Saturday Non Sequiturs.

I have a ticket for the Wilmington Blue Rocks game tonight. Big deal, right? Uh huh. Little did I know, it's dog night:

Bring your dog out to Frawley Stadium as Concord Pet Food & Supplies will be sponsoring Dog Days of Summer.

Me and two thousand dogs. Geez. That's worse than going to Singles Night at Jenny Craig. Why don't they ever have Cat Night? I might take him anyway. Ten bucks says I step in poop.

We had a thunderstorm warning last night. The warning said that "lightning is one of nature's number one killers." As though there could be more than one number one killer. Nobody is editing the weather forecast. Or this blog.

A riddle for you:

If a chair sits in the woods,

does it make a sound?

We're talking about practice, man.

Steve Porter has created a modern classic. It features the iconic Allen Iverson "practice" press conference as well as gems from Dennis Green, Joe Namath, Jim Mora and Terrell Owens. Mike Missanelli has been playing it on his ESPN radio show, and it makes me smile every time I hear it. The video is even better.

Kudos to Steve Porter. You're awesome, dude. Words fail me. Visit his web site and hear stuff for yourself.

Dead and dying

"Michael Jackson is a 5 asshole having, pterodactyl marrying, werewolf raping, baby dangler."

- Patton Oswalt

Every time someone near my age dies I start thinking about my own mortality. Michael Jackson was only a year younger than me, but his dying didn't make me think much. He was like a piece of fine china - a little to fragile to be human.

I always wanted the job of the guy who used to walk behind him holding the umbrella. If you can't go outdoors without an umbrella over your head, you're way too dainty. Although, I guess he only had one or two layers of skin left, so it stands to reason. The odd juxtaposition of always wearing a germ mask and having a pet chimpanzee is too bizarre to explain.

Now, as death often does, the bizarre stories of his life will come to light. What's the over/under for the number of posthumous biographies? I say ten before the end of the year. First though, the autopsy should be very interesting.

Michael Jackson died.

Now the stories will come out

of how weird he was.

Earlier, the news came out that the Academy Awards will be nominating ten films for best picture instead of the customary five. I don't like it. Like everything else, I'm thinking there's a money angle to this decision.
They think it means that more good films will be included, but I think it means that it's more likely that a great film will lose out due to a split vote. Why do people always think that more equals better? I suppose this means that the telecast will be six hours instead of the regular four.

Farrah Fawcett died today too. She was 62, so that doesn't make me think much, although she was probably in her late 50s when she got sick. I used to love the Charlie's Angels show, but only with the original three. Once Kate Jackson left I lost all interest in the show. To me, Kate was the babe of the bunch. Cute, thin, smart and she had that raspy voice. I rarely make the obvious choice. Mary Ann (Gilligan's Island) Shirley (Laverne and Shirley) Janet (Three's Company) and Mindy (Mork and Mindy).

Nanu nanu, bitches.

Another one bites the dust.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he had secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair. Wiping away tears, he apologized to his family and gave up a national Republican Party post, but was silent on whether he would resign.
"I've been unfaithful to my wife," he said in a news conference in which the 49-year-old governor ruminated on God's law, moral absolutes and following one's heart. He said he spent the last five days "crying in Argentina."

Boo hoo. Another teary confession from somebody who got caught. Now, he's Mister Apology - lamenting his twisted life. People like that always ruminate on God's law once they're caught. If he had a brain in his little head, he'd have had her flown to South Carolina and his little tryst would still be going on. But he's a dumbass on top of being a Republican.

"He left the state unattended," said Glenn Mitchell, 54 of Columbia, out of work recuperating from surgery. "He just hasn't been there for us."

Something tells me that South Carolina kind of runs itself. You might be better off unattended.

Sanford described the woman, who lives in Argentina as a "dear, dear friend" whom he has known for about eight years and been romantically involved with for about a year. He said he has seen her three times since the affair began, and his wife found out about it five months ago.

OK, so a year, and now he got caught and out comes the teary-eyed apology. Another death-bed confession.

Apparently, Sanford was an early contender for the Republican presidential race in 2012. What a shame we won't have him to kick around.

As a congressman, Sanford voted in favor of three of four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, citing the need for "moral legitimacy."

Oops.

Every once in a while I ask myself, "Why would someone spend millions of dollars to get a job that pays $100,000 a year?" And every once in a while, I get an answer.

Cooch in Argentina. This Philistine Stick-insect can get a B.J. overseas and I'm sitting here eating chicken fingers with a cat coughing up hairballs. Where do I sign up?

I'm guessing that he has a nice stockpile of money that he's made from his graft in politics, in addition to a list of babes willing to service him because he was in politics. We're supposed to ask, "What is this teaching the kids?" It's teaching them that power gets you stuff. Just don't get caught.

And every kid thinks they're smart enough not to get caught.

A lot about a little.

It's that time of year again. The time when we'll have to listen to so-called professional broadcasters say Wimbleton when they really mean Wimbledon. Why do I find it annoying? Although, it's not nearly as annoying as the women screaming every time they hit a shot, as though they're giving birth. Who taught them to do that?

For those of you who may be wondering, giant hematoma leg is healing slowly. No, I'm not taking another photo.

Has anyone ever tried Kefir? It's supposed to be one of those "good for you" foods. I've seen it described as a drinkable yogurt that tastes like sour milk. One article said: Beyond the satiety-inducing protein, the probiotics in kefir may also speed weight loss. British scientists found that these active organisms boosted the breakdown of fat molecules in mice, preventing the rodents from gaining weight. I'm guessing I can get it at Whole Foods Market, but wondering if it's worth the effort. I'd like to lose a few pounds, but I'm not sure drinking blueberry-flavored sour milk is the right way to go about it.

