It's Magic

The TV machine has been filled with images over the past 2-3 weeks of a spiffy new device called the Motorola Droid. The Droid is a cell phone machine that enables people to use the telephone while not connected to a phone line. Perhaps making more news than this new cell phone machine is the catchy but not-too-saccharine popular music song that runs during the iDon't portion of the advertisement before it is rudely interrupted by the television machine advertisement for the phone machine. I know it is hard to keep track of all the ins-and-outs here, but I have confidence in my readership and our collective intelligence . After a little bit of internet machine searching, I discovered that the singer/songwriter of this song is a woman my age born with the name Maureen McDonald in Detroit, Michigan. Her artist name is MoZella and she seems to have some sort of soft spot in her heart for Michigan because the name of her second album machine is Belle Isle. I guess she's had some degree of success because the Wikipedia machine tells me that she has toured with the likes of David Matthews and the band of said David Matthews. Way to be from Michigan, Maureen.

Enjoy the song in its entirety right here from the YouTube machine. I promise it won't be interrupted by any gadget machine commercials.

Here's to U of D High School

Facebook was filled yesterday with former classmates of mine linking to this story that is currently featured in Time's special Assignment: Detroit feature. Awesomely, this story is about the greatest high school in Michigan, if not the galaxverse, The University of Detroit High School and Academy Established 1877. The year after I graduated, a guy named Drew started a popular cheer that went "Give me a T - T - Give me an H - H - Give me an E - E - Give me a U - U..." and so on until the entire fan base had spelled out "The University of Detroit High School and Academy Established 1877." The cheer took several minutes to complete and most often people forgot what part of the cheer they were spelling, but it was OK as long as Drew kept his focus. As great as the school was and is, they didn't discourage us from idiotic cheers.

Another name for the article could have been "Why Catholic Central is a Bunch of Pussies" - ZING CC

Ah, just a little bit of lingering high school rivalry against a school that has generally vastly superior athletics (but is filled with pussies - ZING).

I'm a white suburban boy, born and raised in the 'burbs, but aside from my family, nothing shaped the person that I am today more than my experiences at The High. The statement that resonated most strongly with me in the article is how the school, which remains inside the border of Detroit despite dropping enrollment and White Flight in the mid-1900s, allowed surbanites to cross over scary 8 Mile and better integrate with the great city of Detroit. Admittedly, the school remains in a safe and well-kept area on the outskirts of Detroit, but the school lived and breathed Detroit. Students volunteer thousands of non-compulsory hours every year to service projects in and around the city - donating and delivering food, cleaning up parks, standing fast against Russian communists, all sorts of great things for the city. The administration, faculty, staff, and students hold so much pride in regard to the simple location of the school. We stand with our city for no reason other than choice. This city birthed the school, and the school chooses to stand with its sexually ambiguous parent of Detroit.

It's impossible to really begin to hit on every thing that makes students and alums feel their high school is special, but the Time article is a decent place to start. Cubs are not known for being particularly fierce, but they do love their mommy. Someone decades ago must have known that if the school stayed in the city and Michigan went through some crazy hard times, years later Time Magazine would write an article about it and, eventually, allow me to write this post. That person is the true hero here.

Why, L&O?

Law and Order is a show that is now, has been, and forever shall be, story driven. I like Lupo and Bernard as much as the next guy, but in the 400 years that L&O has been on television, they have solved one zillion cases, thrown at the viewer two zillion twists, and that guy who voiced Lumiere was a star for more than a few years. Lumiere! It was amazing watching them integrate a candelabra week-in/week-out. It was nice for someone to finally break through the candelabra glass ceiling that has been so very prominent in TV through the years. Sure there was always that subplot that if his wicks ever burned down he would suffocate and we couldn't Be His Guest, but that just made the show that much more exciting! That Lumiere sure could sing, though. I miss Jerry Orbach.

I just can't understand why this season they have introduced the undercurrent of Van Buren's cancer. I have seriously seen every single episode of L&O (most multiple times) and I can't remember a single time where they had some sort of ongoing personal story arc like this. When they killed off police officers or DA's after they had been on the show for 1-5 years they would forget about that by the end of the freaking episode. Detective Green was on the show for oodles of seasons and the reference to his departure was "he something something police something". That's about as much explanation as they gave his character.

I find it very depressing and completely unnecessary to incorporate the personal story of cancer into the show. I also find it upsetting that this problem I have with the show has caused me to say cancer in back-to-back posts. I know that they're setting up for some sort of Benjamin Bratt return and it will likely be related to Van Buren's cancer, but let's get back to supermodel murder, pawn shop suspects, and in the end the supermodels younger sister did it because she wanted to marry the husband of the supermodel, kill him, and then take the life insurance policy of her sister and her new husband. Cancer just makes things too confusing.

Antioxidants!

According to this article from Time, Michigan is the nation's number one grower of blueberries. Congratulations Michigan! Of course, Time is just jumping on the bandwagon from my award-winning post On Blueberries that I wrote back on August 13rd. Award-winning is not exactly an accurate statement in that it is not at all accurate. Of course, this article focuses more on the fact that one of the Michigan farms that grows our nation-leading blueberries utilized some variety of illegal migrant and child labor, but that's not that important when you consider all of those delicious balls of blue (hehe) our state produces. If children are required to lead the nation in this category of blueberry production, I'm all for it (for the purposes of any future political career, this is where I must unfortunately say that I am against child labor because of humor shortages across the land).

Here's why I think it's OK that children are picking our blueberries - the antioxidants. I know that when I was younger (and less younger as in today), it was absolutely impossible to work with food without eating mass quantities of that food. As a result, you end up with a bunch of children who are probably cramming their faces with blueberries in the hopes of turning into that girl who turns into a blueberry in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And what comes with all of those blueberry-stuffed faces? Antioxidants and whatever antioxidants may or may not provide in terms of positive health effects (people claim they help with cancer and coronary heart disease - help meaning the reverse of help in this situation). If anything, we should put more children to work in fruit and vegetable fields. In Michigan, we can parlay our blueberry leadership into leading the world into a future of a cancer-immune human through illegal child labor.

Poor Decision Making

This is just a short little story and people have lots of these kinds of stories, but this one is pretty funny. Maureen was shopping at Meijer today (which I continue to believe is the greatest store of all time) and was stuck in line behind an individual who was also making some purchases. This kind of thing makes sense because the person in front of her was at a great store like Meijer and was also at the cash register, so that is a natural time to be making purchases.

What is less natural, though, is a combination of things about this person. She was using a "bridge" card, which is government subsidized food assistance parsed out in monthly allocations, and the amount varies by an individual's circumstances. So when you put all this together, the person in front of Maureen was purchasing cigarettes and crab legs. The bridge card does not work for cigarettes, so this component of the purchase had to come out of the customer's hard-earned cash reserves. I'm not a fan of the cigarettes but I understand and appreciate that people are addicted. What I do not understand or appreciate is why this person who is on government assistance was spending $65 on crab legs. Do you know how many boxes of Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese you can buy for $65? Somewhere between 65 and 130 based on the day. We are in a recession and this person receives the equivalent of food stamps, so I am genuinely amazed by how much she must really love crab legs. Crab legs and blue spandex sweatsuits. Feed my family for a month? Screw that, I'm having two ounces of nearly impossible-to-access meat tonight.

Get on the Barge or Get Out of the Way

Yes, friends, when kickball season ends, there is only one appropriate way to celebrate - 23 scoops of ice cream of various flavors, covered in toppings of several varieties, and piled together onto a green plate. They call it a "party barge" and it is $25 of severe tummy troubles for those who suffer from lactose intolerance. If I was forced to choose between hepatitis and lactose intolerance for me, I don't think it would be slam dunk that I would choose lactose intolerance. I have no idea in what unfortunate situation this type of decision may arise, but they are doing many good things with fighting hepatitis these days. Steve, Brian, and I would like to think that we were being generous when we purchased the party barge for our party of 11, but really we just wanted the opportunity to eat as much ice cream as we could handle and then drink whatever ice cream and topping soup remained at the bottom of the barge (or the "bilge" in ship parlance - see, you learned something today).

