Today marks the end of July and there is plenty to be thankful for. It’s the end of NaBloPoMo, which I just couldn’t keep up with. Maybe if I’d just cut and pasted some thoughts on the page every day, but that would have been disingenuous. Tomorrow is my 36th birthday, which means I’ll probably grow up and write “appropriate” comment and hollow, cliched sentiment. Until then, however, here are some things that I’ll do at 36 that didn’t get done this past year.

1. Grow a ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons beard. It says I’m old, I’m gnarly and that I embraced my feminine side. And then I ate it.
2. I’ll stop believing, because (frankly) Journey can suck it.
3. I’ll never make another list in which the first two references are old, lame 80′s bands.
4. This is the year I’ll learn the piano. I’ll learn to stack books on it, prop things against it and one day play chopsticks on it.
5. Business opportunities will abound. For instance, those MSNBC hidden camera shows always feature good businesses. Sure, most of the unwitting subjects end up in jail, but you should see the cash that comes out of their mansions.
6. Tattoo. I’ll finally get my wedding band inked, because I accidentally threw out my real one. Three years ago.
7. I’ll finally stop telling my child that the Lord intended Sunday for football. She knows the truth by now anyway.
8. No more Beavis and Butthead impressions. 16 years of them has been enough. Huhhuhhuhhuh.
9. My F-bomb usage will decrease. Right. In one year? Not likely.
10. I’ll go outside and retrieve the dog before the neighbors call to complain.

Some lofty goals, but I’ve got 364 days. I’m working on the beard now.

I got a little weirded out at the mention of Amy Winehouse’s rumored demise. The world can’t afford to lose any more bee-hived, smacked-out, one hit wonders. So, thank you Amy for not being dead. You can do so much more as a living person. Of course, you’d sell more records as a formerly living star.

     A thank you goes to President Obama today for being a regular guy. Sort of. Thursday afternoon marks the increasingly weird photo op in which the wronged Professor Henry Louis Gates, Cambridge Police Officer James Crowley and the Presidnet share a beer at the White House. News stories have stated that the beer choice was agreed on by all three parties and that it would be Blue Moon. So much for regular guy. This is just Chicago lawyer crap. Come on, Mr. President. Serve some Old Style in the Oval Office. Pabst Friggin’ Blue Ribbon. Serve some High Life and have Wendell come take it back for serving the brew in tax payer funded digs. Olde English with the President. Now there’s a photo-op.

     Finally, thank you to Octo-Mom. Nadya Suleman is making parents everywhere look better just by continuing to vaguely parent. It’s not enough to just have 14 kids, but now you have to turn them into a cottage industry. The new Wheaties box featuring all the kids is going to be awesome. Then there’s the tell all book (“then the seventh baby stuck his head out. And…then the eighth baby pushed  seven’s slow self out of the way.”) Now, Ms. Suleman is even getting a television show. Yeah. I had a joyous experience feeding, changing and trying to get my one child to sleep. Watching 14 just sounds like too much excitement. Think I’ll watch baseball and fall asleep. Or maybe have a beer and toast the President.

I hate being serious, so I’m going to give up even the merest pretense of doing so. Serious, thoughtful, aware living is so frowny and dull. I don’t want to think about the things plaguing the world. There is not a reason to care about whether Sara Palin is off in the woods Twittering with the bears. The President can call any action he wants stupid and then send David Axlerod out to fix it the situation on Face The Nation. My serious thought days are behind me. What I really want to consider today is what would make a perfect Summer experience. I’ve already enjoyed the below average temperatures in Michigan and the so-so humidity. The movies have been okay. I even paid to see one. The new Sims (which is a lot like the one released five years ago. Note to EA Games: Please release an actual upgrade.) is taking lots of time as I have to download skins and objects for it. Still…the perfect Summer might have lots of other great, memorable times and events. Here are some that I can only wish for.

• 50 Foot Katherine Heigl. Science has given us so many advances. We can slow the onset of nasty diseases and build space stations that don’t do much of anything. Why then should Katherine Heigl make crappy romantic comedies with Gerard Butler? No! I want a movie wherein ginormous Izzy is assailed by Butler and 300 men of Sparta. Actually forget the movie, just find some nobel winning mind of science to make her 50 feet tall. All blond hair and Heigl-y goodness. Alrighty then.
• Outlaw waxed beans. The world doesn’t need them. Once they’re off the market, I fear, they’ll become the new cannabis. There will wax-bashes in secret locations all over the states. Americans will travel to Amsterdam to consume them in public. We’ll find an alternate version of Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta tells Samuel L. Jackson about how cool wax beans are in Europe.
• We’ll get a “just kidding” from Axl Rose and he’ll put out a Chinese Democracy that doesn’t suck.
• Cleveland will be found to be the center of enlightenment in all the universe.
• Not sure about Detroit. Probably have to smoke more waxed beans to figure Detroit out.
• No old television geezer will climb into a claw foot tub on a dock, beach, river side, lawn or bathroom for the purposes of artificially enabled lovemaking. Whats more, I quit making dorky jokes about Cialis.
• Bacon will be classified as a health food.
• Yao Ming will wed giant Katherine Heigl (alright, its on the brain. What can I say?).
• Brett Favre will really retire, the Lions will be assured of winning maybe one NFC North game. Nah. Pure fantasy.
• Ernie Harwell will live forever and go back to doing radio games.

