It Ain't Fall 'Til Charlie Gets His Rocks

Sure, the calendar said Sept. 23 marked the start of autumn.
However, my idea of fall isn't 95-degree weather with 100 percent humidity and a large volume of my blood making it into the digestive systems of mosquitoes. It isn't $200-plus utility bills due to the constantly whirring air conditioner. It isn't getting a sweaty armpit just by walking down the driveway to get the paper in the morning. It isn't having to still mow the grass every week because it grows an inch a day.
And it certainly isn't keeping a wary eye on the tropics for whirling masses of clouds possibly heading this way.
No, to me fall starts when that old fussbudget Charlie Brown, clad that crapass ghost costume, makes his annual rounds for rocks on national television.
I never get tired of watching that show every year, and I'm not alone. That sucker has been around since 1966, the year my little sister was born.
There is something about that show that really ushers in the autumn for me. Wherever the setting is, they have a much better fall, apparently. They get the brilliant fall colors while we get the leaves going from green to dog-poop brown.
The show comes around at a time when we're finally cooling off, as the recent cold spell underscores ,and my thoughts turn to sweatshirts, firing up my smoker, making dark ales in my beer bucket and torching things in my backyard burn pit.
There is a dark undercurrent to the "Charlie Brown Halloween Special," something that goes beyond the usual psychological problems of the characters. Perhaps it's Snoopy's dogfight and being behind the World War I battle lines. Or maybe it's about it being 4 a.m. and Lucy having to retrieve her shivering brother from his ill-fated outing to see the alleged Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch. Then there is the rejection, with Charlie peering into his bag and declaring, "I got a rock," one of my favorite television lines ever.
It's all kind of dark and eery, to me signifying the death of summer and the beginning of two great months of celebration, from Halloween to New Year's Day. November and December are fall. January and February are winter.
It has always been this way for me, even as a kid. And last night, I got to re-live the start of Charlie Brown's fall kickoff vicariously through the eyes of my two boys, both of whom are nuts about the show.
And when my youngest, Luke, joined Sally word-for-word in her diatribe pointed at Linus for messing up her Halloween, I knew the boy was seeing the show just like I did when I was his age.
Maybe I'll sneak a rock into his bag tonight just for yuks.

Timewaster Of The Week-Oct. 29 Special Halloween Edition

Hangman with a skeleton!

http://dedge.com/flash/hangman/

The first one you get wrong, the skeleton's head appears and the insults begin. He'll insult you with every incorrectly guessed letter. He'll also insult you when you get 'em right.

A Giggle At The Gym

I like to lift weights, but I try to not draw attention to myself by making a lot of noise, like a water buffalo trying to struggle out of a thick patch of jungle.
At the gym yesterday, there was some big goofpotato who was taking a medium-sized medicine ball and slamming it onto the floor.
He did this for like 5 minutes. He loudly grunted as if he were Atlas slamming the Earth to the ground. The booms echoed throughout the room.
I'm recovering from broken hand, so I'm having to use the machines instead of the free weights. I was sitting on one machine, and an older woman was next to me on another. We both just sat there silently watching The Slammer, and then she finally turned to me with a horrified look on her face, saw my look of amusement and said, "Is that really how young men today exercise?"
And then we both busted out laughing at the dude, who couldn't hear us because he was jamming out to Power Station or something on his Ipod.
We were on the second floor. I'll bet the people in the offices directly below were less than amused.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!

Staph Infections Are End-Of-The-World Stuff

The bump on my chin a few years ago seemed like a typical zit, one of those ones that pops up after a teeny shaving nick.
Only, the bump got bigger. And bigger. And bigger.
Soon, I had an angry red golf ball sticking out of my chin. It was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced.
During a clinic trip, the doctor cut a hole in it, drained it a bit and then prescribed me some antibiotics. The stuff that oozed out of it over the next few days was a teenager's dream.
An unfortunate and embarrassing aspect of all that was that I had a tough trumpet solo the next night with the Lamar Concert Band, where I played as a continuing education student. Due to the chin pain and swelling, the solo came out sounding like a goose being boiled alive.
The angry golf ball took days to disappear.
Less than a month later, a chigger bite on my leg turned into another nasty bump, which went away on its own. A few weeks later, another bug bite did the same thing.
Then I got one on my left thigh, and it had no intention of going away.
The near-purple infection pattern on my leg was bigger than palm-sized. It eclipsed the chin bump in the pain department and grew worse.
On a return clinic visit, I was informed that I had a staph infection. This time, it required two highly painful, turkey-baster-sized antibiotic shots plus some pills to get rid of the thing.
I still have a crater and terrible memories, but I haven't had an infection like that since thing.
As a staph infection victim, I am horrified over the recent news of even worse infection bugs running around out there, becoming more resistant to medicine.
In my mind, the end of mankind will not come about as a result of war, nuclear holocaust, a comet or a dying sun. It will come about due to some nasty, highly infectious disease for which there is no cure and nowhere to hid. If we go by way of staph infection, expect an ugly, painful death, my friends.
So wash your hands often, hope the medical industry can keep pace and pray to live another day.
And if you are prescribed antibiotics, be damned sure to take them as directed. Otherwise, you're just contributing to the problem by allowing more resistant bug strains to develop.