I'm proud of our kickball team this year. It was a far more competitive league and we ended up at around .500 ball after starting the season with a whole bunch of bad losses. Our team of ragtag kicking misfits really rallied and pulled together as a group and started playing some truly fundamental kickball - taking the extra base, advancing runners, knocking over opposing team's beer cups that are carelessly resting on the playing field. Way to go guys and girls!

On to more important things, specifically the party barge, you really need to consume one of these things. We bought this one from Rosie O'Grady's in Ferndale - a really beautiful remodeled bar and restaurant at Nine Mile just off of Woodward. I read somewhere that they recently completed their multimillion dollar renovation and upgrade, and it is an impressive and tasty place to eat party barges. I have no affiliation with this establishment, but I have got to appreciate a restaurant that is investing millions of dollars into itself in one of our many fantastic downtowns to beautify itself, the area, and of course just maybe to generate a little additional revenue. You would think 23 scoops of ice cream would be reason enough to eat somewhere, but no, they also offer 1/2 off pizzas on Monday night. That lactose intolerance thing again. If my stomach wasn't what it is, I would be writing this post from the toilet right now.

Further Evidence that I'm a Jerk

Today work was at my parents house instead of the usual locations because it sounds as if someone has installed a lawnmower in my laptop. It is the most annoying computer-related thing I've ever encountered. Every time the fan turns on, the entire computer starts to vibrate and make a noise that you could easily hear from across the room, if not on an entirely different floor. The computer works fine, but that sound, oh that sound. I've started to do things that I convince myself will fix the computer like "punch the fan area on the computer really hard" with the hope that repetitive punching will convince the fan to stop making noise. Not only does that risk serious actual damage to the laptop, it makes me look like an idiot punching my computer in the same place over and over again. I have a new fan module coming tomorrow so hopefully that will fix the problem, but in the meantime, my mom's laptop is the one spare computer I can get my hands on during the day.

Just moments ago, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some coding, and that always-annoying mid-afternoon phone call came with the extended pause between me saying hello and the person on the other end of the phone saying hello. This almost always indicates some sort of telemarketer, and I think I may have written about something similar a few months ago (bonus quiz for my great fans! - have I? and if so, what was I talking about at that point because I have no idea). A split second before I hung up I got the broken "Hello?.....Mr....Ag......(seriously failed name attempt here)." Since I'm at my parents home, this person was referring to my father who is at work, so I had the joyous privilege to cut the person off halfway through the name attempt with a curt and clearly annoyed "I'm sorry he's not here." At this point I was feeling pretty superior and ready for the quick hang up, and this is exactly the moment when my opinion of myself took a painful and enduring hit.

You see, the person on the phone was calling on behalf on one of the Multiple Sclerosis Societies, thanking my dad for his support and to let him know his "packet" was on the way. This also means that the person that I was angry at for the delayed telephone response and terribly botched name was almost certainly a person with MS. Yes, I was feeling superior and smug talking to someone with multiple sclerosis because this person had slight trouble pronouncing my family's last name. Wow, it is not easy to recover from something like that. Why don't I just go outside and kick a homeless person or push over someone's wheelchair with that person still in the chair? I finished the call as cheerfully as possible, embarrassed and ashamed by my lack of patience and understanding. I wish I had a better answer when I think "what is wrong with me?" I also wish that I didn't have to ask myself that question so often.

Life is Unfair

Yesterday morning, I got home around noon, put my feet up, and watched TV for the next several hours. Pretty much everything went according to plan - I finished my run for the half marathon in less than my ideal time, my mom and her friend did great, I saw Maureen and my dad cheering, and I had the chance to cheer for Craig at the 26 mile mark. My stomach was not too upset at the end of the race, and by 5 o'clock, Steve and I had washed away a great quantity of our television backlog. It was a great day - the city of Detroit was alive, the sun was coming up as runners crossed over the Ambassador Bridge, the race was at maximum capacity, and people local and less local were celebrating life and health without any fear of Detroit. No fear of getting there early, walking around the streets to the starting line, running through the heart of downtown, and taking it easy on those same streets on the way back to everyone's cars.

And 3 people died.

These were people of different ages from different places running the half marathon, and they passed away at various locations along the race course. The medical examiner can not yet conclusively declare the cause of death, but each event was likely an unfortunate heart attack or a latent heart condition that manifested itself from the exertion of the run. It is impossible not to feel terrible for these people and their family and friends, and their passing is incredibly tragic. No one has died at the Detroit Marathon since 1994, and then this year on a nearly perfect day for running it happens three times. Not only was this a human tragedy, but also a geographical tragedy. Everyone is tied to the news of their locale, and here is yet another instance in which, through no likely fault of anyone, anywhere, the city of Detroit, state of Michigan, and their beleaguered people are again seen through the negative lens. There is no way to fight back or dispute the facts, just to again sit and wait for the jabs.

This morning I was listening to Howard Stern, who I believe has a firm appreciation for human life and does not take news like this lightly, but he quipped about how fast he would be able to run the Detroit Marathon just to get out of the streets (ha........ha) - another opportunity for those who do not live here and understand the acuteness of the local struggles to take some unobstructed pot shots at Michigan.

These are the types of moments that are utterly depressing to me despite my generally optimistic demeanor. A day of cheer and enthusiasm, replaced by tragedy, enhanced by insult, and what is left is completely undeserved shame. Why must I be made to be feel bad about my accomplishment and my home on a day of positive action?

With all that said, I don't really have a conclusion. Sometimes things just suck. When things suck, I am heartened by the vision of my wife asleep on the couch, TV with Steve, dinner with my family, the thought of the next video of my godson and his parents, and chasing Echo around the garage. Maybe I do have a conclusion from all this, though it is not at all original. I could write it out, but I'd like to think it is pretty clear, and I'm glad I figured it out before I hit "publish."

Cheer for This Guy

Less than 36 hours from now marks my annual dalliance with exercise - running the Detroit half marathon. That is far less impressive than running an actual marathon, but for the time it suits me quite well because I only have to train minimally and the negative post-marathon effects are non-existent. I can also enjoy the excitement of the complete event with half the displeasure, and I get to keep all my toenails.

However, my good buddy Craig (seen above) is running his first complete marathon this weekend. Go Craig! He's a real runner and is hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon, so he will actually be trying hard. It's also cool that he could have done his first marathon in Chicago or somewhere like that, but he stuck with his home state and Detroit. It will be difficult for me to give him the appropriate amount of encouragement because I will likely be in the Port-A-Potty after I am done with my portion of the run, so it is up to the internet community that I have founded and adores me to cheer Craig on through the finish line. If you already are heading downtown Sunday morning to cheer for family or friends, please feel free to add Craig (and to a much lesser extent, me) to your list of people who's name you should yell loudly when you see that person. If you don't already have plans to go downtown for this purpose, what's your problem? Get downtown.

To give the perception that I write more than I actual do, I am going to cut and paste the entirety of a long marathon post that I wrote last year about the marathon experience in Detroit. It's funny because there are some things in there that are less accurate than they used to be, but that's OK because no one read it then, and no one will read it now. But look at how long it is!!


As I type, I am reminded by The Detroit Free Press Marathon website's countdown clock that the Detroit Marathon begins in 1 day, 22 hours, 3 minutes, and 38 seconds. For the purposes of being a little more clear, the marathon begins Sunday morning at just about 7:10 am. I have been involved with this run for either 4 or 5 years now - for the last two years I've run in the half marathon, the three years before that my family participated in the marathon relay, and I plan on running in the half marathon again on Sunday. We're not here to talk about my Grecian physique or my amazing commitment to health and being generally impressive. The Detroit Marathon is one of the single best events of the year for any person to feel connected to the State of Michigan and the largest city in our state. This connection through the run can most clearly be felt by those who are actually participating in the event, but it is also a great opportunity for friends, family, and spectators of the runners to be reminded of their love for Detroit.

