Reid About It

People Magazine says Kevin Federline won't sign the divorce papers to finally end the War On Marriage that was his relationship with Britney Spears. They speculate that it's because he's worried about her post-rehab partying.

Not sure about that. Has anybody actually ever seen K-Fed Yo read or write? After hearing some of his "music," K-Fed Yo may be taking advantage of his downtime to take "English As A First Language" courses at the local community college. Chances are, he just hasn't reached the "Writing Your Own Name" chapter of the picture book. Is a divorce document legal if it's signed in crayon?

If the legal system in this country truly worked, the authorities would step in and make sure those kids were raised by stronger authority figures, such as a pack of wolves or a large fern.

The Chris Benoit story was bizarre enough, but now the media is really reaching. Apparently someone logged on to Wikipedia hours before the events were revealed with an update about Benoit that said...

"However, Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."

The IP address of the person who made this entry was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the corporate headquarters of the WWE, and that started the conspiracy rumors about Benoit flying.

What the Heck, sure! Let's admit it. Wikipedia is a great source for reliable information. You don't have to have anything to post on there except access to a computer and at least one finger, but people wouldn't lie, would they?

In their rush to judgement, did Fox News or ABC bother to look at the other hot inside scoops this Wikipediot posted? What's Bill O'Reilly think about this guy replacing an entire page on the "African Wild Ass" page with the word "piss"? As a WWE insider, he certainly must have known what he was talking about when he filled out Stacy Keibler's page with "People want to #@% her in her lovely #$@ and whip her $^%@ til the dawn of day" or when he replaced Ron Artest's entire entry with a racial slur.

Yep. Clear the docket. It seems that Encyclopedia Brown has cracked another mystery. The way the media's treating this, CNN might break a story on new evidence gleaned from some misspelled graffiti in a Cracker Barrel bathroom on the Connecticut Turnpike.

If you believe everything on Wikipedia, then this fact, posted less than twelve hours later, might provide some clue to who the real culprit was. Chris Benoit's entry read at that point, and I quote...

"After defeating Guerrero whio is a poopy head and smells like poop and more poop mcpoop and he eventuallly ate more poop and more poop with poop sauce and poop yogurt, MVP claimed that he was the best man to hold the US title."

There you have it. As reliable as can be.

Forgive me, friends, I have fallen prey to peer pressure. Long having been a staunch advocate of the dark, bubbly, carbonated beverages, I succumbed to temptation and bought for the first time, a "fruit smoothie."

A guy from work was going to pick up some for everybody else, so I said sure, I'll try one. I had no idea what to order, so I just said "whatever you guys are having."

He returned with 40 ounces of an alleged beverage with some strange name that implied health and energy, like "Big Range Extremejello" or "PowerPunchPummelPants" or something.

To begin with, it's not exactly a beverage. It's neither solid nor liquid, closer to some form of plasma. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to expel this matter from my body.

The taste was hard to describe, it seemed to be made up of every fruit imaginable mixed in random amounts. Then, add bark, leaves, shell, stem, and roots, and you've got health, my friend. It tasted like I was trying to drink 40 ounces of rain forest.

The first taste was quizzical, and unpleasant. It got slightly better as I tried again and again, pausing only to chew back another mouthful, and examine my mouth for the leftover pieces of debris.

So I drank more than my share, only to open the lid and find out I had finished about a third of it. The final part of the smoothie I used later to mortar some bricks in a retaining wall I'm building.

I know everybody else in the world loves these things, I just don't get it. Anytime I pay eight dollars for a drink, I don't expect it to have bits of bark and leaves in it, and I imagine it would at least taste pleasant. I need some bubbles in my beverage. A friend of mine loves them, she says she drinks them instead of meals sometimes. I can only assume that's because by the time you finish chewing down this smoothie, you've finished a drink, a meal, and a workout.

Next time, I'll just drink a 40 ounce of paint, it's cheaper, and actually smoother.

Times are tough for everybody it seems. I saw today that Falcons quarterback Michael Vick's benefit event for Virginia Tech had to be postponed because of all the bad publicity he's been getting. No word on when "Dog-Fight-A-Palooza" will be rescheduled. Hopefully it's not on the same night as Pac-Man Jones' "Strip Club Shootout For Seniors" benefit or the "Cincinnati Bengals Drunk-Drivers For Christ Jamboree." I'd hate to have to choose between the events.

