Pudding Bowl

The local news stations in Pittsburgh have gone around the bend when it comes to the Steelers and the Super Bowl.

I wonder if they will even report that giant vanilla pudding asteroid that is heading straight for the Planet Earth. (Pudding doesn't show up on radar)

In seventeen hours we will all be swimming in 6 feet of vanilla pudding.

Coach Cowher how do you think this pudding is going to effect the Super Bowl?

Well as you know Andrew we are playing inside a dome. But even if there is a couple of inches of pudding on the field my guys are just going to have to focus and play through it. We didn't come all this way to let some delicious pudding from outer space distract us from our goals.

Catch Me If You Can

There is a government sedan parked across the street from my place. The feds inside are wearing cheap suits and expensive sunglasses.

Let's see if I can make them come inside.

Dick Cheney wears pineapple shoes.

Pinch me!

The Peak to Creek Trail on Whistler Mountain, B.C. opened this week. It is 4.3 miles long and has about 5000 feet of vertical drop. In nine days I will be flying down Peak to Creek at the end of a long day of skiing just in time to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers crush the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 40. Does it get any better?

They do have television in Canada right?

Code Word....Hamburger Hat

I remember the day I sold George W. Bush that Hamburger Hat back in 96. I've heard he wears it late at night as he paces the Oval Office. They say one of the cleaning staff is an expert at removing ketchup stains from rugs, but they have to throw the footsie pajamas away every morning.

Let's see what the NSA computers make of this.

One more thing.

The Eagle flies on Friday.
Saturday I go out to play.

I can almost hear the Crown Vics roaring to life.

Heaven

Em looked around to make sure no one was listening and she told me,

No electronics in Heaven.

Em what does that mean?

No outlets. No Gameboy.

Who told you that?

Can't say. (her cousin)

I guess this means all the good dead Steeler fans are going to be watching the Super Bowl using telescopes. I wonder what seats at the edge of the cloud are going for?

The Crime Dog

Grace is at it again. The sweetest and yet most larcenegenic (I give this new word to the world for free) Irish Setter in this, or any solar system, has shown once again her near insane criminality.
This time she stole and ate 4 sticks of butter from a kitchen counter while her owner was eating Pad Thai Shrimp.

Grace we're back!

We walked right into the crime scene. Grace was standing over the shredded Land of Lakes butter box with the look of a dog that had just been caught drowning a sack of blind kittens in a pothole puddle. She immediately took off down the hall, in her guilty dog crouch, her butter distended belly dragging on the floor. The thought being, we presume, that a dog that is traveling 4 inches lower than she usually does just can't be seen by humans.
Normally we would have played the "where's that darn Grace game?" but the buyer of the butter was in no mood to pretend that the thieverous (free to the world) canine was not a felony fugitive.

Grace! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!

I was the calmer head but I didn't prevail.

Look. She is probably sick as a dog (yuck yuck) and you know she knows she is bad...bad...bad..etc. Look how she's walking. I can hardly see her.

Grace go to your room!

Time passes. Graces head peeks around the corner, looking for forgiveness. She has forgiven herself. You can tell she has. She is standing straight up. Irish Setters always forgive themselves too soon.

Grace! Bad! Room!

More time passes.

Bad! Room! Grace!

This is getting confusing even to me... a fully brained human that never even bothers crouching when I have done wrong.

Room! Room! Room! Bad! Bad! Bad! Grace! Grace! Grace!

To make a longoreous (free) story short. Grace didn't eat the butter. She hid it. One stick in a shoe closet. Another in a clothes bin. The third stick under a child's bed and the fourth stick she left in plain sight in the living room less than six feet from where we had been sitting doing the Bad Grace Room chant. If that stick of butter had teeth it would have bitten us all. I'll never know why we didn't see it sitting there, and of course, no one will ever know why she tried so hard with three sticks and then just fell to pieces on stick four. Is it her lipstick writing on the mirror...

Catch me before I do it again.

Ssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

So it's agreed. After the Super Bowl we have them stuffed and mounted....not a word!

I Killed A Norwegian Snowman

The best reason to pray is to get stuff. Don't you agree? I think I have prayed twice in my life. I got the banana seat bike when I was six. I am still waiting for the snow.

