Tuesday, October 16, 2007

This is not part of Best of Week

I guess I did go shooting my blogging mouth off earlier today and say I was going to do some blogging this evening, so I shouldn't sit here and just blow it off, though I will admit there are times when it is tempting. The urge to blog is indeed a fleeting mistress, when I feel the urge to type, real life responsibilities get in the way and when I have time, I just find I am not all that energized. In that regard it is sort of like leaving for vacation then realizing you didn't take out the trash, sure the motivation to take out the trash is there, but you aren't at home and when you do arrive home from vacation, the last thing you want to do when you come in the door is take out the trash.

That being said, we will call this garbage day. At least it is garbage day as opposed to the other stuff I have posted this week. For those not in the know, I have tinkered with a Best of the Web in the past. Basically what it is is recent writings of people who I enjoy reading and whose thinking and or writing style I tend to admire, if not always agree with. I am one of those fools that appreciates the argument as much as the outcome, which is why I like reading from both sides of the political spectrum, at least those sides that aren't so far removed from the spectrum as to be distractions rather than thought provoking arguments. A quick example if I may and probably the most pressing example today, the war in Iraq. I appreciate those on the left that question the role and or mission, I don't appreciate those that climb the mountaintop to scream "Bush is a Nazi", likewise I appreciate those on the other side who argue this is a battle worth fighting and I do not appreciate those that say simple dissent is equivalent with support for terrorism. That is it in a nutshell kids, it leaves me a broad swath of middle ground to work with, but it is territory that needs to be claimed by someone and who better than me.

Excuse me for a second while I check on a post I made earlier today. This is not the only place I post commentary, though it is the one with which the majority of my rants appear. I occasionally pop up at Radio Info (www.radio-info.com) and leave posts under the Pittsburgh radio board. Such was the case today, and I just want to see if my ramblings have garnered any feedback. Well, no such luck, a couple of posts since I left my remarks a few hours ago, but nothing regarding the genius that is me. I would get into what was talked about, but I have a feeling this is going to be a long enough blog to begin with, and it certainly isn't "best of the Web" material, so it isn't deserving of its own blog entry, plus beyond maybe one or tow of you, I can imagine that me talking about Pittsburgh radio would border on insufferably boring for the vast majority of you, and my content is boring enough without giving you the reader more reasons to tune out entirely.

Well, Yahoo is offering nothing in the way of hockey coverage this evening, and there is very little the TV is offering that I would want to watch, so for the time being I guess this will get my undivided attention, though I do get distracted quite easily.

First off (yes four paragraphs in and I am saying first off, tell me again who rambles better than me), I might as well get the fantasy sports stuff out of the way. The office poll on picking games was probably the worst news in the realm of faux sports (We play, you decide, damn I love my witticisms sometimes), where I went 7-6 picking games this week. For the year I have 48 points (1 pt for every correct pick, drop the worst week) and the group leader has 54, so things are far from looking bright in that regard. For the year, including my worst week, I am 54-35 picking winners of NFL games. Like I said though, that was the bad news and lo and behold, that was the only bad news. I had the best week of anyone in the fantasy hockey league, getting 17 of a possible 20 points (2pts for a win, 1 for a tie). I finished the week with a 7-0-3 mark, and currently reside in second place with a 13-3-4 mark over two weeks, 2 pts behind first place. Both of the fantasy football teams did well also, compliments mainly due to playing Wes Welker in both leagues. In yahoo I won 121-72 bringing my record to 5-1 and I remain in sole possession of first place, with 4 teams one game behind me at 4-2, and in the bar league I also won, 135-78, leaving me in a 4 way tie for third place at 3-3. Mind you there are two teams tied for first at 5-1, so 3-3 encompasses 3rd through 6th places, mind you we take 6 teams for the playoffs through the course of a 13 week season, so at almost the midpoint, I would still qualify for post season play. Of course the worse record in the league is just 2-4, so all 6 playoff spots are still very much up for grabs, nobody is stinking up the joint, and save for the two 5-1 teams, nobody is really all that comfortable yet.

I have been booking more guests fr the radio show recently, or at least trying to. I have Chef Paul Prudhomme coming in on Friday. Rumor has it he is going to cook in the studio, which should make for some interesting viewing, too bad it isn't on TV. I am hoping for some interesting eating as well, though I have no idea what it is he will be making. I have a call into Congressman Jason Altmire's office as well, hopefully we will be having him on the show on Wednesday to talk about the FISA bill in the House. I have been playing phone tag with his office, I just haven't heard back from them yet as to when he will be available. I also have some feelers out for some other potential guests, a few of which have gotten back to me and I am just waiting on information and availability to book them. One of which, AJ Jacobs, we had on the show in the past when he wrote "The Know It All", which was his book on reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. He has a new book out, I just received the review copy today, titled "The Year of Living Biblically" where he has spent a year of his life trying to live as much as possible along the lines of the Scriptures. Some of it is simple enough, the do unto others stuff and Love thy neighbor, but he goes for the most literal meaning possible, which means no shaving, stoning blasphemers, not wearing mixed blend clothing, and while I have just started reading the book, it looks to be just as funny, if not funnier than his last effort. I am also working on war corespondent Kevin Sites, some of you may have seen his work on Yahoo in the past, he has spent the past year in 24 different war zones and I am hoping we can get him on the air. I have been in contact with his publicist and things are looking up in that regard, but no confirmations as of yet. If I do snag some of these people, I will leave a message on the blog telling you when and where to tune in, and then if they suck as guests, you can blame me for wasting your time.

