Dinocroc vs. Supergator: A live blogging review

I've got a camera, the remote, three drinks and my laptop. This will be long, probably longer than most people will want to read, but keep in mind that I actually watched this movie. You guys have it easy.

So in the immortal words of my good buddy, Ash:

Yo. She-bitch. Let's go.

A female scientist straight from a porn set looks at what appears to be a voltage meter on a rack of uninterruptible power supplies in a mainframe data center somewhere, and yells through her lip-liner, "Everybody out now! It's escaped!" Thus begins the exceptionally poignant dialogue and amazing special effects of "Dinocroc vs. SuperGator."

The first scene is just a bunch of whitecoats running away from something, and when it finally comes around the corner, the monster looks like a giant alligator with spikes on his back. I'm not sure at this point whether I'm looking at Dinocroc or SuperGator. I don't see a cape, or an S on its chest, so I'm guessing it's Dinocroc.

He eats a handful of scientist mcnuggets, but amazingly, there's no blood. Either he's a meticulous eater, or blood is hard to do in CGI. The creature that I assume (until otherwise notified) is Dinocroc, runs across some sandy-looking dirt, leaving no tracks even though it appears to weigh about the same as a city bus, and eases itself into the water without a single ripple. It also seems to be made of styrofoam since it floats way too high up in the water. Come to think of it, that may explain the lack of tracks. On the plus side, that should make it easier to kill.

Doc Hottie stops running for a few seconds to make a phone call. We cut to the phone ringing on the other end. Who picks it up? A very old and frail looking David Carradine, who is having his blood pressure taken. I'm not sure if that is supposed to be part of the scene, or if it’s just bad editing.

She breathlessly tells him that "Primeval One" has escaped. He tells her to fill a tranquilizer gun with 500cc’s of Cetacolin, which I don’t think is a real drug. It’s probably why she then says that Primeval One has developed an immunity to it.

David Carridine asks about the other specimen (Primeval Two?), and she says that one of the other scientists is trying to sedate it. I hope they’re not using Cetacolin again. Based on my experiences thus far, that stuff doesn’t work for shit.

My hopes are shattered as a CGI monster bashes a hole into the wall, flattens a scientist and escapes its confines. Damn Cetacolin. I think the monster is extra-pissed because he just looked down at himself and realized that he has the resolution of a first-gen Xbox game. Also, I guess this must be Dinocroc since he looks more like a dinosaur than the other monster. He runs down a trail, eats one of those dudes that has no blood, and then the title credits start.

This should be good.

First we’re circling some tropical island with white sand beaches and gorgeous mountains. Then we cut two people on a beach. Unfortunately the beach looks like it’s in Jersey somewhere. The chick, who is apparently named "Baby" because that’s what her boyfriend Bruce keeps calling her, runs into the jungle and finds a waterfall. They strip down to their bathing suits and wander into the pool. The water is up to their knees. You can clearly see the bottom. No danger here, right?

Bruce tells Baby to get him a beer, and Baby complies, and walks to the cooler. Before she can turn around again, SuperGator swallows him from below, like Jaws:

How this happens in two feet of water is beyond me, but I am thinking that one of SuperGator’s powers is the ability to swim through rock, which is an awesome power to have, especially if you are a SuperGator.

Then when Baby turns around to look for Bruce he’s gone. She’s squatting on a rock, looking into the knee deep water for him. But you know who isn’t gone? Wrong! You thought I was going to say SuperGator, didn't you? It’s Dinocroc, and he sneaks up on her:



I am assuming that she is very distraught because it’s not like he actually "sneaks" in that the camera work would lead you to believe that the ground is shaking with each step. She finally turns around, and sees Dinocroc scant inches from her face. She screams. She makes no effort to run, or move or even stand up straight and take it like a trooper. No, instead, she just does this:

Next we cut to an investigator talking to his boss on the phone. They talk about the cages, and the people at the lab, who have all disappeared. Apparently, David Carradine is "using growth hormone on living creatures," and these government types don’t seem to like it one bit. Although I’m not sure what else you’d use growth hormone on. I don’t think it would work on inanimate objects. I think it would probably just make a wet spot.

So about these missing people — the boss man wants his agent to go take a look "up close and personal" because they are so worried about what’s going on up there at the lab. So, as you’d expect, the agent says "OK, but not today, I’m taking a well-earned day off and going fishing." What? Your boss just told you to do something, and you say "Bullshit, I’m going fishing?" I find that harder to believe in than Dinocroc.

Enter hottie number two, in an inflatable pontoon boat named "Wild Angel." She looks a little like a stripper. Now I think I know why secret agent boy is going fishing. Because they both read the script and I bet they're supposed to meet up. She looks like she’s some sort of cop or forest ranger or something. Her dad is also a cop, and they discuss the weird stuff some nature photographer found in the stream. Some clothes, a backpack, a severed arm. No, I’m kidding about the arm. She tells him there’s nothing big enough to eat humans up there, and she has a very sexy voice. Also, the sound track to this movie is awesome. Picture the theme music from the A-Team meets the Munsters with a hint of 60’s Bond films, and then put the whole thing underwater so it warbles a little bit.

I’m not sure exactly why, but now there’s two choppers full of dudes with guns. They look like mercenaries. I'll bet that David Carradine sent them to kill the animals and also kill the scientists so there are no loose ends. There’s a scientist running through the woods and he’s intercepted by the mercenaries. Holy shit, the bad-ass soldier in charge sounds like he either has a speech impediment or he’s over-enunciating. "Tell me where those lizards are," he lisps. So now I know that David Carradine did send them. The scientist says, "I don't know. I’m just glad I made it out." Commander Impediment says "Yew dint int" and shoots him in the heart. He sounds a little like Tracy Morgan. He also has a lazy eye, so I’m not sure which one to look at. Then he radios to some other guys on his team who are walking through a different part of the jungle.

Did you ever notice that strange coincidence in movies like this where there always just happens to be a walkie-talkie or cell phone conversation going on when the monster attacks? I think there may be a law that says you have to hear monster attacks over a radio for them to be scary.

The other guys hear Dinocroc crashing through the woods, so they're ready. When Dinocroc is bearing down on them, they do what any superbly-trained mercenaries with high-powered automatic rifles would do - they fall backwards on their asses without firing a shot and totally get eaten. Turns out it might not have mattered, because when Dinocroc finds Captain Impediment and his team, they dump about 300 rounds of automatic fire right into its mouth, with no apparent adverse effect. They then throw a grenade at it, and figure out that it’s a little too tough for what they have on hand so they decide to run away and call in the extraction chopper. Of course, they stop near a pond or something to use their walkie talkies so I assume that they’ll be eaten, if not by Dinocroc then by Supergator, who I haven’t seen much of lately. I miss Supergator. We had some good times.