Wrapping things up on a Friday, and the chatter is all abuzz with whatever the Hell people are talking about these days. Even as a pop culture savant, there are certain things I won't sully my weekend with thinking about. In no particular order...

Isaiah Washington - Don't care about the slur, the firing, or the TV show. The slur may be the high point of his career, when you consider that before lucking onto the chick-tv sensation that is Grey's Anatomy, he was in such classics as "Wild Thing 2" and "Trois 3: The Escort." I think any concern over his popularity is one of those things that would take care of itself in the long term.

Alli - The new weight loss drug that everyone will take for two years, then realize the side effects are death, dismemberment, sexual dysfunction, uncontrollable falling down syndrome, Dutch Elm disease, the Rockin' Pneumonia, The Boogie Woogie Flu, Cat Scratch Fever, the drowsies, the Drop Thumb Medley, and whatever else people will develop and sue the company to recoup their losses.

And how ironic is the naming of a diet drug "Alli", thus bringing up thoughts of Callista Flockheart as America's favorite emaciated, swollen-lipped attorney? Remember when everybody watched Ally McBeal? Me either, but I know it happened, I remember the TV Guide covers.

Celebrity Impersonators - Reality show or otherwise, how do you build a long-term career in this profession? Does somebody pay you a dollar everytime you hear the phrase "You know, you look a lot like..."?

Bollywood stars - Never heard of this before six weeks ago, and still have never heard of these people. "Bollywood" is the new "tilapia," it's just something they've made up to sell to us.

Any reality show involving chefs - How am I supposed to care about somebody's culinary creations if I can't taste them? It would be like picking your "American Idol" winner with the sound muted.

A Possible Spice Girls Reunion - It would be interesting for roughly the same amount of time the Spice Girls were the first time. And for that matter...

Eddie Murphy/Scary Spice's Baby - Don't care at all as long as I don't have to watch it. She hasn't had a hit in a decade, and Eddie hasn't been funny except in animated form in twice that long. Spare me the sexcapades.

Lauren Jones, Anchorwoman - They're filming this new reality show where a supermodel tries to turn into a local news anchor. They're shooting this is my home town, thus setting back my city and my former profession at the same time.

While embarrassing, this isn't anything new. Watch any major pageant and listen to the interview portion. Four out of five contestants want to work in television. And notice the way they say it. They don't want to be journalists, or investigative reporters. They have no desire to expose corruption or shine the light of truth on injustice.

They want to be on television because they're pretty. They think the world will become a better place if everyone gets a chance to see them every afternoon.

As for the show, on set they've taken all of the sex appeal out of the sex kitten. She wears her hair back, and dresses semi-conservatively, or at least wearing more clothes than she did when she was a WWE Diva. However, on the occasions when she appears out of the studio, she's a bit more supermodel-y. Yesterday, they had footage of her at a local park, kicking a soccer ball with kids while wearing four-inch heels and a low-cut blouse. The kids were too young to be suitably impressed.

Political candidates - As an independent, I pretty much have to choose between whoever wins their party's nomination. I'm a hostage to whatever human suit they throw up there.

The Backstreet Boys Manager Getting Arrested - This may be of interest to people who fell for the boy band trend a few years ago, but I never bought in. And besides, the damage to our collective psyche has already been done. Can simply jailing this man erase the wasted brain cells that still hold the song "Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely?"

Could a military execution blot out the lyrics, "Let me show you the shape of my heart"? Uh, I dunno, guys. Without succumbing to your metaphor, perhaps it's shaped like a heart.

I think when the end of the meal comes, we all lose focus a little bit. We're full, we're sleepy, and then it's time to tip the waitstaff.

To begin with, we can never figure out how much 15% is of anything. Just give up. Take ten percent of the total (move the decimal over, Chester), then add a couple of bucks. We invariably round off, so don't worry about exact percentages.

Why do we tip? I'm not complaining, I'm just curious. When did we decide it was okay to let the restaurants pay these employees several dollars below minimum wage, and make them hustle to make up the difference? And then when did we also decide it was okay for them to not hustle, and still count on us to subsidize the industry?