Ed McMahon died yesterday. One of the recurring stories my mother tells is how dad once installed a floor at his home when he lived in Cherry Hill. The story is quickly followed by, "... and the cheap bastard didn't even offer him anything to drink." Hiyo!

President Obama recently signed tough anti-smoking legislation which gives the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented authority to regulate what goes into tobacco products, to make public the ingredients and to prohibit marketing campaigns geared toward children. Mostly, it's aimed at keeping teenagers from doing what their parents do.

Let's recap: Smoking is banned in most restaurants, indoor facilities and workplaces. The new legislation will make the health warnings almost as large as the cigarette brand. It's a social anathema and almost everybody who does it knows it may eventually kill them. We do everything but ban the sale altogether, which is interesting, since prescription drugs are quickly removed from the marketplace if 5 people die from taking them.

I envision a day when the War on Tobacco will rival the War on Drugs. I would guess that we're throwing about the same amounts of money at both. How's that War on Drugs going?

I thought so.

Cat favors.

This is one of those stories that sounds like I'm drunk, but seriously...

The last thing I do before I leave for work every morning is to make sure I have my wallet. You may remember this item I purchased a while ago, because I don't carry a "real" wallet, but got tired of misplacing credit cards and/or my driver's license. I'm sort of scatterbrained. I blame alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

Anyway, this morning I realized that I hadn't seen the thing since Sunday, but I didn't have enough time to look for it unless I wanted to be late for work. The shock left me dumbfounded, so I left the house with nine dollars in cash and a lot of anxiety.

When I got home tonight, I tore the place apart looking for it, to no avail. I checked my accounts and made sure no one had absconded with my tens of dollars, so I felt like I was left with nothing but to replace the scattered shards of my life, which included my driver's license, gas card, credit card, ATM card and another debit card. That's a lot of stuff, and since I was down to the five bucks I found in a hampered pair of jeans, things were getting interesting. It also told me that the thing was here someplace. I searched the car (twice) and even emptied the trash can, in case it dropped off the kitchen counter. Nope.

Ironically, I bought the thing because I got tired of losing random cards. The result now is that I have lost all of them, so what did that solve exactly?

Alternately, I kept searching and collapsing in the sofa in despair. Energizing breaks. The cat wandered around, and I lamented that he couldn't help me. I picked him up, because animals are comforting, and told him that I wished he could help me, because he seems to pay more attention to what I do than I do - and that's a strange request to make of a cat. It's also why I continue to believe that married people will live longer than single people. But I digress.

I put the cat down, and started to crawl around the floor after him. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but desparate times call for desparate measures. There are only so many places it could have been, and it isn't like a jungle in here, so a clear floor only has so many places to stash things. Plus, gravitationally speaking, it would seek its lowest level, which here, means the floor.

As I crawled the floor after the cat, (strange, I know) I stumbled on my nearly empty gym bag and decided to take one more swipe for the missing pieces of my life.

Viola!

Pretending to be a cat turned out to be an effective method of finding something, getting me a good night's sleep and making me even happier that I have a furry friend to help me around the house.

He has no idea.

3 for 3.

Another weekend in paradise. Cloudy, rainy and generally crappy weather all weekend until Sunday at around 6:00pm when the sun came out. Just in time for me to take a stroll to the grocery store and start getting stuff together for work on Monday. I know better than to complain about things that I can't control - like the weather - but Jeebus!

I spent a couple of evenings at the ballpark watching the woeful Phillies get swept by the even more woeful Baltimore Orioles. The games weren't part of our ticket package, so I went out of my way to get them, since I'm kind of an Orioles fan. I pay $40 a month for the MLB Package on cable, and when the Phillies aren't on, I spend my time watching the O's. There are probably people in Baltimore who don't do that.

Anyway, most fans thought the Phils would get fat off the Orioles, but the forty bucks made me a more well-informed fan, and I wrote to one of the Inquirer columnists and told him that "I wouldn't be surprised to see the Orioles win 2 of 3 this weekend." Technically, I was wrong, since they won 3 of 3.

My friend with whom I have the season tickets went with me on Friday. He gets assed-up when the Phils lose, and Friday was no exception. "If they lose tonight, I'm not coming tomorrow," he told me, and I figured he was exaggerating, because Saturday's ticket was $24, and I don't throw $24 away easily. They lost, and on the way out he informed me that he wasn't coming on Saturday.

That left me to attend the game by myself, in addition to leaving a perfectly good ticket unused. Fortunately, I don't mind going places by myself. Mostly because I don't have many other choices and partly because I like making my own schedule and doing what I want. Besides, I can strike up a conversation with people rather easily, and baseball games are even easier than most other places.

Late in the game, I found myself standing downstairs next to some young fans, but one fan, a young woman, didn't seem to know exactly what was going on. I keep score, and my scorecard can look like hieroglyphics to non-scorekeepers. Backward K's, F8, E6, two dashes with a circle around it ... that stuff looks like the scribblings of a mental patient to some. I do it mostly to keep my head in the game. It's something I've been doing since I was a kid, and old habits die hard.

She was eyeing my scorecard and complimented me on my penmanship (it's usually better) and after asking me about the stuff I was writing, queried, "So, who's winning?"

The scoreboard was in plain sight. In fact, there were no fewer than four that could be seen from our vantage point, but I answered her question politely, "The Orioles."

That's right.