Well another trip home has come and gone. Everyone at the Jeety’s Joint staff hopes that you all had a very nice Thanksgiving break. Although, I get the feeling the staff sort of resents me… I kiiiiind of had them work all weekend, just in case something big happened. But it was for their own good–they need the extra work. Plus, I added an extra half bowl to their usual single bowl of porridge, so what they could possible complain about, I have no idea. That’s really the problem with America today… unappreciative workers. I mean, I shouldn’t have to ASK them to roll out the red carpet when I get to work (literally), they should WANT to do it. [This portion of Jeety's Joint dictated by El Jeet, transcribed by... I don't even know. One of them. I think he's new. (And yes, I had him write that.)]

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of the pictures from that weekend (actually, I think they’re all from Thanskgiving day):

Tom the Turkey, fresh from the deep fryer! Mmmmm… delicious. However, Tom does beg the question, why Turkey? Shouldn’t there be some sort of rotating bird system put into place? I mean, isn’t this like the BCS championship game? It switches every year among four different bowls… So let’s see, Turkey, Chicken, Duck and um… Pheasant? Game hen? Perhaps ruffed grouse, in an ode to Pennsylvania? Unfortunately, the ruffed grouse is a bit smaller than I thought… you would need SEVERAL of them for a decent-sized meal. Maybe this is why we stick with the turkey…? Although, on the “conservation status,” the grouse is considered to be in the “least concern” category… which translates to “shoot now, ask questions later.” Also, the dining room table.

Eli helping grandma with the dishes! And their usual photo-op.

Eli and Uncle Ed, having some fun after dinner. Eli chowed down on a Thanksgiving dinner of his own that night: turkey, sweet potatoes and corn, I believe. It’s funny though, all I could see was off-white mush. He seemed alright with that, though. Also, Eli had a fun time checking out what these “teeth” are that everybody seems to be talking about. Uncle Ed’s seemed like a good place to start his research, while Aunt Jeannie held him.

Eli and momma! And he’s (seemingly) thiiiiiiis close to being able to say that, too. At least, the momma part. He’s got his “ma’s” down, that’s for sure.

Anyway, that’s it. It was a great weekend at home and everybody ate well. I had a good time catching up with friends, bowling and losing money to Kevin, Scott, Lee and John at poker (I still don’t understand how I was the only one to lose money and it seemed like everybody else won… And I think it’s garbage that the trips trump the pair in a full house, but whatever. I’m over it. Almost.) and relaxing at home. Good times, indeed. Finally, I’d like to close with these words… “H to the izz O, V to the izz A.”

Hey ya, folks!

Just stoppin by to tell you that my HEAD JUST EXPLODED from an article I just read on Yahoo! My jaw was literally on the ground… and it’s not amazement or shock… I think for the first time in my life, I can use the word “bewildered” to describe my current status.

Apparently… OJ Simpson has decided that he’s going to do an interview on FOX… titled, “O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened.” In case you’ve been living under a rock the past decade and change, the “IT” he’s referring to is the killing of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Um, does anyone else find this completely ridiculous? How SNL didn’t think of this first, before REALITY stepped in and said, “No, no… we’ve got this one, thanks,” I will never know. I mean, my mind literally exploded all over the “wall” that is my skull. I have no idea how I’m supposed to function in society now, knowing that this is taking place.

First of all, let’s break this down the nerdy way… Because there’s something significant here. Okay, the title again is: “If I did it, here’s how it happened.” This sentence is butchered, in terms of tense. First of all, it’s an “if clause.” The first statement “If I did it” is perfect tense… the following statement… is PRESENT! “Here IS how it happened.” That’s… not allowed to happen. Also, the title (uh, along with the CONCEPT, but we’ll get to that) makes it sound like he definitely did it… They maybe should have gone with… “If I had done it, Here’s how it would have happened.” But apparently, when FOX produces murderous sensationalism, they don’t have “The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation” nearby.

Uh, secondly… WHYYYYYYYYYY? Why are we doing this? What can be GAINED? Not only that, it doesn’t make any SENSE! When someone says “I did not do that”… they don’t hold a two-part special, 12 years later saying “Uhhh, well, if I had, it might have gone something like this” (but of course, you know… much less grammatically correct… cause apparently that’s necessary).

The show is described as “hypothetically describing how the murders would have been committed.” Hey guys… didn’t we have like a 10 month court trial that kind of painted that picture for us all? Non-stop? For a huge portion of our lives?

Here’s a paragraph for you… try to figure this one out. Warning: Do not concentrate too long on this… you’ll begin spitting and throwing things, involuntarily:

“O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes,” the network said in a statement. “In the two-part event, Simpson describes how he would have carried out the murders he has vehemently denied committing for over a decade.”

