17 BLACK...
WINNER!

I left for Las Vegas on a Friday morning with a dream in my heart and a smile on my face.

I awoke with a start, mere seconds before my rarely utilized alarm clock got a chance to finally end his silence. Ha! Sucker.

It was 8:00 o'clock. Apparently they have one of those in the morning now, too. G.W. was right, the damn gay marriage is ruining everything.

After a quick packing job (hour and a half) we left the house, and we only had to come back twice to grab things we forgot. So we set out for the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank at 10:15 for our 11:00 flight and we made it just in time.

By just in time, I of course mean, just in time to give up our seats to some stand-by passengers in exchange for a trip in a "shuttle" to Ontario Airport, which I for one, had never even heard of. It wasn't that bad because we also got a free flight, and some drink tickets. Oh, and $250 dollars, each.

So by the time we actually set foot on Nevada soil, or rather, carpeting, we were already up a deuce and a half. No, I'm sorry. Do me a favor, take that number, and double it.

After we checked into our first hotel, The Tuscany, we quickly walked down the street to meet my good friend, Swidler from Homicide, in his very crowded living room that just happened to be in the same place as the sportsbook at Ceasar's Palace. We grabbed a couple drinks in one of the bars, and they tasted way better than they should have for only 8 bucks a piece. We watched the first half of the Huskies loss to UAB, and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for some dinner.

Our actual reason for being in Las Vegas, as if we needed one, was our friend Carrie Jenkins. She's finishing Graduate School at UNLV with a degree in fine art, and she held her thesis/gallery show that we had the honor to attend.

Once we arrived on the UNLV campus I felt the familiar pangs of regret that I always experience because I never got the chance to owe a school like this multiple thousands of dollars.

The gallery was very nice. Completely empty of furniture, and featuring white walls and hardwood floors, it seemed to look exactly like it should. Oh, and there was an open bar.

Bravo Carrie. Bravo.

During the evening I met a lot of different folks. First and foremost, was my man Jim Beam who is awesome with just a couple ice cubes. The gallery patrons were an interesting lot. The majority of people were Carrie's family and then there were some folks between 40 and 50 and it seemed like they went to art shows with some frequency.

Then there were the art students. You could tell who they were by their crazy hair and tattoos all over their bodies. I immediately warmed to these folks and wished that I had more tatts and/or piercings to impress them with, but alas. One incredibly cool girl named Jessica Starkey took us to her studio, and we listened to some gangsta rap, looked at some of her hilarious artwork, and smoked some great hash that her boyfriend brought.

I was really enjoying myself. And I hadn't even started gambling yet.

When we returned to the gallery it was really crowded, and I decided to step outside for a minute to make some drunken phone calls, it's one of my favorite hobbies.

Once the party was over I went with the freaks to a dive bar called Champagne's, where ironically enough, they don't have champagne on the menu. It was fun just watching the local drunks hit on the local prostitute and then get in fights with each other only to be hugging two minutes later. Someone made the remark that if you just ignored the fact that they were human, it was like watching the Discovery Channel. Only in real life. Oh, and you're drunk.

We went back to the hotel and I proceeded to win 75 dollars playing Craps, which I am notoriously bad at, then we went to bed. I wanted to gamble more, but I knew there would be ample time for that.

NOTE: That night we watched the "movie" Timeline, which is so bad that it rivals Battlefield Earth for worst movie of all time. Watch it only if you're currently making a movie and need a good example of what not to do.

The next morning I woke up and ran down to the casino. In hindsight, I could have walked and kept that $120 for a least two more minutes. Oh well, I lied to myself, it's only money. I laid by the pool for a while and drank the first and last pina colada of my lifetime, and strategized on a system that this guy told me about to win at blackjack. The way it works is this:

Every time you lose, you double your bet. Eventually, you'll win and make all of your money back, plus one bet.

Now that sounds simple, I know. But that's because I left out the part about needing balls of solid rock to pull it off. Let's say you're betting $5 and you lose. And lose. And lose.

