"I Lick My Chops and You're Tasting Good"

Hair Band Friday has been a bit saucy here in the office today. Shari and Kari have been performing various sex acts on each other using binder clips, highlighters, and redwell folders, a feat that I didn't know was possible until I actually saw it, all to the tune of three wicked songs: "Bad Girl" by Trixter, "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)" by W.A.S.P., and "I Want You Both (With Me)" by Anvil. Earlier I found myself reviewing documents while standing on my desk buck naked -- save for my black dress socks, which were pulled up as high as they could go -- howling like a banshee and occasionally running in place, likely because of the mixture of coke and Red Bull and vodkas I have been ingesting since about 7:30 this morning. When I realized what I was doing, I quickly sat down, took a couple Xanax, doused myself with a bottle of merlot, and then started looking for my cockring and these Japanese twins that I thought I saw in here earlier. While I didn't find the twins (turns out what I thought were Japanese twins were just two wooden chairs), I did find some chick named Darci who made me forget about the twins because of her willingness to please me in the most nefarious of ways in exchange for simply letting her watch me write a memo.

My weekend is shaping up to be the popular independence-celebrating combination of booze, charred animal flesh, baseball, small missiles, and studying for the bar. Happy 230th birthday America! In honor of our fair land, I will leave you this weekend with a whole bunch of random shit to keep you entertained when fireworks are not enough. Sadly, I don't have any stories about 5-year-old transvestites to flip out about this week.

Links

• Here is a link to a recent hilarious Onion article entitled "Government To Defend Marriage from Dashing Reginald St. Croix, Esq." Thanks to Tradd "The Dude Abides" Fromme for sending me the link.
• For those of you who plan on being in, or simply traveling through, Will County, Illinois, heed this warning: Beware of bats! Apparently they're having a problem with rabid bats biting people. As if dealing with bats wasn't already a big enough pain in the ass. To be safe, vets are suggesting cloaking yourselves with garlic necklaces at all times and carrying wooden stakes, crosses, and silver bullets (the latter is just in case rabies turns bats into werewolves). My favorite part of the article is when Orville Hires, the 87-year-old man who got bit, is describing what he did after he got bit: "That thing bit hard. . . . Then I clubbed it, and it finally got off. And then I took a stick and batted it." "Batted" it, Orville? Touché. Thanks to my bat-loving, yet vampire-fearing, wife Jester for alerting me to this horrifying reality.

Videos (all thanks to Tron Wiescinski)

• A three- or four-year-old kid in a suit dancing better than I ever will.
• A classic moment from a British game show, full of double entendre, toilet humor, and the like. You may have seen this on Most Outrageous Game Show Moments.
• A short clip showing a ladder race, a completely safe sport that I assume is from the Netherlands or Wisconsin.
• Some moron high schooler, who I assume is Dutch or a Cheesehead, who let his friends shoot his chest up with paint balls. He got what he deserved.
• Some future date rapist with hair band hair, competing in karate's U.S. Open, which I assume took place in either Maastricht or Eau Claire.
• This clip is from an episode of Maury entitled "My Fear of Mustard and Pickles is Ruining My Life!" This type of behavior is typical of people from Holland or the Badger State, or those sodomized by Oscar the Grouch. If The Onion had a TV station -- and it should -- this is the type of thing that would be on. Maury can barely contain himself.
• Funny song and cartoon about how much of a badass George Washington was. Interestingly, George Washington neither liked windmills nor cheese curds.

Enjoy your long weekend, and dammit, be good to each other.

Midwestern Eavesdropping - 6/29/06

I told you this week was a little thin. Dammit, I expect better eavesdropping results next week, especially considering the long, drunken, holiday weekend.

Teenage girl (during discussion of strange eating habits): "My brother dips Oreos in garlic sauce."
--Chicago, Purple Line train
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Dude 1: "I just don't like it when her friends are around. I feel like I have to entertain everyone."
Dude 2: "Isn't it her party, so she has to entertain people, not you?"
Dude 1: "Yeah, but then I feel like I can't do what I want to be doing."
Dude 2: "What do you want to be doing, dude?"
Dude 1: "I want to be doing HER! ... Man, I'm gonna be on overheard in Chicago or some shit. That was loud."
--Chicago, Einstein Bagel, Rush & Walton
Eavesdropper: RobD

Twentysomething white female within earshot of female flight attendant with a very loud voice who was speaking over the plane's loudspeaker: "Hey Squawkbox, you don't need to use the microphone."
--ATA flight 4225 from NY-LaGuardia to Chicago-Midway just after landing in Chicago
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Mid-50s housewife, talking extremely loud on her cell phone, not giving a damn how loud or where she is: "I'll have to make sure Carol knows where to go."
Mid-20s college student, thumbing through a Maxim, practically yelling (and echoing the entire store's sentiments): "Is Carol hard of hearing?"
--Columbus, OH, Barnes & Noble
Eavesdropper: Ulltimate Lactose Hater

Lincoln Park Trixie talking loudly on cell phone to her mother, apparently not realizing that it's late June and not mid April: "Oh, and tell Daddy to give me a call. I think I need to file my tax return."
--Chicago, crowded Brown Line train
Eavesdropper: GMYH

As usual, we have a submission that isn't technically eavesdropping, but still worthy of inclusion. Here it is:
"I was on the Purple Line this morning at around 8:45, listening to some music, and saw a 40+ year old woman, wearing a conservative business suit, looking like she was probably fairly well off. She was also listening to music on her iPod and I just kind of glanced over to see if I could see what she was listening to, out of curiosity. I didn't see the exact name of the song, but I clearly saw that she was listening to the Geto Boys."
--Chicago, Purple Line train
Eavesdropper: Trashton
(I can only hope it was either "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta" or "Mind of a Lunatic," described by Wikipedia as a "graphic portrayal of rape, necrophilia, and murder")

Let's see if we can't pick it up a little bit for next week. Don't make me threaten castration. Despite how beautiful your singing voice may be as a result, no chick wants to hook up with a castrato. For the female GMYH readers, I shant threaten castration because God and/or Darwin already took care of that. Nor will I threaten an oophorectomy. Instead, I'll simply threaten to chop your legs off at the knees. Despite the fact that you're currently 6'7" and you think said chopping would make you a reasonable height, no dude wants to hook up with a chick with no feet. I don't want either of these horrible options to come to fruition, so please email your eavesdroppings to gmyhblog@yahoo.com. Save yourself. Save others. If nothing else, do it for the children.

Scorpio Pimps

There are two -- and only two -- items of interest in today's melange of otherwise worthless news.

First, completely unsurprisingly, scorpion venom cures brain cancer. Here's an excerpt from the article saying so:

About 17,000 U.S. residents suffer high-grade gliomas, a form of brain cancer that is usually fatal. A protein in venom from the yellow Israeli scorpion has been found to bind preferentially to the glioma cells, so scientists have created a synthetic version that does not by itself kill a patient. (emphasis added)

Good to hear that scientists have made the synthetic version of the venom non-deadly to patients. Otherwise, I think the whole exercise would be counterproductive. As a Scorpio, I always knew that I was more special than anyone who was of another Zodiac sign, and this just proves it because I can cure cancer. This is ironic, of course, because a Cancer can't. Sure, they can get cancer, but so can anyone with a boob or a prostate these days.

Second, rather than focusing his time on the real issues affecting the US, some overzealous Senator from Iowa (where, incidentally, there are no prostitutes) is seeking to tax pimps. It's actually kind of creative. The idea is that pimps are employers, and therefore, the pimps who don't file W-2s for each of their hos will violate the tax code, and a pimp will get 10 years in jail for each ho without a W-2. Aside from the obvious constitutional problems (I think I recently learned that pimps are a protected class under Equal Protection Clause analysis and, thus, giving them 10 years for each violation while not doing the same to other employers would raise serious constitutional problems), the logisitics of enforcing this thing would seem to outweigh any benefits. It's not like each pimp has a list of hos who work for him, and if some do, they're definitely getting rid of them now. It'll be interesting to see how those fat cats in Washington treat this, considering most of them rely on call girls to support their ever-burgeoning libidos and perverse sexual fantasies their wives refer to as "grody." Why don't we just legalize it, regulate it, and tax the hell out of it? That way, Sen. Grassley gets his precious "W-2 for each ho" rule, and we can all sleep better at night knowing not only that the BJ we just got won't leave us with the clap, but also that the boss of the undereducated but orally talented woman administering said BJ is going to be paying taxes on it. This way, EVERYBODY WINS.

Lemme Here a "Hoo-Ha Two Times Tuesday"

Well, it's Tuesday, which means that my life is slowing to a painful crawl, as the weekend is too far away for me to cope with rationally. Here are some random thoughts that are most likely wholly irrelevant to your life.

• Just a reminder to submit your hilarious eavesdroppings for inclusion in Thursday's Midwestern Eavesdropping. Email them to me at gmyhblog@yahoo.com. It's pretty thin right now.
• Thanks to Tron Wiescinski for sending me this video link of a band called Hurra Torpedo, which looks to be comprised of cunning mountain folk and Yahoo Serious in track suits, playing their rendition of Bonnie Tyler's transcendental hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" with an electric guitar and various kitchen appliances. Yahoo appeared to be making some sort of borscht at the beginning of the video, but it must not have been to his liking. The video raises important questions about what music is, why music like this is unimportant in today's society, and why birth control is needed more tonight and needed more than ever.
• My constant need to engage in homicidal activity on a massive scale cannot be corrected.
• All of my wordly problems will be solved later tonight when they announce the Mega Millions numbers. Jessie and I bought not one, but two, tickets, nearly tripling our odds of winning.
• "Hoo-Ha"
• That's what I'm talkin' about!