WHAT???? What does that MEAN?

I mean, isn’t enough, enough? We all know O.J. got away with it… he’s knows it, we know it… Marcia Clark knows it (speaking of, how’s her hair doing these days? Let’s see it’s been about 12 years… judging by my calculations, her hairstyle has changed approximately 3600 times since the trial. In other words, she is bald.). Anyway, my point is… why do we have to KEEP rubbing the failure of the US court system in the face of the American people? Isn’t Judge Judy enough?!

Anyway, the show airs Nov. 27 and 29 (apparently we need a day to recooperate). I’m sure it’ll be great… and make a lot of sense. And not continue to place my head squarely between two huge cymbals, held by a giant monkey and bang and bang and bang…

Good news for O.J.–former co-star Leslie Nielson has decided to come to his defense… in character, from his “Naked Gun” films as Frank Drebin. I see things going smoothly…

Listen up… We are not happy campers down here in Texasland. Can you guess why?

First of all, I have to say that I was betrayed this weekend. The University of Texas competed in a football game this weekend with the Kansas State University. The game was at 8 p.m. EST and carried by the American Broadcast Company. Some people… know it as ABC. ABC employs a wide variety of commentators, as do all the networks (CBS, FOX, NBC… in case you forgot). Some of them good, some of them bad.

Gary Thorne, I thought, was a friend of me. We used to hang out. He would do some baseball games for ESPN… other college football games and occassionally a hockey game, when it was a sport in America (RIP). I always though, “Hey… this Gary guy… he’s not so bad… a nice enough sort… maybe even a swell fella.”

BUT NO! Not after that DEBACLE that was Saturday night’s football contest, which I partially blame Mr. Thorne for. (Yeah yeah yeah, don’t end a sentence with a preposition, well guess what, I’m doin’ it. Try and stop me.) Sure… the opponent (we’ll get to them in a minute) might have taken out our quarterback… who was perhaps about to go down as the greatest freshman quarterback in college football history, after the first drive… and we put in a cross-eyed, club-handed neanderthal as his replacement. But as I always say… the players on the field are only part of the equation. The other part, you ask? The coaches? No. The announcers.

Everyone knows they have some sort of secret device in that booth to make things go the way they want it. And how do they want it? Exciting! Nobody wants to see the powerhouse #4 team in the country beat the crap out of the… what are they, wildcats? Or something that isn’t natural to Kansas? Then again what is? I guess Nebraska got it right… Cornhuskers is about all you can do. Honestly.

Anyway, GAR thought it would be a good idea to have Texas lose this one. Well, good going, ya jerk. I always enjoyed your commentary, but this is it. Consider our friendship null and void, chief. You ruined it with your thoughtless words. Like having an aneurysm every time KSU scored, completed a pass or uh, hiked the ball.

And speaking of those pencilnecks… Kansas State… who is this? From what I can tell, it’s Beaver Area High School football. LOOK! Purple and gray… hmm… take a little blue out of that purple and you know what you got? That’s right. Maroon. And of course, they have a bobcat on their helmet… Oh wait, the ear is… bent or something? I forget the difference, but it’s the exact same thing. This is like… okay, you’re playing a game on Nintendo… and I’m talking NES, too… none of this 64 junk. Okay, so you go through, you beat all the levels… all the different nations with their horribly stereotyped people… and you get to the last team, which in this metaphor, is BHS football. You beat them, then all of a sudden, lightning strikes and they’re ALIVE again (because every team you beat dies, inexplicably). Anyway, they’re alive, but not the exact same team… they’re undead, so obviously they’re uniforms have to change color, slightly. To… you guessed it, purple. We played and lost to the undead Beaver Bobcats. Led by chief primate, Beff Jeltz.

With all that being said, I have to make a confession. This year, I didn’t mind Joe Buck as much as I normally do. It probably had something to do with him not covering a single New York Yankees game, which was a major plus. I think it must be his love affair with Derek Jeter (friggin’ nickname stealer) that makes me so mad. Him and the rest of them. Overpaid sissies. And I don’t know about you, but I just feel guilty not liking Tim McCarver anymore… have you seen this guy? He’s decaying on screen. Unfortunately, I cannot support this with photographic evidence. He has destroyed it all.

