America's Most Wanted

1. Usama Bin Laden

2. LARRIONDA Jorge


Nationality: Uruguay
Role: Referee
Date of birth: 9 March 1968
Height: 176 (cm)
Weight: 74 (kg)
Referee since: 1 January 1998
First international : Chile v Bolivia (20 June 1999)
Place of residence: MONTEVIDEO
Country of residence: Uruguay
Mother language: Spanish
Other languages: English
Occupation: Clerk
General interests: Breeding animals (birds, dogs, parrots, etc)
Best memory: FIFA Confederations Cup France 2003 semi-final: France v Turkey; 2004 Olympic Football Tournament Bronze Medal Match: Italy v Iraq


Worst Officiated Game: USA v. Italy, 2006 World Cup

I've been there once, I think.

A common theme you may see running through this blog are the ways that I (and Brien) have discovered that South Florida is anything but the South. From the accents to the incredible number of Yankee and/or Red Sox car flags to the fact that we have to keep a short list of restaurants that serve sweet tea, one quickly realizes that the greater Fort Lauderdale area is not a member of the greater southeastern culture.

I have decided that "The South" for most people down here is the place they fly over to get to and from Florida to their homes/families up in the northeast, a place they have heard of, maybe even tried to imagine based on lyrical descriptions they hear from the country radio stations, but have never really ventured into.

A recent post by gillikin reminded me of a brief conversation I had recently with a parent of one of my baseball kids, which illustrates the above observation:


The mom: Thanks for coming to the tournament this weekend, Coach. The boys love having you.

Me: Sure thing, Mrs. X, I wouldn't have missed. The boys played well.

The Mom (noticing my Georgia license plate): Oh, are you from Walker, Georgia? (she said it in an excited, nostalgic kind of way, as if that was where she had grown up)

Me: Sort of, I went to school in north Georgia and lived there for a few years after college. Are you from there?

(I expected her to tell me that she had gone to high school in Rossville or Dalton or some coincidental connection like that. I was excited, my mind already imagining the southern hospitality that might result from this meeting - the family would have me over for grits sometime, and we sit together and work on our southern drawls and talk about college football and state's rights, etc.)

The Mom: No, I stayed in Alabama once.

Me: Oh.

At that moment I think I realized how many internationals must feel around us stupid Americans. They visit our church or social group, and we try to be relevant and establish commonality and act as if we understand the Ukrainian because we visited Moscow, or north German life because we flew through Frankfurt. Please.

So much for the grits.

My visit to the Readers Digest Large Print Edition Retirement Neighborhood

In case you couldn't read the numbers on the mailbox...

Why I can't stand the New York Times

We begin with a confession: we get the New York Times emailed to our inbox everyday. Part of our early morning ritual is to read through the headlines, including those of the Times, just to get a feel for the worldwide "office vibe." We don't think we need to explain what a longstanding and incredible reputation the Times has as an American media source, and we admit that they often have some interesting stuff in the art section and even in the sports section.

But when it comes to news and opinion, the Times sucks. Reading it makes us gag.

Case in point: Yesterday the U.S. bombed and killed the most feared terrorist in Iraq and, outside of Bin Laden, the most wanted Al Quaeda leader. This is huge. Probably the biggest thing since capturing Hussein. A major victory for the military, for the US, and for the war against terror.

Yesterday, good triumphed over evil. Yesterday, the world was reminded that people who kill for the sake of killing, who oppress their own countrymen and terrorize the citizens of other nations, who seek to oppose freedom, will not succeed.

You would not know it from reading the Times.

You don't even have to listen very hard to hear the pessimistic, whining, anti-Bush anti-America anti-success in this war negativity that oozes from just the article headlines in today's edition of the Times:


"After a Long Hunt, U.S. Bombs the Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq" - i.e. It took us long enough, and in the end we just dropped some bombs (such a brutal way to go about things, we could have used diplomacy talks or something) like barbarians

"How Surveillance and Betrayal Led to a Hunt's End" - i.e. America may have gotten Zarqawi, but we had to lie and decieve to do it.

"Hatred He Bred Is Sure to Survive Terrorist's Death" - i.e. Killing Zarqawi didn't help things at all. It's no victory.

