The Best Jobs For Brett Favre When He Finally Doesn't Play Football Anymore (Number one)

It's a MiniBest!

Back when I had a sports blog (it's this now) I made no bones about the fact that Brett Favre is the best football quarterback ever and should be allowed to play forever, if he wants -- quarterbacking whatever football team he might want to play on, in the far-distant future, leading a team of renegade humans to an improbable Superbowl victory over the Battlin' Skynets, or over a team fielded by the Legion Of Superheroes, if that's what he chooses to do.

I even had a suggestion for the NFL, one they haven't taken me up on yet, but will -- let Brett play for all 32 teams, playing 1/2 for each team through the course of the season. How wouldn't that be a great outcome?

There are those, though, who continue to feel that Brett should not play football and who continue to take sports as seriously, or more seriously than, they take important subjects like politics and religion and the question of why "Quisp" cereal is so expensive. There are those fans who discuss and obsess over the fate of Brett Favre and talk about it apocalyptic terms, fans like "KidNotorious2001," who last year wrote this about Brett's retirement-then-not:

In closing I just want to ask who are the REAL Lemmings and Kool Aide drinkers here? Those of us who have been following the pack before Favre and will follow them after, or the Johnny come lately's who only know of the Favre years? Favre was foolish in leaving us and, to quote a famous Jedi, "Who is more foolish? The Fool or the fool who follows him?"
FOREVER PACK!!

Kudos to KidNotorious2001 for cramming, into one paragraph, a nature movie, a reference to Jonestown, and an Obi-Wan quote. In doing so, KidNotorious2001 reached the pinnacle of human literature -- all future writing efforts will pale in comparison to that one.

I'm not like KidNotorious2001; I love the Brett talk -- if it weren't for Brett, what would sports fans talk about in May and June? Baseball's boring, and there's no other major sporting events going on right now, are there? (I'm not including this, as by "major sporting event" I mean "sports that people care about and which are not fixed.")

But I've also come to realize that there will probably be a time when Brett no longer plays football, and that will mean, too, the end to the speculation about which team Brett might play for and also an end to the comments by a bunch of Johnny-Come-Lately's (shouldn't that be "latelies"?) about how Brett Favre is going to bring a rain of fire and destruction down on the skulls of those who dare to want to watch him, or how he will someday lead us, wearing a jersey from the Vikings (or from the Raiders? Or Red Sox? Or maybe he'd play Hooker for the Wildeklawer Griquas Rugby Union? 'cause I'd like one of their jerseys) lead us to the promised land down the Yellow Brick Road through the Candy Cane Forest... or something. Look, it's tough to make up a religion on the spot.

Yes, that day will come that Brett no longer throws touchdown passes (or, as they're called in Rugby, in case he playes for the Griquas, "touchdown passes, mate") but he'll still need something to do and we Brettarians will still want our Brett Media Fixes, so it's in that spirit...

... and I'm finally getting to my point here...

... in that spirit that I have decided to plan for the future not by saving for retirement or working hard, but by helping Brett Favre find the perfect job for when he no longer wants to play football anymore.

And my first choice for that job?

Researcher at the South Pole UV Monitoring Station!

The NSF UV Polar Monitoring Programs network operates a UV Monitoring station at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Monitoring station -- located at the geographical south pole.

This job would be perfect for Brett. First of all, he's from the South, and loves it in the South. Well, what's South-ier than the South Pole?

Second of all, Brett always does better in cold weather. The average temperature at the South Pole is -49 Celsius, which in real ("American") temperatures is... really cold. (The other day, on Jeopardy, a contestant had to, for Double Jeopardy, calculate a Fahrenheit Temperature from a Celsius temperature. When did Jeopardy start requiring math?)

Thirdly, the season goes from September to March -- which makes it fit almost perfectly with the football season, which ends now in Mid-February. Brett wouldn't have to get used to any new rhythms.

From our perspective, as fans, too, it makes perfect sense. They could hook up a webcam and Brett could give daily reports to us on how the UV is doing down there. (I'm not entirely sure what UV is. I think it's a kind of penguin.) Media types could then obsess, yearly, over whether the South Pole ice is receding, whether it would come back in the winter, whether maybe the ice covering would try to obtain its release so that it could go play for a different continent, and Brett could appear on the cover of Discover magazine, with his own personal column in there just ahead of that article they have, every month, on how some telescope somewhere looked further than ever and found some "proof" of dark matter -- since scientists are still trying to get us to buy into that.

So, Brett, when that day finally comes up and you hang up your cleats and drive your bakkie away from the locker room for the last time, have your agent get in touch with ... um... whoever it is that runs the South Pole. And say "hi" to the Penguins for us!



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The Best Stupid Questions (And The Internet Sites They Lead To.)

This post will appear in my upcoming collection. Up Was Macaroni. Look for it here.


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Whodathunkit?! The 3 Best Things You Want To Know About The 135th (Really? Apparently So!) Kentucky Derby

Did you know there were three sporting events going on this weekend? In addition to the 135th (Really? Apparently so!) Kentucky Derby, there are, I'm told, hockey and basketball playoffs... but only one of those three will in any way capture anyone's interest. As I understand it, even the players are bored by the NBA Playoffs (a/k/a, The Neverending Story II), and I judge that by a snippet of an interview I overheard with Kobe Bryant, in which they asked him whether he watches the playoff games when he's not playing or practicing, and he said no, he usually watches something else.