This is the best photograph of Gary Thorne out there that isn’t the size of a post-it note. (This post brough to you by Post-It Notes! Try our new various neon colors with different levels of stickiness! From Light to Surgically Irremovable!) Gar looks a bit… cardboard, here, no? Also… this picture of Howie Long, Tim McCarver and Troy Aikman is actually a promotional photograph. That’s right folks, ABC is bringing back the 70’s classic “The Odd Couple” with these three crazy characters, each living in one New York City apartment, each conspicuously thrown out of their homes by their wives! Well, I guess Tim’s isn’t conspicuous… He filled their bed with about 30 snakes as an April Fool’s prank. Some people can’t take a joke, apparently.

Happy November, everyone! I’ve been pretty busy with a bunch of CRAP… and yes I mean that. So I’ve not been able to update as much as I would have liked. I missed entirely the Jeety’s Joint one-year anniversary extravaganza I had planned. That of course was the same day that I saw Jerry Seinfeld from the FRONT ROW and thus, I can die now. Anyway, that was November 3rd. And here we are, all the way at the 7th and I’m getting my first post of the month in. Sigh… If the rest of school is simultaneously this busy and dull, I’m dropping out. I know a little institution in New Brighton that will surely employ me full time… ahhhh!

Anyway, it’s election day. Also known as “The Day Wolf Blitzer Has A Reason To Be Alive.” After this it’s downhill until 2008, when all the pundits and pollsters will pee thier pants once again. Actually, that’s probably not true. With no incumbent as President or VP running for the office, the press will probably just be hyperactive until 2008, when Wolf Blitzer’s head will actually explode from sheer joy. Wolf… who names their child Wolf? And then who grows a bear to “go” with their name? Weird on so many levels…

As a tribute to today, I thought maybe we’d have a little look-see at some of the great political gaffes from recent memory. I came accross one last night that had me giggling in my sleep practically, but I’ll wait and put that one at the end. First, we start with Ted Stevens from Alaska, pontificating on “the internet”… er, as he sees it.

“The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s, it’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand that those tubes can be filled, and if they’re filled when you put your message in it, it gets in line, it’s gonna be delayed by anyone who puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.” He goes on to give an example… “Ten movies streaming accross that, that internet… and what happens to your own personal internet? I… just the other day, I got an internet that was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning Friday, I got it yesterday. Why?”

As you can see, I’ve highlighted my favorite parts of Senator Steven’s remarks. The senator then hopped in his horse and buggy and retired for the night. See you in a fortnight, good sir!

I’d like to dedicate this portion of the post to the incomparable Dan Rather and his ridiculous… -ism’s. First, his obsession with heat:

“This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex.”
“This race is hotter than the Devil’s anvil.”
“Ohio becomes like a sauna for the two candidates. All they can do is wait and sweat.”
“No question now that Kerry’s rapidly reaching the point where he’s got his back to the wall, his shirttails on fire and the bill collector’s at the door.”
(To Joe Lockhart) “I know that you’d rather walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit than consider the possibility that John Kerry would lose Ohio.”
(To Joe Lockhart) “What about Michigan? It’s been out there for a long time. Is that making your fingernails sweat?” WHAT??
“This presidential race has been crackling like a hickory fire for at least the last hour and a half.”

And now, for just the absurd:

“We used to say if a frog had side pockets, he’d carry a handgun.”
“We need Billy Crystal to Analyze This”
“The election is “closer than Lassie and Timmy”
“This situation in Ohio would give an aspirin a headache.”
“To use a metaphor, he’s gotta draw to an inside straight. But hey, sometimes you get lucky and hit that straight.”

I love how he introduced that last one… because you know, all the other insane things spewing from his mouth is just normal speech. Keep in mind, also, that all of these were taken from ONLY the 2004 election night. I had to cut back, because 2000 and 2002 had “some real hum-dingers,” to quote Dan himself.

And you can’t leave out religious fanatics when you’re talking about politicians… because generally, those crazy pyschos lie just as much. Pat Robertson, for example. We don’t have the webspace at Jeety’s Joint to recite all the blunders he’s spewed, but this one is hilarious. Enjoy:

“Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”

I don’t know about you, but I say let’s scrap “E Pleribus Unum” at slap THAT on all of our currency! Brilliant…

And finally, the quote I found last night that still makes me laugh, just thinking about it. In 1998, Senator John McCain made a joke at a Republican Fundraiser… now, you don’t often hear politicians do jokes, but I think when you do, it just makes them funnier. For example, McCain on SNL… hilarious. Well, prior to his late-night debut, McCain had a crack at the comedy scene on his own…

“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?” …. “Because her father is Janet Reno.” BADA-BING!!! Oh man… that is classic. Hats off to you, senator!

Unfortunately, I guess McCain apologized later, but we all have our faults. Anyway… Happy Election Day, if there is such a thing.

I… I could put a joke here. Yes… I… could.