Randy is struggling to find a theme to his blog of late, but I think it's abundantly clear that the theme of Randy's blog is his own insecurities about blogging.

So it's my recommendation that Randy just accept that the official theme of his blog is self-destruction on a blogoscopic level.

At any rate, I find it interesting that Randy is fairly certain getting married and finding stability in his life will lead to the demise of his blog (and Jim echoed this same sentiment). Having been married long enough, and cohabitated with before that, I have ONLY the context of being married, etc... fresh in my mind. Indeed, The League more or less represents the lack-of-adventures of Jamie and R. Steans.

One wonders what Dedman and Randy foresee marriage doing to them. Because for me, it's like living with somebody, only you can make them do most of the work on your taxes.

Hey, Kids!

If one allows their eyes to drift down the left hand side of the blog here, one will see links to other people's blogs. I have linked to a handful of them now. My newest addition is a fellow named Daniel Loyd who is apparently a former Longhorn out in LA. Well, really, he's Jim's old roommate from college. But Daniel has been kind enough to link to The LEague, completely without any pleadings from me, so we're tossing back the favor.

Take a look and see what he's up to and get some appreciation for the hard work which goes into video and film production. All that stuff you watch for free comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is this Loyd guy. So show some respect, you miscreants.

So, admittedly, I flipped out today.

I had planned to take the day off from work as my employing university is currently enjoying Spring Break. So, Monday I sat and stared at my hands all day, cleaned my desk and desk area, ate some lunch, blogged some and kind of spaced out.

By 4:00 I didn;t think I'd be coming into work, so I kept saying "Shhheeeeeyooot, I do not think I'm coming in tomorrow."

See, I have a school project to do which I haven't done either jack or shit on, and I really need to get rolling. So I was to stay home today and work on it, and maybe run out and do some stuff I can't usually do when Jamie tags along. I had a full day of nuthin' planned.

At 7:00-something, Jamie, ignorant of my plan, shook me and asked if I was going to work. "Nope!" I barked and fell back asleep. A moment later she shook me again.
"I'm going to drive myself to the ER."
roughly translated that means: Hey, chubby, I'm about to spew chunks from my migraine. Get your lazy ass out of bed and get me to the ER.

Jamie's medical history, in brief:

1992: bops head on ice while skating
1992: diagnosed with FSGS, a nasty kidney disease
1993: has jaw surgery, changes identities
1993: begins college, sleeps most of time, avoids drunken League at party as he tries to pick up future Mrs. League
1994: kidney transplant
1995: League bags future Mrs. League
1996: first trip to hospital with Jamie. Much confusion. Delighted to discover chairs fold out into beds. With free food from hospital, League doesn't get up for two days.
1997: Jamie in hospital repeatedly, goofy Christmas in San Antonio, Plasma pheseris is weird and reminds League of reel to reel player
1998: cohabitation, Jamie sick with alarming frequency from migraines
1999: Jamie being sick old hat for League.
1999: DIALYSIS. Jamie gets up at 4:30 am to go. Must never drink too much soda. Perplexes League.
1999: Heart attack? When the hell did she have a heart attack? Weird...
2000: Wedding. Spend good deal of time of honeymoon reading National Geographic in waiting room of Dialysis clinic in Orlando. Jamie is trooper and allows multiple rides on Space Mountain.
2001: New kidney for Jamie. Transplant is exciting. Forced three weeks off work. Get opportunity to read all of Kavalier and Clay while at home. Grow to resent Montel Williams.
2001: Jamie loses job. God bless Medicare.
2002: Arizona?

In between the major events, we've just had her migraines to deal with, which hasn't been much fun. I suspect the heart attack occured during 1998 when she was getting sick from them a lot. It's called a "silent heart attack" when you never knew you had one. A Dr. McMinn just mentioned it in passing after an EKG.
"So, you know, because of the previous heart attack, you're going to want to be careful..."
"Previous what attack?"
But there was a time we were doing this so often, I got kind of casual about it and the one time I left Jamie at the ER so I could (look, you can't hate me for this) go home and get some shut eye, she came home in a cab, bright pink like an easter egg.
"What happened to you?"
"They gave me something new. I'm allergic. I itch inside my skin."
"Well I'll be dipped."