NBA, if you can't even get the players to pay attention to your games, you're doing something wrong.

And the less said about hockey, the better.

But the Kentucky Derby manages to capture America's attention every year, as news reporters and Matt Lauer mention the Kentucky Derby, and mention some horses that are running in it, and also mention hats and mint juleps. Horses, hats, and mint juleps, plus inexplicable pairings of celebrities, are all anyone really knows about the Kentucky Derby. Well, that and that Tobey Maguire won it riding Seabiscuit, who was played by Seattle Slew in that movie about horse racing.

And seeing the mention of hats and mint juleps on the news this morning, I thought two things to myself. I thought:

1. Why doesn't someone make a hat shaped like a mint julep and in doing so reduce the number of inane news stories by 50%, and

2. There must be something else interesting about the Kentucky Derby, because how could it last 135 (Really? Apparently so!) years unless there's something actually interesting about it.

So I set to with my keen investigative skills and found

The 3 Best Things You Want To Know About The 135th (Really? Apparently So!) Kentucky Derby!


What's wrong with "Home of the Kentucky Derby?" Louisville, where the Kentucky Derby is held, really needs a slogan. If you go to the official Kentucky souvenir store (which you'd do if you wanted to convince people you went to the Kentucky Derby without actually having to go to the Kentucky Derby), you find bumper stickers featuring such thrilling, incentive-building slogans as:

Hmmm. That's your selling point? But the people of Louisville may be slogan-challenged. Their other effort is Louisville: Do Something Original, which seems incongruous given that Louisville this weekend will host the 135th (Really? Apparently so!) running of a horse race -- and aren't all horse races more or less the same?

The adoption of Do Something Original is itself something of an irony, given that there was, for a while, an effort to promote as a slogan and bumper sticker the phrase "Keep Louisville Weird," ... which was a slogan first used by Austin, Texas, and then at least three other cities before Louisville got around to its own Weird Maintenance.

So maybe try: Louisville: Do Something That's Been Done Many Many Times Before?


Here's an event that takes a little longer than the Derby. The Kentucky Derby is over in about a minute or so, if my memory serves me (and by memory I mean I don't really care and have never watched the race itself, so what's the big deal?). That's hardly a good reason to head to Louisville, weird though it might be kept. If you're going to draw people in, you've got to give them more than a minute or so of entertainment. (That's the lesson I learned when my Off Broadway One Man Show, "A Minute Or So Of Entertainment" folded after only two matinees in 1997.)

Louisville is all over that, though. They've got just the hook for you if you're one of those people who insists on watching something that takes longer than a sneeze: The Falls Landing Foundations "100 Years On The Ohio River," a re-enactment of the founding of Louisville. And more. To quote from that site:

To aid our fellow history buffs, we provide "The historical re-enactors' EVENTS DATABASE" for all to post or peruse events. Historical events range from 1492 to the end of the Civil War.

So if you're lucky enough to be in or around Louisville beginning on May 15, 2009 -- just two weeks away, so book now! -- you can watch Louisvillains re-enact the history of Louisville from the year Columbus set sail through 1865.

Bring snacks.

Alas, Poor York, I Knew Him Not At All... No Whodathunkit?! would be complete without giving you, the casual observer/possibly medication-needing reader of this blog information on which famous people are associated with that event, and I won't let you down. While Louisville boasts of such famous favorite sons as Muhammad Ali, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Thomas Edison, and Tom Cruise (who lived there for a bit as a teen), by far the most famous and fascinating person to hail from Louisville is:

York.

York, as everyone knows, was the uni-named slave that Lewis & Clark took with them on their famous expedition to recapture the Fountain of Youth that was secreted inside the Alamo. (I'm a little sketchy on history.) York is probably best known for the eponymous opera -- "York"-- that was written in his honor. I wasn't able to find any songs from the opera, but that website gives you a rundown of the plot... complete with SPOILER ALERTS!

Not to ruin it for you, but apparently, in the third act, Lewis & Clark get into an awesome lightsaber duel, and then later on, all the ghosts of all the characters come on stage and sing while the ghosts of William Clark and York reconcile.

And, yes, one of those two actually happens in that opera. You know which one I'm hoping for.

Also, York was named after his father, so technically, he was York, Jr.


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The ACTUAL Best Invention Since Sliced Bread.

What, exactly, was so great about sliced bread as an invention?

Nothing, that's what. There was nothing great about sliced bread as an invention. Sliced bread was a necessity, for one thing. Back in the 1700s, or whenever bread was invented, it would have (as bread does) come in a loaf. What were people supposed to do with it, just eat it that way? Put a couple of slices of bologna, and mayo (they had mayo in the 1700s, right?) and cheese on an entire loaf of bread, then put a whole 'nother loaf of bread on top of that, and eat it?

Ridiculous. And while most of what happened in history was, in fact, ridiculous (why the powdered wigs? What's the deal with pyramids? Flappers and flagpole sitting? Come on), it's beyond comprehension to think that somebody, somewhere, didn't instantly look at a loaf of bread and say I'd better slice a piece of that off to make it manageable.

