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Friday Fun Facts – World Pinball Championship Edition
My Father brought to my attention last weekend that the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) World Championship recently took place in the humble agrarian town of Cokato, Minnesota. He suggested that I Blog about it, and since he wears the Daddy Pants, I decided it would probably be a good idea. I figured it would be a bunch of obese, sweaty, forty-somethings in a garage littered with empty cans of Mountain Dew and KFC Double Down wrappers, but there was a pretty wide range of ages and nationalities involved, with 13 countries and 64 players represented. And it was in a barn, not a garage. Why they would host this event in Cokato, I do not know.
Let’s meet some of the participants, shall we?
-Brothers Josh and Zach Sharpe of Illinois. The self described “Venus and Serena” of pinball, they are ranked number 4 and 5 in the world, respectively. Does this make Louis and I the Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon of Blogging? It’s quite possible that we may never know.
-Bowen Kerins of Boston, who was attempting to three-peat this year. For some reason the IFPA has not updated their site to tell who won yet, and I am NOT going out of my way to find it. But I’m sure he traveled for a long time in his cah while eating a lot of gahlic and thinking about Fenway Pahk. (I love Boston accents.)
-Josh Henderson of Illinois, age 12, was the youngest pin-baller to compete.
-Some guy from Japan.
-Bob Matthews of Thousand Oaks, California, 55 years young, was the oldest silver-baller in the tournament.
-Oh, I found the champion. Daniele Celestino Acciari of Italy defeated Michigan-ian(?) Andy Rosa in the finals. Acciari was awarded $1,000 and a new pinball machine. So after traveling all the way here, and now burdened with shipping a brand new pinball machine all the way to Italy, I’m pretty sure he lost money on this whole deal.
-Jorian Engelbrektsson, 28, of Sweden, who is ranked #1 in the world, came in at a paltry 5th place. The Swedish never have been known to crank up the intensity when the cheese is on the table.
-One of the articles I read informed me that pinball used to be illegal in major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York up until the ’70’s because of its use a gambling device. I did not know that.
Well, today’s Blong is an old school cut. I don’t know why I thought of this, but it is a good one. K’s Choice – Not an Addict. I seem to remember this song wafting out of my Big Sister B’s room when I was young. Good stuff.
Target Field, Yet Again
Short one today. I’ll be back with Friday fun facts tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 26, 5:03pm.
-I have to leave class to move the car from the parking lot. (see yesterday’s post) I am cruising at a casual pace to a parking lot far, far away from Target Field. I notice a man in a Twins jersey crossing the street some distance in front of me. As I approach, he actually slows down in order to get in my way. He proceeds to give me a prolonged stink-eye as I pass, signaling his importance. These people walk among us.
-I arrive at a parking lot that I believed to be outside the Sphere of Influence of Target Field, only to happen upon a Mauer-jersey wearing two-some fiendishly floundering over each other’s bathing suit areas. So naturally I parked right next to them just to see what would happen. I proceeded to stay in the car and write in my notebook for a while. Did this stop them? Of course not. The DNR should now be informed that the lands within at least a one mile radius of the new stadium have become a veritable spawning ground for these cute little critters. If this season proves to be as fruitful as the early happenings suggest, I can’t even begin to imagine the pain ahead as we will all have to deal with not only regular fans, but bloated, angry preggos fighting for position to be the first to give birth at Target Field. Serenity now!
Here’s a Blong (Blog Song) from Kanye West. It’s kind of catchy I guess, but listen to the words. Is he trying to make us feel sorry for him because he has multiple homes, sports cars, and only flies first class?
Target Field, Continued….
As a companion piece to yesterday’s Blog, here is a letter I wrote, but never sent, to the proprietor of the parking lot I use in Minneapolis. You see, in order to maximize their earning power by exploiting the Twins stadium, they don’t let their regular renters park in the lot during games unless they pay an extra 20$. And they also recently raised the monthly rates for parking there. I have no problem with them wanting to take in more scratch, but raising rent while reducing parking privileges really chaps my ass. I never gave them this because I’m pretty sure it makes me sound like a pretentious dick.