Detroit is a city that is beautiful and haunting, and both the beauty and the haunt explode throughout the race course. Individuals start near the Theater District, run by the remains of old Tiger Stadium, twist through Mexican Town, cross over the Ambassador Bridge, run along the Windsor-side Detroit River bank looking back into our beautiful city, through the tunnel back into the D, around Belle Isle, through Indian Village, the Detroit River Walk, Greektown, and finish in Campus Martius. There is no better way to tour the city's sights, and in the past few runs, I have sincerely felt the urge to weep while running through many of these stoic Detroit landmarks. As the feet hit the pavement, the urge to protect this place, to help it grow and thrive, to see the city homes and proud or once-proud buildings, is amplified millions of times over during the marathon experience as the runner soaks in the surroundings. It's a little bit like what I perceive will be my heaven, except with painful legs. It is impossible not to contemplate what I can do - what we can do - to encourage, promote, and work toward the rebirth of this city over the course of the run.

Running in, out, around, and through the city that drew earlier generations of my family to this state makes me proud, energized, hopeful, and sad. I have found much happiness in this place called Michigan, and it is because of this city and industrial icons who found Detroit to be the right place to start their businesses. Believe it or not, Detroit, at one point in time, was the oasis of promise throughout the entire United States. Throughout the entire world. The sadness I feel during the run is because of the way that I now know the world perceives our city (OUR city) and our state, and how difficult and time-consuming it will be to change this perception. Detroit is perfect in its imperfection. It represents America - the historic opportunity for success and wealth, the damage from poor planning, racism, and lack of diversification, and the great optimism of a better future.

If you are running, walking, or cycling in one of the variants of the race on Sunday, great job(!), and take a moment to contemplate what the city of Detroit means to you over the course of the race. If you can't think of anything, determine if you have found some happiness in Michigan, and remember that the probable reason you are here is because of this city. If you're not in the marathon, I heartily encourage you to come downtown and cheer on the people who will be losing their toenails that evening. Your cheering helps more than you think, and maybe you, too, will strengthen your connection to Detroit.

If you see what looks like a beached humpback whale flailing his way through the course, the odds are good that you are looking at me. Send up a cheer for Ken or, perhaps, turn to the person to your side and say "That fella there writes quite the blog," and then proceed with my blog address.

The Internet Has Failed You

I've been on board with the internet since late 2008 when my brother showed me a video of a fatso singing along and dancing to a German song. You can send a letter without a stamp, see a live view of the official times of the world (and broken out by time zone!), and check sports scores all the way out in California. What a Golden Age in which we live.

Information is valuable and nothing provides information better than the internet. One type of information is news, and one well-known and mostly reputable news source is cnn.com. This site serves me well for the most part, but tonight down at the bottom of the main page in their "From Our Partners" section there was a link to people.com with the title "24 TV Characters Who Turn You Off". I admit, I was somewhat interested by the article because I'm a big fan of TV, and the phrase "Turn Me Off" was intentionally luring. Do these characters make me angry, turn me off to the show, turn me off sexually, or something else? Intriguing premise, and so I clicked on. The first character that popped up was Izzie from Grey's Anatomy. I have never watched nor will I ever watch this show, but this one made sense to me because lots of people these days seem unhappy with Katherine Heigl. I glanced at the description and clicked through to the next character who is Mohinder Suresh from Heroes. "Yeah," I'm thinking, "I see where they're going with this. Mohinder sucks." I clicked through to a few more characters with an increasing disagreement with the characters outlined by People.com, until I realized that every character and the description of why they "turn you off" is written by someone as stupid as me - as far as I can tell it's just regular people describing characters in 2-3 sentences and why they don't like the character. People.com took feedback from people, put all the feedback in a hat, and then pulled 24 names from this hat, put together a list that requires you to click through 24 times to see it all, and it is all from idiots. One such jewel from one idiot named Drew, seriously, is "I can't stand Miss Piggy." Really, People.com? And more importantly, really, Cnn.com? Linked from your main web page? Really?

I know there is a lot of stupid stuff out there on the web, mostly because you are reading something stupid right now and I have been writing stupid things for over a year, but this is the most stupidest thing I have ever had the displeasure to read, enhanced by the fact that I was connected to this terrible, terrible list through Cnn.com.

#1 on my list of internet thingies that Turn Me Off - this list from People.com. I'm having trouble controlling my anger just thinking about it. I feel both tricked and betrayed, with a hint of abused.

And I love Miss Piggy, so screw you Drew.

They're Everywhere and We're the Best

I look out of my front window and what do I see? A street. If you do the same, there is at least a 99% chance that you will see the same thing - well, likely not the exact same thing but some approximate variation. Your mind = blown.

What's kind of cool is that of the 12 total streets in the entire United States, (number is estimated) the American Planning Association of America (I surprisingly did not make this organization up) has organized a list of 10 "Great Streets" in America for 2009 and 20% of this list is comprised of streets found in Michigan. Up yours North and South Dakota! For the non-analytically inclined, 20% of 10 is 2, so that's not all that many, but 2 out of 10 ain't bad. My thanks to Todd M. for the tip* - I'm not sure why is he spending time at the website for the American Planning Association so you'll have to find and ask him yourself, but I think we can all appreciate the combination of planning, organizations for a common purpose, and also America.

I don't know what constitutes a great street to this association, but it's always nice to be recognized for something, even if it is a combination of concrete, vertical concrete barriers (curbs), additional concrete outside of the barriers (sidewalks), and then vertical brick indicating the conclusion of the additional concrete (buildings). First up on the list from Michigan is South Main Street in wonderful Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor both rocks and rolls, and Main Street is the primary artery for the city. I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on Main and/or institutions along Main, and it is a perfect place to spend warm afternoons and late nights. Other things that are cool and directly related to Main Street and me are that time I met Jimmy Fallon there, my brother plays Irish music at Conor O'Neill's on Main every Sunday night, and the location of my first date with Maureen. If these three things together don't sell you on the greatness of the street, you are a jerk. Spend some time on Main Street and if you go into any of the bars or restaurants, tell every person helping you out that "Ken sent you." No one will have a clue what you are talking about and you may be ushered out for being peculiar, but wouldn't it be great if someone had a clue who and what you were talking about? Yeah.

Next up on the list is a street I can only assume exists because it is on the list - Front Street in Traverse City. For this one, I feel like Wayne and Garth in Wayne's World the movie trying to sell the positive qualities of Delaware - "Hi, I'm in Delaware" - because I have never been to Front Street and have spent woefully little time in Traverse City. If this makes me a terrible Michigan blogger, so be it. I apologize to Front Street and all the good people of TC (that's what those of us who have almost never been to TC call it) for my ignorance, but I can only assume that you have a great street on your hands because the American Planning Association tells me so. Way to represent the state, and keep up your cherry-loving ways.

We should all feel lucky that we have something 41 other states in the U.S. don't have - great 2009 streets as determined by the best damn planning association in the world, the American Planning Association.

*For everyone else who is kind enough to send me a link and I fail to post about it, I am sorry but thank you so much. I do read everything that everyone shares with me so keep them coming, but I have determined that I must at least give the outward appearance to employers that I do more than just blog.

3rd and X

MICHIGAN FOOTBALL, DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR THIRD DOWN DEFENSE. HOLY CRAP. 3RD AND 24???????????????????????????? HOLY CRAP YOU SUCK.

Collegiate Football Question

This is something I've noticed a few times over the course of this college football season, most importantly it came up a few times last week in UM's loss to MSU. There was another instance of this just one moment ago in the Iowa game and it is really bugging and confusing me, so I was hoping someone out there may have an easy and quick answer for me.

Why, when a football player goes out of bounds (not tackled in bounds and then the play carried them out of bounds), the clock stops temporarily and then starts again? I'm not talking about the play clock, I'm talking about the game clock. What is the deal with that? Isn't the clock supposed to remain stopped until the next play is snapped? My entire football memory consists of a stopped clock when someone goes out of bounds until the next play begins. This is going to bother me until I have an answer, and even after that I'll still probably be bothered because it causes time to run off the clock when it should be at a standstill. We don't have much opportunity to control time in our lives, so it's not fair to have one of the instances in which we can taken away.