So the idea of slicing bread was itself not that big of an innovation. And neither was pre-sliced bread, which is what I suppose most people would think of when they refer to something as being The Best Invention Since Sliced Bread.

They don't say "pre-sliced bread," but it's implied.

Pre-sliced bread is also not that great an invention. Unlike actual great inventions, things that improved upon modern life a great deal or otherwise came up with something truly unique or new (e.g., Cadbury Creme Eggs, the Herman's Hermit's Song "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter":)




Unlike those things, pre-sliced bread was not a major innovation, or even, really, necessary, and in fact, it's kind of unnecessary and wasteful.

Everytime I think of how much trouble must have gone into inventing and maintaining and perfecting a machine that would take a freshly-baked loaf of bread and slice it up and then package it, I think Couldn't the world have done something else with that kind of energy and time and money? Something useful, like maybe finding a way to stop televising hockey or outlawing left turns? Because the act of slicing bread is simply not that hard. Not at all. You take a knife, you lightly slice off one or two or three or however many slices you want, and you go on with your life.

So it's easy to slice bread. Why, then, do we have to have pre-sliced bread, and why is that tiny innovation -- a tiny innovation that's both wasteful and, as I'll get to in a moment, un-American, -- held up as the pinnacle of human achievement, or at least the prior pinnacle of human achievement to which all future inventions must aspire?

Pre-sliced bread is, too, wasteful. Every loaf of pre-sliced bread I've ever seen has the endcaps -- those slices of bread that aren't quite whole slices of bread, and that lots of people don't want because the endcap is 98% crust. If you use that end cap on your bologna-and-mayo-and-cheese sandwich, it will not only mean you get a lot of crust but also that the top slice of bread is going to be a little smaller than the bottom, creating a Nigel Tufnel-esque sandwich inequity.

But what are you supposed to do, create an endcap-only sandwich to match them up? Then you get more crust, plus the endcap is thinner and smaller than the other slices, so you'll have an inferior sandwich experience.

So most people, I imagine, simply do what I am so reluctant to do, and that's throw away the endcap. Imagine. There are, say, 6 billion people in the world*

(*unscientific, made-up-on-the-spot estimate.)

Each of whom eats, on average, we'll say, one loaf of bread per week.*

(* see previous asterisk.)

Now, we can discount Russia from this, because they eat only that black, hard, Russian bread that can't be cut and is also used for ballast in their secret Navy floating just off the coast of Novosibirsk, so we'll reduce the figure to 5.5 billion people. Doing some quick math, that's 5.5 billion loaves of bread per week, or 11 billion endcaps of bread being thrown out per week, which, taken together, would be, in a year, enough bread to build an entirely new planet, which we could put into synchronous orbit around the sun in Earth's orbit, but exactly opposite us, so that the Bread Planet would never catch up to Earth. Then we could take all those people that I don't like (e.g., Ashton Kutcher, Diablo Cody, people who turn left in front of me when I'm in a hurry to get home) and send them to The Bread Planet to live and Twitter and wear trucker caps and write movies that will be overrated and will not hold up to the test of time, and then I would not have a 40-minute commute to go seven miles.

So, using science, you can see ... well, something. I'm not sure what point, or points, I just made, but they were no doubt very cogent.

Pre-sliced bread is also un-American: It stands in the way of freedom, specifically, the "freedom to have whatever thickness of bread I want," and also the "freedom to have different thicknesses of the same bread if that's how I roll."

Pun intended.

When I buy pre-sliced bread, someone, somewhere -- probably a secret cabal, probably including President Obama -- has determined the thickness of the bread I am going to want, or need, or use, and that's that. If I want a thicker, or thinner, slice, well, tough. So I am forced to buy two different kinds of bread if I think Maybe tomorrow I'll want a thicker bread -- like, maybe I'll need thicker bread because instead of bologna, I might put sliced-up corn dogs and macaroni and cheese on it, then microwave the whole shebang, and need some thick bread to hold that all together.

And don't knock the Corn Dog-and-Macaroni sandwich on Texas Toast until you try it. It's delicious!

But thanks to the Obama Bread Cabal, or whoever, I can't just get one loaf of bread and determine how to slice it. Or, I could but I'd have to go to a special store and buy special, more expensive, unsliced bread.

And what kind of world is it where it's more expensive to buy bread that hasn't been sliced? They don't charge more for an unassembled set of bunk beds, you know.

Pre-sliced bread denies me, as an American, my God-given and Constitutionally-guaranteed right to slice my bread however I want it. I get the same width of bread slice that people in Maryland do, for crying out loud.

Anyway, you get the point: sliced bread isn't so great an invention. But, human culture has decided that sliced-bread is the yardstick against which to measure innovation. Just as we rank our inadequacies as a society by comparing them to the moon landing, we judge our successes by how they measure up to sliced bread.

While that's a pretty low hurdle to get over, I still have come up with The ACTUAL Best Invention Since Sliced Bread, and, like all truly great inventions throughout human history, it came to me as a combination of hunger and sloppiness.

In this case, those two qualities were combined into one burger-eating-attempt as Sweetie and I were driving home last night from a visit to Mom, and we stopped to get something to eat. I ordered the "Whopper" at Burger King, even though I knew I'd regret it, and I did regret it.