So this morning was trip number 40 or so to the ER for this business. And we were in and out in a few hours and Jamie is fine.

But I left her to sleep and went and ran my preplanned errands and wound up at Best Buy. Where I bought a ton of CDs, because I realized that I had been telling myself for ten years I was going to replace some of these from tape, or others were albums which disappeared, or just records friends used to have.

So screw it. I am now the proud owner of Public Enemy's Greatest Hits.

Hey, Supernerds!!!!

DC Comics is having a big to-do about changes in the Superman titles beginning in April.

For those of you keeping track, that's:

Adventures of Superman
Superman
Action Comics

other titles include JLA, Superman/ Batman, Superman: Birthright, Smallville, Justice League Adventures, and a scad of others...

You can download a Superman screensaver for free at this site, and while you're there, read up on the upcoming art and stories in the core Superman titles.

So if you drift past your local comic shop, now's the the best time in a few years to be taking a peek at the Superman comics.

Thanks to Jamie who had to be the bearer of horrific news. Yes, the true cause of democracy is dead in the eyes of The League of Melbotis.

Somehow, we will soldier on. But don't be surprised if a disaffected League decides to become a monarchist so that the League will never face this sort of disappointment again.

BTW, I noticed that the high school on the WB's new season of "High School Reunion" is not only my year (1993), Round Rock was also the rival school for the brief year I was a Westwood Warrior. I looked at the website. I don't know any of those people.

I'm a little disappointed, but, it was 13 years ago or something the last time I saw anyone from that school. I'm actually more curious about if they tried to get any of the people I did know. My buddy from that school eneded up going to MIT and does financial modelling for a big international bank. Apparently being smart enough to go to MIT also tells you to be smart enough to not volunteer for a show like High School Reunion.

and this, my friends, is why The League did not pursue a career in the sciences

If The League ever needed a reminder that The League lives in bum-fuck Arizona, it is surely The Chandler Ostrich Festival.

The dirty little secret of Chandler is this: just because all the trolls in their SUVs (myself included) moved into Chandler, does not mean the indigenous lifeforms moved out. And the even uglier secret is: really, despite the $40K cars and the golf clubs, you get the feeling there is a very thin line separating the newbies from the local yokels. It takes something like a State Fair or Community Festival with $3.00 admission to make folks put down the crytal meth for long enough to locate their kids and force them into a family bonding experience such as The Ostrich Festival (an event even the organizers now seem fairly embarassed of).

I like to think that events like this which used to happen in rural communities were the glue which held these places together. But I'm a suburban kid, and this isn't the 1930's dustbowl, so when I'm not worrying about whether the carnies are stealing the hubcaps off the Forester, or why the technicolor movies like "State Fair" always star people much more attractive than what I ever see at the actual State Fair, I'm usually thinking about how obvious it must have been to dream up Something Wicked This Way Comes after a trip to the carnival.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for staring at people, mostly because it provides an ego boost like none other. And there's no better place to feel good about yourself while looking down your nose at your fellow man than at any place with a portable Ferris wheel. So Saturday, after we'd been out doing yardwork all morning, Jamie and The League took our showers (a futile gesture, considering where we were headed), patted Melbotis on the head and took off for the Ostrich Festival.

Held once a year, the festival must have been founded in the 90's when some mastermind behind a pyramid scheme convinced struggling farmers and ranchers to invest in Ostriches. Surely, they would be the next white meat, and we could look forward to a golden future of an Ostrich in every pot. Or something. But those plans went awry (which I could have predicted given the demeanor of the "Ostrich Lobby" I sat with when visiting the Texas State Capitol in the Spring of 1995). And, alas, Ostriches have not yet taken off as the meal of choice in American households (of course, if Atkins said it was good for you....).

At any rate, I've lived in Arizona for roughly two years, and The League had not yet borne witness to a single Ostrich roaming about. I hear one can see them between Phoenix and Tucson, but so far, not a single one has reared his tiny head in the greater Chandler area. Cows standing knee deep in their own filth? Certainly. Tens of thousands of them (screw you, EPA!). But, no. No ostriches.

