I see the story today about Kanye West and it disgusts me. What ever hapened to modesty? I remember as a kid watching Steve Largent (Seattle Seahawks receiver, Hall of Fame member) getting touchdown after touchdown, and what would he do? Either set the ball down or walk over and hand it to a ref. Asked why no “celebrations”?…(these are my words, but close enough) “because It (the catch) didn’t win a Super Bowl, and It looks like I’ve been there before” (in other words it was no big deal)…now THAT is cool, classy. This crap of looking around for cameras and pulling a sharpie out of your sock to sign a football on national tv isn’t just UNcool, it’s sickening. If you’re good, people will appreciate it, but this ME ME ME stuff..look at ME. I’m sick of it. It’s a darn shame… Ok, I feel better now..hehe…

You know, Mark Harmon, I really used to like you. You always seemed to be the affable, laid back guy. Your first big impression on me was one of my favorite classic summer 80s film, Tuff Turf. Er, no wait a minute, my bad, wrong movie. No, your first big role to me was Summer School. What a great movie, and those of you old enough to remember it probably to this day wonder whatever happened to the lovable Chainsaw. Or the kid who never showed up to class. That was a great movie, and I am sure Mark counted himself lucky to be acting with a young Courtney Thorne-Smith and a pre elephantine Kirstie Alley. Even Saw cutie Shawnee Smith was in this flick. Day-um, stupid girls sure were hot back in the day

He would continue through more TV and movie roles. He married –and apparently is still married to-Mindy from Mork & Mindy. He was voted People’s Sexiest Man Alive in n1986, the year People also suspiciously disqualified me, for some bullshit reason of ‘not being even remotely famous’. Fuckers. Anyway, Harmon all but disappeared from my consciousness, to be replaced by such happy things as orange creamsicles and Tetris.

Recently, Mark Harmon has reappeared in my life in a big and negative way. In fact, I now hate you, Mark Harmon. I see entirely too much of you. Apparently, he’s been on this show called NCIS, which I believe stands for ‘now can I speak’. And this show, unbeknownst to me, has been on the air for quite a few years. I didn’t know this until the show started rerunning on USA. I know all of this because my wife is addicted to this goddamn show.

At first it was just on USA and whatever other channel it first airs on. Life was good, life was tolerable. But that has all changed over the last year. Now, NCIS is omnipresent in my house. We have 3 TVs in the house. At any given time, all of them are on channel 13 (aka USA, aka NCIS central). This pisses me off more than when they all used to be on the Food Channel. It’s not like she ever made me any of that stuff…

Since then, I have clearly been put in my place. I know between the hours of 5-7, I am second fiddle. I am third wheel. The house can be on fire, and upon telling her this fact, I will get scolded, “WAIT FOR A COMMERCIAL!” If this was only contained to scheduled intervals, I am laid back and accommodating enough to work around it. Hell, I’ll even give her the big TV-you know, the B&W one-to watch all the nefarious goings ons going on. But it has grown worse. It appears NCIS spreads quicker than the swine flu.

Now it seems NCIS is on 4 channels that I am aware of. Which I believe still pales in comparison to how many fucking channels show Scrubs. That was her previous crack TV. I think I’ve counted Scrubs on no less than 6 fucking channels. It’s now gotten to the point that I can watch Scrubs rather than NCIS. But Elliot is still fucking annoying.

Also, USA appears to be so devoid of alternate programming, test patterns and infomercials that it now runs NCIS marathons. So imagine my shock as all day yesterday-a Wednesday-USA went all NCIS. Surely somewhere, there must be unaired Billy Mays commercials. Fuck me. I’ve arrived at the point where I am familiar with the characters and certain storylines. Me. But she can sit there and watch the whole damn thing all over again. Yesterday, I hit a new low. “We” were watching the show, and about 15 minutes in, I realized I fucking saw this show before. Yet, her gaze was the gaze of a traveler spotting water after a week in the desert. Ambrosia to the angels and such shit.

I don’t like the show, for a few reasons. Chief amongst them is she likes it so goddamn much. But there’s more to it than just that. (And I am ashamed I can go into this much detail of a show I don’t even watch.) First of all, Mark Harmon’s character is named Jethro. Right, Jethro. That’s his first name, too, not his last. It’s hard to buy an action hero as a ‘Jethro’. A Clampett? Sure, but not a federal agent. Unless he was the federal agent of moonshine. So Gibbs (Jethro’s last name, the name most people use to call him.) is one of those smarmy types that is always fucking right. What’s that? All the evidence points to the husband as the killer? No, because Gibbs is Gibbs, he has some sort of ESP that actually tells him the real killer is the neighbors’ gardeners’ cousins’ eighth grade teacher! Alas, how could we not have seen this? We all must bow to the knowingness of brother Gibbs. Gibbs always knows where the bad guy is hiding.