I got the "Whopper" because I was hungry, and it takes a lot of fast food to knock out hunger. Fast food shrinks on its way to the belly, so a quarter-pound burger in your hand becomes nickel-sized by the time it hits your stomach, so if you don't get a big enough burger starting out, you have to keep on eating french fries to fill up, and the french fries were technically for the twins, so you're a horrible person because you're literally taking food away from your children.

To combat that, I ordered the "Whopper" but I knew that was a mistake because the "Whopper" has all those ingredients on it like lettuce and onions and mayo and such, and they all flop out as you bite it, falling onto your dark blue shirt and squirting onto your face and generally making a mess of things, and that's what happened, exactly, with the added benefit of me dribbling a little soda down my shirt, too, and thanking the powers that be (The Obama Bread Cabal) that "mayonnaise and diet Coke on shirt" is not grounds for divorce in our state.

And that's when The ACTUAL Best Invention Since Sliced Bread came to me, and here it is:

Pouch Bread.

That's the name I've come up for it, anyway. Here's how it works. Instead of slicing bread, we devote all our time and energy, as a species, to developing machines that can take bread, once made, and make it into a sandwich pouch -- like a pita, but not all weird and foreign-y, and made up of good, wholesome white or wheat bread.

The Pouch Bread would have an opening into which a hamburger, mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, what-have-you, could be slid, but all around, say, 90% of the sandwich, would be sealed in, so that no matter what your sandwich is, you can eat it with one hand secure in the knowledge that your ingredients are stuck inside.

Pouch bread wouldn't just be for driving, either -- it would work perfect at home. How often have you tried, as I did last week, to make yourself a deep-fried ham, swiss cheese, and apple sandwich (trust me, it's awesome) and then sat down to eat it, only to have half the ingredients squirt out onto your plate so that you end up eating your sandwich ingredients separately from the bread, with a fork, like some kind of loser?

Too often, I bet, if your life is anything like mine.

But with Pouch Bread (TM), that would never happen. Bite into the open side, and the ingredients skooch back... to be caught by the pouch.

I've even got a mascot for it: Paulie The Kangaroo, a friendly kangaroo who hops around the world, watching kids and grown-ups spill their sandwiches all over important papers and the laptop computers and all, and says, cheerily, "Why try eating a mess? Have a Pouch!" Then he pulls a piece of Pouch bread out of his pocket, hands it to the happy, now-smiling person, and hops off into the sunset while the voice over (James Earl Jones) says "No more sloppy sandwiches. Have a Pouch!"

And here Mom thought I'd never make a positive contribution to society.

In closing, let me just say that (a) you can thank me in $10s and $20s, and (b) here's another Herman's Hermits song to play you out. It's "No Milk Today." I didn't listen to it closely, but if I heard the lyrics correctly, the singer isn't getting milk and that's the end of all his hopes and dreams...





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Chance, love, fate, drownings, packages, movies, music, Las Vegas, brothers, sisters, Madison, snow, fiances, serial killers maybe? Up So Floating Many Bells Down is a novel about a year in the life of a brother and sister as each tries to cope with a drowning and the death of their mother. Heartbreaking and unique: Read it today.

I'll be flying -- and not in that fake Kate-Winslet-Titanic way, either.

I'm going back to SeaWorld, and I'm going in style.

We went to SeaWorld last year on vacation with the kids, and it was excellent -- between patting sting rays and seeing the shark tank and riding the Kraken and the shows, the day flew by too quickly, and I've wanted to go back.

Now, thanks to the Manta, I have an excuse to do just that.

I just found out abotu Manta -- a flying roller coaster that's one of a kind, a flying roller coaster that takes riders through underwater worlds of floor-to-ceiling aquariums filled with seldom-seen fish and rays, sea dragons, schools of fish, octopi, and over 300 Rays -- letting you walk through all that and then rid the Giant Manta Ray ride on steel rails that spin, fall, glide, soar, and race you through, all while lying face down so that you're flying.

And SeaWorld's not just opening that ride, they're giving me a chance to skip to the front of the line, VIP style. They've got a Manta Quiz game that you can take on their site (that link above goes there.) Read through the site and get hints and tips on that site or on the SeaWorld twitter feed (@RealShamu)

Then log in using your own Twitter account and answer 5 Manta questions. Completing all six of the easy activities qualifies you not just as a Manta expert, but also gets you a free "front-of-the-line" pass when you go to ride the Manta.

So now, picture me: Arms outstretched, flying through the Florida sun past aquariums full of exotic pets... and this time, NOT screaming my head off like a terrified two-year-old. I'm sure I'll be braver than I was last year.

The Best Aliens In Books That I'm Hoping Are Real Because It Would Be Cool If They Actually Existed.

Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell last week restated something that's been obvious to anyone who, you know, reads. Speaking at a press conference called by the "Paradigm Research Group," Edgar D. Mitchell -- the sixth man to walk on the moon, and so someone who's in the know -- said this: "We are being visited... It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence."

