I Am Not Legend

As I sit by myself at the Las Vegas Hooters Hotel pool on a Monday Morning at 10am, I am reminded of the scene in the movie "I am Legend" where Will Smith sits at the end of a pier waiting to see if there is another member of humanity that is still alive. While this might seem like a far fetched comparison, I would rather deal with homicidal flesh eating zombies from that movie than the sleeveless guys I just walked by at the 3$ blackjack table who are drinking Budweiser at 10am on Monday morning. You know the kind of guys I'm talking about..... small hands.... smells of cabbage.

So while reflecting by the pool filled with a surprising number of people who are able to smoke and swim at the same time, I find myself wondering “why would someone who is turning 30 and who isn’t morally bankrupt be in this situation, and what advice could he give to my friends so that this will never happen to them?”. So in honor of this ethical conundrum and my recent trip to Las Vegas with my friends Jason, Chad, and Walt to celebrate multiple 30th birthdays, I present to you some “Travel Tips for Las Vegas for People Who Don’t Want to Lose a Large Portion of Their Soul” -

Tip 1: “If you book a hotel because it sounds cool to guys, expect to see a lot of guys at that hotel”

Much like Cuba Gooding Junior in Boat Trip, I was a little surprised by the amount of guys at our hotel. But instead a hilarious misunderstanding which booked me on a homosexual cruise, I just chose a hotel because it 1) was reasonably priced, 2) had an in house sports book, 3) had a view of the strip, and most importantly 4) had a flat screen TV in the bathroom (I don't want the score of the Cubs game in 5 minutes when I'm out of the bathroom, I need it now!). Of course much like anyone outside of the Gooding family, I haven’t seen the movie Boat Trip, so there’s a good chance this reference doesn’t make any sense at all.

Chad giving Walt pointers on his performance and drink choice as an extra in Boat Trip II

The name of the hotel we ended up staying at was “THE Hotel”, which lacks both a creative name and a second gender. To give you an idea of the clientele, as we would leave to go buy beer to drink before going out while making jokes about how stupid the name “THE Hotel” is, we would see 4 other guys coming back from buying beer while making jokes about how stupid the name “THE Hotel” is*. It was like looking in a mirror every time we passed the other hotel guests…. But one of those fun house mirrors that changes your appearance to give you spikey hair, expensive jeans, and very strong cologne. The kind of cologne that’s quite pungent….. that stings the nostrils…. which made sense once we learned that the hotel was sponsored by the new scent Tag's Pure Gasoline Body Spray.

* For a full transcript of all the hilarious witty banter about the name of our hotel and our ideas for possible stores like “THE store in the lobby”, “THE place outside the hotel where you get propositioned by hookers”, “THE other place outside the hotel where you get propositioned by hookers”, please shoot me an email and I will send you the hours of comic gold. Gold, Jerry!

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Tip 2: “Instead of finding out what day the concert is scheduled, find out what day the concert is scheduled to end”

When we were planning out the trip to Vegas, Chad found out that the rapper Mos Def was playing at the House of Blues at our hotel on Friday night. And since Mos Def is one of my favorite rappers, just behind the “ Hiphopopotamus” and the “Rhymenocerous” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbxA8a_M_s) , we decided it would be a good way to start off the night. The only thing we didn’t do is check to see what time the concert actually started. When he first got there, we assumed the concert started at 8 pm…. Then we found out that the concert officially started at 11:59pm….. then found out that there is an opening act that starts at midnight, and Mos Def won’t go on until 1am…..then found out that Mos Def didn’t actually start until after 2am….. then found out that Mos Def likes to talk a lot between songs and finished after 4:30am……Then was reminded back in the room that while it was “only” 5am in Vegas, but it was after 8am on the east coast, and that I should probably re-evaluate some life choices.

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Tip 3: “If partying on the Vegas strip isn’t crazy enough for you, and you need to go to a bar called “Carnaval”, you are probably fun to watch”

On Saturday, after piecing together what was left of our souls from Friday night, we grabbed lunch with Eric, our friend from college. Eric is one of the few people that has somehow found a way to live in Vegas and maintain his sanity and morals. I’m assuming he does this by avoiding going out for drinks with a guy who is in Vegas for the weekend and going through his 1/3 life crisis. He gave us a few suggestions of places to go that night, including a place called “Carnaval” which has no cover and great people watching. I told him that he had us at “hello” “no cover”.

