Happy Halloween!

Long time no blog. I've been away from blogging for a couple reasons. Work's been kind of busy, life's been kind of boring. There were some things I was thinking of writing about this weekend, but I've forgotten them now. I haven't even been reading blogs that much, which is weird.

I'm also kind of glum lately, which stinks. My wife and I have to deal with a family issue that arose this weekend, which is unfortunate to say the least. That's got me down. Man, Halloween isn't even cheering me up that much. It's normally one of my favorite times of the year, but I guess there's not much to look forward to tonight. Our older son will trick or treat, but he'll mostly do that in another neighborhood with his biological father. Our neighborhood totally sucks for trick or treating, so that will be over in about 10 minutes. Our baby is too young to participate, so it will mostly just be a regular night tonight.

Well, that was a total downer of a post. Sorry about that. I hope everyone has a good holiday, and hopefully I'll have more (in quantity and quality) to write about soon. See you then.

My Son the Jackass

Bear with me, I'm not maligning my son like you think. Just hear the story first:

My 6 year old son loves America's Funniest Home Videos. We DVR it every Sunday and try to watch some of it with him before he goes to bed. We didn't watch it until Monday evening this week, though, when my mother-in-law was visiting. (The extra audience is key to the events about to unfold, I'm sure.) AFV (who has forsaken the letter 'H' in its initials for some reason) has a recurring feature called "Head, Gut, or Groin" where an audience member is shown the beginning of a video clip. The clip is stopped and the audience member must guess whether the person on the video is going to get it in the head, gut, or crotch. Much hilarity ensues.

After the show, my son, having three people in the room to witness his performance, decided to act out the game. He started asking us "Head, gut, or groin?" After our answer, he proceeded to hit himself in the named location and double over on the floor. But then it was time for bed, so we told him to get ready. As he left the living room, though, he wanted to play one more round of "H,G, or G". Someone in the room (I can't remember who) said head. So my very smart son launched his head, at high-speed (although I remember it almost in slow motion), at the cushioned arm of our living room chair. Unfortunately, the cushioning on the chair is deceptive. His head knocked loudly into the wooden frame of the chair as we all gasped.

Luckily he was more shocked than hurt. He held his head and laughed about it while we suppressed our own laughter and lectured him on the importance of not imitating what he sees on TV. Suffice it to say, we will be vigilantly protecting him from all Jackass-related programming for quite some time.

And to all you Kristen Bell haters, I just finished reading all the episode recaps from Seasons 1 and 2 and don't see what's so annoying about her. I really want to watch the eps now. Hopefully I can rent them somewhere.*

*Not a hint to my wife to buy me the show on DVD. You need to be careful with her. She's very good at buying things I mention in passing. And while that's a great quality of hers, Veronica Mars is more of a watch once show for me than a "keep for the ages" show.

Are you shitting me?!?!

Jim is moving on?!?! He's flirting with another woman?!?! Sure, she's cute, but what about Pam? I'm sure they're setting up some awkward situation where Pam drives to Stamford to declare her love for Jim, and finds him in the arms of his new coworker. Need a season 3 cliff hanger, I guess.

I'm talking about "The Office", of course, but I'll stop the TV talk at that. My cold has moved from sore throat and sinus pressure to an annoying, phlegmy cough that (along with other things) keeps my wife up at night. Thank God it's the weekend, although today's date is rather ominous. Maybe I should avoid any bad luck my ham and turkey sandwich may present and get one of those new Domino's Hot Pockets for lunch*. Don't want to tempt Mama Cass' fate!

What else is on my mind? Watched a flag football game last night, and I'm starting to think I want my sons to play football. Originally my dream was to have them play hockey, but let's face it, hockey's a third class sport (but still my favorite). Football is king, and I've become a huge fan of it over the past few years. Soccer is great, and it's cheap and easy for the kids to play, but football is where all the glory is. Maybe I'll have them play soccer in the spring and hockey in the winter to build their athleticism and coordination, but football in the fall to get them college scholarships. My wife will never go for it, though.