If you lose six times in a row, which you will, you will be placing a bet of $160. If you lose again, it's $320. I don't want to sound like a pansy, but I'm not so sure I have what it takes to put that much money in the little betting circle after I'm already down three hundy. In fact, let's be absolutely clear, I'm positive that I don't have what it takes. I'll just stick to betting dollars on Roulette.

That reminds me, it's time to get to the good part.

On Monday, Darla and I decided to take in a little film called "Dawn of the Dead", and being the zombie fan that I am, I enjoyed it. However, my fragile girlfriend informed me after the show that she needed to "scrub that piece of shit off of my brain" and so we walked to the Bellagio Hotel and Casino to look at their fabulous flower garden.

Since I regard flowers in much the same way that Darla regards zombies, it wasn't long before I had chosen a roulette wheel to throw my money at.

I dropped my hundred dollar bill on the soft green felt and asked the kindly dealer named Illysha for "nickels, please.", and she gave me a stack of twenty red discs. I took six of them and placed one straight up on 17, my lucky number, and spread the rest out on the board in such a manner as to guarantee me at least my 30 dollars back, as long as the ball didn't land on 1,2,3, or the 0's. After about two spins, my fears were realized as the dreaded number 3 appeared. There goes my $30 bucks. Waitress!

But the waitress was nowhere to be seen, so I picked up six more chips and placed them strategically, and man, am I glad that I did. Sure enough,

"17 Black. Winner!" Said Illysha as she pushed over a stack of chips towards me that equaled $175.

"Wow," I thought. "maybe I should stop now." But I didn't. Thank God.

I went on to hit 17 three more times at that table and then went to other casinos and hit twice more. And that pretty much paid for the trip.

So, I'm forced to harken back to my last blog post, when I mentioned the four words that keep me and millions like me going back to Sin City.

What If I Win.

When I posted that pre-trip, I was kidding, just poking fun at the incredible gullibility of the general populace.

And now that I've won? Have my feelings changed on the matter?

Of course not. But my new basketball shoes sure are comfy.

WORST BLOG EVER

Good Morning. It's almost time for the men's NCAA basketball tournament and I've got ants in my pants. Ah! Ants in my pants! Be right back.

That's better.

As excited as I am for the tourney, I'd like to discuss another type of madness.

What the fuck is wrong with these Al Queda guys anyway? Do they want Bush in office for another four years? It seems to me that if they are responsible for the senseless acts in Spain, (and it's looking more likely that they are) then that only bolsters support for G.W. and his war on terror.

On the other hand, what if the American People break with tradition and are smart about this? Will they see that the real reason these attacks can continue is because Bush is wasting our time in Iraq when he should still be hunting these thugs down for what they did 2 1/2 years ago, let alone last week.

Let me take it a step farther in saying that if Al Q. had the time and resources to plan this attack, they don't seem to be nearly as decimated internally as our administration purported them to be. Could it be that again, as in the State of The Union, the white house is purposely beefing up it's "factual claims" to support it's own agenda?

The worst part about all of this, is that apparently these guys have figured out that they don't necessarily have to kill themselves in order to carry out devastating acts of atrocity. That sucks, because at least before we were getting some of them, and now that all we have left to rely on is Bush's idea of intelligence, I'm starting to get a little nervous.

And seriously, how many different ways can you spell Al-Qida? I've seen many variations, none of which look exactly right. They need to get their P.R. guy on the scene, pronto!

And now, for an entirely different type of Madness.

I'm going to Las Vegas on friday.

I'm more than a little excited to be surrounded by millions of blinking lights and security cameras and given free cocktails for as long as I can drink them. Some would argue that the drinks aren't free. They'd say I'm actually paying a lot more for them than I normally would with all of the money I lose. To those people I respond with the four words that has kept Las Vegas in business for all the years;

What if I win?

I might, you know.

Today is St. Patrick's day. In Ireland they use this holiday to pay tribute to some guy, I forget his name, who got all of the snakes in the country so drunk that they all died of alcohol poisoning. That's a lot of Zima.

Ridding an entire country of snakes is an impressive feat, even if that country is the size of Bellevue Square*. Now, if someone was to rid this country of all of it's snakes, I would strongly consider voting for him over Kerry. Who am I kidding? I'd vote for Mark Siano if I thought he could beat Bush.
But, alas, he can't. Mark has virtually no left hand, and if Bush gets hot from the outside, it's over.

