Not to throw my wife under the bus, but while she was engrossed in grading papers last night I played "We are Robots" and after about one minute she stopped, looked up and politely said "I don't know what your listening to...but its awful". I didn't reply or argue, just laughed and turned off the sound. (I had to watch the rest of the no-budget video.) Some tastes have to be acquired...like Turkish coffee and Bulgur salad.

Anyway, because Bentley has been struggling with skin allergies for the past week or two, Jennie decided to take him to a new vet recommended by my boss. The office is buried deep in the bowels of backwoods Jupiter Farms. I can only imagine what sort of disturbing sights she must regularly see, considering I have never seen a single animal in the Farms that doesn't possess some sort of physical defect or malady. If Dr. Sfingi can link us to the tale of the Hell House on Haney Lane (OK, done), you will recall the dog with the tracheotomy or even better...the petting zoo at the old Burt Reynolds estate. Just in case that story has yet to be told I hit you with a few details.

I believe it was back in 1997 (which is scary to think is 15 years ago), that Broadway Joe was just beginning his ascent in the entertainment business and was forced to spend most of the year working and promoting in Germany. To record and share his experiences there, his now-wife Kelly bought him what was in 1997, a state of the art handheld camera. So given some time off , Joe flies back to Florida and on one particular weekend shoots down to Spumoni Gardens. After viewing some of his amazingly funny footage in Germany, we decide this camera must be put to good use here. We head off just a few miles down the road to Burt Reynolds Petting Zoo, which was open and free to the public, and to my knowledge an abandoned refuge for deformed animals. Somewhere out there still exists a video tape of the four balloon-heads...who even in 1997 were old enough to know better, mocking and toying with sad mutant deer, llamas, emus, goats and even a burro (which had a sign above its cage informing it was a gift from Dom Deluise!). I feel sheepish giving all the details of the tape, but Broadway Joe was taught that an emus neck can be twisted 360 degrees without any physical harm...and he demonstrated. BazzukaJoe carried with him a backpack full of Doritos and M&Ms we could feed the hungry animals, by the time we reached the goats we had ran out, and were forced to feed them the receipts that were left. There was a llama with a severe dental problems, that we felt obligated to publicly humiliate, and the big finale was was an up close video of a goat pressing his face to Steve Fatone's ass, to which he responded to with a blast so powerful and perfectly timed that it stunned the goat frozen. Its a scene we watched 700 times and laughed every time. Anyway, I now start my day off with a big silly grin remembering that confused goat.
Disclaimer: Dr. Sfingi, please explain to your children...these are all terrible ideas.

We stopped for breakfast after Mass yesterday and ordered ourselves some eggs and coffee. In the corner a mounted TV screen showed a bicycle race and I wondered aloud if it could be the Giro or the Tour de France before realizing I have no idea when any of those are scheduled or why either of them would be on American television.

Anyway, Mojo immediately started singing We Are The Robots by Kraftwerk, which includes the zombified refrain Tour de France, Tour de France. Naturally, that singing quickly gave way to the Rathergood version of the song, We Are Pork Products (by Kraftwurst) which has the even better refrain Pork de France, Pork de France.

What did we say the other day about unlikely cultural references? Gotta dig the LED-studded necktie. And the googly-eyes glued to the hot dogs.

Y'know Shteef you remind me, back in 1985 I was the official scorekeeper an XU baseball game against IIRC Indiana University, Purdue (UI-PUI, or something). The opposing pitcher was a dead ringer for Steve Perry -- the nose, the hair, lots of both. Every time an XU batter took a big cut on one of his pitches our entire dugout sang out IT SHOULDA BEEN GONE! Poor bastard probably got a lot of that.

Ahhh...good to be back. Special thanks to the fine folks at Best Buy for providing Jennie with a brand new replacement computer free of charge after hers recently took a dump. Thanks to them, I return to the blogosphere. Anyway, its been two weeks and a lot has happened...so lets dive right in.

Recently, the wifey and I traveled to Newport R.I. for a family wedding. We had a fantastic time...and although yachts, vineyards and mansions are enormous fun, my shining moment occurred at a tiny rundown sandwich shop tucked away far from the chowder guzzling snobs by the pier. I ordered a sandwich of cooked Bartlett pears, fresh brie and prosciutto and hot baguette. It was magical. It reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the knight watches Indy choose the grail and confirms "you have chosen...wisely". Jennie's brother Matt also went with it and I am certain he would mirror my enthusiasm.

Lets see what else? We saw the Gold-man this week, he visited Spumoni for Ree's birthday and continue the happy march towards the April 5 spectacular.

Last night I was driving home from work and "Oh Sherry" by Steve Perry came on the radio. Something in my head forced me to call my cousin Tomas. No clue what the subconscious correlation could be, but he fortunately picked up and was thrilled to be associated with such a timeless classic. When I read this story, I recall my brother's wedding when our friend Angela introduced her date to Me, BazzukaJoe, Broadway Joe and Steve Fatone.
Angela: "I want you to meet my boyfriend, Steve Perry"
Silence and then...
Me: "We're big fans."
Broadway Joe: "Shoulda been gooooone..."
Yeah, I know word and thought association gone awry. Well, I'm ready for work.

And today we finished out the Batman trilogy, heading out to our local Regal to catch the latest installment. A good movie, we all thought (though I drank a little too much coffee beforehand and had to spend the last half of the film with my legs crossed).

After the flick we played a little tennis -- because I needed to dump that much more water from my system. Actually, the weather's not as hot as it has been so I didn't sweat as badly as those two mornings last week, taking Da Chimpz to the courts for early-morning volleying.