"Zarqawi Is Dead, but Weary Iraqis Fear the Violence Won't Subside" - i.e. Again, this is no victory at all. You, Bush and America, have just made it worse.

"Death of a Terroris: As Americans discovered earlier, it will take far more than the elimination of iconic leaders to stem the tide of the Iraqi insurgency and reverse the country's slide into civil war."

"Zarqawi's Life After Death: The decapitation of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network may indeed diminish its effectiveness, but we should not get our hopes too high."


That's why we can't stand the New York Times.



Footnote: For some positive opinions of yesterday's victory, check these out:

Zarqawi’s death is particularly welcome because it comes at such a distressing time in Iraq.

Killing Zarqawi is the equivalent of averting a Haditha every other day in Iraq, indefinitely

It would be underestimating the impact of Zarqawi’s death to say it is a major blow to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Complete coverage of Zarqawi's death

A Moral Victory
The meaning of Zarqawi's death.

World Cup Watch, Part 4

Among the players to watch on the US Men's National Team is one Clint Dempsey, an attacking midfielder who could (and should) play a major role in the US team's success in Germany. Some suggest that Dempsey (who played college ball in the great state of SC) has become such a success because of his "caprice," and his creative, sometimes "fluff," style of play is reminiscent of another US midfield, Clint Mathis (who also played college ball in the great state of SC - for the Gamecocks).

We, however, think Dempsey is the midfielder US opponents should fear because of his superhero alter-ego as the gangsta rapper Deuce. If you don't believe us, check it out here.


Don't be all treadin up on his pitch. Bee-otch.



Speaking of Gamecocks, how bout ol' Deuce giving us a shout out? Pretty clever lyrics, really, "more game than a gamecock." Sounds like it was written by a Clemson Tiger.

HD Monday's with Murray

Do not dissapoint, World Cup. Entertain the world, Germany. Play well, US Men's National Team. Be beautiful, soccer.

We are watching. In High Definition.

Meyer's Pride Construction - This week in numbers

800.72 – dollars worth of nails that Brien and I purchased at 9:30 Tuesday night. Apparently this is what roofing contractors do in your spare time once the season of American Idol has ended. 1¼” ring shank coil nails have been in short supply in Broward County for the last 3 weeks, even from the roofing supply companies, so when one of our roofing buddies called us last night and told us Lowes had just gotten a load in, Brien and I rushed over there and bought as many boxes as we could before Lowes closed. We left just enough for the other roofers to discover in the morning and be frustrated that there weren’t more.

3 – customers that have been drunk when I met with them.

4 – hours is all it took for Dave Page to change his mind from not being able to fly to Ft. Lauderdale for Memorial Day to calling us mid afternoon on Friday to let us know that he was in fact in the airport on his way here.

117 – minutes for me to remove and replace 40 feet of fascia boards along the back of a house we are roofing. This was physically the hardest I worked all week. I was dripping with sweat, covered in sawdust and roofing granules, and looking like I just survived WWIII.

5 – minutes drive between completion of said fascia work and beginning a round of golf with Brien and Jamey for Brien’s birthday. Exhausted, my goal was for my golf score to be lower than the number of minutes I had just spent doing fascia work. It was close.

50 – inches diagonally from one corner to the other on our new Panasonic Plasma HD TV. World Cup, we are ready for you.

7 – remote controls that now lie around our house, including 2 Direct TV, television, VCR, DVD, receiver, and the CD player,

6 – security cameras on the house that Dave Page and I estimated on Saturday. Dave is convinced that it was a drug house, given the neighborhood, the inhabitants, and the interesting “trinkets” inside the house.

0 – people that have waved at me when I wave at them while driving. Back home, everybody raises a hand from the steering wheel to greet an oncoming car or a pedestrian. Especially if you’re in a truck. Here, you wave at a guy walking in his neighborhood as you drive by, and he just stares at you with a bit of a scowl, as if he’s just seen an obnoxious alien or something.

93.1 – a local rock station that offered me $1000 dollars if I tune in to 93 Rock, get the song of the day, and then be the 9th caller after that song is played. A usual radio station gimmick, only this one I discovered because I received a telemarketing call at 8 a.m. from a woman (presumably from the station) bringing all of these exciting details to my attention. I’ve never, in my 26 years, received a sales call from a radio station asking me to listening to listen in. Whatever happened to just playing good music that people want to hear?