Be careful today, and have a great weekend!

* It's called "Pizza on the Go", and it's like a big calzone. I couldn't find it on Domino's site, so it must be some regional product test they're doing here.

Crap!

I'm getting sick, or already am sick. I traveled over the weekend, and almost as soon as I got back home my throat felt sore. The soreness is going away, but I can feel a cough coming on, and I've got sinus pressure. I'm also starting to get that achy/tired feeling in my back. This sucks. The mornings are the worst, and this morning I was coughing up you know what. I don't want to gross my wife out too much, but sometimes it was dark brown. I can only attribute that to the brownies we ate last night. I hope it was the brownies.

So I've been thinking of joining an indoor soccer league, to get some exercise (since I stopped running in the mornings), to sate my restless competitive spirit, and hopefully make some friends. I guess there's no where for me to go with that.

TV - "Lost" last week ruled, especially the beginning; "Heroes" is getting freaky; I gave up on "Gilmore Girls", but will stick with "Veronica Mars" (who busted out the killer line "Boom goes the dynamite" last week); "Studio 60" is getting a bit too much for me, but "30 Rock" starts this week; and I'm looking forward to NBC's new gimmick game show "1 vs. 100", beginning this Friday.

Foley Blew, Hastert Knew!

The title is a take on a refrain from the movie Turk 182. Pretty good movie. I'm referring, of course, to the recent Republican scandal in Congress. It seems that Mark Foley, a Congressman from Florida, has been sending explicit emails and Instant Messages to young male pages for a while now. (Of course, there's no suggestion that Foley gave any Congressional hummers, but I needed the rhyme.) Foley was busted recently, but there's evidence that Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, was notified of the situation a while ago and did nothing to fix the problem. I particularly love this quote from the story:

From Representative Rodney Alexander, R-La: "Speaker Hastert is a good man," he said. "And I think he would personally break the neck of anybody he thought was trying to sexually abuse a young man or woman."

If that kind of rage-induced violence isn't the mark of a good man, what is? Wouldn't Jesus do the same?

Now while I'm no fan of most Republicans in Congress (I'm not a big fan of very many Democrats there, either, actually), I'm tickled pink at the "three-for" this scandal has offered:

1. A morally upright Republican, who has taken the lead in protecting youth from exploitation and internet predation, has been exposed as a hugely hypocritical pervert.

2. Hastert, a big Republican gas bag, is feeling the heat from his apparent cronyism designed to either a. help a friend avoid (much deserved) public disgrace and/or b. preserve the Republican majority in Congress and the party's false claim to a monopoly on morals and Christian values.

3. Foley, already forced to resign, has taken "full responsibility" for his actions. Which means identifying himself as an alcoholic the very next day, claiming to have been molested by a clergyman when he was a teen, and saying he was drunk at the time he wrote the perverse missives. But he's not making excuses!

Take 'em down! All false political idols.

I'm going to be away for the rest of the week, so I'm dumping unrelated stuff into this post. Like this funny video I received in a spam email - Martin Scorcese's Sesame Streets.

Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. We had celebrated beforehand, so last night we just drank wine and watched TV. Saw the new "Heroes", and while I'm still intrigued, it's getting bizarrely violent with an unseen villain's methods of killing his prey. Jury's still out.

"Studio 60", on the other hand, I'm really liking. I don't know if I have the stamina to watch it religiously, what with all the rapid-fire dialogue and oblique references to the past that apparently is very important to the present, but I enjoy the characters and there are some really good lines.

And of course tonight, season premiere of "Lost". Let's hope it's good. The Alternate Reality Game the Lost people did over the summer was fun, but ended with a schmaltzy whimper. Having been so focused on the origins of part of the show's mythology in that game, it may take me a while to care about the "here and now", so to speak, on the island.

That's about all I got. Talk to y'all later.