Category: etc.

Thank you SO much for the link about h*t girls k*ssing.

I really hate it when ugly girls k*ss.

Here’s what I learned today:

A donkey is the father of a mule. A mare is the mother of a mule. Mules are sterile.

Well, hee-HAW.

Oh, Andre, that picture just chokes me up. Every great athlete has that moment when he bids farewell to competitive sport, but how I wish this were not your moment. I’m just not ready! There’s so much you did to shake up a decorous, country-club game, turn it on its ear; so much you did to raise the standard of how the game is played. Really, truly, one of the greats.

So much to appreciate and remember:

That killer return of serve, the absolute best in the game
The way you hit the ball early, throwing opponents off-balance
Those impossibly deep angles you played
The way you wore players down, working them back and forth from your perch in the center baseline
Your one-time wild and bushy hairdo
Your long-time smooth and shiny head
Your goofy, slightly pidgeon-toed gait
Your huge early 90s “Image is Everything” persona
That Sampras/Agassi rivalry
(And even though he won more of your head-to-head matches, I’ve always liked you better than that goodie-goodie Sampras with those Groucho Marx eyebrows and those perfectly placed behaviors.)
Your career Grand Slam
Your wives:
Brooke
and Steffi
Wimbledon 1991 — You wore whites! You wore the whites — which is tradition but still, you managed to shock everyone because no one EVER thought the neon king would wear the traditional whites.
Wimbledon 1992 — You WON! And critics thought you couldn’t win on grass.
Wimbledon 200 — 5-set semifinal nailbiter against Australian hottie Patrick Rafter. You lost …. but, seriously, that match was amazing.
U.S. Open 2006 — An insane 5-set victory on Saturday against Marcos Baghdatis, both players injured, but still swinging away, both fighting like crazy through the pain, ferocious to win. You did.

But today, it ended. And you, the one-time Image King, showed graciousness and humility and class and brought anyone who watched you to tears with this:

“Thanks. The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. And over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I’ve found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I’ve found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams, dreams I could have never reached without you. Over the last 21 years, I have found you and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life. Thank you.”

No, thank you, Andre, my favorite, for the years of joy watching you rattle the gates of the country club.

What do you think of this idea? Could you do it? Will you do it? Or even a part of it?

She’s taking some flak for it, you know, a bit of “so what’s the point?” but I really like her heart about it, her desire to be changed herself. Which is nothing, if not a point.

If I’m honest, I know I could not do it; not 30 days. I wonder if I could do any part of it, though.

Did anybody see this?

Um, Simon Cowell? Are those T-shirts just getting way too tight? Are you becoming impaired from Spandex? Suffering from woosy-ness? Because this show — your new show — just SUCKED.

And I’m writing this in the past tense, even though I’m writing this AS I’m watching it.

Here’s the dealio:

It’s basically “Dancing with the Stars” with singing.

A group of B-list celebrities — Lea Thompson, Lucy Lawless, Alfonso Ribero, some “Queer Eye” guy and the rest — are paired up with a group of singers who each must have their own perfectly good reasons for choosing professional suicide — Randy Travis, Michael Bolton, Peter freakin’ Frampton, and GLADYS what-is-she-doing KNIGHT — to sing “duets” and be judged and then voted off one by one. You know, the basics.

Judges are Marie Osmond, LITTLE RICHARD, and producer David Foster.

Here’s my take on why this sucks:

1) It just does.

2) But, to be more specific. Look, on “Dancing with the Stars,” a show I actually like, a show that’s actually fun, celebrities are paired up for the duration with a professional dancer. Not so here. They’ll be “mixed up” every week. So, where’s the chance to really grow attached, to root for your favorite “pair”? Huge mistake, in my opinion. You’re robbing the audience of what is key in these kinds of shows — the emotional attachment to your favorites.

3) The B-list celebrity comes onstage by him/herself and starts the duet alone. You don’t even know who they’re paired with until that cheesy moment about 30 seconds into the song when B-list HAS to pause to announce her singer/partner, like, “Mr. Peter Frampton, everybody,” and then out slinks the singer with a definite “Holy God in heaven, what have I done?” look on his face to vocally wrassle a dying bear to the ground without being mauled himself.