Timewaster Of The Week-Oct. 22

Portals.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/404612

I just took a quick glance at this, so I have no idea how interesting it gets. You create two holes and use them to escape a room and advance to the next level.

You hop in one hole and then pop out of the other.

If nothing else, it looks kind of cool.

Timewaster Of The Week-Oct. 15 Special Edition

It's YOU, America!
That's right, you're all a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing professional timewasters.
And if you're reading this blog on company time, you're underscoring the point.
Last week, I attended a workshop in which I and other Enterprise managers learned just how much time American employees waste across the land.
The average worker wastes 2.09 hours per eight-hour work day, according to a survey by America Online and Salary.com.
The No. 1 timewasting activity, of course, is Internet surfing, with 44.7 percent of those surveyed calling it their top work distraction. Socializing with co-workers came in at 23.4 percent, with conducting personal business on company time a distant third at 6.8 percent.
Some 3.9 percent listed simple "spacing out." I'm not sure how someone does this. If I saw a reporter sitting at her desk and blankly staring at the wall, I'd probably call an ambulance or a psychologist from human resources. If she's going to waste time, she needs to do it right.
Other distractions were running errands, making personal phone calls, applying for other jobs (snicker), planning personal events, arriving late/leaving early and a curious "other" at a chunky 12.5 percent.
I can't imagine what that "other" would be. Maybe it's toilet time, although I often like to make the most of it by reading a newspaper.
Some 33.2 percent cited lack of work for allowing them to wander off in timewasting directions, while 23.4 percent vindictively wasted time for being underpaid. Maybe if they worked harder, they could get a raise or a better job, eh?
The survey said men and women wasted about the same amount of time, but younger folks tended to waste more time than their elders. For example, those born between 1980 and 1985 wasted 1.95 hours daily, compared to 1.19 hours for my age group, born between 1960 and 1969.
Salary.com calculated that all this timewasting added up to $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected but not performed. Texas ranked the 13th worst timewasting state. Missouri ranked No. 1, while South Carolina wasted the least amount of time. Laid-back Hawaii ranked a surprising 49th.
I'll admit to wasting some time here and there, but I also work well beyond 40 hours a week. I'm really busy from when I arrive around 8:15 a.m. to noon, but unless there is barn-burner news story going on, I sometimes have to find things to do in the early afternoon. I use this time for employee reviews, coordinating and following up on long-term projects, seeing how reporters' stories are coming along, adding to this blog and, yes, surfing the Internet, usually checking out TV and other newspaper web sites for breaking news or story ideas. My reporters also seem to like it when I come out and chat 'em up. They've even complained in their job reviews about me not doing it enough. I guess they find me entertaining at times.
Ironically, I look for timewasters to add to this blog, so I'm not helping the problem much. Occasionally, I'll get an e-mail from someone disgusted with themselves for getting addicted to a timewasting game I posted here.
However, from an business-opportunity standpoint, maybe there's a big untapped market in chronic timewasters, so the more time-killing opportunities we offer them at beaumontenterprise.com, the better. We'd love for them to spend a lot of their work day indulging in our outstanding products.
Journalism is a little like war. It can be highly busy and intense, or it can hit slow stretches where we polish our guns and look for productive ways to kill time.
I like to be busy. There is nothing like the adrenaline of being in the middle of covering a mammoth news story. We were crazy busy during the recent Hurricane Humberto.
I like my employees to be busy, too, but I'm not going to get lathered up if they have to make a quick run to the mall to buy a birthday present for their mom. When news breaks, I know they'll be on it like the Chicago Bears defense. And speaking of football, just look at how much time those guys spend standing around. If they played constantly for four quarters, there would be few, if any, survivors.
Like my boss sometimes says, what you lose on the apples you make up on the bananas. There'll be points during the work week where they're going at a sweat-shop pace, or maybe they have to sit in some boring school board meeting all night.
If they need a mental coffee break and want to spend a couple of minutes checking out The Onion online, that's OK, as long as it doesn't become excessive or chew into story quality and productivity.
If it does, I can always spend a couple of minutes surfing the Internet and coming up with something interesting for them to do.
So that's it for today.
GET BACK TO WORK NOW!!!!

Whatever Happened To The Katrina Heineken Guy?

Humor often can be found amid the greatest of tragedies.
When it came to Hurricane Katrina, it was that photo of that guy, presumably a looter, up to his waste in nasty floodwater, with a big grin on his face as he toted a bus tray full of Heinekens. A beer stuffed in his back pocket took the humor right over the top.
Since then, that Associated Press photo has become quite the fodder for photoshop and other high-tech computer shenanigans, such as this: http://home.comcast.net/~edwardjr72/looter.gif
One site I saw today trumpeted him as an American hero, while some guy on another site claims to have tracked him down this summer in New Orleans, although it was hard to tell from the photos if it was really him. I'd post links, but some of the content is racist.
I wonder who that Heineken fan was, if he knows about the publicity and whatever happened to him. He could have made a fortune off this.
If he's not crazy or dangerous, maybe I'll buy him a Heineken some day. He seems like a fellow who likes a good time, and he has OK taste in beer.