We got back and got some stovetop sausage and peppers going -- the quick version of the old standard. Sprinkle it with grated parmesan and all is good with the world.

By now the sunlight is fading. Mid-summer is like that, with darkness setting in earlier each night. Early July is great because the daylight lasts until close to 10. In a few weeks, it'll be dark by 9. Gotta live if up while summer is here.

Tomorrow I'll call the Duke of Marcinski and tell him we urgently await his updates.

We just watched a whole lot of Batman. We started with Begins and then watched Dark Knight. We didn't mean to be up this late with it. But now that it's the wee hours, maybe I should strap on the utility belt and go swinging around town stopping crime.

(In Batman Begins the young Bruce Wayne dug out his father's old S&W Model 36. As he checked for rounds in the cylinder Mojo wisecracked "leave the gun, take the cannoli." The whole movie was like that. Smartasses.)

First you have to practice your swing to maximize head speed. Then you need to step up to the potato.

If this protocol makes no sense to you, it probably means you never played potato golf in our backyard. It is a truly disgusting sport, and tonight was a perfect night for it.

We started with some red potatoes ("I get the potatoes, the red potatoes," says Don Vito). These potatoes had been in our summer-warm kitchen for weeks -- all soft and overgrown with tuber sprouts. It was time to compost them. Or better. As you can see, we've done this before. Several times.



Notice how brown and crunchy our grass is? Been a hot dry summer. And yardwork is blowjhinsky.

Earlier today we stopped at Bob Evans for early lunch. Late breakfast, really. I like to order eggs over medium -- mostly because I prefer them that way, but also because it fascinates me how many places don't know what that means. I don't dislike the more common eggs over easy, and that's a good thing because that's typically what is sent out to me from the kitchen.

Anyway, we finished eating and went to the cashier to pay. The boys grabbed candy bars and lollipops and I said no and no. There was a cup with toothpicks. We each took a toothpick instead. As we went to the car the boys proposed keeping them in their mouths all day so they could look cool like the Ivan Vanko character in the Iron Man 2 movie we watched last night.

"Look cool? That guy looked scary," I said. I explained that I would prefer to flick the toothpick off the edge of my top front teeth the way Murdoc does while driving the dune buggy in the old Gorillaz video. So like a trio of dorks we stuck toothpicks in our mouths and drove to Lowes to buy a reciprocating saw (did I mention I have a lot of projects to complete during my week off?).

While entering the Lowes parking lot I finally got the toothpick propped vertically in the front of my open mouth. I tried to flick the top part forward. It worked, sort of. The fail started when I closed my mouth too quickly, sending the pointy top of the toothpick up into the soft underside of my nose, right between the nostrils.

"Aaaagh! I stabbed myself in the nose!"

Mojo was in the front passenger seat watching me; he had seen the whole thing. Meaning there was no use trying to deny what I had just done. And it was a good thing we were in the parking lot because lancing your nose like that hurts about the same as yanking a nostril hair -- I had tears welling up in my eyes.

So did the boys... from laughing so hard.

Every few years we drag ourselves out to a baseball game. I think the last time I caught a game was last year at Yankee Stadium. Was that last year or the year before? Anyway, Da Chimpz weren't with me -- they profess to be bored by the sport.

Even yesterday's day at the Jacobs Field (or whatever they call it now) was abnormal, as Mojo was sitting up in the grandstands while the rest of us hunkered for shade under a bleacher deck just to the rear of the right field foul pole. We had the patio area -- nice.

We even got a visit from Alane's favorite Cleveland Indian, Slider. Unfortunately Alane had wandered off and didn't get to say hello. Or get the obligatory snapshot. (That makes two snapshots we just barely missed over the weekend -- one with the Indians' insufferable mascot, and one with the local network's insufferable weatherman).

Cookie sat at his little patio table and sipped lemonade the whole time, mostly oblivious to the baseball game. I suspect he'd have more interest in the competition if he had a team to follow. But that's hard to do without cable TV so all we get to see are random games from random teams. Even I get bored watching those (I'm usually reading blogs in one window while ESPN3 plays in another).

So it looks like the baseball-fan trait of the Mastandrea gene is going to dead-end at this generation. I'm sure MLB has lots of geniuses explaining to each other why this is good for their sport.

More evidence Da Chimpz have all the wrong cultural reference points: when we were at Andre's last month sitting at the breakfast table eating pancakes, I noticed they were singing Frank Zappa's "St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast (where I stole the margarine)."

Yeah, that's my fault.

Today we bought and configured a new Blu-Ray player. I say configured because getting it onto the network and properly logged into the various services was a bitch and a half. But now that it's done we got our Netflix and our Youtubes and the ability to play all my old video downloads, even the ones in *.mpg format. So we sat around watching cheezy music videos from the 80s.

No wonder their pop-culture awareness is so... wrong.

"Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge, I'm try-ing not to lose my head."

I was sitting in the Ice Room just now, enjoying the ebbing daylight, writing some gibberish notes to myself, when Mojo came in.

"Can I have some of that V8 Splash that's on the counter."

"That's not V8 Splash."

"Can I have some?"

"Uh, yeah. But that's regular V8. Vegetable juice. No fun."

But it looked so berry delicious he wanted it anyway. So I went into the kitchen with him because I had to see this.

"Get yourself a smaller glass," I said, already anticipating what was about to happen.

I poured out some of the red stuff and handed it to him. He took a tiny sip, made a face of intense disgust, then put it down and left.

This won't be the first time Mojo ignores his father's advice and tries something anyway. But what am I gonna do now with this open bottle of V8? If I had vodka I'd make a bloody mary.

Every time I see the "New Mastandrea Model", I think of the Watson Crick model. Just thought I'd mention it.