Tapping the Rockies: Day 2

Wednesday 10/01/08
11:26 a.m.

I have awakened in many a place before: the humidity engulfed Mississippi, the fog blanketed London, the mist sprayed shores of South Beach, the buffalo roaming South Dakota, on a couch in a frat house wearing my super cute outfit I wore to the football game the night before, in gay Paris, in the back of my CRV... but the most wonderful place to wake up (in my opinion) is in the clean, crisp, pristene air of Colorado.



Well, maybe waking up in the arms of Paul Rudd would be better, or waking up in in a pile of money and diamonds, but you get my drift.

After hitting the snooze button a time or four, I roll out of bed to drive Stefano to work. Next stop: must have espresso and lots of it. After a triple shot and a bagel the size of my head, it's time to hit the gym and work off the schmear.


(ok, bigger than my head)


The sweat session starts out okay, but after about 20 minutes something funny starts to happen. I don't know if it was the altitude or the fact that the View was on t.v. but all of a sudden I wasn't feeling so well. Apparently mixing no dinner with one (or 5) bourbon drinks, espresso, and slightly too much movement may have stirred things up a bit, thus causing my throbbing brain to tap my skull every 30 seconds and cause several hundred tiny dots to fill my retina. Anyway, I had to cut my workout short and exit the gym immediately.

A quick purge and shower later, I was once again ready to take on the world. Or at least I was ready to take a couple of dogs to the park. As Jain would have it, my dear friend A.cat lived only a 7 minute walk from Stefano's. And also a 7 minute walk away, my god-dog, Bailey. I have never been greeted with more love and affection than when I opened the door to their condo. You would think after not seeing me for 3 years, she may have forgotten me. Wait. No. It would be impossible to forget me. What am I thinking? Don't answer that. So after a quick sniffing of the butts (I had another dog with me. I don't go around sniffing the posteriors of canines.) we were off to the park. Running, chasing sticks, splashing in the water, following strange men around in the sunshine...what a great day. And I'm pretty sure the dogs had a good time too.



After an hour or so of frolicking it was time to head back and pick up Stefano from work. While we were out and about we also picked up his friend, Juice Box, and took a detour to his house. J.B. lives in a pretty sweet place, however, something not so sweet recently took place outside of his home. A couple of weeks ago an "accident" occurred. While watching Judge Judy or Jepordy or something on his super fat screen t.v., Juice Box hears a car speeding by out front, a loud thud and some screams. The car drives off, leaving a dying barefoot man in the street and an emotionless wife by his side.



Here's what I think happened...

This hobag wife was having an affair with some skeezebag, probably a meth-head or crack dealer. Or maybe he is her pimp.



Anyway, the husband was catching on to what was happening and was trying to put an end to it all. Rather than have him foil their plans of dealing or selling tricks or interfering with their adulterous relationship, they decided to kill him. So, one night while the wife is getting into the car with the boyfriend/dealer/pimp, the husband sees what's about to go down and runs out of the house without his shoes. He sticks his head in the passenger side window and begins to yell, "What the hell are you doing with my wife?" and so on and so forth. Enraged, the thug rolls up the window with the husband's head inside and takes off down the street. He starts off slowly, but then accelerates, dragging the husband along with him. After pulling the poor man for miles and miles, he finally slams on brakes and rolls down the window. In shock, the screaming wife jumps out of the car and the man speeds away. The husband dies and the wife is taken to jail. And scene.



That's probably nowhere close to what happened, but it makes a better story.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, so we leave Juice Box's house to pick up Karlos Santana Moss and head out for some delicious raw fish. Speaking of fish, it was just announced that Phish will be reuniting in Hampton on March 6,7, and 8. All of the hotel rooms are already booked and I'm sure all of the tickets are already sold. So, if any of my readers live in Hampton, I'm calling couch now.

After our delicious dining experience, I had just enough time to swing by the drive-thru liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine to take to A.cat's for our girls only fantasy football draft.



I know none of you really care who I have on my team and are probably totally over me talking about it, but I'm going to tell you anyway, just because I am slightly obsessed.

Romo Cops:

QBs: Tony Romo, Phillip Rivers
RBs: Julius Jones, Steve Slaton, Jamal Lewis, Michael Pittman & Jerious Norwood
WRs: Santana Moss, Vincent Jackson, Amani Toomer & Mark Clayton
TE: Jason Witten
K: Nick Folk
DEF: Minnesota

So, I picked the winning team, tried not to vomit during McCain's speech and strolled back to Stefano's house to find him already sleeping like a little baby. Good night.

Jam of the Day

Thursday 9/25/08
1:31 p.m.



Pay close attention to the sax player

Daily Rudd

Thursday 9/25/08
1:27 p.m.

Go Shorty, It's Your Birthday

Wednesday 9/24/08

12:27 a.m.

Today we celebrate the life of one of the most creative and inspiring men who ever puppeteered on this earth, Jim Henson.

