Happy Birthday wishes

Better late than never, I recently got some Happy Birthday messages from some of G's closest friends, and they asked me to pass them along:

Um.......

Did Prince just perform on American Idol?

That Prince?

Holy.....

Tomorrow's paper in LA

While I'm getting the Fox out of my system, I got a copy of the LA Times on Tuesday, the day after Jack Bauer was finished rampaging through his 24 hours of hell.



Make sure to click on the picture to open up the whole picture and fully see the depths of my insanity. After it opens a new window, hold your mouse over the pic for a second and click on the little box on the bottom right.

Disturbing American Idol stuff

Since this is my last chance to post about these jokers, and since 50 million people watched that final sing off tonight between Katherine McPhee and Tayolr Hicks, here are a few observations:

*** Best sign: This Hick Loves Hicks.
Worst sign: Fox identified Tori Spelling as "Katherine's family."

*** I saw at least five Ford commercials, and I heard this week that a 30 second ad cost $1.3 million (third among TV shows, behind only the Oscars and El Super Bowla). Even if they got a discount and only paid $5 million, that's enough cash to hand out 250 free Mustangs, which probably would have been much better publicity.

*** When they announced there was a special guest, I could have sworn it was the Registrar of Alabama there to confirm that Taylor is actually 47 years old. Dude has more gray hair than Sean Connery, but I'm supposed to believe he's 29? C'mon. I sat through a whole season of 24, and I can't swallow that. Even my hair isn't that bad.

*** I wish I had bought stock in the song "You had a bad day." Every 14-year-old girl in the country has been brainwashed into loving that weeny little Canadian guy. There's gotta be some way we can make money off that.

*** When 9 p.m. rolled around, my Tivo switched over to NBC's disaster movie 10.5 Apocalypse. You know, I didn't even notice that I wasn't still watching American Idol...

*** And for all you gamblers out there, put the money on Taylor and pick the over on the vote totals (60 million is the over/under, but I bet 75 million votes were cast).

Disturbing pics, part 3

The most disturbing picture I've ever taken -- this was a puppet shop on the side of a hill in Prague. We still have nightmares.

Disturbing pics, part 2

More from the camera.


This sign sits along Route 301 just north of the Maryland/Delaware border. Again, no clue. Maybe there are a lot of frog-related train derailments in the area.

Disturbing pics, part 1

I was cleaning off the digital camera today, and found a number of disturbing, random pictures on there.

So, rather than actually get rid of them , let's make it into a recurring theme. For picture number 1 ...


This was a statue in Prague (from a trip last fall) titled "Man Peeing." The little girl who was studying it with us didn't have any better answers.

More to come ...

New favorite Phillie

If you run headfirst into a wall trying to make a catch, then pull out "For who? For what?" as your explanation, you're the greatest Philadelphia baseball player since Darren Daulton made some sense.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read the Inky now.

Seriously, he needs a nickname and a fan club right away.

Fun with Google

If you don't check in on Google Labs frequently, you should -- they're always putting fun new stuff up there. Today they released a tool where you can see how often certain search terms come up.

For example, if you did a search for Chuck Norris you would see searches in his name spiking right around the time the 30 facts about his life came out.

You can even compare, say, Chuck Norris to Jesus, you would see that at the height of his popularity the master of roundhouse kicks was as popular with Google searchers as our Lord and Savior, master of everything but roundhouse kicks.

I bring this up, of course, to confirm to you what you already knew:


Even in the offseason, the Eagles are vastly more popular than the other Philly sports teams. You can see it for yourself here.

It's not just that the NFL is more popular than everyone else. If you compare the four major sports leagues (We'll include the NHL just for fun) you'll see baseball and basketball taking over during their respective seasons. But even at their lowest, the Birds are right on par with everyone else.

What I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with caring about the Eagles all year long. Everyone else is doing it. And it'll make you feel good. C'mon, just try a little bit.

What happens when there's no football

Some stats from this Madden 06 game:

** Donovan McNabb -- 383 yards passing, 8 TDs, 16 yards rushing, 1 TD
** Brian Westbrook -- 135 rushing, 2 TDs, 65 yards receiving
** Anquan Boldin (traded for TO in the offseason) -- 122 yards receiving, 1 TD, -3 yards rushing
** Javon Kearse -- 5 tackles, 4 sacks, 1 safety
** Sheldon Brown -- 3 tackles, 2 INTs, 2 TDs
** David Akers -- 1 FG (26 yards), 13 extra points

Why can't all football be like this?

You must be kidding me

I'm feeling that Phils' pride ...

No, wait, that's too strong.

I'm feeling that Phils' not shame. Yeah, not shame.

Parenting 101

This is the right way to raise a kid.

Nine in a row?????

Now I've gotta say something about the Phillies....