A spokesman for the Paradigm Research Group (PRG) then didn't threaten the United States government. He made it very clear he was not threatening the government (he said "this is not a threat or anything, you don't threaten the United States government, they're heavily armed ...") but he did say that if the U.S. Government doesn't make public, by the end of May, what it knows about aliens, the PRG will make it "as difficult on them as possible."

Well, I for one am not afraid of even the heavily armed U.S. government, and this is a crusade I've decided to join because I, too, want the government to reveal what it knows about aliens and the fact...

... yes, fact -- go back and see what Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell said...

... that we've been visited by aliens, and I hope that when President Obama (who obviously has not much else to do) does declassify the documents, these aliens will turn out not to be merely figments of the imaginations of some science-fiction writers... So here are

The Best Aliens In Books That I'm Hoping Are Real Because It Would Be Cool If They Actually Existed.

1. Tralfamadorians. (As seen in Slaughter-House 5) The Tralfamadorians are little plunger-shaped aliens with hands where their heads should be and eyes in their hands; when embarrassed, they close their hands over their eyes. They kidnapped Billy Pilgrim and put him in a zoo with a porn star.

Why It'd Be Cool If They Actually Exist: Aliens are always kidnapping people and doing things like dissecting them or raping them and dropping them back outside their trailer in Alabama, or bringing them back to be greeted by Richard Dreyfuss and that one woman. The Tralfamadorians aren't having any of that. They'll just kidnap you and plunk you into your own little life-long porn movie. If you're going to spend the rest of your life on an alien world, do you want it to be with a short guy who hasn't showered in three weeks? Or with Montana Wildhack?

Then Again, Why It Might Not Be So Cool: The Tralfamadorians do put people into a zoo, where they're always on display, and there's large crowds. Suppose they get bored watching you just live your life with your porn-star mate and television with pasted-on picture, and decide to make you fight instead? Or suppose they get confused and bring you Richard Dreyfuss?

Why The Government Probably Won't Reveal That They Exist: President Obama's plans to make the United States a communist paradise require that its citizens stay around and pay up to 150% of their income in taxes. (He's hoping you won't pay attention to the math!) If people start applying to be abducted to Tralfamadorian zoos, the whole deal's shot.


2. Moties: (As seen in The Mote In God's Eye and The Gripping Hand.) These three-armed aliens that live inside a red giant star (or something like that; it's been a while since I read the book) have a distinct class system that is strictly enforced: warriors, workers, and tiny "watchmakers" who can build anything. Their civilization rises and falls repeatedly, as they need to breed to survive, and they refuse (mostly) to consider solutions, dubbing anyone who proposes an answer to the constant collapse of Motie civilization a "Crazy Eddie."

Why It'd Be Cool If They Actually Exist: Those "Watchmakers," tiny Moties that can build and rebuild and improve anything. Give me a few of those any my garage door opener would not only work, but it would probably come down off the ceiling and clean up the bowl of snacks I spilled out there a few weeks ago. Not to mention how helpful they'd be in programming my cell phone.

Then Again, Why It Might Not Be So Cool: Two reasons: Warriors and "Fyunch(click)'s." The Warriors are self-explanatory: They can outfight anything and have learned how to hurl asteroids as weapons of mass destruction. We've got Marines and Navy Seals, and don't need anything to outtough those and make the U.S. a second-tier country. But more worrisome than Warriors are the idea of a "Fyunch(click)." A "Fyunch(click)" is a Motie assigned to exactly parrot a human being: mannerisms, speech, even, probably, the way I sort of rub my neck when I'm thinking.

As someone who is surprised every single time I look in the mirror -- where'd those bags under my eyes come from? Is that really my chin? All of it?-- I have no desire to see myself parroted back at me. I know, deep down inside, that I'm not cool. I'd rather not see a three-armed, furry not-cool version of me sitting around scratching its butt.

Why The Government Probably Won't Reveal That They Exist: What, the government is going to let people know that there's a society that strictly enforces class and caste divisions, a society in which moving from one occupation to another is impossible, a society which is built on a boom-and-bust mentality, constantly throwing itself into crisis in order to take the steps it needs to fix a problem because forcing a solution through desperation is the only way the public will ever act? No way, man.


3. Martians: (As seen in Stranger in A Strange Land.) These "Martians" are more ghosts of Martians past than little red men fighting Santa Claus. Armed with physical and mental abilities beyond anything man has ever known, the Martians are, even as we speak, contemplating humanity's fate -- a fate they will determine.

Why It'd Be Cool If They Actually Exist: Look what they taught Valentine Michael Smith to do: heal his body, levitate things, seduce women with ease... that's what it all comes down to, right? Every advance that science makes, it all boils down to Will It Help Men Get Chicks? (Answer: Probably not.)

Then Again, Why It Might Not Be So Cool: Well, there is the fact that the Martians are contemplating whether or not to destroy our planet, contemplation that if I recall correctly might go on for eons (they're slow moving ghosts of Martians and not quick to rush into anything) but which might, ultimately, end up on Let's just destroy their planet. That, and they're humorless: the one thing that Mike never was taught by the Martians was how to laugh. Humorless and possibly destructive: they're like giant versions of Matthew McConaughey.

