Time Out

Senator McCain (fourth from left) takes a strategic break


















Evidently, some people are only now reorganzing their priorities, in light of the world's increasing fucked-upness*. As any reader can see, I long ago chose to suspend Grandpaboy-related activities due to the whole "cats and dogs living together" thing, in favor of...


Bullet-points!

[lame resume device] My Great American Novel!
[lame resume device] Work on stately Grandpaboy Manor!
[lame resume device] My continued work as America's Least Powerful Elected Official!**
[lame resume device] "The world must be peopled!"

But I have re-entered the fray. Mostly because I want to make sure that McCain gets his ass kicked so hard, he'll see Mondale looking back everytime he stares into his wife's coke mirror.***


* Oh, it is a word. Look it up.


** Grandpaboy Fun Fact - I got 300 less votes than Sarah Palin. On the other hand, my friends, I have managed not put the Hilltop 20 million in debt, my friends.


*** I'm kidding. She did pills, not coke.

My Favorite Holiday

Amazing true fact: Mr. Red's bulbous head is filled with pockets of helium that allow him to defy simple physics!






Opening Day ranks with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in the first tier of hallowed days. So I'll spend a little extra time around the radio today, maybe pick up some Skyline for lunch and hope that the Reds don't get slaughtered. I've already had about as much of WLW's coverage as I can stand - putting Mike McConnel and Tracy Jones together is like rancid peanut butter and fuzzy jelly.

[And in petty grandpaboy fashion, let me add - who the hell is Tracy "Unless you played the game like me, you don't know what you're talking about" Jones? That's right. No stupid guys have ever played baseball. Jones is like Tim McCarver, but without the respectable playing career. But he's got plenty of WLW-style hot air, the basic ingredient that allows a group of social misfits to broadcast with all the grace and charm of pro-wrestling.]

Back to the fun! I like Thom Brennaman and hope he'll breathe life into his dad's golden years. Marty makes me sound like a ray of sunshine on meth. I think Dunn and Griff will perform better than last year. I think Josh Hamilton is the goods. I think if the stiffs pitching 3,4, and 5 can stick around .500, Harang and Arroyo can get the Reds to 90 wins and the Central title. I think I'm in love and I know I'll get my heart broke.

Triple Word Score

Lordy. Three weeks of skipping over the cheapest, funnest, warmest alternative to the SXSW. I can stand slacking off my own brand of brechtian Buckeye boarishness, but I don't want to live in a world without obscure references to the Question.

















"At 3:28 am, Michigan J. Frog was found dead in his toilet. A preliminary autopsy indicated possible overdose."

















"Which tooth had the cyanide capsule?"


















Seems like a lot of trouble just to guard some cheese.

Babe Ruth. Still Dead.

Opening Day should suck a little less this year.

















If you're lucky, the crappy team you root for every year will spend April and May playing scrappy, getting their uniforms dirty and, the good Lord willin', give 110%. Or you're a Pirates fan.

If you're extra-shiny lucky, the crappy team you root for will manufacture some feel good story to ease the slushy grayness of February and March. For the Cincinnati Reds, that feel good story has a name. It's Josh Hamilton C. Trent Rosencrans.

Replacing the affable Mark Lancaster at the doomed Post, C. Trent has been a breath of fresh air in a baseball town that too often smells like Marty and Joe locked in a tiny radio booth with coneys with plenty of mustard and onion, Bud longnecks, and Camels.

You have to admire C. Trent, a man who silently moves past the fugly new spring training gear MLB markets, and invents new teams. The guy's popping out names like he was Adam on Day 8. And unlike the Nicknamer-in-Chief, they're actually funny: the General Shermans, Satan's Rays of Sunshine, and Pure Evil.

Speaking of the Yanks, C. Trent may have already peaked. Noting the field-blocking pillar the Yanks have at their overpriced spring training grounds, C. Trent found visiting media can't actually watch the game. But they are treated to a framed picture of the Whammer. Which led C. Trent to proved his web fans with a Babe update at the bottom of each inning.

These are the kinds of things that ease the periods between Pete Rose press releases/ autograph signings.

Schmidt Shrieking, Covered in Sick

The headlines write themselves...








Goodness knows I've been remiss in so many ways. But I'd be überremiss if I failed to point out this ray of Schadenfreude from Crooks and Liars...

Meanwhile, today on the Hill, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) was seen making a spectacle of herself when the unlucky lawmaker slipped and fell in what we’re told was vomit, in a bathroom in Cannon... “She made THE biggest scene [grandpaboy: How do you recognize the great ones? Grace. Under. Pressure.] in the hallway,” says a staffer who escaped the, um, regurgitation. “It’s literally all down her back.”

That's got to be worth a year full of St. Patrick's Days right there.

The Weekly(ish) Non-Random Post

"RAHR. How much Hulk drink last night?"






















Trapped in a world we never made! Go soak up the radioactive gamma goodness.

Meet the Mayor

Contemplating the Bill Todd candidacy.








Mayor Coleman invited local activists and neighborhood commissioners to a pre-State of the City meeting. He listed the challenges facing the city: inadequate infrastructures (specifically school and neighborhood sidewalks and street drainage, primarily on the Southside), the City Center mess (he's optimistic about the new ownership, but foretells the situation worsening before a costly fix), and preparing for Columbus' 2012 bicentennial.

For anyone interested in more details, check out the State of the City speech 6pm tonight at the Southern Theater.

Cowtown Crisis

"Leave me alone! I'm dead and fictional."















The weather-ninnies on our local "news" stations dished out a new slice of terror this morning - "FREEZING FOG!" Due to some undiagnosed speech impediment, I can only repeat this phrase as "freezing frog" which sounds like some kind of lame Spider-Man villain. And I don't need that cluttering up my mind right now. I still haven't managed to forget the Venom origin story.