TV silence please

The Chargers were on Monday Night Football this week. That was fine. No problem there. In fact, I relished the opportunity to watch the Bolts, live in big-screen TV glory while perched on the edge of my couch (east facing southern end, of course).

For the masochistic aspect, it was great. I don't get to watch the Bolts much on the tube out here, so when that chance pops up I'm like a mousy accountant in a Dominatrix's lair - so excited I almost burst at the first sight of LT.

What troubled me about this broadcast, though, were the announcers.

Let me set the record straight: Announcers are like those sweat gnats that buzz around your face after a hard day of work in the sun. They hang around your eyes, rest on the ear hair, and in the end annoy enough to prompt ceaseless flail as you hope to catch one and squash their heads until white puss leaks out.

Wife tells me I should mute the tube and add my own soundtrack. But, as stated in paragraph two, I'm a masochist. Slap my ass, whip my gonads with seven-tailed, and I'll squeal with agonized pleasure.

But the Monday night crew took it a step further. They talked incessantly about the Chargers. Talk is hardly accurate, in fact, they praised the Chargers (except when Phillip Rivers - the Chargers big mouth QB - talked shit to the Bronco QB, but that's not the point) for their turnaround this season and hypothesized that they could give the Indy Colts and the New Cheatland Patriots a run in the playoffs.

"Shut up!" I yelled at the TV, "No one needs to know they're playing better." Wife poked her head out of the office (where she was exiled because the Bolts were winning), but quickly figured I was just talking to the voices in my head again. She's used to my inner-monologue rants.

But the Monday night announcers are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm seeing news about San Diego on every corner of the Internet now. From the front page of Google News to the Canadian Press to the Los Angeles Times. Hell, I bet if I went to Redbook or Christianity Today, they'd have eight-page spreads about the Bolts peaking at the right time. Igor Olshansky is probably the centerfold Playgirl, for all I know (and I don't ... really ... how would I know?).

What happened to the days when I'd be out in my Charger gear and folks would ask me if San Diego still had a team? I miss those days. Anonymity is a very underrated trait. Now the nation's eyes are hovering over Jack Murphy Stadium, and the gaze is as unnerving as a creepy old guy at a playground park.

Can't the football-watching world just leave the Bolts be? Watch the Cheatriots go undefeated. Laugh at Raiders ineptness. Ask Michael Vick about dog handling. There's nothing to see in San Diego, just let the Chargers play under a curtain of media indifference. Like a traffic accident on the 805 freeway, there is nothing to see here. Move along please. They don't need the added pressure. I don't need the added pressure. My ulcerated gut doesn't need the pressure.

But it would be cool if they shocked the talking head pundits on NFL Network and ESPN (the Worlwide Leader in ruining Sports) and came out to Glendale, AZ, for a certain game on Feb. 3.

Me, and four other Charger fans would be exceptionally cool with that.

Tradition ... TRADITION!

Christmas and tradition go together like a turkey dinner - you eat until gravy and green beans seep out your ears and your nose is clogged with yams and marshmallows. There are so many Christmas traditions that it's easy to feed into the gluttony.

As a kid, my clan wasn't much different than anyone else around the world. Lil' Sis and I woke up with the roosters, burst through the parental units' bedroom door, pealed their eyes open, farted on their heads and decreed it was time to get up so we could score our sweet loot. When the teen age years hit, the roles shifted: Ma and Pop would storm into our rooms at the crack of 10 a.m., yank the sheets off our bed, farted on our heads and decreed us to be up, dressed and prepared to open presents in T-minus 10 minutes. No matter the age, we had to start with stockings, so we could unwrap our new tooth brushes and deoderants because Ma was always under the impression we only brushed our teeth once a year - on Christmas, hence the new teeth scrubber - and smelled like apes.

Once the Chia Pets, scratch-and-sniff ties and videos on the mating habits of the Northern Egrets were unwrapped the next clan tradition began - the wrapping paper fight. To hell with the new gear and electronic doo-dads, it was better to shove brightly colored (likely toxic if ingested) paper in each other's face until someone passed out from suffocation. Call it our own survival exercise, you never know when you'll be attacked by a Christmas wrapping paper wielding mugger in a dark alley on Christmas night.