Why The Government Probably Won't Reveal That They Exist: When Mike the Martian-trained human came to Earth, he pretty much destroyed all of society just as soon as he learned to walk in our gravity. With the help of a crotchety author and three hot chicks, Mike brought the world-government to its knees, made most inventions obsolete, proved all religions false, and generally threw humanity into turmoil. Since that's pretty much President Obama's agenda (as I understand it from glimpses of Fox News), why would he let someone steal his thunder?

4. Hyper-intelligent Pan-dimensional Beings (as seen in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and its sequels.) These creatures, whose forms in our dimension look a lot like tiny mice riding around in highball glasses, are the ones responsible for building the two most powerful computers in the history of all the dimensions: Deep Thought, whose job it was to come up with the Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything... and then Earth, whose job it was to come up with the question that Deep Thought had answered.

Why It'd Be Cool If They Actually Exist: For one thing, they invented the sport of "Brockian Ultra-Cricket," a game so massively complicated that the rulebook was so heavy that it collapsed into a black hole. Any sport that features people growing extra legs to amuse the crowds, and has as its goal the whacking of other players and then retreating to apologize, is a sport that we could use on TV to fill in the gaps that are otherwise, now, filled in with the NFL draft and the neverending and endlessly boring "NBA Playoffs." For another, mice driving motorized highball glasses are cute.

Then Again, Why It Might Not Be So Cool: On the other hand, if they do exist, that means that we're all just part of a giant computer program, and also it means that Vogons probably exist, which means Vogon poetry exists, and if there's one thing that's worse than Shel Silverstein's poems, it's Vogon poetry. Well, maybe not worse, but the two are tied.

There is, it turns out, a "Vogon Poetry Generator" you can go to. I went there, and got this poem generated for me, personally:

See, see the Smart sky Marvel at its big puce depths. Tell me, Ben do you Wonder why the platypus ignores you? Why its foobly stare makes you feel bleary. I can tell you, it is Worried by your thuyrfrgable facial growth That looks like A cottage cheese. What's more, it knows Your hypotenuse potting shed Smells of frog. Everything under the big Smart sky Asks why, why do you even bother? You only charm old cheeses.

Which I kind of like, actually. And it's also true: My hypotenuse potting shed does smell of frog.

Why The Government Probably Won't Reveal That They Exist: They're already busy covering up the disappearance of the dolphins. They don't need another scandal breaking.

5. Quozl: These rabbit-like aliens that took up residence on Earth in underground burrows started out just wanting a planet to live on, and then conquered Earth the best way possible: through the media.

Why It'd Be Cool If They Actually Exist: They're giant rabbits, with advanced technology. What's not cool about that?

Then Again, Why It Might Not Be So Cool: Well, they do breed like rabbits -- that's why they needed a new planet to live on. And the way they fight is highly stylized -- they have fights in which the goal is to make it appear as though you're going to beat the other guy up, but never actually touch him. After the wrestling, karate, tae kwon do, tae bo, aikido, kung fu, judo, kendo, capoeira, ninjitsu, ju jitsu, "ultimate fighting," "mixed martial arts" and other similar crazes, do we really need another fake form of fighting designed to make middle-aged guys feel good about themselves while spending two nights per week at a strip-mall storefront wearing a bathrobe?

Why The Government Probably Won't Reveal That They Exist: Actually, they probably will, eventually. Whenever things start to look bleak, President Obama hauls out something cute for the media. Need another $150 bazillion dollars for the bailout? Let's see his daughters head off to school with Hello Kitty Backpacks. About to send mixed messages on whether the US will torture or not? Hello, Bo, the Portuguese Water Puppy. So when those jobless numbers come out at the end of May, expect to see a couple of Quozl showing up on the view.

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Children tormented by demons. An old man accidentally killing people. Witches who live hundreds of years and escape from Hell repeatedly. An astronaut drifting through space... these and other great stories can be found only on AfterDark: The scariest things, you CAN'T imagine.

Welcome another TBOE Reader!

Guess who else -- besides you-- is reading The Best of Everything? Dan Patrick and his crew.

Driving into work this morning, I was listening to Dan and his guys talk sports. They began discussing which NFL teams would be good, or bad, to play for, and one of the guys said "We're actually in a time when people are wishing they could get traded to the Atlanta Falcons."

To which another guy said, and I quote: Whodathunkit?

We all know who coined and popularized the term Whodathunkit?! Right?

Me. I did. Keep up with me here.

So welcome, Dan Patrick and his crew of guys on the radio, to the ranks of my readers.

Who else is reading TBOE? (besides you?)

Among others: Mark Harris, Stephen Colbert and dolphins.

Butter must be charming; margarine more so. (It's The TBOE Roundup!)

It's Sunday morning, and I'm spending it, I imagine, doing what almost everybody does with their Sunday mornings: Musing about poetry, writing about sociopathic guys being hunted by other sociopathic guys, and provoking violent physical reactions in people simply by mentioning breakfast food.

Let me hasten to add that I'm not using "sociopathic" in that paragraph in any sort of clinical sense. I mean it in the same sense that everyone uses words like that: the "I'm going to use a big word and hope my readers think I'm intellectual and junk" sense.