1,000,000 – times that Brien and I have wanted to cuss out, shoot, etc. the Pembroke Pines building department staff. They are the epitome of government bureaucracy that is slow and apathetic about, yes even hostile toward, customer service. They are inefficient and have made numerous mistakes on what should have been easy shingle jobs. They do not accept responsibility, but instead blame it on us, and being full of grace and mercy as Meyer’s Pride is want to be, we have numerous times swallowed our "pride", taken the hit and corrected their mistakes ourselves. We have paid fines for failing inspections we didn’t call for, rescheduled inspections that had previously been passed but didn’t get recorded in their records, fixed problems they had previously said were okay, and dealt mercifully with the snotty, condescending, make-one-comment-and-I’ll-pop-an-attitude-with-you ladies that make you want to pop a knot on their head big enough for a camel to suck. We will never do a job in Pembroke Pines again. Pembroke Pines is a municipality very much under the domain of the Prince of Darkness.

1 – lady sitting next to me in the Tamarac Bldg. Dept. who told me the little goalkeeper glove attached to my key chain was cute. The tiny replica goalie glove key chain came with the last pair of keeper gloves I bought. It is not cute. Roofing contractors are not cute. I have removed the glove from my key chain.

2 – times I laughed out loud at the ignoramus who took charge in one of the building department lines the other day. He had taken the clip board on which everyone signed in when arriving at the permit counter and was trying to figure out who was next in line. Ignoramus came to the Asian man sitting next to me, whose head was bowed and had apparently fallen asleep, and asked if this was him. The man was asleep, and didn’t respond. Ignoramus tried again. Still no response. This frustrated Ignoramus shoved the clipboard in the man’s face, literally 2 inches from his nose, and yelled “Si Senor is this you mi amigo?” The Asian man awoke, clearly startled at the loud voice, the clipboard in his face, and the fact that someone was speaking to him in his “native tongue.” He shook his head, looked at me (as I was laughing out loud) and shrugged his shoulders, and went back to sleep.

363 – miles driven. This does not include Murray’s Mileage, half of which was spent driving back and forth to Hell to visit with the Devil (see Pembroke Pines).

11 - inches from chin to the tip of the beard on the Jewish engineer that came to inspect a roof I am working to have replaced for a customer. A rather large man, with a digital camera hanging from a string around his neck and wearing some sort of Jewish looking garb, he had a very quiet, very raspy voice and said very little. As he walked along the ridge of the roof, I couldn't help but picture him with a violin, dancing lightly from one roof to another fiddling happily while the rest of the town sang along. I asked him if roof inspecting engineers made a lot of money. He didn't answer. I asked what he would do if he were a rich man. Either he didn't get the joke or hadn't thought about being a rich man as much as Tevye the Milkman. Oh well. La Kayim.

How to sell a roof to a drunk person

Perhaps it is the sweltering heat of the Florida summer that makes a cold drink look so refreshing ("I was hot, it was cold" - Krazy Karl). Maybe it's because hurricane season is nearly upon us, and the scary realization that some folks will not have their roofs repaired before the next storm comes through is more than they can bear. Or it could be that in a world where 1/5 the population is retired (i.e. does not work), the rule that 5 o'clock is the first hour of the day in which you can grab a beer is no longer in effect.

Whatever the reason, I have begun to run into an increasing number of drunk people on the job. Thankfully, I haven't caught our crews drinking on top of a roof (though I have heard of other companies whose salesman went on a customers roof and had a drink), although I have been tempted to brink a 6 pack of Coronas to Lupe, Victor and the boys as a thanks for the hard work they do.

No, the intoxicated folks I have encountered have been potential customers. Given my experiences, I now have determined at least 3 ways to gently handle drunk customers and still make the sale.

3. Stare directly at the drunkard. This was the approach I took when meeting with a customer at Panera bread. Actually, this guy wants to partner with MPC to do "literally hundreds of jobs in the next few months." This guy claims to have the network connections, and has created a contracting company and sold jobs under its name - all without a license. Whatever his story, when I sat down at Panera and realized he was already under the table, all I could do was stare directly at the guy as he spit out his story in slow, slurred, incoherent phrases.