Wife's family has their own traditions, and apparently paper fights in the living room were never part of their clan lore. This I learned during my first Christmas when I chucked a tigthly balled hunk of wrapping paper at Sister-in-Law-to-be that smacked her between the eyes (a declaration of war in my tribe that would be bring instant, jihad vengeance on my nation). She looked at me like I was evil incarnate, and I could see she was internally debating whether to take back the two seasons of Seinfeld DVDs, or worse yet, slice open my jugular with disc one of season one.

They are also a open-presents-on-Christmas Eve family. I come from a open-presents-on-Christmas morning clan. That takes a little to get used to. But after throwing back a few more brandy-and-coffees than the body can handle on Christmas Eve, that's a welcomed tradition. The last thing a hangover needs on Christmas morning is the constant sound of rips and shreds, or the sights of electric red and green plaid paper which can be a trigger for fluid expulsion in the In-Laws waste disposal center. Never an enduring trait on Christmas morning, especially when the afternoon at their house consists of Italian potluck whereupon we pile an assortment of red-sauce pasta delights on our plates and open our pie holes to the Christmas flavors of marinara and mozarella cheese. Throw in some meatballs, spicy sausages and eggplant and chicken parmigiana and this Christmas tradition is something I count the days off the calendar for beginning Dec. 26.

With it being Christmas Eve last night, we opened up gifts at the In-Laws' compound. As we sat there tearing through Christmas greed, I couldn't help but think this would be the last Christmas on our own - not that there's anything wrong with that - and that traditions will change next year as the Freeloader will garner the attention as we watch it's eyes grow with wonderment at the lights and colors and sounds of Christmas. There's nothing better than watching a kid's face soak in Christmas.

That fact was cemented last night when I opened one box from the In-Laws. It contained four books that appeared to be charity book sale rescues, when in fact they came from the In-Laws private collection. Two were for Wife and two were for me. One was my Dad-in-Law's book when Wife was born, given to him from his In-Laws, and the other was Wife's grandfather's book for when Mom-in-Law was born. It was maybe one of those most touching Christmas gifts I had ever received, and something as her note said could be given to my Freeloader when they present me and Wife with our Grand-Freeloaders.

With us past the halfway mark of unleashing a new hellion upon the world, this Christmas has taken on a new, special meaning that will be surpassed by next year's Christmas as we watch our Freeloader roll in wrapping paper and chew on ribbon until Wife yells at me and pulls the kid away from it's new toy and plops it in front of the real gifts.

And new traditions will begin.

I expect the fart-head wake up calls to begin in year two. I would be disappointed if they didn't.

Merry Christmas from us to you.

Why are you hiding?

“Come here, honey, I think you can feel the Freeloader.”

That’s how it starts every night. There I am, bundled like an Eskimo on a fishing boat in the Artic Circle because my nuts have been freezing to my inner thigh during the latest cold spell here in the Valley of the Sun, knowing if I leave my blanketed cocoon of warmth I could lose some extremities to frostbite. But I trudge over to her side of the couch anyway, lay my hand on her tummy and wait for the kid to paw back.

“No, you have to push harder.”

Push harder? I ask myself. “If I push harder, the kid it’ll get shoved out the other exit,” I tell her, believing it sound logic. If you push too hard on my gut I guarantee you’ll get a present, too. That’s just physics.

“OK, well it stopped moving around.”

“Uh-huh,” I try not to sound skeptical, but you can only piss on my leg for so long before I realize it’s not raining.

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to feel the freeloader squirming around like a sea cucumber in my hands. However, as things stand today I can’t help but feel like a visitor at the zoo – every time I come by an exhibit a creature is sleeping of just sitting placidly looking at us curious homo sapiens, and when I’m not around the creatures are doing everything you’d expect them, from fighting with each other to humping like sex-starved humans. That’s how this kid is, it just waits until I’m gone before turning back into John Travolta or Uma Thurman and dancing the twist inside Wife’s belly.