Things I Did This Weekend

This weekend Jessie and I traveled to lovely Trumbull, Connecticut for my grandma's memorial service (she died a month ago or so, but I guess this is how my dad's parents wanted it to be done). Deciding that driving would be a bit cumbersome, we booked travel arrangements with an airline service. Our flight left Midway at 6:15am on Saturday, which meant that we had to wake up at 3:30am. I don't recommend waking up at 3:30am. It kills the circadian rhythm and freaks the hell out of your dog.

We flew into LaGuardia. On the flight there, we sat in the very back row of the plane, which wouldn't have been a big deal had I not had to sit next to a 400-pound man who I'm convinced was a member of the Russian mafia. His girth was such that putting the armrest between us in the down position was an impossibility. At least that meant that his love handles were constantly touching me the whole flight.

As soon as I stepped off the plane, I could see that New York City is indeed a melting pot! In the airport alone, I saw blacks, Jews, Italians, gays, and women. You just don't see that kind of thing here in the Midwest. Who knew it was possible to see all of them in one place? Only in New York.

We rented a car and drove to my grandma's house, arriving just in time to change and head over to the church for the memorial service. My dad gave a speech entitled "Little Dogs, Tough Broads, and Butterflies" that longwindedly and almost accurately described my grandma. Also in attendance were my brother, my 2 aunts and uncles from that side, and 3 out of my 4 cousins from that side.

After the memorial service, we all went back to the house, where the grandkids were all given various random items that my dad and my aunt had found in the house that they thought would be funny to give us, such as hats, golf crotch hooks aimed at keeping your head down through the swing, and cassette tapes. Then everyone went through the house and figured out what we all wanted. Little did I know that my decision to take the antique cast-iron meat grinder would come back to haunt me.

Sunday morning we woke up at 4:30 Eastern/3:30 Central so that we could get to LaGuardia in plenty of time for our 8am flight. All was going well as we were breezing down the Merritt Parkway until we came around a curve to see several cars at a dead stop behind a huge tree that had fallen across the entire southbound side of the road. There was no way anyone was getting around this thing. After impatiently waiting for about 5 minutes, we turned around and followed some cars that were doing what any good New Englander would have done in the situation: drive the wrong way down a highway to the last exit. We were driving in the right lane, with as much on the shoulder as possible. At one point, the cars in the right lane going the right direction failed to yield, so all of the cars going the wrong way had to veer into the left lane. Luckily the previous exit was only a couple miles back. So we got off and followed some livery van that Jessie was sure was taking us to Massachusetts via the many windy and poorly marked roads in Connecticut. Alas, the guy was just going down to Stamford to get on I-95, which was exactly what we needed to do. We got to LaGuardia about an hour before our flight.

A word to the wise for all of you travelers out there: despite what you may have heard, the Transportation Security Administration does NOT encourage you to travel with a cast-iron antique meat grinder. At LaGuardia, after my bags passed through the x-ray machine, one of the TSA employees said she had to look through my bag. While she's opening the bag, she asks, somewhat coyly, "Do you have a meat grinder in there?" I, of course, said "yes," since I did. "Okay," she says, "Well, I'm going to have to see about that." So she takes it to her supervisor, who apparently gave it the OK, although it was strongly suggested that I refrain from traveling with said meat grinder in the future (as if this was a normal traveling item -- who knows, maybe they thought I was Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago).

We sat in the first row on the flight, and the entire flight was plagued by a flight attendant who couldn't speak to her fellow flight attendants in a six-inch voice and who wouldn't shut her damn trap for more than a couple seconds at a time. Thus, sleeping on the flight was relegated to short, sporadic mini-naps. REM was not achieved. Apparently this woman's godawful voice did not distract the pilots to the point of suicide because we arrived safely at 9:02am (Central).

After getting back to the hizzie, Jessie and I decided to take Harley on a walk and stop at Dunkin' Donuts at the corner of Halsted & Diversey, where I purchased my second DD breakfast sandwich of the day, tying my personal record. The floats for the Gay Pride Parade were lining up on Halsted, which was apparently more than Jessie could take, so we decided to head over to the parade. Some guys in my fraternity a couple years younger than me were having a "pre-pride-parade party," so we stopped by there for a drink, then all headed to the parade. Jester and I thought it was particularly appropriate for Harley, since we're certain she's a lesbian.

Having never been to any sort of gay pride event before (much less a parade), I wasn't sure what to expect, although I figured whatever it was would be fabulous. I learned that, if there's one thing gay people love, it's being gay. It was raining (not raining men) during the morning before the parade, and I'm sure many conservatives were gleefully awaiting the following headline on FoxNews or in the National Review: "God Rains on Gays' Parade." Without a doubt, it was the gayest parade I've ever been to.

A friend of one of the aformentioned guys who had the party was in town from Kansas, where they don't have gays or transvestites. He seemed to be particularly smitten with the parade. At one point, he had his picture taken with a tranny, hoisting it into his arms. And this was not the kind of tranny who you look at and say, "I'm not gay, but maybe after a few blueberry daiquiris I can overlook that Adam's apple." This was a fifty- or sixtysomething tranny in less-than-perfect shape with an obviously fake blond curly wig, who was wearing a black undergarment of some sort on the outside of her person, along with black fishnet stockings showing off its thick thighs. Nonetheless, it seemed all too natural for this kid from Kansas.

"I Ain't Got a Fever, Got a Permanent Disease, It'll Take More Than a Doctor to Prescribe a Remedy"

Hair Band Friday is reelin' and rockin' here in the office. I'm hammered off a combination of Stoli, PCP, and coke, all of which has only heightened my ability to do acute Lexis-Nexis research and write a memo about said research. Sandi, Lori, and Trudi are all fucked up on peyote, which has made for some pretty interesting pole dancing and some unbelievably weird conversations. Luckily for me, getting blown by three girls at once while doing online legal research doesn't involve a lot of talking. The music today has been off the chain. For instance, the last three songs have been "Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi, "Girls Girls Girls" by Motley Crue, and "Shame Shame Shame" by Ratt. Meanwhile, Lexi, who just came back to the office after a one-month tour with another firm, is so happy to be back that she OD'd on speedballs, mumbling something about seeing her soul before passing out buck naked hunched over some bankers boxes full of documents clutching her vibrator, which is still on. I'd call 911 or something, but I'm -- ahem -- preoccupied, if you know what I mean. And if you don't know what I mean, then you need to experience Hair Band Friday for yourself. As the old Old Milwaukee commercial so aptly stated, "It doesn't get any better than this." Rock 'n' roll!

Here's one for the ages:

Just when you thought the state of Florida couldn't get any weirder, Ryan "Pissed Off and Rightfully So" Christoff sends me this article about a 5-year-old transgender kid (I only say "kid" because I'm not sure exactly what else to call shim -- from now on, instead of he, she, his, hers, him, her, or shim, when I'm referring to a gender pronoun, I'll go with "It"). Yes, it's true. Five-year-old Nicole Anderson (born Nicholas) of Broward County is a boy who dresses and carries Itself like a girl. Here's a precious little exchange from the article:

"What would you change about yourself?"
"Mm... my penis," Nicole murmurs.
"What would you do with it?" her mother asks.
"Um... cut it," Nicole replies, very softly.
"And what would you do with it then?" asks a surprised Lauren [the mother], who later says she's never before heard Nicole express dislike for her penis.
"I would hammer it," Nicole says.
"What?" Lauren says.
"Hammer it," Nicole insists more strongly.

. . . . .

Lauren was sitting at her computer working when 2-year-old Nicholas, who, like all the Anderson children, had a frank understanding of anatomy, came to her with a request: "I want the fairy princess to come and make my penis into a
vagina," he said.

I'm sorry, but what 2-year-old has a frank understanding of anatomy? What sick, twisted shit is going in the Anderson household? As if all this wasn't disturbing enough to make a hanging chad look like a hang nail, it seems that the parents of Nicholas/Nicole are not only content with, but are fully encouraging, Nicholas/Nicole's acting and dressing like a girl. "Experts . . . say the Andersons are the only family in the United States supporting a 5-year-old's choice to live as the opposite sex. This fall, the Andersons plan to enroll Nicole in a Broward County kindergarten class as a female. They are convinced that's the only way she'll be happy."

I'm certainly not meaning to come off as insensitive, but are you skullfucking me? FIVE YEARS OLD. What the hell are these parents thinking? I don't give two shits if they support the fact that It wants to play with Barbies and wear dresses. Fine. Most GLBTs will tell you that they knew about their preferences/feelings at a very young age. But thinking that allowing It to live life as a girl beginning at 5 seems to me to be a bit, oh -- how you say? -- shortsighted, naive, and completely idiotic. I'd like to think that I'm going to be a pretty understanding parent, but there comes a time when you have to draw a line in the sand and say, "Across this line, you do not!" Why can't the parents just encourage It to be a regular, normal gay kid? If at 12 or 13 It still wants to "cut" Its penis off and "hammer it," then by all means, bring on the hormones and let's give this thing a vagina (as if high school isn't awkward enough without having to explain that).

The parents seem to think the transition from the sanctity of their home -- where Nicole runs (and probably skips) free in dresses and such -- to public school is going to be a smooth one, apparently thinking that Florida is a bastion of acceptance. One of the sexologists in the article said that the teachers are often the only ones who know about it (implying that this is somewhat of a common occurrence). Does this kid not have any friends? No one who's going to say, "Hey Nick, why are you wearing a dress?" It does have older siblings who no doubt go to the same school and who no doubt have friends who new Nick before It became Nicole. What I'm getting at is that there is no way for It's little gender bending experiment to remain a secret.