Harvard Is Dangerous

Straight from the internets, I read today that National Science Foundation (NSF) is granting Harvard University $10 M to explicitly terrorize me. No, they are not determining additional ways to shrink marshmallows in my life, they are in the process of developing robo-bees (Maureen suggested Ro-Bee-Bots, which is appropriately clever for my highbrow sense of humor). National Science Federation, what are you thinking? While we're at it, perhaps we can identify new and exciting methods to slam my hand in a door. Robotic bees? Of all of the things in the world, I am most afraid of bees, and robotic bees sound even worse than regular bees. This is a recipe for complete disaster when the bees become self-aware and start a war against regular bees in which the robot bees learn how to shoot their robotic stingers against the real bees and humans start to fall in the crossfire.

NSF, here's a better idea - use the money for....something remotely useful with far less risk of angry robotic bees. Has no one in this organization seen any of the Terminator movies? If you are going to robotize anything, it should almost definitely be butterflies. Butterflies pollinate, are pretty, and most importantly, I am not terrified of them. On top of the robotic bees, there are all kinds of other terrifying things going on at this school. Have you seen Fringe? In a basement at Harvard, they have the ability to hook up a person in a sensory deprivation tank to a deceased brain that somehow still has brain activity and then they can share a series of memories until the deceased mind helps the living person solve a series of adventures and mysteries. At Harvard!! This is not safe.

For these and no other reasons (including not granting me an interview, just the bees thing) I stand against you Harvard, the University of Michigan of the East.

Yesterday in Review

Yesterday was a bit of a roller coaster day with a few ups and many downs for me, culminating in the defeat of the Detroit Tigers. I love you and I will always love you Tigers, even if you have another season in which you lose 119 games. For no other reason other than I want to, here is a brief review of my day yesterday followed by a few ironic moments from the big baseball game.

Bad - Had to wake up earlier than usual to get to the airport to go to California
Good - Airplane left on time
Bad - Airplane had to turn around after 30 minutes in the air because pilot thought we might have hit a bird/flock on takeoff (also bad, birds getting hit by airplane)
Good - Did not die from bird strikes
Bad - Had to wait for an hour to re-board a new plane
Good - There was another plane available to re-board in the middle of the day
Bad - After re-boarding plane, luggage guys loaded plane, were missing bag, unloaded plane, rescanned all bags, still missing bag, waited another hour, and then eventually the missing bag magically reappeared
Good - One person had underpants to wear today who otherwise would not have
Bad - The airplane did not weigh the right amount, resulting in another 60 minute wait where I guess they put us on a scale or something
Good - Got extra pretzels for being good-natured after we eventually took off
Bad - had to take the stupid SFO monorail to the rental car center. Way less fun than Disney's monorail
Good - No line at rental car place
Bad - Literally no cars available when I made it to the garage. I ended up with a freaking electric blue KIA with 42,000 miles on it, no key fob, several scratches, and it feels like it's going to fall apart when I hit the accelerator
Good - I did not kill anyone after my travels
Bad - Tigers Lost
Good - I did not kill anyone after Tigers lost

It was a weird day, but all of the sins of the day could have been forgiven if the Tigers could have pulled it off. Here are a few things that I noticed about the game yesterday that were notable and largely ironic:

• Gerald Laird, the guy who said the Tigers were "in the driver's seat" a few weeks ago, struck out after a 3-1 count with the bases loaded and two outs in extra innings
  
• Brandon Inge, after getting hit by a pitch, grounded into a fielder's choice at home with the bases loaded and only one out. Just before that, Brandon Inge had a double to put the Tigers in the lead. He also made a diving play that temporarily saved the game - so he saved, ruined, and saved the game in 1 hour
  
• Miguel Cabrera, likely still drunk and booed like crazy, was almost nearly the star of the world with a big two run homerun
• Magglio Ordonez, goat for the first 3/4 of the season, had a huge home run to tie the game up after the Tigers fell behind
• Ryan Raburn, after screwing up the Tiger's chance to win on a terrible sliding catch attempt, temporarily saved the game with an amazing throw to home plate later in that same inning (with a good tag by Laird, who, as we all know, struck out with the bases loaded)
• Placido Polanco, the guy who never strikes out, struck out with runners on first and third and no outs. TBS technology indicated it was a ball, thereby screwing the Tigers.
• The Twin who Ryan Raburn threw out at home because of bad base running had the winning hit

There was more, but I have since forgotten because all the salt from my tears damaged my brain. It was a great game, but sometimes I'm convinced God is still mad at us for the race riots. Come on, God, I wasn't even alive at that time. Can't anyone give Detroit a break?

Tangential Marriage Benefit

So far, being married seems quite similar to being not married - except now I have the privilege to live with Maureen and we get to spend more time together. The marriage can and likely will evolve over the next weeks and months, but many things are largely the same for now. It could be that we had dated for quite awhile before we actually got married so there weren't any of those married "surprises" you hear about, I'm not sure, but I'm looking forward to whatever the future brings.

I have, however, identified one major unanticipated benefit of marriage over the past month. Mostly this is a benefit because I am a gigantic sissy, but it is a benefit nonetheless. This has to do with various people offering me things I do not want, and how I can now, guilt free, respond to these people.

"I'm sorry I have to talk it over with my wife first."

This has nothing to do with who makes the decisions or the ability of one or the either of us to unilaterally choose something, it is simply an excuse for me to slink out of an uncomfortable sales pitch. If the person offering the deal pushes a little bit harder, I can go to plan A-2:

"I understand this is a fantastic offer, but I'm a newlywed and I can't do anything to get myself into trouble this early in the marriage." And with that, my nemesis understands that he is defeated and lets me go. If you have no problem lying, I recommend this approach to dismissing all telemarketers. If you really, really hate saying no to people, consider getting married to someone you meet on the street for this benefit. Could getting married really be worse than paying for HBO that you don't really want?

If You Can't Mauer Them, Mauer Them

I started the thought process for this post temporarily believing I had come up with something original and thought-provoking, only to realize 5 seconds later that I'm a complete idiot for thinking I had come up with something original and thought-provoking.

The Tigers just finished up their day/night doubleheader against the Minnesota Twins, and as a fan of the Tigers, I am terrified of playing against the Twins. I don't know what it is about that team and their mid-Western charm, but they strike me as a relentless force of baseball. It's not that they are that incredibly awesome, but they are that incredibly awesome when they play the Tigers. It sometimes seems like there are greater powers aligned against the Tigers when playing the Twins, like the time when Don Kelly lost that fly ball in the roof of the Metrodome and the Tigers went on to lose.

Of all the Twins, I am most terrified of Joe Mauer. Joe Mauer is a good-ole Minnesota boy who is also a catcher for the Twins. He is reserved, humble-seeming, non-controversial, and a beast at the plate. I'm pretty sure he was born to play baseball, or, possibly, read books to children in the library while curing AIDS. Every time he is up to the plate against the Tigers, I get that sinking feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, mostly because he always produces. This is why tonight I'm pretty sure I convinced myself that I'm going to buy a Joe Mauer jersey and become his #1 fan. This is the place where I thought I was brilliant for a moment - "Hey, if I become a fan of this guy, he can't hurt me" and then I realized that sounds an awful lot like "if you can't beat them, join them." If I had a time traveling DeLorean I would go back in time and take out the person who first used this phrase making me an original, and if this wasn't an option, I could travel back in time to warn myself that I was coming up with a stupid idea.

Winter Survival Tip

Yes, it is a little bit early for a winter survival tip, but man did fall blow in yesterday. Two days ago was pretty beautiful, and yesterday and today rivaled something more out of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Fall is definitely here, and winter can't be particularly far around the corner. This isn't pertinent to my one regular reader from Arizona, John, but winter is part of Michigan and we have to learn to love (or at least deal with) all that winter brings.

Which is why today I bring to you a fantastic winter survival tip that I stole from my guy that I saw today. By the way, thank you that guy. You have already improved my life.

