Happy New Year 2008 (or the holiday card you didn’t get)

adventure, creative, dogs

So if you’ve been sitting by your mailbox for the past three weeks waiting patiently for the annual Pat and Stacy Hanukkah / Solstice / Christmas / Boxing Day / Kwanzaa / Eid ul Adha / Politically Correct Non-Religious Observance / New Years card, please go back inside, warm yourself by the fire and crack open an ice-cold beer.
It ain’t coming in the postbox – it’s coming in your in-box – in part because the ink cartridge on our printer is dry and we’re too lazy to run to the store to pick up another and print out 40-something cards, sign and address them… oh, and we also realized that if you’d like to receive this missive before Martin Luther King Day … or Mardi Gras … or Presidents Day, we might as well get on it, so with out further ado…
Read the jump for THE 7 MOST INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT 2007 (in no particular order) by Pat and Stacy – or rather, Stacy and Pat (It’s my blog; I can take top billing)

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Scott Simon is my BITCH! The true story of the most depraved NPR junket ever

adventure

Back in the golden age of radio – well, the golden age of radio SALES – when ad reps had four-martini-lunch expense accounts and eight-martini-Happy-Hour slush funds, and payola wasn’t considered a premium form of whole-grain cereal…
Back in the good ol’ days, I’m told, there were legendary junkets whereupon a radio salesperson (like me) would take a client or two (like, say… representatives of a gigantic, world-dominating, Internet search-engine and a cool web start-up) to an out-of-town location… perhaps a concert? Then said sales rep would ply them with hookers and crackpipes… or at least concert tickets and copious schwag that would resemble a Texas-high-school football recruit’s haul of Camaros and underage cheerleaders back in the glory days of the Southwest Conference.
… And then, and only then, would they proceed to make some memories.
Business may or may not have been discussed… but much fun would have been had by all, and bonds would have been posted by shady organizations, and perpetrators would have been released from the county lockup under the cover of unmarked taxicabs, and vaccination records would have been doctored to protect the innocent, and then (and only then) would the “OUT OF TOWN RULE” have come into play – the “OUT OF TOWN RULE” being the precursor to “What Happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
This was, after all, the 1970s… when I was about 6 (years old).
Fast forward 30 years… to the following true story (or not) of the most debauched and depraved National Public Radio junket ever undertaken (actually, probably the ONLY NPR junket ever undertaken that did not involve Diane Rehm reciting Shakespeare at a poetry slam or Robert Siegel singing Kum-Ba-Yah at a vegan protest).
You thought you’d heard the stories about Carl Kassell doing the Macarena atop the bar at Coyote Ugly… You’d caught whispers of Susan Stamberg filling a bathtub with her family’s cranberry relish and Tanqueray gin… You claimed you saw a grainy photo that purported to be Corey Flintoff doing bong-hits in Fred Flintstone pajamas… And yes, on YouTube, you’d searched, however fleetingly, for records of Scott Simon singing the theme song to Shaft at a karaoke drag bar in Sao Paolo.
He’s a bad mother- Shut your mouth! … But that was before Stacy B found her way to San Jose.
Draw the acid bath, fire up the rubbing alcohol eyewash, prepare to scour your ears, and read on if you dare:

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Save the Day before the Stupid Bowl: Krewe of Helios-AZ Part VI