Gibbs is a maverick. Gibbs will only use your last name, even if it’s Gibbsisapedophile. OK, that was a funny episode. Gibbs thumbs his nose at his superiors, he disobeys orders, he ‘goes dark’. I believe he even has a pristine copy of that Erin Andrews video. Gibbs can anticipate the bad guys’ next move. Gibbs is a deadeye. Gibbs. Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs. Enough fucking already!

Sure, he is surrounded by less smart characters as well. There’s the suave guy, the nerd guy, the chick, the goth forensic chick, the weathered coroner. Every week, it’s a new struggle against evil. And my sanity. I don’t like the slickness of Gibbs. It gets quite tiresome to see the same general scenario week in and week out. Right, I can see all of you rolling your eyes-you know your webcam is on, right?-thinking, “Well what about your hero, Jack Bauer?”Jack Bauer is far more hardcore than fucking Gibbs. Take away seasons 5 & 6 (please) of 24, and 24 is the far better show.

But, boom there is NCIS on just about every damn channel we have. Look, we’re poor, we just have basic cable. And at the rate they’re taking away my channels, we’ll be lucky to have 20 left. And Mark Harmon will be on at least 5 of those. Maybe my wife snuck in some sort of NCIS channel unbeknownst to me. All I know is I have 20 channels-16 if you take away the Spanish speaking ones-and I am pretty sure I’ve seen NCIS on 4 of them. And one of the Spanish ones. Eh, Senor Gibbs?

I can see by the hour upon us, that soon, the NCIS channel will be on, and any actual conversation must take place between the commercials. Even if it’s a rerun. Even if it’s a rerun I’ve seen, I’d best not spoil the ending. Sure, you can argue the same thing with me and The Simpsons. Yes, true, I’ve seen the majority of the shows, but not all of them. And since it’s only a half hour long, I get 2 episodes for the price of one measly NCIS. Plus, with all my drinking, my memory is spotty, so sometime it really is like watching a brand new episode. And it’s all about escapism for me; it makes me laugh, and my troubles vanish for a brief, fleeting amount of time. Besides, if Gibbs ever got bonked on the head with a transmission, I would laugh my ass off.

George Clooney officially has the hottest girlfriend in Hollywood. His latest female partner is italian bombshell model and TV host Elisabetta Canalis. The two have been seen in public a lot together recently. They were seen biking around CLooney’s Lake Como home in Italy. The two were introduced by a mutual friend. They have been seen dining together an awful lot. Will this be the one for CLooney. Let’s wait and see. It seems old age isn’t making George Clooney any less hotter. The big question is when will he stop this game and settle down? We are all waiting to see who that one lucky woman would be.

A recent confession by Ex Idol contestant Ju’Not Joyner couls hyave opened a Pandora’s Box. He claimed for sure many things that could put the show to shame . In an interview for AI Now, he said it was a  rigged afair, that the contracts were not fair and that the shows lawyers made them blindly sign contracts. What was surprising was that he was the only who confessed that and the others didn’t. Or is it just he had a bad case thats all? Maybe there is more let’s see what Simon  has to say about all these allegations. Only time will tell.

There has been a birth in Hollywood  and no hungama. How can it be? Well, this time it’s Jude Law and an unidentified woman. The actor has said that she will be fully supported. He has clearly indicated that they two are not involved at this point in time. The actor already has three children with his ex wife Sadie Frost who were married from ‘97 through to 2003. The three children are Rafferty, Rudy & Iris. The actor has three movies coming up - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Repossession Mambo and a Sherlock Holmes adaptation. Lets see how this story picks up in time to come.

It seems that infatuation with Megan Fox is good for self control. Men specific sites have banned her off their sites for a whole days on account of having too much of her. But really can you blame her? While it may be a commendable act, we can say for sure that they will be back at it again.  And maybe she does need the rest. It seems that she didn’t have top act but just be her own sexy self in the movie. Well. Megan some roles just come tailor made. This is not the first time that Megan Fox has turned eyes around so much ans we know that wit her reputation many more times will come.

We all knew that Kevin Federline was up to to no good. He was never more than the worst boy toy that Britney would ever  had and the one that made the best use of her. Well, it shows that the guy was wasted and intended on getting wasted. At an event recently he made a public appearance and had a paunch that is so unbelievably huge it is comparable to Jack Nicholson’s paunch when he is sun bathing with babes on the beach or with his boat. Man, Kevin is the worst Hollywoodite ever. Talk about a bad rep!!!

