That Big Scary Word's Largest Drum Will Get You Every Time

On the other hand, our for-one-game former quarterback can't seem to get his Yaffa Blocks and beanbags unpacked, and is now angling for a position at... the University of Cincinnati. The "You Got The Express Campus Tour" Quote of the Weekend Award:

"My whole point of going to Notre Dame was the same reason I committed here," Jones said, according to the newspaper. "The atmosphere on campus, they've got top-notch facilities."

...Yeah. I've been to UC after dark? And the "atmosphere" is one of "duck inside as fast as humanly possible." Those "top-notch facilities" consist of the city's best hospitals, because it's the place to be if you want a lot of bullet-digging practice. Happy snapping!

bad dream, bad bad dream at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Elegant Weapon

Several of you have brought this story to my attention, this business of NASA stowing a prop Luke Skywalker lightsaber on board Discovery for next month's launch. The news copy leads us to believe that the lightsaber will be jettisoned from the orbiter, which strikes me as a typical government-type decision; if you're going to have a collectible, you keep it in the original packaging. You don't expose it to potential eBay value-lowering heat differentials of four hundred degrees and an utter vacuum. And why Luke's lightsaber? If we're going to subject anything from the Star Wars universe to disintegration upon contact with the upper atmosphere, let it be JarJar Binks.

But then I watched the attendant raw video with the above-linked version of the story, and I learned that the prop will instead twirl on-orbit with the International Space Station before its return to Lucasfilm, and possibly subjected to microgravity behavior experiments, such as discovering whether simply holding a Skywalker's lightsaber in space causes a person to instantly whine and make out with immediate family members.

Me, I'm learning from the lightsaber launch already. Behold what I have gathered from the unedited video of the prop delivery to the Oakland Airport:

1) You can put a non-Ewan McGregor person in a Jedi costume, but it makes him not a Jedi. It makes him a church softball league umpire in an extra-large brown hoodie.

2) X-wing pilots tend to lose a bit of their mystique when they pick their wedgies upon alighting from a prom limo. There is in the original trilogy an X-wing pilot named Wedge, true, but I really, really hope we just haven't learned why.

3) A prop lightsaber in a glass box borne by a guy in a Chewbacca suit is majestic right up to the point when Chewbacca trots past the information kiosk, the unclaimed rolly bag pile, and the john.

4) I am thinking lightsabers are on the TSA's Prohibited Items List, and I would have paid large amounts of money to see the X-wing guy wanded.

props (the uncarried by Chewbacca kind) go to Tony The SuperReader at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Chad Johnson Is So Totally My Wacky Uncle

I've kept my mouth largely shut about Bill Simmons and all things Sports Guy, but then somebody brought the following recent quote of his to my attention:

Our favorite teams are extended families. There's no way you'd boo a family member at a Little League game, so why is it okay to boo someone on your favorite team?

Bill. BILL! Oh. Bill. This is coming straight at you from a person who has formed an emotional attachment... or two to professional athletes in her life, and who also, three years or so down the line, is fully prepared to heave first base Pinella-style at any person who dares to look even slightly askance at the athletic prowess of Jim the Small Child Nephew, but these people? Are not your family. They are ridiculously wealthy athletes, grown men who receive mostly-free college educations and who now shove, throw to, or run after other ridiculously wealthy athletes. Your family is your amazingly sexism-tolerating wife and your very young daughter, whom I dearly hope within a decade will look up at you with big eyes and pipsqueak questions about what a strip club is, and why you wrote about them so very, very much, and if she might work at one when she grows up because Daddy seems to enjoy them so immensely.

I just really, really doubt that if Tom Brady began drawing a check from, say, the Jaguars tomorrow, he would take a call from you and agree to take a few snaps for the Patriots next Sunday instead, just because you asked him to, and hey! Bill's family!

