lower. This compared to his last few albums though, I thought it wasn't bad a all. It isn't loaded up with totally mainstream type stuff as he switches it up. He doesn't get all mean like we'd want out of him, at least out of those of us who were rap fans when Snoop first came on the scene. Some reading this were barely born then, ouch. This is Snoop's 10th album, a veteran of the game if there ever was one. A ton of people are on this thing such as Lil Jon, The Game, Jazmine Sullivan, The Dream, Soulja Boy, R. Kelly, and Pharrell to name some. Tracks to jam to? Pimpin Ain't EZ featuring the legendary R. Kelly, Different Languages with Sullivan who I'm a fan of and I usually don't care much for chick music, Pronto with Soulja Boy (he's still a little dork, but he cracks me up now), and 2 Minute Warning. Check it out.

I had more I wanted to pack into this blog, but some things have to get held over till the next week. That just gives us more material. The annual Toughman Contest is at the end of the month and I can't be anymore excited. You know I have reports on those in the past how many ever years and you definitely get your worth for your money spent and then some.. Also, it's kicking into high gear in my 30-man keeper fantasy baseball league, Chin Music, that is basically a year round league. As I type this part, we're in the middle of our offseason draft that consists of the guys just drafted or international imports. I like it for the fact that you have to be on top of the minor league systems as well. We all have 55-man rosters, have salary caps, and the whole works, it's serious. I may post my draft results one day, but we'll see..

Bird's Dirty of the Week: We're going to North Carolina for this week's action. Apparently she's single and "looken". She's also supposedly the girl that you'll never be. Who knows, I just report on it. In her words, "i want a guy or gurl thats really no bull shit added so you drama dont add or fuck with me love to meet new ppl this is me like it or not". I'll give her credit though, she looks good. http://www.myspace.com/sexyassbitch289

Bird's Video of the Week: The Shore boys goofing off in their hotel before going to a Lakers game.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. We haven't tried birthdays in a while, so why not do it up.. Let's go with Wednesday, January 20th. Before that, we'd like to thank a big blog contributor, none other than Kasher, he celebrates his today, the 19th. Have a good one Kasher! Onto the 20th.. The second person on the moon or so they say in 1969, Buzz Aldrin, 80. Paul Stanley, guitarist of KISS, 58. TV talk host Bill Maher, 54. Actor Lorenzo Lamas, 52. White Sox fiery manager, Ozzie Guillen, 46. Rainn Wilson of The Office, 44. I'll get scolded for this, but I'm one of very few people who have never watched that show. I hear it's great. Stacey Dash, I'm sure she's still looking great at 43, but I haven't seen her in ages. Melissa Rivers, she hits 41. Rob Bourdon, drummer of Linkin Park, I don't know him, but he's 31. That's not a bad list. I could give some lower level sports players, but I'll refrain from that as much as possible.

2. I just read in the latest Men's Fitness magazine that it is 289 minutes. What is 289 minutes you ask? That is the average time an American spends watching TV each day, 4 hours and 49 minutes. Crazy. I'd say I'm in that bunch though for sure.

3. Some weird facts to end up on. Chickens can live without a head. One supposedly lived 18 months after getting beheaded, but I don't believe it.. A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounce is used to start the average car.. Porcupines float in water.. We started with a chicken fact, let's finish with one. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

"Gym, Tan, Laundry"

2010-01-12T17:05:00.002-05:00

Hey everybody, what do we have in store for you this week? It's one where I shouldn't be short of things to write about. You'll get another movie review, doubling up days on playing board games, birthday wishes, Japanese action, Jersey Shore, Real World, CD updates, and of course whatever else we mix in. As I dust off a jumbo sized box of Nerds, it's time to get the show rolling..

I'll start off by thanking everyone for the birthday wishes last week. I was blowing up with messages on Facebook, Twitter, texts, chat IMs, message boards, you name it. As usual, you can tell I'm online WAY too much. It's much appreciated though and I made sure to thank every message I got. 40 will be here before I know it and then I can turn into Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State fame with his classic speech. Sports fan or not, you've more than likely seen it and it's always a running joke with our crew. It's easily found on YouTube of course. "It's garbage! And the editor that let it come out, it's garbage! Attacking an amateur athlete for doing everything right! And then you want to write articles about guys who don't do anything right and downgrade them to the ones that do make plays. Are you kidding me? Where are we at in society today? Come after me! I'm a man! I'm 40! I'm not a kid!" That to me, never gets old just to see Gundy go nuts.

I'll go to the movie review first since that was on the birthday night. Whip has been my partner in crime with the movie watching and we checked out Did You Hear About The Morgans that night. At that point, there weren't many others that I haven't seen that were out that I really wanted to make a point to. I'm one of few who hasn't seen Avatar. I've heard nothing but good reviews for it, but at the moment I have no interest. I'm sure I'll see it one day, who knows. As far as this one goes, it has Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker in it for those who don't know. SJP has that weird complex with guys. I've heard some guys say she looks good, others go with brutal. I'm more on the brutal end, she never did much for me and she only weight 82 pounds, come on. She wasn't too horrible as far as looks in this movie though I guess. I kind of get a kick out of Hugh Grant and his accent, so it was watchable to us.

