Oh, it’s game time up in here now Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

The Rocket
Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens won the Cy Young award at age 42. He also won the less prestigious but more aptly named Cy Geezer award.

All kinds of fun
Fans lined up for many hours to buy the hot new video game “Halo 2.” The game is pretty wild, if you’re able to get Tara Reid to flash, you get an obscene call from Bill O’Reilly and Martha Stewart goes to prison.

What is wrong with California juries?
Apparently the Scott Peterson jury has been eating off of the same plates as the O.J. Simpson jury.

There hasn’t been a jury as stupid as the Scott Peterson jury since O.J. Simpson lied about those ugly-ass shoes.

Let the Eagle soar . . .
Attorney General John Ashcroft has resigned. President Bush accepted his resignation because he was shocked to discover Ashcroft wasn’t a real Army-type General.

A disappointed President Bush said of Ashcroft, “I should have known he wasn’t a real General. He didn’t have those flappy things with stars on his shoulders.”

Ashcroft turned in a five page, handwritten, resignation letter. I’ll take: Something President Bush will never, ever, read for $500, Alex.

Ashcroft left to spend more time with his fellow fanatical psycho religious zealots.

Something like that
The attacks on Fallujah continue. President Bush like Fallujah, he doesn’t even like the name Fallujah, Bush said; “Why, isn’t Fallujah what got that Bill Clinton fella into trouble with that intern?”

Talented fellow
There’s a tabloid picture circulating the Internet of “24” star Keifer Sutherland in a bar really drunk with his pants around his ankles. I knew that guy was talented, but I didn’t know he did a Bill Clinton impression.

Awwwwww
Last week President Bush gave the First Lady a Scottish terrier puppy for her birthday named Mrs. Beazley. The first lady says the puppy reminds her of President Bush, it’s cute, it can’t talk and it mistakenly thinks it has a mandate.

Update
It’s been reported that Michael Jackson has been forced to cut back his expense and now lives on $1 million dollars a month. In a related story, La Toya Jackson now lives in her van.

What about his tattoo artist?
Yesterday a federal judge halted a military trial against Osama Bin Laden’s driver, saying the military had no authority over him. However, Osama’s Palates instructor and herbalist are fair game.

Since you asked:
The big Comedy Night show is tonight, so wish me luck. If you still want to go, get there early (7:00 pm) and buy tickets. $20, Del Mar Hilton, 15575 Jimmy Durante Blvd.

I am fired up. Great comedians, good cause. Great crowd. Should be fun. Yours truly is the producer and host. (Sniff, stretch, teeth-suck, slow exhaled into chortle of pride and then satisfied groan) Nice cinco, there Lex.

This just in:
Fans lined up for many hours to buy the hot new video game “Halo 2.” When asked to comment, one 30-year-old male said; “I am so excited about Halo 2, it almost makes up the for the fact that I will never, ever, have sex with a real woman.”

We keeping it real real up in this here deal, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

He didn’t have those flappy things with stars on his shoulder
Attorney General John Ashcroft has resigned. President Bush accepted his resignation because he was shocked to discover Ashcroft wasn’t one of them real Army-type Generals.

Bad year
The 1-8 Miami Dolphins coach Dave Wannstadt resigned. The poor Dolphins. Their star Ricky Williams retired, they endured hurricanes, their coach has quit, and now, just when you think things couldn’t get worse for Miami, today Al Gore endorsed them.

Sounds familiar
The headline read: Fallujah insurgents choosing mobility to counter U.S. forces. Isn’t “choosing mobility” a French-term for a running retreat?

First they said Yassar Arafat was dead, then they said he was resting, now they say he is gravely ill. This guy has been lingering longer than Ralph Nader.

How bad is Arafat? As of now, doctors say his chances are about the same as Ralph Nader’s campaign.

ABC New reports that Yassar Arafat’s vital organs are still functioning. Here’s my question, aren’t pretty much all organs vital? Are there trivial organs? “Here, take a kidney, I only need one.”

The reports keep going back on forth on Yassar Arafat: is he dead? Is he alive? Is he dying? Is he OK? It’s sort of like Ben Affleck’s movie career.

Sad
Have you seen the videotape of Tara Reid’s flashing incident? The poor girl is standing there obliviously exposed with the cameras flashing wildly and you can just see her think: “Wow, I’m way more popular than I thought.”

That’s like the lonely little single guy at the bar that excitedly returns the wave of the hot girl only to discover the hot girl is actually waving at the guy behind him.

This just in:
After the election, there is debate over what dictates a mandate. Republicans think Bush has a mandate, democrats don’t think he has a mandate, and New Jersey Gov Jim McGreevy thinks a mandate is when the guy buys him dinner.

We feelin' it and healin' it right up in here, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Shocking
Did you hear about the latest embarrassing celebrity incident? Ashlee Simpson tried to flash her breast, but Tara Reid’s popped out instead.

Celebrities deeping us abreast
At P. Diddy’s birthday bash in New York, Tara Reid accidentally flashed her left breast to the crowd. Today, Tara Reid was invited to both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton’s birthday parties.

Forget P. Diddy’s “Vote or Die” vote campaign, Tara should have launched a vote campaign called “Flash and Dash.”

Upon hearing of this, Paris Hilton said she thought it was a cheesy, tawdry, pathetic way to get publicity and she is furious she didn’t think of it first.

And here I didn’t even know Tara Reid was related to Janet Jackson.

Who knew?
Boston First baseman Kevin Millar said the Red Sox took shots of Jack Daniels whisky before the playoffs and World Series games. And here I just thought it was the New York Yankee pitchers that got hammered.

