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SPECIAL MID-DAY GORILLA RELATED BULLETIN!

The History Channel will be broadcasting a show tonight about a gigantic gorilla which lived millions of years ago in Asia somewhere. The gorilla is commonly known as Giganto. Which is awesome.

Set your DVR's, Leaguers.

Go here for more.

we now return you to your usual, non-gorilla related day.

Huh

Who is Nancy Grace, why is she crazy and why is she allowed to go on Headline News and rant like a pedantic maniac every night for an hour?

And did I just dream it yesterday, or was CNN.com running a story on some pastor in the SouthEast who was going to military funerals and protesting them? I swear I read a very complicated story on CNN.com about bikers going to military funerals to shield the families from these folks. The craziest part of the whole thing was that this minister believed that the reason the US was embroiled in the current conflict in Iraq (and possibly Afghanistan) was because the US "harbors" homosexuals, and God was punishing the U.S.

Today I couldn't find a trace of the story, which literally is making me wonder whether I dreamed the story last night. Am I nuts? Wasn't it there? There are items about Lindsay Lohan and shit in the headlines on CNN.com and I can't find THIS story? I distinctly remember making a note in my head that I wanted to blog on the topic, specifically that this pastor had not just made the statements, but somehow found a very active flock... and today... Wha-?

I swear I must have just made the whole story up in my crazy head.

Oh, wait, no, here it is...

God Bless America

the 2006 Mellies

God knows why, but for some reason this week RHPT and Jim D started asking me this week "Whatever happened to the Mellies?"

For those of you coming in late to the game, The League used to have lots of contests and stuff. I'd pose a question or group of questions, usually with a set of rules, and then I invited Loyal Leaguers to send in responses. We've had two or three Halloween contests, Holiday contests, one or two goes at The Mellies (a sort of all around awards) and a few other things.

I dunno. I guess at some point people quit sending in responses, so I sort of lost interest. In fact, ironically, I recall Randy pitching a fit when I asked why he hadn't participated in one of my last contests. And then my Halloween contest this year received exactly zero responses. So, anyway, that's that.

I do get comments, so I guess that's sort of made me feel that The League is plenty interactive. But even that's been a bit of a wild ride. Once you add a comments section to your blog, you really change the dynamic of the whole enterprise. There's a lot more give and take. Instant feedback lets you know what people are interested in (in my case, for some reason, everyone's always interested in my days as a high-school loser and my lack of success in various minimum wage jobs. Nobody cares about comics, that's why you don't see anymore about that here, despite the original intention of this site to be comics and pop-culture stuff).

Bottom line: Feedback makes you want to blog. When you get no comments for a while, you REALLY start to lose interest.

The biggest downside is having to police the comments section when people are feeling cranky or decide to pick a fight. I've lost some good Loyal Leaguers after tiffs in the comments section. Now, I can't say that the odd comment is what has driven their departure for sure, but, yes, a few people disappeared forever and ever once myself or someone else has disagreed with them in the the ol' comments. And that's sad, because The League is really intended to be a happy place.

I have also had the unpleasant task of occasionally removing a comment I felt was inappropriate, which I REALLY didn't want to ever have to do. I know it makes me a Nazi, but I also sometimes just don't want to deal with the headaches that I can guess are going to spiral out of the comment, not to mention private e-mails, blah blah blah. I'm always going to leave up political opinions, and I even left up one comment which gave away the ending of a movie four days into that movie's release. But if you're going to time something badly which may be hurtful to someone else, or that you've just gone a little bluer than I would normally do in front of, say, my mom, you might see the comment evaporate.

In general, I will alert the party whose comment has been taken down and then e-mail them privately as to why I took the comment down. It sucks, Leaguers. I'd love to let you all dig your own graves here, but I gotta maintain some stability.

Just FYI: There's also some folks who lurk around the League whom many of the more vocal Loyal Leaguers forget are there. My parents, my in-laws, my uncle, Jim D's mother... Lots of folks who may or may not want to hear some of the more choice stuff that might pop up on this blog if none of these people ever became aware of this site. But there it is, so we're on good behavior here.

So do I want to run the 2006 Mellies? Sure. Will I?

Well, you know Leaguers, there's a bit of work involved in all this. If I were going to do this, I'd like to know if anyone but RHPT and Jim D. were going to pop up with their responses.

So, that's your cue, team...

Bananaphone

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Video 2 - warning, may cause migraines

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Lyrics to Bananaphone

About Bananaphone

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Note that the bedding is only available for single beds. How sad.

Greetings from Oval LeagueMelbotiso

Another fine weekend, Leaguers. Not much to report.

We went to La Stalla here in Historic Downtown Chandler. I always like La Stalla. As much as I'm a fan of Primo's swingin' strip mall/ senior citizen hang-out atmosphere, La Stalla has a nice interior and the food is a little bit more, shall we say, upscale. That, and Evan the waiter (who we've now had twice) is one of those waiters who seems REALLY into his job. Like, when you say, "Maybe I'll have a glass of wine..." and Evan knows what you should have and will hear no argument. Sometimes I need that in order to quit guessing.

Here's a tip from the couple who is now doing their 10th Valentine's Day together: There's Valentine's Day, and then there's Valentine's Day Observed. Going out on actual Valentine's Day is for suckers who like to stand around for lengthy periods waiting for a table, and then get rushed through the meal so the next couple can sit down. Bleah.

We try to go before or after Valentine's Day, and just do the candy and whatnot on Real Valentine's Day.

Uh, what else... we've been trying to entertain Lucy and Melbotis a lot this weekend. And we bought a magazine called "Training your Labrador Retriever", which, if anyone has visited recently, will agree was a necessary purchase.

I'm still watching some Olympics. I like this Ice Dancing business. The women are much better looking than in normal couples' skate. Also, they're showing some speed skating which I'm enjoying with these shorter races. The speed skaters have the coolest looking legs, like they could kick over a Kia, if need be.

I like this dude who won the races last night, Shani Davis. He gave Melissa Stark the best interview, ever. "Shani, you're a black man who just won a medal. How does it feel to be a black man?" "Stick it in your ear, Melissa." Also, is it just me, or does the Chad Hedrick/ Shani Davis dispute seem completely blown out of proportion and/ or fabricated?

Hey, this Russian dame has on the best outfit ever. Well, huh... She's pretty good looking, anyway. He looks like a villain.

I have been summoned by the wife. Ya'll are on your own.

Cowgirl Funk is having the best week ever.


So longtime Loyal Leaguer Maxwell of Cowgirl Funk has had herself an interesting week. Go check out her blog to see her visit to the White House with the mighty UT Longhorns and Dubya himself.

Read here.

And to learn how this came to be, and to see Maxwell getting personal with the Presidential pets, read her hubby's blog here.