So when It goes to school, does the teacher let It go to bathroom with the boys or the girls? Either way, it's Awkward City. In the girls' room, everyone is going to be asking why It's peeing standing up. In the boys' room, everyone's going to beat the shit out of It for wearing a dress. Pardon me for not thinking that other five-year-olds are going to understand and accept It with open arms.

And what about gym class and the good ol' Presidential Physical Fitness Tests. Will It be measured against the boys' standard or the girls' standard? And then when It starts to play sports in a few years, will It be on the girls team or the boys team? It would seem to me that "she" would have an unfair physical advantage if "she" was on the girls team. There's something very East German about all this.

And worse yet, suppose It keeps It's little secret long enough to where boys -- gulp -- start to like It. What grotesque, adolescent version of The Crying Game are these parents setting up for some unsuspecting preteen or teen boy? That poor boy is going to be ruined for life. You can't come back from that. Can you imagine how fucked up that boy would be? When he and his college buddies are sitting around talking about when they lost their virginity, and everyone has normal stories about backseats, prom nights, date rape, or Lookout Point, poor Tommy has to say, "Well, I went out with this, uh, girl named Nicole. My parents were out of town for the weekend, so she came over and we were getting hot and heavy. She was on top of me, and I was just about to take her shirt off. Then I felt something digging into my thigh. And no, it wasn't a banana in her pocket. She was, in fact, happy to see me," and the story would only digress from there. Or on the other hand, Tommy says, "Is it considered losing your virginity when what you thought was your girlfriend turns out to be a teenage she-male and it sodomizes you against your will, and the only thing covering up your uncontrollable sobbing is it screaming 'I knew you'd understand'?" Either way, the only way Tommy even comes close to being able to talk about it is after years of intense therapy. And I'm guessing Nicole's parents aren't going to be footing the bill because, after all, they thought it was perfectly fine to let little Nicholas wear a dress when he was 3.

Midwestern Eavesdropping - 6/22/06

Ask and ye shall receive. Thanks to the many of you who responded to my call to ears last week and sent in some pretty hilarious eavesdropping material.

Two children's librarians prepare for a storytime for one-year-olds:
Librarian #1: "Is a chicken a male hen?"
Librarian #2 (confused): "What? A chicken is a chicken. A male chicken is a rooster and a female chicken is a hen."
Librarian #1: "Oh. So then a chicken is a hen?"
Librarian #2: "Well, yes. But a rooster is also a chicken. They're all chickens. Chickens are a type of bird."
Librarian #1: "Okay. I just didn't want to confuse the kids."
--Greenwood, IN, Johnson County Public Library
Eavesdropper: B-Mart

Black woman on cell phone: "She's a fighter, that's what she is. My momma talks a lot of shit, but my aunt . . . my aunt, she talks a lot of shit but then she'll hit you."
--Chicago, Clark & Monroe
Eavesdropper: Ajira

Girl comes into nail salon totally frazzled and had clearly been crying:
Nail Lady (who speaks very little English): "Can I help you?"
Girl: "I just found out that I am pregnant and I lost my teaching job all in one day."
Nail Lady: "How can I help you?"
Girl: "Do you want to adopt my baby?"
Nail lady: "Excuse me?"
Girl: "Do you know of any teaching jobs?"
Nail lady: "Can I help you?"
Girl: "I will just take a manicure and a pedicure."
--Chicago, nail salon on Southport
Eavesdropper: AlyK

Friend telling a story to a group of people at a party:
Guy: "Then the guy told a hilarious Jewish joke, but he could do that because he was Jewish."
Girl listening in: "I wish I was Jewish."
--Chicago, party in Lincoln Park
Eavesdropper: Catfish

Large drunk male, pointing in face of petite girl, during a frank exchange of ideas: "Armani! Versace! Fuck Chanel!"
--Chicago, outside the Red Lion, Lincoln & Montana, 2:30am.
Eavesdropper: RobD

A group of twentysomethings attend a wedding and smell some strong perfume:
Guy: "What is that smell? Do you guys smell that?"
Girl: "Yeah, it smells like girl juice." (apparently thinking that "girl juice" was a reasonable synonym for perfume)
--Mishawaka, IN, First Presbyterian Church
Eavesdropper: way too many people at the wedding

Attractive young female, petite and obviously physically fit, addressing her equally attractive friend and strapping young male her friend is talking to:
Girl 1 (with a look of shock and awe on her face, yet smiling): "That guy over there just came up to me with the best pickup line I have ever heard."
Girl 2: "What did he say?"
Girl 1: "He walks up to me and says 'Hey Big Girl it's pretty obvious that you're pregnant, but you're still interested in going home with me right?'"
All: (laughter)
Girl 1: "I'm intrigued. I'm going to go talk to him some more."
--Milwaukee, McGillycuddys Irish Bar
Eavesdropper: Klank McT

Handyman: "HOLY MACKEREL. Yeah, I can fix that. It'll take some caulk."
Office manager: "It'll take some what?"
Handyman: "A tube of caulk to fill the crack. I'll be back."
Office manager: "Uh, where should I let you in?"
Handyman: "The back door is best. (sings) the back door maaannnnnn…"
--Chicago, law office, Washington & Wacker
Eavesdropper: RobD

A mid to late 20s hipster-type guy and an early-to-mid 20s hipster girl were waiting for their bus. There was an incoherent, quiet conversation between the two, and then:
Hipster guy (screaming in a serious manner): "I AM NOT USING COCAINE!"
--Chicago, bus stop at Michigan & Ohio
Eavesdropper: Trashton

Fortysomething Venezuelan man apologizing for calling a disliked Chicago sportswriter a "fag": "I'm not gonna back off from Jay. He's a piece of shit. (cough/laugh) You know what I mean? What I said about the -- what the name -- what -- the word I used, I should have said something different. A lot of people have hurt feelings, and I didn't mean it that way. . . . I don't wanna waste my time talking about Jay, you know. Jay's a piece of shit, and if he wanted to know, he should be here right now talking to me right now. He's a man enough, he should be here right now with you guys. . . . I should've used another word."
--Chicago, 35th & Shields
Eavesdropper: the entire sports-watching nation

Thanks again for the many contributions. Keep up the good work, and keep those ears open. As always, email what you hear to gmyhblog@yahoo.com to share your eavesdropping with the world.

Wednesday's Random Nonsense

I don't have much to write about today, so I'll give you these random news stories, videos, and links:

• News Story: The White Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals last night with a football-esque score of 20-6. This is unbelievably ironic because the original Comiskey Park (which is now a very nice parking lot across the street from The Cell) was home to both the White Sox and the NFL's Chicago Cardinals (who moved to St. Louis, where they experienced the kind of failure with which only the Cincinnati Bengals are familiar and thus moved to Phoenix where they have fared no better). Anyway, I'm sure the irony wasn't lost on any of you either.
• News Story: In case you haven't heard, the Kansas City Royals have hired Tom Emanski to help teach them the fundamentals of baseball. Thanks to several people for passing this link on.
• Video: Thanks to Marc "Tron" Wiescinski for sending me the link to a video of a guy getting booked for drunk driving who was so hammered that he fell headfirst into the wall at the police station several times.
• News Story: "17 Beers a Day Keep Prostate Cancer Away." Yes, that is the real title of a legitimate article from MSNBC, finally giving me some ammo for when Jester gets all pissed that I'm on my eighth beer by noon. "Do you want me to get prostate cancer? I didn't think so. Now hand me another Schlitz." Again, thanks to Tron for this link and for legitimizing my worldview.
• Video: Jamie Kennedy's "Rollin' With Bob Saget" video. Funny stuff. My favorite line is when Saget says, "I gotta cock like a donkey, hard as a rock, and a trigger finger itchier than chicken pox." He truly is the "illest muthafucka in a cardigan sweater." Thanks Tron.
• Link: The Lincoln Park Chad Society. Apparently the Lincoln Park Chad is the male equivalent to the Lincoln Park Trixie that many of us have come to know and hate. The website is some good satire, and those who live on the North Side (or anywhere in Chicago) will especially appreciate it. Special thanks go out to Juliana "I Have No Idea Who You Are Or How You Stumbled Across My Blog, But I Thank You For Reading GMYH and Sending Me a Hilarious Link" Thewis for sending me the link.
• Link: The 2004 US Election Results Listed by Average State IQ. Scary. That's all I'm gonna say about it. Thanks again Tron.
• News Story: Thanks to Jesterio for this one. Apparently in British Columbia it's not out of the question to come home and find a bear eating oatmeal in your kitchen. And apparently it's also not out of the question for police encountering a bear eating oatmeal in a residential kitchen to just let the bear finish eating and leave on its own accord because "it didn't appear to be aggressive." Just a quick reminder to any law enforcement official out there who encounters a bear eating oatmeal in a kitchen and thinks it's cute, so, rather than doing anything, you think it's a good idea to just see how it pans out because the bear isn't acting aggressively: it's a fucking bear who can snap your feeble human spine in a half a second. All the bear has to do is say to himself, "Man, that oatmeal was a nice appetizer. Oh, what's this? A portly human who is stupid enough to think that my natural carnivorous instinct was somehow quelled by the Quaker Oats I was unable to cook due to a lack of opposable thumbs. I think I shall prey on him." Before you know it you're gasping for your last breaths of air, trying to fend off a hungry 500-pound bear while holding your intestines in the gaping wound that used to be the pristine mass of flesh between your armpit and your waist, all because you didn't think the bear appeared to be aggressive. You know when bears actually don't appear to be aggressive? When you shoot them with a tranquilizer to get them the fuck out of some woman's kitchen.
• News Story: My wife's extraordinary baking abilities are once again making waves in a town's legal community. I would often bring her baked goods into my firm in Dayton, and the reviews were so good that people actually believed me when I said that she was going to start her own bakery in the giant vacant storefront in the building nextdoor. Well, today she brought her world-famous "banana bread," as she calls it, into her office for the first time, and she has already received several requests for the recipe, which is kind of funny, considering one of the main ingredients is cocaine mixed with dog's blood.
• Reminder: Midwestern Eavesdropping is tomorrow. I've gotten a great response this week so far. Keep it up. Email any submissions to gmyhblog@yahoo.com.