Um ....

Woo-hoo?

While I try and decide if I'm back on the bandwagon, take a look at the first tenth of the season vs the second tenth. If my math is right, they should go 18 and negative-two over the next 16 games.

	First 16 games	Next 16 Games
Wins	6	12
Losses	10	4
Phils runs per game	4.5	5.5
Opponents RPG	6.2	3.9
Phils ERA	5.66	3.55
Opponents ERA	3.96	5.62
Phils total hits	143	143
Phils home runs	23	19
Phils strikeouts (batting)	88	115

That's right -- the Phillies struck out more and hit fewer home runs and managed to double their win total.

I'm still deciding....

Tomorrow's post: Why Candyland stinks

The wonderful folks at Hasboro have been working furiously to destroy the beloved game Monopoly for the last month -- After May 12, the game will no longer feature Park Place and Boardwalk but instead feature some of the great (and some really crappy) landmarks from major cities throughout the country.

And they're letting people vote on it.

I don't know how many presidential elections this country is going to have to go through before we all demand a king (or military coup, with Fort Awesome as its HQ) and realize that there are certain things people shouldn't be allowed to vote on.

So the public gets to choose among such wonderful Cleveland sites like Jacob's Field, Elucid Street and ... something else that has the same photo of Elucid Street. They couldn't even get a third photo in there, for the love of gawd.

Sorry -- I'll post a picture later -- blogger is broken yet again. If it wasn't free, I'd have to complain.

Or, if you travel down to New Orleans, you can vote on three things that no longer look anything like the pictures supplied.

But none of that is my problem -- who cares how lesser cities are represented for future generations. My problem, as you probably guessed, is with the Philly choices:

*** The Liberty Bell
*** Independence Hall
*** Ben Franklin parkway (a "cultrual mecca, including museums and educational institutions" )

Independence Hall is a great symbol of the city as the birthplace of the country, and the line they give there about Ben Franklin parkway combined the majesty of optimistic thinking and good old-fashioned American BS.

But we all know what's going to win: That damn loser bell.

That broken chime is the symbol of everything that's wrong with Philly today. It's the physical embodiment of "trying hard" and "perservence" with the silently understood "but still failing" afterwards. Anywhere else, they would have fixed the crack or thrown it away and bought a new bell. Not here, though. Here it get fixed enough for it not to crack more, but not enough to be used. And we revere it.

When Rocky lost to Apollo in the first movie, he was the Liberty Bell in action: Impressive and inspiring, but not enough to amount to anything real. Every time a Philly sports team makes a run, they Liberty Bell it just enough to get further than they should but just short of the top spot.

And I blame the Liberty Bell (and Greg Jeffries). We need to ditch it in the harbor like so much Boston tea and embrace a symbol befitting the city's grace and not-New-Jersey-scent.

So I implore you: Go here and vote for Independence Hall. Save our fair city from another decade of this albatross of a symbol. And while your there, see if you can figure out a way to vote for the site of Kennedy's assassination on the Dallas page. Isn't that what people really think of?

What sport was I just watching?

In case you missed the hockey games last night, here's the box score between the Sabres and the Senators:


For the record, there were 15 baseball games last night, and 10 of them had less scoring than this match-up. The Padres won their game 1-zip in the 11th inning.

But in this ice contest, three of the goals came in the first four minutes of the game, and three more came in the last two minutes of the third period. The game-winner came 18 second into overtime.

Welcome to the new NHL.

Tonight's top story

The streets run red with Burgundy's blood.

That is all.

Skip the post, go right to the link

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the Flyers won't come back in this game, down by six goals with nine minutes left, which means yet another sports season has passed for the good fans of Philly without a championship.

For those of you keeping score at home, since the '83 Sixers took home the NBA title, the city has gone nearly 23 years without a championship. That means that kids born in 1984 are old enough to drink and haven't had a reason to raise a glass of champagne to sports glory for their entire lives. That should scare you.

To put it another way, that's 88 sporting seasons (not including strikes) since Philly has had a title. We'll hit the 100 mark in 2009 unless one of these teams does something soon.

Or, if you prefer, it's more than 7,600 regular season and playoff games since we've had real satisfaction. I'm getting sick of facing the Panthers (Florida or Carolina)and Giants (New York or San Fran) and Bucs (Tampa Bay or Milwaukee) and Devils (New Jersey or Dallas Cowboys) without any gratifying closure.

So, while I wallow in self-pity for a bit, here's a video of Brian Dawkins hitting people to make you a little happier.

Ahhhhh ... I feel better already. Look at little Alge Crumpler crumple.

Greatest T-shirt ever

A gift from Major Dingus and his loverly wife:


Major Dingus is now in line for a promotion.

In case you don't know what this is, click here. That's all the explanation you get.