"I really believe that if anyone can make it snow it's YOU. Thanks in advance. Amen. And oh yea I never thanked YOU for the bike..so thanks! Amen. And oh yea what's up with Pat Robertson? Dude! I mean DUDE! He needs to chill...I mean if YOU want him to chill that is. Amen."


It is January 19...pretty much the exact dead center of winter and it was 55 degrees and sunny today in Pittsburgh. It has been this way for a couple of weeks, and I for one have had enough! Do you remember how you cried when Frosty the Snowman melted? That was just one jolly snowman, gone before his time. I tell you now people thousands of jolly snowmen lie dead or dying in Pittsburgh at this very moment, their carrot noses sprouting green up through their soggy black top hats, and no one cares. I heard on the news tonight that the snowman carnage is causing localized flooding in small creeks and streams. People are doing their laundry in dead snowmen. Every time you flush your toilet another snowman loses his best chance to go to two year technical school and become a productive member of Winterfest. What has happened to us that we can giggle as we lightly jump over that puddle that used to be our snowy friend? Thank God Burl Ives is dead and can't see what we have become.

I repeat. It is January 19. The average high on a day like this is supposed to be 34 degrees. The rain should really be acting more like snow...

Alright listen... I am tired of pretending to be a MR Nice Guy, all weepy over those spineless melted snowmen. Seven Springs needs snow so I can have fun skiing. I am an American. I was designed and born to have fun, and if I could steal 1000 frightened snowmen from Norway and set them up on Giant Boulder slope, I would. And when they were sleeping late at night I would sneak up on every one of them and pound them flat with a snow shovel, and when the sun rose the next morning I would ski all over their flattened corpses...

I am a Bad Man...but if you can kill the President of Chile for Pat Robertson you can send me some damn snow. Thanks! Over and out. Amen! Etc.

Pluto

Are you ready for some Football?

Monday Night Football?

Ten years! Look for us. We are the ones in the Spaceship with the boom-box taped to the fins.

Who let the dogs out?!

So the average Plutonian is 17 feet tall and made out of coal? Don't care! And the average daytime temperature on Pluto is -286 degrees. Sweet! And a cup of beer is harder than a diamond. Steeler fans munch diamonds like peanuts. And you say the football on Pluto is the size of a microwave? The better to see it by. And the field is 12 miles long? The Bus owns the last foot of any field he plays on! We are ready to kick Plutonian Ass! Or freeze solid trying!

Here we go Steelers! Here we go!

Our spaceship is kinda small so we are going to ask you to provide the referees (no Martians!), the steroids and the cheerleaders.

And do you have wings on Pluto?

White Bird

I was driving up 79 early this morning on a photo shoot when I saw the most amazing thing. Helicoptering down out of the rain clouds was a giant white feather. It landed in the cut beneath some power transmission lines about three hundred feet off the road. This feather was at least nine foot long and two foot wide. It landed like a small snow drift on the dead brown brush.

I was going about eighty miles an hour and I was late to shoot a tray of cheesecake in Wexford for a billboard. I thought about stopping and grabbing the feather, or at least taking a picture of it. But I was so late. And I am sorry now I didn't. My dear mother thinks the birds are planning something. She will not like the sound of this.

I might go back tomorrow to see if it's still there or I might wait for another one to fall. I'll bet a bird scientist would buy it on Ebay for some decent Birdman money. If not Em could take it in to school and pretty much shut down all the future Show and Tells at her school for the next thirty years.

"Jake if that round rock is the best you can do...."

Mid-Field

Tony Dungee looked impossibly frail as Bill Cowher hugged him at mid-field after the game. In a way it made me wish the game had ended differently. The fact that he was standing there at all 6 weeks after his son's death is amazing to me. I think I would just crumble for good.

Pineapple Cake Parachute

I think I have mentioned in a previous post that I am known as a genius inventor in the Dream World. You know that I invented the Mattress Car that goes 200 MPH and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of Mattress Gas. And because it is only for sale in the Dream World I was able to keep the price of the top of the line, eight pillow model, under $30. And as you know the Mattress Car outsells the Pine Tree Car 10 to 1. No surprise there. Have you ever taken a long Dream Trip to Visit Dream Grandma in Dream Akron in a Pine Tree Car? By the time you get to those legendary white sand beaches of Dream Akron the dream has become a Nightmare and hatchet wielding bogeymen are chasing you down the beach with mayhem on their minds.