Mishawak-of-Life

You ever find yourself drinking warm Budweiser (not Bud Light, Bud Diesel) cans at 3:30 in the morning in a hotel parking lot in Mishawaka, Indiana, talking to a complete stranger about the personalities associated with astrological signs while three mop-haired brothers with guitars play a song they wrote about their newlywed brother? Until this weekend, neither had I.

Saturday morning, Jesterio and I (through the help of a friendly young southern Italian couple who had apparently relocated to the Chicago area) ventured to the South Bend area for the wedding of Chris "Gemkeezi" Gemkow and Selina "Now a Gemkeezi" Wozniak, as the sign outside the ballroom accurately portrayed.

Other attendees included none other than Tony "T-Dawg" Zumpano, Megan "Chach" Zumpano, Ryan "The Dane" Knudsen, Carrie "Married to a Dane" Knudsen, Jon "J-Diza" Dudek, Tracy "Soon to be T-Diza" Larson, Adam "McLure" McClure, Katie "Wenger" Wegner, Sean "Reisenbeck" Riesenbeck, and Bridget "Girl Juice" Spanbauer (you'll have to wait for this Thursday's Midwestern Eavesdropping to find out what that means).

The night was a rousing success. Here are some of the highlights:

• Chris's brother Pat gave a mildly entertaining, yet mildly awkward, speech at the reception. At one point, he explained that he finally knew Chris and Selina (who had been going out for nearly a decade) were in love two weeks ago when he saw them dancing horribly and looking into each other's eyes, or something like that. Then moments later, he said that he had seen them look at each other like that "a million times since then." He also explained how he pawned Chris's golf clubs to pay his rent.
• At weddings I tend to go with whiskey because it makes me happy and spry, enhancing my dancing abilities tenfold and my talking abilities twentyfold. After boldly starting with a whiskey on the rocks, I learned that my survival depended on having a mixer in there, so I switched to Manhattans. The bartenders made them sweet, so at no time did I have the opportunity to ask, "What have I done to deserve this flat, flavorless Manhattan?"
• J-Diza electrified the crowd with his modern and refreshing take on hip hip dancing.
• Through reasonable self-control and limited provocation, I was able to refrain from projecting my hatred of Notre Dame onto anyone, at least as far as I know.
• Speaking of disgusting, I spit a mouthful of Manhattan all over Tony during a particularly provocative dance move in which he grabbed my tie and started gyrating his hips so as to simulate intercourse.
• The Knudsens mysteriously left the reception, returning 45 minutes later. The only possiblities we could come up with were: (1) baby making in the 95-degree parking lot, (2) a quick tennis match (probably won by Ryan), (3) some sort of Danish ritual sacrifice in the nearby pond, involving Legos and butter cookies, or (4) practicing wheelbarrow racing, just in case.
• At the post-prom hotel party, we took it to the parking lot. There were probably about 25 people drinking in lot when I went to bed around 3:30.
• I met two other members (aside from Chris) of the short-lived Missoula, Montana-based power quartet The Franklins.
• Chris's female cousins nearly got the party busted after a cabbie was supposed to take them to their hotel, but then just drove them around, brought them back to the party hotel, kicked them out, and called the cops on them for no apparent reason. No worries, though, because one of them talked to the cops and the cabbie was soon tasered to all hell. Or maybe he just left. I can't remember.
• I woke up a little bit before 10, still a might bit tipsy. It wasn't all bad, though, because whenever I wake up still drunk, I never get a hangover. At least this time I didn't have to go to work.
• On the drive home, we stopped at a McDonald's at 10:45am, assuming we were 15 minutes late for breakfast. A sense of immeasurable, yet hesitant, elation washed over me as I walked into McDonald's to see the breakfast menu still up. I asked the obviously stoned 40-year-old woman with less than the requisite number of teeth who somehow has a job if my eyes were deceiving me. Alas, they were not. Feeling haughty and a bit sexually excited by the whole situation, I ordered not one, but two, Sausage McMuffins with Egg. The woman, confused out of her mind, asked, "Number 3?" I said, "No, just the sandwich, but I want two of them," to which she replied, "So, two number 3s?" I soon realized that she had no idea how to spell "Sausage McMuffin with Egg," and playing this rudimentary word association game was the only way my order was going to be punched into the machine correctly, so I said, "Yes, two number 3s, but just the sandwich." With the help of a minor miracle, I actually did receive two Sausage McMuffins with Egg. After finishing both of them, I quietly wept for the remainder of the ride.

I'm at the Foreclosure Sale Just In Time to See the House Fly By

In case you haven't heard, our dear friend Dustin Diamond, who is better known around the world as Screech from Saved By The Bell, is in a bit of a pickle. It seems that his house in Port Washington, Wisconsin is going to be sold in a foreclosure sale if he doesn't come up with $250,000. In order to raise the money, he is selling t-shirts at www.getdshirts.com. $15 gets you a t-shirt that, on the front, has a picture of a disheveled Diamond holding up a sign that says "Save My House," and on the back, it says "I paid $15.00 to save Screeech's house." For $5 more, you can get an autographed t-shirt. I guess he has to put an extra "e" in Screech for copyright reasons. Poor Screech. This is worse than the time he had to wrestle Nedick while Slater had temporarily quit wrestling to find a career. Sadly, though, there's no Slater to bail him out this time just before he gets bodyslammed.

As a diehard SBTB fan (I watch it every morning before work), I am torn. On one hand, I want to help Screech even more than Jessie wanted to get into Stanford. On the other hand, I feel like he should be taught a lesson, not unlike those doled out by Miss Bliss. Also, Dustin Diamond isn't exactly the most sympathetic of the SBTB alumni. If it were Lark Voorhies, I'd buy a couple hundred shirts. And can't the Zack Attack reunite for a quick tour to raise the money? Or what about another couple celebrity boxing matches? He beat Horshack's ass that one time, so why not put him up against Urkle, Paul from The Wonder Years, or Janice from Head of the Class? I'd pay good money to see Screech knock Janice out.

The way I see it, we have 2 options:

1. Buy a t-shirt and actually try to help him.
2. Let the motherfucker burn and buy his house at the foreclosure sale. How cool would it be to say that you live in Screech's old house?

So who's with me? Who wants to go buy Screech's house?

CD Review: Def Leppard - Yeah!

After 27 years, Def Leppard has endured unbelievable highs (hits galore, groupies galore, one of only two bands in rock and roll history with two 10+ platinum albums) and equally unbelievable lows (one guitarist kicked out of the band for -- cough -- alcoholism, one guitarist dead from a heroin overdose, one lost arm). Unlike many of the great bands from the hair band era, Def Leppard has stuck together, kept making music, and has kept its head well above water.

Perhaps as somewhat of a "thank you" for all of the band's success, their new album, Yeah!, is a cover album paying tribute to the British rock-and-rollers of the '70s who influenced them. As I learned on a bonus CD I bought (containing several extra songs and a couple band interviews), the band chose only songs by British bands and chose only songs that were released before they signed their first record deal. It's quite different than any other cover album out there.

Most of the songs are not songs that you would normally hear on the radio, except maybe on a "deep cuts weekend." The band wanted to choose songs that were hits in the UK, but not necessarily huge hits. Hence, no Rolling Stones songs. But what we do get is a great gathering of songs from the likes of T. Rex, David Bowie, The Kinks, ELO, Thin Lizzy, Roxy Music, Badfinger, Free, Mott the Hoople, and Faces, among others.

Musically (at least from the songs that I knew), they played the songs as closely to the originals as possible (which was their intent). Joe Elliott's vocals are as sharp and upbeat as ever. Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell's dueling guitars bring the expected gusto that you've come to know and love (especially on Thin Lizzy's "Don't Believe a Word"), while the rhythm section of Rick Savage and Rick Allen is tight. By listening to the album, you can tell that they had a great time recording it. Elliott and Collen even brought in their wives to sing background vocals on Mott the Hoople's "The Golden Age of Rock 'N' Roll."

If you like Def Leppard -- and there's no reason you shouldn't -- and if you like '70s British rock -- and there's no reason you shouldn't -- then you will enjoy Yeah!. Here are some of the highlights of the album:

• "20th Century Boy" (originally by T. Rex) - This song kicks off the album, and the guys do it up nicely, exuding the same raunchy, raucous, sexually charged bravado that Marc Bolan and T. Rex were known for.
• "Rock On" (originally by David Essex) - I don't really like the original at all. However, Def Leppard added some edge to the song, substituting a hard-charging, bluesy guitar solo for the less manly strings that plagued the original. Apparently the video has been getting some pretty decent play on VH1.
• "Waterloo Sunset" (originally by The Kinks) - This is a Kinks song that I'm not very familiar with, but I like whatever Def Leppard did with it. If there's one thing Def Leppard does well, it's use backing vocals with precision, and this song is no exception.
• "Hell Raiser" (originally by Sweet, or The Sweet as the Brits call them) - Sweet is an underrated band, probably most famous for "Ballroom Blitz" or "Fox on the Run." "Hell Raiser," however, is a fast-paced screamer, and Def Leppard brought in none other than Justin Hawkins of The Darkness to provide backing vocals. Good times.
• "Stay With Me" (originally by Faces) - This is the last song on the album, and Collen takes over the vocals from Elliott, and Elliott takes over for Collen on the guitar. Collen does a pretty mean Rod Stewart, and Elliott apparently plays a pretty mean Ronnie Wood, such that when Wood heard Elliott's guitar on the song, Wood said, "Fuck me! It's sounds more like me than I do."

