Category: General Musings

By:

The Dude on the Right
Here I am, some probably 25,000 to 32,000 feet up in the air, in a tube being
held up by a whole bunch of stuff I learned in college (something about airfoils
and jet propulsion), on my way to Houston for my favorite niece’s birthday. I
just got done watching last Monday’s episode of “Heroes” titled “Godsend,”
thanks to iTunes. Since I screwed up my TiVo Season Pass (how the hell did “Two
and a Half Men” get ahead of “Heroes”?) I was able to give Apple and NBC a
couple of bucks by downloading the episode yesterday as part of my pre-trip
planning. I also typed a couple of movie previews, and since I’m just killing a
little more time because someone already did the crossword puzzle in the
American Way magazine, I figured I would type this blog, which if things go as
planned, I can post tonight. Obviously, if you are reading this, things went as
planned.

Weird how things sometime turn out when you are flying, though, because at
first there was no one sitting in the seat in front of me, then these two girls
seat-jumped (worrying me that the one now in front would put her seat back), and
then the dude who actually was assigned that seat showed up. He nicely let her
stay in his seat, instead taking the aisle. He then proceeded to slur his words
a bit (by his own admission he was at the airport bar and almost missed the
flight), explaining to her that country music in San Antonio is a lot different
than country music in Chicago, and she nicely dealt with conversation. As my
luck would have it, the dudette decided to spend the flight staring out the
window, with her seat in the upright position, while drunk dude proceeded to put
his seat as far back as possible, and probably drool a little while he napped.
Two empty seats next to me, someone in front who didn’t put their seat back, and
a nice take off and safe landing. That’s about all I ask for in a plane flight.

Anyway, I should probably start to wrap-up this quick little blog entry,
which is really just a test of seeing if I have my laptop set-up to remotely get
my blog updated, thanks to the free internet access at the hotel I am staying.
Sadly it doesn’t look like internet access on the airlines will be happening
soon, but then again, maybe it’s a good thing because the people in back of you
could peak through the seat and see that you are looking at internet porn. Which
does lead me to an interesting dilemma because since I watched “Heroes” on the
way down to Houston, I brought a couple of DVD’s to watch on the trip back to
The Windy City, one being “Thank You for Smoking” and the other being “Artie
Lange’s Beer League.” The dilemma part: They both are rated “R” and they both
contain nudity. Hopefully on the flight back there won’t be anyone sitting
behind me to wonder what kind of pervert watches that kind of stuff on a plane,
or maybe, better yet, a hot dudette will be sitting behind me, moving to the
seat next to me because she is interested in the kind of pervert that would
watch that kind of stuff on a plane. But that’s a story for a later blog.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Here in the Chicago area it’s been a very mild winter, with one snow storm at
the beginning of December and then pretty much nothing for almost a month and a
half.  Hell, the weather has been warm enough that a lot of folks were able
to go golfing here in  January, although getting a tan didn’t seem to be an
option.  But once again a storm seems to be upon us, although the weather
folks still can’t seem to pin exactly what is going to happen.  My Weather
Channel forecast seems to be saying I will be getting two, maybe three inches of
snow between now and Noon tomorrow, the local dudes seem to have me in a swath
that will get between five to seven inches of snow, and I’m not sure what the
Farmer’s Almanac says for me since I haven’t actually read one since I was about
seventeen and my dad bought it.

With that, there’s a part of me that likes the
fact that even with all of our technology, even with all of our computer models,
even with all of our experts, the weather still gives us uncertainty.

It makes
me sort of remember when I was a kid growing up in Ohio.  As a kid, and
because there wasn’t cable TV yet, all we had was

Dick Goddard to tell us what was going to happen.  Sure, there were
probably some other dudes on some other channels, but Mr. Goddard always gave a
breath of honesty to a weather forecast:  That as much as he could look at
the way things were taking shape, Mother Nature has a mind of her own, and he
had no way of totally reading her mind.  He also had the power of the

Woolly Bear, a strange caterpillar that Vermillion, OH, has adopted as its
own.  Anyway, as a youngin’, we would hear about snow coming, but thanks to
Mr. Goddard, there was always an uncertainty about how much snow was actually
going to make it.  That led to one thing, and one thing only – going to bed
knowing most likely we were going to have to go to school, but there was always
that chance, that Mother Nature decided it would be better for us to stay home,
build snowmen and snow forts, have snowball fights, make our parents drive us
through the snow-covered streets to the great hill in Amherst, and thanks to
Mother Nature, and not Dick Goddard, we got a snow day.