Zing! I got him again folks!

Wish me luck in Vegas. Go Huskies!

Meaning UCONN. I mean, who are we trying to kid?



*For those of you reading The Pinyon in California, just substitute the Sherman Oaks Galleria for Bellevue Square. Thank you and Good Night!

OOPS.

A Note From The Staff: Previously when we stated that we'd be posting on Monday, we neglected to take into account the fact that we had not cleaned our apartment since a week before the show, and also we had just purchased a new video game for our xbox entitled "Ninja Gaiden" which we will give a resounding thumbs up. Hence, no blog. We'd like to sincerely apologize to all of our readers, both real and imagined. It will most definitely happen again.


Hey everybody!
Well, we finished the Habit show on Sunday and my girlfriend and I headed to my friend Will's house along with six other couples who came to see the show, to get down to some serious drinking. During the course of that evening's conversations, something became very apparent to me, I can't say that I'm surprised, but I was more than a little jealous to find out that apparently Steven Unckles is fucking hilarious.

And that sucks, because I couldn't even get hilarious' phone number. I was like,
"How you doin', Hilarious? I got a pool." and NOTHING.

Seriously though, everyone there had just seen the show and every time I went fishing for a compliment on my performance, I came up with kudos for Steve. It got so bad that I started disagreeing with them so that they'd shut up already. But even that backfired.

I'd say something like, "Yeah, he's kinda funny I guess, but you should see his room."

And they'd all reply in unison, "Can we see his room? That would be great! Is he coming tonight?"

Me: "No, he went to go pick up some hookers and blow."

Them: "Is that what he said? That's sooo funny!"

Enough people, I get the frigging point.

So, it looks like I'm going to have to come to grips with the fact that I am now the 5th funniest member of The Habit. (Take that Mark, who doesn't even read these blogs)

I'm OK with that, as long as I'm still the cute one, like my Mommy says.

The show itself was fun to do, but I only wish we'd had an opportunity to really get to know it before it was gone. It's like an awesome dog that you get when you're a kid and then he gets hit by a car two days later. Ahh, what might have been...

Anyway, from a legal standpoint, I'm forced to now acknowledge the fact that in my previous blog post I used the headline "Riding the Over-Reactor Tractor", and I would be lying if I didn't admit that I did not make that up. It was stolen, and for that I'm sorry. The person who coined that phrase deserves to be given all the credit.

It's been hot as hell lately and I thank my lucky stars everyday when I get up that I don't still live in The Great Pacific Northwest. To anyone who does, forgive me, I'd like to keep writing, but I'm going to go lay by the pool.

********************************************************************
Also, a happy 22nd birthday today to my littlest sister Claire, who is without a doubt the coolest person below the Mason-Dixon Line, and way too cool to read online journals.

RIDING THE OVER-REACTOR TRACTOR


So, I've spent some time over at John Titor dot com and I have to confess my deep and relentless curiosity.

Is it because I'm intrigued by the mere premise of time travel, as we all are, or is it that the answers Mr. Titor gives to the questions posed contain more than just a hint of something that feels genuine?

Basically, what I'm asking is,

Is this guy for real?

Now, I'm not a sap. Nor am I easily convinced of anything ever since I was 17 and figured out that God was just like Santa. Both are old white men, both have big full beards, and both are ficticious entities designed to scare simple minds into behaving correctly. So why am I inclined to listen to this Titor guy and not the guy with the question-mark jacket screaming on the TV about all the free government money?

I don't know. But I am. Perhaps it's the science fiction geek in me, but I want there to be time travelers. And also, I want there to be a Government vs. The People civil war. We'd totally win, even though they have all the tanks and stuff that kills people.

I'm sincerely interested in what my readers think about this subject, and also I'd like to know if they have any thoughts about:

A. Water on Mars. (yay.)

B. The fact that Bill Murray was robbed.

C. The lack of any consistent blog posting these days.

Speaking of that, I'll be working on the new Habit show until Sunday night, so don't expect any more Pinyons until Monday. I don't know what time Monday, but definitely before Davf posts his.