If you want to listen to samples, Def Leppard's website provides samples of every song on the album, as well as the songs on the bonus CDs (the one I got at Wal-Mart features a cover of Tom Petty's "American Girl," Iggy & The Stooges' "Search and Destroy," Bowie's "Space Oddity," Queen's "Dear Friends," and Jobraith's "Heartbeat").

Overall, I give Yeah! by Def Leppard 5 Handrews.

*GMYH CD Review Scale:
-6 Handrews - Buy it now. NOW!!
-5 Handrews - Excellent album that you should seriously consider purchasing in the near future
-4 Handrews - Very good album that you should at least check out on iTunes
-3 Handrews - If you want it, download it illegally
-2 Handrews - Somewhere between Britney Spears and William Hung
-1 Handrew - Ashlee Simpson
-0 Handrews - Kevin Federline

"I'm Gonna Give You a Taste"

Hair Band Friday is raging today. I have been writing interrogatories like a madman, and the women could not be more appreciative. Misti has pretty much been begging me to tie her up and "punish" her for "not being able to produce written discovery requests as well as [me]." I'll oblige as soon as I get these rogs out the door. Meanwhile, Keri is dancing on the stripper pole along with Sadie. They're both wearing only knee-high patent leather boots, and they're performing various sex acts on each other with gavels and giant architectural drawings. Both of them have taken enough Valium and Halcion to kill a horse. Speaking of which -- and maybe it's the acid talking -- but there is a fucking female polar bear in here going down on some centaur named Ron. "The Young and the Wild" by Quiet Riot, "Smooth Up In Ya" by The Bulletboys, and "Wasted Years" by Iron Maiden were the last three songs coming from what appear to be large rotating bass drums full of snakes with Amish beards.

In case you haven't heard about this extremely weird traffic accident, some dude in Boise crashed head-on into another car, killing two people. That's not so weird is it? Not until you find out that the dude's wife's severed head came flying out of his pick-up truck. Oh she must have been decapitated in the accident, you say? No no, this guy had previously decapitated his wife and simply was tooling around town with her severed head in his truck. After he told the police on the scene of the accident that he "was involved with" (read: directly caused by decapitation) his wife's death, police found his wife's decapitated body at their house. My favorite line in the article: "An autopsy was scheduled next week to determine Theresa Time's cause of death, Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said." Uh, I'll just take a shot in the dark on this one, but I'm going to have to guess that the removal of the wife's head by force may have been a contributing factor in her body's lack of ability to sustain life any longer. Thanks to my lovely wife Jesterio for sending me the link.

In completely unrelated news, I refused to watch the Britney Spears/Matt Lauer interview last night, although I did see the tearful preview, in which Britney pleaded, "People have to understand that we're people" or something similarly inane. Excuse me for not feeling sorry for this glorified hilljack hooker after she had her fucking infant sitting on her lap while driving, then later had him sitting in the wrong kind of car seat, then later was toting him in one hand with a drink in the other and nearly dropping him while walking down the street, then recently changed the poor kid on the floor of a Victoria's Secret, trying to hand the dirty diaper to a saleserson (who didn't take it). She needs to realize that she's a celebrity, which means she now belongs to the people. It's part of the job. Ergo, when you're famous and you haul your kid around like he's a sack of flour, then it's within the public interest. And certainly when you have a reality TV show about your new marriage to some talentless dancer, then you should understand that maybe you sold your "private" moments to the public long ago in exchange for exactly what you wanted: money and publicity. I long for the day when she's a washed-up thirtysomething single mother (K-Fed will long have left her for some Brazilian ass shaker, yet somehow managed to have gotten a sizeable alimony decree) living back in some modest house in Louisiana, begging someone to pay attention to her. Because it's then that she will finally do Playboy.

Midwestern Eavesdropping - 6/15/06

This week's installment is a little light compared to previous weeks. Thanks to those who did make an effort to spy on other people's conversations.

Homeless man jingling change cup, speaking monotone at a normal speaking volume: "Chicago White Sox. Chicago White Sox. Chicago White Sox. Chicago White Sox. Chicago White Sox." (continuing to say this over and over at least until I was out of earshot)
--Chicago, Wacker & Adams
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Lincoln Park trixie talking absurdly loud on her cell phone in a line for a bar: "Do you know Alicia Smith? Really? Are you sure? 'Cause you used to fuck her roommate every night."
--Chicago, Red Ivy bar, 3525 N. Clark
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Paralegal on the phone: "You know they're making these things that put the Virgin Mary into a pancake now? . . . Yeah, you know there's all these people that see the Virgin Mary in their pancakes. Well now you can do it yourself. . . . There were headlines that the city was going to be blocked off so everyone could see this pancake. . . .What? I don't know where your husband would sleep. Outside? Hello? Um, yeah, I showered today. Why?"
--Chicago, Madison & Wacker
Eavesdropper: RobD

Fortysomething stereotypical Lincoln Park mom with sense of self-entitlement: "I need to return this." (handing a bottle of Clorox surface spray cleaner)
Fiftysomething Asian female clerk: "Do you have the receipt?"
LP mom: "No, I don't. I bought it three weeks ago, and I tried to use it for the first time yesterday and the nozzle is broken so it gets all over your hands every time you spray."
Clerk: "You can't return it if you don't have the receipt."
LP mom (getting overly agitated): "Why the hell would I keep the receipt? Who the hell keeps receipts? It was three weeks ago. I didn't think I'd have to return it. So what am I supposed to do, keep spraying this and get it all over my hands?!"
Clerk (with a very small, yet smug smile on her face): "I'm sorry, but you can't return it if you don't have a receipt. It's story policy."
LP mom (dead serious, as if they are longtime enemies): "Why are you always so mean to me?" Clerk: "You can always exchange it without a receipt, if you go get a new bottle."
LP mom: "Oh. I'll do that then."
--Chicago, customer service counter at Jewel/Osco, Ashland & Wellington
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Homeless man almost doing spoken word poetry, but for an audience of zero: "Love, man. LOVE! Quiet. I'm a bum."
--Chicago, Monroe between Clark and LaSalle
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Obviously gay mulatto attired with colorful scarf, pencil-thin mustache, tan blazer, trendy sunglasses steps on Red Line. This guy is CULTIVATING the Prince look:
Blonde: "Prince?"
Queer: "Hi dear."
Blonde: "Can I have your autograph?"
Queer: "I'm not Prince, baby."
Blonde: "No one's ever called you Prince?"
Queer (smirks): "Oh, people have called me Prince…"
Blonde (seems disappointed): "Can we still party like it's 1999?"
--Chicago, Red Line train
Eavesdropper: RobD

Late 20s guy in business casual attire speaking loudly about his 10-year high school reunion with a late 20s female in business casual attire that apparently went to the same high school: "I'm bringing a camera. I can't wait to get a picture of Julie's ass. It's gonna be a contest for everyone there to see who can get the most pictures of her ass." (then they both laughed uncontrollably for about 30 seconds)
--Chicago, crowded morning Brown Line train
Eavesdropper: GMYH

A thirtysomething yuppie couple force their way onto an already overcrowded morning rush hour L train, such that the man who was standing next to the door was so smashed that he had to put his book (American Psycho) away because there no longer any room to hold it up. Immediately after the couple gets on the train, they bust into this conversation:
Husband: "When we go to Lexington, if we get drunk, you know what I think we should do?"
Wife: "What?"
Husband (talking in a way so as to make it seem that only 7-11s in Lexington have these options): "Go to 7-11 (pause for dramatic effect) and get one of those pizza sandwiches. It's the best thing when you're drunk. All we have to do is just walk down to 7-11 and grab a Big Gulp and a pizza sandwich. I can't wait."
--Chicago, rush hour Brown line train with 2 too many people on it
Eavesdropper: GMYH

As with every week, we have something that's not technically someone saying something funny, but it's still worthy of inclusion. Here's an email I got from some chick"
"This isn't really an eavesdropping... but this morning on the train the totally fratty, ripped up Abercrombie jean, flip-flop, old college t-shirt-wearing 20 something sitting next to me was jamming out to Mariah Carey 'Emotions,' and Whitney Houston's 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody.' Which he played three times on repeat. I was trying not to laugh the entire time. I think he had no idea other people could hear the music coming out of his ear buds."
--Chicago, morning rush house Purple Line train
Eavesdropper: Jesterio

I can't stress this enough people, it's not just Chicago Eavesdropping, it's Midwestern Eavesdropping. People have to be saying funny things in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, the rest of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota (especially the last two). I'll expect a better showing next week. Remember, the workplace counts too. As always, email said eavesdroppings to gmyhblog@yahoo.com. I love you all.