The fun thing to hear,
a year or two ago when I was visiting my parents in Ohio, was that Mr. Goddard
still knows that Mother Nature has her own mind, even as far as the computer
modeling, the forecasting, the satelliting, have come in all of these years. 
There he was, in front of the weather map, telling everyone in his viewing area
that in the next twelve to twenty-four hours he couldn’t tell them how much snow
was coming.  There was a chance of anything from less than an inch to
almost a foot of snow, depending on how the cold front moved, and in my head, I
knew that he knew that Mother Nature still has her own thing in mind, even
though I wouldn’t go to bed dreaming of a snow day.

And so, with the winter
weather that is supposed to come tonight, I wait again to see what Mother Nature
has in mind for my Monday.  It’s not nearly as exciting as when I was a
kid, because there is nothing like a snow day when you are ten year’s old and
you can build a snow fort, but I would like to know if I can sleep in tomorrow,
maybe pretend I was ten again and build a snow fort, or if I’m going to have to
head out, in a measly inch or two of snow, and do some business consulting. 
As I do every time I hear a snowstorm might be coming, since I was like five
years old, I pray Mother Nature wants me to make a snow fort.  And that
Dick Goddard (or now, in Chicago, it’s Tom Skilling) just can’t read Mom
Nature’s mind.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Maybe I should just listen to the couple of commercials
Howard Stern has on
Sirius, because while flipping through my local Chicago radio dial for a couple
of minutes this morning I started yelling at the radio in my car.  A
way-overpaid radio dude (at least in my mind), and a reporter, were talking
about things at the
CES (that’s
the Consumer Electronics Show for everyone).  They had the audacity to
question who would want a

103" plasma screen TV, complained about the cost of LG’s dual-format DVD
player (you don’t buy it now, you wait a few years while the price keeps halving
itself), and then, couldn’t figure out who would spend $600 on the coolest phone
to come around in years.  That’s
the iphone, of
course.

I’m just bummed the iPhone won’t be available until June, and the fact
that I can’t get a lame, morning, radio show and make over a million bucks a
year.

Thanks for listening and your comments.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
On my

MySpace page blog I listed a few of my goals for the New Year.  Along
with a Chicago Bear’s Super Bowl win was my winning the
Mega Millions jackpot
when it was over $100 Million.  But now that the jackpot is over $100
Million, I have created a new dilemma for myself, especially with my big win
with yesterday’s jackpot, a $10 win that gives me the cash for buying new
tickets for Tuesday’s drawing.

You might ask, "What kind of dilemma is there
when buying lotto tickets?" but because I’m nuts, well, here goes.

Many, many
years ago, when I finally had some of my own income and would buy a few lotto
tickets when the jackpot got into that "What the hell would I do with fifty
million dollars?" range, rather than, in my head, bask in the glory of being
able to imagine the great new house, a cool car, not working for the man, well,
my thoughts turned to my family.  Not so much mom and dad, other than
figuring I would have to pay to get their phone number changed and maybe buy
them some cool stuff, but rather the thoughts turned to my brother and sister. 
If they were in a financial bind would they come to me for help?  Hell, if
they weren’t in a financial bind, would they come to me expecting a hand-out? 
And even if I gave them something, what would stop them from coming back to me
later, looking for more?

And so I developed a "buying lottery ticket’s" plan.

If the jackpot was small I would buy a quick-pick ticket or two.  If I won
– great!  But if the jackpot was larger I would buy five tickets, all with
the same numbers, based on my family.  My thinking was this:  I buy
five tickets, all with the same numbers, and they come in.  I give my
brother one ticket in exchange for a dollar and I give my sister one ticket in
exchange for a dollar.  I keep the other three tickets, with the agreement
between us being that I will take care of any need’s mom and dad might have
(since I have the other two tickets), and if any of us are fiscally
irresponsible with our winnings, in the future, well, we can’t go to any sibling
looking for a hand-out.  We would all be on our own with what where my
winnings and now part of those are theirs.  So say the jackpot was $100
million and my five tickets were the only winners?  That leaves my brother
and sister with $20 million each, and me with a nice $60 million dollars. 
(On a side note, imagine if there were six winning tickets, and I have five of
them – that other person first finds out that they won and thinks they have $100
million, then they find out that there are six winning tickets and they are
still happy because they at least won over $16 million bucks, then they find out
that I have $83ish million dollars worth of tickets to their $16ish million. 
Would they be mad at me?  I’m sorry I digressed.  Back to dilemma-ing.)

