Beirut, 1983

A friend of mine whose father was the base commander in Beirut 25 years ago today sent along this op-ed piece that appears in today's New York Post. The man is a patriot and hero, and he is spot-on in his assessment of the threat we face from the Iranians. Find the article here.

10 & 2

I don't how I came to this or if it's even true, but it occurred to me today that people who walk with their toes pointed out are naturally happier people. When contrasted with the demeanors of people you may see walking on the street with bowed legs, or even the straight steppers, it just seems to me that people that stroll with an open gait are generally more congenial folk. Does anyone agree? Think about it: you see a guy skulking down the avenue with his toes pointed in. He mostly walks on the balls of his feet; maybe he drags his heels. Almost always these people are hunched over a bit, their shoulders getting across the finish line before their hips. Do they ever have a smile on their faces? Now imagine that rotund guy walking on his heels. His toes are pointing 10 & 2. That guy is always smiling. That guy is open to whatever life is going to throw at him on his walk. His feet do not present a defensive posture.

Is there anything to this? Because when it occurred to me it felt like I had uncovered some secret of life that I never heard anyone else talk about. Now I'll be examining every man, woman and child and the way they perambulate. If you got to the end of this post I'm betting you'll do the same.

Feedback appreciated.

The Season's Must-Have Toy

I know I want one. You might want one too. That's right: you can now order your very own Sarah Palin Action figure. They will come in three styles. One will be your regular run of the mill "executive" Palin doll. Another will be the "school girl" Palin doll (I'm not joking). But the third one, which I imagine is depicted in the image above, is termed as the Sarah Palin "action" doll! Is that a gun on her thigh? Awesome!

Trust me, it's only a matter of weeks before some loony lefty burns one of these things in effigy on youtube. My question is: why don't they make more of these things? If they had a Barbara Boxer, a Diane Feinstein, or a Hillary Clinton doll out there I would certainly buy one for my daughter. You should see what she does to these things! I can't think of anything that would be more entertaining to me than to watch my 17 month old daughter drowning a Ted Kennedy doll in her play pool out on our patio. It could be like Chappaquiddick all over again except if God existed and old Teddy went down with the ship on that fateful night.

Come to think of it, I'm going to write the company that manufactures these things and request that they mass-produce a life sized Sarah Palin action figure doll in malleable poly plastic. Now that would be cool.

Word of the Day

Today's word is Egalitarian, which as an adjective means "favoring social equality."

An egalitarian is like a rich communist: to each his own cup, but I'm not pouring any for you out of mine.

Word of the Day

In honor of last night's epic Radiohead show at the Santa Barbara Bowl (setlist and review to come) I am choosing as today's Word of the Day

ARPEGGIO. noun. 1. the sounding of the notes of a chord in rapid succession instead of simultaneously. 2. a chord thus sounded.

If you didn't know the word arpeggio, get yourself a copy of In Rainbows.

Word of the Day

Good morning folks. My apologies for the break in the action. Life is busy for the Daddy of a 16 month old. I promise to try to post more often.

With that, I'd like to begin a new thread here: The Word of the Day! Being a verbophile, I have a vast repertoire to show off to you folks. And I thought that $80 thousand dollar English degree wouldn't really buy me anything in the real world.

For the first entry I'll use something appropriate:

INFREQUENT
- adjective. happening or occurring at long intervals or rarely.

Leather Tuscadero was an infrequent visitor to the Happy Days Universe.

One Liner, #2

I'm John from Edwards Valley Infidelity; we're an illegitemate STORE, not an illegitemate department.

One Liner, #1

It's official: Turkish journalists have now been fired upon more than Hillary Clinton.

Things I Hate, #5

Fiesta is over, but my experience during the five days of fiasco in the downtown area has led me to an ongoing grudge with a group of people I truly despise: The Space Savers.

Let me be clear; I didn't even attend any of the big events of the week like the Mariachis, the kid's parade,or the horses. I never planned to go to the thing at the Mission where the kids get all dressed up and dance around. But that fact does not detract from the loathsome feeling I get when I see all the chairs and blankets laid out on State St. 17 hours before a parade is even going to begin.