So once we got to the bar, all we had to do is grab a table in the corner just in time for the 11:30pm freak show…. which is totally different than the 12:30am freak show. Highlights from the shows included -

• One old school dance off with what looked like two extras from the 1980’s movie – Breakin 2: Electric Bugaloo. The only problem was that both contestants in the dance off had one move, so there was never a clear winner…. Just half an hour of two guys doing the same move over and over with a crowd around them waiting for a good time to walk away. There’s only so much poppin and lockin you can watch before you decided to get another bucket of beers.

If only there was a direct correlation between cool dance moves and fluorescent head bands

• Two cougars (or “aggressive older females searching for young males” for the lay person) from Canada who enjoyed making crude hand and mouth gestures to each other. I don’t think they put together a coherent sentence the entire night, and might have set US/Canadian relations back a few decades.
• Three guys dancing who didn’t seem to need any drinks or dance partners to get out on the dance floor and dance three times as fast as everyone. These guys loved dancing to the beat of the DJ…. then to the beat of the band….. then to the beat of the band breaking down the equipment…… then to the beat of the bouncer telling them that the music stopped and the club closed 20 minutes ago….. then to beat of the people walking down the street outside the club on their way home. Hopefully they will eventually dance to the beat of an intervention with their close friends and family.

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Tip 4: “If you have to switch hotels because you forgot to make reservations for the last night, don’t choose a hotel based on the amount of laughs the name got”

It turns out staying at the Hooters Hotel in Las Vegas is a much more amusing concept than reality. After quickly checking in and quickly making my way through the lobby and casino and up to my room, it took me three showers to wash off the smell of smoke, chicken wings, and sad.

Hooters comes up with a very creative single entendre

But here’s a fun fact for you – the Hooters room service menu does not include wings. You read that right, the Hooters dinner menu at the Hooters hotel that uses the Hooters restaurant to deliver Hooters dinner to Hooters customers in their Hooters rooms, did not have Hooters chicken wings.

This leads me to the final and most important tip……

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Tip 5: “It is never too late to second guess your life choices”

The most important lesson that I learned this past weekend is to never ever stay an extra night in Vegas. It might seem like a good time to stay on Sunday night to save some money and get a good story from staying in a gimmicky hotel. It is not. Ever. Under any circumstances. After spending 2 minutes walking through the lobby and another 2 minutes eating food court pizza at the hotel across the street, Chad and I decided to do our best impression of Howard Hughes in his late years and holed ourselves up in the room and watch an Adam Sandler movie*. While this might not sound like a lot of fun to you, to avoid any further contact with Hooters or anything else on the Vegas strip, I would have watched a Hugh Grant movie marathon with Hugh Grant commentary followed by an interview with Hugh Grant talking about how he gets into character for his new role as an awkward but charming british man who falls in love with someone in a totally different social circle. Man, I hate that guy.

* It turns out Howard Hughes was a huge Adam Sandler fan, true story.

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So just to review, if you only remember one life lesson from this entire rambling and barely coherent rant, make it a paraphrase of Nancy Reagan’s slogan from the 80’s -

“JUST SAY NO… to your friend who is turning 30 and thinks it would be funny to stay an extra night in Vegas in a hotel that is under $50 a night and has lamps that strangely resemble nipples” .

And you guys didn’t think I knew anything about politics.

Sleep Deprived in Seattle

Having the attention span and maturity level of a 7th grader has made finishing "text heavy" books very difficult over the years. So in honor of my finally finishing the book "On the Road" (which is about Jack Kerouac's cross country adventures), I am documenting 24 hours of my own cross country adventure to visit my sister in Portland. But instead of taping all pages together so that he could type for hours on end (see below), I just wrote incomplete sentences and included lots of pictures.



Also, instead of hitchhiking and taking odd jobs to make it all the way across the country, I am just taking a nonstop flight..... so I guess its really not that similar. The important thing to remember from this story is that I finished a book. Please make a note of it.

Also, before I begin the highlights of my trip, please note that I realize that I don't literally have the worst travel luck or the craziest travel stories of everybody you know. It turns out that almost everyone has a recent story about travel plans gone wrong..... like Steve in accounting. However, if you want to hear Steve's crazy travel story, you will not only hear about his crazy flight to Iowa but also his theory on how fiberglass fishing poles work better for catching Bluegills.

