Mystery Solved

Close fans of the Boston Red Sox have had a question on their minds for more than a year now -- What happened to Pedro?

Not the headhunter who now cashes checks from the New York Mets, but the seemingly life-size Pedro Martinez bobblehead doll that made an appearance in the Red Sox dugout before the All-Star break in 2004, when Pedro was taking one of his annual extended vacations to the Dominican.

I'm not sure if it was meant to deflect the Whiner Line firestorm that was to follow, but I do know the thing was hilarious. It was so real, the only thing that was missing was the patented Manny Ramirez double-point. And so I guess it was no surprise that the bobble ended up in Manny's penthouse loft.

I know this because the guy who wants a trade because he hates being the public eye let reporters and photographers into his $6.9 million condo. Wha? To borrow a pair of Cold War analogies, Manny is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I'm just hoping he doesn't end up playing for the Evil Empire.

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As a member of the media elite, I often come across news stories that I think I ought to call to your attention. So here's a little roundup of stories you might have missed.

The New York Times reported that many former college and current pro-team cheerleaders work day jobs as pharmaceutical representatives. It's good to see you can go from breaking hearts to selling drugs that mend them.

A group in Washington, DC is collecting signatures in the hope of nominating talk show host Oprah Winfrey for the Nobel Peace Prize next year. Oprah's great, but her fans are confused. They must think it's the "Noble Prize." Not the first time a transposition error has doomed a well-intentioned group. Bad spellers once tried to organize, but their efforts floundered when they urged one another to "untie."

And in Maine, a lingerie shop is trying to give business a lift by putting live models in its windows. It has some shoppers wondering if Augusta has been stripped of its moral standing, and others saying "Tata" to downtown shopping. But I wonder if it increases the chances of a hold-up.

Pop-up blocker's revenge

The term for the unintended consequence of a technological improvement is "revenge effect." And while it's hard to believe there might be a drawback to the Google toolbar pop-up blocker, I think I may have found one. Gone are the days when I would rejoice at the sight of an Orbitz pop-ups, because they meant I could spend a few hours goofing off. (Artist's rendering at right)

But because of pop-up blocker, a whole generation of these time-wasters has gone missing.

Where's my Hotel. Island Hop. The Italian blockbuster Gondoliero. There are Orbitz engineers spending weeks perfecting these games, and I dishonor them every time my Google toolbar kills one of their ads.

Orbitz was smart enough set up an arcade, but it's just not the same. I don't want to seek diversion out; I want it to find me.

This is the Internet equivalent of having your mail blocked so you don't get Red Envelope catalogs, but sacrificing birthday cards to do it. I never thought I'd say it, but I may just miss pop-ups.

Sonnet on the passing of a friend

Born each September in Jamaica Plain
Your birth portends a season of great hope--
Of college football and big hurricanes,
Of fallen leaves, another Red Sox choke.

But faster than the Boston leaves do drop
Your taps replaced by bitter winter brews.
It comes too quick; I still can taste your hops.
They help hold off the stubborn winter blues.

I know the time is nigh when it gets dark
At 5, then 4, and then 3:45.
Your time in bars and stores, a fixed mark,
As selflessly you warm our chilly lives.

It's no surprise I hold you as the best.
Please rest in peace, my Sam Octoberfest.

Why the Colts shan't go undefeated

Take it from a guy who's .300 in picking games against the spread this year -- The 10-0 Colts will lose before the NFL regular season is out. I know, I know, it's blasphemy to speak against Colts QB and football messiah Peyton Manning, but I will spell out my argument in three simple points, so easy even Mike Vanderjagt could understand.

1. Consistency. The Colts have six games left in the season. That's 360 minutes of football. To go undefeated, they'll need to play with focus and discipline for at least 300 of those minutes, probably more like 330 or 340, since just one bad quarter is enough to doom a team on any given Sunday. Can they do that? Maybe. (They've only had one major breakdown this year, when the Rams went nuts on them in the first quarter of a Monday Night game. They came back to win that one after Rams QB Marc Bulger was injured.) I take the under on 360 minutes of focus for the rest of the season.

2. Schedule. After fattening up for two months on creampuffs, bon-bons, and maybe even one prep team (if I remember right), Indianapolis is now facing teams with winning records. Before the year is out, the Colts will play Pittsburgh, at Jacksonville, San Diego, and at Seattle. These are quality teams, playoff teams, the types of teams Indy did not face in September and October.