At some point, the tip went from being a reward to being an expected part of the meal. If your waiter brings the appetizer after the meal, sneezes in your salad, and grinds the pepper shaker over your glass of tea, you might be ticked off enough to only give that incompetent idiot 10% above the cost of the meal.

Another thing that irks me is when people assume tips. If the meal is $43 and I give the waitress $60, just assume I want you to bring me my change and let me figure out the tip.

Her: "Do you need change?"
Me: "Uh...no. Why don't you just climb up on the table and dance for me, while you're at it?"

Don't be cute. If I get $12 in change, don't bring me a ten and two ones. Don't try and force me to overtip, I'm a bit stubborn.

And there are some occasions where we just lose our minds and tip too much, like in a bar. Why do you always tip a bartender too much? Because they're getting you alcohol, and you like alcohol. Bear in mind they're not actually brewing the beer themselves, they're just handing it to you. They don't rush to the back to their still to make us a martini, they just pour it and place it in front of you.

And if you're a guy, and your bartender is female, you may go ahead and slide down one more row on the abacus of tipping. You will overtip her, go ahead and admit it, in spite of the fact that your odds of successfully taking her home are about the same as climbing Mt. Everest. I know it's happened before, I just don't know anybody personally who's successfully accomplished it.

We set our tip for waiters and waitresses on how the food was. They're not cooking it, folks, they're just walking it out.

We tip strippers, and we usually tip them before they do anything other than display the items they have for rent. Then after the tip, they display them again, then put them away. I have nothing more to say about that, just pointing it out.

Why don't we tip people who actually work hard for us? Mechanics? Plumbers? Farmers? Why isn't it okay to slip a ten spot to a college football player who made the big touchdown that won you money in your office pool?

How about pastry chefs? We tip the person who hands us our cheeseburger, why doesn't the woman who sets her alarm and gets up before the sun every day just to make doughnuts that you buy for fifty cents get a little thank you?

Shouldn't the traffic cop who lets you off with a warning get a small token of your appreciation? What if he were kind enough to run your license and registration, and then come back with a refill of tea and a desert menu?

Why aren't we happy in our relationships anymore? Why is the divorce rate so high?

I blame the modern day unrealistic expectations, myself.

My long-standing theory has been that as bad as pornography is for men and their expectations of adult relationships, romantic comedies and romance novels are worse for women. Both create an image of the way things should be in a relationship, and both are almost completely false.

Quick example. I love the commercial where the guy on a bus sees a pretty girl riding another bus, then jumps out of his bus to try and meet her, only to find out she has also gotten off to meet him. Wonderful. Now, two total strangers with nothing in common but superficial attraction have derailed their days and gotten abandoned at a city intersection in hopes of finding something to talk about with a pretty person.

Her: "Hi there. I was on my way to a pro-choice rally, and had to stop to talk to you."
Him: "Hey you. I'm an abortion clinic bomber. Wanna grab a coffee?"

There was a movie out a few years ago with Diane Lane and John Cusack as two people who couldn't find anyone to go out with, and wound up together. Think of the special effects it would take to make you believe that Diane Lane and John Cusack would be sitting around their houses on Saturday night playing Scrabble because they have trouble finding dates.

Reality For Guys:
-- The pizza delivery girl is not going to let you tip her with hot loving.
-- In the hospital, "head nurse" is a title awarded solely on seniority and nursing skill.
-- When your girlfriend invites a friend over to the house, you are the only one in the house thinking what you're thinking.
-- Real-life lesbians do not wear lingerie. They wear loose-fitting flannel to sleep in. And they don't care at all that you'd love to see them make out, don't even bother to ask.

Reality For Women:
-- Pirates were not nice guys. They had leathery skin and smelled of fish constantly.
-- Castles were dark, damp places that permanently smelled of old food and piss. And I'll tell you right now, British people and proper dental care go together like fish and deserts. Any fantasy you have of being taken by the Lord of a Manor, downgrade immediately.
-- A guy who loves you enough to stand at the end of your driveway with a radio over his head, blaring your song at 3am, is not a sweet, lovable imp. He's a stalker, and the next step is him breaking into your house and boiling your bunny.
-- For that matter, whenever you see something in a movie that tugs at your heartstrings and makes you think "I wish I had someone like that," stop a moment. If the guy doing the sweet thing didn't look like John Cusack, and looked more like Andy Dick, would it still be something desireable?