Oh, well. It’s been a pretty strange summer so far. Anything could happen.

I promised myself I’d never again write one of these posts about an actress in a commercial. No more Progressive Flo (who is now starting to seem strangely hot), no more Ms. Machado from Rosetta Stone. Nope. I was going to write smart, tough, think pieces on world events. Let’s face it though, the commercials are the best part of television these days. You can only watch so many people run into giant foam pads and you’ll go crazy watching Michael Jackson biographies. The material between the shows is far more entertaining. This week alone, Scientology made me want to go meet women and the Orphan ad campaign told me that its okay to adopt effed up horror movie kids. Then there was the Palm Pre series of spots. These ads just boggle the mind. In them, actress Tamara Hope unleashes a stream of ethereal consciousness that makes…well, it doesn’t make anything. We see the vaguely dressed from the sloping shoulders up Tamara discussing something while standing on what might be a sit-and-spin. She’s demonstating the mapping application on the Pre and muttering “bing, bing, bing.” In another of the ads our heroine/heroin discusses a juggler with lots of balls and how her phone also helps with lots of balls. After watching these spots, I wasn’t exactly repulsed. My only thought was that the sexless folks at Palm decided to use a sexless woman to sell their soulless phone. They could have probably gotten the Old Navy Mannequins cheaper, but having a semi-living woman sell product is probably better than plastic people.

In the name of science and all things cultural, I decided to watch the ads as objectively as possible. After consuming a bottle of Malibu, I sat down and waited for the ubiquitous commercials to appear. Sure enough,  after a while, there was Tamara Hope, talking about “bing, bing, bing.” When drunk, the Pre woman makes sense. In fact lots of things do. The blog really does write itself after that. Heck, I don’t even care about the commercials at this point.

The birthers are, at best, an entertaining collective of citizens. I could take the normal road here and call them right-wing wackos, psycho wing nuts, conspiracy geeks. No, they’re American citizens, after all. Each and every one of them can produce a legitimate birth certificate. Right? It makes no difference. The Obama birth certificate faction is hanging on by their dirty nails to the theory that the 44th President of the United States was not born in the country that he leads and has no legitimate claim to the office which he holds. The people perpetuating this idea make Fox Mulder look like the most reasonable, non-obsessed character ever. Apparently the Live Certificate of Birth from Honolulu is a fraud (a viewer e-mailed Morning Joe on Tuesday and pointed out that a “Live Certificate” is not proof of birth or citizenship). They need more. The birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser dated 8/13/61 is a fraud, too, supposedly. So, here we are. Talking about the President’s birth origins during the longest recession since World War II. is weird. Lets just forget 9.7% national unemployment. What the President needs to be honest about is…where he was born. Seriously? Forget affordable health care for all Americans. Nooo, some of us want him to fess up to not being the rightful president. I’ve got some suggestions as to what he can do about the situation.

1. Resign-That ought to shut  the knuckleheads on the right up. He quits, everybody is happy. Oh, and the country plunges deeper into the crisis of confidence that already plagues it. Recession continues, country plunges headlong into the night.
2. Re-birth-President Obama crawls out of giant…um…womb….gooey, dripping re-birth for a nation. He could do it at the Staples Center, which is a popular cult celebrity venue these days.
3. Detroit Lions. He could take over starting quarterback job with the Lions and never be bothered by the media again.
4. Astronaut Training-The President could pilot a new lunar lander, thereby erasing two dopey conspiracies with one fell swoop. Just our luck, the moon will look like Arizona and John McCain will cry foul.

One last thing for this post and regarding this week’s peep-hole zeitgeist. Steve Johnson in today’s Chicago Tribune wrote about the hypocrisy of the Erin Andrews media circus, and after a couple of re-readings I started to see his point. None of us could look her in the eye at this point if we walked up to her on the street, because as guys, we’ve fed the Google circus. Somehow, in some weird way, I’ve learned something about myself. Yikes.

