Back from Orlando with thunks on Survivor, Football & a whole lot of what not....

So I spent 4 days last week in Orlando inside a convention center at an industry conference that was only slightly less painful than being boiled in oil & eaten alive by starving cannibals. At least I flew first class there & back.

My hotel was under construction when I got there so that meant no free appetizers, breakfast or snacks on the executive level. I would have been better off at a DewDrop Inn or a Motel Sixty Nine. I am getting so spoiled.

Anybody watch any football yesterday ? I am wearing my Memphis Musician tie today because I have some friends up in the beantown area who are singing the blues today. Guess that walking talking touchdown tossing Ken doll couldn’t beat the extra from Next of Kin and the rest of his motley crew in the seriously ugly brown & mustard uniforms. I did dig on some of the players twisting their vertical striped socks so they looked like barber poles. I liked the scoreboard at the end of the game better. If the sun were actually out today, it would be orange with blue streaks.

Finally watched Survivor this weekend and stop the presses, the idiots at FOA FOA finally won a challenge. Natalie, the blow up Barbie doll, who had yet to say more than one coherent sentence in the past episodes actually stepped up, talked & delivered. Russell may think he has that tribe under his thumb but I have a feeling that Jaison may be the start of an undercurrent of rebellion. Without his redneck minion from the other side of Hell, the outlaw hillbilly, Russell may find the going a bit trickier even for the holder of an immunity idol.

Over at Club GALU, Sister Detroit was actually making herself out to be even more of an outcast and even more disposable for the yoga crew than Shambo & her magnificent mulletness. I think the only thing that actually saved Shambo this week, beside the fact that she is a graduate of the Dr. Doolittle Correspondence Course in Conversational Chicken, was the fact that Club Monica & her itsy bitsy purple polka dot bikini was so pathetic in the challenge that her yoga crew had to save her from being targeted by Captain Dreadlock for elimination. And props go to Eric for finding the other immunity idol by using her royal mulletness’s hidden clues against her.

And don’t think we haven’t seen the last of that vagabond chicken either. I am willing to bet that it shows up in a few weeks when Russell sacrifices a goat or something….

(but seriously, nobody cares what I think – you should all just click now on the link to your left for the Bitchy Survivor Blog by ColetteLala – she slays & flays)

It has been my experience that most double standards are a one way street & I am heading the wrong direction.

I missed Top Chef this week but finally got it recorded last night so nobody tell me who was told to pack their knives. Of course that assumes that anyone is actually reading my blogs and we know that no one is because kharma is a bitch that way.

Protesters in the street outside my building ? Really ? Why ? Did they actually find out that I was back at work today? I may have to send someone down to find out. It is Columbus Day but that shouldn’t have anything to do with it. I think.

The Yankees beat the Twins and the Angels swept the Sawx. This is the best case scenario for us yankee haters in that the Angels have had their number this year with the exception of the final series in California. And by the way, they are still the CALIFORNIA Angels to me, none of this Anaheim Angels crap.

I love cooking in the crackpot on lazy Sundays. Threw in some pork shoulder with red & green peppers, carrots, butternut squash, sweet & white potatoes, apples, apple cider, some bbq sauce and some woostershistershiresauce. Dang tasty over some yellow rice. Guaranteed the wife & kids won’t leave an leftovers for me.

Dancing with the Wannabe & Never Were Stars is on tonight and I have read that the ratings are off dramatically. It is either because they have a mix of real nobody cares celebs or that Julianne Hough left the show. My $$$ is on the latter.

I had to scrape frost off my windshield this morning, guess that means that those final 10 habaneros I picked on Saturday were the final 10 habaneros I am going to get to pick this year. My garden was pretty much a disaster but I am just going to blame George W. Bush for it all anyway. It seems to be in vogue again.

I know I am few days late on this one but you can check my twitter feed if you want from Friday for verification but I did say that the Nobel Peace Prize did seem to me like it was a consolation prize or one of those pathetic little league participant trophies for losing out on the Olympics. I still can’t believe that the Power of 3 that was Barack, Michelle & Oprah couldn’t bring the games home to Chicago.

