100 Riffs (A Brief History of Rock N' Roll)

After folding in 1987, the United States Football League is going to re-open in 2013. "That is a great idea," said Sony, the makers of the cassette-playing Walkman.

This right here our little cuddle bunny, Mister Wrigley T. 

At the Track and Field Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, Mark Block, a man banned from track for 10 years for peddling steroids, was seen leaving the Nike VIP tent. That’s not surprising, Nike has condoned steroid use. In the ‘90’s they launched a shoe called the Air Tiny Nuts. 

(Thank you, John Snake)  

Did everyone have a good Fourth of July? Texas Gov. Rick Perry didn't. He forgot to mark the date down on his calendar.  

A new study claims that sex and lust can turn into love. See that, Barbara Walters, we can make this crazy thing of ours work.


Since you asked, Nike version: 
The one thing you have to keep in mind when you hear these countless idiotic and immoral atrocities occurring at Nike, is that Nike is built in the image of its egomaniac, moronic, immoral, a-hole, evil and downright stupid co-founder, Phil Knight.

Phil Knight looks like the devil if the devil was mentally challenged. Michael Jordan himself – who practically saved Nike singlehandedly – despised the guy. Everybody did.

Besides being at the right place at the right time with the only running shoe in the US at the start of the running boom, Phil Knight hasn’t done anything right since. He hated the name Nike, he hated the swoosh logo. Knight fought against the idea of product marketing Nikes in movies. In the Seventies, Nike came within an inch of losing their loan at Bank of America and going out of business at their start because Knight bounced payroll checks.

Their shoe manufacturer CEO in Japan had to fly over with a check in his hand, like the rich daddy coming to bail out the bratty kid, to save their sorry asses. Phil Knight has almost run that company into the ground ten times. He just keeps falling down in poop and coming up smelling like roses.

At one point in the Eighties, Nike appointed someone on their board to not only not do what Phil Knight proposed, but to do the exact opposite. Whenever they executed the exact opposite of what Phil Knight wanted, it resulted in an explosion of money and good public relations.

Yes, I know from experience the Nike Beaverton campus is chocked full of greedy, egomaniacs, hypocrite ass-munchers, but somebody is doing something right if they have survived so well with an inept dork like that utter tool, Phil Knight, on the board.

Nike, now it is $250,000 to shut me up. This is too much fun. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I think how this works is I am protected under freedom of speech from any legal action by Nike. If I falsely accuse them of something, like  privately sponsoring Casey Anthony, then maybe they have a case. But everything I have said is true or opinion.

But once they pay me $250,000 hush money, then we have a contract and if I say something  outside of the non-disclosure agreement, that is actionable.  


Your move, Nike. 

This sounds like a joke, and it mostly is, but I know that the cult paranoia at Nike is so off the charts that somebody has put this blog on their radar. The same offer goes to Tiger Woods and Paris Hilton, but they are too cheap and self-absorbed to see it. And it is very small. 


But the threat of going viral is always there.

Not that Nike isn't self-absorbed, they are, but they are also obsessed about their image. They have a five story building full of attorneys out to find anyone or anything saying something negative about Nike. 




 

We live in a country where a corporation is allowed to exploit child laborers while sponsoring known sex offenders, promotes and produces products they know inner-city youths will kill each other for while their co-founder publicly supports a football coach who covered for a serial child rapist.

Happy Fourth of July, Nike.

My history is a little ragged. Is today the anniversary of the day we liberated all the dentists from England?

Can someone get me the Las Vegas odds on whether Tom Cruise will marry Kelly Preston?

Wrigley Telluride Kaseberg, the First and Last



Here is a list of things you may or may not know about my dear departed Mister Wrigley:

 

To me I swear he smelled like a big, furry cinnamon oatmeal cookie. 

Not once, not twice, but three times, when he was a puppy, on separate occasions, he made one or more pretty twenty-something women burst into tears at how cute he was. All four or five or six women cupped their mouths and proclaimed in amazement;
 

 “Oh my god, he is so cute he made me cry.”