Who do these people think they are? You're not supposed to be able to claim space without actually hanging around to defend it. These people think that because they got up early to go lay out their possessions in a choice viewing area, then went home back to bed, that the fact that their beach chair is right at the corner of Ortega and State that they own that piece of the right of way for the next half day? Screw that. The moniker "Sooners" is one that stuck with Oklahomans but it was always a derogatory one. The Sooners were the people who cheated, who left early, in the big claim race. Maybe they never saw the oft-maligned Cruise/Kidman pic Far & Away. I always liked the movie, even if it's a little slow.

So what is an angry hater of the self-entitled to do with such a garish scene of what looks like abandoned beach chairs and dirty blankets? Sabotage of course. I would never stoop so far as to damage another person's property; that would be pretty low. But walking up State St. on Friday morning at 8 A.M. it occurred to me that a small experiment in social anarchy might serve, even if I wouldn't be around to witness the product of it.

The first thing I did was grab a couple of chairs in the 600 block and run them up to the 700 block. I dropped those randomly, and grabbed two more chairs, walking them across the street. I dropped those two chairs and grabbed a chair and a blanket and put those in the space that I had vacated with the previous two chairs. I walked one block up and smiled at the people already out on the street at 8 A.M. selling cascadores and said "watch this!" before I pulled the same across the street switch on some currently owner-less folding chairs. My final act of treachery was complete when I took two chairs from in front of a Starbucks and actually walked them half a block down a side street and dropped them as if they were staring at the front door of the Press Room waiting for them to open.

Am I a bad guy for doing these things? Maybe. Did it make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Absolutely. I was grinning all morning. The good guy got in a counterpunch last Friday, so hooray for us.

A Few Things

I have some updates in the world of Emma. There's nothing spectacular, just a few tidbits I found interesting as they occurred.

She knows the word "pizza." I already knew she liked pizza, I just didn't know she knew how to say it; so it surprised me when she came hauling ass across the room and threw herself in my lap as I was crushing a slice and she just yells out "PIZZA!" replete with a "P," which is significant because the next 30 times she yelled out "pizza!" there were no P's, so it sounded more like "eeeetsa!" but we all got the drift.

She can trot. She can't sprint or even jog, but she knows how to trot. Yesterday we were walking around the house and she strolls up to a neighbor's patio door and points at it. I wasn't sure what she was getting at, but just then a small dog behind the door started barking and I'll be damned if she didn't turn tail and trot down the sidewalk right at me, terrified.

She loves peek-a-boo, popsicles, and the theme from Flash Gordon by Queen. In fact, when I sing it to her, she does the lilting "aaaah ahhh!" right after "Flash!" and it is hilarious.

That's all for now.

I Like to, #3

If I had a fetish it would be ankles.

I don't know why, but I have always been fascinated with people's ankles (or lack thereof). I should be more specific: I have always been fascinated with women's ankles. I don't go around checking out the ankles on a guy walking down the street. But if a chick with decent stems walks past, the first thing I check out isn't her fanny, or her breasts, no. It's that complex joint where the foot meets the leg. The ankle, for me, has always been the barometer of whether or not the gal I'm checking out is, was, or will be fat.

I think it started out in high school with one of my first girlfriends. She had a great rack, a great smile, and most importantly great ankles. They were defined, and that was a good thing, because although I had a deep respect for this particular girl's mother, the woman's body shape most closely resembled Grimace from McDonald's. The way I saw it, since my girlfriend's ankles looked mighty fine then, it was safe to suppose that later in life she would not turn into the behemoth that was her mother.

These days I see it all the time. An otherwise excellently proportioned body from the neck down turns into a disaster when you get to the bottom of the shin and you can't see an ankle bone. If the lower half of a girl's leg resembles the stump of a redwood it's a sure sign of trouble in the future. When I first met my wife she was wearing capri style sweatpants before a workout at the gym. My wife is not and has never been what you would consider a hardbody. She is well proportioned and beautiful, to be sure, but she wouldn't make the grade for the SI swimsuit issue. I would describe her body then as athletic. But oh those ankles! So shapely, so obvious, they were the first thing to catch my attention. Well here we are eleven years hence and she hasn't blown up like Kirstie Alley, so there must be something to my theory.