Remember Timothy Treadwell, dudes. You are treading where humans should not tread.

4) At the end of the song, singer is asked, “So, how do you think (uh, gymnast) Carly Patterson did in rehearsals this week?” And of course, the singer, who’s just ruined his life by singing with gymnast Carly Patterson and will be comitting seppuku later, HAS to say, “Ohhh, she was great. Really focused,” or some other inanity, rather than being able to freely say:

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”

(*gasp*)

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

5) They offer up this lame little compliment at the end of a lame little song because the cameras don’t follow the singer and B-list into rehearsals and allow us to see what REALLY went on. We don’t see them working, struggling. We don’t see the creative process. We don’t see the WORK, like we do in “Dancing with the Stars.” It’s a ripoff and a cheat. And it’s alienating. People aren’t going to care because there’s no engagement, other than those stomach-churning moments when we watch them sing together, bobbing and weaving on their separate sides of the stage, both fighting for dominance.

We never see them have to work TOGETHER. We never see relationships, either developing or crashing. And then there’s Tutti Frutti Little Richard trying to be the guy who brings da pimp hand? No. No.

Mistake, Simon. “I have to say, it was absolutely dreadful.”

Oh, and by the way?

6) Lea Thompson just choked out a real teetery cliffhanger, rather like this: A~A~A~A~A~A~C~K~K~!~!

But perhaps most egregiously ….

7) Michael Bolton

Now …. just watch. It’ll be a HUGE hit.

…. before I go get the wee niece …..

Uhm, Father Tawny?

YOU ARE THE BIGGEST OFFENDER OF THEM ALL!!!

I JUST SAW YOU AND YOUR JIBBLIES OUT THERE JIBBLING AROUND!

Must I draw my blinds, live in darkness, stare at the ground, grope about with my eyes squeezed shut??

For a man of the cloth, Father Tawny, you sport about in precious little of it when it’s your laundry day. Look, this is not some “Free to be You and Me Commune” here. That notion sounded all nice and crap when I was a kid, but the reality is wrong and dangerous and …. just plain gross.

You know what you are free to do, though? You are free, Father Tawny, to be ME, actually.

A person who wears clothes.

This ain’t the Garden of Eden.

I do not absolve you.

All right. Look. That’s IT, dudes. I’ve HAD it.

Can’t a girl walk to the community laundry room a mere 10 steps from her own front door — a door she still owns, shockingly — on a sweaty summer’s evening to do some damn laundry without running into YOU — you, the men who live in this small hostile complex of townhomes who insist on walking around in — I don’t know what the hell YOU call them, but I call them Shame Undies or Shundies, if you will — those short, dingy, well-ventilated mini skirts that make me avert my eyes and breathe, “uh, sorry” then slam the door really fast while I skitter away bug-eyed from your pasty, poochy self-loathing?

Look. I do not want to be forced to notice any danglies or jibblies or hoo-hahs or what-nots.

I CANNOT TAKE THE EMBARRASSMENT.

ANY. MORE.

FOR YOU!

FOR MEEEE!!!!

Which is, really, what’s most important in this whole virtual nudist colony scenario we’ve got going on here, people.

Please, for the love of God and Joe Boxer and everything that makes life liveable, please, cover UP your ….. your goods or …. your bads or whichever end of the scale they deserve to be on.

PLEASE!!

I am willing to buy or make — MAKE, even — some mumus, maybe from a nice charcoal pinstripe or a deep blue herringbone. You know, manly mumus. Nice professional mumus. Some damn Community Living Mumus. But something, SOMETHING, just perfect for any and all situations which involve me encountering you and your little box of shaky-shake-a Good ‘n’ Plenty there.

There is an innocent 5-year-old girl arriving here in 12 hours, for God’s sake!

Cover up or I will KICK you. Right there.

Right.

THERE.

And I won’t feel all that bad about it, really, and then my niece can kick you, too, if she wants, but she won’t, because she’s a very kind and sensitive and non-kicky child, unlike her aunt, who, let’s face it, will probably just be acting out some latent childhood hostilities, which, as we all know, is the fertile breeding ground for ALL hostilities everywhere, both latent and manifest. But, anywho ….