Enter hottie number 3. This is getting too confusing. Her name is Victoria and she sounds like an Aussie. She stops in to see David Carradine and kicks the shit out of his body guard for absolutely no reason at all. I will call her Victoria Kickass. She says there’s a problem and the mercenaries got themselves perished, so he tells her to call...."THE CAJUN." Holy shit, not The Cajun.

The Cajun looks like Matthew Mcconaughey dressed up like Crocodile Dundee, except less greasy than either. He looks way too clean to be "THE CAJUN" and he looks more like "THE AMBERCROMBIE." I will call him Ambercrombie Dundee, for short. He asks her what David Carradine wants him to kill….this time. (Cue ominous music)

Back to the agents. Fuck. I can’t keep track. Robinson wants secret agent boy to stay put and build a case. He also says that they can see from the satellite that someone demolished the lab.

Now we’re back to the Wild Angel cruising in her inflatable and looking at the shoreline. She has an amazing boat. Twin 50 horsepower engines, hard bottom, pontoon sides. Looks brand new. So of course, she stalls…I think that’s supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing, but then she starts it back up again. She meets up with secret agent boy just like the script told her to, and he's just fishing off the dock, wearing his ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. They talk.

Hey, his name is Paul and she’s Cassidy. She even has a stripper name. He offers to take a look at why her boat stalled, and for some reason finds out her prop is flattened. I'm not sure, since I'm not an outboard motor mechanic, but I don't think that automatically stalls your engine. He offers her a ride home. Turns out she’s a conservation officer with the fish and game department. She’s kind of cute. Maybe not so much stripper like. More like a surfer girl, only in a cop’s uniform. Like someone ordered a really fucked up strip-o-gram. He gives her the "what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this" line and she says she’ll handcuff him and he says "Really. Is that a promise or a threat?" That’s the kind of stuff we’re dealing with here, but at least neither of them sounds like they’re gargling marbles like the dead mercenary with the lazy eye.

OK, now new hotties #4 and 5 are at the hotel pool talking about their upcoming helicopter ride to a hidden waterfall and you just know they are reptile food the instant you see them. I feel bad for them because neither of them can read. I know this because they are having a hell of a time reading their cue cards. I think if I turned the volume on the TV way up, I'd hear someone whispering their lines to them. Some skeevy guy starts hitting on hottie 5. She tells him to get lost but it’s not working. Just in time, Ambercrombie Dundee strolls up and pushes him in the pool with the sheer force of his awesomeness. OK, I’m kidding. He used his arm. He then tips his hat to hottie #5 and says "You have a nice day, ma’am." I shit you not. They only show her from the waist up, but judging from her eyes as she watches him walk away, I’m pretty sure her bikini bottoms exploded off of her in pleasure. He walks up to the Jerry the activities guy at the hotel and gets the info he needs for David Carradine's hunt.

Jesus, another character from central casting. This one’s in a limo and his name is Chaz Kingsley. He has sunglasses like Roy Orbison, and he’s on his cell to Jerry. I guess Chaz is taking the studio jet to the island. The activities guy says the fishing is "to die for." Har har. Chaz says "You know how I love my Tilapia." Which is a fresh water fish, so either bad writing or a little joke there. Chaz orders up a lot of stuff in advance for his regular Villa…cheeses and wines and food, and says, "Oh and Jer? Make sure you bring enough for three…if you catch my drift." Jer replies, "THAT I do, sir." Just in case you guys miss the subtlety, he’s planning on having a threesome. i didn't want you to miss that because it's pretty hard to pick up on it.

Now we’re back to Humpalong Cassidy and secret agent boy, who decided to break into David Carradine’s game preserve because the road is blocked by rocks and they can’t get the jeep through. Good plan.

Now we cut to new hotties 4 and 5 at the same waterfall/shallow pool in which Bruce and his girlfriend were chomped. I hate to see them go. We had so little time together. Right when you think they are SuperGator chow, they are surprised by the nature photographer, who explains that he thought they might be the sheriff. They freak a little, and ask him why anyone would need a sheriff out here, and Nature Photographer gets all creepy and he actually says, "No need to worry your pretty little heads."

Also, the girls decide that the best thing to do when surprised in the jungle by a strange, creepy man with greasy hair and a huge camera is to strip down and and have him take some sexy pictures of them. See? That's just bad decision-making right there.

Also a bad decision - He stands by the water to take his pictures. Note to self: I wonder what giant telephoto lenses taste like. I'll have to remember to ask SuperGator because he just had one. Then there’s lots of bikini running. If it were in slow motion, I’d think I was watching an old episode of Baywatch.

They stop running after a few seconds, and squat down looking at the water, because that’s what you do when you’re being chased by a giant carnivorous creature that lives in the fucking water. One of the says, "I can’t believe it. That poor guy. He was so cute."

I can’t make this up. It’s all true.

You know, on second thought, I think they might actually be fine standing by the water while trying to catch their breath.

OK, maybe not.

Now Humpalong Cassidy’s dad is visiting a farm. Something has been eating cows. I wonder what it could be? The farmer who looks like Jimmy Carter thinks it’s aliens, but I bet not.

Humpalong’s dad says, "Well if E.T. did it, he’s got one hell of an overbite." I freakin’ love the dialogue in this movie.

He tries to call Hump, but she’s flirting with secret agent boy who has been telling her up until this point that he’s an engineer. She says she doesn’t believe him so he folds under her brutal interrogation and says ok, you’re right, I’m a federal agent. "Sort of a spy, but for the good guys." He tells her that David Carradine is supposed to be doing crop research, but he’s been doing stuff he’s not supposed to. To prove it to her, he drives her out into a field that is full of giant…um….mushrooms. I shit you not. Mushrooms. That are two stories tall. I think they are the same mushrooms that the scriptwriter was on when he wrote this.

Victoria Kickass makes a phone call to David Carradine and then Amercrombie Dundee pulls up. In a mustang convertible. He jumps in a boat and Victoria Kickass decides to go with him, and he’s having none of it. He actually says, "I work alone. Listen, sister. There’s no way you’re gettin’ on this boat, and that’s final." So yeah, you know she’s going. She calls him a hillbilly and tells him he stinks, and he says, "You don’t have to flirt so hard." I almost shed a tear, it was so sweet.

He’s not doing it for the money, he says. He’s doing it for the challenge. I assume he is going to try to kill the creatures.

Cut back to Secret Agent Boy and Humpalong — he tells her that the government stumbled on a way to accelerate plant growth by using animal DNA, and they hired David Carradine to develop it.

Oh wait! The original Doc Hottie is running/limping down the dirt road yelling "Help me! Help me please!" They can tell she’s a scientist because it’s like a thousand degrees in the tropics and she’s still wearing her long white lab coat.

