Ace is back (almost)

Yeah, I know -- I ramble on about Ace Frehley around here far too much.

However, I just had to post the above commercial for Ace’s new album, Anomaly. The album is due out on Sept. 15, and Ace was absolutely brilliant for tapping into his 1970s roots and putting out a wonderfully cheesy commercial that is reminiscent of the time.

And, by God, why shouldn’t I be excited about a new Ace album? He wrote some of KISS’ finest songs (“Parasite,” “Shock Me,” “Cold Gin” and “Rocket Ride,” to name but a few) and hasn’t released anything in a couple of decades.

So, enjoy the commercial. Appreciate Ace’s snide reference to that Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park movie and get ready to pick up an album from a true legend.

Oh, yeah. KISS is recording something new, too. Oddly, I just don’t care.

Remember, kids -- “It’s OK, Uncle Lumpy. Ace won’t let us down.”

A great, Arkansas-based moving company

Moving stinks.

When we moved back home to God’s country (Benton, Ark.) back in 2004, we rented a couple of moving vans, loaded them up and drove them down here. It was awful, but it was a cheap way to go.

When we moved to our new home across town a couple of years ago, we hired a full-fledged moving company to pack up everything and move it. That was a good way to go, but it was expensive. I also noticed that I still did a heck of a lot of packing.

I wish I would have known about something that takes the pressure of driving an unwieldy moving truck off of me but didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Sort of a middle ground, as it were.

That’s where ABF U-Pack Moving comes into play. Instead of going through the whole truck rental process, you get a cube from ABF that you load at your leisure. The trucking company then shows up, picks up the cube and hauls it to your knew home.

The cost is very nice, too, and you're dealing with a trucking company with a great reputation. ABF is based in Fort Smith, Ark., and is one of the premier less-than-truckload carriers in the nation.

The U-Pack service is a great one for people who want to economize a little bit but aren’t opposed to doing a little packing and loading. Click here and see for yourself how favorably U-Pack’s prices stack up against traditional truck rental. It’s a great program, folks.

The best of The Hawg…

Just the other day, I posted a little something acknowledging the one year anniversary of the Natural State Hawg.

I was content to leave well enough alone with that post, but that wacky Steve from The Axis of Stevil suggested I post some highlights from my one whole year of blogging.

I have decided to go ahead and do just that for at least three reasons – I’m a bit vain; I’ve got a devastating head cold right now and am medicated enough to make questionable decisions; and I’m lazy.

Yes, remember how all those sitcoms would air a “best of” episode every year? Whenever I saw those I believed them to be the result of writers who are very lazy and not afraid to admit it.

“Well, we’re under contract to do another episode, but we’re just not feeling it,” I imagined the writers saying. “Let’s go ahead and repackage some old clips and present them as something new!”

So that’s exactly what I’m doing here. You can blame that Steve fellow. Here are the very few highlights I can find, presented in no particular order:

1. That whole thing with Jeff Foxworthy. I sent Foxworthy a redneck joke last year and got mad when I heard no reply from him after pestering him through email. I got mad and posted a tantrum. Not too long after that, I received a letter and autographed photo from him.

The photo is hanging up in my living room in a cheap frame I got from Wal-Mart (and, yes, I do realize how funny that sounds). I also learned a valuable lesson about blogging – if you do something idiotic and then write passionately about it, people will visit your site.

2. Proving to the world how great rat terriers are. After this post,  who could argue against the notion that the rat terrier is the finest breed of dog on the planet? That post was – and still is – dedicated to my dog, Cobb.

3. International The Hawgmania! I learned another lesson about blogging from this post – bragging about how great you are is very funny, particularly if people think you’re serious.

4. Presidential Candidates. This post gets better with age because I was totally right. McCain and Obama both sucked as candidates – you had an old wishy-washy fellow and a man who stole his “yes we can” slogan from Bob the Builder. We’d be better off with the likes of Alton Brown, Patricia Heaton, John Elway, Mr. T or George Lopez in the White House right now.

Political posts are always great fun because I – by and large – hate the people who are running (ruining?) the country. We haven’t had a great president in this nation since Ronald Reagan and I get a kick out of mentioning that as often as possible. For extra double good fun, check out my “Hillary Clinton is a filthy, stinking liar” post. Beating up on Clintons is always fun as we Arkansans aren’t as sleazy as those rascals. Seriously.

5. Colonel The Hawg? ‘Nuff said.

6. The Benton Panthers won and I met two great bloggers. While at a Benton Panthers game, I met two Conway, Ark., residents and fellow bloggers – Paul and Laura Eilers. Nice folks, those Eilers.