Lesson learned - Panera's in south Florida do not sell sweet tea, but apparently they sell something even stronger to drink.

2. Ignore the drunkard and get straight to the paperwork. Earlier this week I swung by a house for a call back, where the folks I had previously met with decided to sign with us and needed the paperwork to get started. A man in his lat 20's answered the door, the son who still lives at home who to date has failed to launch.

"My parents are in the back, hold on a sec," he said.

I waited. I heard a door open around the corner and down the hallway. Rita emerged first, looking somewhat flustered, and in her very strong New York accent began to apologize and make excuses for not getting to the door right away. I was confused, but said nothing.

"My husband and i were in the back room looking a different paint colors. I guess the door closed without us knowing. We kind of got carried away back there and then we really got in to it," Rita informed me.

"In to the paint colors," her son clarified.

"Yes, Yes the paint colors," Rita said excitedly. She kept fluffing her hair and fanning herself.

Ed then emerged from the back room, his shirt off, a beer in his hands, and adjusting his shorts. At that point I wanted to run away. Instead, I opened my folder and began to pull out the papers to be signed. Ed went to shake my hand but missed. He then asked me to follow him upstairs where he could point out a few additional water spots that needed to be corrected. He slapped Rita on the butt as we walked by.

I tried to take Ed seriously as he discussed the different work that needed to be done, but he was drunk and kept repeating himself, and he concluded the tour with "J, you're a roofer. Do what you do. And I'll do what I do."

Lesson learned: At least in my mind, the famous Mr. Ed is no longer a talking horse.

1. If you can't beat the drunkards, join em. After measuring one house, I found the homeowner in teh back yard by his pool, knocking em back with his elderly father. These guys were actually not drunk, yet, so when they offered for me to grab a beer and join em, I figured what the heck. It was 5 o'clock there, and probably somewhere else too, so i wasn't too worried. Plus, if you join em early enough, neither of you will remember if they ever actually got drunk.

Lesson learned: Always join the homeowner for drinks after having measured the roof, not before. Alcohol and steep slopes do not go well together.

World Cup Watch, Part 3

A few of the folks who sit and talk regularly at the Manville Table have requested that I continue to highlight football players and teams in order to educate the not so soccer savvy public prior to the start of the World Cup. I aim to please.

So, class is in session.




Petr Cech. Goalkeeper for the Czech Republic, who are currently ranked 2nd in the world by FIFA. Cech plays professionally for Chelsea, a very talented and well financed English club who are basically like the New York Yankees of English soccer.

I choose to highlight Cech for several reasons.

1. He is a goalkeeper (just like me)
2. He is one of the best in the world, if not THE best (just like me). He was voted footballer of the year for the Czech Republic.
3. He plays for the Czech Republic, against whom the USA will play its first World Cup match on June 12.
4. His last name is the same as his country (pronounced Peter Check). If I were as cool as he, I would play keeper for the US national team and change my name to Jasn America. Or Slippry United States.
5. According to ESPN’s soccer website, Petr Cech weighs 13.2. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds pretty dang cool.

As for the game against the Czech’s, this will be a huge gauge of how good our US men’s team really is and how we will fare in this World Cup; if we can manage a draw or even a squeack out a win against the Czech Republic, we stand a good chance of making it out of Group E and into the bracket round of the tournament. An interesting match up to watch will be Czech’s Jiri Stajner, a forward, who could line up against the USA’s Steve Cherundolo, a defender. Both Cherundolo and Stajner play together professionally for the German club Hanover.

One final parcel of food for thought. Many people think the US has finally arrived in the soccer world. We’re currently ranked 5th, though we often play like we’re ranked 50th (see USA v. Morocco), but we are looking to build on our strong quarterfinal performance in the 2002 World Cup. On the other hand, the Czech republic is ranked 2nd in the World. The Czech Republic currently has a population of approximately 10.2 million. Going back to my earlier New York analogy, the metropolitan area of New York City boasts approximately 21.9 million people, which is twice as much as the entire country of the Czech Republic (for you people from the Blue States). Not that quantity ever necessitates quality, but it would seem our talent pool, resources, financial support etc. might be a little bit bigger? So marinate on that for a while.

