Thinking about college football already.

From Every Day Should Be Saturday:

"...Perrilloux may be more talented than Jamarcus Russell: he won the SEC championship game off the bench, and has a dazzling skill set. He also possesses significant potential the other way, since we would be unsurprised to go duck hunting in a Louisiana bayou and discover Perrilloux and friends ferrying crates of bootleg moonshine off a swamp-hutch still."

Exactly. If he keeps his nose even relatively clean, LSU could have another season to talk about for the next fifty years or so. Or he could implode, go to jail, and LSU could be happy to make it to the Liberty Bowl. Who knows? How exciting! And imagine all those LSU fans on Beale Street!

New policy

On his way to the United States today, Pope Benedict XVI said that "we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry."

That's a good thing. Before, when they checked the Yes box next to Pedophile? on the seminary application form, prospective priests were given noogies and told to "try and stay clear of the playground, champ."

Pavo Profile

And speaking of The Gays, my homeboy Shawn's salon got a big write-up in the CA today (read quickly; God knows how long the link will last. They are making some mad bank over there! Thankfully, I only charge a few thousand dollars for mentioning a business here. It's a small, selecet audience. Very influential.

Seriously, Shawn is awesome, and he's worked like a motherfucker over the years to make his business the success is it today. Sonya still goes to him, though I quit seeing a professional stylist several years ago. There's no need for a highly trained professional like Shawn to waste his talents running a number one blade over my head. Anyhow, I like to say I knew him when he was working under a tree in his front yard and all he had was a pair of orange-handled scissors and a bucket for the customers to sit on. You've come a long way, baby!

Hypothetical

Does it make me gay that I was so excited about Kylie Minogue's Your Disco Needs You coming on my iPod this morning that I had to dig out my headphones and listen to it a couple of times as I walked into work? And no, don't answer that.

It's a damn good tune though, sweetie.

Squirt gun

So I take John to the first Rock and Romp of the season. It's a pretty afternoon, the bands are decent, I'm having a beer, John is running around and chasing girls. Life is good, right?

[Digression: the crowd never fails to tickle me. Five years ago all of these people were stinking drunk at the Hi Tone every weekend. They all know each other, and having spent some time in Memphis bars a few years before that they all kind of look vaguely familiar with me. I get a lot of the "who is that guy" look. It's cool. I like being the mystery man.]

The people who organized the thing had put out a box of toys, too - mainly noisemakers and waterguns. I dutifully filled John's gun up and sent him on his way.

I knew there would be trouble when I had to run him off from a none-to-happy looking couple he was squirting.

"No," I told him, "just squirt kids. No grown-ups."

A little while later I hear the woman behind me say "no. I don't want to be squirted at all."

"I was just going to water the grass around you," John says in his I'm-a-charming-kid voice.

"Okay then. Bye," the woman says.

[And I wanted to say "no one dismisses my kid but me, you twat. You should get down on your face and thank my son for even thinking about squirting you." However, I did not.]

Then I see John squirting a group of three or four boys. All bigger than him. [My son is fearless.] I look back a few minutes later and see the biggest kid - easily twice as big as John - swinging John around while John tenaciously clings to the watergun. The kid asks John something. John points to me and wanders off.

The big kid comes up to me - his smaller followers in tow - and asks me if John is my son. I tell him yes.

"Would you please make him stop squirting us, we've asked him to stop," he said.

"He squirted me in my ear!" one of the followers wailed.

"I'll take care of it," I said.

[And thought, "you little pussies. Especially you, big kid! You should have pushed him down and stomped the gun!"]

John didn't like that he'd been tattled on. I told him not to squirt people who didn't want to be squirted - a lesson we can all use in many facets of our lives - but I didn't fuss at him.

"These delicate midtown kids," I told him, "they just don't know how to handle a New Orleans-born, Arkansas-raised kid like you, John. You have to be careful with them. They're not as tough as you."

From the Goner Board

Excerpts from a thread on the Goner Records board concerning the eating of two whole pizzas in one day:

Miss Linda said:

I usually get 1 medium pan meatlovers right arround 11:00 and [eat] the whole thing as fast as I can, so I can look like a big shot infront of the people I work with.

At night it's a totino's cheese pizza. I usually don't finish it because I'm too busy crying.

And then maggot said:

Totino's doesn't count as a large pizza! That's like a snack! But yes, I would say I eat two large pizzas in one day quite regularly. Keep eating those emotions!

And Hugh Jass contributed this:

I don't eat frozen pizza much, but when I do, I always eat at least 2 at one sitting- any brand, any topping. I don't even bother to cut them. I just fold 'em in half like a taco.