Sometimes questions crop up during the day and it’s easier if I hash them out publicly than trying to keep them in my mushy cranium. I’m not talking about the big universe questions, or even the ones I posted last week about Giada, Catherine Bach and Batman. No, it’s the specific questions for the marketing genius’ entrusted with selling me products and services. Someone on Unasked posted the possibility that I will see 7,212,400 ads during my lifetime (http://unasked.com). Most of these ads, I suspect, just make me want to go to Jimmy John’s for a sandwich. It doesn’t matter what the ad is for, I just go buy a sub. My current weight is 3,600 pounds. I am one of those people who ends up thinking about what I see on TV, so I end up having 7 million weird questions come to mind. Here are some of the ones bothering me today, addressed to the perpetrators themselves.

Dear Scientology.org: Let me get this straight. If I join your religious movement I’ll gain a lollipop, a feather tickling, a boat load of chocolate, the chance to jump off a cliff and the ability to run down the street (freakishly) like Tom Cruise? No kidding? Gosh, all I ever got from Christianity was salvation.

Dear Harry and Louise: If your universal health care covers Cialis and I can scrounge up two bathtubs and a mountain top, will you promise never to do another lobbying advertisement? I’ll call the junk yard right now.

Maxoderm Guy: Is it possible that you are the luckiest and also the dumbest man in existence?  You know darn well the twenty something woman you’re with doesn’t care if you use Mayonaisoderm, motor oil, or Orange Julius. Just keep that credit card where she can see it. If the lady gets the stuff in her eyes will she realize how old you actually are?

Miller High Life Truck Driver: What are you doing pushing that cart through the club? Must be a cheap club that serves High Life, anyway. You could be with the ladies, but your preaching about the High Life. People are looking up from their Ciroc going “did he just take the Miller? Why?” I’m over thinking this one. I guess I’m just biased because I grew up in a town where people threw their High Life bottles out the car window at me. Oooh, wait. They still do.

I keep reading media hits referring to the Erin Andrews video as being “infamous.” Wow, and after no more than a day or so. That has to be some kind of speed record for infamy rivalling that of Michael Richards’ racial slurs and Mel Gibson’s various mug shots. Even if the viral video hadn’t yet become” infamous” after such a short time, it certainly would have. The infamy will not have anything to do with the subject matter, that of the completely unaware ESPN sideline reporter  in her own private hotel room curling her hair while nude. Nor will the quality of the video, or anything about it’s production live to see historic remembrance. It’s the fact that for the first time, at least in my memory, a celebrity has been stalked and sold as an Internet commodity. This is scary on the scariest level. We have seen nearly a decade and a half of celebrities selling themselves out for cash with cheap home movies. Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, Vern Freaking Troyer have all had “leaked” Internet videos which went globally balistic and raised their b-list talent status to new lows. This is different. New and wrong headed world different. The Andrews video is a new sort of sickness perpetuated by the insatiable appetite for internet voyeur material. Some lunatic went beyond the staged instruction manual porn of celebrity rip-off movies and committed virtual rape for entertainment purposes.

I am not a terribly sensitive guy, but I will say about Erin Andrews that no woman deserves this kind of treatment. She has risen to the pinnacle of her profession by having to pace every sideline and locker room in sports trying to get the detailed story of each event. She’s had to put a microphone in the faces of belligerent coaches and over paid athletes for years for our entertainment. Apparently it wasn’t good enough. With the video, female sideline reporters have been set back decades. How is any woman supposed to take the field or court again knowing that they could be targeted because of their looks? How is any woman supposed to report news to a male audience knowing that if they don’t pose naked on the Internet some “fan” will take advantage of them. Sick shit. Lo and behold, I’m probably perpetuating the whole idea just by writing about it.

Aging in America ain’t pretty. I was cracking up the other night when Chelsea Handler re-told the news blurb about the woman who was refused service at White Castle, because she was trying to use the drive-up window from her Hover-Round motorized chair. The good folks at Death-On-A-Roll wouldn’t process her order and even though the company has apologized she won’t go back. When your too old to get off of the scooter and drag yourself to the counter to put in an order, your too old to go out for a meal. Just have some youngin’ wire a microwave to the battery on your mobility chair and ride dirty with some hot-pockets. Who am I kidding? In a week I’ll be 36 and in that’s just way too old. Pretty soon I’ll be at Ponderosa trying to score the early bird special at 4:00 p.m. so I can get home and watch NCIS. Here are today’s other signs that you have aged badly and it’s all downhill:

10.) You’re Cher and you’re still rocking the “If I Could Turn Back Time” outfit. 9.) If you thought the “If I Could Turn Back Time” outfit was hot the first time. 8.) You threw out the first pitch at the all-star game in Rustler husky jeans. 7.) You’ve spent more that five minutes trying to locate the Erin Andrews video torrent. 6.)Someone accidentally tags you as Phylis Diller 5.)You glanced at the latest cover of AARP monthly and thought Ritchie Cunningham was too young to be featured. 4.) You consume more than three servings of Activia a day (that’s some dagone good yogurt right there. I’m doing the Activia dance just thinking about it). 3.) You aren’t stoned but feel the need to drive through White Castle in scooter chair 2.)C-Street looks like a fun bunch of guys to hang out with 1.) You (okay-I) spent more than 20 minutes (20 seconds) writing this post. It’s all downhill. In my hover chair. Dressed like Cher. Onward and Upward.

