The Andrew Extravaganza

Minor change to the main page of my site. I got sick of that calendar mocking my lack of updates, so it has been shit-canned. I was in a destructive mood so the right column met a similar fate. I went Joe Stalin on it; the many undesirable members of the right column did not survive annexation by the left column.

My car, a 2006 Lancer that was purchased in May, is averaging 28.04 miles per gallon in what has been mostly city driving conditions. I should hit the 3,000 mile mark in about a week.

In the store the other day, a woman spent at least 15 minutes perusing the selection of word searches. I'm not sure what kind of comparison shopping can be done for that particular product. One was celebrity themed, the others did not have a cohesive theme throughout the entirety of the book. That is it. I have just broken down every difference that I noticed. Granted I'm not a word search connoisseur, but I fail to see how it can require more than five minutes to pick one given the most stringent standards. Supreme Court justices don't scrutinize legal briefs as thoroughly as this woman did those word searches.

After a while it became clear she was "mentally handicapped", a term I'm using because I don't know the proper way to explain her particular affliction. She didn't seem crazy; she didn't talk to or wet herself. She didn't seem to be a retard, no jarring shouts or the tell-tale physical traits and I didn't see a handler nearby. More than anything she was spastic. Kind of twitchy with quick, aggressive movements of her arms. She never did settle on a word search worthy of purchase, but she did browse the DVD selection as if it were an infant that wouldn't stop crying. Characters in stop motion animation films move more fluidly.

I was at Half Price Books the other day and happened upon a James Ellroy book, Destination Morgue!. Part I, titled Crime Culture/Memoir, is a series of related short non-fiction pieces. The scoop: The man is very creepy. The book also features lengthy stretches of distracting alliteration, it comes and goes, but when he gets rolling the book becomes borderline unreadable. It has several chapters worth reading, but I think I'll steer clear of Ellroy's book length memoir, My Dark Places.

As I discussed in a post back in June, Houston finally has a new sports talk radio station. KGOW 1560 The Game officially launched today. I tuned in for the last segment of Ken Hoffman's show and most of Sean the Cablinasian and John Harris in the afternoon. Now they just need to ink Lance Zierlein to join John Granato in the morning, but I think his settlement with CBS radio prevents Lance from going on the air in Houston for a bit longer.

That picture on the right is of Sean "The Cablinasian" Pendergast. Sean is a five time winner of the Smack-Off and was the subject of Willie in Kansas City's Cablinasian the Friendly Ghost song. I had never seen a picture of Sean until today. He's as bald and as fat as advertised, but I was expecting a much pastier Cablinasian. Now that he is on a radio station that competes for ratings with the Jungle's Houston affiliate, have we heard the last of the Cablinasian in the Jungle?

Streaming audio of The Game's programming is available on their website. Until they work out their signal issues, streaming is probably the best bet.

I will be unemployed in two days. I will also be back in Austin. Life is good.