Beat The Meat

No, literally.



Now that I can breathe again, let’s dissect this article a little bit.

First of all, look at the photo. Italian Americans are up in arms over their portrayal in The Sopranos, but a gumba sausage is okay?

Pittsburgh first baseman Randall Simon was booked for misdemeanor battery for hitting one of the Milwaukee Brewers' popular racing sausages with a bat during Wednesday night's game.

Hands down a phrase I never expected to see in writing: “popular racing sausages.”

. . . and it will be up to prosecutors to determine whether formal charges are filed.

What will the charges be? Assault on a sausage with a blunt object? Does Randall Simon have a history of assault on anthropomorphic grilled foods?

In an event that's a fan favorite at Miller Park, four people in sausage costumes race around the bases between the sixth and seventh innings at Milwaukee Brewers games.

This is also a popular event in the Missouri legislature. But, really, who can resist racing sausages? Or can they? Is it a good idea to humanize food?

Simon took a two-handed chop at the Italian sausage character

All I can say in Simon’s defense is: “Five years ago, a man's fantasy became
a reality in a form never seen before: Kitchen Stadium, a giant cooking arena.”

As she fell, a nearby sausage -- the hot dog -- went down as well.

I can’t breathe again. Must. Stop. Laughing. Hands down, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read.

"They were doing the sausage race. He hit her with the baseball bat . . ."

Wait . . . are we talking about the assault or a date? This comment seems like a quadruple entendre.

"It was very strange," he said.

That’s the understatement of the century.

Rick Schlessinger, the Brewers' executive vice president for business operations, said he felt Simon's "conduct is just unjustified."

Any abuse of an Italian Sausage and a Hot Dog is unjustified. Where is PETA when you need them?

To sum up:

Ryan Borghoff, 16, who wore the bratwurst costume in the race, called the episode "unbelievable."

"He just hit the costume and she fell over," he said. "These things are so top-heavy that it doesn't take much."

Borghoff went on to win the race.

"Somebody had to, I guess," he said.

Again, a phrase I never expected to see in print: “Who wore the bratwurst costume . . .” Wow. That’s almost frightening.

But I think we need to investigate this, because it’s suspicious. We didn’t hear from the Kielbasa who came in second. There were four sausages. Or were there five? Was there a sausage on the grassy knoll?

And I don’t think Borghoff himself is above suspicion. Not only did he win the race, but he was available to the press after such a tragedy involving his fellow sausages.

Did Borghoff have previous contact with Simon? Was he paid off to allow Borghoff?

And where was Tonya Harding at the time?
Discuss Sausages

Blogger Acting Weird

Sorry if you’ve seen strange posts, strange fonts, etc.  I’m having Blogger issues.

The Island of Lost Projects

This is where I live. The Island of Lost Projects. It’s a lot like Fantasy Island except there are no fantasies, jiggley eighties babes or Ricardo Montalban. But still here I am.

Why do I live in the Island of Lost Projects? Because that’s what I do. I start projects and then lose them. Right now I have either lost, forgotten about, abandoned or am too lazy to complete:

The Halves and Half Knots—My Political Blog

Part of this Nutritious Breakfast—My Creative Blog

Jesus Saves—My collection of strange, and ill-advised, Church direct mailings.

Audio Biograpy—My life in song. I’ll get back to that though.

The Truth—Where I mine public domain photos and write stories about them. If you haven’t seen what I’ve done thus far, click to your left.

Earth, Inc.—A science fiction novel about something . . . or other. Actually, I think Earth, Inc. was the title of someone else’s novel and I can’t remember what the hell I was calling mine.

What’s He Building in There—Another novel about a guy who builds stuff. It had subtext. Or maybe it was supertext. Maybe that’s why I never wrote it.

Giant Cyborg—This one never got off the ground. The government found out, sent some mind-control robots and now I love the human race. I promise not to destroy you in a firey ball of robotic death. All my evil tendencies have been abated and now I don’t hate the human race except for three specific male tennis players, Bert Convey and Kip Winger. I used to hate Murray Head, but I got over that. He can spend all the time in Bangkok that he wants.

Pizza Kabobs—This was going to make me rich. A grillable pizza on a stick. You put on pieces of crust, meat, veggies and cheese cubes. Then you put it all on the grill. I was on the verge of a breakthrough in cheese technology that would allow me to have a grillable cheese that melted on the inside but remained solid on the outside. That way it didn’t fall through the grill slats. But Wisconsin found out and sent out goons to silence me. Stupid goons. But, it’s okay. Really. My sauce globules never really worked anyway.

Super Bugs—This was just misguided. Who wanted a bullet-proof bug in the first place? Who shoots bugs?

Gangsta Cruises—Specialty cruises for Gangstas. Never got off the ground. I’m not sure why.

It’s Just Happy Hour!!—It was a dating service for business men who didn’t have time for It’s Just Lunch! Had to shut it down when a bad case of The Clap was running among my clients and someone named Tammy suddenly started driving a Lexus. I’m not sure why that happened.