• I love the TV show 24, but every week Jack Bauer causes more deaths of innocent people than OJ and Robert Blake combined. Cops, CTU agents, bystanders, security guards, nobody is safe.


• I love Sue Grafton's writing, if only because at some point, she'll have to write books where people are murdered with xylophones, yarmulkes, and zithers. I really look forward to that.


• I love that we're living in a society where the phrase "well-respected actor" has come to mean anyone who is not currently appearing on an infomercial.


• I love you can now buy AC/DC and Motley Crue t-shirts at Sears. Things that were once associated with Satan and pure evil are now part of the mass consumer culture. Everything we survive becomes a part of pop culture. Woodstock. Watergate. The Vietnam War. I fully expect to see kids wearing t-shirts with the World Trade Center towers within twenty years.


• I love when I drive by a gym, and the parking lot is full, because I know all those people drove to the health club to walk on the treadmills. I like my irony thick enough to build a house on sometimes.


• I love that the youth of America have taken it on themselves to use their cell phones to provide constant, ongoing play-by-play of their lives. "Yeah, I'm just getting out of class. You too? I'm walking across the quad now. Yeah. Just walking to my car. Now I'm there. I'm going to see what's on the radio. Yeah, me too." God forbid they actually look around, rather than neglect their duties of mumbling the minutiae of their lives to their friends.


• I love when older women feel the need to poison themselves with Bo-Tox, because I think people are never more attractive than when they walk around looking perpetually surprised.


• I love to go to Wal-Mart late at night and play my favorite game, "Trolling". It works best with a friend of the opposite sex, you go to Wal-Mart at night, the later the better. Then you walk the store, trying to find someone that you would sleep with. The rules are simple, it has to be someone you'd have sex with willingly, not a closing time beer-goggle hookup, and they have to be someone you'd admit to being with later to your friends. Many nights, I'll go completely snake-eyes, wandering the aisles until blind like a sexual Diogenes.


• I love when Hollywood celebrities tell me they're scientologists, because then I know to never listen seriously to another single word they say. I can automatically downgrade them a few notches on my personal Wonderlic test.


• Finally, you know what I love? You know that Barry Manilow song "I Write the Songs"? He didn't write that.

MySpace has upgraded their photo capacity thanks to a commercial tie-in, and now you can upload 300 pictures.

Quick question, if you've got 300 pictures of yourself just laying around, why don't you just go ahead and admit you're just a little bit self-centered?

I worked in TV for years, and even those people don't have 300 pictures of themselves. Jenna Jameson doesn't have 300 pictures of herself.

Julie Tam might, though.

Anyway, I really like MySpace. Now, when people from high school find me, the brief moment of stilted conversation dies out quickly. With email and personal messages, I don't have to pretend I left my child in the car to make a quick getaway when the conversation hits that mind-dulling lull.

I do like to have some fun with those moments of polite remembrance, and turn them quickly into uncomfortable situations.

Them: "Hey, do you ever see Brad from homeroom anymore? Whatever happened to him?"

Me: "Oh, you don't know? Brad joined the military, and was court-martialed for giving a handjob to an Iraqi insurgent. I'm dating his mom."

Them: "Oh."

Keeps me from having to turn down all those reunion invitations, at least.

I feel like MySpace is just the modern-day equivalent of hitchhiking. It was cool for a while, but eventually the molesters took it over and it got too dangerous.

This time of year always reminds me of what I did for myself, and for my family two years ago. I gave the gift that keeps on giving.

I had a vasectomy.

I was married for almost ten years when I had my daughter, and she's a beautiful, smart, incredibly challenging child. I'm a small family guy, and I felt like my life was complete with her. I always told my wife that we had our first child for her, and we wouldn't have the next one for me.

Three years I told that joke, and she never found it funny even once.

When we decided in 1998 to think about children, we decided not to decide about not having a child. Basically, we pulled the goalie and whatever happened, happened.

What happened was I teed up a shot from the blue line and scored on my first attempt, so we've been understandably paranoid ever since.