So what do I like to do? I like to show off my own ankles! The majority of athletic socks I own are shorties. In fact, I often have friends or acquaintances ask me, "Uhhh, are you wearing socks? Because if you're not that's pretty gross." I would agree, and then show them that I was indeed sporting socks; they are just so short that you can't really tell I have them on. The reason I like to wear those short socks is that I believe that I have attractive ankles. For a guy with my looks I have to seize on the positive, and according to me, my ankles are the positive. You wouldn't have to use my ankles as a guide to how fat I may someday become, because I can tell you here that unless I am diagnosed with diabetes or end up in a wheelchair after a bad car accident, I won't be getting fat before I die. I have the metabolism that all women would kill for. But just check it out for yourself the next time your cruising State Street or the mall: ankles are beautiful, and useful too.

Movie Review, In Bruges, 4 Stars

Fucking awesome!

It's hilarious and grotesque. Any flick that features the killing of adolescents is going to get my attention, but this one breaks the mold. You thought you'd seen the buddy action comedy before, but you never saw one with so many retard, homosexual, and midget references as this one. Colin Farrel is perfect as the neurotic hit man; Brendan Gleeson is excellent as usual; and the script echoes an English Tarantino with enough F and C bombs to make a rugby player blush.

Y'all check it out now. In feckin Bruges (it's in Belgium).

Things I Hate, #4

I looked online for about four minutes for a picture of this thing but could not find it. There is one at the Santa Barbara Central Library on Anapamu, but the bathrooms are closed for renovation, so I was not able to get a shot of it when I was there this evening with Em. If you are not acquainted with the device I will describe it. It is a hand towel dispenser placed in public bathrooms, but it does not dispense your average throw away hand towels, no. It is a roll with a cloth hand towel that rotates. It is fucking disgusting.

I will just say here that I will never touch that thing. Ever. I would rather dry my hands on my hair than lay my fingers within three feet of that monster. If I had a dirty diaper handy I would use that before I handled the scummy re-usable hand towel thing.

It's just another sign that the eco-terrorists are taking over.

The Wussification of America

I guess this came across the wire a couple of weeks back but I saw it first today. It is yet another example of what is going wrong with America today, another example of the emasculation of our youth.

In a suburb east of Cleveland, Ohio, the long-standing tradition of the town's post-season Little League All-Star game has been officially cancelled. The move was initiated by Beachwood Mayor Merle Gordon with letters to the players parents informing them of the cancellation. The decision was prompted by an article by a man named Fred Engh, founder of the National Alliance for Youth Sports, on a website entitle Parks & Rec Business. Mr. Engh argues that all-star games damage the self-esteem of the players not selected. He cites several reasons why all-star games are damaging, including chance of injury. He even goes so far as to insinuate that the mediocre ballers do not get picked because they may be "obese." That is actually the coolest part of the argument. Of course the fat kids don't get picked for the all-star game! Fatties can't steal second or run down a fly ball.


This is political correctness of the highest order, and not a small reason for the overall decay of our society. If a kid fails to make the all-star team is it the end of the world? Of course not. But now we are going to take away the joys of making and competing in an all-star game away from the kids who can achieve such a thing. It's bogus.

Welcome to the new America folks. Pretty soon there won't be an honor roll.

The next thing you know you will be treating your family to a brand new Scrabble set and when you get home and open it up you will find that there aren't any numbers on the tiles.

When the time comes for my daughter to start soccer I will refuse to enroll her in a league that condemns the infernal act of keeping score. If that means she has to take up golf then so be it. But when she starts to best her old man's tally I'm quitting.

America 2025: where the only game the masses are allowed to enjoy is tic-tac-toe.

We're fucked.

Question, #3

Not really a question, but a small piece of trivia while we're on the subject.

The answer might be obvious considering there's a picture of him right here, and my last post names him, but some people don't grasp things immediately.

Who is the only player currently wearing Jackie Robinson's retired #42?