One thing that I found really bugging me last fall and winter is those gas stations that remove the lever thingy from their pumps that lock the handle in "keep pumping" mode. Why would they do such a terrible thing? Because the pumps can't stay on automatically, you have to stand there with your hand out in the freezing cold holding that lever with the cold and wind blowing through you right to your bones. Wearing a glove isn't a particularly good option because then your glove has to touch the disgusting handle and you don't want to have to do that with your gloves. It's easier to wash your hands than your gloves, so you and I are stuck out standing next to our cars staring at the gallon meter wondering why the owner of the gas stations hates us so very much. I hate you too gas station owner. Who is this benefiting?

Yesterday when I stopped by my favorite gas station on Woodward between Catalpa and 12 Mile with the wind and rain driving hard, I already started to hate the prospect of pumping gas for an entire winter with my poor hand freezing pump-by-pump. It's only a few minutes a week for a few months of the year, but it's something I have grown to reasonably dread. I popped out of my car ready to inaugurate my hand to another winter, and the guy in the car in front of me was doing something so brilliant, so thoughtful, he must surely be a relative of Rod Allen, color commentator of the Detroit Tigers. He had taken his gas cap and placed it between the gas pump handle and the handle casing, thus forcing the handle into the perma-on position. Freaking brilliant! I gave it a go with my car and the gas cap fit absolutely perfectly for me. I then stuck my hands in my pants with glee and ran over to the man to give him a hug. That hug attempt didn't work out so well (maybe it had something to do with my hands in my pants), but even just reflecting on this revelation right now makes me a happier person. Even if you have one of those tether gas caps (as I do), the tether is long enough for this brilliant use of the gas cap. If you drive one of those gas cap-less Fords you are screwed, but for the rest of us, your life is now officially better. Us 1, Winter 0.

Curse the Wind

Yesterday night our internet and cable were down for the better part of the evening probably because of the wind storm, so I was unable to blog AND forced to make conversation with human beings. That should be illegal. Now I have to go off to work so I will be unable to add excitement and important insight into your life until later this evening. It really is a shame for you, because today I have a tip that will change your life in only the way that something that doesn't actually change your life will change your life.

Massive Coverage

If you spend your time on any of the websites that I do (Time, CNN, Sports Illustrated, Ken is Great), you are likely to notice a very odd trend from these media outlets. They are all focusing incredibly heavily right now on the great city of Detroit. Well, that is a slight exaggeration in that they do not seem to view the current status of the city as "great", but they are definitely focusing on the city. A couple months ago, there were several reports that Time Warner actually purchased a home in Detroit and they were going to filter various writers and reporters into and out of the house and then they would write about their hands-on experiences "in the trenches". Today, the first major report hit Time's website called "Detroit: The Death - and Possible Life - of a Great City". Of course I read the piece and I thought it was pretty decent, but mostly I'm struggling with figuring out how I feel about all this media coverage. OK so I don't actually live in the D, but I clearly know and have written several times about the way people outside of Michigan view the state is massively influenced by what goes on inside our city. I guess this is why I currently approach this project with fear - fear and slight anger that they haven't yet contacted me for my invaluable input. They even have a Detroit Blog and a Detroit landing site dedicated to this project, and yet, no references to me. This is even more bullcrap than the Lucky Charms thing from a couple days ago.

It's only been about a week since I've been aware of the project's physical (digital) existence on the web, but already I'm realizing how difficult it is to have the microscope pointed directly at us - and for a whole freaking year. It's like the summation of every feel-good and feel-bad story I've read about the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan from the last 5 years compiled in one place with a dose of optimism, cynicism, hope, despair, and desolation in varying amounts. I'm going to continue to follow this effort very closely because I think it is incredibly valuable to know how outsiders view our situation, or perhaps how outsiders may be influencing how others view our situation. I don't even know if people care about what's going on in our beautiful peninsulas and have the time or energy to read these stories, but if you want stories about Michigan minus the humor and my general sexy style, this project may be for you. Don't get it wrong, Time.

This is Bullcrap

Cereal remains the best food product ever invented for so many reasons, I don't even have time to delve into them. I actually probably do have the time, but then I would have to work my way through the thought process of generating a list, attempting to infuse a pathetic degree of humor, and then ranking my list. Everyone seems to like lists (like this one), but I guess I just don't care enough about you to become a list master. Just look at my infrequent blog updates over the past few days. That's not true. I love you.

So what is bullcrap about cereal, you're thinking? Lucky Charms has me upset. If I had to guess, and I do, I would guess that if I were to go around the country and ask everyone what their favorite cereal is, more people would say Lucky Charms than any other cereal. Sure Frosted Flakes has its strong fans and Cheerios make you poop, but Lucky Charms is the champ. Wheat-ish pieces, marshmallows, and a healthy dose of cereal racism; how could you lose? Well, General Mills has figured out how to lose, and they have the audacity to try to pass it off as a benefit.

Right now, the Lucky Charms box proudly advertises "Mini Marshmallow Magic" charms. Mini Marshmallow Charms? MINI MARSHMALLOW CHARMS! This is bullcrap.

How dare they replace my non-mini marshmallow charms with mini marshmallow charms. From my extremely scientific visual scan, I don't even think they have more mini-marshmallow charms to counteract the fact that they are miniaturized. General Mills is giving us less marshmallow for our dollar, and trying to pass it off as something magical. I'm on to you General Mills. They have games on the back of the box where you're supposed to do something or other with the miniature charms to solve a puzzle or something, but really they're just trying to make you overlook their baloney. If it weren't for sentries like me, General Mills may even get away with this. We cannot let them. Post has the right idea with their Honey Bunches of Oats spin-off "Just Bunches" that has picked through the least healthy components of their cereal and put them into their own packaging for our enjoyment. Way to go Post. Lucky Charms would be far more magical if I were to open a package one morning and they replaced regular charms with super-sized charms. Or even better, just replace the charms with whole Kraft marshmallows and then revel in the magic General Mills has provided to us. That is a product I can get behind.

More Screw You Kwame

Did you notice the solar eclipse today? If you did, it was Kwame's balls blocking the sun as they swelled and swelled and swelled (much like the Grinch's heart grew) from another of his many outrageous acts. Today, he requested that his restitution to the city of Detroit be cut from $6,000/month to $6/month. That is not a typo. Kwame's camp requested that he have to pay one-one thousandth of what he owes. His lawyers were late getting to the courtroom because driving around Kwame's balls added an additional 4 hours to their trip.

Fortunately for everyone who loves truth and justice and hates Kwame Kilpatrick, the appellate court denied his bid because of "lack of merit" and (I'm making up this paraphrase) additional cost of sewer repairs necessary from the devastation of the weight of Kwame's balls.

His lawyer cautioned that we do not make assumptions about Kwame's financial situation because of his Cadillac Escalade and the million dollar+ mansion he lives in in Texas, and I agree. We should not make assumptions about his financial situation - we should hate him regardless of his net worth. It doesn't matter if he eats out of a trash can or only on caviar spoons or out of the trash using caviar spoons, our spite and anger must be boundless and parsed out in perpetuity.

In for Five

This morning, local news sources reported about a woman and her daughter in Roseville who were burgled, and during the course of the burglary, some piece of crap (or possible pieces of crap) killed the family kitten by putting the kitten in the washing machine and turning it on. The Michigan Humane Society has offered $2,000 as a reward for the case, and I'm not sure the right way to do this or if it will actually mean anything, but I am going to figure out how to add $500 of my money to the reward. I'll call the Humane Society tomorrow to figure it out. I'm not a rich man, but this is the kind of B.S. that is above and beyond unacceptable. There are so many things in our lives that are completely out of our control, crap like this that we can control just cannot happen. On top of all this, many a study shows that people who torture and kill pets are those who are most likely to become sociopaths and murderers.

Somewhere out in the world, a terrible person is bragging to a friend about a successful burglary, and maybe with some luck and enough financial prodding, that friend will rat out their friend. On The Free Press website someone commented that financial incentives aren't helpful and that the police should be left to do their job, and I agree with the second part of the thought, but shit like this can't fly.

The Greatest Michigan News Ever. Unqualified.

