SwampLog 3.0

Just So You Know...

I'm home from the Nevada trip.  Worn the frell out, since I had to turn around once I got home and immediately went to work at Gators last night.  Still pounding away at edits on Jamey Newberg's book, and I may or may not be able to meet my deadline to get it to the printers today.

I've got a podcast I'll be putting together to talk about the trip, and there'll be photos and video galore... once I get the camera back from Richard next Monday.

Aside: buy U2's new album, "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb," as soon as you possibly can.  Click the above link to buy it from iTunes right now.  It's as good as everyone says it is.

National Lampoon's P1 Vacation

It started with the four of us -- Woody, Tim, Chubbs and me -- sitting in the drive-thru window at McDonalds getting food for a couple of the guys.  The clerk could not get our order right to save her life, and in the middle of the confusion on which drink was supposed to be diet and which Coke was large, she stops in mid-sentence and says to Woody, "Hey, aren't you that guy on TV?"

It was on.

We've done a whirlind tour of Nevada in the last five days.  Vegas on Friday night, Reno on Saturday night, and the Moonlite Bunny Ranch throughout the weekend.  It's been one helluva trip.  I'm sitting in a wireless internet coffee shop (no, not starbucks -- they have played hide-and-seek with the Carson City Starbucks this weekend; one night it's on a certain block, the next morning it's been picked up and moved to another city) getting caught up on e-mail and various work-related disasters.  We don't pull back in to North Texas until Tuesday afternoon, so I'm still mostly incommunicado.

As to the Bunny Ranch festivities, there's so much to cover.  For example, we now know how to shock a room full of working girls: have a skinny Gen-Y intern run into the place wearing nothing but a pair of boxers which are falling down around his knees.

Scheduling a wedding in Nevada in November is fine, but holding it outdoors in the early evening might not be the most prudent.  Also, scheduling the outdoor photos for the wedding party after the sun goes down is less prudent.

Richard Hunter is one of the luckiest men alive.  He has an amazing career (which he claims is non-existant, and he hasn't felt like he's worked in three years).  He has a group of friends who will follow him to the ends of the earth (especially if one of those ends is a legal brothel).  And he now has the most beautiful, wonderful wife.  The two of them are so damned happy together it almost makes you sick.  It also gives people like me hope for the future.  Their love is something undefineable, and they light up a room when they're together.

"Fine," you are likely saying, "enough mushy stuff.  Get to the hookers."

The women at the Bunny Ranch are an eclectic bunch.  They run the gamut of backgrounds and ethnicities.  They're hot.  And they make no bones about their careers (or second careers, in some cases, like the real estate agent who comes out on the weekends and rocks people's worlds simply because she loves sex).

For the record: I did not partake.  I also did not get married, arrested, or obliterated.  Came close to getting sloshed in the Vegas strip, thanks to some well-made margaritas at Jimmy Buffett's joint.

There are a ton of pictures, and a whole lot of video that I have to edit.  The video will be up by the end of the week.  The photos, I hope will be available at some point mid-week, once we get back to Texas.

Back to the road.  We have to make good time on the way back: there's a White Castle on our return route, and I need my White Castle fix.  It would make a perfect trip even better.

Hoover Freakin' Dam

Woody Sleeps

Worse Santa

At Wal-Mart, shopping for supplies for the Nevada trip, this creepy-ass Santa Claus display was by the door.  The damned thingshakes his hips like a polar Elvis, lips moving in time making the animatronic horror look almost lifelike.

Then, the damned thing started singing.

When I was trapped working at MIX 102.9 for Christmas 1996, we were doing a network feed of Christmas songs all weekend.  The song I heard every two hours for the fourteen I was at the station was "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" by Andy Williams.  I cannot listen to that song now without an involuntary shudder working its way through my spine.

The Santa was singing "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year."  I damn near passed out.

Are You Ready For Some Outrage?

Okay, I understand ABC wanting to promote 'Desperate Housewives,' and I didn't think the 'Monday Night Football' stunt with Terrell Owens was all that bad.  But, if ABC was that regretful about the spot, why are they letting ESPNews (owned by the same parent company, Disney) run the damned thing every 30 minutes?

PodCast DuJour

If you're on board with the whole PodCast thang, here's one more link for you to add to your feeds.  Think of it as the rebirth of DAMRadio.

If you're new to PodCasting (and why wouldn't you be -- it's a relatively new app), you can read about what it is here, and read a painfully simple description on how to do your own PodCast.  You can also get a PodCast reader for your PC, Mac, or Linux box.

For the propellerheads in the audience: I have never done my own RSS feed, and was hitting a wall with syndicating the file properly.  TypePad doesn't (yet) do RSS enclosures, so that was the final piece.

...The More Things Change...

The roller coaster that is my professional life is getting ready to head around another hairpin curve.

I was in the middle of my resume earlier in the week, and realized that I have changed jobs an amazing amount in the last two decades.  Most of it was out of my control, and I was never fired due to gross negligence or stupidity.  When I left a job, it was due to the management just being a bad fit or the job not being a good fit.

The good news is: in the next chapter of that resume, the only person I'll have to blame is myself.

Stay Tuned.

[Yes, I know it's a monumental tease.  Trust me when I tell you that this is a tenuous thing for the next 10 days.  Just keep a kind thought or ten.]

Tasty

A joke from Steve Wozniak, a personal hero of mine (as relayed by Gina Smith, a personal heroine of mine):

First-year students at Med School were receiving their first anatomy class with a real dead human body. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.

The professor started the class by telling them, "In medicine, it is necessary to have two important qualities as a doctor: The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the human body." As an example, the Professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the corpse, withdrew it and stuck it in his own mouth. "Go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students.

The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead body and sucking on it. When everyone finished, the Professor looked at them and told them, "The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention."

It's not as repulsive as the vampire joke Madonna once told me, but it's in the same realm...

Chunky Clicky 2004

One click, one can of soup.  Sounds simple, right?

Last year, we linked to an NFL promotion that Chunky Soup ran where every time you voted for your favorite NFL team, they donated a can of soup to homeless shelters around the country.  They're doing it again this year, so [say it with me] Make With The Clicky Love.

Looking at the voting results this year, as go the Cowboys fortunes, so go their votes.  Eight weeks into the season, the team is seventeenth in votes (9,397).  Green Bay once again leads the team voting (129,606), followed by Philadelphia (86,217) and Jacksonville (54,594).