Anyway, I learned something I'd like to pass along to all prospective patients. Something financial to keep in mind.

When you buy the first vasectomy, the second one is free.

Yep. First one didn't take. Apparently my groin has the mutant healing powers of Wolverine, because my boys were stronger than ever after the first round of surgery. Fertile as the Nile Basin, I was still.

So to sum up, I spent not only Christmas, but also a week of spring camped out in front of a television with a bag of frozen peas sitting between my legs. I looked like one of Norman Rockwell's lesser known paintings, "Christmas With The Numbing Cold 'Pon My Crotch."

Anyway, I went through the process twice. And it was actually worse the second time, for some reason. And also, when I went back for my second time, it sure seemed like there were a lot more people on the other end of me than the first time. And it seemed as if several weren't even wearing scrubs or masks or anything.

Onlookers aside, the strangest part of having a vasectomy doesn't come until weeks later. That's when you need to bring them a sample for analysis.

Yeah, I'm just going to let that one set in for a while.

One morning, six weeks after your surgery, you wake up with a doctor's perscription to masturbate. You are a man on a mission, with a delivery to make. Enjoy the morning, fellas. Never again will you not only have the freedom, but for once in your life, you are fully sanctioned under the law.

That's the understandable part. What comes next is a bit strange. That's when you have to fill a cup full of your warm Johnny's and Suzi's, go to your car and put it in your cupholder, and drive it downtown to the lab where you will hand it over to a woman you've never met, and who will take it from you like you're old friends.

That's an uncomfortable moment, in part because you know they have to have heard all of the jokes before.

"Can you fill this for me?"

Uh...from here? No. But I'll be glad to bring it back later. How far away from you is considered polite before I bring it back? Is the waiting room okay, or should I go out in the hall, the restroom, the elevator, or the cross town bus? Would it be better if I waited until tonight to see what's on Cinemax?

Random thoughts while waiting in line at the deli counter...

• 11 Different Kinds of Ham: It's all made from the same pig. Once you get it on bread and cover it with mustard and cheese, will even the most discerning pallet be able to decide which is sugar-baked honey ham, and which one is light glazed smoked ham? If you're going to have ham for lunch, just pick a brand and eat it. Don't try and sexy up a simple foodstuff. It's a snack, it's not the DaVinci Code.
• Ham & Cheese Loaf: How lazy can we get? If you've reached the point where you'll pay extra to have a stranger assemble your ham and your cheese to make your sandwich, maybe you could use the exercise of constructing the snack yourself.
• Liver Loaf: Incomprehensible that this product would be on the market. The single most maligned food on the planet, and they try and make it more attractive by making it look like ham surrounded by a thick layer of lard.
• Souse Loaf: What the Hell is this? What kind of animal is "souse"? Is it a biped? Is it dangerous? And what's so important about letting us know there's "gelatin added"?
• Cotto Salami: Not sure what "cotto" is. Why couldn't they just say "Salami with green crap floating in it"? On second thought, maybe that's not the best marketing ploy. See? I'm always willing to listen to a better idea.
• Smokin' Chipotle Turkey: Ah, chipotle, the white whale of foods. We needed to make up a new kind of food to get everybody interested again, so we came up with "chipotle". Before that, it was "angus," and "tilapia." Nobody grew up fishing for tilapia. Nobody had even heard of tilapia until about a year ago, and now you can't get through Luby's without somebody throwing one on your plate.
• Luncheon Loaf: This is truly scary. No one really knows what this is. It's pretty vague. It's like when McDonalds offers you a "Fillet O'Fish", and since it's only two bucks, nobody ever stops to ask just exactly what kind of "fish" they're eating. Same thing with Luncheon Loaf. To begin with, "luncheons" are never pleasant. Lunch is a meal. A "luncheon" is a social gathering, where people pretend they always get dressed up to eat at eleven in the morning, and are forced to try and make a meal out of salad and finger sandwiches while some uninteresting speaker drones on about some charity project that could easily be attained if everyone in the room would simply donate their money to the cause instead of spending it on awful meals like the one they're eating. They would never serve "luncheon loaf" at an actual luncheon.

Confession time. After thirty years, I still geek out every time Han Solo flies up at the end of Star Wars and saves Luke's bacon.