Look, just pretend I’m your fusty ol’ gammie and COVER. UP!!

I can still remember my mom sitting at our kitchen table, sighing loudly over the stacks of English papers she had to grade. “What’s wrong, Mom?” I’d ask. And she’d roll her eyes, pull out a paper, and read the latest literary atrocity committed by one of her students. I remember one in particular, where the student was supposed to use vocabulary words in a brief paragraph story. (Vocab words in italics here.)

So the kid wrote:

“Today is our anniversary. We have been spliced for 7 years. I am making my wife a breakfast of toast, orange juice, and scrambled ova.”

There was more to it that I don’t remember, but I do remember he did NOT get an A.

So check some more gems I found, from the brilliant pens of our future leaders and felons:

> While researching my topic, I have been able to swim in a pool of my own opinion.
> Gaining weight doesn’t happen overnight, but if you keep eating junk food constantly, then you are playing right into the government’s hands.
> Schlink illustrates his thoughts about illiteracy by showing the paradox of the juxtaposition-related issues of secrets in a relationship and illiteracy.
> Mimi had stage freight.
> Throughout history, breasts have been in and out of fashion.
> The 60’s had a lot of unexpected and tragic events such as the Woodstock Music Festival and World War II.
> They lie and tell us… that they love us, but it was all about getting into our panties.
> (His) words cut me deep, like salt on a womb.
> Adults still believe that youth are violet and bad.
> Capital punishment insures peace of mind.
> Most people look to the bald eagle for guidance.
> It can be a way to pay back African-Americans without actually paying them back.

*****
From a history paper on Anne Hutchinson…

“I’m not sure if she was a slut or what, but she had 14 children…it seems like she really got around.”

*****
I have two or three students who have shared new ideas in my American Lit. class and I thought I would pass the information along:

* Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “the mother” is not a good poem because killing babies is wrong.
* William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” is not a good story because you shouldn’t hit your children.
* Hemingway is a bad writer because he yells at his wife in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
* Whitman is gay, and this is why we shouldn’t read him. And Emily Dickinson might be a lesbian. And Adrienne Rich doesn’t like men at all. And there are naked pictures of Allen Ginsberg with another man on the internet.
* Kate Chopin must be “one of those feminists.”
* T. S. Eliot is stupid.
* Flannery O’Connor can’t be a Christian writer because her stories don’t have happy endings.
* Black writers in the Harlem Renaissance seem angry for some reason.

Shiver me timbers, people. Shiver me timbers.

(Frankly, real life is just too heavy right now. I’m choosing to be utterly frivolous here this week.)

So catch the spirit! Or not!

Here’s how this works: I’ll start with the first line of a song. It’s a song I learned when I was a little kid. Maybe you did, too. First commenter says the next line. Next commenter says the line after that, until we see if we’ve got the whole song.

Bonus: Name those HAND MOTIONS!

NO GOOGLING! Although conferring amongst yourselves and loved ones is definitely acceptable.

Ready? (sing with me, now)

Little cabin in the woods …….

Hand Motion: Cabin roof with your fingers, children. No, Timmy, not that finger.

Next line, anyone?

…. I am embarrassed to admit I don’t know.

I am a dummypants so I need to smarten my pants and, therefore, you Smartypants may procced to help me now.

‘Mmkay?

All right.

1) I do not know (ahem) how to get wireless Innanet provider for my Mac laptop. I do know my Mac has some magic thingie called Airport, but I do nah geddih.

But I need to know this because, apparently, I’m some kind of low-life Innanet thief who’s been stealing her wireless connection from God knows who for God knows how long. And I want to know because, well, how else am I going to blog from the hoosegow, people?

2) Also, I do not know how to post an audio file on dishere blog. And I want to know because, well, I want to post an audio file on dishere blog!

Okay. Wait a second.

Let’s all have a meditative moment in honor of my rank stupidity:

(d……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………uh)

All right, already! Close your mouth, Michael. We are not a codfish.

Annnnnd now …..

Ready.

Set.

HELP me, Smartypants, ELHP!!