They all run to the jeep and pile in, then take off but…

Here comes Dinocroc,

Here comes Dinocroc,

Right down Dincroc Lane

Then Doc Hottie pulls a 6-shot revolver out of her purse and fires no less than 16 shots out of it. But apparently imaginary bullets make imaginary holes because it doesn’t even slow him down. Also, it just so happens that the dirt road the Jeep and Dinocroc are on runs right next to a river that Ambercrombie Dundee and Victoria Kickass are riding down in their boat, and so Vicky takes the wheel while Ambercrombie Dundee attempts to fire exploding crossbow bolts at Dinocroc, and misses completely.

"Well that took care of him for now," says Ambercrombie Dundee. "So?" Victoria Kickass says. "So I guess," replies Ambercrombie Dundee, with dramatic pause, "play-time is over." Yes, I hate when my play time is interrupted by explosive crossbow bolts.

Now we’re back at the hospital, where Doc Hottie wakes up in bed with perfect hair and exquisitely applied makeup, surrounded by X people, where X=(everyone who hasn’t been eaten) - (David Carradine + Jerry, the hotel guy). It's like the closing scene in The Wizard of Oz up in here.

Then Doc Hottie gives her long drawn-out explanation of the science behind the giant mushrooms and how she and her brother did all sorts of cool things until David Carradine said he'd triple their funding if they do one thing for him…do a little testing on some live animals. He picks out crocodiles because they aren't susceptible to human diseases.

She and her brother get into a fight and he convinces her to go for it in order to get the funding.

She's conflicted, because all she wants to do is feed the world with giant mushrooms. I think she's probably done a better job of feeding Dinocroc and SuperGator so far.

Then she explains to everyone how at feeding time something bad happened and then, just in case we forgot, we’re given a three-minute, sepia-toned, slow motion montage of the open scenes of the movie, where all the scientist mcnuggets get eaten. Then everyone leaves the hospital room to "give the little lady a chance to rest." Whereupon Victori Kickass gives Doc Hottie the stink eye on the way out.

Oh my god the acting in this movie is horrible. HORRIBLE. Where the fuck is Supergator? He probably made scale for this movie. He's like an extra.

OH LOOK, it’s that dick CHAZ with his two hotties. I will call them Hotties #6 and 7.

They are drinking champagne in the hot tub. He’s telling them there might be a "part" for them in his next movie, but they have to be able to scream convincingly. I have a funny feeling they’ll be doing that shortly. He tells Hottie #7 that she has to give it her all. He’s coaching her. Telling her to imagine the worst nightmare imaginable. To feel the fear in her soul.

Fuck, what was that noise? Oh, that’s just Dinocroc stopping by for a steaming bowl of scream soup.

I just stopped fast-forwarding through the commercials because I saw something that looked like we were back at Chaz’s pool, but it was just a 7UP commercial with David Spade. Where’s Dinocroc when you really need him?

Uh oh. Victoria Kickass is skulking around Doc Hottie’s room again. She picks up the phone and calls the nurse up to ICU and then sneaks into Doc Hottie’s room with a syringe of something that she injects into her. I was hoping it was growth hormone, but it I think it’s just poison. Just then secret agent boy comes back and catches her in the act..but remember when she kicked the shit out of David Carradine's body guard for fun? Yeah, that skill comes in handy again. She kicks his ass and runs. Just then, Ambercrombie Dundee shows up and is in pursuit!

Now Secret Agent Boy is calling his boss. Spilling the beans.

Ambercrombie Dundee is back, but empty-handed. His plan is to go after the monsters. Secret Agent Boy wants to call in the military, but Ambercrombie Dundee isn’t down with that. He says, "I know lizards. They’re pretty smart. They know when they’re being hunted."

His proposal: Alligators and Crocodiles are mortal enemies. He wants to bring them together, then take out the winner when it’s most vulnerable.

How? Well first they get a chopper and load it up with equipment. Their main ace in the hole: A forward looking infra-red unit. They plan to track the lizards by their heat signature. Apparently, when Ambercrombie Dundee says he knows lizards, what he means by that is he has no fucking clue about lizards, since last time I checked they were cold blooded and have the heat signature of a parked car.

They’re off! Flying through the air with the greatest of 80’s synth music.

Now there's an inexplicable cut to a movie tour bus full of old people looking at the ruins of an old hotel. I am sensing that this might be their last tour.

Our guys in the chopper see SuperGator, and then they fly back to the base for explosives. They’re going to run it through a tunnel and then trap it. But Ambercrombie Dundee says they have to hurry, because the lizards hunt during the hottest part of the day. When secret agent boy says, "Where do the hunt?" the answer is, "Wherever there’s people," which, in this case, means "wherever there’s a movie tour bus" which we cut back to now.

Blonde hottie #8 is the tour guide, and she and a gaggle of dried up beef jerky tourists start walking around the hotel, and they leave the bus driver alone for a little nap.

Warning: Objects in mirror are larger than they appear:

Secret Agent Boy’s boss is waiting at David Carradine’s for Victoria Kickass. FREEZE! FBI! yells the boss.

They don't freeze, and Vicky gets a bullet, while David Carradine fakes a heart attack. Or David Carradine actually has a heart attack -- I can’t tell. He doesn’t look good, but then he started out that way. His eyes are still open. Alive? Nope. Dead.

Now we cut back to the tour, where all the tour attendees are apparently deaf because they didn’t hear a thing when SuperGator jumped up on top of the tour bus and squashed it flat about 50 feet behind them.

Hey! It’s the classic "Standing with your back to the water" pose! Someone take our pic—

Nom nom nom...

(Hey, did someone lose a camera? There's a really nice one in here.)

Then the rest of the tour crowd is terrified and all like, "HOLY SHIT! RUN!" except for the one asian girl in the middle. She’s like "HI MOM! I’M IN A MOVIE!"

Humpalong and her dad pull up at the hotel as people are running away screaming into the woods. "The gator must be around here somewhere," he says. He's has one of those brilliantly deductive detective minds.

He radios in for backup, and then this dialogue happens:

He dramaticlly peels off his shades and says, "Are you ready for this?"

"I’m your daughter, aren’t I?"

"Damn right you are. I’m lucky to have you. I should tell you more often, but I’m a cranky son of a bitch."

"Dad…"

"Save it Cass. We got work to do."

Awesome.

Their shooting has no absolutely no effect, so they formulate a logical plan which involves her running for the jeep while he stays behind to sacrifice himself.

He says to SuperGator, "Here’s lookin’ at you, kid." And then kills it. No, I’m kidding. He gets eaten. SuperGator then chases Humpalong's jeep down the road. I did not know that alligators could gallop, but clearly they can.