But this morning I came up with my new, "buying lotto ticket’s" dilemma.

I
have a favorite nephew, and I have a favorite niece.  In fact, right now,
they are my only nephew and my only niece.  And I wondered, in the shower
this morning, if I should now include them in my lotto ticket buy?  My
nephew is in college, so he is supposed to be an adult, and my niece will be 16
in a few weeks, making her an adult in at least a country or two in the world. 
Does this now mean they deserve their own tickets?  And really, can I trust
my sister to make sure they are taken care of, or would my fear of them coming
to Uncle Dude, looking for money in the future, become a new reality?

But then
the financial reality of including them in my ticket buy came in.

Let’s see: 
Instead of five tickets I buy seven.  The jackpot is still $100 million
bucks and I have the only winning tickets.  Instead of being worth $20
million each, now each ticket is worth about $14.3 million.  That means my
brother, sister, niece, and nephew find themselves with $14.3 million apiece,
not a bad chunk of change for them thanks to my good fortune.  Meanwhile my
jackpot diminished from $60 million bucks to take care of myself, my mom, and my
dad, to a paltry $42.9 million.

So I have to decide if my favorite niece and
favorite nephew are worth a little over $17 million bucks to me, or should I
count on their mother to make sure they are taken care with her winnings?

Then
it occurred to me that instead of five tickets with the same numbers, well, I
could up that to ten.  With that same $100 million jackpot each ticket
would be worth $10 million.  I’d give one ticket to my brother, one to my
sister, one to my favorite niece, and one to my favorite nephew, leaving me with
six tickets, and I’m back at $60 million buckaroos!  Now my brother and
sister are pissed because their winnings went from $20 million to $10 million
(and especially my brother since my niece and nephew aren’t his kids), my niece
and nephew are pissed because if I weren’t so greedy about the $60 million
they’d each have another $4.3 million, and if there happened to be another
person with a winning ticket, that poor bastard goes from winning $100 million
to less than $10 million, all because I wanted to stake my claim at that $60
million dollar mark.

See, I told you I was nuts!

I’ve got a $10 winning Mega
Millions ticket and now I don’t know how to spend it.  I could buy ten Mega
Millions tickets all with the same numbers with the potential to piss off a lot
of people; I could buy seven Mega Millions tickets all with the same number and
maybe lose $17 million bucks for me; I could stick with my "buying five tickets"
plan and hope my sister takes care of her kids; Or I could, oh hell, maybe I
should just buy two "Quarter Pounder With Cheese Meals" and be happy for an
hour, until I realize that it  means I will probably also lose a bet with
my sister.

You see, I’m nuts, and also with dilemmas!

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Do you make resolutions or goals for the New Year?  I make goals, with one
being to get organized (again), yet I’m having issues with my old Palm Pilot,
calendar programs, and to-do lists.  This simple goal is becoming more
complicated than I planned.  I also made a goal to get postings more
consistent here at Entertainment Ave!, starting with a redesign of the review
pages (give me your opinions, if you will, if you like the page design of

"Rocky Balboa" vs.

"Dreamgirls" vs. our old design at

"The Pursuit of Happyness," and our new concert review design for an old

Bob Seger review).  We also hope to have a new feature, sort of, in the
next couple of weeks.

I’m also happy because I found a place to relive my love
for "Calvin &
Hobbes" (use the "Tools" link to add the RSS feed to your favorite reader),
wonder if it really matters that
Barack Obama tried
cocaine when he was younger in his maybe bid for the Presidency (maybe he could
use my slogan when I run for Governor of Illinois in a few years), and am
rethinking my goal to lose weight since wearing a

mansiere might also save my life.

Thanks for listening and your comments.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
In the immortal words of Nanga Eboko, exchange student from Cameroon, "Merry New
Year!!!!!!"  Sure, it’s a few days early, but I doubt I’ll be doing a blog
on New Year’s Eve night, even though I really don’t have anything planned
except, thanks to the NFL, watching the Chicago Bears play the Green Bay Packers
in what a lot of people say might be
Brett
Favre’s last game.  Thankfully our local radio station pops a little
delay on the broadcast and it synchs with the cable TV broadcast so rather than
hear John Madden wax poetic during the entire broadcast that this might be Brett
Favre’s last game, I’ll get to yell "Ball" with

Tom Thayer of the WBBM broadcast team (along with Jeff Joniak) every time
there is a fumble.