In other "intellectual and junk" updates, it's time for some more of my favorite comments, including another one that was left on my old "Best of" Blog, the one I no longer post to. Reading "The Best Book I Think Of When I Think Of The Words 'The Best Book,' " Dorie LaRue writes:

I connected with everything you wrote, except I've always loathed The Great Gatsby, and me, an English teacher. Personally I would not want to hang out with any of those people in the novel. I know I was supposed to see their superficiality as entertaining, but why read that if you gots Flannery o'Connor, if you gots Ralph Ellison, gots Thomas Mann, gots Updike, Paul Theroux, Edna O'Brien.

Especially do I agree for your reasons that people don't read, and add one more: digital natives expect instant entertainment...I read aloud to my college class The Overcoat because I knew they wouldn't read it left to their own devices. To make them interested you have to read it aloud stopping ever so often to point out stuff...

Dorie, it's always nice to preach to the choir. And I've even read one of those authors you mentioned: Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast, a fascinating, great book that I'd forgotten about until I read your comment and now wish I had around to go page through. I'd have rather read that twice than anything by Chaucer.

Chaucer could have used some guidance from reader Le Yo, who followed up on the competing nominations for Best Fake Musical by noting this:

"All novels have one of two plots: someone goes on a trip or a stranger comes to town."-- John Gardner.

Which prompted me to run through every novel I could think of (and some comic books) and see if that was true. (It's certainly true about this one, which uses both of those plots...) So the ultimate novel, I think, would be one in which an assistant manager at an aquarium has to get out of town because of the arrival of a mysterious stranger. Look for that soon in bookstores. (Right after I publish "John Tyler: Space President.")

And speaking of Chaucer, Scott Dunlop, of Husbands Anonymous, paused from linking Dr. Seuss to violent crimes to be poetically repulsed by not one, but two of my posts.

First, Scott wrote this about my dreams of getting rich through butter sculpting:

Let's be honest, that didn't look much like Elvis. Very poor sculpting indeed. Surely it goes rancid? a ton of rancid butter must be charming- rancid butter elvis...

A comment which stands alone for its lucid criticism of the shortcomings of butter sculpting, and because it contains almost-a-haiku:

A ton of rancid
butter must be charming -
rancid butter elvis.

Scott wasn't done there, though: He hated the idea of The Best New Food:

What is it about your posts that have the ability to provoke physical response:
This time, I threw up a little in my mouth.

At least he wasn't reading the one about Nick Lachey. I won't stand for any Lachey-bashing here.

Scott's credentials as a foodie might be lacking, though, because while he wasn't impressed by toaster-sausage-puffs, he does dream of Sherbert-Flavored Rasputin sucker, so we both love Communist Candy:

It's a gift- to be able to represent a frog wearing a crown in sillhouette only. I am enthralled. Also hoping for the day they make other sweet figures- you could cut the head off gi joe and replace it with those... Put him in a glass box, enbalmed.
Why stop at dictators? Why not Florence Nightingale, or a Rasputin one, filled with sherbert, that foams at the mouth.
Interesting. You have made me think needless thoughts once more. Thank you.

Scott would also probably have words to say to Lisa Pepin -- writer of Lost In Provence, reviewer of bottled water -- who liked the idea of Toaster Strudels:

Holy crap. Is it wrong that I really, really want one of these?

To which I say: NO, it's not wrong, regardless of what Scott says. It's very right. What's wrong is Scott's sushi pizza.

I'm way way ahead of the curve. Always.

Let's play some Footvolley! You're up on this, right? "Footvolley" is the new Pepsi Football online game that lets you play this combination of football (soccer) and beach volleyball -- and play as your favorite footballers, players like Torres, Messi, Fabregas, and more.

It can be played at www.pepsifootball.com/game, and it's a blast -- you get to be an international football star, computer animated, of course, and use your special moves to win the game, and then do your personalized victory celebrations. And it's the first game ever based on Footvolley, a sport that's drawing bigger and bigger crowds worlwide.

Go to the site and sign up now -- get on the leaderboard and show the world what you can do as a Virtual Footvolley player. You'll never beat me, of course -- but maybe you'll finish second and bask in my glow.

The Best Books Written By Felons (Guest Post!)

Sorry! This post was removed at the request of the original nominator. But if you're looking for something to read, why not check out these books available from The Trouble With Roy Press?

(Click here to go to the Lulu Website and see previews.)

Just Exactly How Life Looks (book) Print: $11.18 In Just Exactly How Life Looks you'll be introduced to unforgettable people living remarkable lives. Cowboys wander in a timeless desert. Scientists meet in secret to plot a new way to get attention, and money, from people. A man and his would-be lover try to find lions on safari, and more. The people and places in this book spring to life fully-formed and full of anxiety and imagination. They worry about the time they have had and the time they have left. They bury their loved ones and look for new friends. They talk and laugh and hope and cry and die, while their friends and family and enemies and Gods watch them, seeing, in their faces and actions and fears, a portrait of just exactly how life looks.

Eclipse (book) Print: $11.50 Download: $1.49 Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars... and maybe he was. In a stunning psychological horror work, "Eclipse" unfolds slowly, beginning with Claudius drifting through space after something has gone wrong with his mission. As he stares at the only thing he can see, a tiny rock off in space, he mulls the events that led him here, reflecting on his childhood and the mission-turned-into-murder. Or did things go bad? As "Eclipse" unfolds, the reader is treated to a twisting, constantly changing landscape created by Claudius' own mind, as version after version of what-might-have-happened pile on. One thing is clear, though: Something has gone wrong, and Claudius may never reach the stars. Or will he?