This is not going to his supposedly touted reality show with lover Victoia Prince.  Now would we want to watch him live his daily life?!!

I’m glad to see that Minnesota weather is finally back to its usual shenanigans. The thunder and lightening this morning was thrilling and the hail was positively titillating - nothing quite so much fun as driving blind, wondering if your windshield is going to crack (for the second time in the month), and the short-lived somewhat splatty interlude of snow that followed was very refreshing in July. My only regret is that a tornado didn’t sneak out of the massive black storm cell above me and touch down in the corn field to my right…I have yet to see a corn field go up in a tornado.

I’m disgusted. What’s more depressing than the economy? What’s more of a bummer than all the people losing their jobs, their homes, their hope, their fucking everything?

I’ll tell you what. Walking down to Stillwater’s infamous FORMERLY FREE Lumberjack Days celebration and seeing it barred shut. Getting a load of the massive quantities of youngsters, huddled in huge groups, loitering, bored, and bummed on every curb just OUTSIDE the chainlink fences and gates barring them from the formerly FREE TO ALL Lumberjack Days celebration. I can’t think of too many teenagers that are going to fork over $10 so that they can then fork over another $5-$6 on the hotdog they were planning on scoring while watching a few interesting acts onstage and looking for familiar faces in the fun, festive, normally packed, sometimes weird, always entertaining crowd.

Teenagers weren’t the only people turning away from the ridiculously prison-like barrage of chain-linkfencing. In case you hadn’t picked up on it, for the first time, they’re charging a $10 cover to get inside what was before, a down-home, local, fun, free, old-fashioned small town annual celebration.

Yeah so it got out of hand when Lynard Skynard played a few years back. Whatever. Bad planning.

Hell, I won’t even pay $10 to get into the State Fair and that’s pretty big-time.

All I have to say is (edit this): City of Stillwater, you just fucked all your Lumberjack Days Vendors in the ASS. Way to stick it to the little guy trying to make a buck.

Major fucking Bummer. Guess I’ll go take my usual hike in a state park - the fee for that is only $25 a YEAR (not counting the $105 fine I had to pay for forgetting to update my annual pass in time.)

What a fucking money grubbing pathetic world we live in. I’m disgusted and ashamed Stillwater. Fucking disgusted. Take your infamous celebration and shove it up your money-grubbing touristy ass.

Coming up with 500 words to say about this is really a bit of a challenge. It’s one of the few things in life that speaks for itself.

Other than the picture that’s being created in this video, if you listen closely to the artist, just about every thing this guy says can be interpreted on a number of levels. Massive metaphor action going on. Really really COOL stuff (in my opinion)

By the way, having a 500 word prerequisite for posting videos is silly as far as I can think - which isn’t usually farther than my point of view, which, at times, can be exhaustingly narrow, limited, misguided, and whatever else (I’m trying to fill the 500 word minimum so I can just post this friggin amazing video already). Fuck 131.

The best things in life have NO words attached to them – that’s why I personally, genuinely and passionately from the very depths of my (rather shallow at times although occasionally a little bit less than shallow at others) heart - Goddamnit – 172. ARRRRGGGHHHH!! – really would like to get that 500 word requirement reduced.

I guess I could try to be all smart and perceptive and actually make an intelligent (or at least attempt to make one) observation of this really incredibly delightfully unusually completely and utterly surprisingly cool video, but I was looking at this video on another site (not youtube) and every single person that commented said less than three words…and in fact, not many of them were actually words per se, but rather, exclamations. ( please Jesus, let me be at 500 words….pretty please because I’m getting really fucking tired of saying nothing about something that is (in my opinion) beyond words….hold on – let me check…..(drumroll)… 291. Shit.

All right fine…I’m no quitter. Fuckit. So this video starts out slow, and you might be tempted to simply shut it down, but if you get past the part that begins to look like a cheesy ad, you very well might be pleasantly surprised with the knowledge of what some people do for fun. I love this guy. Makes me want to take a trip down under (and I’m not talking under the covers or anything else here, although….) Anyways. Hold on one more tiny little second…Damn hell – only 380.

That minimum really should be shortened to 250. Some of us are visual people as well…Can you imagine if they put an essay beside each work of art in museums…? I mean – it kind of ruins the point. But anyways…..423 – wait a minute – that was four hundred twenty three words according to Words wonderful wordcount tool. Love that tool. Yes I do…Alright god Damnitt…where are we at?

So here’s the deal – if you survived reading the shit I just posted in an effort to meet my quota – which I hope to hell you have because this video IS COOL – then good for you…and sorry about all the bullshit…. 491. Close enough (almost)….Thank GOD – one more word. Enjoy!

(Damn - after all that I hope this video shows up in the post)

Sand Dancer