Last year at about this time, I embarked on a noble and spiritually-inspired journey to eat a whole bunch of hamburgers. There is a little bit more to the journey than just this, but that was the basic premise. I ate a bunch of hamburgers, wrote about them in this here internet writing thingy, and I continue to eat burgers in a less-specific and unstructured way. I have deviated from my ultimate goal in that I am not pushing myself through the specific list and I am simply failing to finalize write-ups on the burgers I am eating. I have myriad reasons for my failure in this area, including but not limited to moving, marrying, honeymooning, working, etc., but the bottom line is I am not doing my job for you, the reader. In other areas of the blog I feel that I am vastly exceeding your expectations simply because I have not given up yet and I still write with some frequency, and the cherry on top being that my writing remains totally and 100% awesome. We all know it.

But in the burger area, I am reminded of my failure every day simply by waking up and reflecting on my accomplishments and failures of the last 24 hours. I actually never do this and have never done this before, but it seems like it could be a good idea. Note to you: try this and let me know how it goes and if it is worth it.

BurgerFest-O-Rama lives on in spirit and I still have realistic hopes for its triumphant return. The reason this is important is because one of the restaurants that inspired the journey and default best-burger-in-the-universe-until-proven-otherwise, The Redcoat Tavern in Royal Oak, Michigan, is expanding its Michigan footprint. I guess the Redcoat owners also owned Zinc Brasserie and Wine Bar in West Bloomfield, and they have decided to do away with their fancy-pansy Wine Bar and replace it with a slightly creepy red-lighted restaurant that serves the finest burgers in the land. The article from The Freep also indicates that the owners are considering opening 1-3 MORE Redcoats in our fine state. If the prospect of having a Redcoat Tavern closer to you does not excite you, you have no soul or joy of living. This is the greatest thing that could happen to our state - including unemployment closer to 5%. That is entirely untrue, but it's still pretty great news. Every time I am in a group and I mention Redcoat, someone looks toward me and gives me that little head nod to indicate they know what I know. This isn't a small club of lovers and I'm not claiming to know any secret fact about the burger greatness with waits of greater than an hour at pretty much any time or meal of the day, but it's still fun to evangelize the glory of meat when cooked correctly and served with perfect onion rings.

All In the Timing

Any time one moves into a new place, that person has to figure out quite a few things about the new place of living. Since I finished up my masters at school many years ago, I've been living in Royal Oak with my parents. In some capacity or another then, excluding time at school, I lived in the same house in Royal Oak for about 26 years. Because I spent so much time there, I pretty much had the system masterfully figured out. I remain intimately familiar with every creak, draft, hitch, and ding in that house. I took many things for granted about that home, and now I'm realizing even more things that require further education and training now that I no longer live there - things that I didn't even realize were important to me. Life is like one big learning experiment. Over the past week, I've realized that I really need to improve my timing.

What timing, you ask? Toilet timing.

Over the past several years, I've developed a very odd but perfectly understandable (to me) habit of trying to have the toilet complete its flushing process at the exact moment that I complete taking my leak. This requires me to carefully reach down and hit the flush lever when I still have about 5% of my internal liquids remaining. This may not immediately make any sense to you, but it's really all about efficiency and adding another sense of accomplishment to my day. When I complete this feat, it is strangely gratifying and makes me feel pretty good about myself just by performing a ridiculously common act. It's like when I was younger and would spend minutes on minutes with a stop watch trying to get the stop watch to stop at exactly "X.00" and training myself to make it happen as consistently as possible. Every once in awhile when I'm waiting in line or something, I'll whip out a time keeping device to see if I still got it. I do.

Now, though, I have to learn three new toilets and their respective timings, and this has thrown my success rate into chaos. Typically, I'm finding the flush completing before I'm completed, requiring an additional, very environmentally unfriendly flush, or following the whole "if it's yellow, let it mellow" approach. Both of these are terrible options, and years of training under one timing system is making it much harder to adjust than I originally anticipated. I'm still working on it (multiple times a day), but I have not yet found the optimal solution. These are the things you learn when you move somewhere new.

So, does anyone else do this or anything similar - or are you still waiting to discover the joys of bathroom efficiency? This is a no-judgment zone, unless you say something really crazy and then I and everyone I know will judge you harshly when I tell them what you do. That's a good way to encourage involvement, isn't it?

Obama+Speech = Obvious Communism

It is the oldest mathematical equation known to humankind, much like the book that I never really understood "Sideways Math from Wayside School" or called something like that. What I'm saying is I have absolutely no idea why parents and some educators objected to President Obama's "Welcome Back to School" speech that was presented to select students across the country earlier today.

The thing that absolutely bothers me the most about this non-issue is that adults were objecting to the prospect that President Obama would include beliefs and concepts in his speech that may not 100% agree with the parents' point of view. This is annoying for two reasons. First, people objected without even having a clue what the president was going to say - without any sort of idea about anything specific, people had a huge problem with this speech. Second, and the bigger issue I have, is the belief that your children are somehow better off if they are only exposed to ideas that agree with those of their parents. How are the kids supposed to learn to cope with adversity, disagreement, or challenges to their beliefs if they are insulated from things as simple as a speech from the overwhelmingly elected President of the United States of America (who, again, may or may not be saying anything disagreeable in the first place) who is more or less telling the kids "Thanks for coming, stay in school, don't do drugs, and please worship Karl Marx (now corrected because Charlie made me feel highly uneducated when he noted that Karl is spelled with a K not C. The worst part is that I totally know this one, too) and I'll give you candy".

I Hope This Isn't Our Moment

Is anyone else watching the Michigan game right now?

Furthermore, if you are watching, are you praying, much like me, that the song by Kenny Chesney "This Is Our Moment" is not a recurring theme for the remainder of the college football season on ABC? I won't be able to take it - I'm going to have to swear off football for the whole 2009 season.

Going into many commercials, halftime, quarter breaks, etc. ABC rolls into a video package cutting back and forth between game highlights and some video of this insanely painful song. How dare they force me to listen to this garbage? I have strong feelings about music and they don't always coincide with the opinions of others, but there is no way that more than 50% of the people out there in TV land have positive feelings toward this song. This may be the shortest period of time it has ever taken me to grow to hate a song, including "My Humps".

Making a House a Home

Or at least a house with food and toothpaste. I continue to work on figuring out what it means to be more of an adult, and my education continued today when Maureen and I spent just over $400 on groceries and other general health and personal hygiene products between CostCo and Meijer.

You mean my dental floss didn't magically replenish itself when I was living at home with my parents? This is baloney.

I'm sure there are many more lessons forthcoming, most of them likely involving the expenditure of dollars. On the flip side, my parents are going to quickly realize that they have started suddenly saving hundreds of dollars a month on food, electricity, and delousing bills. The only thing I'm still majorly adjusting to is that I don't have my dogs and brother here with me to watch TV.

Things that are Cool

I am the decider of all things cool because I have figured out this internet thing, and in this capacity as decider of cool, I would like to let you in on a couple of very cool things. You're welcome, in advance.

The first thing that is very cool is this blog. Thanks for coming!

The second thing that is almost as cool but not quite is straight from the mind of my friend Colin, he of ColinFest and "The Great and True Story of Colin". Colin recently completed law school and will be shortly starting a new job as some sort of pretend lawyer (I have no absolute proof that he took or passed the bar exam, I only have his word which is most often great and true, but I'm of the suspicious sort). Prior to starting his new career, he is traveling around the midwest and eastern seaboard and visiting all of the amusement parks and ice cream providers that he can handle. As far as I can tell, he is eating waffles (in normal and cone form) and ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. Colin is a fan of pointless games of skill, and with this passion, he is spending a large percentage of his time at these amusement parks playing their various carnival games and winning absurdly sized stuffed animals (they're not all animals, but they seem to be all stuffed). He then will typically donate these prizes to Toys for Tots, random people in the parks and their families, or whoever else is willing to take them off his hands. That is my basic overview, but I have to imagine Colin would be happy to have you read his blog - Amusement Purposes Only - as often as possible. As we have already determined that I am the arbiter of cool, you have no doubt that this is the next best website for you to read. I am thoroughly enjoying Colin's saga, and I imagine that you will, too.