It’s to the point now where I think it might be a conspiracy between Mom and Freeloader. “When he gets over here, you go back to sleep,” Wife likely tells her tummy. Freeloader flutters and kicks in agreement. I come over, and the Disco Inferno shuts down as if I was a cop called to stop a high school party.

“No, no, come back, it’s moving again,” she says, keeping her little joke going between her and fetus.

If I was more perceptive I would pick up Wife’s sly smile or maybe a wink she passes down to the freeloader. But I’m a dude, which means if you want my attention you better smack me in the melon with a ball-peen hammer.

I’m not asking for much. I don’t need the freeloader to grab my hand and yank me through the uteran wall. Maybe just a nudge, a series of taps to say “hey, I’m in here working on my curve ball and studying pitch recognition charts.”

Is that too much to ask?

Just as long as I don’t see this molded against the skin of Wife’s baby-holder:

'roid wage

Kenesaw Mountain Landis - Aug. 3, 1921:

"Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball."

Bud Selig - Dec. 13, 2007:

“So long as there may be potential cheaters, we will always have to monitor our programs and constantly update them to catch those who think they can get away with breaking Baseball's rules. In the name of integrity, that's exactly what I intend to do."

Two quotes about cheating in baseball.

Two very different circumstances.

Which is worse? Players losing games purposely with the promise of a hefty paycheck at the end of the day or players taking drugs that are designed to build muscle faster, aid in injury rehabilitation, which in the end helps their team win ballgames?

I’m a baseball traditionalist as much as any stogey-chomping 80-year-old at Yankee games – I still despise Interleague play (mostly because the Dodgers have lost 13 of their last 20 to the Angels), but the wild card is growing on me – so I get that the hallowed numbers of baseball are sullied by this steroid era. But were the pitching numbers tainted when the mound was a few inches higher in the late 1960s? There are a handful of spitball pitchers in the hall of fame, should they have asterisks next to their names? Gaylord Perry (yeah, that’s his real name – go ahead, giggle, I do the same thing when his name is mentioned) has admitted to cheating and he’s in the hall. He used to put everything on the ball to make his pitches dance - vaseline, spit, and scuff it. If he didn’t think he’d get chucked from a game, I’m sure he’d doctor the ball with his own poo to get a batter to swing and miss.

So, if 80-or-so players in the late 90s and early 2000s felt they needed an edge and spiked up before game time to help them play better, who am I to say that’s wrong? Hell, the owners knew what they were doing, the fans knew what they were doing. And you could damn well bet the sportswriters knew what the players were doing. But at least they weren’t messing with my trust that every game is being played on the up and up.

Man, baseball used to be so much easier when we were kids, wasn’t it?

Today's post is brought to you by the letter A

If I had a nickel for every time I heard "Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one," I could quit the prison work camp and live out my dream of being a bum who sits on the couch drinking Newcastles brought to me by my dwarf waiter and living from "Law and Order" rerun to "Law and Order" rerun on TV.

Some folks pass the day digging ditches, shoveling cow poo on a midwestern dairy farm, or crab fishing in Dutch Harbor, Alaska; I pass the day reading and editing letters to the editor in a senior-based community (that would be me – the editor. Can you believe I have a position of such authority? Yeah, me neither!). After reading a dozen or so each day it’s a wonder these folks don’t self-combust from their balled-up hate. Hell, maybe their little hate engines, fueled by early-bird dinner buffets, keep them going like blue-haired Energizer bunnies.

Some days I laugh at that their crazy conspiracies and half-brained (the other half is being sliced and diced by dementia, I’m sure) logic while wading through hip-deep grammatical errors that makes their points even murkier (and they say our English is bad. Some of these folks may as well be speaking in tongue clicks after reading reading their mangling of the English language). Other days there isn’t enough beer in Arizona to chase away the thoughts that these whackos who write in may be in the lane next to me as I drive home, likely packing heat. The happy balance are those days when I receive letters for publication that thanks Hal and Edna Jones for finding Harriett’s wallet, which she left in the Safeway shopping cart and didn’t realize it until she arrived home. God bless them for finding it, the writer says (God is big to the blue hairs, they have Him blessing everything from the green grass in neighborhood’s medians to the local grocery store stocking the shelf with their favorite diuretic).