7. My own holiday. Since the UN recognizes a holiday for about every damned day of the year, what’s wrong with establishing Universal Send Cash to The Hawg Day? It would give everyone the chance to dig deep and send some money and that would bring me closer to my dream of quitting my job and watching television all day.

8. How to make soccer popular in the U.S. My brother and I discussed soccer and we came up with the plan to make the sport catch on in the U.S. The key to the whole thing revolves around random and indiscriminate violence. Part 1 of our plan is here and Part 2 is here. Read them both and you, too, will be a believer.

9. Where is my boysenberry? IHOP doesn’t sell boysenberry syrup in central Arkansas. What? I’m understandably upset. So I sent the company an email and even got a response.

10. My cell phone was garbage. The thing broke because it was too flimsy to survive being thrown a few times, kicked and stomped. I hate cell phones. Absolutely hate them.

11. Avoid this shampoo. The Hawg gets a new shampoo. The Kitten goes nuts for it.

12. The Christmas Wrench. What would you do if you had to repair a sink on Christmas eve. Would you do the smart thing and borrow a wrench from a neighbor or sneak past a Wal-Mart employee trying to keep people from entering the store right before it closed? Sneaking around is fun, kids…

13. The end of Twitter? Like Twitter? Get ready for something even more obnoxious – Pretty Pink Pony! Why? Because sending tweets just isn’t sissified enough.

14. Why is Fox News hiding the truth? I love this post primarily because someone got very, very upset over it and made an idiot of himself in my comments section. Here’s the thing about politics – neither party gives a damn about folks like you and me, so going out of your way to defend any bastard politician is generally a waste of time.

15. What the hell is going on here? Sick of all those “LOL cats” photos? I am.

That’s about it. Thanks for a great year, folks. I’ll get the hang of this one of these days. I promise!

I was always rotten at algebra…

Back in school math was never my strongest subject (and that’s putting it mildly).

Over the years, I’ve learned to master the evil number through sheer focus. I lacked that focus in school, of course, and it seems to me it would have been a very good idea to have had a little help in that regard.

Some algebra 2 help would have – in retrospect – been particularly useful. Thanks to the wild, wonderful world of the Internet, finding some algebra help is much easier now that it was once upon a time.

For some free algebra help, TutorVista.com is a good place to start. The convenience of it all is sure to be much appreciated by struggling (or lazy) students and their parents. Pay the site a visit, folks.

Are you ready for Sept. 15?

So, what happens on Sept. 15? The famed Ace Frehley’s new album, Anomaly, will be released. Read this Rolling Stone interview with Ace Frehley and click the video below to see a vintage performance of “Rip it Out” (a song from the man’s first solo album). Get ready, folks!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

Oh, Lappy – I hardly knew ye…

Just this weekend, my work laptop – a Toshiba (hereinafter “Trashshiba”) Satellite A215 dropped dead.

Yes, the thing won’t boot at all. Our technology cat at work tells me that it’s probably a hard drive issue meaning that a lot of the data I had stored on that thing is gone. Yes, another cheap, piece of crap hard drive is all I need to get it up and running again.

Ah, that’s a shame but it’s no surprise. As I’ve ranted about before I’d prefer to have a Macintosh. However, my employers love Windows PCs and my wife has blocked my attempts to purchase one for the house (she claims they’re too expensive).

The thing I hate about Windows is this – there are an awful lot of cheap Windows PCs and notebooks out there. There are some expensive ones, too, but Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money convincing everyone that cheap hardware is just great.

That’s the entire premise of Microsoft’s latest advertising campaign, isn’t it. “Don’t get a Macintosh! This cheap piece of crap has everything you need and it runs Windows! Don’t be a sucker!”

So people get suckered into buying substandard hardware because they’re convinced it’s just dandy. Take that Trashiba of mine. I asked for a Macintosh a couple of years ago and got a cheap Windows notebook instead.

“Look at what you get for the money,” I was told. “A Macintosh is just unreasonably expensive.”

So, instead of a durable Mac I wound up with something that dropped dead after a couple of years because I had the audacity to use it regularly. Hell, I even carried the laptop around and used it as a portable computer – certainly it wasn’t designed to be mobile, was it? That's awful hard on a computer -- you know, carrying it around and all.

There’s a reason some Windows boxes are dirt cheap – they’re built with the shoddiest, crappiest components on the planet and fail in a hurry.

The truth of the matter is this – you can get certainly get a durable PC made with top notch components but it will cost about as much as a comparable Mac. Don’t think a $500 laptop can hold a candle to one that costs $2,000 one that’s running either Mac OS X or whatever flavor of Windows is popular this week.

Yes, Windows can be a good operating system – but you’ve got to be willing to buy some decent hardware and that costs money. You don’t hear Microsoft talking much about that, do you? If you take the “this computer is great because it’s cheap” argument from the company, what does Microsoft really have left?