Booing, like tazing, happens, bro. You don't do it just because your team is losing or simply matched against a far superior squad. You reserve it only for when your team, which consists of people who are extremely well compensated for any momentary lapse in self-esteem, is all-out sucking, so that they know you expect better of them than to suck like this and are embarrassing you and you won't stand for it. I did it when Ron Powlus called his ninety millionth handoff at the top of a series when I was a senior, as I was a poli sci major and could see it coming, much less the defense who'd had the opportunity to study three years of offensive game film, and I mean "offensive" in every single connotation of the word here. (Side note: Ron--or Dammit,Ron! as he was affectionately known, there in the student section--is now Notre Dame's quarterback coach and for the past two years also served as the recruitment organizer, which explains A LOT.) And I booed when the NBC Commercial Time-Out Guy on the sidelines raised his unfortunate game-halting orange glove in the air, because he sucked also.

But I applauded the team as a whole after the game when the players came back to the student section and raised their gold helmets in the air, because, well, at least they didn't cheat that I knew of, Bill. Booing consistently piss-poor play doesn't mean you've forfeited your fandom. You do it because you care. You do it because your team isn't cowboying up. You spank your team because you love. And it is okay.

In other news, Central Florida carries on without me.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGARBAGE!! at: mbe@drinktothelasses

Red Cheeks, For Serious

I was ironing last night, and simulatenously rocking. out. to the 90's channel that comes out of my television. I do not pretend to understand or afford it; I merely enjoy hearing, for the first time in a decade and a half, "Batdance."

But then Shania Twain showed up, which meant that the ironing board and about a week's worth of skirts flew through the air in a frantic attempt to MAKE HER DERIVATIVE FAKE-NAMED SELF GO FAR, FAR AWAY. When the cotton-poly blends came to a rest, I found myself looking at: The Bachelor.

Twenty-five Shanias of all races and ages came pouring out of limos and said such self-uterus-hating things as the following:

"I'm a nurse, and I'm here to check your vitals and make your heart go pitter-pat."

"They said you were hot, but you're a fire extinguisher!" (very, very sadly, I must add--sic.)

"I'm an international citizen of the world."

One, named "McCarton," since her parents think it's awesome to name children after drive thru meal combos, decided to array herself in a dress consisting entirely of beaded fringe. I can understand that. Any self-respecting woman wants to be able to tell her someday-babies, "As soon as your father saw the beads dangling from my boobs, he knew we were meant to be."

Another woman, whose name I forget because her parents do not hate her, showed up with her night-setting cheeks in full blast. I made a better showing with blusher when I was seven years old and sitting down to my Strawberry Shortcake vanity with a TinkerBell rougepot. I have Halloween pictures of myself from this era with subtler makeup jobs.

A rejectee was a high school biology teacher, and I was somewhat hopeful when I saw what she does for a living, because-- hey. That is an actual career, one which deals in cat guts, so props. But once she departed roseless, she wandered the parking lot, wailing, for, as the promos just before the rose ceremony should have warned her, her dream of marrying the bachelor... was crushed... FOREVER. Have fun at school on Tuesday morning, Ms. Biology Teacher! May your splendid example of independent womanhood shine forever upon the impressionable faces of your young female charges.

As to The Bachelor himself, he is faux-scruffy and owns four bars and would like to marry a "sexy" person. He bespoke of his initial impressions of all the ladies, and said of one woman who greeted him in Greek: "... but for her to follow it up in a different language, I felt an instant connection." Mmmmm. There is no better connection than having absolutely no clue what your mate is saying. I feel this way whenever I watch Josh The Pilot talk to another pilot about endless piloty crap. When he starts speaking entirely in acronyms and begins to address at great length such topics as pre-wired mode-c transponder kits and multiengine land ratings? We are very deeply bonded.

And! Coming up later in the season! The Bachelor has... an identical twin! Who will be... employed in... some... nefarious reality fashion! And his name is Chad, just like Space Ghost's evil twin! Man, you can't trust those freaky samey-same twins.

vicki vale at: mbe@drinktothe lasses.com

Screened

James Brown (the alive one) sloooowed it down yesterday on NFL Today. He had a Very Serious Message. He wished to discuss his recent interview with Donovan McNabb, as apparently said interview caused some controversy, and he just wanted to somberly remind the world that, honestly, we must all truly respect one another, a sentiment that would have been somewhat less undermined had the large TV screen behind him not been, at that very moment, displaying the crotch of a Dallas Cowgirl.

The National Football League: Spearheading the progress of the human race since 1920.

boomer just kept quiet at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com