In the meantime, it's back to reading about the five different Presidents of The United States. I mean, back to learning my lines.

Be strong Nillas, for the end is near. Maybe.

THE NAIL, THE SETTER, AND THE STAIRCASE: CONCLUSION


Previously on The RyduffalO Pinyon:

"You know, I bet we could fix this old treehouse up better than new."

"Ahhhhhhhhh! Help me Julie, there's a nail in my foot!"

"Let's play a new game, I know, we'll run around the neighborhood looking for dogs to jump over!"

"Ahhhhhhhhh! Help me Julie, there a giant piece of glass in my hand!"

....

In the interest of being historically accurate, let me point out that the shard of glass in question was, in fact, giant. Some of you might assume that an ordinary sized piece of glass stuck into the left hand of an 11 year old boy might seem large to him, but actually be relatively small.

You'd be wrong. It was fucking huge, and damn you for assuming.

However, just to be clear, it was about 5 inches long and 3 inches across at it's widest point. The widest point didn't really concern me however, it was the pointiest point that was currently on my mind.

And in my hand.

As far as it would go.

And also on my mind, apart from the blood and pain of this traumatic injury, was the fact that no matter how much my hand hurt, there was still a dog to be dealt with.

The Setter.

It was snarling at me as if to say,

"Ha ha you fool, you fell right into my trap! I saw you degrading the other dogs around here and I put that glass there for you to fall on. Now you're mine!"

So I did what any real man would do in that situation, I screamed for my little sisters to help me.

They came running, but it was too late.
The Setter grew tired of taunting me, and attacked.

And what happened next is something that I won't ever forget or forgive myself for.

In a desperate attempt at self defense I kicked out with all of my might to keep the dog from biting me, and it worked.

My foot landed squarely in the throat of this hellacious beast named Lucy, and she fell back with a strange muffled yelp, coughed a few times, and died.

I killed her. I went into her yard, and I killed the Irish Setter that belonged to my neighbors down the street. And I was bleeding pretty badly now.

Not knowing that Death had just come for Lucy in the shape of my Converse, and thinking she was just stunned or something, I turned my attention back to my hand and the protruding foreign object I had unwittingly collected.

I pulled the glass out, and that was apparently the cue for the real bloodflow to start.

Within seconds, my hand wore a bright red glove that dripped and I began to seriously consider panicking. My sisters arrived at that moment and immediately got into a fight concerning what they should do to help me. It wasn't their fault though, they were kids and this was adult business.

But there were no adults around. It was the middle of the day and the only things populating our neighborhood were kids and dogs, and the dogs weren't in much of a mood to help us out right now. You understand.

So we went from house to house knocking on doors in the vain hope that maybe someone would answer one of them and fix my hand. This plan hadn't been thought through too well, and I was beginning to feel a bit faint. I'm unsure if it was loss of blood that made me feel this way, or the terror that comes with watching your hand spew red liquid everywhere you walk, leaving a blood trail going from house to house that would remain on the sidewalk until the next rains came.

Yes, I used the sidewalk. I was a dumb ass.

Finally, we knocked on the right door.
It opened and a kindly lady stood there, she looked down at my sisters and I and instantly sprang into action. She rushed me to the sink and went to work on my hand. She seemed to know exactly what to do, I mentioned this to her and she told me why.

She was a nurse.

That was the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me, and it kept my faith in God rock-solid for the next five years.

A few days passed, and my neighbors buried their dog Lucy who had died mysteriously in their front yard while they were at work. My sisters, to their credit, never told anyone about the murder and for that I thank them. Nice work, ladies.

After the whole excitement of my near-death experience faded, later that day, we went to work on a new idea. One that was fun, but didn't involve nails, or glass, or dogs.

We sat in the living room and brainstormed for a while with no little to no results, when my eyes came to rest on the staircase.

I thought to myself, that's a pretty steep staircase, I bet you could get up some speed going down that sucker, if there were only something to ride.
And then it occurred to me that if we took the mattress off of Claire's bed, it might prove to be just the vehicle we needed.

So we went and got the mattress.