Dear Eunice (names have been altered):
Are you guys eating paint over there? I recently received your notice about the charges that will be incurred during Twins games here at Union Plaza (that name was not altered). I am somewhat troubled however, that you have the valor to charge your paying customers for parking in your lot during games. As an observant patron of your parking lot, I couldn’t help but notice that rates were raised in recent months. I also couldn’t help but realize that with the new stadium in your backyard, your revenue stream will be increasing substantially. So I must ask–why would you charge your clients more money for a declined service? Whoever’s idea this was honestly deserves to have Kevin Federline fart in their dinner every night for no less than two weeks. If monthly rent were to decrease due to the inconvenience that these new stipulations have induced upon us, I would understand. But I must insist, nay, DEMAND that either the faithful patrons either be granted the right to park there during times in which the local baseball franchise is playing, or the rent should be lowered. After all, I have noticed that by the time I vacate the lot, usually around 7-9pm, I am often one of very few cars left. I haven’t taken any of my time to actually count how many spots there are, but I am under the impression that these few motor vehicles would not do much damage to your monetary intake. You are, after all, charging 20$ per vehicle, which adds up to a nice little haul. This deft maneuver on your part strikes me as something vaguely akin to the recent signing of Greyson Chance by Interscope Records. A company so desperate for a cash grab that at the first promise of profit they jump on it much in the same way a famished mongoose would ravage the nearest serpent. What happens when baseball season is over? Are we to forget how we were tossed aside, while you pandered to a base of mongrel athletics fans? Do they appreciate the painstaking effort that it took to lay down the intricately straight lines that keep everything in order? The perfectly placed stop sign that we all must obey, just to remind us that hey, you’re in a parking lot, slow down! The fences along the train tracks that have no doubt deterred more than one of us from jumping in front of the 7 o’clock to St. Paul? We, the little people truly appreciate all that you have done for us, while the Twins fans leave nothing behind but brat-flavored vomit and and air of unearned superiority.
Here’s today’s Blong. I’ve never really been a fan of Twisted Sister, but I find it somewhat amusing when the guy gets blasted out the window at the beginning. And it goes with today’s theme.
The New Twins Stadium is Ruining My Life
Outdoor baseball! Wahooooooooooooo!!! The days of sitting inside that big old inflatable protuberance have come and gone, and now the Twins have invaded the Warehouse District. It’s like having 40,000 inbred cows all trying to get to the same delicious feedbag at once. Only these cows kind of know how to drive, and they have become sentient enough to talk, but they use their aptitude at vocalization to utter unfathomable mutterings over some guy playing with a wooden stick. As horrible as crossing Washington Avenue was before, now you have to deal with rubes who obviously have no clue where they are, and who do not hesitate to whip a U-turn in the middle of a busy street. Every gameday, the area descends into complete and utter anarchy–the blood-curdling shrieks of women and children, people screaming at you from their car for directions, and, I’m not sure, but I think I saw a guy on fire one time. Boozed up vagrants will ask you how to get to the stadium, when you can literally see it 200 yards behind them, to which I reply, “Go three blocks east, lead a life of blasphemy and hubris, and GO BACK TO HELL WHERE YOU CAME FROM.” And not to mention, the people who have been paying monthly rent to use the parking lot right next to that God-forsaken toilet, can’t even park there during games! And they raised the monthly rate! What if your landlord told you that your rent was going up, and several nights a week, you had to vacate your apartment while a chlamydia-ridden prostitute distributes ZJ’s for 3 hours? What’s a ZJ? I don’t know, and I don’t care to find out. I heard it in Beerfest.
Well, I’m off to go to other stuff. Have a good day. Here’s a song I keep hearing on Radio K.
Friday Fun Facts – Random
Hello Internet. I didn’t expunge the mental effort to come up with a theme, so I’m going to throw a bunch of random stuff out there. For instance, here is the Governor of California punching a camel!
-There are 293 different ways to make change for a dollar. So the next time you’re screaming at a nervous, greasy little teenage cashier for his sheer incompetence, be sure to throw that in his face as well.
-And as you continue to heap insults onto that cashier’s fragile sense of self worth, why not call him a waterhead while you’re at it? Because you see, my friends, the brain weighs about three pounds, with all but 10 ounces of it being water.
-As the scrawny little penny-pusher’s eyes inevitibaly begin to water up, you can announce in a very patronizing voice, “Oh, are somebody’s lacrimal glands acting up again?” Because that is the scientific name of tear ducts!