I'm not a sci-fi geek. I could barely watch the last three movies and didn't watch the Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica TV shows, but I caught the end of Star Wars on HBO, and I have to admit, I marked out like a seven year-old again. That moment to me defined cinematic excitement for me as a kid, and it still gets me.

That was the problem with the (chronologically) first three Star Wars movies to me, no Han Solo. Those three movies were about Anakin growing up and putting on the Darth Vader mask, and everything led up to that. The characters didn't change or evolve except for Anakin, and that was not only obvious, but horribly acted.

Star Wars/Empire/Jedi had Luke and his destiny as the big story, but the evolution of Han from cold-blooded mercenary into freedom fighter and family man was what sold the first trilogy. Han was a smuggler, gambler, and murderer. He had his chance to leave with his money, but rejected his selfish nature for an act of heroism that turned him from a common criminal into a traitor. He made the choice that defined his character, and made him exciting and three-dimensional. Without a character to develop like that in the first three movies, it was pretty boring.

Okay, maybe I am still a bit of a Star Wars geek.


Just for future reference, I also get a bit misty when Willie Mays Hays comes in from second to score the winning run at the end of "Major League", and will not permit anyone else in the house to speak while Swayze is giving his "be nice" speech in Roadhouse.

Any moments for you guys that you always geek out for?

My nice, quiet dinner table conversation this weekend was shattered by a war whoop, followed by a human train of wait staff snaking their way through the restaurant, clapping and singing their particular version of "Happy Birthday" to a table full of revelers and trying to get the entire building to sing along.

As a room full of bright-vested people tried in vain to feign interest in an impromptu get-together for a person they'd never met before, I tried to block out the clamor and just go back to eating. I uttered a silent prayer the brownie-bearing ringleader wouldn't spot my disdain for forced enthusiasm, and single me out.

There! Him! He is the one who does not clap along with us! Attack him! Punish him! Beset him from all sides, and force a festive had 'pon his head!

I detest it when waitresses try and press gang me into service to sing "Happy Birthday" to a total stranger while my food gets cold. While your cup of soda stays empty, and your queso remains God-knows-where in the kitchen, your waiter sings and dances around a sombrero for the amusement of someone who's not even sitting in his section.

If I wanted to go to a birthday party for someone I don't know, I'd get a job at Chuck E. Cheese. I don't want to be pressured into singing for a total stranger. What if that guy is planning on celebrating his birthday by getting drunk, robbing a gas station, and then blowing up an abortion clinic later? I don't want to encourage him.

And maybe it's not that good of a deal for him either. Let's face it, if you're spending your birthday in a chain restaurant eating something called "Happy Day Nachos" and drinking a "Sunrise-A-Rita", simply having some teenage strangers singing to you in hopes you'll leave a big tip is not going to turn your life around.

Why don't they just pass around a hat quietly and take donations, and instead of leaving a tip for the hypersexed sorority waitstaff, we can all throw in a buck and the birthday boy eats for free? If he's hitting a milestone birthday, I'd throw in a few bucks to help him drink away the pain of time.

Or better yet, why don't they just give him the use of one of the waiters/waitresses for an evening? That way, everybody's happy and I can get my Cheez Fries delivered before the rest of my meal arrives.

I went by Hobby Lobby today just to look around. They have three aisles right up front, filled with patriotic items for the summer and Fourth of July holidays. You can get pretty much anything you want there to decorate your home in red, white, in blue.

All of them bearing the tag "Made in China."

Yep. Every single thing I picked up on the aisle was marked "Made In China." Flags, banners, busts of Uncle Sam holding balloons, "Proud To Be An American" bottle openers, everything.

Good Lord, if the irony is going to be this obvious, I'll have nothing to blog about anymore.

Upon further review, roughly half of the store was "Made In China," including decorative crosses, big woodcrafts that said "Freedom", and University of Texas memorabilia. I'm pretty sure the Chinese government doesn't believe in any of those things.

When I talk about capitalism run amuck, this is what I'm talking about. Give it a shot, see how much of the patriotic stuff you'll see between now and July Fourth is actually made in America.

One for the ladies today. Guys, you're probably not going to get it.

Actor Shemar Moore was arrested and charged with DUI last weekend. When they asked him for his ID, he just lifted his shirt.