I Got Nothing

I have nothing of interest to write about today, so I'll get some administrative details out of the way:

• Tomorrow is Midwestern Eavesdropping and currently it's pretty thin. If you overhear (or have overheard) anything funny, email it to gmyhblog@yahoo.com to be included in Midwestern Eavesdropping.
• Here is the picture of Dean Hess on the cover of Gay Chicago Magazine that I could not upload yesterday because computers hate me almost as much as I hate Dean Hess.
• I have become chemically and aurally addicted to Pandora. Thus, I now have 6 Pandora stations for my and your listening pleasure (to listen to any of them, there is a Pandora box to the right, just below the GMYH Classic™ links):
  -GMYH Radio, for those times when you feel like listening to every possible genre of music I like
  -Hair Band Friday, for those times when you feel like doing lines of coke off a stripper's ass
  -GMYH Blues, for those times when you feel like the world is taking off its gloves and giving you an old fashioned bare-knuckle, coma-inducing beating
  -GMYH Instrumental, for those times when you feel like words can only hinder your life
  -GMYH '80s, for those times when you feel like reliving your childhood
  -GMYH Garage, for those times when you feel like you're missing CBGB
• Just a reminder that I am not going to write a bio for the 20,000th visitor. If you happen to be Mr. or Mrs. 20,000, feel free to email me anyway and I'll give you a shout out.
• I am postponing the release of Mr. 15,000's bio until after the bar exam (July 25-26). Between work in the mornings, bar review class in the afternoons, studying/doing practice essays and questions at night, and drinking myself to sleep soon thereafter, I just don't have the time to write a biography that is deserving of Mr. 15,000 and all of my fair GMYH readers.
• Finally, dammit, be good to each other. I love you all.

Random Thoughts for Tuesday

Since I don't really have anything interesting to say on this fine Tuesday, today's post will be an amalgamation of random nonsense, broken up into 3 categories: News stories, videos, and CD reviews.

In The News

• Taking a page out of the graphic and well-written books of Jason "Jay" Williams and Kellen "Soldier" Winslow II, Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethisberger got into a serious motorcycle accident. As if that wasn't good enough, he wasn't wearing a helmet. Don't all NFL contracts have a clause prohibiting motorcycle riding? If not, they should. Your job as an NFL player in the off-season is to not involve yourself in activities that are more dangerous than your chosen profession. No skydiving, no firefighting, no lion taming, no alligator wrestling, and certainly no riding a motorcycle (even with a helmet). Fucking idiot. He deserves to miss at least one entire season because of this.
• Check out Conan O'Brien tonight for a band called be your own PET. They're a group of teenagers from Nashville who play some pretty solid garage rock/punk. I've been listening to them for a little over a year, and they are pretty polished for how young they are. I can't wait to see them at Lollapalooza.
• When two lawyers in Florida couldn't agree on the location of a deposition, a federal judge ordered the lawyers to resolve their dispute with a game of rock, paper, scissors. The best part is that the two proposed locations were down the street from each other. Way to waste the shit out your clients' money, guys. Special thanks to Tradd "The Royal We" Fromme for the link.
• The venerable Chicago Tribune has finally written an in-depth article about the greatest hot dog stand in the history of the world: The Wiener Circle. If you've never been there before, check out the article.
• I have put a link to another blog on my side bar. For those of you who were Pi Kapps at IU, you'll know who the author of Haastility is. For everyone else, just check it out already.
• Dean Hess -- the cock-chugging SOB dean at Harbor on The OC who was forced to leave Newport after his affair with Taylor Townsend came to light -- may actually chug cocks. This photo (**for some reason I am unable to upload the photo, but I'll keep trying**) was taken at the corner of Halsted and Cornelia by loyal GMYH reader and frequent Midwestern Eavesdropping contributor RobD. In case you're hard of seeing, that would be Dean Hess (or whoever the hell the actor who played Dean Hess was) on the cover of Gay Chicago, a magazine that is apparently free for the taking from newspaper stands, not unlike the Employment Guide, The Red Eye, or The Onion. We don't know for sure if he is gay because, as you might expect, RobD didn't want to open the magazine stand and take a copy of said magazine, especially given that he was in the epicenter of gay Chicago and someone might get the wrong idea.
• Marc "Tron" Wiescinski sent me this delightfully funny blog post relating college football teams to characters from The Simpsons, as well as this link for what might be the greatest mullet of all-time.
• Sean "Never Been Any" Riesenbeck sent me the link for Overheard at College. Good stuff.

Video Links (all courtesy of Marc "Tron" Wiescinski)

• "28 Day Slater," a short series about a guy who thinks he's AC Slater every February: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3. While I haven't had a chance to watch all of even the first episode, it seems like something that the die hard Save By The Bell fan will enjoy.
• Tom Cruise kills Oprah.
• The best margarine commercial of all-time.
• Some creepy woman playing a key-tar, and really getting into it.

CD Reviews

*GMYH CD Review Scale:
-6 Handrews - Buy it now. NOW!!
-5 Handrews - Excellent album that you should seriously consider purchasing in the near future
-4 Handrews - Very good album that you should at least check out on iTunes
-3 Handrews - If you want it, download it illegally
-2 Handrews - Somewhere between Britney Spears and William Hung
-1 Handrew - Ashlee Simpson
-0 Handrews - Kevin Federline

• The Black Keys - Chulahoma (EP). This 6-song EP features the two guys from Akron playing the songs of Junior Kimbrough, naming the EP after the Mississippi town where Kimbrough owned a famous juke joint. The EP is simply solid blues, which the Black Keys play extremely well. 5 Handrews.
  -Official Black Keys website
  -Black Keys MySpace site
• The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers. In case you haven't heard, The Raconteurs are Jack White's side project, along with Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence of The Greenhornes and Brendan Benson. You've probably heard "Steady As She Goes" on the radio, and I think that's probably the best song on the CD. The first time I listened to the CD, I wasn't overly impressed (probably because I was expecting it to sound more like The White Stripes--I miss Meg), but it's gotten better each time I listen to it. 4 Handrews.
  -Official Raconteurs website (which is a great site, by the way)
  -Raconteurs MySpace site
• Township - Township (EP). Led by former Runner & The Thermodynamics frontman Marc Pinansky, Massachusetts-based Township plays good, old-fashioned rock & roll, harkening the classic rock of the late '60s and early '70s. I'm not sure if the EP is available for purchase or not, but if you like what you hear on their MySpace page, you can probably just contact the band as ask for a copy, and they might just send you one for free (that's what they did for me). Or you can just download their songs from their MySpace site for free (don't worry, it's completely legal). 5 Handrews.
  -Official Township website
  -Township MySpace site
• Wolfmother - Wolfmother. You've probably heard their song "Love Train" on iPod commercials, and that's a great song, as are most of their others. From the primal scream that kicks it off, the album is refreshingly familiar, taking obvious influences from early Black Sabbath and early Led Zeppelin. As a whole, the album kind of ran together the first few times I listened to it, but the individual songs themselves are great. I can't wait to see them at Lollapalooza. 4 Handrews.
  -Official Wolfmother website
  -Wolfmother MySpace site

I Want to Be a Gaucho

And I don't mean a graduate of UC-Santa Barbara. Yesterday Jessie and I celebrated our one-year anniversary with a trip to Jewel/Osco, a trip to Target, a movie with friends (Jessie only), and 9 hours of studying for the bar (me only). While that may not seem like a festive way to celebrate a first anniversary, the night before is when we actually did something interesting.

Since neither of us had been, we decided to go to Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian churrascaria renowned for its seemingly endless supply of meat. It didn't disappoint. For those who haven't been there, here's how it works: everyone pays a set price ($48.50), which includes a pretty ample salad bar and the previously discussed endless supply of meat. Waiters walk around continuously with big skewers of meat. Each person at a table has a little round disc with one red side and one green side. If the green side is up, the waiters stop at your table to see if you want some of the particular meat that they have. If the red side is up, the waiters pass by you. There are 15 different kinds of meat that are floating around at any one time, mostly different styles of beef, with some pork, lamb, and chicken as well. At one point, I actually became giddy because of the amount and variety of meat I had at my fingertips. I felt like I was on top of the world. One of the dishes was filet mignon wrapped in bacon. Can it get any better than that? At Fogo de Chão, the answer is yes. The pork loin was probably the best I've ever had, the spicy pork sausage was phenomenal, the pork ribs were great, the house specialty (picanha) was delicious, and everything else was excellent too. Those Gauchos sure as shit know how to cook dead animals.

I'd highly recommend Fogo de Chão to any carnivore or omnivore; however, it is not the place to go if you are a vegetarian, both from a value-for-your-money standpoint and a being-bombarded-with-succulent-dead-livestock standpoint. It is also not the place to go if you have any intentions of doing anything non-sitting-related for the four to twelve hours after you eat there. Jessie and I had discussed going out to the bars a couple hours after dinner, but we could barely move, let alone drink. And even if we could drink, assuming there was any room left in my stomach, it would have taken me damn near 20 drinks to get a buzz.

The only time I've ever been more full was when I ate two huge, plate-sized wiener schnitzels in Vienna in 2001. In that particular instance, I actually had to leave the restaurant and walk around outside because I was so full I thought I was going to puke, and puking in a restaurant in Austria is almost as big of a no-no (or nein-nein) as killing the Archduke. Saturday, I was a shade below the vomit point. However, the meat-induced drowsiness after Fogo de Chao was unlike any gluttony-related feeling I've had before. It was the kind of woozy feeling that I assume Henry VIII experienced on a daily basis. Unlike Hank, though, said lethargy didn't invoke any wife-beheading thoughts. Although, so help me God, if Jessie is unable to produce a suitable male heir . . .

Friday night was pretty low-key. After I studied until about 10, I felt the undeniable urge to drink, so I met up with "Pissed Off" Christoff and his co-worker Greg "Gregerson" Peterson at a bar called Red Ivy, a couple blocks south of that fortress of failure known to the world as Wrigley. Aesthetically, Red Ivy was nice. Lots of room (although it was packed to capacity), lots of TVs, and generally agreeable decor. I could have done without the blaring techno music. Worse yet, I could have done without the bathroom attendant. I hate it when seemingly regular bars think they're uppity enough to have a bathroom attendant. All it does is make for an uncomfortable and uncleanly bathroom experience because if you want to dry your hands, you feel compelled to give the guy a dollar. Therefore, fewer guys wash their hands after they pee so as not to have to deal with the bathroom attendant.