Sam Elliott (65) and Mary Steenburgen (56) were awesome in their roles and help make the movie if you ask me. Is it weird to say that Steenburgen (who was also in The Proposal that I reviewed) at 56 is hotter than SJP? I'm not afraid to say it. Elliott is the man though and has a great presence in all of his movies. I did like the small town Wyoming lifestyle they had when they left New York in this movie, reminded me of Shinnston. Ok, rank time. I gave this one 6.7 English accents out of 10. Whip gave it a 7.0 due to the fact she's a big SJP fan. Others who reviewed it? IMDB users have it at a pathetic 2.7 out of 10. Boyles and his Caragh said it was the worst movie they've ever seen, ouch. Vanilla Sky still gets my vote for worst ever. This movie wasn't bad at all to me though, maybe we were just weird and halfway liked it. The ending was good and the storyline easy to follow. Either that or we just wanted out of the house. For the locals on FB, check out Farris' movie reviews, they're impressive. He just did one for Up In The Air.

Before we get to some reality TV action, let's first tackle board game night(s). Yes, plural. Since I'm such a rebel around here, the past two Saturday nights I was able to battle in board games. That might not be exciting to some, but count me in for this every single time. Last Saturday we had a crew of six of us doing our thing. Along for the ride were the Riley girls, Pat, Court, Whip, and myself. I hit up Abby and Pat's house and we rolled with some Monopoly and Balderdash. I wrote about those last week in the blog and then joked that a few hours later, I was invited to play the very same games. If I had to pick, those are my top two board games, so I'm all about it. I didn't win either, but I'll take a good enough performance. I finished up 3rd in Monopoly behind Ally and Court. Ally, you're ruthless at that game, hah. That was cracking me up. In Balderdash, I tied for 2nd, so I'll settle for that. No trophy to take home for the night on my end though, but we'll get em next time. Homemade milkshakes though, can you really go wrong with that? Props to Abby for doing that part up big.

Board game night #2 is upon us. Let's fast forward to the following Saturday, which would be this past Saturday. Follow me so far? We did the Japanese trip to Shogun as we were due and that was a crew of ten in total, doing it up. In attendance, not that you care, but I amuse myself with lists of just about anything: three married couples in Ozzie and Maria, The Fortneys, and Cork and Kristin. Then we have a couple that will probably get married eventually in Boyles and Caragh. Mudcat and myself played our roles of wingman. I went with lobster and shrimp as my main courses, yum yum. On a note, it happens at least twice, it's "someone's" birthday. Come on, stop banging that stupid gong that has your ears ringing for 3 weeks. For as nice as this place is, the guys can back me up, the men's bathroom is beyond filthy and the smell, ouch. Health department, let's get it clean in there. Afterwards, we had a different crew for board game night. In attendance? Ozzie and Maria as the hosts, Cork and Kristin, Boyles and Caragh, Matty Cakes and Kari, and myself. We went old school and dusted off Scattergories. It's been a long time since I've played this one, but I'm a huge fan. You wouldn't think it'd be much, but you can get some pretty off the wall answers when you battle, especially when 9 of us are in one game. The winner ended up being Cork with Maria coming in 2nd, and if memory serves me right, I ended up with 3rd. So in the past 3 board games duels, I had two 3rd Place and one 2nd Place finish, not too shabby. Still a loser though, I'm due for a win soon.

Time for the weekly Jersey Shore update. I know, you either hate it or love it. There is no in between with this show. Myself, you know where I stand, I'm all about it. This week featured quite a few nice storylines. One is that The Situation's girl he tried to hook up with in a previous episode came back to the house, but also brought along "the grenade" with her and a buddy. That put a dagger in his heart. Through all of that, Snooki tried to run the other two girls out so Situation could be with his chick, but then she ended up getting punched by the big chick. Cops were soon on the scene and put Situation's chick in cuffs. My favorite part of this whole scene was when the garbage truck was there and Situation kept telling them that their ride is there. This episode also had the infamous fight scene with Ronnie and an annoying guy that kept messing with them. It started with this dude saying stuff to Pauly D at a bar, but Pauly shrugged it off. Later in the night, this guy started with Ronnie, bad move buddy. In short, Sammy Sweetheart basically got Ronnie involved in this fight. He literally roid raged on this dude, dropped him with a haymaker and then landed a knee. After that, it was ground and pound and he punished this guy something awful. Maybe I'm awful for watching this scene, getting all pumped up, and telling Ronnie to mangle that guy, but that's how it was. Rumor has it that our crew is wanting to film a spoof video and make our own Jersey Shore. We'll see.. As an added bonus, for those who watch ESPN's SportsNation on ESPN2 at 4:00 EST, you saw The Situation as a guest and he was great of course. SportsNation is one awesome show that is hosted by my boy Colin Cowherd (a buddy of Uncle Wilbur of the blog) and the little hottie Michelle Beadle.