Last year when we attended the festival, there simply were no Ostriches. Newcastle Disease had caused such a ruckus that nether man nor beast wanted to be near a huge, snotty bird, and so the Ostriches were conspicuously absent. (Jamie still has a t-shirt bearing the Silhouette of an Ostrich with the "no" circle around it.) So, this year, with dozens of the grotesque monstrosities on display, the motto of the show was "The Birds are Back".

Perhaps because the birds were back (ho ho!), or because Chandler is, I am told, a town on the move, the Festival seemed much bigger this year. I found it odd that neither Jamie nor myself could recall if last year's festival had the midway and carnival rides. All either of could remember were a half dozen or so demonstrations by local karate schools. This year, those demonstrations were conspicuously absent, but what the festival lacked in Kee-Yopping 7-year-olds, it made up for in inflatable Hulk dolls. Everywhere one looked, there was another booth hawking inflatable Hulks, Spider-Mans and cartoon mallets.

We first made our way down food alley, and Jamie selected a gyro and water and I got a churro (a food suspiciously absent in any environment outside of a carnival) and some tea. And I think that was about as much carnival as Jamie wanted to take in.

"You want to ride on the rides?"
"How long have we been together?"
"Well..."
"Have I ever wanted to ride the rides?"
I looked about at the sort of activities made available to us. Carnival rides, check. Midway games, check. Inflatable Hulk, check. Stare at freaks, check. Eat questionably prepared foods, check. Avoid Jim Belushi's band, check.
"So, uh, wanna go on a ride?"
"NO! I could get hurt."
Looking at the rides, I could not deny Jamie could well get hurt. In fact, I suddenly wondered what minimum safe distance was myself.
"Wanna play a midway game?"
"If you want to..."
"Do you want to?"
"No."
"Oh."
"But I wanna see the ostriches."
So we trudged through an inordinate number of chubby people and headed for the rodeo staging area, complete with metal bleachers and a corral fence and all that. And we parked ourselves on the bleachers in some kick ass seats and proceeded to watch a guy drive a tractor in slow circles around the corral while pulling a log or something.
"What is he doing?" I asked.
"It's like a rodeo zamboni," Jamie answered.
Another guy followed behind him with a hose, and sprayed down the corral where the rodeo zamboni had circled.
"Any idea...?"
"it's dusty."
And dry and getting hotter.
"How long have we been watching this guy?" I asked Jamie.
"Maybe twenty minutes."
"Do we know when the race starts?"
"No."
So I turned to the girl sitting nearby.
"Hey, any idea when the race starts?" she shook her head politely. There was a moment of silence and then the girl and her friends became speaking to one another excitedly in what was not English, nor did it appear that this girl spoke any English whatsoever. Which made me wonder how she had found the festival, but it was not a mystery to dwell upon. At any rate, I let is slide and returned my attention to the rodeo zamboni.
Slowly fat people began drifting in. Seriously. I don't know what the story was, but as I looked around, the morbidly obese community of Chandler, Arizona was slowly trickling in to the bleachers, sweating badly and groaning with relief as they placed themselves on the straining aluminum seating.
A matching set of a fat family sat down in front of us, the only non-obese member a small baby, destined (as DNA is a cruel bitch) to be just one more of this amazing team before me.
And, morbidly obese teen-agers, a little advice from Uncle Ry: Just because the trend of the day says to wear skin-tight belly shirts, save yourself a lot of aggravation. Be your own person and forego the Christina look.
But it wasn't just the family in front of us. There was a family who (one hoped) had participated in a karate demo who were all busting the seems of their uniforms. And, of course, many, many other variations.
I kind of wished I had beer. In fact, I wished I had a lot of beer, because it was hot out and the churro was certain not to absorb up as much beer as I thought was going to make my wait better. But this is Chandler, and not Texas, and so no beer was to be seen.
Music began playing from a crappy tape player over an even crappier sound system. The first song was from Bonanza.
"Hey," I said to Jamie. "What's the name of the ranch on Bonanza?"
"Bonanza."