James Maury "Jim" Henson was the most widely known puppeteer in American television history, who created some of the most memorable shows of our time - The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street. He also was the mastermind behind several of the greatest films in cinematic history The Mupppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Dark Crystal, and my all-time favorite movie to feature a rock legend in spandex with the biggest bulge to ever be shown on screen (other than Marky Mark in Boogie Nights), Labyrinth.

Jim grew up in the state where only the coolest people in the world are from, Mississippi.* He later moved to DC, where he was raised a Christian Scientist. This is not the same as Scientology for all of you morons who think it is. C.S. teaches that the reality of God denies the reality of sin, sickness, death and the material world. Accounts of miraculous healing are common within the church, and adherents often refuse traditional medical treatments. Uh, yeah. I'll stick to my Jainism.

Jim's life was forever changed when his family purchased their first television set.

He began creating puppets while attending high school and later took a puppeteering class at the University of Maryland. He first worked on the show Sam and Friends.



Despite the success of the show, which ran for six years, Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before being able to realize his dream of the Muppets as "entertainment for everybody". The popularity of his work on Sam and Friends in the late fifties led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show. This greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters through the sixties.

In 1963, Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc. would reside for some time. When Jane quit muppeteering to raise their children, Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppeteer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her; Henson later credited both with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets. Henson and Oz, particularly, developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of the characters of, respectively, Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.





Henson's sixties talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show.



From 1964 to 1968, Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Short Film in 1966. Jim Henson also produced another experimental film, The NBC-TV movie The Cube, in 1969.



Next up: Sesame Street.


(these are my favorite characters of all time)

While this was great entertainment for the younger audience, Henson also wanted to appeal to the adults. Henson, Oz, and his team created a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live. Around the time of his characters' final appearances on SNL, Henson began developing two projects featuring the Muppets.

Following his television work, Henson made his move to the big screen. Below are some of my favorite movie moments:







On May 4, 1990, Henson made an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. At the time, he mentioned to his publicist that he was tired and had a sore throat, but felt that it would go away.



On May 12, 1990, Henson traveled to Ahoskie, North Carolina with his daughter Cheryl to visit his father and stepmother. The next day, feeling tired and sick, he consulted a physician in North Carolina, who could find no evidence of pneumonia by physical examination and prescribed no treatment except aspirin. Henson returned to New York on an earlier flight and canceled a Muppet recording session scheduled for May 14.

Henson's wife Jane, from whom he was separated, came to visit and sat with him talking throughout the evening. By 2 a.m. on May 15, 1990 he was having trouble breathing and began coughing up blood. He suggested to Jane that he might be dying, but did not want to bother going to the hospital. She later told People Magazine that it was likely due to his desire not to be a bother to people. Henson's being raised a Christian Socialist is often speculated as the reason that he was reluctant to receive medical treatment.

At 4 a.m., he finally agreed to go to New York Hospital, at which point his body was rapidly shutting down. By the time he was admitted at 4:58 a.m., he could no longer breathe on his own and had abscesses in his lungs. He was placed on a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe, but his condition deteriorated rapidly into septic shock despite aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics. Only twenty hours later, on May 16, 1990, at 12:58 a.m., Henson died from organ failure at the age of 53.

Two separate memorial services were held for Henson, one in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and one in London, England at St. Paul's Cathedral. As per Henson's wishes, no one in attendance wore black, and a Dixieland jazz band finished the service by performing "When The Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around," a song he had debuted on The Muppet Show, as each member of the audience waved, with a puppeteer's rod, an individual, brightly-colored foam butterfly. Later, Big Bird (performed by Carroll Spinney) walked out onto the stage and sang Kermit the Frog's signature song, "Bein' Green".



In the final minutes of the two-and-a-half hour service, six of the core Muppet performers sang, in their characters' voices, a medley of Jim Henson's favorite songs, culminating in a performance of "Just One Person" that began with Richard Hunt singing alone, as Scooter. "As each verse progressed," Henson employee Chris Barry recalled, "each Muppeteer joined in with their own Muppets until the stage was filled with all the Muppet performers and their beloved characters."



The funeral was later described by LIFE as "an epic and almost unbearably moving event." The image of a growing number of performers singing "Just One Person" was recreated for the 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson and inspired screenwriter Richard Curtis, who attended the London service, to write the growing-orchestra wedding scene of his 2003 film Love Actually.

After the funeral service, Jim was cremated. His ashes were scattered near Santa Fe, New Mexico at his ranch.

*Miss Middleton, Jimmy Buffett, Bo Diddley, Brett Farve, William Faulkner, Faith Hill, James Earl Jones, B. B. King, Willie Morris, Walter Payton, Elvis Presley, Jerry Rice, Conway Twitty, Muddy Waters, Tennessee Williams, Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, Parker Posey, Cool Papa Bell, little bitch's dad - Archie Manning, Deuce McAlister, Clinton Portis, Jerry Clower, John McCain Sr. - EWWWW, Afroman, R.L. Burnside, Sam Cooke, Willie Dixon, Nate Dogg, Robert Johnson, Sonny Landreth, Pops Staples, Ike Turner, Cat Cora and the coolest of the cool - Britney Spears and Lance Bass.