3. They're just too good. The Colts lead their division by two games right now, and lead by two games (in the loss column) in the race for homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. The Colts are so good this season, they might have both the division and homefield locked up by week 15, almost certainly by week 16. That gives coach Tony Dungy the ability to rest his banged up starters, and it gives Colts opponents the ability to take advantage of Indy's second string late in the season. That's why if the Colts haven't lost by week 16 at Seattle, I predict the Seahawks will beat them.

And when I am right, we'll get to see what I've been missing all year: Sad Peyton.

Blog. James Blog.

Spike Television has carried on the mantle of its predecessor TNN, and is broadcasting a Bond-a-thon over the holiday weekend. It's back-to-back Bond for four days, save a few Three Stooges episodes and the standard litany of overnight infomercials.

All this TV left me shaken, not stirred, but not so much that I couldn't put together a list of Bond superlatives.

Best Bond. Any discussion about Bond begins with who was the best. I choose Roger Moore, anathema to Sean Connery fans I know, but Moore was helped by having the best scripts (Octopussy and the bayou tour de force Live and Let Die come to mind right away.) So it's Moore, Connery, then Pierce Brosnan. George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton bring up the rear. I can give Dalton a pass, though, because he was the first post-Cold War Bond, and didn't really have anybody to fight.

Best Villian. Speaking of which, Bond is only as good as his villian, and nobody did it better than Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill. Far scarier than the Ernst Blofeld character on which Dr. Evil is based, creepy crazy Chris Walken still gives NaturalBlog the heebie jeebies when I think about his plot to flood a fault line and trigger a massive earthquake in San Francisco. Walken's Zorin character, by the way, died in a tragic dirigible accident.

Walken had the help of Grace Jones in A View to a Kill, though she doesn't even crack the Top 10 of Best sidekicks. This is a tossup between Odd Job from Goldfinger and the recurring Jaws character. I can't pick between them, so you'll have to imagine a fight between the two to determine who's best.

Best Bond Girl. I believe I'm partial to Jill St. John as Tiffany Case in the forgettable Diamonds are Forver. Honorable mention to Jane Seymour. (As Solitaire in Live and Let Die, for providing an "I didn't realize she was a Bond girl moment.") Rounding out the top three is Denise Richards as Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.

That's a nice segway to Best Pun. Bond has a million, but I think I have to cite the love scene at the end of The World is Not Enough when he tells Dr. Jones, "I thought Christmas only came once a year." Classic.

Just a few more. Best stunt. Probably the boat chase in Live and Let Die, though the ski chase scenes in Living Daylights and For Your Eyes Only are up there.

Worst Special Effect. I think I have to nominate Moonraker, not one special effect, but the whole freaking movie. Just awful.

Best theme. You may not realize many Bond themes met some modicum of commercial success, most of them eponymous with the movie. Wings's Live and Let Die , Carly Simon's Nobody Does it Better, View to a Kill by Duran Duran. Madonna was in on the action in the last Bond movie, Die Another Day. But the best, by far, is Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger. "Golden words he will pour in your ear, But his lies can't disguise what you fear, For a golden girl knows when he's kissed her, It's the kiss of death from Mister Goldfinger." Nice.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Homer Simpson's spoof of the Goldfinger theme when he changes his name to Max Power:

Max Power, he's the man who's name you'd love to touch! But you mustn't touch! His name sounds good in your ear, but when you say it, you mustn't fear! 'Cause his name can be said by anyone!

The NaturalGift

 
We are all endowed with a natural gift. For some it is to create sculpture from clay. For others it is to make the written word dance before your eyes. For NaturalBlog, it is to pick the slowest checkout line at a retailer.

I have possessed this incredible ability my entire life. Just the other day at the Stop & Shop, I get into an express lane, then spied the fella ahead of me, with glasses like bottle-bottoms and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. This guy was trouble, so I tried to outsmart the NaturalGift and I got into another line. Little did I know that the mustachioed lady at register 12 would have not one but two half chickens ring up at $25.49 instead of $7.54, necessitating a price check of epic proportion. NaturalGift 1, NaturalBlog 0. That day, anyway. Over my lifetime the score is more like 745,328 to 0.