What I found particularly appalling about Red Ivy's bathroom attendant is that, among the normal array of colognes, cigarettes, hair products, and condoms, this guy had a platter of Blow Pops. There must have been 50 Blow Pops on the bathroom counter, suggesting that there is actually some sort of men's bar bathroom market for Blow Pops. Guys, no matter how many $10 appletinis you've bought a girl, nothing screams "don't let any part of me touch your vagina" quite like walking out of a crowded men's room with a Blow Pop in your mouth. You might as well say, "I have three kids by three different women, I live with my parents, sometimes I shit myself while sleeping, and just yesterday I noticed a strange cauliflower-like growth on my penis."

In other news, since I'm sure most of you have no idea, the US soccer team has its first World Cup match today. They are ranked in the top 5 in the world, but are currently down two-nil to the Czech Republic just after halftime. Hopefully they can turn it around and do well this World Cup so that fans in the US start to actually pay attention to their games.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

In case you've never seen the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which is usually on FX--the second season premieres June 29), for the next couple weeks Fox is showing a couple reruns from last season on Sunday nights at 9:30 Eastern/8:30 Central, after Family Guy. It's a pretty funny show--off beat, if you will. So if you're looking for something to watch after Family Guy, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is on after Family Guy. Problem solved. It's just that simple.

"Dizzy In My Head"

Hair Band Friday is here and, as usual, the office is a mad house (not to be confused with the John Larroquette-Kirstie Alley vehicle Madhouse). Candi is all coked up, completely naked, and crying while finger painting some sort of rudimentary tornado destruction scene on the wall. Meanwhile, I'm drunker than John Bonham, writing an answer and counterclaim while some chick named Suzette is begging me to go back to Monaco with her. I would, but she doesn't seem to understand that I women like her are a dime a dozen to me, and I'd rather spare the trip. Why buy the hooker when you get the sex for free? "Mista Bone" by Great White, "In My Dreams" by Dokken, and The Scorprions' cover of The Who's "I Can't Explain" were the last three songs blaring from my speakers, which was enough to make Carly (who I think was freebasing) totally go down on Jim while he was doing some wicked Lexis research. All in a (Hair Band Fri)day's work.

I went to the Sox game last night, and it's apparent that my catharsis after last Thursday night's unnecessary drink-a-thon has faded. We did the patio deal, which for $49 got us a ticket to the game and 2 hours of all you can drink beer and all you can eat stadium fare (an hour and a half before the game up to a half hour into the game). The Patio, as it's called, is right next to the opponent's bullpen, so I got a nice picture of Kenny Rogers (and no, he did not try to break my camera), which I am for some reason unable to currently upload.

It was apparently middle-aged cover band night outside Comiskey before the game. As I was walking around the stadium, I came across a band performing some song by Wings on a stage in front of 2 people. The large sign behind said stage informed me that this wasn't just some two-bit band playing a Wings song. No no, this was Band on the Run, a fucking Wings tribute band. Aside from an arguable sonic resemblance, the only thing that Band on the Run has in common with Wings is that both are (or were, in the case of Wings) comprised of humans. In Wings, the lead singer was Paul McCartney, a former Beatle who plays the guitar and bass left-handed. In Band on the Run, the lead singer was a husky, Italian-looking guy who played the bass right-handed, had a haircut that looked like something Paul might have had in the '70s (but it may also be this dego's regular haircut -- and yes, I am allowed to call him a dego because I myself am significantly comprised of Italian blood and vigor), and it is unlikely that he was formerly a member of a Beatles tribute band, although quite possible that he played the role of Ace in Rock Soldiers, Tinley Park's most successful Frehley's Comet tribute band. In Wings, the keyboard was played by Linda McCartney, Paul's now-deceased wife who had long blond hair and, for one reason or another, made a conscious decision to never wear a White Sox jersey on stage. In Band on the Run, the keyboard was played by a living woman with long blond hair wearing a Sox jersey. Nice try guys. I didn't even bother to pay attention to the guitar player and drummer in Band on the Run, which is directly related to my discernible lack of desire to learn who played the guitar or drums in Wings.

The sheer horror of my encounter with Band on the Run soon turned into outright jubilation as I continued around the ballpark to see yet another band -- this one comprised of mild-mannered and seemingly fun-loving fiftysomething men called The Incognitos -- which was in the process of covering "Build Me Up Buttercup." From my brief, yet satisfying, dealings with The Incognitos, I am almost certain that they are not a Foundations tribute band.

Midwestern Eavesdropping - 6/8/06

Here are this week's submissions. Well done!

Guy #1 to Guy #2, as Guy #1's dog was humping Guy #2's dog, which had a blue rubber ball in its mouth:
"It's okay. That's just his little trick for getting the ball back."
--Chicago, Wiggly Field dog park, Sheffield & Schubert
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Puerto Rican 7th grader wearing pink "black is beautiful" shirt: "Mrs. B, are you pregnant?"
Teacher: "Well, I guess I could have put on a few pounds this month, but no I am not pregnant. Why do you ask?"
7th grader: "'Cause you got married and I thought that you had to be pregnant to get married."
Teacher: "Well, I got married because I found someone that I really liked to spend time with."
7th grader: "So you aren't pregnant?"
Teacher: "No."
7th grader: "That's weird."
--Chicago, public middle school
Eavesdropper: AlyK

Twentysomthing boy: "Um, excuse me?"
Twenstysomething girl obviously rocking out to something on her iPod: "What?"
Boy: "What’s your name?"
Girl: "Uh, Eva." (Laughs nervously and returns to listening to her iPod)
Boy: "My name is, um, George, in case you--"
Girl: "Nice to meet you, George." (returns to her iPod in an attempt to have this guy stop talking to her)
Boy starts talking to another bus rider in Spanish
Couple near Girl (trying not to talk loud enough for Girl to hear): "He's saying that girl sucks. It's the first time he's tried to talk to her and she's being rude."
Girl (to couple): "Yeah, I know. I can speak Spanish."
--Chicago, Fullerton #74 bus
Eavesdropper: ½ Pint

Well-dressed black dude: "Mind if I sit on the inside?"
Attractive Pakistani girl: "Um, okay. "
Dude (squeezes past her): "Thanks."
Girl: "Sure."
(brief silence)
Dude: "You smell good."
Girl: "Um, what?"
Dude: "YOU SMELL GOOD."
Girl: "This is my stop."
--Chicago, Red Line train
Eavesdropper: RobD

Twentysomething woman gets to work late and is noticeably frazzled:
Boss: "Why are you late?"
Woman: "Because I wouldn't talk to some guy on the Blue Line, so he set me on fire."
--Chicago, Big Four accounting office
Eavesdropper: Floppy Burrito

Group of recent law school graduates discussing whether hypnosis is real:
Girl #1 (apparently named Barb): "It's fucking real. My ex-boyfriend used to date one of my friends before he dated me, and a hypnotist came to our school and called him up in front of the whole school and hypnotized him. Then the hypnotist asked him what he wanted to name his first child and he said Barb. And then he didn't remember saying it after he was snapped out of it."
Girl #2: "You've gotta be kidding me."
Girl #1: "No. I mean, on one hand, I'm really glad we're not together anymore, but on the other hand, I wish we got married because that would have been such a cute story to tell at the wedding."
Girl #2: "Yeah, that's true."
Girl #1: "But so yeah, that's why when anyone ever tries to tell me hypnosis is fake, I tell them that it's fucking real."
--Chicago, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Eavesdropper: GMYH

Chicago L Conductor: "Thank you for riding the CTA. The next stop is Chicago. And, in case anyone hasn't said this to you today, let me be the first to say, Good morning! Good morning, good morning, GOOD MORNING!" (increasingly gets louder and more effeminate)
--Chicago, morning rush hour Blue Line train
Eavesdropper: ½ Pint

Teacher #1: "[Teacher #2], get in here and watch my class for a minute, will you?
Teacher #2: "Sure, is everything okay?"
Teacher #1: "Yeah, I just got really drunk on the field trip at lunch and then one of the parents brought a flask and I already broke the seal, so I gotta go to the bathroom and need you to watch my kids."
Teacher #2. "Ok."
--Chicago, public middle school
Eavesdropper: AlyK

Some guys on a boat in a lake converse:
Drunk thirtysomething guy: "You guys wanna see some titties?"
NCAA All-American: "Does the Pope wear a funny hat?"
Drunk guy: "See those sluts?"
Woman on raft: "We're not sluts!"
Drunk guy: "These chicks are sluts. Keep workin' on these sluts if you wanna see some titties, they'll show 'em to ya."
All-American: "Hey sluts, how long is this going to take?"
Drunk guy: "You sluts love flashin' their titties don't ya?"
Woman on raft: "Heyyyyy boys...." (flashing titties)
All-American: "Those are the worst titties I have ever seen."
Drunk guy: "I told you they were sluts!"
--Bloomington, IN, Lake Monroe
Eavesdropper: RobD

Stereotypical attorney (to a paralegal): "Oh, thanks for all of your help today since Marsha isn't here. Oh, that's right, you didn't help me with anything."
Paralegal (obviously fed up): "You didn't give me anything to help you with."
Attorney: "Oh, you want work?"
(30 seconds go by and the attorney is still at the paralegal's desk)
Attorney (mumbling to himself): "What is this? Oh, my brain has stopped working."
--Chicago, law office
Eavesdropper: ½ Pint

On a 4.5-hour flight from Cincinnati to LA:
Mid-40s extremely loud talker with annoying smoker/stoner laugh: "We go to Denny's just about every Sunday for breakfast, but the thing about Denny's is sometimes it gets loud in there."
Late 20's Blue Gate Killa: "Would those times happento be just about every Sunday morning?"
Mid-40s extremely loud talker with annoying smoker/stoner laugh is silent for the first time in 3 hours
--Somewhere between Cincinnati and Los Angeles, on a plane
Eavesdropper: Tron 3000

As usual, we have a submission that isn't really an eavesdropping, but a sighting. It's funny nonetheless. Here's the text of the email I got:
"This old man (80s?) who was wearing a very old fashioned suit that looked like a priest's suit without the collar, who had a very noticable hole/tracheotomy in his throat was walking around and going up to every smoker pointing at them, pointing at his throat and then shaking his finger at them in a very accusatory way. I have to say this looked like it was pissing the smokers off... but he was a cute old man with a cute little black hat. I have to believe that his is not the face that Phillip Morris wants on the streets talking, or not being able to talk, about smoking :-) The smokers didn't want to hear it."
--Chicago, Daley Center
Eavesdropper: Jesterio

Thanks a ton to all of the contributors. Keep those ears open! And as always, if you hear something good, send it to gmyhblog@yahoo.com.