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KOH 08Logo.jpg
As if the calendar weren’t crowded enough already, please mark yours for SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – yes, the day before the Stupid Bowl – for the KREWE OF HELIOS-ARIZONA MARDI GRAS PARADE AND PARTY, VI!!!
(We figured we’d start listing the years in Roman numerals since we’re coinciding with the Stupid Bowl – but for those of you who never made it through Latin, VI means 6, or ‘six’ as the case may be.)
For those of you who don’t live in Scottsdale and haven’t been bombarded by the Stupid Bowl Countdown (T-minus 59 days {LIX} and counting, as of this posting), the highlight of your weekend (that would be our party) coincides with the busiest day at the Phoenix Open Golf Extravaganza (only V miles to the south) and a flurry of surgically enhanced Official Stupid Bowl parties (which cost upwards of $CC per ticket and to which you’re probably not invited anyway – imagine that, 200 = 2 C-notes!)
So come party with people who know how to have a good time (and won’t require you to meet a dress code – we just require you to REMAIN clothed)
THE KREWE OF HELIOS-ARIZONA (the only official Mardi Gras Parading Organization in Arizona)
HEREBY OFFICIALLY INVITES YOU AND YOURS (and yes, your kids – but sadly, not your dogs)
TO PARTY LIKE (aunts-by-marriage-of) ROCK STARS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2008
3 PM – 10 PM (or whenever we kick your butt out – isn’t VII hours enough time to consume free food and beer? And, yes, we’re starting earlier this year, to accommodate for Phoenix Open traffic, and we will be publishing alternate routes, but we’re too lazy to do it right now)
AT THE KREWE OF HELIOS-ARIZONA WORLD HEADQUARTERS
24952 N. 74TH PLACE
SCOTTSDALE AZ 85255 (google map to come later – or look it up yourself)
And please, don’t blame our MMVIII King and Queen of Mardi Gras – the honorable Ryan and Cynde Cerf Dehmer – they had nothing to do with the scheduling. Sadly, Van Halen was not willing to alter their tour schedule to accommodate a better, non-Stupid-Bowl-Weekend date for us (and no, they’re not playing the party – Uncle Pat will be on tour with them during the more appropriate and less crowded, more desired date of January XXVI! Sorry about that…)
Come on out, drink some beer, PARTICIPATE IN THE NEW-FOR-MMVIII ADULT PINATA (no, it’s not X-rated, you just have to be XXI to play), eat some AMAZING gumbo (that has been featured on the Rachael Ray Show), drink more beer, eat more gumbo, catch REAL MARDI GRAS BEADS (PLEASE, don’t take off your clothes), and participate in our parade (if, and only if, you arrive early because it doesn’t take that long to drive VI cars around a cul de sac).
We’ll have more details as it gets closer – we just wanted our name on your dance card!
Laissez les bon temps roulez,
Pat and Stacy Bertinelli
Founders and Captains, Krewe of Helios-Arizona

Team Limoncello Scales Seven Summits… Sort of

adventure

It sounded like a good idea at the time: Entering the Phoenix Summit Challenge.
In a smaller scale version of the epic “Seven Summits” – the highest peaks on each of the seven continents – we would scale seven smaller summits in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve… in one day.
“We could do the two-day event, you know – three summits one day, four the next,” I said to Team Limoncello member Kristi Olson, who was tasked with entering said team in said event.
“Seven summits. One day. We can do this. Don’t be a wimp,” she insisted. “One day.”
Yet that one day would be days after I succumbed to the antibiotic-resistant mega-bug known as consumption or maybe it was typhoid… or dysentery… or cholera… I consulted The Big Book of Things That Can Kill You: Self-Diagnosis for the Hypochondriac and determined that it must have been SARS… or maybe even MRSA.
And so, the month of October disappeared in a fog of Tylenol Cold and Sinus, NyQuil, DayQuil, Airbourne, pseudoephedrine, sneezing, hacking and coughing – and I awoke at 4 AM on Sunday, November 11 with throbbing feet, wishing I could roll right over and go back to sleep. Instead, I drove to Kellee’s house, and together we drove to meet Kristi at Papago Park to begin our one-day adventure.
If your name is Jeffro, now is when you can click on the link below to read the “jump” so you can finish the story (rather than wait for the never-arriving cliffhanger). If you’re a normal reader, you know that if you want to continue reading, you can just click on the link below…

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I hate Bill Belichick

rage

For once in my life, I can be succinct:
I hate Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots – the one that dresses like a homeless person ON PURPOSE (hoodie sweatshirt, cut off at the sleeves). He’s the one that blames the NFL after he was caught videotaping opponents and found by the NFL to be CHEATING. He’s a dirty, rotten, arrogant bastard who clearly has a small man complex because he motivates himself and his team by pretending that everyone is out to get him and hates him.
Well, he’s right on that second part. And so to be succinct, I have created the following simile:
Bill Belichick is ruining football the way that George W. Bush is ruining our country. As my husband says, “It’s called economies of scale.” Rot in hell, Bill Belichick. Go Colts!