And arman then ended the conversation with:

i roll them up and fuck the shit out of them

To which Miss Linda replied:

Now that's good pizza.

Evil Angel, Stagliano Indicted!

Say it ain't so:

John Stagliano, Evil Angel Indicted On Federal Obscenity Charges

Where do I order my "Free Buttman" t-shirt? Or, possibly, my "Free Belladonna" t-shirt?

Though I suppose the t-shirt in question would cost $19.95 and, if I didn't cancel it, $19.95 would be billed to my credit card every month.

Anyway, fight the power! Free speech!

Dental Update

The dentist says he may have to pull the tooth in a few weeks, but that it has tightened up since John came in last week. So it might be fine. If he has to pull it, he'll give John the gas first.

Of course, I don't want my little boy to have to get his tooth pulled. But the idea of John high on nitrous is pretty funny. My lack of fitness as a parent is mind-bottling.

Damn linen!

I tried on my linen pants last week. They fit well - and much better than they did last year. Sadly, they looked like I'd kept them in the glove compartment all winter.

Being the thoughtful wife she is, Sonya took them to the cleaners to be pressed. I picked them up on Thursday evening.

I put them on this morning and was halfway to work before I realized the damn pants were too tight. And then as I walked in I noticed the fetching way the cuffs were banging around my ankles.

Damn you, linen! You treacherous, treacherous cloth! Fooled me again, you have!

I mean, if I'd tried them on three months ago and they didn't fit today then yeah, sure, too many big ol' sammiches between now and then. I'd be growing, not blaming the pants for shrinking. But on Wednesday - less than a week ago - they fit fine.

Oh, you conniving bitch. Linen!

Heston dead...

...team of NRA employees removing gun from cold, dead hand.

Update: Great minds, etc. The Onion makes the same joke, but theirs is better, really, because they have a picture.

The Little Woman

Me and the wife, post-bout, after her Memphis Roller Derby team (the Angels of Death) stomped the competition (the Legion of Zoom) to make the championship game, taking place at the end of the month. She only played for a few minutes, but she was happy. Tickets are on sale for the championship game now, I'm sure.

Dental Update

Sonya took John to see her dentist today. The tooth could tighten up and be fine. Or it could turn black. Or it could fall the fuck out.

"If it turns black it will fall out, right?" I asked.

"Not until his adult teeth come in," Sonya told me.

"That's gross."

I'm taking him back for the dentist to have another look next week. Stay tuned!

Dental

John and I came home this afternoon and ate our dinner, like always. Then he sat down to watch a little TV while I changed clothes and got his bath ready.

I was barely down the hall to my bedroom when he started crying, the good, loud nearly-screaming crying that tells a parent that a kid is truly hurt and not just snivelling about something.

Back in the living room, I found a broken lightsaber, a toothprint on the wooden edge of the coffee table, and John with a loose upper tooth and blood pouring out of his mouth.

I could never get an accurate account of exactly what happened. He's fine now, even though his tooth is wiggly.

Floodlands

From West Memphis to the New Bridge, I-40 runs about twenty feet off the ground. Just after I-40 leaves West Memphis, it crosses the levee that keeps the Mississippi River from flooding northeastern Arkansas all the way back to Crowley's Ridge during the spring flood. I suppose they built that stretch of road elevated so that it would still be usable when the floods did come. And it jumps up higher - thirty to fifty feet, maybe - to go over the railroad tracks that crisscross the fields between West Memphis and the river.

And the river doesn't flood every year. Some years the fields from the levee to the river's edge stay dry and unflooded. Not this year, though. This year the flood is deep and spectacular and makes it feel like (as Sonya said last week) you're driving over I-10 leaving New Orleans and heading east: swamps and trees and water everywhere.

John was impressed by the flood. We went to meet Sonya at El Porton (yes, that El Porton; yes, she showed us to our table) on Thurdsay night and John was blown away by all the water.

"No way!" he yelled from the back seat, "how did this happen? No way! Where did this flood come from?"

So I say all that to say this: It was rainy and cool this morning. A creepy, horror movie-ish fog was hanging against the water that had flooded the fields. The fog was thick and white and very, very Silent Hill. And then! As I came over the last rise over the railroad, where the interstate flattens out before rising again to meet the New Bridge, I got to see the whole vista. Two or three miles of fog, punctured here and there by skeletal trees, and then rising up out of the fog like some post-apocalyptic trading post: Memphis.

It was fucking awesome. I wish I'd had a camera. And a place to stop the car.