-By this point the cashier will be so strung out by your ruthless onslaught that he may appear to be fumbling with his speech. Perhaps this is a case of lethologica; the state of not being able to remember what word you want to use!
Well I’ll cut it short so you can get out there and start using this knowledge. Here is the new Black Keys video.
Band Names Plus a Bonus Prelude – The Rue of the Average-Sized Man
Since the dawn of recorded Time, or at least ever since the first smart-ass propped himself up on his hind legs, people have been giving other people crap. You know the drill — acne, irritable bowel syndrome, that lazy eye you’ve been meaning to take care of, clinical grade halitosis, morbid obesity — the list rages on. And the nicknames that accompany these afflictions — s**thead, d**ckwad, a**sbreath, Puppy Nugget Bag, f*****eyed******face****with-soggy-underwear-and-c**k-for-brains. We’ve all been called all of these names at least hundreds of times. Some people have kids that really suck. Yet we carry on. Anyways I think there was a point to this. Ah yes. You all may remember Big Limm, Freemont, Nebraska’s #1-selling rapper. You don’t? You know, the guy with rhymes so raw that they gotta be cooked first? Internal temperature of 165 degrees? Almost 60 copies sold in one weekend (now that’s called moving product, son!)? Well he was mentioned in one of the early days of this very Blog. Anyways, I know someone named Slim(I call him Slimminy Cricket), who is…………wait for it………………….just about there…………………very thin. And I used to know a guy named Big J, who was, for all intents and purposes, a very big guy. But then I meet this character going around calling himself Big Limm. I get a good look, and I’m like, he’s really not that big. But he’s also not small enough for it to be one of those ironic nicknames, like your ugly friend that everyone calls Pretty Boy. And I began to think, there is a severe lack of good names for average sized people. I’m sure he didn’t want to be called Proportionate Limm, or Healthy Weight for My Height Limm, bad-ass as they may sound. So it was recently changed to simply, J-Limm. What are people who aren’t really big or really little to do? Waft through life with their noses to the air, pretending that the lack of a pretentious moniker doesn’t bother them? Quite frankly it’s their problem, I solved it for myself by going out and creating a genius apellation, YoungCleanLegit (opposite of Ol’Dirty Bastard for the hundreds of new daily readers). I was hoping to somehow tie that in with this next Band Names segment, but it’s really hard for me to do stuff. So here are more crappy/awesome band names. They are all stolen from the website of a publication that is now dead to me. So I don’t feel bad. As usual, there’s probably some naughty language used. Hehe!!!
-Poofinger -Bonerama -Brutal Dildos -MC Vagina -The Clit Rippers
-Genital Hercules -The Poontang Wranglers -Public Display of Funk
-National Ass Groovin Association -Guns N’Rosa Parks -Tom Cruise Control
-Honkeytonk Homeslice -Nitrous Foxide -Fecal Corpse -Maggot Twat
-Corpse Vomit -16 Bitch Pile-Up (favorite) -Fuck Start Your Face
-TwoDeadSluts OneGoodFuck (I have no words) -Super Fucking Judo Flip
-Sh-Sh-Sh Shark Attack! -Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza
-The Busiest Bankruptcy Lawyers in Minnesota -Dave Coulier & The Cut It Outs
-We Will Eat Rats to Survive -David Copperfuck -Sexhawk -The God Damn Doo Wop Band
-Here Comes Old Vodka Tits -You Ruined Christmas
-Sorry About Your Couch (the name seemed a bit too topical be around for longer than a week, but they actually lasted for about 5 years)
-Instant Asshole -Gay Beast -The House That Gloria Vanderbilt
Today’s Blong is a blatant rip-off from Louis’ Blog. But when I heard this song I was like “AWWWWWWWWWWWWW YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
More Cogitations
Conversation that I had yesterday:
Monday, May 16th, 11:46AM. Green Room Cafe.
I am standing by a table eating one of the free doughnuts that have been set out.
Random guy: Good doughnuts, huh?
Me: Yeah they’re alright.
Guy: I really wish I could thank the person that brought them in.
Me: Me too I guess.
Guy: It was me.
Me: Hmm?
Guy: It was me. I brought the doughnuts.
Me: Oh, thanks.
Guy: Your welcome.
Then I got the hell out of there.
A few weeks ago, I’m sitting alone in the computer lab. Somebody walks in, and sits right next to me. “That’s odd,” I lamented to myself, “there are 20 other computers he could have sat at.” A minute later, another member of humanity walks in, and sits right next to me, on the other side. Now I know I smell really good and constantly tell awesome jokes, but sitting in between two scruffy, bedraggled, heavily breathing sweat-basted blimps, I freak out a little. Can’t people just leave me alone? Can’t I just live my life? So then I had to get the hell out of there.
The dictionary.com word of the day is tipple, but I actually beat them to the punch and used it last Friday. Splendid.
That’s enough of that for me. Here’s a good Blong. It’s kind of bluegrass-y. Then again maybe it isn’t bluegrass. Maybe it’s folk. But anyways, it’s Minnesota’s own Trampled by Turtles!
Friday Fun Facts – Betty White
Man, it’s just been a Betty White lovefest lately. And I’m all like, whats the big deal? I could act like an adorable little old lady if I wanted to. Well, I looked into her flossy past and uncovered some disturbing episodes of alcohol abuse, lawsuits, and inappropriate voidation of the bowels.
Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois. More like Joke Park! Total facial. The spawn of a nefarious haberdasher and a two-bit prostitute, White’s adolescence was less than reputable. As a young woman, she would spend hours upon hours in the back alley, clamping jumper cables to stray cats while taking brawny pulls of her home-brewed tipple. She vowed that she would one day travel the country and swear at small children. As the years passed and her drinking spiraled furthur out of control, future co star Rue McClanahan was employed to pick the dried vomit from her hair and keep her away from the microwave, where she had a tendency to cook live hamsters, and then dip them in delicious McDonald’s Sweet and Sour sauce for her own fowl amusement. Following the expiration of Golden Girls, things only soured for White. Aimlessly drifting the streets of New York, blasted on elephant tranquilizers and Lysol, she would abduct tourists and rip their toenails off while forcing them to watch the entire box set of Golden Girls. More disgusted I could not be. Police later found her crumpled in a heap behind a grimy dumpster, next to a decapitated pigeon. She looked up, feathers plastered to the bloody remnants of pigeon viscera on her face, and whispered “hellllp……………me.”
Following a smattering of drunk driving arrests, a slew of public urination tickets, and a dash of indecent exposure, it appears as though White has gotten her act together, having recently appeared on a television show. Me so happy, me want to cry.
Next week on The Blog – I do some invesitigatory journalism. Are people really getting fatter, or is the Earth getting smaller? Absolutely riveting.
Here’s an appropriate Blong for all of you that were depressed by the rain the past few days. Quite frankly, it didn’t affect me at all. I thrive on the mental anguish of others. Anyways, you may recognize it from Missy Elliot’s “Da Rain.” No? You know, “Beep beep, who got tha keys to tha jeep? vroooooooom.” That’s always been a favorite lyric of mine. But here is some Ann Peebles with “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”
Cogitations
Since I am feeling rather malapert (dictionary word of the day-unbecomingly bold or saucy) today, here are some random thoughts that have been kicking around in my head.
-(Talking in Jerry Seinfeld voice) When people say it’s hot as the dickens in here, what are the dickens, and why are they so hot?
-Here is one of my plans for the summer: I always see all these people outside Twins games with signs that say “need tickets.” Well, one of these days I’m going to go sit at happy hour inside J.D. Hoyt’s for awhile, get plastered, and draw up a bunch of tickets. I will then walk outside, and hand them to someone who needs tickets. They will look down and see that I have written “gun show” on the tickets. By the time they look up, I will be standing topless and flexing in front of them with an outstretched hand saying, “that will be 75 dollars you freak.”
-I hate to keep talking about the gentrification of Aldi, but they done did it again. This time, I saw a guy wearing a somewhat snug Abercrombie shirt in there. Him and his little lady acted like they were on a freaking safari. I could hear them, hiding behind the cheap lawn furniture, whispering to each other- “Oh honey, shhhhh…..look, it’s an immigrant! Here, hold out this 50 dollar bill and maybe he’ll get close enough so we can pet him.” Cutest couple EVER. How I pine for the days when it was just me and some deranged old lady complaining about the tax on marshmallows. We must keep these yuppies out of our grocery stores!
Anyways, that’s all I’ve really got. Here is some Japanese hip-hop. I would really love to learn the language so I could understand, but for now, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the Nintendo-esque beats.
The Philosophunculist 