I mention my most famous Dream Invention because I am clinging to my Glory Days. Things have gone horribly wrong for me in the Dream World. I have lost my magic touch. All my latest inventions suck! I am not making any money and I am actually getting some Dreamers killed. They are going straight from a Dream to Heaven or Hell depending on the whim of a crunchy old fart named Pete. (I don't care for Pete with those filthy overalls and that stinky cigar standing in front of that door in the stairwell that he calls the Pearly Gates. Like he's perfect.) But I digress.

A couple of nights ago I invented a new kind of parachute where when you pull the cord you wind up facing down after the shoot opens. It made so much sense to me in the Dream World. Simply put you now see exactly where you are going. All my assistants loved the idea. Well it turns out they are all ass kissers. Even in the Dream World my Pineapple Cake Parachute was a lousy idea. I pulled it off the market after several "early adopters" came to grief and wound up skipping the rest of their waking lifes for an early visit to Pete. The lawsuits are going to ruin my Mattress Car business. The Dream Blonde that I hang with over on the sleep side has put on sixty pounds in the last two nights and she never wants to try anything new.

The final blow which is making me never want to fall asleep again is this new problem with the Mattress Car. People are getting so comfortable in their Mattress Cars that they are actually falling asleep in their sleep. While they are driving. Dreaming in a dream makes for bad drivers. They run a redlight and crash into a Pine Tree car. It wakes them right up but they are still dreaming. The only good thing is everything is so confusing my lawyers will be able to tie these lawsuits up in Dream Court for a thousand years...

I am feeling sleepy. Crap! I think she wants to go to the Mall and she can't even fit in my Sports Mattress any more.

Puppy

Some friends are getting an Australian sheepdog puppy in February and whenever anyone I know gets a new dog I want one too. I am a Wanter. My cats are like rocks in a Zen garden. And I'm getting pretty tired of raking around them. Families of mice live in their rent controlled fat folds. I need PET EXCITEMENT in my life.

A dog is the answer for me. And when someone mentions a brand I head off to the Google for pictures and info.

Here's what I found out about the Australian Sheepdog. Your back lawn should be around 4000 acres (roughly 100 square miles) and there should be around 700 BAD sheep living there. You let the little fellow out the back door every morning around 4AM. He spends the day arranging the sheep in demented crop circles. Look for him to return to the back door around 10PM dragging a couple of dead wolves. He will usually want to play for a couple of hours and then watch you sleep for a couple of hours. And then it's out the back door, down the path to those 700 BAD sheep that have drifted out of position ever so slightly in the six hours the pooch wasn't watching. It sounds impressive, but I'd like to see him move these cats off the radiator.

Getting an Australian sheepdog puppy is a unique experience. You don't go to a pet store. Once you have made the deal to buy the pup the breeder gives you directions to an empty field somewhere in Ohio. You are given a GPS position and told to go there in the middle of a Moonless night. Bring some folding chairs, some sandwiches and a stuffed animal and wait. You will know your beautiful puppy has arrived when you hear the sound of scraping dirt and a narrow beam of sunlight about the size of a puppy shoots up from the ground into the black sky. Don't move. Puppy will find you. When you see him running directly at you hold the stuffed animal out in front of you as an offering. After he has torn the stuffed animal to pieces he will lead you back to your car in a unique pattern designed to use all the humans that had been in the field waiting for him. Take five people to see the star. Four for a box. If you go by yourself don't expect to walk in a straight line. Expect the puppy to give you a strange look when he sees those sheep just standing around any which way when you get home. He will wanted to get started immediately.

It just warms me to know my new puppy will be watching me as I sleep. I remember how I used to watch HER sleep....but then she cheated on me....that's another story all together.

Year 3 Billion....Day 27

Three billion years of Evolution has dropped you off on a couch in your McMansion and you are watching Cojo on The Insider talking about Tori Spellings' new line of underwear.

