I have seen the greatest minds of our generation fall – or mostly just my own brain succumbing to TV cancer.

I had to deal with the Diary of Anne Frank recently and my only thoughts were, “Oh, I learned about that in high school.”

Only when I actually started working on it did I realize it wasn't the story of the deaf, blind and mute girl, it was the tale of a Jewish girl who had to hide from the Nazis in a crowded attic.


Mostly I blame Kevin Smith for this monumental mistake. When I saw Clerks 2 and Randall confused Helen Keller and Anne Frank, I thought it was silly.

Only after I made the same mistake did I realize my brain has something severely wrong with it which most likely is a result of watching too many movies.


I watched and read the Diary of Anne Frank in school. Can one movie really undo 12 years of public school education?

I guess so.

Open bar, dude!

When I was little getting together with my cousin from Indiana was the most tolerable family reunions. My sister was the oldest, my cousin a year younger and I was two years behind him. We got along well.

We would listen to Great White on a tape recorder in my grandpa’s basement as we tried to make stink bombs with our chemistry sets. We also set up plays to lure my uncle from Idaho into the basement so we could tie him up. My cousin wasn’t much a boy scout though, because our uncle would always free himself as we were plundering his suitcase and we would pay for our treachery through wet willies until our uncle flew back to Idaho.

We always had to sit together at the “kids table” during these visits but it wasn’t bad because we would throw things, lament on the terrible food and hollow out dinner rolls to clean our plates.

A decade later, it’s nice to know some things never change.

At my step-cousin’s wedding last weekend my sister and her husband, cousin and his wife, and G. Jonah and I got sat at the kid’s table with two sixth-graders.

We listened to their sixth-grade woes and gave advice: “You broke up with your girlfriend because she punched you in the spine and now she wants to get back together? Tell her talk to the fist cause the face is pissed,” or “Your best friend likes the boy you used to like? Stab her.”

Then we stole a bottle of Champaign from an empty table, talked about things our parents will never know (can we say a trip to Texas five years ago?), and decided to take advantage of the open bar by seeing how many liquor glasses we could collect on our table.

I must say that kind of stability is comforting.

Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones!

I love the Indiana Jones trilogy and I'm looking forward to the new one (as long as they don't screw it up), but Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom takes the cake.

Sure I love the Nazis, Sean Connery and Elsa in the other movies, but as far as I'm concerned there's nothing better than the dinner sequence with Snake Surprise, roasted cockroach, eyeball soup and chilled monkey brain ("Ahhh, desert!").

I also enjoy Willie and Short Round for comic relief and I love the part where the voodoo man rips the heart out with his bare hands, I used to try that as a child.

Can't wait for the early bird

I have long dreaded middle age, but old age doesn't seem so bad. I often see old people swearing at service workers, driving slow and getting cheap stuff, but today I saw what could be the best thing about getting old.

Only senior citizens can ride their bike to Kroger at 2 p.m. on a Monday dressed in a polo shirt and pajama pants to buy a big jug of cheap vodka and a tub of cole slaw.

Sometimes I love old people.

Another reason to never visit SF

San Francisco just got a little worse. Not only do they provide the most money for the homeless, but now they are looking into a facility where medical workers supervise drug addicts as they shoot up.

I’ve been called a ‘cold-hearted conservative,’ but this plan is ludicrous. Why should medical personnel supervise illegal activity? Not only does the plan condone drug use, but it pretty much says, "The drug problem can never be solved. Let’s give up. And while we’re at it, why don’t we take away the fear of overdose that may keep some from doing drugs? Brilliant!"

The city already hosts a clean needle program which seems like a complete waste of tax-payer money, and advocates of the plan say the facility will decrease the amount of overdoses.

But I think fear has already done that. According to the AP’s story, “the number of deaths linked to overdoses has declined from a high of about 160 in 1995 to 40 in 2004…”

There are no such facilities in the U.S., but one in Vancouver reports that there have been 800 overdoses so far, but no deaths.

Good for them for preventing deaths, but if someone needs drugs bad enough to go to one of these places, they’re not going to go there every time they need to shoot up. These facilities are only perpetuating the problem.The money spent on this facility could be much better spent getting drugs off the street.

These bleeding-heart liberals who so value choice need to realize these people chose to do drugs and also chose to deal with the risks associated.

Todd for prez

Call me crazy but I’d like to see what Bill Todd could do as Columbus Mayor. I know it’s not going to happen, but I honestly believe it would be an amusing four years.

If elected Todd says he will take over Columbus City Schools and fight crime. I’d like to see that, especially if he wears a cape while doing so.

When I was in high school I was constantly amused by the antics of Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbinder. While in office this man threw a coffee mug at his secretary, got in a shouting match with another politician and suggested that the city move all the deaf people to the neighborhoods around the airport because they can’t hear the planes landing and taking off.

It may have been an unproductive term, but it was amusing. Toledo constantly made the national news for all the stupid moves Carty made.

And just a FYI, a few years later Toledo again voted Carty into office. The city may suck, but they know the value of having an amusing mayor.

Another rant

Some lawyer is suing apple for $1 million because she bought the i-phone when it came out for an unreasonable price and three months later they discounted the phone by $200.

I’m hoping that when she goes to court (if that even happens) the judge says, “Boo hoo. Apple will pay this whiner a quarter so she can call someone who gives a shit.”

I know America is the land of frivolous law suits, but this is getting ridiculous. Did this whiny dolt miss the memo that all other consumers have that says products get cheaper the longer they have been out?

I know $200 is a big price reduction in a couple months time, but if this lady is sooo strapped for money perhaps she should have waited to get an i-phone until apple had the technical and financial bugs worked out.

$1 million is an awfully steep price tag to put on all the suffering this poor stingy soul has likely been through. If this chintzy broad gets any money, I hope it’s only the $200 she would have saved had she not been a greedy sheep who has to have the latest trend now. And hopefully the $200 she gets will be paid towards the $500 she owes in fees to an already over-taxed court system.