Do Pizza Samples Really Exist? Print: $10.06 Download: $1.49 Why will paying attention to Paris Hilton destroy the universe? How can one number be better than the other? Are saber teeth really necessary for a good movie monster? Would Hollywood as we know it exist if not for Jennifer Aniston's hair? These questions and more are asked, and answered, in the only book that dares to explain how jellybeans are related to the apocalpyse. Essays on pop culture, things that are The Best, and life show a provocative, and hilarious, way of looking at the world.

Thinking The Lions, and 117* Other Ways To Look At Life (Give Or Take)T Print: $12.98 Life, only funnier: Here's the book you've been waiting for, assuming you've been waiting for a book about a guy who spends his time trying to prove velociraptors didn't exist, who teaches his kids to gamble and helps them with their homework by wondering what would happen if you cut a superhero in half, whose own wife said he would get a crocodile for a babysitter, who finds squid chili romantic, and who generally makes the most -- or the least? - -of his life.

The 10 Best Movie Villains, According To The Boy (And Some "Man Walks Into A Bar" Jokes.)

The Boy and Middle were stuck babysitting the twins last night while I helped Sweetie grocery shop ("help" in this case = "ask her if she thinks I can keep the paper towels balanced on top of the cart all the way through the store.")(Answer: no.) And The Boy used his time wisely -- not watching the Twins (who threw a can of Lysol into the toilet) and not doing his homework, but instead, creating a list of the The 10 Best Movie Villains, which he then said I should post on my blog.

But he didn't give me reasons why they were the 10 Best, and when I said he should, he said he didn't have time to. (That ESPN isn't going to watch itself, I know.) So, sans reasons, I've decided to fill in the gaps by posting, with each, one of my favorite "Man Walks Into A Bar Joke."

In order, from 10-1, here they are:

10. The Terminator (movie: The Terminator).

A drunk goes into a bar. The bartender tosses him out as he is too drunk. The drunk walks back into the bar. Again, the bartender throws him out for being too drunk. Again the drunk walks into the bar. The bartender is just about the throw him out when the drunk looks at him and says, "How many bars do you own, anyway?"




9. Michael Myers (movie: Halloween).

A guy walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Do you want to play a game? See those two rib-eyes nailed to the ceiling? You get to throw one dart. If you hit one, you get to take them home and I'll give you a free drink." The man says, "No thanks, the steaks are too high."







8. Agent Smith (movie: The Matrix)

Charles Dickens walks into a bar and orders a martini. The bartender asks, "Olive or twist?







7. Saruman (movies: The Lord of the Rings trilogy)

A horse walks into a bar, across the room, up the back wall, across the ceiling, down the front wall and then up to the bar. The bartender gives the horse a beer, he drinks it and leaves. A guy sitting at the bar looks perplexed and asks the bartender "Hey, what's that all about?" The bartender replies, "Don't take it personally, he never says 'Hi' to anyone."





6. Jack Torrance (movie: The Shining)

An amnesiac comes into a bar. He asks, "Do I come here often?"










5. Hannibal Lector (movie: The Silence of the Lambs)

A man walks into a bar and says, "Give me a beer before problems start!" Again, the man orders a beer again saying, "Give me a beer before problems start!" The bartender looks confused. This goes on for a while, and after the fifth beer the bartender is totally confused and asks the man, "When are you going to pay for these beers?" The man answers, "Ah, now the problems start!"






4. Anton Chigurh (movie: No Country For Old Men)

A piece of rope walks into a bar and the bartender says, "We don't serve your kind." The rope goes outside, ties himself in a knot and frays one end of himself. He walks back into the bar and the bartender says, "Weren't you just in here?" The rope replies, "No, I'm a frayed knot."



3. Syndrome (movie: The Incredibles)

A man runs into a bar and asks the barkeep, "Give me ten shots of your best whisky." The bartender sets up the ten glasses. The man starts drinking them as quickly as the bartender serves them. The bartender asks, "Why are you drinking so fast?" "You'd drink fast too, if you had what I have." The bartender asks, "What do you have?" "Seventy cents."



2. The Joker (movie: The Dark Knight)

A neutron walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender sets the beer down and says, "For you, no charge!"








and the The Boy's Number One Movie Villain of all time -- and the villain The Boy forgot about until Middle reminded him (shame on him!):

1. Darth Vader. (movies: Star Wars series).

A kangaroo walks into a bar. He orders a beer. The bartender says, "That'll be $10. You know, I've never had a kangaroo come in here before. The kangaroo says, "At $10 a beer, I won't be back."



Got a nomination? Think something's The Best? Send it to me at "thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com" I'll post any of them, and if I like it a lot, I'll send you a t-shirt!

Related: Longtime readers know that the "Man Walks Into A Bar Joke" is The Best Kind of Joke...

But if you like Knock-knock jokes, you'll want to see The TBOE Players perform "The Best Knock-Knock Joke.


Click here to see all the Whodathunkits?!!

Click here to see all the other SemiDaily Lists!

Click here to see all the MiniBests!

Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!