She’s luring SuperGator to where Ambercrombie Dundee and secret agent boy are waiting with Dinocroc, who is picking the last bit of Chaz from between his teeth.

It’s time for the showdown. Dinocroc and SuperGator see each other, and start to fight.

Dinocroc clearly has the upper hand here. He jumps up and face kicks SuperGator like a fucking ninja turtle. Now’s he’s dragging SuperGator around. SuperGator finally gets a shot in and tosses Dinocroc into something that starts conveniently spewing massive quantities of CGI dust.

Ambercrombie Dundee has a single explosive charge left, because they are so well-prepared. Secret agent boy's theory is that sometimes dust explodes, so someone will have to run up to the bin that is spewing dust and throw the explosive in. That will explode the dust and along with it, both creatures. Before the charge explodes, he will jump in a conveniently placed tub of water to protect himself. This plan sounds flawless.

Ambercrombie Dundee is about 6’5" tall, and a clear athlete. Secret agent boy is about 5’6" tall, and looks like he sits at a desk all day and gets short of breath walking up the stairs. So you can guess who gets the explosive. Yep, secret agent boy.

"Make sure you hit the deck when I throw this."

"What about you?"

"You see that trough out there? I'm hoping there's enough rainwater in there to keep me safe."

"What if there isn’t?"

"Well… just make sure they bury me in this shirt."

KABOOM! Both monsters are toast. It reminded me a little of this clip.

You can almost hear the director yell, "OK People! That's a wrap! We're out of money!"

Afterwards, as Ambercrombie Dundee, secret agent boy and Humpalong Cassidy walk away, three abreast, into the sunset, the movie ends with Humpalong's immortal words, "I’m glad that’s over with."

Cut to the basement of the old hotel where (you guessed it) we hear the pathetic mewling sounds of...

LITTLE BABY SUPERGATORS.

They sound like newborn kittens. Who knew?

Do you guys just like me? Or do you *like me* like me?

I created a new Facebook page for my book. If you get a chance to hit the little "Like" button, I'd be forever grateful. I'm not sure what I'm doing, exactly, but I'm trying to do a little "grass roots" marketing, and unfortunately for you all, you're the only grass I have. Thanks!

Sex and Acid. These two things don't mix. Except on my blog.

I was perusing CNN today while I was waiting for my computer to finish getting boned by Radia, and after I read about the horrible shooting in Arizona, I stumbled upon an article with the title "Despite Claiming Abstinence, Young Adults Test Positive for STDs."

My first thought was of Inigo Montoya. "You keep using that word - abstinence. I do not think it means what you think it means."

To give you the gist of it, the study involved 14,000 young people who were tested for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis. I don't even know what that last one is, but it sounds like something you get from eating undercooked pork.

The funniest reason the researchers gave for their odd results was that the survey respondents "may have simply forgotten that they had sex."

What?

I suppose it's technically possible to be so drunk or wasted that you don't remember having sex, but when I was a young adult, I got laid so infrequently that wasn't something that really slipped my mind, regardless of my level of intoxication. When I actually succeeded in having sex, I walked around for weeks afterward, remembering it with amazing clarity and detail. I always managed to remain STD-free so I guess I led a pretty sheltered life.

When I first saw the headline on this next one, I thought, "Big Deal. Some people like to do that kind of shit when they're on spring break."

But no, he really tripped and fell. In actual acid. The kind that eats flesh and bone. Two hundred gallons of sulfuric acid spilled because a "pipe broke during delivery to the casino."

First of all, WTF? Why is the casino having vats of acid delivered? Is that how the get rid of people who can't cover their gambling debts? Maybe it's how they keep people from swimming in the fountains. I have no idea. Second of all, I can't believe the story just sort of glossed over that bit. They write the story like, "Oh yeah, everyone knows about the tanker truck acid deliveries. That's not news."

OK, I'm off to Google it so I can sleep tonight.

p.s. - if you are one of the wonderful people who bought my book, I'd love it if you could post a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or GoodReads. Thanks!

I've got gas and first gear for two cars.

I am totally getting a set of these for my Honda next winter.

Stay out of my way. I'm warning you now.

Doin' it all for the Nookie.

I figured there might be one or two of you out there with Nooks, so I put The Snitch, Houdini and Me up on the Barnes & Noble e-book site for your downloading pleasure. (If you're in the market for one, you might want to see if there are Barnes & Noble coupons you can use to get a deal.)

I haven't tested it on a real live Nook yet, so if anything looks off, please let me know. Thanks!

Mom, something smells like burning.

Hot metal. Melting plastic. Chemicals. Poisonous fumes. Everything a mother could want for her child. I realize it sounds as if I'm talking about some Chinese sweat factory full of ten-year-olds working 14 hours a day, but I'm not. I'm talking about me, when I was a kid.

Let me give you an example. Say you're living alone in a shitty room at a boarding house, and all you have to cook on is a hot plate. One day, you get a hankering for some squeeze cheese for your crackers, but all you have is a block of american. You figure you can melt some, but you don't have a pan or cups or anything else since you just moved in and mostly use the hot plate to heat a teapot full of water for your ramen noodles.

You rummage through some old crap a previous tenant left in the closet, and since she was a crazy old lady with six cats, you stumble on a couple of cat-shaped candy molds underneath a stack of newspapers from 1975.

"Hmmm," you think to yourself, "I'll just melt up the cheese in these things. You rinse the mouse turds out of the molds, stick a piece of wire hanger through the holes, lay them on the hot plate and drop a few blocks of cheese in. A few minutes later, right before you get to dippin' your Ritz, the phone rings and it's your parole officer wanting to know where you were last Tuesday night. You get all flustered trying to remember, and you don't want your cheese to burn so you pull the candy mold off the plate, burning your fingers in the process because you forgot to use the coat hanger.

"Fucker!" you yell, forgetting who you're talking to. By the time you convince your parole officer that you weren't talking to him, and that last Tuesday you didn't answer the phone because you went down to the adult video store and rented The DaVinci Load and Forrest Hump, the cheese has cooled in your mold and you've just re-invented a best-selling children's toy from the 60's and 70's called Creepy Crawlers:

Granted, you've got congealed cheese cats instead of rubbery bugs, so technically you've invented the toy my brother Snitch had -- Incredible Edibles:

Incredible Edibles was basically the same idea -- heat up goop in molds -- but since The Snitch's life revolved around food, it was only fitting that he wanted toys he could eat. I think if someone told him about edible underwear, he would have gone crazy with excitement for all the wrong reasons.

The main problem with the Incredible Edibles toy was the cost of the consumables. My brother would bake bugs like most people bake brownies. My mother could give him an entire set of new flavor packs and they'd be cooked up and eaten by the end of the day. He's the only kid I knew who could ruin his appetite manufacturing edible bugs. He would have been better off just eating the raw goop right from the foil pack. I don't even know what the ingredients were, but when you're eating something called "goop" that's the color of antifreeze, it's probably not great for you.