But yelling "Ball" at the TV screen is the least of my
worries, right now, because I think I am suffering from reality TV withdrawal. 
My main symptom of my malady – multiple dreams in one night of me in reality TV
shows.  The scarier part?  They weren’t even real TV shows.

In my
first dream last night I found myself in a sort of "military boot camp" reality
TV show.  I was in a big room, with a lot of people I didn’t know, and all
of us were dreading the "training" we were going to have to endure.  I
wanted to quit before the filming even got started, but as dreams sometimes take
a life of their own, all of a sudden this one turned into something about one of
the dudes swinging the driver from his golf bag around, as we all started
ducking for cover, and me wishing I had brought my golf clubs so I would have a
weapon, only I kept knocking over other golf bags before realizing I did bring
my clubs, but I woke up before I could pull out my driver and join in the fight.

So I woke up, drained the main vein, and headed back to sleep wondering "What
the hell was that?"  And no sooner do I remember that than I kicked into a
dream even more all over the place.

It started at a basketball court, where
the players seemed to be committing a lot of hard fouls (this might have been
spurred by the news coverage of the Chicago Bulls’ player that got hurt the
night before), one that even took Joakim Noah (although he wasn’t in a Florida
Gator’s uniform) to the floor where he broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder
and kept rolling around and screaming while his arm flopped around like a fish
out of water and it took most of his teammates to get him to stay still so as
not to hurt himself any more than he already was.  At this time me and my
buddy (even though I didn’t know who he was) were on the court watching this
happen when a security guard escorted us outside, where we kept insisting to let
us watch the rest of the game and that we wouldn’t go on the court, but he kept
saying we were needed for something outside.

So there we were, and then a big
group began to congregate, complete with buddies I knew, namely The Dude on the
Left, Aquaman, and Big Cooter, and they wouldn’t stop talking amongst
themselves.  We found ourselves being separated into two football teams,
only I didn’t hear my name called the first time and had to run through the
crowd when our jerseys were being handed out, in total fear I was going to be
yelled at by our coach for not hearing my name the first time.  But joining
with my team proved just as daunting as my friends wouldn’t shut up and I feared
us getting yelled at (I suppose that sort of reminds me of a night class I had
in college when T.P.’s friend decided to join us for class), and with their
talking I couldn’t hear what our "coach" was saying.

But that didn’t fluster
me as much as trying to put on my jersey.  For whatever reason there were
pads on the inside of the jersey, and it was a couple of sizes too small, so I
kept trying to stretch one arm open a little more to get one arm in…

And
then, wouldn’t you know, my phone rings, waking me up as I struggled to get my
jersey on, AND IT WAS THE WRONG FREAKIN’ NUMBER!

So now I won’t really know
why I was supposed to be in a "military boot camp" nor a "weird football game"
reality show.  But what really bummed me out the most, after I woke up, was
that I wasn’t able to flip the switch while I was dreaming, to realize I was
dreaming, and take control of the dream.  That is the coolest thing about
my dreaming when I can make it happen.

So on this eve of the eve of New Year’s
Eve, for Joakim Noah’s sake, I hope my dreams aren’t premonitions.

And if my
dreams are premonitions, all I ask if for one of them to give me the winning
numbers for the lottery.  Is that too much to ask for the New Year?

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
The Godfather of Soul James Brown died, President Gerald Ford died, but who will
be #3, because deaths come in three’s, right?  My guess is Saddam Hussein. 
Anyway, thanks to the grand opening of the
House of Blues in Chicago I have a James Brown story for this podcast, and it
goes along with the picture posted here.  Staff member, The Mystery Dude,
also reviewed that show we saw back in

November of 1996.

But this podcast isn’t only about death, it’s also about
things like why I will never buy a Kia vehicle, a rant about the NFL and their
network, and my debating whether or not to invite any of my friends to see my
Christmas display, mostly out of fear of ridicule about my window treatments.

But the most important thing about this podcast might be that I found the best
version of "O
Holy Night," ever, thanks to one of the bulletin boards that I read. 

I hope you are having an okay holiday season whatever you are celebrating, or
might not be celebrating.  If I get the gumption I might do another podcast
before the end of the year, but if not, good luck with picking your resolutions
that you will probably break during the first couple of weeks of the new year.

Thanks for
listening.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!