Wednesday's Mith Wurray

Check out this nifty trick. Several of you have wondered what happened to this week's Monday's with Murray. Well, we missed it. But we found out that our computer has a "take the first letter of every word and flip it upside down to maintain a cool title for blog posts" button, which we just used. Granted, Wednesday's With Wurray would have made for a better illiteration, but the button doesn't understand that - it just does what it's programmed to do.

So, sorry for any trouble it has caused those of you for whom Monday's with Murray is a cyber shot of inspiration.

Who I'd most like to be when I grow up (currently)

They say he could be the man that will lead England to a successful World Cup run, much as he has captained his own Liverpool to their Champions League Championship last year and their recent FA Cup victory (which is the most recent source of my admiration). If you haven't seen or read the highlights of either of those games, you have not lived. He was brilliant in both, with two 35+ yard goals (or "absolute howitzers" as we like to call them) in the FA Cup, the second which came seconds from time and sent the game into overtime.

Pele says he is one of the best he's seen.

He's been a part of only one club, Liverpool, his hometown team for whom he has played since he was 9 years old (a loyalty that is rare these days of million dollar/pound contracts).

And his fiance looks like a Swedish Paris Hilton.


All good reasons why I'd like to be Steven Gerrard when I grow up. And by grow up, I mean when I turn 26 in August, because that's how old Gerrard is (as of a few days ago).

South Florida Soccer fans, a microcosm of American sports enthusiasts?

From The History of Soccer: The Beautiful Game, which Brien and I have been attempting to watch for the past few weeks (999 minutes is a lot of soccer). Perhaps this explains the lack of interest in the World's sport on the part of Floridians (and Americans):

"Americans have great difficulty understanding the attraction of soccer because American games can be segmented into individaul acation and individual statistics. Soccer has continual fluid action. American games are fairly high scoring, and nothing to nothing games are something you cannot sell in America." - Henry Kissinger

"They didn't undstand it. I mean I don't undstand baseball or basketball. The Americans were the same. They didn't undstand the offside law. They didn't understand most of the stuff they were watching. The only time they made noise was when there was a goal. That's as much as they knew about football." - George Best on the now defunct North American Soccer League.

South Florida Soccer fans, where are you?

In true Manville fashion I attempted to throw a Champions League Final party last night. Like years past, I invited everyone I knew (which is a substantially smaller crowd down here) to come to the house and watch the game, which I taped yesterday afternoon. It was BYOB, with an imposed alcohol limitation that required the beer you brought to be brewed in the country from which your team hailed (i.e. England or Spain) or the Champions League sponsor (let's hear it for Heineken as the new sponsor over last year's Amstel Light). I even made my world famous salsa.

We had 5 people, Brien, Jamey and myself included. Apparently soccer does not have the same appeal as in Chattanooga or Columbia. I can't even begin to count the number of weeknight games I watched with Noel, Elissa, Macey, Strawbridge and a host of others last year. Or the multiple nights I hosted slumber parties with jr. high and high school guys from our youth group so we could watch the World Cup games live in 2002. I had planned numerous World Cup 2006 parties here in the next month - we'll see how that goes.

Despite the fact that my team lost (hint hint I brought Newcastle), it was a good game, even with the early departure of Lehman and the equalizer from Barcelona that was questionably ruled onside. The defenses were impressive, and the superstars Henry and Ronaldinho were essentially shut down. Brien and I have decided that Ronaldinho is a brilliant footballer, but way too much of a showboat.

And watching him play again only further confirmed the fact that he looks like a horse. I believe I saw Ronaldinho canter at one point. How appropriate the ubiquitous pony tail.

We'd like to buy a vowel (or a moment of silence)

Last Thursday we flew from Birmingham to Orlando on Southwest, proud of ourselves for having found a ticket for under $100 that happened to fly from Bham (where we were visiting Caldwell and Co.) to Orlando (where our family was vacationing). As we waited to board the plane, we glanced around at the folks in the terminal and made mental notes of which people we wouldn't mind chatting with for the next 2 hours and which people we would definitely avoid buckling up with. Southwest has an open seating policy, first come first serve, so by the time we boarded the plane the only seats remaining were in the back, right next to several people that we had just minutes before noted we should NOT sit next to. Mission failed.