Timewaster Of The Week-Oct. 8

Yeehah! It's Columbus Day!

How much do you know about him?

Find out here:

http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/games/walk/walk_columbus.html

Led Zeppelin Flies Again

Led Zeppelin has been and always will be my favorite band.
When I was a young boy, I'd often put a radio, tuned to a Houston rock station, under my pillow at night and drift off to sleep. That radio would play all night long.
Years later, I'd hear a song on the radio, one that would get my juices flowing. I wouldn't know who it was, but as the song ended and the DJ said who it was, it turned out to be Zep a frightening number of times.
Their music, inexplicably, had found a permanent place in my subconscious.
As a young teen-ager - when Zep was still touring and putting out albums - I began to buy their records one by one. I'd buy one and play it over and over for months. Then I'd buy another and do the same. I never got tired of listening to them.
One like Friday afternoon, my dad, quite aware of my Zep fascination, brought home the double album "Physical Graffiti," held it up and said: "Yard mowed and raked. Gutters cleaned. Driveway and front walk swept."
I was done and listening to that classic album - still my favorite - for the first time by 10 a.m. the next day.
After collecting all their albums, I turned my attention to live bootlegs, for which I paid ridiculous prices at an underground Houston record store.
So obsessed was I with this band that I paid $200 to a scalper in 1980 to pre-buy two Zep tickets for their upcoming U.S. tour. Back then, that was a lot of money to pay for tickets, whose face values had yet to top $15 for many rock shows.
Alas, while driving from home to school on my lunch break, I heard on the radio that the drummer, John Bonham, had died of an alcohol overdose.
I was devastated.
Months later, the group broke up. My dad went down to the scalper and got back my $200.
Since then, the surviving members have played a handful of one-off gigs but never a full-blown show.
Until now.
At the request of the widow of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, Led Zeppelin will play a two-hour show at the 02 arena in London. Bonham's son, Jason, fittingly will take his dad's place behind the drums. Proceeds will go to Ertegun's education foundation.
I, like many other Zep plan, have had mixed feelings about a reunion. Singer Robert Plant's voice is a fragile shell of its former self. Guitarist Jimmy Page, whose post-Zep career has been spotty, at best, is old and gray. Plant has been the reunion's biggest roadblock, preferring to preserve the band's legacy rather than attempt to build on it.
Initially, the guys planned on a short 30-minute show, but as they began to rehearse, they realized they still had some of the old magic, according to various news reports.
The more I've thought about it, the more I'm liking this reunion, despite it supposedly being a one-time thing.
With the Rolling Stones and The Who still going, and bands such as The Police and Van Halen doing reunion shows, why the hell not? As old as these acts are, they still kick the stuffing out of just about everything else touring out there today. Their music lives on, but do you think anyone will be listening to Korn or 50 cent in 20 years?
Apparently, others think the same way.
To get Zep tickets, you had to toss your name and credit card number into a lottery system. An eye-popping 25 million people applied, with only about 18,000 tickets available.
They also came up with an interesting way to beat the scalpers. Those selected in the lottery are given a code, and the code, identification and credit card all have to match for the winner to pick up a ticket.
Already, scammers have been trying to sell their codes on Ebay, but it won't work.

http://www.harveygoldsmith.com/news-and-press-release-item.php?item=19

So without playing a note publicly, Zep has already recreated the mystique-enhancing circus that followed it throughout the 1970s, when it was hands down the world's biggest band. Only a Beatles reunion, impossible since Lennon's death, would be bigger.
I don't think they'll be able to top themselves when they play Nov. 26 in England, but despite all the passing years and their ages, I have a feeling Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham can still bring it, and do so in a fresh way that will surprise even their most hardcore fans like me.

Roller Rink Fight Makes Me Sad

We carried a story today about a near riot at a Beaumont roller rink.
The report did not detail how the dustup started, but the incident Saturday involved "several" fights involving parents, pepper spray and backup officers called to Mannings Texas On Wheels Roller Rink on College Street.
When I was a kid, I saw a few fights between adults. I remember two rednecks going at it outside a pool hall next to a Mexican restaurant our family frequented. I remember a huge bully knocking out another guy at the beach. I remember a drunken guy at the deer lease trying to pick a fight with my dad.
These incidents made me sad and disappointed in adults.
I suppose some people just like to lose control and get into a punchup.
As for the roller-rink melee, I think about all those frightened children subjected to that kind of violence. Many degrees of innocence were lost for those kids, at a happy little roller rink, of all places.
Now, some of those kids some day will be less inclined to back away from a fight themselves.
Sad. Pathetic.