"No. It's not. It's something else."
"I have no idea."
"Lorne Greene was in it. Michael Landon was Little Joe."
"Have you ever seen Bonanza?"
"Well, no."
"Okay."
For the next fifteen minutes or so I stared into space and tried to remember the name of the ranch. It's Ponderosa (not that I remembered that then). So we can all thank Bonanza for being the show which launched two family steakhouses with groovy salad bars.
Eventually a guy dressed roughly like a 1950's movie cowboy (think retired Roy Rogers) wanders out and reveals that the "animal amusements" in this show (and already I was hoping nobody from PETA was around) are from Kansas. Except maybe the Ostriches. He never clarified.
And I wasn't really sure who this guy was, because, despite the printed program in his hand, the show seemed to be a complete mystery to him. At least four times before the animal races, he failed to press "play" on the tape deck to play the crappy rendition of a bugle tooting out the start of the race. He also improperly identified his wranglers, called a llama a camel once or twice, botched several other musical cues and didn't turn off his mic (nor take it away from his mouth) when making asides to his staff.
Maybe he was old and confused. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe the sun was getting to him. I don't know, but, people... rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal... it's the key to success.
Ostriches raced, chickens raced, we saw a trained Zebra sort of do about half of the tricks he was supposed to and a trained Palamino refused to play ball on a few tricks as well.
Someone made the curious decision to strap the ostriches to chariots made of barrels (which made more sense than you'd think), but didn't strap the ostriches down very hard, because only 1 in 3 chariots ever remained attached to the birds.
The cowboy MC also dropped a few questionable comments of a sexist and racist slant, but sometimes you got to let things slide with dudes in their 70's wearing a silk scarf and a cowboy hat.
Inexplicably, the family in front of me suddenly rose to their feet and wandered off. It seemed the heat was overcoming them. And so, like a Russian doll collapsing back into itself, the family disappeared from view, no doubt, to find a less sunny and less dusty place to rest their bones.
But these folks missed the part where our erstwhile/ anglophile jockeys donned Arab head scarves, renamed themselves "Ali", "Mohammad" and something else, sported some classy accents and proceeded to narrowly miss an international incident by repeatedly referring to themselves as Camel Jockeys (which was a literal minded interpretation in this case, but nonetheless...). The camels raced, we all cheered, and I guess we all learned an important lesson about what is and is not funny in Chandler, Arizona.
By this time the sun was getting to me, but the show ended somewhat anti-climatically.
Jamie and I went and fed some goats, stared at a kangaroo, tried to figure out what a gnu was if that thing was a yak, and then walked down the row of booths where you could get an air-brushed T-shirt. I wanted to get one that said "Jamie's Man" in baby-blue, but Jamie was holding all of our money, so I didn't even ask.
I tried again to get Jamie to agree to go on the rides, but she showed no interest.
Alas, with no inflatable Hulk or Spider-Man, but with a bag of cinnamon glazed almonds secured, Jamie and I bid the Ostrich Festival a teary-eyed adieu. Until next year, Ostrich Fest.
Man, I can't wait for Chandler Jazz Fest 2004.

The system does work!

thanks to Randy for sending this link. Let us hope he is not having to join in the class action suit.

Curse you, Kylie!

Luckily, I carry full insurance.

Comics are an odd thing. People tend to think of them as being just stories about people in brightly clad costumes punching the daylights out of one another. And the past fifteen to twenty five years, that's mostly what you could expect from DC or Marvel comics.

But the fact is, there was a time when Superheroes knew how to get their groove on. Even at the expense of the safety of others.

God as my witness, I will learn the Krypton Crawl.

this will make Jamie chitter with delight, much like a chipmunk.

I do not have any big stories to tell today. Most of what's been going on has been work related, and that's not terribly interesting.

I must find a birthday present for my brother, Jason. It is Jason's birthday on March 17th. He will be 31.