So, unless you have a strong interest in long fishing stories or find sitting in accounts receivable more comfortable than your current chair, I suggest just briefly skimming the highlights below and then reminding yourself not to take a trip with me:

7:30am – Wakeup and do my daily affirmations in the mirror - "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and for once I will reach my travel destination on the same day that I planned"

Strangely enough, I was wearing the same cardigan as Stuart Smalley

9:01am - Receive email from friend saying “Good luck with your flight, hope it doesn’t get cancelled like the last time…. Or the one before that where someone has a heart attack and another person urinated on themselves because of how bad the landing was”. So after reminiscing on the last few travel adventures, we decided that as long as my flight wasn't cancelled, then the trip would be a success.

9:02am – Receive email saying that my flight is cancelled. But the silver lining is that farther down the email it explains “Good News, you may qualify for a Free Transfer to a different flight”, which seemed like a small consolation to not accomplishing the 1 thing I paid the airline to do. But then I remembered the old phrase - “when the airline industry closes a door, it opens a window .....that will most likely take you a long time to get out of and will bring you to a totally different city than you planned on”. Its amazing how accurate old sayings are.

9:04am – I click on the email link to find that my cancelled flight does not qualify for the “free transfer”, so I’d like to formally take back the small consolation part.

9:47am – I finally get through to a Jetblue Customer Service Representative, who is very friendly and proceeds to complain about her day, then tell me my name is “beautiful”, and then "can't believe that my flight really wasn’t eligible for a free transfer?!?”. This is my problem, I can’t stay mad at someone as nice and incredibly confusing as this old lady. By the end of the call, I somehow was no longer mad about my inexplicably cancelled flight to Portland, and was happy with a flight to Seattle two hours later with no compensation for rental car or arriving in the wrong state.

Well played crazy customer service lady. Well played.

12:45 – Decide that flight troubles, government stimulus check, and trip to see cute niece are the three signs that I need to buy the small and expensive camcorder that I saw online a few weeks back. I really believe that ignoring these signs would be like the ancient Egyptian pharaoh ignoring the 10 plagues in biblical times. I hope that doesn't come across as too dramatic or sacrilegious because the camera is really cool, and I really needed a good justification to buy it.

And you thought Family Circus the most controversial cartoon.....

2:00 pm – Check online and see 1^st delay for my new flight to wrong state.

6pm – Leave work to get to the airport on time via two trains, an airtrain, and a walk that rivaled Tom Hanks in the final scene of Green Mile in length and morale level.

Just realized this is the 2nd reference involving Tom Hanks. From now on, the only
reference of his I will make is Mr. Short Term Memory from SNL

8pm – Get through security and check departure screen to find flight is delayed until 10pm, with consolation being that every jetblue sign says “check out our new terminal that is spacious and state of the art”

8:12pm – Look closer at signs and realize that it says to “check out the new terminal in fall 2008". For now, I can “check out” a temporary terminal that requires an extra jetblue shuttle out in the middle of nowhere and drops you off at an airplane hangar that has been converted to resemble the 4^th layer of hell. For those of you not familiar with all 7 layers of hell, the 4^th layer is the one where there are 4 people per square foot, no air conditioning, and hundreds of signs for a new layer of hell that will be coming soon and will be much roomier and state of the art.

9:02pm – After glancing every few minutes at the departure board, I notice the time has been changed from 10pm to 9:25pm. Oh, and its also been changed to the gate 3 that I passed on the way to the shuttle back in the 3^rd layer of hell.

Judging by the angle of this photo, I assume it was taken by George Muresan

9:14pm – Get to gate 3 in record time after pulling a Constanza and giving a mean stiff arm to an aggressive 90 year old woman who was attempting to cut me in line for the shuttle. Don’t kid yourself ..... much like cows, if the elderly got the chance, they would eat you and everyone you care about.

(sorry, just realized that less than 1% of people would understand the Simpsons reference, so click HERE to see that i have nothing against the elderly and why its dangerous not to eat large quantities of meat)

9:15pm – Look at gate’s departure time and laugh that it has been changed to 10pm. It feels so good to laugh.

9:16pm – We are now boarding in a rushed fashion, even though the departure time still says 10pm. I can only assume there is a flight attendant that no one likes in the bathroom and we are trying to leave before she gets back. Either that or they are filming a new elaborate reality show where Jamie Kennedy makes you think your flight is delayed, and then quickly leaves when you go to the wrong gate. Either way, I’m glad to be on the right side of the practical joke.