But if you want to see me go editorial – much like going postal except we hurl computer equipment at passing golf carts – whine about me and the two prison guards I answer to cutting your precious words as if they came etched from some golden tablet.

We have guest columnists, which is really an unfortunate title because it gives these amateur Erma Bombecks (they have double the sass and twice as little talent) a head the size of a Lincoln Town Car. They fall into two categories: far left (religion should only be used in the bed room during kinky sex acts – they are liberals who lived in the ‘60s - as in “Oh God, yes!”) and far right (George W. Bush is the Messiah and all Muslims should be roasted on a spit in his name). There is no gray area, no demilitarized zone, and no soft underbelly for one side to scratch so both are happy. And within those two groups I have two styles of writers: 1) Their words are gifts to our little prison fish wrap and they should not be touched under any circumstances, the penalty being outed by said columnist to his/her neo-political blue-hair coalition; 2) The topics they plan to discuss in future columns are interesting, so much so that they like to keep me on the phone for 45 minutes while a mean dump screams to be released from my ass because they always call when I have a fire in the hole.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Category 1/Style 1. I grant OpEd space – fancy prison fish wrap lingo for opinions/editorials – to a handful of these red asses who believe it’s their birth right to fill our one page of opinions with long-winded, nonsensical rantings about how the other side of the political spectrum is trampling on their cookies and pissing in their Cheerios. Never mind that our audience is seniors who have to power up magnifying glasses to read our fish wrap; glasses, by the way, big enough to burn their initials into Uranus if they hit the sun at just the right angle. Anyway, this e-mail was addressed to the columnist (we’ll call him Mr. Fathead Gasbag), obviously he didn’t want me to see who he rolls with, and huffed and whined and cried that after I asked him to cut the prison guard I answser to had the nerve to cut more.

I checked the warden’s name to make sure Fathead Gasbag didn’t buy the paper over night. He didn’t, which means WE CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL WE WANT, bucko! At the bottom of his message, he included my note that stated if he had questions, he should talk to my bossman. I guess that was tantamount to shitting on his car hood because he felt his cache of opinion submissions meant nothing to our prison fish wrap (“Winner, winner, chicken dinner buddy, your opinion means about as much to me as air freshener in the men’s room!” Is what I typed … in a mental e-mail). Hell, the douche even produced stats: 60-whatever total, XX of which were ginormous, pointless, so boring myself – and readers too, I’m sure – would rather shove spoons through my ear hole. At the end of his written-word whine, he said he might rethink writing to our fish wrap. Whereupon I shouted “Hallelujah!” stripped down to my skivvies and danced a tarantella on my desk.

Since that note came I’ve pondered how to handle Fathead Gasbag. Tying him up, drizzling honey over his raisin-contoured nut sack and unleashing flesh-munching ants on the his fogey smorgasbord didn’t have any appeal. Golf cartjacking him on his way to the knee doctor or hip doctor or dick doctor or whatever the hell doctor 70-year-olds visit on a Thursday morning and driving him out to the middle of the desert where there are a lot of empty holes – if you know what I mean.

Instead, I decided to write my own Letter to the Editor, except this is a Letter to the Reader with a target audience of one.