The third thing that is cool on this Friday before the extended Holiday weekend is The Perkins Family, and most specifically Jim Perkins. The Perkins family is a clan of renegade musicians based in the Detroit area who travel around, performing songs, and providing enjoyment for those who like clans of traveling renegade musicians. My brother has been friends with the Perkins for many years now through his experiences with Irish music. The reason this is pertinent to right now is that Mr. Perkins, patriarch and bearded man, performed at my wedding almost two weeks ago now (wow, I've been married almost two weeks). He was awesome and a phenomenal addition to the wedding ceremony. We asked him to learn a couple of songs, he had a few songs that he recommended, he showed up with his guitar, and then sat down and wowed the crowd. Everyone who was at the ceremony (standing room only crowd) made a point to comment on how great the musician was, and several of these people are actually professional musicians themselves. I'm not quite sure how the family typically rents themselves out to share their talents with the world (my brother connected me to Mr. Perkins for the wedding ceremony), but I don't think I could recommend them any higher. They typically perform Irish music, but Mr. Perkins didn't seem to have trouble incorporating non-Irish fare into the playlist. You can check them out here and here (important note - in no way is this positive reference or review related to compensation for the wedding performance. He was just a great addition to the day).

The fourth thing that is cool that is happening this weekend is the Detroit International Jazz Festival (I love how because you can pee on Windsor from Detroit and vice versa everything in Detroit is "international"). The festival runs from today, Friday the 4th, through Monday the 7th. I have never been to the jazz festival, and unfortunately I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to make it this year. The performance that has the biggest draw for me is happening in very near proximity to the Michigan football game tomorrow. This performance is by Mr. Dave Brubeck, absolutely amazing and incredibly famous jazz pianist, on Saturday at 4:45 in the Hart Plaza Amphitheater. I saw him about 4 years ago at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor and it was one of the most magical concerts I have ever attended. Right now Dave B. is 88 years-old, so he must have been about 84 when I saw him with Maureen and my siblings. Watching someone of his age flying over the keyboard was awe-inspiring, and this performance stands as one of my top 3 favorite concerts of all time. If you have any free time at all on Saturday (or don't care about college football), you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't make it to see him downtown tomorrow. Maybe Dave Brubeck and Jim Perkins can get together and hang out.

Those are the cool things right now, and I haven't even touched on Arts, Beats, and Eats or my and Maureen's first trip to CostCo as a married couple. Get out there, enjoy your state, root for your college football team (Go Blue!) and professional baseball team of choice, experience the perfect weather, and generally enjoy your life, family, friends, and anything else that makes you happy. I'm happy to be married, to have a strong, happy, and fun relationship with my family, to live in the great state of Michigan, and that maybe someday we'll finally have our new couch and car.

Home, Sweet (New) Home

I'm back from honeymoon and I returned with some woman who now lives in the same place that I live. I'm still figuring out what she is doing here, but she seems pretty nice and quite pretty, so I don't mind very much.

As always, I have returned to my fantastic home state of Michigan. Vacation is great, but Michigan is greaterest.

I hit the ground running with some significant work queued up right off the bat, so that will also be keeping me busy as I continue to try to find my way out of the closet I have locked myself in at my new dwelling. I just wanted to take a minute to let you know to start checking back on the website with your ever-increasing regularity. Once a day is quite insufficient.

It's nice to be home

MDOT!!!

Apparently the entrance onto I-696 from Woodward is closed today, which is quite frustrating because it is the primary way that my family was planning on getting to the wedding. There are alternatives I'm sure, but the very annoying thing is that it is not possible to know which alternatives (like Southfield to 696) are going to be available for travel and which will also be closed down. The dumbest thing is that the freeway is open westbound at Woodward, so it makes no sense why they would close down the entrance ramp. Maybe we'll have less people - or more late people - than we thought at the ceremony. At the moment everything else seems to be running fine, but what would a wedding day be without a hiccup.

The Day Before the Day

Today is the day of my wedding rehearsal, which means that tomorrow is the actual day of the wedding. Maureen and I are pretty OK with whatever weather the sky throws at us, though we are hoping it will be more nice than less nice. That's a bold statement.

I've spent the last ten days regularly bouncing back and forth between weather.com and accuweather.com and selectively picking the weather forecast that I prefer. At this point, they both seem to have converged on there being a slightly less than 50% chance of rain at the moment we will be exchanging our vows, so it will be very interesting to figure out if the ceremony is indoors (I <3 Boobs for the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy! lovers out there) or outdoors. Whatever happens is going to happen either way, so focusing too much on it takes my attention away from other, far more important, things.

Most importantly, this is my note to you, friends and people who aren't going to be married to me tomorrow, informing you that my writing over the next 1.5 weeks is going to be severely limited. One of the reasons is that I will be having a wedding rehearsal, wedding, wedding brunch, and honeymoon - in that order - and this will be occupying a fair amount of my time and energy. The second reason is that I really feel as though I have peaked with being in the same building as Jerome Bettis, so I need just a little over a week to gather my thoughts and figure out where to go after such an event. Nothing I can say will be more important or valuable than this event (excluding the wedding, of course).

So there you go - as much as I love writing this blog, I love Maureen far more, and pretty much everyone has told me that if I plan on still being married after the honeymoon, I probably shouldn't use my time during that period for laptop-related events like working and writing. On the upside to you, maybe my future life will provide me the opportunity to reflect on things I've learned about being married ("What's the deal with female underwear" and "Don't you hate it when hit your mate when you have night terrors").

As always, thank you for your patience and general devotion to me and Michigan during this brief downtime. I'm going to try to maybe convince Steve to carry the mantle for a few days with an update here or there, but I have not been successful in this effort before. Maybe he can make it a wedding gift to me (and of course to you). Then I will have a writing staff of two and I will have grown 100% in just over one year. That is a really fantastic growth ratio. Look for me to be listed on the NYSE next year.

Official Fame Magnet

Alright world, this is getting ridiculous. I don't think you can make it any more clear - famous people like to be near me and spend some amount of time in my presence. I don't need you to send me any more subtle messages. TMZ is considering opening up a bureau right here in Royal Oak because of all of the famous people that just "happen" to find themselves near me.

Saturday night was the bachelor party, which I wrote a tiny bit about in my last post. This isn't about that, but here are the best two quotes of the night:

"Those aren't the free kind of girls" - Dave G.
"What happens at a bachelor party stays at a bachelor party...except herpes" - Steve

Congratulations for those fine lines, gentlemen. After a night of hanging out in downtown Detroit (where I seriously felt completely safe roving around the downtown streets), the bunch of us made our way to Lafayette Coney (seriously Firefox, you don't take coney?) Island. I wasn't hungry from the gigantic dinner from earlier in the evening and all of the free (to me) OH molecules that were provided to me that night, but most of the guys were in the mood for some late-night dining. We took our seats at the long center table down the middle of Lafayette, and for some reason started talking about famous people. Dave said "you mean like Jerome Bettis, who is buying some food right now?" Needless to say, I was a little confused. It was 2:15 in the morning and we were sitting in a Coney Island in downtown Detroit. As it turns out, Jerome Bettis was, in fact, buying some food from Lafayette with a small posse of approximately two individuals. Jerome-freaking-Bettis. By the time my brain figured out what was going on, Jerome was making his way to his car. Steve and I got up and tried to make it over to him to say hi, but we started a little too late and he was on his way.

What no one else saw, though, was the secret smile that Jerome shot me and his implicit recognition of all the hard work I put into the blog. Mr. Bettis, you have, just barely, supplanted Justin Verlander as my most famous best friend. You're a Detroit guy who has always supported the city, now if you could just buy me a coney that would be even better. I mean, you won a Super Bowl. Spread the hot dog love.