The weather is cooling and the boots are chilling but I do not have a boot fetish…

I really love watching Amanda from CHOPPED struggle on the Next Iron Chef – every time someone criticizes her she looks like she is constipated….

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving !!! (think they know they are celebrating 6 weeks early ?

This past Saturday was my fake ID birthday from high school. It says I turned 48.

And a week from today my sobriety will finally be old enough to legally drink.

I had 25 voicemail messages on my phone when I came in this morning. I really wish I had a delete ALL button.

A reporter from Channel 5 asked me if I thought the tickets at yankee stadium were overpriced. I told her you couldn’t pay me enough to go to a game. I don’t think I will be on the 10pm news.

It’s 3pm and there isn’t a realistic chance in hell of me actually doing anything productive in the next 2 hours. I already cleared out all the emails from last week and reassigned any real work I might have had. Now I am trying to figure out what to watch/listen to on Hulu before it is time to leave.

And on that thought, it is perhaps best to say that’s the view from Behind the Shades…..until I am bored again and you are looking to kill some more brain cells…..swampy abides

Monday Missives On What I Forgot Over The Weekend

Maybe it's just me but it would seem to me that FaceSpace, Twitless and the others of their ilk seem to be devolving into Anti-Social Networks.

I think it wouldn't be a bad thing to have Neil Patrick Harris as your personal emcee for your everyday life.

As I walked the recycling to the curb around sundown I noticed hundreds of dragonflies darting & swooping in the front yard. When I turned back to face the sun, I saw the clouds of gnats swirling in the air. The dragonflies were diving through them like sharks through a ball of baitfish.

I did battle with the overgrown thorn bushes encroaching on my new forsythias and based on the scratches on my arms & legs, it was a pyrrhic victory at best.

Today is The International Day of Peace. I am already going to have a hard time observing it and I haven't even gotten off the train yet.

And I swear I am going to punch the next person who hip thrusts the ID scanner when my hand is there.

I am wearing my compass tie today because there are more than a few people out there who need some direction.

I consider myself a TV watcher but I when they got to the movie & mini-series section of the Emmys last night, I was completely lost.

Speaking of LOST, Ben wins an Emmy. Or did he ? We won't know for sure until we see the outcome of Juliet whacking Jughead with a rock.

The judges on "Chopped" really, really bug me with their self importance & smugness. Come on already, you just asked people to create a dish with crap that was scrounged from the back of a forgotten cupboard or that you can't find in Whole Foods without a sherpa. Get over yourselves already.

When you see a cop badly out breath in Au Bon Pain and all they have done is walk in from their car parked illegally at the curb, you can't feel safe. Can you ?

Russell on the new season of Survivor is a psychopath. Mark Burnett is probably already scheduling another Survivor All Stars so he can bring him back again. I still say I could win but I also still say that mortgages don't pay themselves.

CBS Monday is almost a slam dunk except for the 10pm hour - I am hooked on Castle mainly because I am a wannabe mystery writer who is still struggling to complete his first novel. I also got turned off last year by Callie & Delko but I can forgive & forget once Delko is dead. I do hope we get more Eva LaRue this year. Either way, one of those 2 shows gets watched online tomorrow here at work....during my lunch hour of course.....

Speaking of watching TV online - thanks to really bad summer tv and limited channels in some of the flophouse I stay in while traveling, I have discovered Kitchen Confidential on HULU. It was a 2005 sitcom set in a fictitious NYC restaurant based on Anthony Bourdain and starring Bradley Cooper. It never saw more than 4 episodes get aired but all 13 that were filmed are available online. I bet Bradley Cooper is hoping that people don't find it even though it isn't exactly half bad. Of course it isn't exactly half good but it beats watching repeats of "The Colony" on Discovery.

And since we are talking about cooking, I made some of my killer easy applesauce last night to go with the fresh bread machine 9 grain bread and the Ham Shank with a pineapple honey mustard glaze that I had going. Too bad I had to take the middle swamprat to a church dinner for overcooked egg noodles and bland chicken noodle soup. We were really there to nourish our soul and not our bodies. I spent most of my time dodging the lightning bolts. The new pastor said he looked forward to getting to know our family but I know he really meant that he looked forward to getting to know my signature in the lower right corner of those green rectangular pieces of paper I keep on my desk.