An entire year of worthless nonsense!

One year ago I opened the Natural State Hawg so that I might be able to bore and confuse people around the world.

Folks, it’s been a heck of a good time. I’ve met some fantastic bloggers and genuinely nice people through this little blog of mine – probably my favorite things about this project, actually.

Frankly, I am almost amazed that I’ve lasted a year. Who can prattle on about virtually nothing for almost 12 months straight? Apparently, I can do just that. Why? Because this world produces no shortage of things that amuse me, intrigue me or just plain piss me off.

Also, I make my living as a writer. I’m a public relations guy by trade (I still prefer the term “media cat”) and once made my living as a newspaper reporter. Evidently, there’s a lot of truth to the old adage suggesting that writers run around writing stuff at random because they can’t help themselves.

I figure I’ve got at least another year in me on this blog. I would like to thank my regular visitors – you cats are the best.

SEO Results – because it’s all about traffic

A few weeks ago we started a blog at my office. We use it to get our message out to the media, the public and our members (I handle public relations for a trade group representing Realtors).

Before we bothered with the blog, I did my research and found all kinds of advice about achieving what we wanted – a lot of traffic. Getting traffic has a lot to do with promotion.

If your site is promoted properly, then your ranking in Google will increase and you’ll find all sorts of traffic. Why? Because sites that are promoted well wind up on the “first page” of a Google search for terms related to the site.

When you do get to the point where you wind up on the first page of search results, you get a scad of organic traffic – the best kind of traffic there is if run a commercial site. Organic traffic, see, is made up of people who are very interested in your site because they have located it through their chosen search terms.

There are many ways to get that organic traffic, of course. An established method involves making sure a blog is search engine optimized (SEO) – to make sure the blog is full of keywords that search engines will grab.

ThinkBIG is a company that promises to help step customers through the confusing SEO world by helping site owners set up those keywords that will attract traffic. Is ThinkBIG a reputable company? Read some testimonials from people who have achieved solid SEO Results through the company and decide for yourself.

What the hell is the government up to now?

I ran across a little fact the other day that has just bugged the hell out of me since then.

I was writing a story about interest rates for a small newspaper in Little Rock. It seems they’ve popped up over 5 percent and that has slowed down both sales and refinances. My task, of course, was to find out why mortgage rates are rising.

I should point out that it’s ridiculous to claim that any interest rate below 6 percent is high on a 30-year, fixed mortgage. Still, rates hovered between 4 and 5 percent for so many months that people got used to it.

Here’s the thing about those low interest rates – they are primarily the result of the Federal Reserve buying up mortgage backed securities on the secondary market. Now, mortgage backed securities are exactly what they sound like – you take a bunch of mortgages, package up that debt and sell it to investors. They behave rather like bonds.

On the day after Thanksgiving, the Federal Reserve announced it was essentially guaranteeing $500 billion in mortgage backed securities. The hope, of course, was that investors would then regard those securities as safer investors and buy them. Because the yields would drop, interest rates would fall and people would be motivated to purchase homes.

Additionally, buying up and guaranteeing those loans would give more capital to banks which would, in turn, lend money to people seeking mortgages.

That plan worked. Sort of. Mortgage rates dropped and capital started flowing a bit more freely. Ultimately, however, people started refinancing like crazy at low interest rates, thus flooding the market with more debt.

So, we’ve got far more mortgage backed securities out there than investors are willing to buy. Naturally, then, the yields on them have increased and that has caused interest rates to rise a bit.

Bear in mind, too, that the current mortgage rates are terribly artificial. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association of Arkansas, the Fed is buying $20 to $40 billion worth of mortgage backed securities per month.

A lot of that money has been borrowed from our good friends in China, of course. That causes a whole set of problems I won’t bother examining now. However, it should be said that being heavily in debt to your ideological enemy is a terrible idea.

The question, of course, is what happens when the Fed starts buying up those securities? Interest rates will likely go through the roof, of course, thus causing all kinds of problems.

What’s fascinating about all of this is that an alternative plan that makes a whole lot of sense (and may have cost less) has been watered down horribly. A couple of years ago, the National Association of Realtors suggested that the housing market would be helped considerably if the government gave a $15,000, non-refundable tax credit to everyone who purchased a home.

What we got was a $7,500, refundable tax credit to first time homebuyers last year. This year, of course, that credit was extended through Nov. 30, was raised to $8,000 and is non-refundable. The hope of a $15,000 credit for everyone is back before Congress, but who knows how that will do?

In other words, we’ve opted for a very expensive plan that artificially decreases interest rates and, obviously, can’t last forever. Had the government opted for a $15,000 tax credit to every homebuyer, it goes without saying that sales would have gone through the roof and the desired economic boost would have been in the works.