Another one of my toys that could give you third degree burns was the Strange Change machine. The basic premise was that you'd take these little colored rectangular-shaped pieces of plastic and heat them in the "Time Chamber," and they would expand into dinosaurs and bugs and all sorts of other things, depending upon the sets you purchased. You never knew what was going to appear since all the cubes looked alike. I can still distinctly remember the thrill of watching the pterodactyl claw pop free of the cube, my face inches from the dome as I inhaled the toxic fumes of melted plastic. To this day when I smell burning wire insulation or overheated electronics, I instantly think, "I wonder who left their Strange Change machine plugged in?"

After the creatures reached their full potential, you could take them out of the oven and let them harden, or you could put them in the integral vise and squash them back down to a cube again. Of course this never really worked well, so instead of a featureless colored cube, you ended up with what looked like a pterodactyl that had pissed off the Russian Mafia and ended up in a car crusher. Eventually the creatures became brittle and burnt and would hardly crush at all. You'd release them from the vise and they'd just sort of expand slowly and then harden into some weird shape. My grandmother would see my pterodactyl and be like, "What do you have there? Is that a bird doing yoga?" and then I'd realize the mystery was gone and I'd throw the burnt ones out.

After a while you couldn't get new refills for it, and since a Strange Change machine without refills is nothing but a space heater, we decided to see what would happen if we tried using other stuff. Most stuff either didn't melt, or melted too much. I think the wax lips finally killed it.

I guess it really was magic.

Just call me Johnny Astro.

When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite toys:

Basically it was a ducted fan with a throttle and a joystick that allowed you to fly a weighted balloon around in a column of air. If you're familiar with the Bernoulli effect, you know how it works. It's basically the same way an airplane gets off the ground.

I know it sounds really boring compared to the toys kids have today, but back then it was almost like magic. You could actually fly it around in circles, out to about five feet, and then by dropping the throttle speed you could bring it back in for a landing. There were two flat "planets" (sold separately) that I didn't have, but really wanted. Somewhere, I have a picture of me playing with this toy. Here's the commercial that suckered me in - hook, line and sinker.

This Christmas, I decided to get myself a little gift, and I have a vintage Johnny Astro on its way to my house as we speak. They were pretty hard to control, but I have faith that if the six-year-old me could get it to fly around, then I'll still have the knack. (I hope it works out better than the japanese flute I bought. I still can't get that thing to make a noise that doesn't sound like geese sex. I'm clearly doing it wrong.)

Thinking about this toy led me on a toy hunt of sorts, and I started googling every toy I had as a kid. The first mechanical toy I have clear memories of playing with was called "Clancy the Great." He was a roller-skating chimpanzee, and he stood almost as high as I did:

I was probably only two years old at the time, and Clancy scared the living shit out of me. There were two ways to get Clancy to do his thing -- either grab his hand and push a button on his palm, which was supposed to make him skate beside you, or put his hat in his hand and then drop a coin into it, which would close the contact between the two metal studs and start him skating on his own. He had a creepy, sliding gait and his right arm and his head moved back and forth, while his hat arm stood perfectly still.

I'd sneak up on him from behind, throw the coin in his hat and then run away screaming like the hounds of hell were chasing me. I was certain that Clancy was right on my tail. I wouldn't go near him again until he ran into a wall and stopped. It was the best and most horrible toy I had. I wanted him to be my friend so we could do things together, but I was also scared he would kill me in my sleep.

During the day, he looked friendly, but there was something about him at night:

At night, he looked like he knew something you didn't. He'd just stand in the corner of my room, silently staring at me until I made my mother throw a blanket over him. It didn't help.

More toys tomorrow. I have a feeling I'm going to go broke on e-bay.

This never even crossed my mind before today.

It's like my magazine rack is a pervert.

A Simple Flowchart.

About a year ago, I created this for the loud, annoying guy in a cube near mine who has no "inside voice." I had forgotten all about it until I was doing a search on my hard drive for a particular graphic file.

I figure I'm probably not the only one with a need for something like this, so I thought I'd share. I never actually used it, because I moved to a different cube to avoid going postal. Your mileage may vary. Don't get face-punched is all I'm saying.

I wish cowboy boots were back in style.

Once upon a time, back in the early 80's, cowboy boots were in style. I alternately loved and hated this, for a few reasons. Let me start by telling you that I wore cowboy boots pretty much exclusively from 7th grade until I was a senior in high school. For four long years, I took a lot of shit for wearing them, because nobody else did. I didn't tell anyone why, but they probably figured it out anyway. It was my answer to being short.

The cowboy boots gave you an extra two or three inches in height, and once platform shoes went out of style in the late 70's the western footwear was my only option that didn't involve me slow dancing with my face buried in my girlfriend's boobs. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, however it did make hugging her mom pretty awkward.

When the Urban Cowboy movie hit in 1980, suddenly everyone was wearing cowboy boots, and my days of artificial heightening were over. I was back to being short on the relative scale, but on the bright side, at least nobody was making fun of me for wearing cowboy boots anymore.

You're probably asking yourself why I'm telling you this. The answer: Socks. It all has to do with socks. Because I wore high cowboy boots for so long, I got used to wearing high socks. You can't wear short socks inside cowboy boots because it just feels weird. Eventually the entire sock will end up as a sweaty cotton lump crammed into the toe of your boot and this is obviously not comfortable. So I would buy those over-the-calf gym socks that went almost up to my knees because they never fell down.

So that brings us to today. I still wear high socks. Yes, I'm a geek. To be fair, I don't wear them to the gym, and I only wear them with long pants. I just cannot wear short socks. They drive me nuts. I can't stand the way they feel, like they're always bagging up on me and threatening to fall down. I swear, I should just get a pair of these:

As a result, my wife is always on the hunt for what they call "full length" gym socks instead of what they commonly refer to as "calf-length" which makes no fucking sense whatsoever, because, as far as I know, your calves normally go all the way up to your knees whereas these piece of shit socks do not. They should call them "half-calf socks that fall down every 30 seconds so you have to stop whatever you're doing and pull them up again" but then nobody would buy them.

She's come home with dozens of different brands over the years. Some start off with potential, but then they turn out to be a letdown. The elastic goes, they're just a bit too short, or something is wrong in the toe area. (She once brought home socks that had rectangular toes. They were basically tubes that were sewed straight across on one end.) Then these rejects sit in one of my drawers collecting (or is that making?) lint.

Sometimes when we need to do laundry, I'll be forced to dig into the drawer of hideous cast-offs because there are no other socks, and today was one of those days.