Biblical Transformers—Saul changed into Paul. That’s all I had. No one cared.

Fronteralls—It was designed for women to abate the . . . uh . . . frontal wedgie. This became a problem when Daisy Dukes or “Hoochie Cutters” became popular. It is a problem that has resurfaced. I’ve noticed that both epidemics have coincided with an upswell of Celine Dion’s career. I’m not saying that the two are related. Then again, I’m not saying they aren’t.

Well, it’s time to go in for my shock treatments now.

Say Something! Gary's Lost It! Someone Grab The Thorizine!

Brutal Youth

In The Days of Future Past and all That Jazz . . .

Yesterday I wrote something entitled, “All I Need To Know About You I Learned From Your CD Shelf” but I figured I would lose friends and influence enemies. Suffice it to say that it was something about how the things we choose to display, CDs, books, movies, actually help define us to strangers. That someone like me would be more likely to talk to a stranger in a bar who makes a sly reference to Cornelius’ “Fantasma” than I would, say, someone who said “Lamal’s theme song for The Neverending Story was the greatest song ever recorded.”

But that’s neither here nor there. Seriously. I deleted it. It doesn’t exist, so for once the expression rings true.

Last night we took Matilda to pick out her very first pair of glasses. She was very mature about the whole process. In fact, she has been looking forward to getting glasses. When she came home from finding out she said, “Now I can look like a geek too!”

At least when I die I’ll be able to know that my kids thought I made wearing glasses cool. So, you know, I’ve got that going for me.

But Matilda went in knowing what she wanted. She had a color and a basic idea of how the glasses should look on her. Rather than rushing through the process or feigning indifference she considered each possible frame thoughtfully and picked her favorite pair, despite the fact that I was pushing child-sized Elvis Costello glasses on her.

Meanwhile, the baby and I were off looking at TVs. I’m training her to throw tantrums whenever she sees a plasma. She kicks her feet and screams, “Please plasma! Need a plasma! My life will not be complete without the beauty, clarity and HD capabilities of an anamorphic, 16X9, wall-mountable plasma screen with stunning digital imagery. Imagine the beauty of The Wiggles on that screen.”

I’m working on her response to Mommy’s “No”. Right now she’s learning, “But won’t the extra-special edition of The Two Towers look amazing on it?” That should convince mommy.

Afterward we went to my sisters to pick up my past. That is to say, that my sister has been housing a bunch of boxes for me for the last seven or eight years. So I ended up spending the evening looking at a bunch of crap I should have thrown out years ago. And I did throw a lot of stuff out. Do I really need a notebook that proclaims, perhaps a hundred times, how much I loved whatever current girlfriend I had in high school? No. I say, no. Those are gone. There’s no need to remember how pathetic I was, is there? I mean, I can just look at myself now. Bad hair, ugly shirts, pasty white legs. I look like Ward Cleaver on a bender.

But a rush of names came flooding back to me like a bunch of evil little gnomes with hatchets. Old girlfriends like Lisa, Amy, Tracy. I had forgotten about most of those old girlfriends and our intense high school relationships that consisted of notes written in the heat of math class that proclaimed our undying love (or at least until fourth period). What’s funny is I’m hard-pressed to remember what they looked like. Sorry girls. I’m sure you’re heartbroken as you think, “And Gary is . . .” But, hell, that was almost fifteen years ago. In the time I’ve forgotten your faces, I’ve replaced those memories with thousands of great songs, hundreds of books, movies and the three beautiful girls I’m spending my life with.

It seems apropos to quote Robert Plant when I think about my current and past lives:

Sitting around singing songs 'til the night turns into day
Used to sing on the mountains but the mountains washed away
Now I'm singing all my songs to the girl who won my heart
She is only three years old and it's a real fine way to start

There are other names that came flooding back. Mostly the time I spent with Patrick Rebmann and Paul McClung as some sort of strange trio. Patrick and I used to stage fake sword duels, complete with mock-Shakespearean blank verse, around a mock-piazza at a local dining/shopping area. Paul and I used to sit in his room and discuss the many layers of the song “Comfortably Numb” and retire to his balcony to smoke cigarettes and talk about death.

We thought we were so damn cool back then. In 1988-1990. And, in retrospect, I guess we were cool. We were some of the only teens who used to sit in McDonalds waiting for a movie to start and discussing the significance of the rise and fall of the Third Reich and wondering how far those waves of effect would carry (they’re still waving, by the way). We used to quote Dante (or what we could of Dante) to each other. And of course, we’d dream about girls. Sigh. Good old girls. Our obsessions ran from girls to music and back to girls. The two most significant things in the world.

It’s funny how the past sometimes comes out of the smoky haze to tempt you with memories. You revel in those memories for a while, good and bad, and let them drift back into the smoky haze again. If you’re smart, you’ll let them stay in the smoky haze until needed. After all, the past is merely a ghost that has a strange need for exhibition.