9:32 – Board and realize that my tv isn’t working. Normally I would make fun of someone complaining about their satellite television not working on a flight, but we have 6 hours to go and the baby and snoring man in my aisle are having a duel for highest decibel level that rivals the excitement of Michael Jordan vs Dominique Wilkins in the 1988 Slam Dunk contest.

9:50 – Announcement from captain “Good News! JFK is currently using 2 runways, when the airport usually only uses one.” And then a casual sidebar “We are currently 18^th in line, ad will take off in around 30 minutes.” Jeblue is all about managing expectations. I make a note to email about what exactly it means to have “good news”. I think I will just send a clip from Princess Bride with Inigo Montoya saying "you keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means".

"He's climbing the mountain by himself..... Good News!!!"

10:02 – The snoring guy wins with a sound that rivaled Michael Jordan's free throw line dunk…..and my tv is still broken

Believe me, the ability to make as loud a noise as this guy did without waking himself up was equally as impressive

4am (eastern time) Land, rent car, and in the process realize that talkative people are still talkative at 4am. Normally I would welcome a discussion on the fairness of moving the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City, but right now I have a 3 hour drive ahead of me.

4:37 – Finally on the road after getting car and a meatball sandwich from a 24 hour subway, also known as my new favorite restaurant in the world.

6:17 – I finally hit that overtired stage of sleep deprivation where you are still awake, but mildly hallucinating with the only images that my subconscious has of Portland…. Which are Rasheed Wallace yelling at referees and a fat Shawn Kemp struggling to make it up and down the basketball court. The good thing about these hallucinations is that its easy to tell the difference between the reality of a dark open interstate and a fictional Greg Oden shooting free throws on top of clouds.

"Hey Ref, I can't believe Adrian couldn't find a picture of a fat Shaun Kemp on Google Images!"

7am – Pull into driveway and am surpised by greeting from brother in law. I guess he lost the coin flip with my sister, which makes 237 consecutive coin flips that she has won in a row. I suggest to him to not let her use Harvey Dent's coin from the new Batman movie.

7:30 am – Finish the 24 hour adventure and get into bed with consolation that I would have a full 3 days before repeating this whole adventure again.

So this concludes my one day diary of bad travel luck. So please take life lessons with you when you travel , which is that you should never travel with me and while I may not have the most dramatic travel stories of anyone in your office, you can easily scroll through my travel adventures without having to nod and smile and listen to how fiberglass fishing rods are the most effective when fishing for Bluegills.

And that's one to grow on.

Tootie from the Facts of Life always knows best

8 Life Lessons Learned at the Indy 500

A few weeks ago I made the pilgrimage to the white trash mecca known as the Indy 500, located in my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. Over the long weekend, I learned a series of life lessons from a number of mulleted prophets. For your convenience, I went through all of my pictures* from the weekend, and filtered out the ones that would make you immediately lose faith in humanity and focused on the ones that emphasized the 8 Life Lessons Learned at the Indy 500.

*Please note that all jean shorts and mullets were all too real, and none of the photos were doctored to exaggerate the trashiness of the event for a humorous effect. Also, please click on each photo if the lesson is unclear, its easier to get the full effect with a larger picture.

"Fashion Statements are not just
for the Rich and Famous"

I know what you are thinking "the race sounds fun, but what are the ground breaking fashion trends that you saw, that I can look forward to seeing on the runways in Milan later this year?" .... will it be the orange hair to match your dad's equally orange hat? the mesh hat that has the name of a 1970's porn movie? I think its obvious that the next big thing will be the futuristic rectangle sunglasses that take the cutting edge trendiness of Blue Blockers and combine it with Marty McFly's futuristic style in Back to the Future II. Who doesn't want the sunglass equivalent of the McFly's hoverboard in the movie? And don't tell me that I'm the only one that bought the Back to the Future trilogy on dvd when it came out..... oh, i am? Really? never mind then.

"Respect Your Elders"

Hi, my name is Jason, and I was Adrian's roommate in college and when he lived in Chicago. I am only a couple months older than he is, but I think I am very fancy because I have matured at a normal rate in the last 10 years while Adrian appears to be stuck in a permanent state of arrested development....which means while he is living illegally in Chinatown, I am living in a large house with my wife and newly born twins. I am also secretly jealous that Adrian stayed up until 2:30am last night playing Mario Kart on Nintendo Wii, which is eerily similar to what he did 10 years ago when we were roommates*.

* Please note that Jason did not actually say or write this because he is too busy doing his job and helping support his wife and kids. I do believe that this is exactly what he would have said..... minus the word "fancy", because that's just a weird thing to say.