Today, I was reminded that not only has she come home with rejects that were too short, but also these, which I am wearing as I type this:

They are practically support hose. Ridiculous. I have to fold them in half just so I can bend my legs. They do make me feel kinda sexy though.

Also, this may be genius.

----------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to share this last item with you because it made me laugh. If my boss is reading this, it seriously took me about 60 seconds to do, so don't dock my pay. It turns out I'm practically Eminem.

I'm on a team at work that has the acronym of EME, or Electronic Messaging & Engineering. We currently use an old version of Lotus Notes, and are planning on upgrading soon. This morning, one of the guys on my team who is in charge of this upgrade wrote an e-mail message to everyone this morning because he was going to be a little late. It looked like this:

I am running late be in by 8.

I couldn't just let that go. So, obviously, I did what anyone would do and immediately sent him this reply:

Don't hate

Just because I deviate

from the arbitrary time

of Mr. Slate

The man

who pays my rate

while I create

the orderly state

of EME while my

peeps wait

for the date

they get Notes 8.

Word.

He didn't answer my email. I think it's because he's a lot younger than me and might not know who Mr. Slate is. At least that's my theory.

P.S. - Thank you to everyone who has bought the book so far. It's doing pretty well, considering I don't know what the hell I'm doing in regards to promotion. And thanks for the typo lists. I'll be fixing them in the print version in a week or so. The Kindle version should already be fixed.

I need professional help.

OK, maybe just regular help. With three things, actually.

A bunch of you bought the book. (Thank you!!) I'm assuming some of you may have even read it by now. First, if you liked it (or even if you thought it didn't suck) please leave a review on Amazon if you can.

Second, if you see any typos, let me know. I've only gotten feedback from one person about one typo they've noticed so far. (Apparently, I managed to spell the word dynamics as "dymanics," which is just stupid. It's not stupid that I reversed the letters, it's stupid that I didn't see the obvious red underline that my spell checker used in a vain attempt to get me to notice my blunder. It reminded me of this.)

I can't read the book accurately any more because I've seen it too many times. But with new eyes (yours) I can fix any typos and get new files uploaded. To fix them on the Kindle version is easy, as the original just stays for sale until the new one is out there. The printed book is a little harder, in that it takes the book out of commission for a week or so, and I don't want to do that until after Christmas. So I guess you could call the versions that I've sold so far "collector's editions" if you want to be generous, or "screw ups" if you want to be truthful. I'll refer to it as the "Dymanic Edition."

Third, If any of you reading this has a blog, a facebook page, or a telephone pole you like to nail shit to, I'd be eternally grateful if you could possibly mention my book and link to it on Amazon.

OK, I'm done begging now. Thanks!

ps - I was #4 on Amazon's "Hot New Releases" list today in the "Parenting and Family Humor" category. I think there may be some angry soccer moms writing to me in a few weeks.

The way my mind works.

The other night, I was sitting in front of the television eating dinner and watching Two-and-a-Half Men. You cannot escape that show. It's ALWAYS ON. While I actually sort of liked it in the early days, it seems as though it (as all sitcoms eventually do) has become a parody of itself, and probably should have been canceled by now.

In the intro of the newer run of shows, they do this freaky morphing thing when the three of them are singing the theme song and the kid Jake goes from being about six years old to 16, or whatever he's supposed to be now. As I sat there watching something I knew was going to be painful, for no good reason other than I was too lazy to look for something else to watch, I had the following thoughts:

(1) Damn, how much longer can this show stay on the air?

(2) What if this trash stays on the air for another 30 years?

(3) By that time, they'd probably have to change the show's name to "One Men."

(4) They'd have to work on that morph, too.

The Republic of Bananas

I opened my wife's Banana Republic bill yesterday, and I saw this printed on it:

I'm not sure what that's supposed to be.

Is it supposed to be a very round lipstick kiss? A bow on a present? What?

I know what it looks like, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they were going for. I think this week there's probably going to be a staff meeting at Banana Republic, and the Director of Marketing is going to ask, "Who thought it would be a good idea to send a picture of a cat's asshole to 120,000 of our customers?"

Someone will not be getting a bonus this year.

Now I'm afraid to open my Gap bill. What if it's scratch-n-sniff?

I Live......Again.......

Update: Now available at Amazon, too. Those guys like to under promise and over deliver.

For all you people that like to hold actual paper in your hot little hands, here's the real deal.

The printed version of the book is now available in my CreateSpace store and from Amazon.com. The Amazon option has free shipping if you spend over $25.

Honestly, I get a bigger piece of the pie ($6 vs. $3) when you buy directly from Createspace, but it's completely up to you.

I've also ordered a small quantity to have on hand in case anyone wants me to write something ridiculous in their copy. I'm not sure how soon I'll have them though. Perhaps in time for Christmas, or perhaps not. I hope so.

This version has at least one less typo than the Kindle version because a few people who bought the Kindle version gave me a heads up and I fixed it. I'm OCD like that. Also, it was in the Introduction. I might be able to live with a typo 200 pages in, but seriously, the second page? No way I could let that sit there and nibble chunks out of my soul every day. The downside is, I'll have about 25 copies of what I call "the very expensive mistake - typo edition" sitting on my porch sometime this week.

I've decided to have a contest to give some of these away. It could be fun. But then again, at one point I also decided to type the word "I'll" instead of the word "I'm" so I can't really be trusted in matters such as these.

I was going to have a contest to see who could find the most mistakes, but then I figured that would just depress me. But I'll think of something.

Enjoy! And thanks again for your support!

Look what I just bought.

No, not the Kindle. Look at what's on it.

Yes, my first customer was me. I clicked a single button, and through the magic of modern radio tube technology, I bought my own book. Also, I can't believe there's no way for you to reliably test out your book without actually buying a copy.

So for all three of you guys who use the Kindle, you can get my book right now for the amazing low, low price of only $4.95 by going here. I bow to the sub-$5 price point. Also, don't forget that you can give Kindle content as a gift now. So spring it on someone you love. Or hate. I don't care.

However, before you spend your hard-earned cash, let me tell you what's in it. People who have been hanging around in my doorway for the last five years have heard most of these stories before, since they came from my blog. They've been tightened up and added to, and there are also a couple of new stories, and a new introduction for each section. And I don't want to over-sell this, but you also get original artwork. Think of it this way: If you drink Starbucks coffee, you'll pay that much for a double-shot venti soy mocha. This book should give you at least that much bang for the buck. Also in it: Typos. Those are free.

Feel free to review it after you're done. Even if you hate it. On second thought, scratch that. I don't want your crappy reviews spoiling things when the print version becomes available. That would be like standing outside of the carnival sideshow tent like this:

Personally, I think you should hold off for the printed version. The cover looks better.

Nest of Junk Mail.