Jason has many interests:
a) playing the guitar
b) playing the guitar while I am trying to watch TV
c) listening to his stereo as loudly as possible so he can hear it over the shower while I am trying to sleep
d) breaking my X-Wing fighter and refusing any restitution or apology
e) insisting that Batman is better than Superman
f) watching movies NO ONE ELSE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD RENT, AND THEN INSISTING "it wadn't that bad..."
g) adopting three legged dogs
h) taking three-legged dogs on slooooowwww walks
i) practicing the law
j) freeing crooks from jail
k) calling me alternately "fatty" or "bitch"
l) insisting my job entails little more than running a VCR
m) insisting his job is soooooooo difficult
n) going to eat enchiladas
o) refusing to get a haircut despite all contrary opinions and common sense
p) keeping Thundercloud Subs afloat
q) swimming
r) reading books about digruntled spies/ cops
s) keeping me abreast of the progress of the Mono Music Ensemble
t) wrestling wild boar

All in all, he has many interests. But what shall I do for him for his birthday? He has requested a hand-drawn cartoon from the League, but the League has a lot of work to do before his birthday.

This will take some sorting out. I might just send an organ grinder and a well-dressed monkey to his office on his birthday.

Like Icarus, we have flown too close to the sun.

Because I have not posted much lately, here's something to entertain.

With all due respect to people who must wear flak jackets for a living.

Seems that Randy is willing to give up the reigns on his own blog. It appears that, due to a minimum of content of late, Randy has decided others could fill in for him. And that's just fine. If you're interested in posting to RHPT.com, Randy is apparently willing to publish whatever reader's send, provided it meets his minimum safe standards.

You can see him playing with the idea here.

And him giving in to Jim D's peer pressure here.

I'm going to do this again, because it's fun.

It's already hot as a bastard out here in Phoenix. Last week I was still wearing a coat in the morning, but I left for three days, and now it's offically 90 degrees (my car thermometer said 92, for the record). Doesn't sound that hot, especially as it will be 120 degrees at some point this summer, but nobody really got time to adapt. I was told that my pal, Al, saw a girl suffer heatstroke during a soccer tournament this weekend.

Yeah, it's hot. Seems like just yesterday we were wearing sweaters in the office to keep warm, and it WAS on Thursday night when hail fell and coated the ground like snow, and it was okay to wear a coat out the door when I left work. But not now. Now it begins.

I hate you Phoenix summertime. I hate you like gum on my shoe.

Why the League refuses to travel outside these blessed United States.

two minor things:

1) Blogger.com, who hosts The League, is going to have some presence at the upcoming SXSW multimedia monkey-fest in Austin, Texas. Sounds like they're going to be at one of The League's former default destinations, Club DeVille, down on Red River.

they say: Mess with Texas Some of us Blogger folks are going to SXSW and to kick things up a notch we're serving up free drinks and t-shirts Monday evening from 6:30-8:00 on March 15th over at Club De Ville in Austin, TX. We provide beer and schwag to our users because we care.

So if you're in town, go get some free shit for The League.

2) The League just saw it's candidate of choice on cable. No, not on CNBC or Fox News or even on Nickelodeon. The Reverend Al Sharpton apparently makes a cameo in the Ryder/ Sandler vehicle, Mr. Deeds.

Home again, home again, jiggity jog.

Kudos to Continental Airlines for not losing my luggage and being relatively on time for both flights over the weekend.

All in all, the weekend was very nice. Kicked it old school on Saturday with the main family unit plus Cousin Sue and "Hopalong" Cassidy.

Sunday, it was down to me and Mum and Pop. Pop and I went and saw Hidalgo at the Woodlands megaplex theater. I'm not really sure what to say about the movie except that it was pretty much you'd expect, and my instructors from film school would have had a field day dissecting the movie. From a non-narrative strategies point of view, I liked how the movie insisted on inserting an evil "Brad"-type character with a better horse. You know, in the end, Sheik Brad will certainly get his comeuppance. We Americans are EXPERTS at doling out comeuppances. But, if you're willing to overlook some questionable thematic issues, and you want to watch a guy ride from screen left to screen right for an hour or so, have I got the movie for you.

I make it sound like I hate the movie. I really didn't. It was kind of a half-baked adventure movie, and after Club Dread, it seemed ingenious.

Anyway, me am home. Melbotis was only half-way happy to see me. It's very warm out all of a sudden, and Mel was revelling in the sun.