No Offense, But If Ann Coulter Has a Husband, He Needs to Die in a Terrorist Attack

I know I said I wasn't going to write until tomorrow, but I just read a news story that has juiced me up enough to break my self-imposed sabbatical. I try not to get too political here on GMYH because I want to make it fun for everyone -- even Germans, Jeremy -- and I try to keep my political discussions amongst friends over several gallons of beer, ensuring that we forget everything and don't hold anything against each other.

That being said, I just read an article about how borderline Nazi and queen of tact Ann Coulter, in her recent book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," referred to the four 9/11 widows who spearheaded the campaign that led to the September 11 Commission as "witches." The argument -- if you can call it that -- is that because these widow received millions of dollars from compensation settlements, and (according to Coulter) were "reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis," and -- can't forget this one -- wanted to blame Bush for not preventing the attacks, then the widows (obviously) were "enjoying their husbands' deaths."
Are you kidding me? Enjoying their husbands deaths? What educated person (I'm assuming Coulter has at least graduated high school) would say that? What's next, she denies the Holocaust? Or maybe she'll argue that we should bring back segregation because Russell Simmons is rich? Does she honestly believe that if these four widows had a chance to go back in time and prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks (and therefore, their husbands' deaths), that they wouldn't? It's not only asinine, it's also devoid of rationality.

Just in case you didn't think she's distasteful enough, she says, "By the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy." Well, Ann, I guess we don't know if their husbands were planning on divorcing them. Just like we don't know if their husbands were going to come home after work that day and say that they wanted to have another kid, or that they won the lottery, or that they found out they had cancer, or that they murdered 50 co-workers, or that they ran a 4-minute mile on their lunch break. You know why we don't know any of those things, sweetheart? BECAUSE THE GUYS DIED WHEN A PLANE HIJACKED BY TERRORISTS CRASHED INTO THEIR PLACE OF BUSINESS. I'm guessing that's why their widows were so gosh darn "agitated" and wanted to bother the government to figure out why such a trifling event could have happened.

In her book, Coulter also criticizes the widows for making campaign ads for Kerry. I love the hypocrisy. Had these four widows supported Bush, would Coulter call them witches? No, she would praise them as national heroes. And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't GW have some tacky campaign ads that centered around 9/11?

If Coulter actually desires to be viewed as credible or to be taken seriously, then she shouldn't cloak her arguments -- however feeble and irrational as they may be -- with cheap, shock-jock theatrics. Rather than encourage an educated political discourse between liberals and conservatives (whatever those words may mean these days) she would rather make baseless accusations and disagree with anything "liberal" just for the sake of disagreeing (or maybe for the sake of selling more books). Americans are becoming a bunch of cold-hearted assholes who are told that empathy and sympathy are four-letter words, and it's because of people like Ann Coulter. Our country would be better off without her.

I'd like to hear from the "conservative" GMYH readers to see what you think. Maybe conservatives think she crossed the line, too. I honestly don't know whether conservatives think she is a polarizing figure, but I am curious.

Mark of the Beast My Ass

Well, it's 6/6/06 and there's no rapture (at least here), proving once again that Satan can't hold a candle to Chicago. If anything, there is a noticeable lack of a demonic presence here today. Are we actually to believe that Lucifer himself is walking around the Loop? That Beelzebub is in Bronzeville? That Satan is working in the Stockyards? That the Prince of Darkness is rubbing elbows at the Palace of Fine Arts? That Belial is galavanting around Jackson Park? That Mephistopheles is mingling with the misses on the Midway? That there's some sort of Devil in the White City? Preposterous.

Due to an insano schedule and the fact that I desperately need to catch up on my bar review studying, I'll be taking a mini haitus, coming back strong on Thursday with Midwestern Eavesdropping. Plus, I have to finish Mr. 15,000's bio, which is long overdue. Just a warning to everyone: I will NOT be writing another bio until the 25,000th visitor. I can barely find enough time to drink, much less write a mindnumbingly hilarious fake biography for the 15,000th AND 20,000th visitors.

So, for the next 2 days, what I need you guys to do is overhear some funny shit and email it to me at gmyhblog@yahoo.com. I'll do my best to do the same, although I won't be emailing it to myself.

For the next few days, I'll leave you with this hilarious anecdote told by my bar review lecturer yesterday. The topic was Commercial Paper, which is actually less interesting than the title would imply. The lecturer was an unassuming, balding, fiftysomething professor. He starts out the lecture by telling us about how he has had a bad day, and it went something along the lines of this: "I woke up this morning and I hit my alarm, and the 'off' button came off in my hand. Then a little bit later, I picked up my glasses, and the right temple fell off in my hand. Then, as I was leaving my house to come here this morning, I picked up my briefcase and the handle came off in my hand. I have to go to the bathroom, but I'm afraid to go." I thought it was hilarious.

I expanded GMYH's radio stations on Pandora. In addition to GMYH Radio and Hair Band Friday, I created GMYH Blues, which, as the name implies, is a blues station. To get to any of them, I have now linked all of my Pandora stations on the right, below the "GMYH Classic" links.

But It's June

The weekend was a rousing success. After the utter self-hatred that ensued Friday during the day, I was in much better spirits (pun intended) Friday night. Tony "T-Diddy" Green came to town from Louisville, as well as Amy "Not the Lead Singer of Evanescence" Lee and Doug "You Son of a Bitch" Smith from NYC/Columbus, OH and Brooklyn, respectively.

Friday night, a pretty solid crew ended up going to May Fest Chicago in Lincoln Square. It's a German street festival (no Kevin, it's not a festival celebrating German streets--it's a German festival in the street). Among the attendees were Jester, Ari, Doug, Amy, Kyla, Alex, Tana, Goni (little), Gsell, Chambers, TG, and me. Maybock was drunk. Bratwurst was ingested (probably the best brat I've ever had). Good times were had by all, including me after I gashed the shit (read: not shit, but actually blood) out of my shin on one of the metal stakes that held up the big tent. I was also fairly ecstatic after I said something about my blog to Kyla and the conversation went something like this:
Kyla: "What the hell are you talking about?"
Me: "My blog."
Kyla: "You're what?"
Me: "My blog."
Kyla: "You're plog? What the hell is a plog?"
Me: "That thing I write that you read everyday."

Then she realized what I was saying and nearly died from laughter. While death was not an imminent possibility for me, I did enjoy a boisterous guffaw.

One of May Fest's little (read: big) rackets is that you can't pay for beer or food with cash, but rather, you have to buy tickets for a dollar each. Therefore, I have about eight or nine 2006 May Fest dollars that are now worthless. Fucking Nazis. Nothing changes.

Saturday was the bachelor party of Morgan "Crazy Legs" Hirst. Since I am a supporter of the general code of male ethics, I'll keep my comments and observations about said bachelor party to a minimum.

It started at a reputable steak house, where I enjoyed the hell out of my filet and crab legs. Then we trekked to Comiskey to see the Sox/Rangers game. At the game, TG was getting bored in about the 3rd inning (Sox were down 2-1 at the time), so he decided he needed to bet on the game to make it more interesting and he was willing to let the other person take either team. We all make mistakes, whether it's drinking too much, betting against the World Series Champion Chicago White Sox, or misidentifying a college girl's corpse. Five bucks later, TG felt the sting of at least one of those.

After the game, we went to Shananigan's on Division St. The previously determined over/under on how many bachelorette parties we would see was 3. I think we went over. Unfortunately, our goal of commandeering a bachelorette party trolley was not realized, due entirely to a lack of an available trolley and not at all to a lack of alcohol. I remember someone talking to two Amazonian-type women. I kid you not, one of them had to be 7 feet tall. At some point I remember someone in our crew buying the shot girl's entire supply of test tube shots. I don't remember much after that, except for the fact that during my 3:30am trip to LaBamba with TG and Morgan, we were somehow given an extra burrito in our bag, an unheard of phenomenon that we didn't realize until we had already taken several bites of said extra burrito. The amount of grief I experienced when we had to throw it away is immeasurable. I'm not quite sure that I've really come to grips with it yet.

In slightly less depressing news, a couple days ago we had a death in the family: Todd, our beloved betta (or pla-kad, for you Thai readers) that, ironically, loved to play dead in his bowl that, ironically, had a little porcelain sign that read "Mar Muerto" that, ironically, means "Dead Sea" in, ironically, Spanish. I've pretty much kept Todd's death to myself. I didn't want to bring the bachelor party down or anything. Needless to say, we miss him. He was the first pet Jessie and I bought together as a married couple. His inability to live more than a year ensures that he will be the last.