My gift knows no bounds. At Fenway Park, people lap me in the beer line. The customers ahead of me at Target always want to open a store charge. Even when I'm the only customer -- say, at a dry cleaner -- the NaturalGift rears its ugly head, maybe in the form of a pen that won't write, or as a lack of proper change in the register.

I've had hours and hours of waiting in line to try and figure out how to profit from this gift, only to come up empty every time. So I offer this altruistic advice: If you see me in your line, choose another.

Jessica, please stop calling

Well, here we go again. Phone calls at all hours of the night. Love letters left on my doorstep, their I's dotted with little hearts. Oblique references to our relationship in songs that sniff the Top 40.

Jessica Simpson is available again. And she's after me.

We've been down this road before. Jennifer, Lindsay, Angelina -- they've all sought sweet solace in my arms. But Jessica, she's in a class by herself. Tenacious with a capital T.

Don't get me wrong. She's great, really, but I just can't keep up with her. All she wants to do is play chess, visit art museums, read policy papers. That girl has needs, and they're all the intellectual kind. Not that I condone it, but no wonder Nick turned to strippers.

It's the panda's world, really

I'll just go ahead and list off the puns and jokes that I'm contractually required to make. "It's Pandamonium!" "It's pandemic!" "He's so adorable I just can't bear it!" "Pretty, pretty dancing."

Ok. That feels better. Now on to the screed.

The panda has gotten a lot of love lately. CNN can't go an hour without panda B-roll. Some 13,000 tickets for the opportunity to wait in a long line and maybe see the panda sold out in just two hours. Some people are even promising to do untoward things for the chance to wait in that line.

And for what? Not much, likely. All this little booger does is curl up in a ball -- an adorable ball, yes -- and sleep, in his little jail cell out of vistors' view, all the time. Look for yourself, Truman. And, as I understand it, they're not even going to give visitors a stick with which to motivate the panda to do something interesting. Does he even fetch? No. I don't even think he eats, shoots and leaves.

Here's some free advice, Tai Shan. Learn a skill and quick, because you can only trade on being cute for so long before you end up sad and broken on reality TV.

Heavy was the head that wore the crown

Sam, the hideous alien-like beast that was named the World's Ugliest Dog three years running, has died of a failing heart in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 14.

Sam, a pedigreed Chinese crested, was mostly hairless, with crooked teeth and eyes as vacant as anything in Satan's army, but twice as evil. He is pictured at right but miniaturized, so that you might not spit out your coffee should you read the NaturalBlog at breakfast.

He is survived by his owner, who had the mercy to euthanize him when she found out his heart was failing. He is now seated in the ugly part of heaven.

The curious case of Robert Blake

One of my favorite actor-turned-defendants is back in the news. Robert Blake was ordered to pay $30 million dollars after being found liable in the 2001 murder of his wife in California.

But it's safe to say that with no Heisman Trophy for Blake to auction, the victim's family won't be collecting that money.

The case featured everything you could ever want. Witness:

Blake's wife, some 25 years his junior, was killed in a car after getting dinner with Blake in California in 2001. Blake says he had gone back in the restaurant at the time. To get his gun. This, by the way, is the plot to the pilot episode of Blake's old TV show Baretta. No joke.

After his arrest, Blake granted the obligatory jailhouse interview to Barbara Walters. Uncontent with simply breaking into tears, he interrupted the interview for a visit to the jail vending machine, where he got a Snickers that he ate during the interview.

And then the coup de gras. After his acquittal on criminal charges in March, Blake was asked what he would do. He said he'd go "cowboying:"

Cowboying is when you get in a motor home or a van and you just let the air blow in your hair. And you wind up in some little bar in Arizona someplace, and you shoot a game of one-hand nine-ball with some 90-year-old Portuguese woman that beats the hell out of you. And the next day you wind up in a park someplace playing chess with somebody, and you go see a high school play where they're doing "West Side Story." And you just roam around and get some revitalization, that there are human beings in the world, that there are people living their lives that have no agenda.

So what's next? Unclear. But if you're a one-armed Portuguese woman, please watch out.

Who keeps down the electric car/Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?

NaturalBlog had been waiting patiently for years for the answer to the question "What ever happened to Steve Guttenberg?" The waiting finally ended last night, courtesy of the NBC made-for-TV remake of the "Poseidon Adventure."