Our mailman is a giant pain in my ass. For some reason, he can't just place our mail gently in our gigantic, cavernous rural mailbox. He has to wind up like a major league pitcher and throw it in. This means I can't pull up to the mailbox in my car and grab the mail, because I don't have the arms of Mr. Fantastic. All my mail is cowering against the back wall of the box like it's afraid of light. I have to get out of my car, which makes me cranky, especially if it's raining or snowing.

This is the same mailman who is so lazy he won't drive up to the house to leave an over-sized package on the porch. I realize I'm calling him lazy when I don't even want to get out of my car to get the mail, but he's a special case. Instead of putting the package on the porch, he'll open the mailbox, balance the package on the open door, and wrap a rubber band around it. Doesn't matter if it's raining or snowing -- I'll just find it there when I get home. He actually left boxes in the snowbank last year because the plow had gone by and blocked our mailbox with snow. He also somehow manages to get actual important mail stuck inside the mail order catalogs. I think he does it on purpose because we get too many boxes that make him have to walk to the porch. It's no wonder the post office is hemorrhaging money.

This time of year, we get about 10 pounds of mail-order catalogs every day. I have no idea why these companies are continuing to do this. I think they should figure out which households have internet connections, and then just stop sending direct mail there. I suppose they keep doing it because they pick up a lot of bathroom browsers.

As I was shaking out our daily load of catalogs, looking for incidental things like bills that have to be paid on time, I stumbled on this picture:

A nest of nativity, if you will. In the second I glanced at it I noticed that something seemed off to me. It's not that they're all the shape of bowling pins, although that's part of it. I think it's that the order is wrong. First, everybody piles in Donkey Joseph. That has to be uncomfortable. And baby Jesus should be in Mary, not two levels down, sitting inside of a shepherd that looks like Tom Welling, if Tom Welling could grow a beard. The wise man wearing the football helmet and holding the Scooby Doo lunchbox has to hold Tom and the baby Jesus, and then jump inside Mary, and that's just no good for anyone.

My considered opinion: The Nativity scene is not optimal for interpretation via Nesting.

Double time, with feeling.

A couple of weeks ago, I got out of bed and went downstairs to shower and get ready for work. While I was standing there in the bathroom, I suddenly felt light-headed and a little sweaty and sick to my stomach. I also realized my heart was beating like a mad mofo and my pulse rate was upwards of 120 or so. I sat down and it passed, but I still didn't feel great. I decided to work from home, except there was one catch -- I had left my work laptop at work, so if I wanted to work from home, I'd have to go get it.

By the time I got out of the shower, I felt pretty good. I got in the car, drove to work, told my boss I was going to head home and work from there just in case it happened again and I needed to go to the ER or something. l packed up my computer and headed home. About half-way there, it happened again, only this time I couldn't put my head between my legs because I was driving in fairly heavy traffic and doing about 75 mph, and that would have been slightly difficult. I figured I probably should get off the road before I passed out and wrecked someone's day.

I was conveniently close to a rest stop, so I called my wife and told her where I was, and also casually added that she might want to call 911, as crazy as that sounds. I knew that most of the time, the "rub my left arm, then grab my chest" heart attacks didn't usually happen without warning signs, unless you're on TV. I knew enough to know that a heart attack can take many forms, and that the most common symptoms are just indigestion and some chest pressure, which seems like a pretty ridiculous reason to go to the hospital.

By the time the EMT's got there with the ambulance, I was fine again, and standing next to my car waiting for them. They pulled up and the guy says, "Um....are we here for you?" I confirmed that they were, and I jumped in the truck. The EMT had to go at least 350 pounds, and he was probably 5' 6" at most. I have no idea how he worked inside that little truck all day. He had me take off my shirt and lie down, then he hooked me up to the EKG. My pulse was a little higher than normal, but not 120 like it was before. I had him go back to my car to get my computer, and he noticed all the hiking gear in the back. When he came back, he mentioned it and then told me he has to get more exercise. He asked me if I ate breakfast, and when I tell him I did, he asked me what I had. When I said fruit, oatmeal and egg whites he just shook his head and looked at me like I was some kind of weird new species of mammal he'd never seen before. I think he may have muttered "fuck you" under his breath.

I then enjoyed a very long and bumpy ride to the hospital. I was really surprised that the ambulance didn't have a smoother ride. I can't imagine trying to keep severely injured people stabilized in this thing. It was like riding in the back bed of a double axle Ford F-150.

We got to the hospital and I wanted to walk in, but they wouldn't let me, so I got wheeled in on the stretcher. They chucked me in a room, and after a nurse took my blood pressure and hooked me up to yet another EKG, I sat and waited for the doctor.

While I was waiting, I could hear just about everything going on in the ER. Some guy outside my curtain was getting checked in and I overheard the following conversation:

"Name?"

"Steve Andrews."

"Phone number?"

"518-573-2987"

"And your social?"

"I have a few friends, yeah."

I thought the nurse was going to piss herself trying to keep a straight face. I didn't bother. I just laughed out loud.

After some attendant sucked about six vials of blood out of my arm, the doctor came in and asked me a bunch of questions, and then told me the wonderful news that they were going to admit me for an overnight stay, just to keep an eye on me and do some additional blood tests every six hours to make sure I didn't have a heart attack.

Thus began the period of waiting for a bed. My wife and I sat there from about 11 a.m. to five p.m. while absolutely nothing happened. The blood pressure cuff would inflate, threaten to pop my arm off at the elbow, then deflate. I amused myself by noting that no two blood pressure measurements were ever the same. Quality equipment. Or quality blood pressure, perhaps. But I'm fairly certain it wasn't me.

They came in and asked me if I had eaten, and I said no, so they told me they'd bring me a turkey sandwich. I was expecting this:

What I got, while technically a "turkey sandwich," consisted of exactly one slice of cheap deli turkey between two slices of stale bread. That's it. I ate it because I was really hungry and figured I might as well, since it probably cost me $75.

They finally found a room for me, and the first thing I saw when they wheeled me in was some old dude's newly bandaged stump. He had just had his leg amputated at the knee, and holy shit he was a talker. Didn't matter if there happened to be a listener or not. He would just talk. He'd talk at the TV. He'd hum, whistle, sing with the headphones on, sing with the headphones off, talk to me even though I was clearly listening intently to my ipod and typing madly on my computer. I'm pretty sure he was as crazy as a shithouse rat. He was also half-deaf, so when his wife came to play bridge with him, between the two of them and their television, I was ready to just check myself out and drive home.

