Please feel free..

to do posts linking your blogs here! I know speaking for myself, I would love to give more traffic to those of you who blog. I get in a routine and forget. Seeing them here will remind me!

Why I Still Hate Yanni

Years ago my wife and I went camping on Catalina Island. Now this was shortly after returning from living abroad. We were both in pretty good shape and liked hiking and outdoor stuff plus we didn't have any kids yet. We took a boat over to the island from the mainland to Two Harbors and then took a bus to the campsite. What a bust that place was. The water tasted like chlorine (it was treated rainwater). The sun was so intense that whole week that we had to build a shelter next to our tiny pup tent. Now the brochure had promised that every campsite had a palm tree-they just didn’t tell us that ours was only about 2 feet tall and useless for shade. We ended up actually building shade out of spare wooden pallets.


Things were going along OK  The diet was pretty lean, consisting many of rehydrated foods and good coffee (we brought along one of this little espresso makers). We actually ended up hiking back into town and bringing some decent water back, lugging it on our backs. So things were going just great (well OK) until Yanni and his love interest rolled into camp. I mean literally rolled because they came by bicycle (motor vehicles are prohibited on the island). I immediately nicknamed him Yanni because he had that doofus-looking long girly hair and was also all buffed-out like a rock star. He liked to strut around topless too, flexing his muscles.

Yanni and the Mrs both had those sidesaddle panniers on their bikes just packed with gear and goodies. We watched them set up from a safe distance. Yanni had a much bigger tree-enough to shade his walk-in tent. Yanni’s love interest soon disappeared inside the tent (no doubt primping herself for a romantic evening) while he set about preparing a fine meal.

“WTF did he just pull out of those panniers? Was that a steak?” my wife remarked. It was. That Yanni had thought of everything. Fresh vegetables even. Then out came a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew! After he prepared the meal, Yanni disappeared into the tent for the night. No doubt for a major seduction scene.

The next morning Yanni re-emerged topless from the tent to cook his lover breakfast (we never did see her until they packed up and left later on that day).  Once again he dipped his hands into the bottomless panniers "Are those eggs? is that bacon?" soon came the laments. Oh well, at least we had our good coffee. And reconstituted refried beans and rice.

It's Friday...

...pour yourself a scotch (or two), find that Main Squeeze and....Sex It Up. Here's some mood setting for ya...

Zippety Doo Dah!

I had this album! I love, love, love this song:

Your Eminence.

This is very troubling to me. I work in this field of law and I'm probably especially sensitive to it, though.

HOCKEY!!

Pretty much says it all. GO USA!!!!

Whoa Dude!

It's still winter.  It's dreary here.  Bah.

I thought that what I needed to cheer me up was a YouTube trip to the beach so I could dig some surfer music. I'm hep with the chicks and surfer dudes, ya know daddio. 

I didn't want some of that sappy Beach Boy music this morning; I wanted something with an edge.  I wanted Dick Dale.  You know Dick Dale, don't you?  No?  Huh? What are you, a commie?  Or worse, from Illinois?

Dick Dale is the inventor of surfing music.  He is called the King of Surf music by other musicians.  He is also known as having the fastest fingers in music because of the way he plays guitar.  It isn't unusual for his fingers to bleed during a concert. He plays the skin off of them.

Where wuz  I?  Oh yeah, the music.  I hunted around my house and couldn't find any Dick Dale CDs, so I sniffed around YouTube for a while. Found some good stuff.  This one I especially like because not only does it have Dick Dale, but also Stevie Ray Vaughn.  Plus, and get this, appearances by Gilligan, The Skipper, The Beaver, Wally Cleaver, David Hasselhoff, and my fave Mousketeer Annette Funicello.  *Drifts off to boyhood fantasyland at mention of Annette Funicello*

Pipeline! Get your Frug on!


Here's Dick Dale and a drummer. No one else.  I sounds like two, maybe three guitars.  There is only one.


You wish you played that well. So do I. 

Now get back to work.  America is counting on you.  I'm at the beach.

Is There a Mafia Behind the Mafia?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Imagine this: There is a higher layer of mafia than the mafia we are familiar with.  The Genoveses, Gottis, Lanskys and other dons and families are actually controlled by a very secret small group of Sicilianos who are never in the picture.  These guys settle disputes, arrange for "leaders" to be taken down or framed when they stop taking orders.  They set strategy, call the shots, without ever being traced.

And they are so secret that even the FBI has never been able to bust any of them, nor even capture a photo for its agents to use.

Maybe they exist; maybe they don't.  But the author of this book believes that he has the evidence that they are real.  Sucker that I am, I ordered the book. And the DVD so I can hear the author's voice.

Real or not, what do you think?  Sounds like a "judge the boobs" question, doesn't it?  We'll find out if I am a boob for buying the book.

Welcome!

Some of us thought we could use a gathering place to converse beyond the 140 character limits in other places.

So...welcome friends.