But maybe the waiting was the best part, because this is a case where imagination far outpaced reality. Gone are my romantic visions of Guttenberg enrolling in the Detroit Police Department, determined to bring his portrayal of Cadet then Ofc. then Sgt. Carey Mahoney in the Policy Academy movies to real life. Or my determined desire that he'd opened a day care center.

Alas, he's still an actor, or some approximation thereof. Is it ironic or merely coincidence that Poseiden -- the story of a sinking ship -- may be the most appropriate metaphor for Guttenberg's career.

Where to from here, another Police Academy? Nah, no one would be that dumb.

Waxing poetic on Rivalry Saturday

NaturalBlog's alma mater has no football team, so you'll have to forgive me for living vicariously through your college on Rivalry Saturday.

It had everything. Resurgence for Joe Paterno and Penn State, who lock up their first Big 10 championship in 11 years and get into a BCS bowl. A last-minute come from behind win for The Ohio State University over Michigan. A tie after regulation, one overtime, two overtimes in the The Game, until Harvard could finally push past Yale, after trailing 21-3 in the third quarter. And what list would be complete without taking joy in the pain of others: No meaningful Big 12 games (thanks to Texas's week off), and a big fat choke by my least favorite of all: Miami.

And all of it narrated by the sweet tones of our Saturday preachers Brent Musburger and Keith Jackson. So wonderful it was almost enough to make you forget that the stubborn call of the dollar means there's still a chance we'll go one more year without a legitimate national champion.

Calling a do-over

Ever been at a loss for a comeback, only to have the perfect one dawn on you an hour too late? I can't count how many times I find myself shouting a retort 90 minutes after the fact, but instead of directing it at some sneering jerk, I'm saying it to a mirror, dashboard, cat, etc.

I therefore present the do-over. All those within the sound of my voice, heed this call. From this day forward, post your late comeback here and all is forgiven. Reading the late comeback on the NaturalBlog shall now be the conversational equivalent of delivering it right on time, because, duh, a blog is timeless.

I'll get us started. A few weeks ago in Healdsburg, Calif., my girlfriend -- pursuant to her hobby of picking fights with strangers after drinking -- shot a dirty look at some woman in a minivan who was mindlessly backing out of a parking spot and into our path in a grocery store lot.

The woman was easily 300 lbs, had hair like straw, and sat atop her driver seat like Jabba the Hut, minus the hookah. She circled back around the lot and shouted at me as I wheeled the shopping cart back toward the store.

What she said: "Tell your girl that she better watch it!"

What I said: "Yeah, okay." What?!!!?!? I know eight-year-olds who can do better.

What I should have said: "Aren't you people supposed to be jolly?"

Separated at Birth

NaturalBlog isn't afraid to tackle the tough questions -- Has God run out of faces?

"Actor" Horatio Sanz (left) and CNN's Ed Lavandera. It's good for Lavandera the similarities only go so far, otherwise he'd laugh during every single standup. Note actor is in quotes there.





Steelers coach Bill Cowher (sneering) and New York AG Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer should hope he has a better record on election days than Cowher does in big games (1-4 in AFC Championship games).





Dennis Berkey on the left was the provost when I was in college. On the right of course is Superintendent Chalmers. I like the fact that they're both in the education field.





Can you believe how much the chick on the right looks like a pre-baby, pre-white trash Britney Spears? Ha ha I gotcha -- it's her sister Jamie Lynn. She's 14, in case you were a guy and were wondering.

Fitness celebrity John Basedow

If you don't know who fitness celebrity John Basedow is, then you're not watching enough daytime programming on the ESPN family of networks.

This 80s-inspired musclehead wants to turn you into an 80s-inspired musclehead, with his Fitness Made Simple tapes at $40 a pop.

Why on earth would you buy anything from this man? Just look at him -- his head is clearly photoshopped on somebody else's body. And his hair is clearly photoshopped on his head from Farrah Fawcett's circa 1977.

Fitness celebrity John Basedow, I don't fear your army of compensated endorsers. I don't fear your airburshed pythons. I don't fear your apparent ability to fight back an entire tsunami.

You're on notice, fitness celebrity John Basedow. What does that mean? The NaturalBlog challenges you to a fight. You pick the time and place, and whether you want weapons. I'll be there.