Our seat partners for the trip were two young girls, Mary Jane (as we'll call her - not her real name) who was 9 and her sister (who's name escapes me - we'll call her Delilah) who was 7. They had very strong southern accents. Their mother sat in the row in front of us. The rest of their group were three rows in front of us. We had seen their group in the terminal - they were a bunch of frantic mothers who could not keep up with their kids, very talkative and had never learned the meaning of "inside voices" (which in turn their children had failed to learn as well).

Shortly after take off, we heard Mary Jane's mother asking the people around her why they were flying to Orlando. The businessman next to her seemed as perturbed as we were, so we popped in our Ipod earphones and didn't wait to hear the answer. The inflight drinks arrived minutes later, however, and we were forced to shut off the Ipod for a few seconds. That was all Mary Jane needed. Sounding just like her mother, she asked us why we were going to Orlando. We explained. No sooner had we finished than Mary Jane began to tell us why THEY were going to Orlando, which we realized was the point of her question all along.

Turns out her mom had been on Wheel of Fortune a few weeks before, and had won a significant amount of money, along with a trip to Disney World. Mary Jane's sister leaned over and informed us that it was $16,500 that her mother had won, and that Vanna White is very pretty. Delilah didn't talk much, we discovered, but when she did it was always worth hearing. Mary Jane continued - her mom had made it all the way to the bonus round, but the word was a hobby that her mother had never heard of, so she failed to get the bonus cash. "Plus the only letter they gave her was G." We're curious what the hobby was.

Teasing, we told Mary Jane we didn't belive her. Mistake. In a flash she leaned over the seat in front of us, whispered something to her mom, and within seconds produced a newspaper clipping with a picture of her mother and a short paragraph detailing her recent Wheel of Fortune win. The newspaper was the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Mary Jane's sister leaned forward - "She is in 4 other newspapers too, would you like to see those?" Apparently they were prepared for doubters like us.

We asked if they were from Birmingham. They were not. They were from Cookeville, TN. Ah, Cookeville. We had just driven through their a week before with our sister. Mary Jane was suprised.

"You've heard of Cookeville?"

"Yeah, but we just drove through it."

"So did you stop at Restaurant Row?"

We had never heard of restaurant row. We could only imagine what it was. Mary Jane didn't wait for us to guess. She began to list for us all of the restaurants that were located in Cookeville. The number of restaurants reached around 35, and we returned to our Ipod.

For the rest of the flight, ever 5 minutes or so Mary Jane would yank the earphone out of our right ear and tell us the 2 or 3 more restaurants she had remembered were on Restaurant Row. We think the final count totaled around 200. This was one heckuva long Row. Our favorite restaurant was Toots, where apparently you can dine in old Southwest airplane seats and if you order a pound of hot dogs and fries, your kids eat free. Mary Jane tried to explain how Toots had to change their name because of problems with Hooters, but we got lost in that story and we're fairly sure she was making it up anyway.

At this point Mary Jane's sister nudged her and said "You sure do talk a lot." We couldn't have agreed more.

The flight attendant passed by and asked the girls if they needed anything else, maybe some more Dr. Pepper? Delilah's eyes got huge, and she nodded, then turned to us and excitedly whispered "This place has free refills!!"

In front of us, we saw the girls' mom opening a Bible and showing the man next to her. We heard her explain that this was a special Bible because the words of Jesus were written in red. The man seemed interested, and asked how she knew those where actually the words of Jesus. "Because they are in red," she responded. Of course.

Mary Jane asked us if we flew much. We told her we had, and listed all of the countries we had visited. She was impressed, and told us that she too was a world traveler. In fact, her daddy was a preacher man, and he traveled all over the place and often took here with him. We asked her where a preacher man from Cookeville, TN traveled, and she said she had been all over the world to places like Memphis, Graceland, Gatlinburg and Dollywood. It was our turn to be impressed.

The plane landed. Mary Jane and her friends 3 rows up chattered back and forth about Disney World as we waited to deboard the plane. Most of the passengers looked annoyed, and Mary Jane's mom finally tried to quiet the girls down. Somwhere between the newspaper clipping and the red letter Bible, however, the businessman in front of us had seen the light, so he quickly responded to Mary Jane's mother and said "Ah hell, let the kids talk. None of the adults on this plane are talking because they don't have anything intelligent to say, but these kids are just excited because they're going to see Mickey."

