My Sick Mind

Big doings and nothing doings this weekend for the sick minded. Friday (today or tomorrow depending) is yet another Dave Matthews show. This one is in Hershey, PA - and you know what's in Hershey. That's right ... beer. No really, it's the chocolate thing. The big stadium (Hershey Park stadium or something) is right next door to the big chocolate factory, so there's tailgating (the beer part) and Reese's cups in my future. I'll have to find a way to keep them chilled, since it's going to be hotter than Hell on Friday (today or tomorrow depending). This is the last Dave show of the summer for us. My friend is a total groupie. After the Camden show a couple of weeks ago she did her usual "follow the band back to the hotel" thing. Usually it includes me, but this time the show coincided with the LPGA Championship in Maryland, and you know how that little competition came out. Well, it turns out that this year she got to meet His Majesty and got a b...

PAVLOV'S CASHIER I'm still trying to cope with the canvas shopping bags. I live so close to the market that I can make little trips 3 or 4 times a week. I grab a couple of canvas totes and walk on over. Invariably, the cashier tries to put something in one of those disgusting plastic bags. Yesterday it was a 4-pack of bottled water. While I'm busy packing the bags, the kid reaches for a plastic one. Ugh. Just give it to me. On Sunday it was a container of laundry detergent which was already conveniently in its own bottle with a handle. I can carry it. That's what the handle is for. The cashiers are trained to use those dopey plastic bags, and it kills them if they can't separate the soap from the food. People walk out of the market with a dozen of them in their carts. They're killing me. PLAY NICE, GIRLS PHOENIX (AP) — Shaquille O'Neal will lose his special deputy’s badge in Maricopa County because of language he used in a rap video that mocks former teamma...

It's here. You're watching, aren't you? C'mon, admit it, you're fascinated. "It's not television. It's birth control." The sad thing is that it is television. It's television at its worst. It's television exploiting life for its own gain. Commercial advertisements, promotion and exploitation. It's what television has become, and for them to say it's not television is a lie. Kids are "borrowing" actual children. It's not one of those cyber deals where it's like Robo-kid and they can cancel the game and start over. These are real kids with real parents - not the ones on the show - other parents who sold the kids to the show, and I can only imagine the family photo album and YouTube video that the kid will see when he's twelve. "Hey Billy, check it out. This is you when we sold you to this TV show because we had too much credit card debt and gasoline was $4 a gallon (you remember gasoline, right?) and w...

Sublimate Pronunciation: \ˈsə-blə-ˌmāt\ Function: noun A chemical product obtained by sublimation . Sublimation of an element or compound is a transition from the solid to gas phase with no intermediate liquid stage . Radio jackass Don Imus is at it again. He made some off-color joke about Adam (don't call me "Pacman") Jones' color and now he's in for another ass-beating. What I don't get about the whole affair is why do we care what he says? We know he's a jackass, yet we treat his nonsense with the same respect we would treat a politician or religious figure making the same remarks. Your attention please: He's a radio guy. He has a program on the radio. They pay him to make stupid remarks, and when you call attention to his nonsense it only makes him say more stupid stuff. Which leads me to Anthony's Rule of Thumb #5: When you see a non-sports personality on the sports page of the newspaper or a sports personality on the front page, it's a...

Former Philadelphia 76er Aaron McKie was arrested and charged Monday with trying to buy two guns despite being under a protection-from-abuse order that bars such purchases. In the criminal charge, he is accused of lying by answering "no" to the gun-purchase application's question about a restraining order to protect his "child or an intimate partner or child of such partner." "You can make an honest mistake on a gun application and pay the price," McKie's attorney, Brian McMonagle said. "I don't think anybody thinks he had any bad intentions here. " Only a lawyer can refer to a lie as an "honest mistake." Sure. People buy guns all the time. "What restraining order? Oh yeah ... that restraining order. What's the problem? I'm buying two guns but there's only one restraining order. You're sticking it to me!" Wimbledon starts this week, and across America trained journalists will say "Wimble ...

I have a difficult time when someone asks, “What’s your favorite...” song, movie, actor or whatever. It depends on my mood and what I’m listening to or thinking about at the time, so it might change depending on when I’m asked. It’s especially true if there are a lot of choices and I’d have a hard time narrowing the list to one. Such is the case with comedians. The best I could do would be to put a list together. Ranking them one through ten is conditional and unnecessary: Lenny Bruce Bill Cosby Dave Attell Doug Stanhope George Carlin Brian Regan Patton Oswalt Don Rickles Jerry Seinfeld Mitch Hedberg If you asked me today, I’d say Regan and next week I might say Stanhope, but at different times in my life I would have said George Carlin. Carlin died on Sunday, and I must admit to losing track of him over the past 10 years or so. I started listening to him in the early 70s when he put out an album called "FM & AM." For a teenager, it was heady stuff - edgy, borderline o...

On Wednesday, NBC is treating us to a television program called The Baby Borrowers . The premise, so we're told, is that childless couples and/or teenagers are given babies to deal with for a period of time, giving them (so we're told) "a unique opportunity to peer into the future and see what they (and their partners) might be like if they remain together and decide to build a family." For three whole weeks. Now that television has run out of ways to abuse adults, they have figured a way to include children in their nonsense. The problem (among many) is that children don't have a way to defend themselves. They are at the mercy of their (so-called) parents, who apparently will sell them to television in exchange for a few dollars. NBC calls it a "social experiment" but what it really is is something more - or less depending on your viewpoint. NBC's upcoming reality series "The Baby Borrowers" is an intriguing new social experiment based o...