Mariano broke into the majors as a starter but was quickly converted to a closer. Good move by the Yankees, by the way. Mo will enter the Hall of Fame as perhaps the game's greatest closer ever. A couple of years back, every Major League team retired the numebr 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson. Players who were currently wearing it then were allowed to wear it until they retired. Mariano is the last player allowed to wear the number. I think Mo Vaughn was the next to last guy to have it, but he ate it shortly before hanging up his spikes.

Things I Hate, #3

Not Mo, of course. I love Mo.

What I hate is when Joe Girardi brings in Mariano Rivera and it's not a save situation. Four of the five runs Mariano has given up this year were in these types of situations. He hasn't blown a save opportunity yet, why bring him in any other time than when you wanna close the door on an opponent in a tight game that you're winning?

I should be the Manager, of course.

Question, #2

Reverting momentarily back to the topical issues that dominated my last blog brand, I pose this question on a beautiful Tuesday morning in paradise:

Exactly how big of an asshole is Wesley Clark?

Think Rosie O'Donnel big. This dude has some set of brass balls to come up with his recent comments regarding John McCain and his military record on Saturday's Face the Nation. The most reported on tidbit was this gem:

"I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a
qualification to become president."

What a dick! Did he forget the fact that McCain spent five years in a Hanoi prison for his country? Did he forget that because of McCains family ties (his father was a Rear Admiral) that the North gave him the option of early release, after two and a half years, and that McCain chose to stay with his men? John McCain is a bonafide American hero, who chose a career of serving his country in the Navy before turning to politics upon his return to the States.

And don't forget that Clark was the same guy who said that John Kerry's three months and (alleged) three purple hearts were exactly the sort of thing that qualified him to be POTUS.

Wesley Clark is a jackass and if he is the guy that B. Hussein Obama chooses as his veep then the R's will be looking good in November, mark my words.

Things I Hate, #2

I cannot stand it when someone on the road is impeding my progress in some way and when I finally get around them I see they are talking on a cell phone.

I was driving back to work from lunch today and some asshole in a Prius (I'll save that group for a future "Things I Hate") is sitting in front of me at the intersection of Modoc and Las Positas. The light goes green and the Prius doesn't move. I have driven one of these go-karts before so I know that when you hit the gas the sled doesn't necessarily move right away so I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt, for the first five seconds at least. When ten seconds went by I gave him a polite toot of the horn to let him know that all was clear, we can go now. Still nothing. I had to actually pull into the next lane and go past him, and the dude was still sitting there stopped at the green light when I passed and noticed him talking into his personal communications device.

Motherfucker. I hope you get pulled over tomorrow when the law goes into effect and when the cop searches your mini-car he finds your 18 inch double headed black mamba in your hatchback.

Saturday, oh Saturday

A pal o' mine celebrated his birthday Saturday night with a surprise get together of about 20 of us over at Paradise Cafe. I should have left around 12, considering most of the self-inflicted damage I suffered came after that hour. I didn't feel like I drank a ton of beers, but that was rendered moot by the fact that I decided it was a good idea to rock an Irish Car Bomb at Dargans and then back it up with a monster Tequila shot across the street at the Press Room, all this after 1 A.M.

If the Irish were into inter-breeding with the Mexicans I can assure you that the child would be one pissed off little monster, complete with a full-time raging headache. My head still hurts this morning.

I Like to, #1

I like to sleep with a top sheet. I'm a sweater most nights, and I feel it's more sanitary to have that top sheet to leak into while I'm dozing and secreting all of the toxins I ingest every single day. My wife does not like a top sheet. It's just the fitted sheet and a comforter for her. She ends up kicking the top sheet down to the foot of the bed within the first 45 minutes of its placement on a day I've installed it there. It's really annoying.

This is a metaphor for my marriage and a reason we're in therapy.

Things I Hate, #1

In no particular order with these, but just as they come to me.

The guy in the line ahead of you at Subway who has orders for everyone in the office, six inchers, footlongs, with cheese, no cheese, half are toasted, all the different condiment configurations, and not one normal, regular order.

God I hate that guy.