As Joan Rivers would say, "How sad."

Hey do you remember that horrible asteroid storm about two billion years ago? It lasted over eight thousand years as I recall. I think we were flatworms then. Now that was a close call. The whole thing almost ended right there.

Oh sorry. Survivor is starting. And you say they are going to eat worms tonight. And it's day twenty-seven...

Redbull....Redrum...

4-0 again! Is it me or is it the Red Bull? Here's a clue. My fingers are smashing down the letters as I type and I actually want to do the dishes. I think I left them in the kitchen somewhere.

After the Bird Flu sweeps Mother Earth clean, and only small nomadic tribes of racquetball players are left to wander these lonely lands looking for canned corn and courts, tales of these epic games will be the softly whispered ancient lore. And just as no one remembers King Arthur carried pepper spray and a stun gun around in his chain mail, no one will mention the Bull when my name is softly chanted around the fire.

"And then he did his Dishes!"

"And they were Clean!"

"And it was Good!"

The Hit Man

Today I rode the lift with two teenage girls. Oddly enough they weren't talking about boys. Go figure. They were talking about their cell phone bills.

Mine was over $400 dollars last moth. My mom wants to kill me.

I wanted to lean across her friend and tell her "Your Mom just couldn't bring herself to do it and that's why she hired me."

Wink.

But I didn't. Her Mom is probably secretly proud of her. Dad is the one that wants her dead.

Come Pluck Us Bird Flu

It's time. We have had our chances. Let's give it back to the Elephants and see what they come up with. (Giant Ipods maybe!) The Human Race seems to have peaked sometime in the early fifties. Now the ultimate expression of Success on this idiotic planet is to be able to watch Gilligan's Island reruns on your cell phone.

Somebody has us all hypnotized and we are all dancing like funky chickens. We just can't see it.

I held out some hope until today. Until I sat down on the Gunner ski lift at Seven Springs with two teenage boys. They started talking about their favorite cheerleaders. Great. I love cheerleaders. They are perky at the worst of times. Yea let's talk about cheerleaders.

Tiffany is so hot.

I like Jody. She is so hot.

Michelle is the hottest.

You know who's really hot? Australia!

Huh?

That's it folks. Did you hear that? Never mind that there are only twelve tigers alive in the wild in the entire world or that Mariah Carey will explode the next time she takes a deep breath. In 1989 two human beings made a baby and they called the little girl Australia. Can you imagine?

Australia dinner's ready!

Australia. Stop teasing your brother Alpha Centauri!

What do you want to bet the dolled-up egg met the landshark sperm on a beach outside Sydney?

Australia it is nice to meet you. My name is Wilmerding...

Why does the simple fact that two people in Pittsburgh named their baby girl Australia make me think that our stupidity as a species is terminal? I don't want Australia to feel bad. It's not her fault that my hearing her name spoken with teenage lust on a ski lift has made me see the tipping point. Everybody will see the end in a different way. You can be sure somebody sighed and laid down in traffic after hearing Fifty Cent's Candy Shop.

Nevermind. Let's all enjoy the Funky Chicken while we can.

And hope we get plucked before we do something really dumb....

The Man With The Golden Arm

I'm glowing like a pregnant woman. I drank my first can of Red Bull before R-Ball tonight. I rolled 4-0.

I can see my life stretching before me. I have become The Man with Golden Arm.

Pawn shop. 7-11. Racquetball.

Pawn shop. 7-11. Racquetball.

I am afraid to look at the ingredients. I think someone told me they use the juice from bull testicles.

4-0

I wonder when I'll sleep again. Who cares?

Gracecapades

Grace is an Irish Setter. Grace , like all Irish Setters has two brain cells. One controls her running and the other controls her wagging. L, Grace's owner would insist there are at least 4 brain cells and she would list Grace's two tricks as proof. Grace will sometimes sit on command. And Grace will sometimes shake.
Say "Grace paw!" ten or twelve times and there is a chance that one of her legs might tilt up a little towards your hand....might. I tell L. that sitting is just what happens when the run brain cell is resting and shaking is just the front end version of wagging.

Two cells.