Now it was time to try it out, and also the time for my big brother authority to kick in. We needed a guinea pig, and since I was the brains of the operation, I was ineligible. So I chose Julie, because she was the middle child and no one really loves them anyway.

She climbed aboard the vessel and peered down the steep flight of stairs to the bottom where we had collected all the pillows and couch cushions in the house and formed a rudimentary landing pad. I noticed her getting scared, and just to take her mind off of things for a moment, I said

"Don't worry Julie, you don't have to go if you don't want to."

And then I pushed her.

She and the mattress left the launching pad at the same time, but regrettably, she arrived at the landing zone much earlier than her chariot, after bouncing down the last half of the stairs. I made sure to laugh very loudly, so that Julie would think that all of this was funny, and not painful. It worked.

We discovered that you had to hold on to the front of the mattress while going down to avoid any unfortunate mishaps, and once that policy went into effect, it was smooth sailing.

We had finally found the perfect form of entertainment, with just the right amount of danger to keep us interested until cartoons came on. We spent the rest of that summer riding our staircase to glory, and as for me,

I haven't been impaled by anything since.



THE END

STORY TIME

When I was younger, so much younger than today, I lived in a big, shiny, beautiful metropolis known to it's many inhabitants as simply Atlanta.
Has a more perfect name for a city ever been concocted?
And no, Tomorrowland doesn't count, as it is a not a real city, but a false moniker invented by a warped, demented mind, just like SeaTac.

It was between the time of my 10th and 11th birthdays and my family lived in a very spacious two story duplex. Connecting the two different floors was a very steep and extremely wide staircase, which will undoubtedly play a significant role in the upcoming tale, because it has been bolded.

A quick background into my familial unit. At the time, I had two little sisters, a Mom, and a Dad.
My sister's names were Julie, who has since dropped the "e" in favor of the more extreme "Juli", and Claire, who has more tattoos than all of The Habit combined (3), and is currently seeing a young man named Pal. Wait, let me just check the spelling on that...yep, Pal.

My father's name is Lawrence, and my mother's name was Joanne. Interestingly enough, she also has since dropped her "e" , but she decided to replace it with an "a", I guess to sound more professional, or maybe she was just trying to show up Juli. You know how women can get.

This story takes place in the summer of what must have been '87 or '88, I could figure out which one it was, but who has that kind of time? We'll just pick one at random and say '87.

So it was the summer of '88 (changed my mind) and my sisters and I were mired in the listless middle days of the golden season, when you had been out of school for just long enough to not be excited about being out of school. Both my parents worked during the day and all I had to look forward to was afternoon cartoons. So that left my sisters and I the whole day until three o'clock to fill with some sort of diversionary activity designed to alleviate the crushing boredom, and I'll be damned if we didn't come up with some doozies.

Doozy: informal something outstanding or unique of it's kind. (The Oxford American College Dictionary)

One day we went into the woods and found an old tree house that we decided, in our infinite wisdom, to fix up. We made plans, designed a rudimentary set of blueprints for reference, and made our way to a construction site down the road, to liberate some wood from the carpenter's oppressive regime. We were successful in our campaign, and we took our haul back into the woods to begin work on

The Reconstruction Project.

Only we never did it.
We never even started.
That wood's probably still laying there.
In the exact same place that it was when Julie was chasing fireflies in the darkening afternoon, and Claire was busy dabbling her feet in the creek, and probably in the same place it was in when I was stepping from board to board on the ground to avoid The Lava.
I was rather enjoying my little game, (as I always do when I'm winning) and then I noticed that one particular board was having trouble being persuaded to come off the bottom of my shoe. It was a very peculiar feeling, and naturally I looked down to see if I could find the problem.

I found the problem.
It was about six inches long.
It was made of metal.
And it was protruding from the top of my right foot.

The pain didn't really kick in until I saw the blood start to bubble up like the stigmata from around the thick black nail that was sticking out of the board, and that's when I began to feel a certain degree of panic start to settle in. I put my other foot on the board and started to pull up with my right leg in an attempt to extricate myself from this unholy union of flesh and steel.

That's when I discovered that the nail was going to hurt a lot more on the way out than it did on the way in.

And so ended The Reconstruction Project.