As we left the plane, Mary Jane shouted to us that there was also a Baskin Robbins on Restuarant row, but she wasn't sure if that counted as a restaurant.

Make that 201 restaurants.

Monday's with Murray

I don't really have any great Murray moments, oral or pictoral, to share today, but I didn't want the picture of my tonsils (see below) to be the top entry on this blog.

However, on the tails of my "Season One of 24 all day marathon" in Birmingham with Caldwell, Shleigh and Cheney, I have decided that I would like to start a new phenomenon. Perhaps you are aware of the Chuck Norris Facts phenomenon that has been sweeping the country over the past year.

I would like to start the Jack Bauer Facts phenomenon.

My reasoning is as follows. Jack Bauer is the star of 24. Chuck Norris is the star of Walker Texas Ranger. 24 is the best evening drama I have ever watched. The writing and production of 24 far surpasses Walker Texas Ranger. Therefore, Jack Bauer far surpasses Chuck Norris.

Some of you may find this sacreligious. I don't care. Jack's got my back.

You asked for it...

The readers of this blog have voted, and the decision is unanimous. Here are my tonsils. Please note, the white stuff on the back of the tonsils, as well as the size of the tonsils, is not normal.

Tonsilitis

We are currently in the midst of our week-plus vacation, during which we will see our sister and friends graduate from Covenant College, travel to Birmingham to spend a few days with some of the SB06 crowd at Caldwell's house, fly to Orlando to visit our family, and help coach our Surge team in a baseball tournament in Cocoa Beach, FL.

On Thursday of last week we began having a sore throat.

On Friday we began having a fever.

On Saturday the fever and sore throat were out in full force.

On Monday we went to the doctor because we feared death was imminent. He said we had tonsilitis. The antibiotics have finally kicked in, and we believe our body is on the mend.


Since this blog has become somewhat pictoral in nature, we are considering posting pictures of our tonsils. These pics are not for the weak of heart. Or stomach. Some of you may find this extremely, what's the word, gross, and so the question of whether we should post these graphic images is the subject of this week's MANVILLE TABLETALK POLL:

Should Sleuth post pictures of the inflamed, puss-covered tonsils on the blog?

Vote now.

You too

I once heard a comedian, I believe it was Brian Regan, do a stand up routine about how funny it is when we mindlessly use the phrase "you too" as a response to people every day. Sometimes it makes no sense, and yet out of habit we continue to use the phrase.

For instance, you tell the postman "have a good a good day" and he responds "you too." That's good usage.

Now consider: the waitress tells you to "enjoy your meal," and without thinking you reply "you too." What meal is she eating?
Or the guy in the toll booth tells you to "have a great stay in Florida" and you ignorantly reply "you too." He lives here!
Or the appliance man at Home Depot tells you "good luck with your new dishwasher" and you say "you too." Doubtful that he also has a recently purchased dishwasher.

Or the girl today in the pizza store. I was waiting in line for my lunch, observing the other customers and people watching (as I am want to do on occasion). The man in front of me, obviously in his late 40's, was currently flirting with the cute young cashier. He was telling her about his life in the corporate world, sadly attempting to flirt with the girl by simultaneously flaunting his acheivements while adoring her youth. She was eating it up.

As he walked out the front door, he looked over his shoulder and cast one longing look at the co-ed and teased, "have fun in college."

She flirted back. "You too."

Baseball is... (part 2)

...better than cow tipping?

How's this for the nadir of any team's season: Wofford (18-30) moved up the start of its Friday game against The Citadel to 5 p.m. so it wouldn't have to compete against a cow's bowel movements for local entertainment dollars.
Wofford's Moo-uau celebration divides up the school's football stadium into squares, which patrons purchase. Cash prizes are awarded based on which squares the cow marks.

"I don't know about that," Wofford senior Stephen Johnson told the Spartanburg (S.C.) Journal-Herald. "I've got to talk to someone about that. Cow bingo is more important than the baseball game? I don't know."

Baseball won in the end, as Wofford scored twice in the bottom of the ninth inning for a 5-4 win. Meanwhile, Lu Lu Belle the cow leapt a hedge and chain-link fence and no one was able to coax her back onto the field. Prizes were awarded by a random drawing.

Mondays with Murray