Well, That Was Fun

I never really understood the phrase "show a person a good time" until tonight, the fine evening/morning of my bachelor party. In no particular order aside from who I remember in order, I would like to thank the following people for a truly great and enjoyable evening that I will certainly always remember: Steve, Craig, Dave, Brian, Nick, Brad, Scott, Andy, Me, a cameo by my dad, and of course, the inventors of fun. I'm getting married next Saturday to the most wonderful person I can imagine, and this group of individuals took me out on the town today in celebration of this big event in my life. Bachelor parties always seemed like archaic and pointless events to me, but my opinion completely changed tonight. They don't have to be a celebration of an end, or a beginning, but just a celebration of being - friends who are happy for you and care for you and want you to know they care in their own way. I am thankful for this group of people and I look forward to hopefully providing the same service for others in the future. Thanks again guys - you gave me a better time than I deserve.

On Blueberries

Blueberries are one of the finest treats in the land, and Michigan produces some mighty fine blueberries. They are generally available in bulk only during the summer, and on special occasion you can swing into a Meijer and pick up a 400 lb. case for a shade under $2, but the rest of the year you're paying about $1 per blueberry. That cost really begins to stack up and my blueberry budget is probably my single biggest berry-related expenditure over the course of any given year. Blueberries are the closest thing to a true guilt-free dessert. They're as sweet as candy and as sensual as Mandy Moore singing Candy. You can put them into cobblers and pies and rhubarbs and salads and pierogi (not recognized as a word by Firefox. Screw you Firefox for ignoring my Polish heritage) and when birds eat them, they're pooping blue all over my car. It's still gross, but I prefer blue poop to white poop.

However, is there any more natural food item in the world that is more hit-or-miss than blueberries? Sometimes I can not figure out what is their deal. Big ones are most often my favorite, but sometimes an entire batch of big ones is just bitter and they taste off. Little ones are less juicy and sometimes kind of hard, but even with these characteristics my enjoyment of them can sometimes exceed the bigger blueberries. Even the discolored runts can sometimes be fantastic, but most of the time they are terrible, so I'm forced to eat the terrible ones in the hope that I find a diamond in the rough, much like Aladdin of Agrabah. Produce is a fickle friend and I can accept that, but blueberries are very deceptive. I think blueberries and avocados made a pact many moons ago to confuse and frustrate the buying public. Typically one can look at an apple or orange or banana or whatever and they have a very good chance of being able to discern whether or not the fruit is worthy of consumption. Not so with the blueberry. I like to judge a book by its cover and a fruit by its ability to read a book, and blueberries fail both of these tests. But I'll still eat them.

Who's a Big Boy

For your massive enjoyment, here's a brief video of baby Louis in the very early days of his ability to crawl. Before you know it, he'll be thinking of me as "that creepy uncle who watches too much TV." As you can see from the video, Louis is clearly uncertain about the existence of the floor, or perhaps its ability to maintain his weight. Everyone thinks that I'm just being weird when I crawl around on the floor.

A Disturbing Trend

Life is incredibly busy these days, and I will most definitely hit on this period of busy at a future point. There are more than a few life changes taking place. You don't care.

I often cart many things around in my car. Family, friends, furniture, my big huge book of CDs that is incredibly obsolete, various pieces of paper that I have neglected to throw away, emergency blankets in my trunk, samurai swords, and pens. Every once in awhile, I am in a position where I need to transport a pet. I like having the dogs in the car. They make for good buddies and only every so often do they complain about my selection of in-car entertainment. Sometimes I get dog boogers all over my windows, but that is part of the small price to pay for pet ownership. Recently, though, I've noticed more and more of something that makes me quite uncomfortable out on the road with people and their pets in the car. These morons have their pets on their laps. On their laps while their driving with the dog heads out of the driver-side window.

This is a recipe for disaster, and is also incredibly weird. Can you not separate yourself from your dog for the brief period of a car ride? If you're a dude, aren't you afraid that the dog is going to step into your crotch, thereby rendering your ability to break, gas, and steer futile. If you're not dude, aren't you afraid of the exact same thing? My dogs are my buddies and I love them immensely, but I also know that they are dogs and in this capacity, they lack a certain control over their...brains. Whose to say what would happen in the instance that the pets see a squirrel, a bird, or another idiot driving with his dog on his lap and start pawing around in the reproductive area? Now the guy who I often see driving around with his golden retriever in the passenger seat wearing sunglasses - that guy and his dog are just awesome and always make me smile, but this literal lap dog while driving thing is not kosher.

I don't have much to add beyond this obvious thought, but I imagine the people driving in this situation are the same kind of people who love Paul Blart.

Boo, Get Off the Stage

People say (not me because I'm an enlightened man) that women make for less hilarious stand-up comedians. There are many notable exceptions, including the likes of Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, and so on, but the opinion definitely exists about women just not being as good at being professional comedians. It is important that we all stand up for the inherent sense of humor that many women have - that is, until you read a headline like this "Big Ten? More like Big Dud" from today's edition of The Detroit News by author Angelique S. Chengelis. Oh man, talk about setting your gender back about twenty years.

It may just be that my sense of humor is so much more advanced and honed than yours (yesterday during the Tiger's game against the Orioles, I thought the Orioles had a guy on their team and his last name was WeiNer. It turns out it was WeiTer, which is far less funny) and therefore I am more critical about things I find to be unfunny, but I haven't been able to stop thinking all day about what a terrible article name. Do you remember the first person someone "PSYCHED" you? I do. It was in fourth grade and a kid named Tim G. was like "Hey Ken, would you like 5 dollars?" and I said "yeah" and he said "PSYCHE" to which I replied "Yeah! where's my five dollars?" The article goes on to talk about how the Big Ten probably isn't as competitive as Midwesterners would like to think and that teams around the country are looking down on our little division of ten+1 teams, but it is impossible to focus on the subject matter with that title floating around in my mind.

"Good Weather? More like good Rainstorms"
"McCain wins! NOT!!!"

Ehhhh...I really love both of my Detroit newspapers even if one sucks way more than the other, but next time, I plead that someone stand up and make the difficult decision - that being to tar and feather the person who came up with this headline. We demand better, and we deserve better.

Greatness Finds Me

As you are certainly aware, last year I made best friends with Jimmy Fallon when I met and talked to him for a total of 1.5 seconds on the mean street of Ann Arbor. That's just the tip of my famous friend iceberg, where last year I said hi to Aaron Barrett from Reel Big Fish outside his tour bus and a few years ago, I saw the lead singer of MxPx leaning on his tour bus but I was far too chicken to say hello. Many, many years ago I met professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page in a sports bar and took a picture with him. Finally, the band Everclear came to hang out in the Brown Jug after a show in Ann Arbor and, you guessed it, I made best friends with them, too. That's just the kind of guy I am.

Today I was cruising south on Woodward through Royal Oak and a very shiny, customized, black Porsche Carrera was revving its way down the road to my left, and I thought to myself "that is a shiny nice black car." Then I took a quick glance at the driver and thought to myself "that's a young guy driving a car that nice", then "hey, that guy looks suspiciously like Justin Verlander," and then finally "That guy is Justin Verlander." That's right, a new famous best friend for Ken.

But really, what does Justin Verlander have that I don't besides a 100 mph fastball, millions of dollars, a no-hitter, a Porsche Carrera, and the ability to grow facial hair? That's exactly what he has that I don't - a 100 mph fastball, millions of dollars, a no-hitter, a Porsche Carrera, and the ability to grow facial hair. I tried to make eye contact with him and indicate that I had a sore shoulder to symbolize that I creepily knew who he was, but alas, no successful eye contact. At that point, I hit him with a baseball bat, kidnapped him in my trunk, tied him to my childhood desk, and played him a song on the piano. There was a small degree of upsetness, but that's just a product of our "Celebrities First" culture. Justin Verlander, simply because you're famous doesn't mean that you're any more special than the other people locked in my room.

Vacation

My family is crazy (in a wonderful way). We spent last week on vacation, and a typical family vacation includes a 6 mile walk, an hour of tennis, a couple hours sailing, a quarter mile walk to and from each meal, and various other physical activities. Today marks my vacation from vacation where I finally have the opportunity to get some dang rest!

So I am back and better than ever, and by better than ever I mean that I have a top 10 sock tan line. Fortunately for the wedding, there is no need for the man to show off any ankle, otherwise I would have to recommend that everyone wear sunglasses for their own safety and protection. I'm glad to be back and I'm looking forward to writing.