You're also wanting my thoughts on the new season of Real World based out of Washington D.C.? Ok, ask and you shall receive. After two episodes, we're starting to get a feel for these people. Opinions change by the week on these characters, so I'm sure you'll see me go back and forth. I just hope it doesn't turn into a season full of religion/political arguments. That to me doesn't make good TV. What makes for good TV is Ty who has a short fuse and is going to let people know what he thinks. He blows up in some future episodes according to the previews, so I can't wait for that. Then we get Ashley who I'm not liking one bit so far. She looks nice, but seems to be nothing but drama early on. Mike, the bisexual, he's back and forth between dudes and chicks, whatever. The girls all think he's hot though. Andrew might be my favorite dude so far because he's a total goofball. He's weird, but is real good at trying to be funny and BSing around, plus his mission is to finally hook up with a chick. That story writes itself, does it not?

Then we move to Emily, the youngest of them all at 20. She grew up in a religious cult that now has her totally against religion. She's also one that claims to be bi and is ready to experience new things and be free since she wasn't as a kid. Callie is a little cutie. 21 and from Texas, she's the dumb blonde/small town girl. She's clueless on the big city stuff, similar to how I would be I'm sure. Andrew wants her bad, but when she gets in the middle of a girl he brought home, that lowered her status in his mind. Erika and Josh are the rockers of the group. They instantly are all about each other. They started out rooming, but Erika had to switch up because she knew she'd end up hooking up with Josh. Neither of them are single, so you can see where this will end up. I like Josh, he's from South Philly (one of my favorite places), dropped out of high school twice, has been locked up, grew up around gangs, but walks with a strut that gets some of the other dudes bothered. He reminds me in looks to somewhat like Prince. There's your quick 2-paragraph wrap up on Real World so far. I hope you're along for the ride.

Yes, it's time for more CD reviews. I have a ton to review over the next few weeks, so I should have a busy space here to provide that. This week, we'll go with three and branch out from there..

Chris Brown: Graffiti. Yeah, I know he's a woman beater so he doesn't get any respect for me on that end. I'm not judging that on a CD review though. His last CD got a thumbs down in my book, but this one seems like a worthy enough candidate to check out. It has both good and bad on it, but overall I think the good outweighs the bad if you're into his stuff to begin with. I'm not big on I Can Transform Ya since it's been way overplayed, plus Swizz Beatz is is more miss than hit for me lately. Outside of that though, I'm into Sing Like Me and Crawl. Still one of the best dancers out there, him and Ursh need to have a battle.

Glasses Malone: F Glasses Malone, The Mixtape. He's been rocking the mixtapes for a while now. If you haven't heard of Glasses, he's a West Coast guy from the Watts section of LA. It's not club rap or any of that garbage, this stuff if you're into the West Coast sound, this is for you. He doesn't pull any punches and just straight brings it with his lyrics. This mix features Lil Wayne, Birdman, and Maino to name a few bigger names. The whole CD is worth the listen as he's going to make a name for himself in 2010 when his first full CD will be released. Go find Like Suge, the self titled F G Malone, Where Itz At featuring Lil Wayne where he kills it with his verse, and Lonely At The Top which might be my favorite. The beat on that one is quality.

Tech N9ne: K.O.D. If you can get past the demented stuff, this is a fine CD. It's not as good as Glasses', but still it has some tracks worth listening to. Also, you rarely see skits anymore on rap CDs. You used to get those all the time back in the day, but this one has a good bit. Sometimes that can either be good or bad. A whopping 23 tracks on this beast. One I've mentioned in a previous blog, Leave Me Alone, very good. Others to consider? The Martini, Strange Music Box, and also K.O.D. He packs about all the minutes onto this CD instead of just releasing a half version.

Bird's Dirty of the Week: Layla Meyer and she's a Florida fan? Hmm.. Ok, we'll run with that. 21 years old and from the mean streets of Decatur, Georgia. Unfortunately she doesn't have any outrageous things in her info or a zillion pics. The ones she does have, the staff around here considered into detail. A rare one where I'm not posting any quotes or anything of that nature, but it's lacking from that end. We branch out though. Here she is, this week's winner: http://www.myspace.com/492323170

Bird's Video of the Week: When I saw this, it had to go up for this week's vid, no questions asked. I'm stealing this from Klimek's FB and he'll get credit for throwing it up there. I can't get enough of this. I don't even have to describe things, you'll be amazed too. Apparently she's shouting out to her Stickam buddies and throws in some "Ms. Moogoo". Oh, how great YouTube is. Enjoy.

3 Quick Thangs:

1. The world's greatest candy is back in stores once again! Why can't they be out all year long? I've never figured that one out either, but you know where I'm going with this. Cadbury Eggs! That's my crack when it comes to candy. Put em in the fridge and you can't go wrong, just trust me on this.

2. Fact time, here we go.. The average secretary's left hand does 56% of the typing.. Polar bears can eat more than 50 pounds of meat in one setting.. Billy goats wizz on their own heads to smell more attractive to females.

3. American Idol starts tonight! I'm sure I'll ramble on this all through the season, so get used to it. Yes, I admit to watching this mess. Another TV show I'm addicted to, imagine that.