After being diagnosed with severe hip dysplasia at age one, Wrigley went on to chase and catch at least one rabbit and one bird. And, when he wanted to, he was an amazing fetcher. Until a couple of years ago, he could jump up on the four-feet-high recycle bins. Until a few months ago he could go on a three mile walk.



When Wrigley was a puppy, I took him to the Torrey Pines dog park and he started playing with an almost identical white yellow lab puppy. When I pointed this resemblance out to his pompous, pipe-smoking dick-bag owner, who claimed to be a horse breeder, the ass-bag literally laughed in my face and scoffed;



“Don’t be silly. His sire (dad) is a champion named Tucker from Broyhill.”



When I got home and looked at Wrigley’s  breeding papers, guess who his daddy was? Tucker from mother effin’ Broyhill.



The next time, when I pointed this out to Sir Pipe-smoker Dick-bag the fourth, he actually said;



“Why, now that you mention it, of course you can see the resemblance.”

 

The moral? Douche bags will always be douche bags. And Wrigley was royalty.

   

A month later, Sir Pipe-smoker Dick-bag the fourth told me Tucker from Broyhill would be at the Del Mar dog show, so I took Wrigley to see his dad. From this experience I learned two things: one, Wrigley and his Dad did not care about each other at all, and, two, dog show people are ten times crazier and creepier than in the movie “Best in Show.” One woman screamed at the top of her lungs at me when I went to pet her dog;

 

“Are you insane? I just had him groomed you a-hole.”

  

Wrigley loved to ride in the car even though it made him visibly nervous.


Wrigley was a very funny dog. Kasey, bless her heart, was sweet, kind and lovable as she could be, but she was a serious dog. Not funny. Wrigley was hilarious. You could see it in his eyes. Virg has had dogs her entire life and loved them to death. But she swears Wrigley was the funniest dog she ever saw. By a large margin. 



Almost once every year at Christmas,  Wrigley would walk over and, as pretty as you please, pee on the Christmas tree. The first time was when Ann Caroline was four and we heard her yell from the living room;

 


 “No Wig-ah-wee, nooooooo.”

  

Wrigley was amazing on the leash. Always on the left and never pulling.

He was amazingly bad to other dogs when on the leash after a lifetime of protecting Kasey. Wrigley would snarl and snap at other dogs.



  In his entire life Wrigley never once growled at a person. You could take a bone away from him or his food and he would wag his tail.

  

Wrigley honestly thought he could talk to us. You know how kids pretend to talk Chinese and think they actually can? That is what happened with Wrigley. He would imitate our sounds, rarr, err, woorr, orrr, aahhr, and expect a response. Of course we played along and gave him a response, like “Is that right? You don’t say. Oh my goodness. I had no idea.” He would genuinely look pleased at how we were having a nice conversation.

 

  Wrigley could tell time. At exactly 2:00 pm he wanted a snack and a nap and at 6:30, he wanted to be fed dinner. (Still working on that being-able-to-tell-time-thing with Virg and Ann Caroline)


Wrigley was razor sharp at detecting our moods. He hated it if someone was angry and he would slink away. But he was never able to figure out that a wagging tail would knock over a glass of wine on a coffee table. 

  

Wrigley could scarf down three cups of dry dog food with water in 30 seconds or less.

Wrigley ate anything and everything. In his poop we found every coin, and most sizes of batteries. He once ate – and pooped out – an entire beach towel. Chew toys - that had on the package they would last for weeks – were gone in one minute.

  

Wrigley ate our entire wooden deck. This is not a joke. This is not an exaggeration. He ate our entire wooden deck. Or most of it until we had what was left torn up. At the end, if you saw all the damage done to the deck and we had told you it was done by, not one, but two velociraptors, you’d say;
 
“Yeah, that looks about right.”