No sooner do I make fun of Florida State than they go out and kill the # 7 ranked team. Of course having BYU & Utah both lose will help make Boise State's road to a BCS Wildcard Berth that much smoother. I hope.

Speaking of Broncos, my Denver Donkeys are 2-0 and headed for Oakland. I won't get my hopes or expectations up but I am suddenly feeling pretty good about that 16-0 prediction.

And isn't always nice to see the Patricheats lose ? J-E-T-S jetsjetsjets fans are living large today.

Nice to see Brandon Dubinsky is finally signed. Now drop the puck, we have trains to catch.

I definitely write more when I sitting at my desk than I do when writing on my blackberry on the train. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing but since I have virtually no readers and fewer comments, I think the point is moot.

Now I remember why I never wear these shoes. They squeak when I walk.

And I knew the FREE special edition of the NY POST, that journalistic bastion of truth, justice and all the news that is unfit to print was a fake because the kid who handed it to me knew how to speak English.

And that's the view for today from Behind The Shades....swampy abides

A quick blog before sundown

Well here it is. Another Friday afternoon and I have absolutely no desire to work. It’s also been so long since I have blogged that I seem to be out of practice and don’t have any lever ideas or ways to get started. I do know that at sundown Rusha Homa begins so the Big Apple is going to empty like rats off a sinking ship and my train is going to be packed so that should help to put me into a real peachy keen mood….

Speaking of peaches, I made an outstanding peach & blueberry cobbler a few weeks back and I posted a picture on Twitter but don’t ask me to do that here because quite honestly I don’t know how and I am too damn lazy to learn….

Since we are on the topic of food, I tried something called a Tennessee Tailpipe at Fat Annie’s Truck Stop the other day that will definitely be recreated on SuperDuperBowl Sunday. It was basically a deep fried pulled pork egg roll drizzled with a cheddar cheese sauce. Plan on my adding some chipotle somewhere into that mix…

Been traveling WAY too much recently. I am already Gold Elite for next year and Platinum Elite is within my grasp. Too bad a great number of my flights are on TurboProp planes so First Class means landing safely and not a bowl of warm brazil nuts & a hot fudge sundae. But speaking of flying, a comedian by the name of Jim Norton was on the new Jay Leno Show, which really is nothing more than the old Jay Leno Show which I never watched, and he did a routine about air travel that frankly I found to be neither new or original. But then again, that also a good way to describe my blogs as I haven’t written anything new & original in the 5+ years that I have been serially killing the brain cells of those unfortunate few that have actually read what I wrote.

Speaking of cereal, I read in my local paper that the kid that posed as Pimp to bust ACORN actually got his undercover video career started when he went to the food services department at his college posing as an irish student to protest the school serving Lucky Charms since they stereotyped irish people. I wonder if Mike Wallace started the same way ?

Speaking of the Irish, isn’t it fun watching Notre Dame lose football games at the last minute ? Isn’t it even more fun being a fan of a team that wins in the last minute like the Patricheats did against the Buffalo Jills or even better, like my Donkeys did against the Bungles with the “Immaculate Deflection” ? Major kudos to Brandon Stokley for running along the goal line and burning off even more time. And since we are talking about football programs that basically stink, let’s not forget Florida State. They haven’t been relevant since Jen Sterger was a B cup and they are going to get blown out by BYU this weekend too.

Speaking of getting blown, I had the misfortune of stepping out onto my hotel balcony in Myrtle Beach this week to enjoy the view only to be distracted by the site of 2 old people going at it hot & heavy with the lights on in the building across the way. I guess those little blue pills must actually work because 11 minutes later when I finally got all of the bleach out of my eyes, I glanced over again and they were still going at it. I called housekeeping and had them send up more bleach.

And finally, as I was driving to the airport (no – they weren’t still doing it) I passed “WICKED STICK – a John Daly Signature Golf Course”. My first thought was stripper poles for flagsticks, Hooters girls working the beer cart and you get to quit after 16 holes…..

And with that, I should probably quit too…..that’s the view for now from Behind The Shades…..swampy abides…..