Driving While Texting

Starting today in Michigan, texting while driving is against the law.



Maybe it's a good thing.

Proof that the ocean is huge

Is that pipe still leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico?
What is it now, day 100?

Americans Hate Soccer

First, the Pro's and Con's

Pro's

• It makes more sense calling something Football since they use their foot. Versus our football which should be called something else, like Run-Pass-and-Tackle-Ball

• It is apparently the "hardest" sport to play, given the constant running around

• For poor kids in Africa it's a good sport cause all you need is a ball, or many plastic bags and the ability to tie quasi-hexagonal knots

Con's

• Their offsides is dumb. Similar to offsides in hockey except replace the blue line with the defender closest to their end of the field. The problem with it is that it is always changing with the movement of the player, making it difficult for the referees. Also the whiny soccer defenders try to intentionally make players offsides by suddenly running forward. Rather then play defense, they reason that tricking an offensive player into being offsides is easier. Then they raise their hand to the ref's. Which leads me to my next con.

• It reminds me a lot of the NBA when a player thinks he got fouled. There the player yells then flops to the court. In soccer the player looks to the referee and raises his hand. Then if the ref doesn't call the offsides or foul, no less then 4 players run up to him and scream in his face.

• Crying. Whether to the ref's or just in general.

• Utter bewilderment when they miss a shot. They react as if every shot they have ever taken on a goal has gone in and this one time is the first time they have ever missed. Most announcers say so-and-so AGONIZES after missing that goal. Well they sure act like it's agony. They usually put their hands on their head in some way.

• Faking injuries, almost dead, then being completely fine 10 seconds later.

• The WORST thing about all of this is that kids watching this on tv think, well that's how the professionals act so i guess i should do it to. Thus continuing this acting, crying, whining in soccer.

• Dirty players

And this little darling in the red is one of the dirtiest players ever. She's in college and is shown here pulling a girl to the ground using her ponytail.



I do remember several year ago that the USA womens team won something. The world cup maybe?? I'm not sure what it was but it seemed important at the time. Everyone said that it would bring new life and revolution soccer in the USA. It didn't. Or maybe it did, i don't know, i don't pay attention to soccer.
The only people that like soccer in America are little kids under the ages of 12 and people who moved here from another country.

I mean it was kind of fun watching it last week and i was upset that they lost but i'll end up forgetting about it in a week. They tried putting American soccer on right after the match was over, something like Phillidelphia vs. Miami. I had no interest in watching so i turned it off.
Every 4 years we get fired up about the summer and winter olympics. But the US team could lose every game and never score a goal OR win every single game by 7 goals and still no one here would care.

The PIR

As i had said a few weeks ago, my buddy John and i were on the Price is Right in LA.
The reason why we didn't get to sit together is that we showed up at 8:30 and we were just about the last people in the studio, out of 316 people we were 309 and 310. We lucked out and barely made it. So when we walked in to the studio they split us up. John went to the right, got screwed and had to sit in the last row. I went to the left, somehow lucked out and sat right up front behind contestants row.



Here's me telling the contestants what to bid. If they would have listened to me they would have won every time but once. For example in this picture i was telling her to bid $1000. The winning bid...$1000.
Here was the funniest part of the show, when Roy got up there and bid $200 for a wicker chair. It ended up being $1400. It was the worst bid. Drew even joked around during the commercial with his family on how bad it was.
John in the back row surrounded by all the people in red shirts
Some quick things to know about the show:

• they film 2 shows a day but to be sure to get on the show you should probably get there before 7am. then in our case they said they had 50 empty seats for the second show and people could stay in their seats and see that too

• before you get to be in the audience you have to sit/stand for hours in 2 different lines, where you hold colored tickets with numbers on them. for example they might say "ok i need all the people with blue tickets, numbers 1-200 to line up here"

• they have a brief "interview" with people to decide on who to call up (ie. the sailor and the woman who's 60th birthday it is)

• no camera or cell phones allowed. you have to go through a metal detector and leave your phone in a cardboard box.

• the studio is way smaller then it looks on tv

• the stage is also a lot smaller then you think

• the announcer, Rich Fields, talks before the show and is really funny. he tries to tell you what to do and where to go when if you get called up

• Drew talks to the crowd between commercials, while they are setting up the games and he was also really funny.

• there are about 15 people and 3 cameras on the stage during the show, making it difficult to see what's going on from the audience

• it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to hear anything that drew or the announcer is saying. they want you to clap and cheer constantly and their microphones don't amplify out to the crowd so it's real confusing.

• when they say "Joe Smith, come on down..." you can't hear that at all so they have 2 people up on stage that hold up big signs with "Joe Smith" written on it.

• it did seem a lot more difficult when you're there compared to sitting on the couch at home. especially for the first two games it was weird, but by the end you got the hang of it.

• many of the people in the crowd were their for their 2nd or 3rd time. one guy in the crowd was from Hawaii and it was his 16th time on the show. but most of the repeat attendees are from the LA area. they said that the record was this guy who was on 69 times before he finally got called up to contestants row.

Bat Wakeup

Imagine that it's midnight and you are asleep in bed. You wake up because you hear something flying around your bedroom. In your sleepy haze you think it must be a moth or large bug. Then after a second you think wait, is that a bird? You turn on the light and come face to face with a bat. To say i freaked out is an understatement.

After being trapped in my bathroom by the flying mammal, i escaped and went over my options. The first thing i did was grab Charlie (the cat) and threw him in there. He was absolutely zero help, just sitting there watching the bat fly around. He showed some interest when the bat flew into the closet but 2 minutes later he came running out of the room. I was disappointed in him. No tennis racket and no fishing net meant i had to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. I went to the obvious choice, the Pumpmaster 760 BB gun.

As the bat circled the room, looking for a place to land, i was at the door. He landed once above the window, i shot and missed high, not wanting to break a window. I missed him a couple more times, then finally hit him when was perched on the door frame. Thinking he was dead i went to pick him up with a garbage bag. He wasn't dead. He let out an amazingly loud bat screech. Once again, saying i freaked out is an understatement. I ran back, got the gun and finished it.

It turns out he got in through a tiny crack in the attic door.

Here's what he looked like:

As far as i'm concerned, here's what i saw: