Snow in Vegas

Old Guy Tip #1

If your barber shaves your neck with a straight razor and trims the hair growing out of your ears, you need to keep that barber.

Vegas photo fun

What the hell is this? Is it a drunk, transvestite hooker Santa? It might be, this is Vegas.

Stoplight Testosterone Challenge

I was driving home from work listening to music from my iPod when Boogie Wonderland starts to flow through the speakers. I'm moving a little to the music while waiting for a red light to change and I look over to my right. The guy in the lane next to me is staring at me and giving me that "check out this douche bag" look. I look down at his car, then back up at him.

Stoplight Testosterone Challenge Round 1:
Me – 1
Guy in yellow VW Beetle with daisy rims -- 0

At the next red light, we look at each other.  I'm now listening to The Clash (I have interesting playlists). He mouths "It's my wife's car." I was about to give him a pass, but then ...

Stoplight Testosterone Challenge Round 2:
Me, who has a smokin-hot wife who drives a 3/4-ton Suburban -- 2
The tool who didn't pay the few bucks for rental car coverage -- 0

When we get to the next red light, I look over and he stares straight ahead, ignoring me. Everyone knows the Stoplight Testosterone Challenge is a best of three series.

I love the Sky Mall

My favorite part of flying is reading the Sky Mall catalog. They have the coolest, most useless items. Some of my current favorites include items I would never put in my yard:

Mombasa the Garden Giraffe 

If it wasn’t nearly $1,000, it would make a great gift for the next Secret Santa or White Elephant exchange.

 

Big Foot Garden Yeti Sculpture

 

Who doesn’t need a sasquatch for their back yard? The only problem is he’s only a couple feet tall, so all the other Yetis will make fun of him.

 

Alien Gnome Bandits

I have to admit I like these because I don’t like garden gnomes. I get to save a few bucks because I live in the desert and have no place for a garden.

 

Zombie of Montclaire Moors 

 

There are six pages of product reviews from people who bought this. I’m not kidding – six pages with reviews like "I love this! Bought it for my father in law, and cannot wait to give this to him on Christmas! My favorite purchase of the year!!"

 

There is also quite a bit of furniture in the catalog. Who buys furniture from Sky Mall?

Audio? Really?

According to what I read in the news the other day, Osama bin Laden released another audio tape saying something about killing Americans. I didn’t pay too close attention to it because it’s not news that he wants to kill Americans – that’s pretty much all he has to say. What did interest me was that it was an audio tape. Are we really supposed to believe Osama bin Laden is living in a cave and can only release audio tapes?

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers, around the world, post video messages to the Internet each day, yet Osama bin Laden can only send audio tapes? The man is a terror mastermind, yet he sends his minions to Radio Shack to get him a tape recorder instead of sending them to Best Buy to get him a laptop computer with a webcam? That sounds like a load of crap to me.

Why would the founding leader of al-Qaeda be hiding in a cave? There are plenty of places in the world to hide with better living arrangements than a cave. Sure, using a cave as a hiding spot prior to 1890 may have been a brilliant idea for a bandit, but today it’s just silly. If you want to fall off the grid, find a nicer place, like Montana or Wyoming. Build a nice cabin on a lake and post some “no trespassing” signs and you’re all set.

It leads me to believe that Osama bin Laden is no longer alive and calling the shots. I’ll change my mind when I see a message from him on youtube, especially if he is dancing to a Beyonce song.

Vampire rules are not meant to be broken

I have a serious problem with what has become of vampires. Books and movies in the Twilight series have taken a time-honored tradition of violent end evil vampire lore and turned it into teeny-bopper nonsense. There are vampire rules, and they have been violated.

Vampires, like werewolves, the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy are, historically, the property of 12-year-old boys. Teen girls and middle-aged women have always been allowed to enjoy them in their original and sacred form, but are not allowed to make up their own rules to fit their needs. I don't believe we (present and former 12-year-old boys) ever attempted to place baseball, aliens or worm farms in your Harlequin romance novels, or change Fabio into giant robot warrior. And isn't it a little creepy that teen girls and middle-aged women are going ga-ga over the same (teen) guys? I get dirty looks from people if I watch an entire Taylor Swift music video.

Here are a few vampire rules, just to clear up confusion:

- Vampires do not go to high school. If they do go to class, it is night school, and they are directly responsible for reduction in class sizes.

- Vampires feed on human blood. Human blood is not for sale at Burger King, Albertsons or Walmart, so it has to come from an unsuspecting stranger's neck, at night, with much violence. It's not pretty.

- Vampires can be "dreamy," but not because of their disheveled coif or bedroom eyes -- it's because they have hypnotic powers to attract their prey. It's like a big, stinky bait pile.

- Vampires do not work well in long-term relationships -- they sleep all day, and spend most of their evenings biting people; they generally live longer than humans; you will always be nothing more than the next meal to them; and they are soul-less demons from Hell.

- Vampires do not glitter, shine or shimmer. They also have no reflection. Science cannot explain this phenomenon -- maybe it is because vampires are not real.

I understand the whole "Chicks Dig a Bad Boy" thing, but vampires are vicious, blood-sucking, soul-less demons from Hell. You may use that description for your ex husband or boyfriend, but trust me, he likely has a soul, and when he feeds at night it is probably a taco or burger, not the blood of a young virgin.

Ladies, please let the vampires escape the modern, metrosexual chains you have shackled them with and send them back to their glory days of sleeping in caskets and fearing nothing but sunlight and a sharp wooden stake. And when you get the overwhelming urge to turn angry, invading aliens into pretty-boys advertising body spray, think first about how you will adversely affect the life of a 12-year-old boy.