Team Limoncello Competes in Epic Mud Run, Launches Scientific Inquiry

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Limoncello Mud Pit.jpg
CAMP PENDLETON, Ca. — Team Limoncello completed the World Famous Marine Corps Mud Run in 1 hour, 56 minutes, 9 seconds on Saturday.
Comprised of Team Captain Stacy “Toes” Bertinelli, Team Athletic Gear Aficionado Jason “I Lost 90 Pounds” Robert, Team Wine Connoisseur Lisa “Mud Bath” Dinsmore, Team Cheerleader Dave “DAVE!” Dinsmore, Team Celebrity Trainer Christopher “I Can’t Believe I Made It!” Ross Lane and Team Last-Minute Substitute Juri “My Feet Don’t Touch the Bottom in this River” Yamashita, our intrepid harriers finished the Mixed Team division in a hangover-free 176th place of 268 teams.
Or in the words of Team Sherpa / Photographer Patrick “Disabled List” Bertinelli: “Man, y’all suck.”
Even though it was the fastest mixed-drink team in its age group, Team Limoncello’s less-than-triumphant finish has posed some interesting questions for scientific inquiry into the limits of human endurance…

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SB on SB1070

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Friends and family back home have asked my opinion of Arizona’s new immigration law, Senate Bill 1070. Having grown up in Louisiana, I know from odd politics: The very first time I got to exercise my right to vote, I had the privilege of choosing between a Klansman and a felon.*
If you listen to the wailing on both sides, you would think that SB1070 was written by a blood-thirsty lynch mob of cross-burning Klansmen chasing after a meth-fueled gang of gun-running, home-invading felons. As with anything extruded by the legislative process, the issue is a bit more complex.
So as a former Louisiana voter, a retired “journalist” and a registered lobbyist with the state of Arizona, here’s my take on Arizona’s “tough stance on immigration reform” or SB on SB 1070, if you will.

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You’re Not in Luck: I Hate Time Shares

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Woke up last week and felt like it was going to be a lucky day. Bought a lottery scratcher ticket and won a few bucks, knowing – just KNOWING – that our numbers would hit later on that night and all our dreams would come true.
At 5:30 PM I got the call: “You entered a drawing in January at the movie theater, and we’d like to congratulate you on being a finalist for the Grand Prize. As a finalist, you can choose from five fabulous vacation getaways. Please call to claim your finalist prize and learn more about the upcoming Grand Prize $100,000 drawing.”
I called back…

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Lips and A**holes

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Celebrate with Sausage
Celebrate with Sausage

The American Academy of Pediatrics has decided that hot dogs should be re-engineered to eliminate their inherent design flaws.

They are not talking about re-engineering the ingredients – MSM (Mechanically Separated Meat aka lips and assholes, snouts and tails), fats (trans, partially hydrogenated, lard) binders (cereals, soy, gluten) and preservatives like sodium nitrite and sodium erythorbate. They are talking about its fundamental essence of hot-dogness.

These are people who should have better things to do with their time and our public discourse, like REASSURE YOU THAT YOUR KID’S RUNNY NOSE IS NOT THE FIRST SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE. Instead, they just want to take all the fun out of food for the rest of us.

“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, (avowed hot-dog hater) and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “No parents can watch all of their kids 100% of the time. The best way to protect kids is to design these risks out of existence.”

Design these risks out of existence? Are you kidding me? Who do these weenies think they are?

We have enough engineered foods without going after my favorite low-rent meat product. If you really want to tackle a serious societal ill, go after SPAM, and I’m not talking about potted meat. Come to think of it, SPAM too is inherently dangerous: It can be weaponized when hurled at Gary Smith’s head! Sadly, projectile SPAM isn’t guaranteed to knock some sense into him, and that, my friends, is a design flaw.

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You’re Invited: KREWE OF HELIOS-AZ MARDI GRAS PARTY & PARADE, PART 8

food

Laissez les bon temps rouler!
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We hope y’all will join us for the Eighth Annual Krewe of Helios-Arizona Mardi Gras Parade and Party:
Saturday, January 30, 2010
4PM-10PM***
Pat and Stacy World Headquarters
24952 N. 74th Place
Scottsdale AZ 85255
As many of you have been here, done this and actually returned home with a T-shirt (and boatloads of authentic Mardi Gras beads), no changes have been made to our parade route or party format – but in case you had one too many hurricanes last year – or the year before that, or the year before that – here it is in a nutshell:
Arrive on time (4 PM) for the parade… bring the kiddos, a friend and a lawn chair, but no four-legged companions… genuflect before our 2010 Parade Queen Tami Simmons… catch the bountiful beads raining down from our cul-de-sac-circumnavigating flotilla of floats (but please, keep your clothes on)… get in line… eat some homemade Cajun goodness (gumbo, red-beans-and-rice, grits, muffalettas)… drink some hurricanes (but not too many)… eat a slice of authentic New Orleans king cake (but don’t choke on the baby) and laissez les bon temps rouler!
For those of you who do not arrive on time (4 PM), don’t whine to us that you are eating the pan-scrapings of cold grits. Do not complain that you have never seen a muffaletta and believe it to be offensive to your Italian heritage. Don’t be upset when you see others wearing cool KREWE OF HELIOS-ARIZONA T-SHIRTS. You have been warned: The time is anointed, so don’t be disappointed. 4 o’clock is the time to rock.
And for those of you late-arriving lackeys that look at your watch at 9:30 PM and think, “Hey, now’s a great time to show up for the party!” THINK AGAIN! Our neighbors are nice people. They tolerate an annual parade on their street. They dig Mardi Gras beads out of their cacti and allow strangers to park in their driveways in exchange for our annual romp through the culinary goodness of the Bayou State. We like them. They tolerate us. They like to sleep (and so do I). The finish time for our party is 10 PM. If you are here at 9:59, expect a gentle serenade of “Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over.” If you arrive at 10:05, you will feel the wrath of cranky Stacy. Six hours is plenty of time to party!
So come on out and have some fun – January 30 – yes, it’s early. The actual Fat Tuesday is February 16, but we’ll be at our hometown Mardi Gras and the weekend before that is Super Bowl weekend, ergo, we decided to kick off the parade season… and yes, we are on the national parade calendar… but no, we are not the first parade of the year. So come on out and have some fun!
Krewe of Helios Arizona Mardi Gras Parade
Saturday, January 30, 2010
4PM-10PM
Be there, aloha!
(And for those of you who haven’t been with us before, you can check out our parade etiquette and rules in this delightful 7th edition explanation… or even the 6th edition… or the 4th… you get the picture)