Death Pool

My wife and a couple of her friends, plus myself, thought it would be fun to do a death pool. We determined a draft order and we each chose five famous people who we thought would die in the next year. There were some interesting choices, to be sure. The picks were weighted. For example, should my first round pick suddenly expire I would receive five scratch tickets from each of the players for my good fortune. If my second round pick croaked I would get four tickets from each player, etc. down to the fifth round pick's demise earning me one scratch ticket from each person. I already have a winner, since I picked Bo Diddley (may he rest in peace) with my fourth round pick.

Here are the results of our draft, first round picks being listed first:

Ty's picks
John Wooden
Margaret Thatcher
Dick Clark
Beverly Cleary
Dick Cheney






Susanne's picks
Britney Spears
Fidel Castro
Nancy Reagan
Michael Richards
Queen Elizabeth II




Kristi's picks
Amy Winehouse
Kirk Douglas
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Barack Hussein Obama
Madonna






MC Confrontation's picks
Patrick Swayze
George Steinbrenner
Ariel Sharon
Bo Diddley DEAD!
Pervez Musharraf

God bless his ass for making classic films like The Outsiders and Roadhouse, but Patrick, will you take a dirt nap already? Please?

Kobe, How 's My Ass Taste

This is quite possibly the greatest thing I've seen or heard in ten years.



I will patiently await the inevitable backlash. If only Kobe could rap then we would have a whole brand new hip-hop war. I imagine Kobe could kick a few lines like this:

Hey yo Shaq I can guess how your ass taste
Like the couch you been sittin on since May
I'd like to break the news to the world today
Shaq's gettin a divorce because he's gay

Question, #1

Pilfered from one of my favorite comics, I heard this question asked about 20 years ago and to this day it haunts me. That is why I am featuring it here as the first question of this blog.

How do blind people know when they're done wiping their ass?

A Primer, Part 2

Part of what I wish to accomplish in this undertaking is to answer the questions that I have about things I experience in everyday life.

Another part of it is to answer questions that you, the readers may have.

A third part of this blog will be anecdotes, stories, book reviews, movie reviews, jokes, or whatever interests me in that moment. It is pretty open-ended. It is a lot more open ended than my last project, where I pretty much had to wait for something to happen before I could comment on it. It seemed that right around the time my child was born, a whole host of other stuff that I cared about seemed pretty insignificant, thus the lull in content.

That will not happen here. You can expect many more posts than the SBMR, perhaps even several in a day. I am hoping to run the gambit from quick hit one liners to full on investigative reporting on a full range of subjects. One day I could write about practical joke activity on the illegal immigrant labor line and the next I could cover obese women who wear high heels. The sky is the limit people. I will also entertain requests.

I am your muse people, and this is your mouthpiece. Behold My 33 Cents.

A Primer

Welcome! If you're here then you probably know who I am. If you don't know who I am, well, I'm not telling so forget about it. I used to post to a blog called The Santa Barbara Minority Report, but after a six month hiatus between January and June 2008 I decided to take things in another direction. There are just not enough funny things going on in local politics to drive that brand. Of course I can still offer you my insight on those subjects, but I felt it was finally necessary to mine other prospects for material. I therefore present to you My 33 Cents.

You might say to yourself, "Why 33 cents?" to which I would answer that I tried to secure two cents, then three, then four, all the way up to nine, until I decided to pick a really high number that I figured nobody had taken. I think about Larry Bird a lot, so I picked the number 33.



The gist of this blog will be nothing more than commentary on the things I see and hear around me. I will ask questions, and I will answer questions. I will ruminate on the profane and the absurd, and on the mundane and the boring. I am a verbophile, which makes me a spelling and a grammar cop, so be careful if you don't want to get flamed, but of course please feel free to expose your abject stupidity to the masses by not knowing the difference between then and than, affect and effect, if you must.

I encourage as much feedback as I can get from the readership, so please feel free to contribute in the comments sections of the upcoming posts. I hereby declare that anything goes in the comments, and unless I personally find your comments to be seriously offensive to me personally, they will stand. If you know me at all, then you know it will take some pretty horrendous shit for me to hit the delete button on your comment, so have at it you abortion cannibals.

I'm back.