Give a holla to a playa when you see him on the street, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Spooked
Since it is after Halloween, you know that Jenna Bush said the White House is haunted? In fact, the White House hasn’t heard this much moaning since Bill Clinton interviewed interns.

New meaning in tennis to blowing a lead
Martina Hingis has been accused of testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon. Hingis denies she used cocaine and then abruptly retired from tennis. I’m not so sure Hingis is innocent of using cocaine. Today she announced she is going to be Lindsay Lohan’s private tennis coach.

Going to their heads
Once Boston Red Sox fans were loyal and loveably humble. Now, after two World Series wins in four years, I hate to admit, a lot of BoSox fans are cocky and obnoxious, the only difference between a Red Sox fan and a Yankee fan is how they pronounce chowder. Red Sox fans call it Chahhwhdahh, Yankee fans call it Frickin’ Soup.

What?
The ATP fined Russian tennis player Nikolay Davydenko $2,000 for “not putting out his best effort.” To which the New York Jets asked; “They can do that?”

Oh goody
NFL fans are excited about this Sunday’s match up of undefeated teams, the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. The Patriots are so excited they can’t wait to see the secret spying video tape of the game.

NFL fans are excited about this Sunday’s match up of undefeated teams, the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. To give you an idea how serious the players are, Patriot QB Tom Brady is cutting down to impregnating one super model this week.

No wonder
Martina Hingis has been accused of testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon. This would explain that time Hingis won a three set match in ten minutes.

Since you asked:
Slash is on the talk show circuit promoting his autobiography “Slash.” Slash seems like a very thoughtful and a quiet, soft-spoken guy. But then I would be quiet spoken and thoughtful too if a famous porn star once dropped to her knees in a crowded hip Hollywood bar and performed her, um, occupation, on me, as once happened to Slash.

Among the many revelations, Slash said he had heart problems due to excessive drinking and he had to have a pacemaker installed and now he doesn’t drink. Wow do I suddenly feel old. Slash has a pacemaker? Slash doesn’t drink? Or more to the point, I drink more than Slash? Yikes. And how does a guy not drink, not smoke and not do drugs when he looks like a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and "The Adams Family" Cousin It? You would either have to change the look or start boozing again.

And how do you not party with a name like Slash? Guys who write books, don’t drink and have a pacemaker cannot be named Slash. He is going to have to change his name to Dexter Brumpkinheimer.

Get out, get out, get out wit’ yo’ bad self, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers


Let my Cameron go
San Diego Padres outfielder Mike Cameron faces a 25-game suspension for testing positive a banned substance a second time, this time amphetamines. Cameron only batted .242 and struck out a club record 160 times. Here’s my question: how crappy would he have been without the stimulants? The Padres should fine him for not taking enough stimulants.

This is the stupidest thing anyone named Cameron has done since one let Ferris Buehler take his dad’s fire engine red Ferrari 250 GT California for a spin.

All of these problems with a guy named Cameron lead to one question: What the hell happened to that hot young actress who played Sloan Peterson, Mia Sara? Her film career tested negative for stimulants.

Shocking turn of events
Viagra now has a warning label it can cause hearing loss. So now Viagra can cause blindness and hearing loss. Do you know what this means? Tom Cruise may actually have sex with Katie Holmes.

A 'tude on them calcetines rojos
Once the Boston Red Sox fans were plucky, loyal and loveable. Now, after two World Series wins in four years, BoSox fans are so cocky and obnoxious, the only difference between a Red Sox fan and a Yankee fan is how they pronounce chowder. Red Sox fans call it Chahhwhdahh, Yankee fans call it Frickin’ Soup.

Since you asked:
Great Halloween. First of all, we had one and our house wasn’t burned down and neither was anyone else's that we know well. (Of course we were thinnking about all the folks who did have their house burn) Second, AC and Virg dressed as Elisabeth Swann “Pirates of the Carribean.” I was sort of a Halloween Scrooge as I did not dress up.

But we had a fun pizza/beer/wine dinner down the street at the fun/cool parents house that they had all done up as a haunted house. Then they went trick or treating as I manned our house to hand out candy and watched “Young Frankenstein.”

Halloween ranks a solid fourth as the best holiday.

#1 is obviously Christmas or your equivalent. No need to go into all the reasons: it has it all, time off work and school, movies, songs, decorations, presents, cards, special foods, parties.

#2. Your birthday. This has huge advantages over Christmas as it is you day and you cannot screw up you day.

#3 Thanksgiving. This is big because you can’t screw it up by forgetting to get someone a card or present because there are no cards or presents. Just food and football and booze like the Pilgrims wanted it.

#4 Halloween. Halloween had a special importance to me as a closet creative person living in the Midwest, asI could go wild with my costume. No, I am not talking wearing a French upstairs maid outfit or dress up as Dorothy wild, but I put a lot of thought into my costumes. My mom shared this talent and I soon learned that putting time and effort into making your own costume was a lot more fun than going to the store to buy one.

And then, sadly, around seventh grade, when your main job is to try and be cool, and being cool is the one thing you aren’t any good at, Halloween is no longer cool. And it gets less cool the older you get as a teenager.

#5 Fourth of July. Come on now. Fireworks, barbeques, Norman Rockwell-like footraces in the Village Green of Winnetka that I almost always won as a kid. If you don't like the Fourth, go sign up for al Qaeda.

#6 St. Patricks Day

#7 All the other holidays, including other people's birthdays and anniversaries.