Extremism in the defense of Papi is no vice

It would be easy to slip into histrionics at Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz's second place finish in American League MVP balloting announced yesterday. Ortiz is arguably the most clutch baseball player in recent baseball memory, and was honored as such by the Red Sox this year. He is simultaneous fearsome and lovable, speaking softly but carrying a big stick, perhaps the most important player on the Sox.

It would be easy to play a game of semantics, saying that at $5.25 million dollars last season, Papi was a relative bargain compared to Alex Rodriguez, this year's winner and the most richly paid athlete in the history of sports, now in the middle of a 10-year, $252-milllion dollar contract.

It would be easy to cite A-Rod's perceived failure to perform in the clutch -- his postseason woes are well documented -- but that would ignore that the MVP is chosen before the season ends and only announced in the baseball doldrums of fall.

What is not easy to admit is that the baseball writers got it right. Heresy I know, but only those failing to vote in good conscience could select a designated hitter as the most valuable player in the league. Yes Papi influenced the outcome of countless games this year, often in the late innings, but exclusively with his bat. A-Rod, won his share with the lumber too (a homer off Curt Schilling in Schill's debut as a closer comes to mind), but also played above average defense on the most expensive infield ever. Not to mention his higher batting average, greater number of homers, and decided edge in steals.

Being a great hitter can get you a salary greater than the GDP of some small nations. But being a great hitter who can also win games with his glove and feet sets you in a separate class. Let's just hope for Yankees fans that history does not repeat itself. The last time A-Rod won the MVP award, he was traded in the offseason.

I'll take BU plus the points

Is there a greater ignominy in the history of collegiate athletics than the Boston University fighting Terriers basketball squad being picked to finish second to the University of Albany in the America East preseason coaches poll? Has the whole world gone mad?

I'll spare you the joke about it being a dogfight in the conference this year and instead lambast the curs in the America East who could possibly imagine BU finishing second to a team whose mascot is the Great Dane. ("Kettle, this is pot. You're black.")

Of course, BU did finish third last year behind Vermont and Northeastern, but that was before UVM lost its one-man wrecking machine Taylor Coppenrath, and before Northeastern bolted for the Colonial Athletic Conference. NU guard Jose Juan Barea, last seen stomping an opponent's head during a game at the Agganis Arena, we hardly knew ye.

Fearless of bold predictions, I say BU and its two returning starters will finish first the conference, but wash out of their tournament in the first round, just like each of the last three years. Hello, NIT, and another blowout by the University of Rhode Island.

But tonight hope springs eternal. BU (0-0, 0-0 America East) looks to shock the world against the No. 1-ranked Duke Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Why open the season with a game you're sure to lose by a couple dozen? Unclear. Hopefully, Joey Beard will be sober enough somewhere to enjoy it. Witness the carnage at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN-2.

A note on cheerleaders

In case you live in a cave, or don't read johnnyjets.blogspot.com, or both, I need to call your attention to the curious case of the Carolina Panthers cheerleaders arrested in Tampa earlier this week.

Renee Thomas, 20, and Angela Keathley, 26, face various charges in Tampa, Fla., after they allegedly fought with fellow patrons at a bar after the Panthers beat the Bucs Sunday. The fight broke out after patrons who weren't the Panthers cheerleaders thought the Panthers cheerleaders were taking too long in a bathroom stall. It's thought they were taking too long in a bathroom stall because they were having sex with one another.

First, what happened to the good old days of just doing coke in a bathroom stall? Second, I should say Thomas and Keathley were fired from the Panthers, and maintain their innocence. But not their virtue.

There's something deeply fascinating about a bad cheerleader story. Witness the Boston Herald's treatment of Danvers, Mass., cheerleaders who allegedly showed up to a high school football game drunk. ("Sis Boom Booze," 12/3/04) Of course, their cause wasn't helped when a cheerleader sex tape was later rumored to exist. ("Danvers all steamed over racy girls video," 12/18/04).

Does a cheerleader getting in trouble somehow ameliorate bad feelings lingering from high school? Are we taking out latent anger over being made to feel less popular when we were children as adults? Isn't schadenfreude ultimately self-defeating? Does asking all these questions make me like Carrie Bradshaw?

Unknown. In the meantime, enjoy these cheerleader mugshots.