Dear Letters to the Reader:

You can go to hell (that’s right, I might not let you right hell in the fish wrap, but I can damn well write it my letter to you, schmucko). No passing go. No collecting $200. If you don’t like our editorial decisions at our fish wrap here’s a suggestion, convert your 1-bedroom, old geezer-smelling condo into a pressroom complete with a typewriter because I’ve seen how you’ve finger-banged computers and trust me, you’re better off with a Royal than a PC. Then untie the purse strings and buy your own press. They run about $100K, so you might have to lift the mattress up to get at your secret savings – a word of warning, don’t mess up the hip when you lift that urine-soaked mattress of yours. And presto, you have your own damn newspaper. If you want to write a 1,600-word opus on why President Bush is really an alien from the planet Conservo sent here on a recon mission to score some hot, drunk coeds, go right ahead. I won’t stop you. It’s your fish wrap. If you want to jerk off onto page A4 and leave your cottage cheese for the readers in your nursing home, go right ahead. Who am I to stop you? I’m just a prison work camp employee charged with reading your senile ramblings.

And for the record, that’s 1,256 words, Fathead Gasbag.

Dream a little dream

When it comes to dreams, I'm a senile old coot who can't remember where he left his hemorrhoid cream let alone a dream that started airing at 3:30ish a.m. So when I remember what story my brain felt like airing I'm compelled to jot the mental film down or at least tell Wife while get ready for a day at the prison work camp and she's working hard for that last hour of sleep before she has to get ready for her prison work camp.

She's a dream savant. Wife will recall dreams from 10 years ago and retell them with spooky accuracy, right down to what color toes the three-toed whachamajig nails were as it chased her through Disneyland's "It's a Small World" while all the little children pelt her with Gummy Bears and sing "It's the End of the World (as we know it)."

That's the kind of things Wife dreams about. It makes me wonder what her pre-natal vitamins are laced with.

As for myself, I dream about football players wrapping their underwear around my pointy head.

I'm in a coffee shop with my buddy, the Crazy Asian, and we're talking Charger football and this weekend's game. In line to order are three or four behemoth human beings in Tennessee Titan uniforms - the Chargers opponents this Sunday. Because my mouth gets me in trouble in both real life and my dreams, I say within earshot of the Titans that "they suck, the Chargers have nothing to worry about."

"Dude, you shouldn't have said that," Crazy Asian says and points behind me at large masses of muscle and flesh that are the football players.

"Oh, I'm sure they didn't hear me," I turn, and they stare me down. I guess they heard. So I do what any red-blooded, courageous American male would do in this situation. I ran like the roadrunner.

From behind me I heard, "get 'em!" and figured it was on like Donkey Kong. I was going to be a Michael melt once these land masses caught up with me.

I ducked into a bathroom and hoped for an empty stall to hide in, but my typical luck follows me into sleep and they're all locked. Meanwhile standing in front of me are three Tennessee Titans, one of which is holding underwear - tighty whitees - likes it a leather strap, pulling it taut so it makes a popping sound each time. This wasn't going to end well. They admonished me for saying such things. And since I often stand by my word, I told the guys they obviously misunderstood what I meant when I said, "The Titans suck." They didn't buy it and quickly levied my punishment, despite my pleas and kicking and squirming like a pinned baby seal receiving medicine.

Let's just say the underwear didn't smell exactly like roses. It was more like the fertilizer used on the soil around the roses, except it smelled more like poo than dirt.

After the incident they let me up and we started talking football. I agreed they were much better than I was giving them credit for, and they said the Chargers would be a tough matchup.

Then Wife woke me up.

Maybe I should stay away from those 9 p.m. Jamba Juice runs just before bedtime, or mix the drink with some Vodka to really spice up the dreams.

Art of noise

Our DVD player worked about as well as a chili-fed baby.

The unit was nearly six years old, and I only know that because it - along with the speakers - were a wedding present from my aunt and uncle (the latter of which was my drinking buddy in Vegas, but that's a another trip down repression road that will be saved for another day).