Wrigley ate Kasey's poop. When I discovered this my first thought was: oh, no, that dog licks my face. My second thought was to call our vet for a cure, forgetting that, at that time, our vet's only goal was to take our money. The women at the vet said in a bad Valley Girl voice;

"We have this product called Forbid. You place it on the feces and it makes the feces undesirable to eat."

"How much is it?" I asked.

"Fifty dollars a tube" she said.

"Let me get this straight, " I said in angry amazement, "you want me to pay $50 to make sh*t taste worse than it already does?" 

Wrigley ate poop, but even he wouldn't eat the peanut butter Virg got from the organic, locally grown, sustainable, natural, non-fat, all vegetarian store. 

One day Wrigley got caught in a bad hail storm. It scared him so much, he would not go outside if it was even slightly overcast.


Near the end, Wrigley took to enjoying eating off of a spoon with us feeding it to him.


Wrigley not only was a bottomless pit of chewing, he was also a bottomless pit of affection; at times during the evening he would insist that you pet him by sticking his snout under your hand. After you rubbed his ears and neck for a while - with him happily grunting and purring the whole time - he would slowly walk forward for you to scratch his butt. He was one butt-scratching loving dog. Wrigley, not us, decided when we were done petting him. This happened at least three times a night.


Wrigley did not get much affection. Just when he woke up in the morning and when he was put to bed at night. And about thirty or forty more times in between. 



  Wrigley loved chewing his bones – and anything else for that matter – so much his front lower teeth were down to the nubs.



When you woke Wrigley up in the morning he was usually on his back and snoring like a drunken sailor. When he went to bed at night, he flopped down and grunted like an old man. Both always made me laugh. So, basically, every day of Wrigley’s life he made me laugh when I first saw him and when I put him to bed.



And only about twenty times in between. 

Wrigley was a shameless momma’s boy. He worshiped Virg and followed her around as she puttered around the house with a sweet look of blind love on his puppy face. It was adorable. It was mutual.


If we were upstairs, Wrigley would sneak up and lie on the couch. When he heard us coming down the stairs, he would slink off with the guiltiest look you have ever seen on a dog's face. His head would actually hang down in shame. 



A couple of years ago, Wrigley slipped and fell on the stairs. He was not hurt, but it scared him so much he never went upstairs again.



Finally, Wrigley’s body decided it could not live a full year without his beloved Kasey and it gave up on him within a few weeks to the year of when Kasey was put to sleep. Just like with old couples. 

They say Wrigley died of cancer. We know he died of a broken heart.

On his last two nights, Wrigley, Virg and Ann Caroline had a slumber party in the family room. He loved it. They loved it.


Wrigley was put to sleep on the exact same spot as Kasey. In the same beautiful late afternoon sun ray in the family room. 



We will love and miss Kasey and Wrigley every day for the rest of our lives. We don't feel like it now, but we were so very lucky. You could not have asked for two better dogs.

Study claims spanking a child can result in psychological problems like multiple personality disorder. But I was spanked as a child and nothing happened to me nor to me.

Anyone know the official Las Vegas odds on Tom Cruise marrying Kelly Preston? 

See now, I don't agree with that Canadian study that claims spanking a child can cause mental disorders. I was spanked as a child and I came out fine and so did the ten voices in my head.

Here is all you need to know about our good boy, Wrigley: as sick as he was, he got up and warmly greeted the Veterinarian who came to our house to put him to sleep.

That's all I have to say about that.

You know how your mom said if you make a funny face it will stick? Well, I've been crying so much, I am afraid I will get permanent Robert DeNiro face.

Citizen Cope - Sideways Music Video

The blues ain't nothing but a good man feeling bad.

This our big boy, Wrigley

Rest in peace, Wrigley. Kasey, be patient with Wrigley, I know he can pester you, but he loved and missed you so much he couldn't wait a year to be with you. We will love and miss you everyday, Wrigley Telluride Kaseberg. They say he died of cancer, but we know he died of a broken heart. 

This is our big boy, Wrigley.