I’m sure Patrick and Paul are still cool. I’m a geek. These things happen. Their moms let them get Van Halen airbrushed on the backs of their jeans jackets and now I’m sitting here listening to Olivia Tremor Control and realizing that, outside of my wife and one other person I know (who introduced them to me), no one else I know is aware of them.

Oh well, as Elvis Costello once said,

Now there's a tragic waste of brutal youth
Strip and polish this unvarnished truth
The tricky door that gapes beneath the ragged noose
The crippled verdict begs again for the lamest excuse

Or something like that. Maybe I meant to say:

My science fiction twin
Escorted by his lovely nieces
Filled up his purse dictating verse
While painting masterpieces
His almost universal excellence
Is starting to disturb me
They asked how in the world he does all these things
And he answered "Superbly"
He's trapped in his own parallel dimension
That's why I'm so forgiving
But how could I possibly forget to mention those fifty-foot women
Who put the fascination back into my science fiction twin

Discuss Stuff and Things

I'm a Shadow Dancer, Baby

This weekend?

Food. Explosions. Beer. Buried car parts. Someone from the past asking to have his/her name removed from the website. Nothing too exciting.

Instead, let’s talk about the baby. The ultra-cute, painfully adorable baby who is quickly growing up into an intelligent, and strangely dangerous, toddler.

For example, the other day when she was given her breakfast she belted out, “Thank you!” And she hasn’t stopped. She’s saying please and thank you better than any other kid I’ve ever met. Suddenly so polite.

I suspect it’s a cover for some nefarious plot. It could be. Who knows? The space aliens talk to her in her sleep.

She made an important discovery last week that may have deep ramifications for the rest of her life.

We were outside in the afternoon waiting for Mom and sister to return from the doctor. It was hot. Like Africa hot. Birds were falling out of the sky from heat exhaustion. Our neighbor’s pool had evaporated and the squirrels were shaving themselves and taking to wearing Bermuda shorts.

So we started throwing ice out on the driveway to watch it melt. It’s fascinating you know. It’s science in action. Like education, only fun.

Well, Gertrude wanted to save the ice from its screaming, melting death. So, she ran out into the driveway to save the dihydrogenoxcide from changing from a solid to liquid and eventually to a gas. “I must stop the evaporation,” she cried.

While standing on the driveway she noticed she wasn’t alone. Right in front of her was another baby. A dark baby, with no face. No discernible features to speak of. But where ever Gertrude stepped, this dark baby would follow. As if this dark baby were attached to her feet.

She started backing away slowly, lest this dark spawn of an evil universe attacked. When she got back to the porch, the dark baby was gone. I laughed and explained that it was her shadow.

“Shadow!” she yelled. But she didn’t seem to believe my explanation. But, from the porch it looked like shadow baby had retreated to its home world, never to bother Gertrude again. Or so she thought.

The driveway seemed safe. So she returned to her task of saving the ice from death. But that damn baby was back. She looked down and saw Shadow Baby attached to her feet again, like an alien trying to leech her life-force, and she screamed, jumped into the air and flew across the space that separated us like she had been shot in the ass by 10,000 volts. She didn’t want to be on the driveway anymore. She didn’t want to be outside anymore. It wasn’t safe. The soul-sucking shadow baby was there.

So we went inside to get a drink of lemonade. When I turned on the kitchen light, there was Shadow Baby again. She’s like a vampire that never leaves. She’s stealthy, sneaky. You never know where she’ll show up next. Again, Gertrude leapt through the air.

We gave up on lemonade. Clearly any lemonade that was in the vicinity of Shadow Baby was not safe. That damn shadow probably poisoned it with shadow juice.

Her mothering instincts inflamed by the encounter with Shadow Baby, she headed off to her room to get one of her babies. When she turned on the light, she screamed and ran. Shadow Baby was there too.

She’s still afraid of Shadow Baby. But she’s beginning to accept her presence. Gertrude doesn’t respond with anger or fear anymore. Just suspicion.

Because she knows that damn baby will suck out her soul. She just knows it.

Discuss

Happy Stuff and . . . er . . . stuff

I’d post today, but I have stuff to do. Of course, this is a post. But it’s not a significant post. Ah hell, you know what I mean.

I do have a story to tell you, but it’ll have to wait. It’s entitled “Me and My Shadow”. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Well, no, you’ll just laugh. Okay, you might not laugh. Screw it. I won’t even write it up. Are you happy now?

Have a nice 4th, if you’re American. Have a nice Friday if you’re other. We here in the US like to celebrate our independence by searing animal flesh, bathing it in sweet and tangy sauces and cap off our day by drinking too much beer and blowing things up.

I don’t know exactly how that makes us happy to be free. But it’s fun.

Unless you’re the animal who gave us the flesh.

Yeah . . .

Someone I know, and I'm not naming names, managed to delete a bunch of files from his computer today that he didn't want deleted.

Now I'm not naming names, but this guy has been searching down back ups of the files ever since.

Without naming names, this guy is pretty stupid.