The doctor eventually visited me, and asked me a bunch of other questions, then they wheeled me out for a CAT scan with contrast. The guy doing it was named Manuel and he had a self-inflicted gang tattoo between his thumb and finger. He said he was going to flush out the IV and when he did it, he also injected me with about a quarter-inch of air. All I could think of was how in the movies they kill someone by injecting air into their veins. I said, "Uh, hey, there was a lot of air in that." He smiled a little stone cold smile and said, "It would take at least two of these syringes full of air to kill you." I didn't ask him how he knew that, but I swear he almost added a "Pendejo" to the end. He then injected something radioactive into me that I think was probably some sort of ionic iodine. He told me it was for contrast, but felt like it was expressly designed to warm my o-ring.

So I didn't die from the air bubble, and the test showed that I didn't have any sort of aneurysm, so that was good. The first blood tests came back too, and they were fine. So far it was looking like something electrical. They wheeled me back to my room and in the time it took for me to get out of the chair and into my bed I learned from the old dude that he had diabetes, had been here for nine weeks, and he was hoping to go home for Thanksgiving, but it wasn't looking good. No wonder he was stir crazy.

I quickly jammed my earbuds back in and waited for dinner. I was in the cardiac ward, which is technically monitored by intensive care. They have a special "heart patient" diet, which they signed me up for. It appeared to be a deep fried hot pocket stuffed with broccoli and cheese, with a side of coffee, and more broccoli, so I'm pretty sure "heart patient diet" is code for "let's see how many beds we can free up by morning." It was horrible at any rate, and my wife went to the cafeteria and got me two sliced of equally horrible pizza. While I was eating, I could hear the guy next to me eating. He sounded like a pig rooting in a trough, and he was making all these sounds like, "Mmmmmm.... ohhhhhh..... unnnnnnnnh... slurpppp...and grunting in between. I looked at my wife and she whispered, "Is he eating it or screwing it?" I didn't have the nerve to look.

The funny thing about hospitals is that they have to do all this different stuff to you all night. They have to check your blood pressure, take your temperature, take blood samples, give you medication, and probe you anally.* Instead of coming in once and doing it all, they time it so each person comes in to do a different thing every hour or so. Their goal, as far as I can tell, is to evenly distribute these activities so they coincide with the exact second you actually fall asleep. Add the buzz saw snoring coming from the one-legged annoyance machine in next bed and I got zero sleep.

The next morning, the doctor told me I could go free, but I had to wait until they finished processing me. He got the details on my cardiologist appointment, and said he'd send over the paperwork. As he was leaving, stumpy Joe told him to call a nurse because he "felt like he had to go." This did not mean that the nurses got him out of bed and brought him to our shared bathroom. This meant they brought the bathroom to him. They had something that looked like a walker with a toilet seat on it, and under the seat was a plastic pan. Luckily, I was in a position to get up and leave, so I stood in the hallway until the deed was done.

I told the nurse it was to give him some privacy but it was really because I just ate breakfast and I didn't want to see it again. After they aired the room out, I went back to waiting to be discharged. I decided I wanted to brush my teeth after I ate breakfast, so I walked into the bathroom, only to be hit in the face with the stench of a thousand cesspools. Apparently, the nurse didn't empty the bucket -- she just left it sitting there in the bathroom to marinate. I hate hospitals.

I actually walked down the hallway and used the public bathroom, and then thankfully got the hell out of there. A day or so later, I went to the cardiologist, and he also asked me a bunch of questions. After I answered them, he said, and I quote, "I want you to stop drinking coffee and alcohol." I said, "Why not just kick me in the nuts, too?" No, I didn't. What I actually said was, "I hate you so much right now," and he didn't even crack a smile. He was as serious as a...well...yeah.

So on the 7th I have a stress test, but he thinks it's going to come up clean since I told him I did 14 miles with a 60 lb pack on my back a few weeks ago and didn't have an issue. He says he's just doing it to be thorough. In the meantime, I'm wired up with a monitor that beeps and records my heart rate if I so much as walk up the stairs fast. I have two extraneous nipples that I apply every morning and then attach wires to. I call them my bionic nubbins.

---------------------------------------

In other news, we saw John Waite in a small 300-seat theater a couple of weeks ago, playing an acoustic show. Just him, a fantastic acoustic guitar player and a bass player. He did rearranged versions of Babys songs from back in the day, as well as some Bad English and a bunch of new and old solo stuff. Even covered a few Dylan tunes. He sounded great. Apparently he has a new record coming out in February. The only depressing thing? Babys fans are fucking old. I felt like I was at an AARP meeting. I tried to take a picture to show you just how old they were, but the flash kept reflecting off glasses and shiny bald heads, so it didn't come out.

Afterward, he stuck around to sign some autographs and do a little meet and greet. Nice guy. Here's Mrs. JV with John:

Lastly, I'm waiting on some final comments/edits from a buddy of mine, and then the book is D.O.N.E. Or at least as far as I'm concerned. If there are still typos and grammatical problems, I'll have to live with them. The Kindle version is also looking good. The last step is to determine pricing, and I'm sort of stuck on it. I'm thinking $12.95 for the print version and $6.95 for the Kindle version. Any thoughts? Too much? Too little?

* What? They aren't supposed to do that? Don't tell me that now.

Please help me.

My wife is out of control. You guys see this?

That's just the most recent purchases. My entire house is being overrun by yarn and wool. I half-expect to come home from work one day and find an alpaca in the living room. My wife has been doing nothing but sitting on the couch and crocheting for the last month. She doesn't sleep, she doesn't eat -- she even crochets on the treadmill. I have to blend her dinner into a liquid so she can drink it with a straw without stopping. I don't even wanna know how she's working the bathroom thing. She's sold almost 100 hats and scarves in the last month, and is ramping up for Christmas. Baby hats, headbands and brooches, too. She walks around the house muttering, "Gotta have stock. Gotta have stock" under her breath.

So do me a favor -- check out her stuff at anniesoriginals.com and buy some Christmas gifts for god's sake. Help me get out from under this mountain of yarn. After Christmas, I'm hoping she'll slow down for a while. It's bad enough that I already know I 'm not great in bed, but when I have to stop and hand her a different color skein of yarn right in the middle, it really doesn't do much for my self-confidence.

Just to make me feel better, she said that if you tell her I sent you, she'll throw in a free crocheted flower pin. And a picture of me wearing one of her hats and nothing else. Wait, what? No, that last thing isn't happening. Not for free, anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Busy, Busy.

I spent a nice night in the hospital last week due to my heart deciding to play the drum solo to YYZ while I was driving home. So now I have to wear a monitor for a while to see if I can catch it in the act. Hospital food sucks, btw.

On the "good news" side of things -- It's a boy.

Of course, I have one more go-round of edits, but I'm hoping to make my self-imposed deadline of December 1st. I'm also trying to get a Kindle version ready to go before Christmas.

I'll be back to tell you of my adventures in the wonderland that is the New York State health care system sometime this week, if I can.