But never fear, The Nail Incident did not slow us down for long, and it was only about a week later that we invented a game that I knew would be the next big sports craze to sweep the nation, bigger even, than our beloved four-square.
The name of this game was Dog-Jumping.
It involved three players, (naturally) and a dog, (more naturally) and the act of jumping (duh).

It was all going swimmingly, and I was up by like seventy-five points, depending on whom you talk to, when I went for the big one.
The Irish Setter.

There were many dogs in our neighborhood, but none as feared and mean spirited as The Setter.
I think it's actual name was Lucy, but for the purpose of this narrative, we will use The Setter, because in our opinion The Setter sounds scarier.

It was lying in it's yard, facing away from me, when I began my approach. I ran swiftly, and stayed low to the ground, As I grew nearer, I knew that it was going to take all the strength my legs possessed to clear this bohemoth. I gathered myself, and lept!

And I cleared it.

But as it turned out, I jumped too far.
I landed awkwardly and stumbled forward and fell to the ground using my hands to slow my fall.

And that's when it happened. The second time in ten days that I was impaled by something.

Only this time, the material in question was not steel, it was glass.

And in the meantime, there was a very large, very red, very angry dog, who had just been punked in it's own front yard, baring it's teeth and barking, five feet away from me.




TO BE CONTINUED
(We haven't even gotten to the staircase yet)

CAN I GET A WITNESS FROM THE CONGREGATION?


Aww yes, welcome back, my brothers and sisters.
Welcome back to the home of the truth.
To the place where everyone is welcome and no soul is ever turned away.
To the center of all that is right, all that is real, all that is fundamentally correct.

My brothers, my sisters, the time has come.

A time I knew would come, but prayed would not.
It is time that we discuss something.
And before I say this, know that I am not one of those kind of people.
But still, as strange as this may sound coming from me, I am forced to admit this unfortunate fact to the entire world;

That fucking Oven Mitt from Arby's is one funny motherfucker.

Can I get an "Amen"?

Anyone?

No?

Fine, church is over, go eat.

In related news, my boy Spirit is fixing to rip that bitch-ass Opportunity a new data port.
I don't know if you've heard, but that nilla is back in action, and he's not going to take it anymore! All of you suckas that jumped on the O-P-P's bandwagon better recognize!
We got Spirit, yes we do!
We got Spirit, how bout you?

What's wrong bitches? Is it possibly the fact you can't respond with a clever chant because nothing rhymes with opportunity? Boy, did you pick the wrong horse. You bet your money on a bob-tail nag, and this somebody bet on The Bay.

In still other news, the votes are in, and the M.V.P. for the month of January is one Lucas Samuel Thayer.
He came.
He saw.
He learned choreography.

And as if that wasn't enough, even though he just arrived in sunny SoCal, he has decided to forgo the requisite year of inactivity to "adjust to life in L.A.".
He looked this diabolical city straight in the eye and pretty much just said,

"No, I'll just kick ass now, thanks."

Nice work, Luke. Keep it up.

In other news, I would like to announce that we are mired in a movie slump right now, and it's kinda getting me down. I can remember vividly the excitement I felt waiting for Return Of The King and before that (gulp) Matrix Revolutions and I don't feel any of that now. What do we have to look forward to?
The Jesus movie with the Lethal Weapon guy? No thanks.
The Meg Ryan/Omar Epps boxing epic? Please.
Win a date with Crap McCraperson? Pass.

At this point, I'm supremely uninterested in anything showing at our huge, overpriced, commercial-showing movie houses.

Tell you what, just wake me up when "Radio" hits DVD.

Better yet, don't.

Tonight my comedy group has the meeting to decide which sketches go to The Show, and which sketches are stuck in Everett playing for the Aquasox.

By the way, that is how they spell it. But I don't know why.

Try as I might, I can't support the practice of replacing the conventional and fully functional "cks" with the more extreme and faintly 90's smelling "x". It's something fifth grade boys do when they're being lazy, as in;

"Dude, this class sux!"

Yes, son. This class does suck. But maybe if you spent a little more time looking at your books than at the Hustler your friends found in the woods, you'd actually make something of your pathetic life.

Kids, you just gotta know how to talk to 'em.