"You don't have to Own a Hybrid to Conserve Our Natural Resources"














Hi, we are Adrian's friends and the nice people that he met while car pooling to and from the race. While we are mature adults, for this weekend we are squeezing into very uncomfortable places.... like the back seat of a Honda Civic. We love the earth and want to help conserve its natural resources, but not enough to drop $50K on a hybrid car, so we are kicking it old school and jamming a bunch of people into the back seat and slapping a "save the whales" bumper sticker on the back of the car. We were very concerned about this whole Global Warming thing, until Adrian explained that it was make-believe, just like Elves, Gremlins, and guys who like Hugh Grant movies.

"Break Gender Stereotypes Whenever Possible"

Hi, its your favorite gender role trailblazers here..... "the spikey hair guy in jean shorts" and "the guy on another guy's shoulders". Why should girls get all the fun of good views at concerts and less leg constriction from long pants? Oh, you disagree.... well, doesn't that make you the closed minded ones? For all this crap I hear from you elitist coast residents about "fly over zone", it looks like we are really the ones acting on gender equality and you are just talking about it. Looks like you guys just got served. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go yell at women to take their tops off.....











The important thing to realize about the pictures above is that whether you are a fat guy who loves car racing or two hot girls who are being paid to hang out with fat guys who love car racing, everyone loves "slip and slides". (except in the case of the guy on the top right, who loves "slip and immediately be mocked by a giant crowd of people and slide")

"Give Your Daughters the Attention They Desperately Need When They Are Young"

For parents, soon to be parents, and guys who "just think it feels better" without protection, if you only remember one life lesson from the Indy 500, make it giving your daughters attention they desperately need when they are young....... so a crowd of three thousand trashy guys don't have to 10 years later.

"Brush and Floss Daily"

Seems pretty self explanatory..... but then again, so did the instructions "don't do Crystal Meth".

"Moderating Food Consumption is not as Important as Moderating Alcohol Consumption"

It appears that while eating Texas Style BBQ turkey legs with a side of Biscuits and Sausage gravy might hurt you in the long run, losing your equilibrium and face planting right in front of a group of police officers will hurt you much more in the immediate future. (Don't worry, she was fine..... and I'm sure she just had an inner ear infection or something non-alcohol related)


"Don't Skip Out on Driving Down to Indianapolis for the One Weekend when all Your College Friends get Together Because you 'Have to Work on Your Deck Because Your Brother in Law is Graduating Next Weekend', thus Making Your Friends Play Golf with a Total Stranger for Over 5 Hours"

Hi, my name is Tom. I am the guy in the top right of the picture who is 30 years older than everyone else, wearing jean shorts and a Pacers hat..... and a Pacers shirt, Pacers Socks, and I have a Pacers sweatshirt and Pacers club headcover in the golf cart. I will be spending the next 5 and a half hours with you because your friend Walt Keating decided not to drive down from Detroit to see his close friends the one time they get together during the year because his brother in law will be graduating high school the next weekend..... oh i almost forgot, i am also hanging with you guys because no one will play golf with me because I am awful to be around and I feel the need to share my expert commentary on everything that is being discussed within a 50 yard radius of me. I will spend the next five hours speaking to you about the following completely believable topics:

1. Why Larry Bird told me that I'm the only one who can control Ron Artest, and that the brawl in Detroit incident would never have happened if I was in charge*
2. Why I really believe that I will be the next head coach of the Pacers, even though I have no coaching experience except for when I volunteered to coach for a 4th grade girls' AAU team.
3. Why everything you do in life can be improved by my listening to my nonstop critiquing of everything I see
4. Why any bad shot I hit is caused by the people in front of me who are too slow, the people behind me who are too loud, and the guys I am playing with who are enjoying themselves too much. I will also yell at all of these groups sporadically over the next 5 hours.

* Please note that Tom has no affiliation with the Pacers, and when asked about these statements, the organization released a statement saying "who?"

I really wish I was exaggerating about any one Tom's points, but unfortunately they are 100% true..... especially coaching a 4th grade girl's AAU team.

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So, just like the end of each Full House episode, I will sit down with you and end this Webl with the moral of the story:

If you take these 8 life lessons to heart, you will mature at a normal rate, cut down on oil prices, increase the self confidence of women and spikey haired men wearing jean shorts, keep most of your teeth, get to eat your side of biscuits in gravy in a non-jail like environment, and most importantly not force your friends to hang out with a compulsive liar for 5 straight hours. I hope you have learned your lesson DJ and Michelle.....