Smrt
The Chicago Bears upset the New York Giants behind rookie quarterback Greg Krenzel. Krenzel’s major at Ohio State was Molecular genetics. That’s when I know somebody is smart, when they majored in something that I can’t spell.

Moving on up
Paris Hilton was recently seen dating tennis player Mark Phillapousis, formerly ranked 10th, is now down to 106th. But she was soon seen with Andy Roddick, who is ranked 2nd. Apparently Paris decided to raise the ranking of her skanking.

And here thought pro tennis players didn’t even like to share locker rooms.

So I guess, for tennis players, we have the French Open and now, the, well, open Paris.

Dispense the nonsense:

This was a piece I wrote for another feature that I adopted for you lucky A.L.B.B.

It is high time – and seriously, who really says high time anymore? – that we here at A.L.B.B. explore the historical and cultural progression of the word Dude. Or, as I like it call it: Dude Reviewed.

(Speaking of high time and such, there are words you can get away with using in print that make you look smart, but if you used them in real life, there is a fair chance, if you hang in rougher circles, you might get punched. Neither and nor spring to mind. High time is another example)

As any right-minded person with a scant knowledge of the west - and especially us viewers of HBO’s “Deadwood” - know, the word Dude’s use originated as a sarcastic insult to somebody who was overly fancy, too educated, overly dressed, urbane, rich and or downright snotty.

Dude’s rich cousin Dandy died a long time ago while Dude, for unknown reasons, continued. It probably continued because Dude is a fun word to say. Dude. Heh heh. See? Try it again. Dude. OK, fine, it’s not as fun as the word biscuit, but it is a fun word, regardless. Or, irregardless, as a wanna-be Dude might say.

Fast forward to Southern California beaches, circa mid 1970’s. The surfing scene had over-grown into something that was no longer just the “cool” 1950’s and 1960’s Zen-like love of the ocean, surfing, music and general soulful peaceful air that defined mellow surfers of the era.

By the seventies, a large sect of surfers had affected an intentionally anti-social, defiantly arrogant and stoned-out rebel persona, partly because of the crowds, partly to distinguish themselves from the older generation of Beach Boys/ California dream mellow surfers and partly due to the advent of better and more drugs. (This social phenomenon is well chronicled in the documentary “Dog Town and Z-Boys” narrated by Sean Penn, who factors into all of this later)

As with most forced trends, the really good surfers didn’t generally feel the need to lower themselves to this new stereotype, it was mostly the hacks and newcomers from inland Southern California, or “The Valley” that stamped, and were identified with, this faux bad-boy image.

This new surfer cult identified each other, for whatever reason, with the term Dude. Like most California surfer expressions, it probably arrived from Hawaii, like the similar pig-English term Brah, or Brauddah (sp?) Dude replaced the too corny terms, buddy and pal. (Part of the reason might also be because, when you are really stoned, the word Dude comes out whether you want it to or not)

For those of us who were then, thankfully, not a member of this odd California cult, the word Dude became a sly put down of these heroic under-achievers: drop outs who only lived to fix up their van, get stoned, surf, eat – or scarf, as they put it - at Del Taco, and live with their parents for the rest of their natural adult lives. The word Dude then, as it had been in the old west, once again became a sarcastic insult.

Most non-surfers only said Dude mockingly imitating how a stoned-out Bellflower, La Hambra, Long Beach or West Covina surfer would say it: Dewhuhuuude. The word Dude was well on its way to die a natural death as a goofy term associated with a narrow cultural stereotype.

Until the movie that launched a billion Dudes: “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

Writer Cameron Crowe and actor Sean Penn accidentally conspired to expose the rest of the country to Penn’s absolutely dead-on-balls accurate (Apologies to “My Cousin Vinny”) portrayal of this relatively new member of California society. That new society member was, and forever will be, personified in the form of one Jeff Spicoli, the consummate fried-out surf-dude:

“All I need is a cool buzz some tasty waves and I’m fine.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Crowe initially wanted to portray the stoned-out surf-dude realistically and simply as the joke-losers they were. But Sean Penn was so talented an actor, he colored his painting with a texture of sensitivity. And it was an accurate stroke of genius.

Although, granted, at first impression, most surfers were worthless morons, many surfers, after “being one with the ocean,” combined with their intense love of surfing – as well as the effect of constantly being high - actually did possess a peculiar and enviable air of feint mysticism and Penn caught that in his character. And the rest of the country ate it up.

My friends in Illinois didn’t like Sean Penn’s Spicoli at first because they didn’t believe he existed. (It was exactly like when my California friends didn’t understand the Cohen brothers amazingly dark and culturally accurate “Fargo”; they didn’t believe anyone in the Midwest really talked like that)

Once assured that stoned-surfer dudes existed, everyone outside of California became fascinated. Fascinated hell, they wanted to be Jeff Spicoli. But since being Spicoli was geographically, financially and socially impractical, they just adapted part of Spicoli: the word Dude.

And that, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers, is how we arrived at the overly intense saturation of the word Dude in modern society. Will the word Dude ever die out? It is unlikely, but it might. As John Elway expressed in his Hall of Fame induction speech, his daughters nag him because he is too old to say the word Dude. The word Dude will never be actually truly cool again thanks to how it was mocked by “The Dude” in another movie; “The Big Labowski” But, will it ever go away forever? Sadly, it’s not likely, Dude.

See that? It ain’t all about the grins and giggles up in this hear A.L.B.B. beyatch. Every now and again, we likes us to get us our thinking on.