HI, THANKS FOR WAITING. HAVE YOU HAD TIME TO DECIDE?

First off, my apologies for the time off between blog entries. I'd like to say that it will never happen again, but I won't. Because it will.

But at least this time I have a good excuse. I was writing sketches.

OK, it's not a good excuse, but it is an excuse, and I'm using it.

You see, my sketch group The Habit is doing a new show next month, and we all decided to come to our meeting on Sunday with at least 3 new sketches each.
You may find this difficult to believe, but I haven't always been the bastion of literary excellence that you all know and tolerate.
No, there was a time when I would write one sketch a year and consider it a job well done. That time has passed.
I can say that with some confidence, because yesterday morning, when I was 3 sketches short of where I needed to be for our six o'clock meeting, I figured it out.
That is to say, I have a rough idea of what it's like to actually do the work that I've been telling people that I do for the last seven years. Quite fulfilling. Now I know why Jeff is so pompous and cocksure all the time. To be fair, he has every right to love himself and treat everyone around him like filth, because hey, he signs the checks.
Not to infer that we are actually getting paid for all of this, but if we did, I think it's safe to say, that Jeff, whether he needed to or not, would write his name on my check.

He's that good.

Anyway, back to me. I wrote my 3 sketches, using my time-tested "just throw some shit together so I don't get in trouble" method and I came upon a startling realization.

They were awesome.

They were pretty good.

They were fair.

And Jeff wrote half of the good one.

But still, I worked in my Mars Rover joke, and it went over quite well at the meeting.

Ah, the meeting. We concluded that we would take a few days to ruminate on the various undertakings, before meeting again on Thursday, which incidentally was named for the Norse God of Thunder, to decide which of all of these opi (opuses?) would be deemed good enough to use in our production.

Here comes the tricky part. The actual picking of the sketches. We have foolishly chosen democracy as our model for solving problems like these, unless of course if there is a tie, in which case it becomes a sketch-tatorship.

But here's my problem. When we reassemble three days from now, there is only one rule we must adhere to in regard to the pieces we have submitted.

We cannot vote for our own sketches.

Now what do I do? Trust these simpletons to recognize the genius inherent in my collective works? Half of them don't even realize they've just been insulted.

What sick, twisted mind conceived of this ghastly unethical system? More importantly, what reality TV show did he steal it from?

I guess we'll never know.
Unless I call and ask him.
Which I won't.
Because I don't want to play his little games.

In other news, I apologized to my mother and she assured me that if I kept my nose clean and played my cards right, then she would strongly consider the option to not stop loving me. Whew.

Thanks America, you've been great.


EDITOR'S NOTE: Just to clear up any confusion, the plural form of opus is, in fact, opuses. And also, America has been great, just not recently.
(Zing! Take that, land of my birth!)

AND WE'RE BACK.

I just got through reading all of the blogs and I gotta say it again.
Mark is hilarious.

Completely unrelatedly, this morning I got into a fight.

With, of all people, my mom.

And the worst part about it is, I won.

It all started when I received an email from Moveon.org (via my good friend Jeff Schell) asking me to put my name on a list of people who think that President Bush should be censured by congress. This seemed like a great thing to do, and not only did I sign up, but I crafted a rare mass email and asked most of my family and friends to do the same.
Included on this mass email list was my mother, who I'm told, brought me into this world, and is apparently allowed to take me out of it at any time. I was not aware of this loophole in the law, but she seemed quite sure of herself, so I guess I'll believe her.

She didn't think Bush should be censured.
In fact, what she said was,

"Not all of us think he's a bad guy, Ryan."

That's it. That was the full text of her message. No, hi son, are you married yet, when are you coming to visit. That meant she was serious. So I sent her this.

"I never said he was a bad guy, Mom. I said he was a LIAR."

And I capitalized "liar" like that too, very cool. Or so I thought.

She sent back a message that talked about how Iraq was better off now. Then she asked me to imagine if she was living under a brutal dictator, wouldn't I want someone to help her?

And what can you say to that?

I'll tell you what you say. You say, "Of course I'd want someone to help you, Mom. I love you, and I'm sorry for upsetting you."