Source: Wikipedia.com

Jam of the Day

Daily Rudd

Wednesday 9/24/08

11:48 a.m.

Tapping the Rockies - Day 1

Wednesday 9/24/08
10:22 a.m.

I'm gonna take you back, way, way, back, all the way to September 3, 2008. Thus begins my return home, a.k.a. Colorado.



After taking one of my 20 summer vacations to my former state of dwelling back in June, I started getting the itch (The good kind, not the kind you get when you drink 10 Maker's drinks and take home some dude/chick from the bar and don't remember who he or she is the next day when you roll over the next morning to see their markedly less attractive than you thought face.*) to move back. But to just return and pack up all of my belongings would be slightly impulsive of me. And anyone who knows me, knows that I always carefully map out my next move and would never act impulsively. Aha, um, yeah... So, I decided to take a week out of my ever so busy schedule to go to Denver and check out the job market and living situation.

Upon arrival I was greeted by one of the most delightful people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, Stefano. And like any good friend, he brought me a gift - a nice frosty road soda and a flask of Makers that had been in the cooler for about 6 months and tasted a tiny bit like dish soap.


(Different Stefano)

What first night in town would be complete without hitting the town for a bit? None. That was a rhetorical question. We first stopped at some hippie Grateful Deadish bar that had a lovely pungent aroma somewhat like a mixture of dirty New Balance sneakers and sharp cheddar cheese.

Speaking of stinky New Balances... One of my best friends in high school, 007, had the most horrific smelling New Balances that I have ever encountered in my life.



Not only were 007 and I best friends, but we were also next door neighbors and we used to fight like an old married couple. Anyway, one day he thought it would be funny to take his nasty ass sneakers and leave them in my locker. When I went to put up my books, the gaseous fumes immediately filled my lungs causing me to simultaneously throw up my activity period pizza pocket and pass out. There was only one thing I could do now - get revenge.

In one of our classes we had just read this very disturbing article about these backwoods doctors giving dirty abortions with coat hangers.



This was extremely upsetting to 007 and made him somewhat ill. So, the next day during our break I went out to my car and got a coat hanger. I then went to the cafeteria to swipe a few packets of ketchup. I will let you use your imagination to complete this story. Needless to say, he was quite shocked when he opened his locker. Payback's a bitch.

And yes, that story was really disgusting and you will all now probably think less of me. So be it. And now back to my trip...

So, we stayed long enough to have a bourbon and play a game of foosball and we were on our way. Before going home, we decided to try our luck at one more bar - El Chapultepec. The smell was definitely more appealing and the jazz was hipper than hip. So, after one more bourbon that didn't tast like dish soap, we dedided to call it a night. When we got home, Elmer Fudd got in the bed with Karlos Santana Moss and proceeded to do a little man spooning. Stefano and I just went to bed.

*This has never happened to me.

Jam of the day

Daily Rudd

Umm...

Tuesday 9/2/08
11:16 a.m.



What a great way to start the football season. Not only did Mississippi State lose their season opener to Louisiana Tech, we are also the ONLY team in the SEC west to lose this week. Awesome! Thank Jain Tennesse lost too. Sorry Banana.

To make matters worse our all-SEC linebacker Jamar Chaney is out for the season after sustaining broken leg in Saturday’s game. Chaney, a senior, had a team-high 12 tackles vs. Tech. He led the Bulldogs last year with 89 tackles, and had started 27 of the last 29 games.



State now returns to Starkville to open its 2008 home schedule, hosting Southeastern Louisiana next Saturday, Sept. 6, at 6 p.m. CT at Davis Wade Stadium. The Lions downed Alcorn State 34-28 in Lorman Saturday night, which means we will probably lose too.

A few weeks ago I was in Newport Kentucky at some boat show where the coolest band ever, Special Midnight, was rocking our souls with some sweet 80's covers. There were several vendors selling booze and food that smelled like my car after I left the window down when it rained and then dried up in the 90 degree sun. Anyway, as I was strolling along the aisle, trying not to vomit from the stench, I noticed a picture of a man who looked very familiar. Now, I could be totally wrong, but take a look at this picture and tell me who you think it looks like...

If I didn't know any better (and I usually don't) I would say that this jolly old man about to suck the poop out of that crawfish is the same gentleman who coaches the team that played like that crawfish poop he is about to suck.

(This is the same face he makes while sucking the heads)

So, this is what I think. During the off-season Croom spent all of his time working on some new outstanding crawfish seasoning instead of working on some new outstanding plays. He's been trying to market it in Louisiana, but hasn't had much luck. So, what does he do? He calls up the coach at Louisiana Tech and says, "Hey man. If you can get me into the market down in Louisiana, I'll make sure my team plays like total shit when we play you guys for the season opener. You scratch my balls, I'll scratch yours." So, their coach said "no problem" and we lost the game. All for some damn crawfish seasoning.

I am never eating cajun food again. Thanks Sly!