I realize that most of you are not in broadcasting and even fewer of you are viewers in the Pittsburgh market, and so I don't know how best to describe the significance of what is taking place here regarding one of Pittsburgh's premiere talents, and one of the people I get to work with and dare call a friend, Bill Cardille, is celebrating 50 years in broadcasting this November. There is going to be a big shindig at the Byham Theater on Nov 10th, where many of Bill's friends and coworkers are going to speak glowingly about him, and really who couldn't, I am not sure I have met a classier guy in the business. Musical groups are scheduled to perform and it will be a great remembrance of a great man and a great career (how many more times can I say great?). Last night the local public TV station, WQED did a special on him during their OnQ program. For those that have frequented the page, you will recall I have had a couple of appearances on their OffQ show, the OffQ program is a political pundit roundtable type thing done live Friday nights, the rest of the week the show is called OnQ and isn't lived, but rather a feature oriented program, and last night's show spent better than half of their 30 minutes just talking about Bill and his career. I could go on about all of the shows he did, from early music programs along the lines of Bandstand but done locally, to his years doing the weather for Channel 11, to his 30+ years hosting the local portion of the Jerry Lewis telethon, including this past year where for the first time ever, Pittsburgh broke the $1 million dollar mark in donations, which had Bill choking up on the air. Instead, I will just tell a simple story of a program he used to host here, called Chiller Theater. I could go into detail about the show, but this site does it more justice than I ever could, http://www.chillertheatermemories.com/ . Suffice it to say, the program became very much iconic in the lore of Pittsburgh television, airing Saturday nights after the local news and featuring Chilly Billy Cardille and his cast of characters and running two B movie horror classics back to back, with the show running until well into the night, usually wrapping up around 3am. As a kid, you would hope you got to stay up late enough to watch it, and then when you managed to coerce your parents into letting you stay up, it was still the matter of staying awake long enough to watch the entire show. That being said, WIIC (now WPXI) channel 11, was the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, and during the run of Chiller Theater, NBC rolled out a brand new program to air on Saturday nights, titled Saturday Night Live. The thing was, Chiller Theater was so popular in Pittsburgh that the local station actually got into a fight of sorts with NBC, the result being that Pittsburgh was the only market in America that had the permission to preempt Saturday Night Live for local programming, as SNL would be pushed back to 3am just so we could get our Chiller Theater.

Okay, who is still awake, a show of hands. Don't say I didn't warn you well ahead of time that this was going to be a bit lengthy in nature. I have been on the computer quite a bit recently, even if it has been me blogging per se. As I have mentioned, I have been watching hockey games on yahoo, tomorrow they are airing the Penguins/New Jersey Devils, which I am very much looking forward to. Who knows, I may even glog it, I haven't decided yet. The Steelers get the Sunday night game on NBC, which may also be glog worthy. Still, while not watching hockey or doing my other normal internet related stuff, I have been doing the Pogo thing again. It was another badge marathon week, meaning that instead of the normal two challenges by pogo plus the one you pick, it as two from pogo and you got to pick three, for a total of 5 badges. The two from Pogo were Hearts, where you had to win 5 games by 15 points or more. This wasn't that hard, especially if you set the games to 25 points. Usually they ended in two or three hands. The second was to play 25 halos in Hog Heaven Slots, which sucked, because I recently had finished getting all of the game award badges in there, having reached level 50 and really had no desire to play it anymore. As for the three I chose, I opted for Shuffle Bump (reach the bonus round 10 times), High Stakes Pool (win 4000 tokens not including spins or bets) and Tri Peaks Solitaire (win 50 hands). To top that all off, I also picked up a sixth badge, the level 1 badge in Word Search daily, which is to complete 30 word search puzzles. So all told, it has been a good week on the pogo badge front, I now have 484 different badges in there.

And lastly on the internet front and the photo at the top of the blog entry is one Sarah Palin. I knew very little about her, but was intrigued when I saw her on Charlie Rose this past Friday. I didn't know exactly who she was, I just knew that she had this schoolmarm-ish hotness about her, so I was intrigued to learn some more. She is a Republican and the Governor of Alaska, but what is fascinating is that, in a age where Republicans as a whole are not doing well in the polls, she is very much the exception to the rule, having the highest approval rating of any governor in the United State, with the lowest approval number I have seen being 84% (with a 5% disapproval number). Mind you, I get that Alaska is very much a Republican state, but 84% is an impressive number for anyone, any where and at any time. After reading up on her (and oggling her photos more than I would like to admit), I can say that while I do not agree with all of her stands on issues per se, it is still refreshing to see someone in public service actually work for their constituents, rather than simply paying them lip service.

Okay, much like the final envelope at an awards show, I guess it is Asshat time (as opposed to Hammer time, therefore no parachute pants are required). . Bennie Thompson, set up and claim your prize. Bennie Thompson is a Democrat in the House of Representatives and chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security. Some congressional staffers were planning on attending the Nascar race this weekend in Talledega, which is fine, but Bennie decide to issue a warning to those staffers that were planning on attending. Make sure you get your shots! Pardon me but just what the hell is that! And just how freaking offensive. Mr. Thompson advised those who wished to attend to make sure they got their vaccinations for hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus and influenza. Let's not kid ourselves here folks, this is stereotyping of the highest order. This type of shit would never be issued for a baseball game, or a football game, but because this is, in Mr. Thompson's eyes, a redneck sport deep in the heart of redneck country, you had best make sure you are immunized so that you don't catch anything from those people. It is people like Rep.Thompson who make me sick, and for whom the Asshat award is much deserved.

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