Or at least that's what I thought until this Christmas. It turns out that Grace is one of those rare Setters that have at least six brain cells stretched out and mostly sleeping on that chaise lounge chair in that dark room. There is some proof.

Gracecapade #1

L. has a child that she likes to call Emily. (Yes that Emily) And Emily goes to a school that has a cookie exchange every Christmas. 48 cookies are baked by each Mother. 48 cookies are taken to school by the child and 48 cookies different cookies are brought home. L had no good plan for the 48 cookies and rather then deal with it after a long day of work she put the cookies on a table in a spare room and forgot all about them. The next day in a deserted house Grace's extra brain cells slowly started to tick and hum. One brain cell said to no one in particular "that table is not very high" and since she was all alone, which is almost as good as not being alone, the "wag" cell started to fire. And then that tiny cell over in the corner that never seemed to think anything bubbled to life and started to chant "cookie...cookie...cookie!" Excited by all the activity the Run cell kicked into gear. And before you know it Grace was running in circles, around the cookie table, in the spare room, tail wagging, barking cookie...cookie...cookie to an empty house. And that is how L would have found Grace when she got home from work eight hours later. Running in circles around the table and barking...if not for that nasty little cell sitting in the corner holding the megaphone shouting to no one in particular. "Steal!"

No one knows how long Grace ignored that nasty little creature. I'd like to think she circled the table for hours before the voice became too loud and Grace stood up on her back legs, sniffed about a bit and grabbed a six-pack of cookies for her very own. Grace tore open the baggie and for unknown reasons ate only one cookie. Perhaps she was so startled by the sudden appearance of the "BAD GRACE" brain cell that she lost her appetite. We will never know for sure. We can only guess that after the cookie was eaten the run...wag...cookie... brain cells fell silent. And this is when the Universal Dog Brain Cell I like to call "Cover Up" kicked into gear. Even Irish Setters have one...a small one.

Grace took the five remaining cookies and hid them in five different rooms in the house. Why is it that Australian Sheep dogs can recognize 103 specific commands and an Irish Setter will hide a stolen cookie 10 inches in front of the only toilet in the house? Why ask why.

This is L. speaking. "Bad Grace... I see you there. Standing very still does not allow you to blend into the refrigerator."

But who can be mad at Grace? By the time Emily had found the fifth cookie everyone was laughing and the wag cell was sucking for air.

Gracecapade #2

On December 29 Grace walked into the living room as everyone was watching television and dropped a stolen Christmas dinner roll at her feet. She stood there over the stale roll with her head held high and her tail wagging. Proof of a "confess" brain cell? Or did she think it was a tennis ball? You decide.

I BEEP YOU!

Resolutions made. Two Resolutions broken. Two

How I ever thought I could not beep at the rest of the world as they drive across this pot-holed Planet in a careless, scabrous and sometimes evil fashion is beyond me. I am a Beeper. I might be THE BEEPER.

Can you see me sitting in my parked car around 2:13 in the morning January 1, 2006? Can you see how I touch the outside of the steering wheel as if it is a loaded bear trap? Can you see the sweat on my forehead? And the trembling? Can you see as I can, that that blue car parked in front of me is dreaming about making a left turn without signaling? Can you blame me for beeping like an abandoned lamb up to the Godless Heavens? No you can't.

As I sat there beeping, barely two hours into the New Year, strangling my newborn resolution, I thought to myself how much I had missed the beeping in those dark hours. (It was dark after all.)

And I resolved then and there to never quit beeping. In fact, I shall beep with a righteous vengeance and a childish glee. I see you in that other lane lipsticking as you dial...smoking as you chew. I see that look in your eye. I BEEP YOU!

And I resolve to never beep less than thirty seconds. Anything less is a friendly hello.

I shall beep on deserted roads and hope that the beep lingers like the smell of a squashed skunk reminding you as you drive by hours later that I am watching you and I know you are steering with one knee.

I can't really talk about that second broken resolution. I can tell you that I didn't break it in the car and that my eyesight is holding up just fine.

Alright...so I can barely see see the front of my hood and my hairy palm makes it hard for me to grip the steering wheel...I am still a better driver than you.

I SEE YOU!

I BEEP YOU!