At least, that's what you say if you're not a dick.

I went on an e-rampage and pulled out all the sarcastic comments I could find. I wrote very lucidly about the lying, the agenda, and all the troops that are dying. I was mean and condescending to her. I talked to her like she was in The Habit.
Basically, I tore my mom a new one.
And I feel really bad about it.

I don't regret what I said, because it was the truth as I see it, but I shouldn't have gone as far as I did. On the bright side, at least I never once used the phrase
"Son of a Cock."

I sent the email with a vicious stab at the left side of my mouse, and sat back, thinking to myself, "Go ahead Mom, respond to THAT."

But she didn't.

I waited around for an hour and still nothing.

And then I read David Swidler's Way Cool Dude Blog to cheer me up.

Bad idea. He's what's known as "a good boy".

I'm an ass.

No, I'm worse, I'm a Mom-abuser.

A Mother Puncher, if you will.

May God have mercy on my soul, even Tupac loved his Mama. I just hope she's not on her way down here right now to grab me by the ear, use my middle name, and tell me to clean up this pigsty.

Mommy?


EDITOR'S NOTE: To follow up on this story, this morning I received a package from my mother and in it were two awesome gifts which she had sent me before our little chat yesterday. I really suck.

I'M 27 NOW (PART II)


When we last left our hero, he was valiantly attempting to ignore the pain in his viciously sprained left ankle and get down to enjoying his birthday. He looked at the clock and it read 11:45.
Perfect.
He'd summon his sidekick Jeff from his lair two stories below, and together they would set off to rid the world, or at least the Wyndham Hotel Pool and Spa, of any kind of despicable treachery or evil.

But, there was no evil there.

Instead there was a Steam Room.

And a Sauna.

And a Hot Tub.

And together, they conquered them all.



THE END



I'm truly sorry folks, but I've made the executive decision to move on from the topic of Chicago/My Birthday. My apologies to those of you who don't know how it ended. Let me sum it up, we all died.


Anyway, I have some things to discuss with you folks about the race for the Democratic Nomination.
First off, Dean is done.
As soon as he made that unholy noise at the end of his speech in Iowa, his political career went into a very sharp nosedive. Pull up, crooked smile guy! Pull up!
And then there's Kerry.
He looks as if he was left out in the sun too long under a magnifying glass with Dr. Mindbender and Serpentor. All I have to do is think of the pitifully lame stab he took at being cool when he rode his motorized bicycle into Jay Leno's house last fall, and I know he doesn't have what it takes to beat anyone at anything.
Wesley Clark looks remarkably frail for a Nine Star Sky Admiral, or whatever the hell he's supposed to be, doesn't he? He's all pale and little, like a iddy-biddy white bunny, who eats carrots and lettuce, and would make a fantastic Vice President.
Who's left?
Lieberman? Done.
Sharpton? Done.
Kucinich? Way too short.
Which leads us to one John Edwards. With Dean, and Kerry, and Edwards in the three man hydroplane race that this is going to come down to, Edwards is the Yellow Boat.
Sure, the Red and Green start out with a good deal of speed and momentum and the Yellow is quickly left behind, but as anyone who's been to a baseball game at Safeco field can attest, the story doesn't end there. There's always some commotion towards the end of the race, and just as the Red goes to cross the finish line, BLAM!

Blam, in this case, meaning that the Yellow hydroplane comes from out of nowhere to win it all.
This is what will happen in race for the Democratic Nomination. Next?

In other news, what's up with commercials in movies? It's starting to get ridiculous, and I think it's because no one has spoken up and complained about the fact that we pay more for one movie than we do for an entire month of HBO. Granted, HBO isn't really worth it either, but at least they don't make you watch commercials before your movie comes on.
If the damn T.V. guide says that the hilarious Martin Lawrence comedy "Black Knight" starts at 10:30 on HBO, you'd better start watching at 10:30.
However, (and as absurd as this may sound, I'm being serious here) I can actually leave my house at the exact time a movie is supposed to start, and still make it there in time to watch the last preview.
Enough is enough, and I think it's time that I said something.

Oh, I guess I just did.


Go Dean!
Seriously Dean, go.