#22 Valentines Day. Someone once asked me "How can you be against a holiday that is about love?" Valentines Day is as much about love as St. Patricks Day is about Irish snakes. It is a scam, a marketing ploy, and a cheesy one at that.

Halloween underwent a serious revival for me when I transferred to UC Santa Banana. Suddenly Halloween was not only cool, it was a damn religious holiday. The party up and down La Playa in Isla Vista has to be seen to be believed. It was a glorious debacle. Many times I would be a lecherous pirate or, even better, a lecherous Groucho Marx. All the girls hoochied-up in their wonderfully slutty witch costumes, or hooker outfits or French upstairs maids outfits, and they couldn’t get enough of a grabby Groucho groping them as long as I did it in character with the voice and stooped cigar tapping strut.

And then I graduated and Halloween only lived on if I got invited to a good Halloween costume party, which I tried to do. But it seemed the Halloween magic was slowly evaporating for me. That is until I moved to New York City and witnessed an amazing thing: the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

Oh . . . my . . . word.

Yes, the Greenwich Village Parade is very gay, but it is also very wonderful. For all the guys in tutu’s tossing batons there are also wonderfully creative parade entrants from very creative advertising companies and such.

One of the most memorable sights was a straight line of twenty nuns wearing Groucho glasses-nose-mustache, lined up in single file in ascending height from a barely four feet tall midget in the front to seven feet tall giant at the back and every height in between in correct order. You had to see it, but it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Trick that Treat, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

Bean town boom
What a time for Boston area sports. The Red Sox swept the World Series, the New England Patriots are undefeated, the Boston College Eagles are ranked #2 in the country and rumor has it that the Boston Celtics have already bribed enough NBA refs to make it to the playoffs.

Not kidding around
The San Diego fires must be serious. Today Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie adopted San Diego Charger Ladanian Tomlinson.

Not cozy with Sarkozy
In a “Sixty Minutes interview, France President Nicolas Sarkozy called his press secretary an idiot and stormed out on CBS’s Leslie Stahl; Sarkozy got really short with Stahl, but then, at 5ft 5 inches, Sarkozy gets really short with everyone.

So mean
Did you know that the-wildly-popular-with-little-girls Disney character, Hanna Montana, is Miley Cyrus, daughter of singer Billy Ray Cyrus? Do you know what Billy Ray Cyrus has in common with the Colorado Rockies? They each had one hit.

Sounds about right
The hot ticket with young girls is the Disney Channel’s “Hanna Montana”, Miley Cyrus concert tour. I believe the tour is titled; “Behold. We Are Disney And We Will Not Stop Until We Have All of Your Money” tour.

We got one questionA former Harvard quarterback designed a football helmet with 18 air-filled, thermoplastic shock absorbers. Specialists say this could end concussions that result from a really hard tackle, to which the Miami Dolphins said; “What’s a really hard tackle?”


Since you asked:
There is this woman whom we know who is very sweet and a good friend of ours but she has absolutely no filter between her brain and her mouth. No inner monologue whatsoever, what she thinks comes out. By the time she dials the phone and you pick it up, her mind has completely wandered and this is what she says every single time she calls:

“Oh, hi, Alex? I is that you? Ha ha ha, I got so busy on the computer I forgot who I was calling. Imagine that? Oh my. That is so funny. Now, why did I call? Oh, yes, is
Virginia there?”

It’s like talking to Dora from “Finding Nemo.”

Once I had to work with this woman on a project who thought out loud when she was working and you had to sit there and listen to her brain function which was like chewing on tin foil. She would call and have twenty minute phone calls reading boilerplate form after form – all the while billing me for her time – that, more times than not, ended with her saying,

“Oh, wait, it says here your signature is not required. Never mind.” Click.

Bless her sweet heart, my wife calls a few times a day and she always acts like I called her. First, she acts surprised that it’s me answering- even though she knows I am in my office by the phone - and then she waits for me to say something, as if I was the one who initiated the call.

If you ever are wondering if I am on the phone with my wife, if I am making the universal sign for wrap it up, fore finger extended in a circular motion, then I am on the phone with Virg.

Maybe I need to be more patient. And maybe she has to make more concise calls.

As I have said, men like talking on the phone as much as women do, but we like to do it like we are on the huge backpack phone in a battle. Confirm their identity, confirm your identity, state the reason for the call, hang up.

“HQ? Lex. We’re under sniper fire. We need air cover at such-and-such coordinates. Out.”

Here is my sweet, lovely wife calling from the battlefield for air cover:

“Oh, heeeeey, hiiiiiiiii, it’s youuuuuuuu. How is it going? Really? That’s nice. What have you been up to lately? Oh, gooooooooood. Well, we’ve been fine, pretty much up to the same thing. Ann Caroline is getting so grown up. And how are your kids? How old are they now? Wow, really? They do, you’re absolutely right, they do grow up so fast.”

“Huh? Oh, the reason I called? Well, I was just wondering. I don’t know if you know, but we are in a rather fierce firefight with the bad guys – we call them the bad guys, they probably call us the bad guys, there are two sides to every story – but now they are being a real pest and using a, oh, what’s that guy called who has the scopy thing on his gun, oh, yeah, a sniper, so, if you’re not too busy, we don’t want to bother you, but, if you could send air cover . . . oh, you know what, since I called everyone’s been shot, so I guess we don’t need it anymore. OK, say hi to everyone for me. We have to plan to get together soon. Oh, you have to go? OK, bye.”

It would be downright mean-spirited to say that, by the time Virg says goodbye, the other end wishes they were under sniper fire, so I will not say that.

But . . .