Last year, the Vomitter (our DVD player) prepped us for parenthood in its own plastic and silicon way. Just like a freeloader fed mashed apricots and turnips, the machine would spit back the DVD we desired to view. We'd put a movie in, and five seconds later after much whirring, clicking and grinding (in my vast electronic experience, grinding is always - ALWAYS - bad) before the unit decided it didn't want to play that movie. Apparently, the Vomitter and Wife had something in common - neither of 'em liked my movies. Pulling again from the vast electronic gizmos FAQ stored in my bean, I determined there was a complicated fix - pull out the DVD, blow into the gizmo, reset the DVD and close the tray slightly harder for it to "take." At first, the Vomitter would play the DVD on the second try, thanks to my Mr. Fix-it expertise. However, second tries turned into third tries, to fourths, fifths, ninths, 14ths until Friday night when it took us longer to get the movie going than actual viewing time.

That's when Wife charged me with an important quest. One that would reshape the Melissa family history and bring happiness to our kingdom once again. Research new movie-playing gizmos to replace the Vomitter. Doling out cash on any electronic gadget is Mardi Gras and Fourth of July all rolled into on in our household since Wife keeps our cash and credit cards in a secret underground bunker where she only knows the location and combination to enter. I have to fill out fund request reports (similar to TPS reports) to get a little green for the weekend. Questions like "How do you plan to spend $_______?" "Where do you plan to spend $_______?" And "Will strippers be handling any portion of the $_____?" Then those requests are sent to the governing board, which I assume is comprised of her and the pooches.

So, when she came home with my credit card in hand I snatched it from her fingers like a trained Dolphin and headed off to the store. Afraid I'd litter our TV room with more gadgets than just the DVD player, Wife leashed me up and accompanied me to the store. That wasn't a bad idea on her part, though, because I would have came back with more than just a DVD player. Instead of me refilling her fifth Tequila Sunrise of the morning ("because the baby is thirsty") I'd have our new robotic housekeeper/nanny, Hilda, do the dirty work - a little gift to my Snookums for pooping out our first born because I'm nothing if not all heart. Hell, if there was a electronic gizmo to adjust my nuts I'd buy that, too.

We wander into the local computer geek store and find the shaggiest 15-year-old store employee to help us find the unit we need. The home theater are is littered with other suckers like Wife and I, but we trudge on and find ourselves a kid with the constellation Orion in whiteheads pockmarking his forehead to help us. We ask him a few easy questions and he answers in a language that I'm sure only computers and various electronic gadgets can understand. I just want to part his mop-top hairdo so I can see his Red Bull drunk eyes and yell, "Quit speaking Klingon or you'll end up a dateless Halo junky who'll end up marrying your game avatar. Now speak to me like I'm 4." Geek speak pricks my ear drums and makes my sphincter pucker, and when I told the voice-cracking punk that, he dumbed down his sales spiel so I and my unborn freeloader could understand.

As it turns out, and just like the little geek said, we can't just buy the DVD player to go with our speakers. We have to buy a new system. I'm not sure why, I didn't understand what the geek was telling me, all I knew is that the unit currently on top of our TV was nothing more than an extremely large paper weight (or a weapon against home invaders that I can lift and throw it before the HI hides behind a couch).

Once again, hosed by the Japanese man. It was much easier to hate 'em when they were just bombing our boats. Now they screw us over, but we don't mind as much because we can still watch our Full House DVDs while getting jobbed.

I tried researching the best home theater systems for our us, but after reading all that electronic mumbo-jumbo my eyes went crossed and gray matter oozed out my left nostril. So with the little information I retained, I tried to glean what I could from the salesdork and the stickers on the shelves and we came away with a discounted higher end model. Discounted because the sucker came back without a box. Discount and high-end model spoke to Wife, so she snapped open her key card, checked the verification code and then handed me the credit card to buy our new DVD unit.

It took just six-and-a-half hours to install, and finally at 2 a.m. I opened the DVD tray, and played our first movie on our new system - "Raiders of the Lost Ark" - at the top volume level so folks in Prescott - 70-some-odd miles away - would wake up and think a giant boulder was barreling down the mountain aimed for their little hamlet. That's how loud this system is. I get wood just thinking about it. I got wood listening to it last night, but I think that was due to the sound vibrations causing light friction between my junk and my skivvies.

And with that, I'm heading off to test the new gizmo again with a movie that will utilize every sound and color that little processor can handle - "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."