No One Likes Your NEW AND IMPROVED Blog

The reason that I am writing this mildly coherent rambling or “post” as real bloggers call it is to explain why I have a blog and more importantly why you should start/keep reading it. I decided the best way to do this is by having a State of the Union type address, and since I only watched 30 seconds of the last one before I realized there was a Small Wonder marathon on Nick at Night, all I got out of the speech was that the president talks for about 1 minute and then listens to applause for 2 minutes. So to keep with this format, please include your own applause after every paragraph, and if you don't feel that applause captures your emotion at the time, feel free to shout out your favorite political catch phrase like "yes we can!", "yes, we will!", or "yes, there is a slight possibility that we don't have anything better going on currently!"



"No one cares about WHY I WRITE A BLOG ...."


1. The first reason I write a blog is because I have a life philosophy to put myself in as many situations as possible that will result in an amusing interaction, observation, non life threatening injury, or story to share the next day. Since I hate coming up with original topics and discussions, this blog will strictly be about things that I see that I find funny and will never contain opinions or beliefs. While I might go on a rant about an occasional theory, I promise it will never be well thought out and be very half cocked.... in fact, it will barely be one quarter cocked…. okay, that sounds bad, let's move on to the next point....

2. My memory resets every 2 minutes or so, in a similar way to the main guy in the movie Memento. And to go along with this short memory is a short attention span. So these posts will be a reminder to myself what I have done, where I have gone, and what was funny about it. They will also be short enough to read while pretending to listen to your coworker talk at length about their new diet/pet/plan to take over the human race/jogging route/etc.

3. The most important reason for me to write this is that I am making it easier for you to mock me in a public forum. One thing I miss about living close to my friends from high school and college is the constant mocking of anything I do that is outside the norm. So, if you have a witty criticism of me, my blog, my personal hygiene, or anything else that could publicly humiliate me, please post it in the comments section below each posting.

As people who know me have figured out, I don't put sustained effort into many things (for evidence, please see my ikea furniture, dozens of partially read books on my shelves, my undergraduate GPA, etc), so the pattern of the blog will now be short bursts of random posts instead of the previous long posts covering 12 months of activity. While it may be annoying to receive more emails about updated blogs, the posts will be a little more current and you can ignore topics that make you physically ill to think about.





"No one cares WHAT I WRITE ABOUT" ...

I promise not to discuss any opinions on politics, music taste, what's wrong with any part of the world, and I also promise not to claim expertise on anything besides being able to play "name that tune" for cheesy 90's hip hop at a professional level.

If you read this and it doesn't sound up your alley, just shoot me an email or send it to your junk folder. If it does sound interesting or at least mildly tolerable, keep it and you will receive 18 additional blog posts for 84% off the cover price. And on top of that, you will also receive the Football Phone..... or else you'll just get more updates when I post new things. Sorry, got a little carried away with the promotional offer.


"No one cares WHAT I CALL MY BLOG" ...

After much (and by “much”, I mean "very little") debate, I have decided that the term blog is not appropriate for my weblog. I have found through personal experience that when I say the phrase "my blog" is usually met with a look that conveys the unspoken question/critique "why do you have a blog? You don't fit any of the current criteria for writing one, which are: being a paid journalist, being passionate about a topic, updating it daily if not hourly, being a coherent writer, living a life worth writing about, or having a kid that does amusing things that need to be shared like eating and making different faces while eating”. So long rant short, I will be referring to the writing previously known as a blog as a ..... (drum roll)......a WEBL (pronounced "wee-bull"). Now hear me out before you close out of the browser- WEBL is a good name for a number of reasons -

1. It looks like the mildly credible local radio station – “WEBL – Local News, Sports and Weather” that competes with the local radio station - "WZZZ's Zainy Zoo Crew", which uses a ridiculous amount of sound effects that include overdone laughing sounds, noises from various parts of the body, and a desperate woman that sounds suspiciously like a 1-900 operator, and all other things ZAINY!

2. It has the same pronunciation as one of the Graham family's childhood toy's - the Weeble, which as the more maturely aged readers know that it “wobbles but doesn’t fall down”.

So, with these thoughts in mind - warm up your junk folders and delete keys, ignore the basic rules of grammar and social norms, and please enjoy my future WEBL posts….