Today wasn’t the day from Hell, but is was from somewhere South of managable. I managed to sit down for a minute and read our local paper late in the morning. Local is the key word. The Palladium is a luxury fish wrapper. The surprising thing about it was that there was nary a mention of the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On page two there was a small picture of astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and a catchy caption. That was it. Understandable, I guess. The moon was last walked upon in 1972, a generation ago. The world moved on and the moon continued to be a nostalgic notion and a conspiracy theorists dream. Que sera, sera. The fact is though, that Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were the height of human achievment. This country had vision not since seen. The president dedicated the country to landing a man on the moon and bringing him back and the goal was achieved in eight years. Thousands of work hours, dozens of lives lost,  but the national goal was achieved. Do yourself a favor. Lose yourself for a few weeks in the sixties and the heady wine of the space race. Start with Andrew Chaikin’s A Man on the Moonand then follow it with HBO’s From Earth to the Moon. Read the memoirs of the men who did the work, including John Glenn, A Memoir, Gene Krantz’ Failure is Not an Option and Lost Moon by Jim Lovell. Try books on Apollo 8, like Genesis by Robert Zimmerman, and see that Apollo 11 was the culmination of a lot of blood and sweat by the early flight crews. Good stuff.

Two last little things. Roe Conn, host of the WLS Chicago afternoon program had some fun on the Monday show with the notion that older folks should stay off Facebook. I couldn’t disagree more. Old folks still love to use “phone tree” to communicate. I hate the wholde thing where one calls out from the house phone with news or gossip and then enlists forty friends down the line to pass along the message via the phone tree. Soon everyone is tied up answering the old house phones. Please, let our parents and grandparents post one little message on Facebook and a picture of aunt matilda’s cat and be done with it.

The other thing was a get-well for the Beastie Boys Adam Yauch. The Beasties are one of the most influential bands of the last three decades and wouldn’t be so without him. Here’s hoping that MCA recovers fully and that the boys continue to challenge every popular music notion that seems set in stone.

As the father of a very pre-teenage daughter it falls to me to know all things Disney. This is a frightening new chapter of my life, but one I’m living through. Not as frightening as her driving a car or dating, but since none of that will happen until she’s forty, I have this part of her childhood to try and fathom. When I say Disney, you might envision talking cars and fruity mice. No such luck. This is the new disney-fied era. The smiley cartoons have been replaced by the Miley tunes and it’s all downhill from there.

The whole thing started innocently enough. That’s what I’ll tell the judge when my little girl burns down the house for the insurance money in order to buy more High School Musical stuff. HSM was where the spiral into commercial mayhem began for her. Musical started out as just a rinky-dink made for TV movie, one that was too good for Lifetime, but not quite ready for theaters. It was like one of those old NBC teen movie of the week specials where they dragged out Michael J. Fox, Tracy Gold and Todd Bridges and sort of cobbled a half baked movie around them. Except the darned thing was kind of addictive. Especailly if you are an impressionable girl. I’m not, but my daughter was caught. Soon, everything the fever addled child owned was emblazoned with the East High logo and the likeness of Zac Efron. She lives in a red and white sea of Wildcat Power. Or at least she did. Then along came the Jonas Brothers. Now Zac and Vanessa may as well trundle off to retirement villiage. Nick, Joe and Kevin have overtaken every merchandisable  part of our lives (and many that are not). Last week she and a friend started a contest to see who could marry Joe first. The thing is their music is sort of…okay. “Live To Party,” the theme from the eponymous sitcom the boys star in has been playing in my wife’s car for weeks, whether we’re in the vehicle, or not. The boys better watch out, though. Demi Lavato and Selena Gomez, Disney’s contract princess troupe, are starting to suck up some of my child’s dwindling swag dollars.

This being said, I will just say it’s good to be this child’s dad. She could be a little jerk, or some precocious, slimy glamour girl. Instead, my little one is a cultural savant. When she latches on to something, she invests passion and faith in it’s meager lifespan. She watches, memorizes and defends the legend and lore of each matinee idol that comes across the corporate landscape. I also see her becoming a thoughtful human being and not just a conspicuous consumer. The other day she professed her first faith in a much higher authority than Uncle Walt, so it’s all downhill for the teen crushlings. Well, a dad can dream.