An Open Letter to Red Sox Principal Owner John W. Henry

Dear Mr. Henry,

It's been a rough couple of weeks, I know. First your mea culpa in front of a horde of media jackals for letting Theo go -- how did it go, "Maybe I'm not cut out to be the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox." Then news your investment business is apparently more of an albatross than the final three years of the team's deal with Manny, who, by the way, wants a trade. Again.

That's why I write. I have a solution to your woes, or at least your baseball ones. I am offering to become the next general manager of the Boston Red Sox for the low, low, one-time bargain basement price of $100,000. I am willing to take a one-year deal with a mutual option for a second year, valued at $150,000. Yes that's a major percentage increase, but it's still about $5,000 less than you paid Schilling per inning last year. (It's true. I looked it up.)

I'm sure you've been inundated with similar offers, so I want to tell you about the one-of-a-kind set of skills I bring to the job.

• Shared goals. In five seasons of fantasy baseball managing, I've finished second more than half the time. I noticed the Sox finish second to the Yankees every season, so I deduce that I share the organization's core values.
• Experience in blockbuster deals. I traded Carlos Beltran straight up for A-Rod in my fantasy baseball league this year. That worked out.
• Productivity. Speaking of fantasy baseball, if I run an actual major league team, I probably won't play fantasy baseball next year, meaning an extra 10-15 hours of productivity each week.
• Media savvy. I have worked as both a journalist and a spokesman, so I know how to handle the media. Plus I live in Brighton, so I'm sure I'd get a free pass from the Boston press because I'm a local guy.
• Baseball know-how. I once had an RBI in little league at the Y. Just one RBI in the whole season, to be totally honest with you. It came on a bases loaded hit by pitch. I don't think I got a hit that year, but I did walk alot and I stole second a bunch of times.

So to recap: $100,000. I manage the team, deal with Lucchino's BS, agree not to play fantasy baseball, guarantee at least a second place finish.

The salary is non-negotiable by the way. And I want to bring back the bullpen car. And say bienvenidos otra vez to your new closer (pictured, left).

A cigar is just a cigar

Any conversation about my many neuroses begins and ends with my dreams. Everybody dreams every night, but I'm unusual in that I remember many of them, and that the dreams I remember are usually a cascade of crazy, seemingly random images and situatations.

Case in point last night: I frantically scaled a mountain with two friends (hazy placeholder friends -- I can't remember who they were) to flee ogres (quasi-orgres, really), fought fruitlessly with the man-beasts at the top of the hill, but then made peace. We decided to head back down the mountain, I decided to slide down on the jacket I was wearing, since it wasn't mine -- it belonged to one of the ogres.

Thing is, this one was strange enough to even bear being noteworthy. As proof, I offer a sampling from my Dream Hall of Fame:

Taking flight. A series of dreams in which I run, but take longer and longer steps until eventually I'm soaring through the air with each stride.

Lucidity. In lucid dreaming, you realize you're dreaming and exert control. My most vivid lucid dream was about a year ago -- After accompying a girl (a cousin, maybe) into a house with an octagonal porch, I sense I'm in mortal danger and see the girl on the ceiling, Linda Blair like. But because I realized it didn't make sense, I created a knife and armed myself with it.

Abandoned. I had two variations on the same recurring dream theme when I was much younger. I was with my dad, in one version in his '78 Buick Regal and in the other in a rowboat in a subterranean lake, then he suddenly disappears.

"Running with the Deer." After making friends with some wild animals, I romp through a field with them. Later I reflect, "This will look great on my resume." This dream has inspired considerable ribbing from friends.

Pope John Paul II. The recently deceased pope came by the office. When pressed on his physical condition, he gave us the slip by sneaking into the women's bathroom.

The diagnosis, Dr Freud? Atavism? The dream as wish fulfillment? I say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

When Blogging Jumped the Shark

Though the jury is still out on whether blogging was ever cool (witness for the prosecution), historians will likely cite November 8, 2005 as the day blogs jumped the shark -- the day I acquiesced to what is probably the most powerful cultural zeitgeist since disco, certainly since the Macarena.

Think of this as a nascent attempt to chronicle the all the times I think I'm being funny, the way the sediment along a riverbank traces the history of that river, the oldest deposits at the bottom, the newest at the top. Perhaps it's not a bad analogy considering blogs appear on your computer deep but not broad.

That's me, the Grand Canyon of funny.