Further, people receiving $15,000 from the government after filing their 2009 tax returns would have provided an additional economic boost by purchasing things. Expensive things like cars (which would have certainly helped the struggling U.S. auto industry).

I can’t help but wonder why on earth that plan didn’t gain more traction. It couldn’t have cost more than we’ve already spent in an attempt to help the housing market. Furthermore, it may have actually been more effective.

So, what’s the deal? Are the feds afraid to turn that much money over to individuals? Are they afraid we’d just be “foolish” and save it?

The whole thing is confusing. Meanwhile, we’re spending billions trying to keep interest rates low. What kind of hell will be unleashed when the government stops spending that money?

What’s all the fuss over snus?

This week a friend of mine at work bought some Camel Snus to the office.

Naturally, I had to try some as I’d heard a bit about it and had listened to the questionable claims that it is safer than my beloved Red Seal Long Wintergreen (yeah, you bastards just go right ahead and judge me – I’m an Arkansan, dammit). I tried some of the stuff and figured it wasn’t too bad.

Camel is pushing this stuff hard, folks. A couple of friends of mine went to Rocklahoma last weekend (lucky bastards – I missed it again) and brought back a ton of smokeless tobacco samples for me. I ought to have a tee shirt -- “My friends went to Rocklahoma and all I got was a bunch of tobacco.”

Anyway, there were six tins of Camel Snus in the bag of loot my buddies scored for me. After doing some research, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have opinions about Camel Snus. I, of course, want to add yet another opinion to the rest of them out there. Because – well – why not?

What is ‘snus,’ anyway?

Snus is a big deal in Norway and Sweden and it is a snuff that’s different from American chewing tobacco in that there’s no need to spit when using it. It’s different from American chewing tobacco in that it’s not fermented, sugar generally isn’t added and it is steam cured rather than fire cured.

Apparently, fire curing tobacco builds up a heck of a lot of carcinogens, whereas a lot of that is avoided in steam curing. So, there are some people out there arguing that snus is a “safe tobacco” as it’s less dangerous than cigarettes, American chewing tobacco, etc.

I’m not buying it, folks. Anyone who thinks this stuff can’t cause cancer or rot your jaw out is living in a fool’s paradise. You can’t tell me that swallowing a bunch of snus juice rather than spitting it out doesn’t do some harm, either.

There’s a debate raging over the health impacts of snus, of course. As with most debates these days, the side with the most money to buy scientists who are willing to advance a certain point of view will win.

Is that Camel Snus any good?

Actually, it’s not bad at all. It comes in pouches and there are 15 of those per tin. The pouches are to be placed in the upper lip and stay flavorful for around 30 minutes (a conservative estimate, to be sure).

The two Camel flavors – frost and mellow – are both very sweet. The frost one tastes rather like a perverted mint variety of Life Savers while the mellow snus tastes like a sissified form of Levi Garrett or Red Man leaf tobacco.

The advantage here is that you don’t have to spit this stuff, so you can (in theory) enjoy it anywhere. Bring some snus along to the movies, the office, on a date, while you’re the best man in a wedding or during a job interview. Camel has no doubt noticed that there are smoking bans anywhere and folks who show up spitting Skoal all over the place are generally shunned.

Here in Arkansas, however, spit tobacco isn’t uncommon (there are  three men in my office and everyone of us is a tobacco chewer). Seeing a spit bottle on someone’s desk isn’t exactly uncommon in this state, so the notion that snus can be “hidden” doesn’t go over as well here as it might in other parts of the country.

Besides, the little packets just plain bug me. They remind me of that rotten pouch tobacco that has never been overly popular around here.

Unlike those nasty pouch tobacco things, snus is actually quite flavorful and delivers a healthy (pun intended) dose of nicotine.

It’s worth mentioning that I’ve read quite a bit about snus in the past couple of days and have noticed there seems to be a bias against the Camel brand. Some folks don’t like the small quantity of snus delivered by Camel as compared to the “real” brands from Sweden. Others say the quality of the tobacco used by Camel is inferior and I’ve read that it doesn’t have much “bang for the buck” compared to other brands (15 packets per tin does seem a bit slight).

Those are all valid arguments, of course, but there is one bunch out there that should just shut up – the “snus snobs.” Yes, some folks talk about this Camel stuff like it’s a Chevrolet in a world full of Jaguars. We’re talking about tobacco, folks. Shoving snus is your head is never going to be sophisticated, folks. Quit acting like it is.

The final verdict

When all is said and done I rather like Camel Snus. It doesn’t deliver the same nicotine hit as my beloved Red Seal Long Cut Wintergreen, but it’s not bad at all.

Here’s the thing – it just doesn’t deliver that buzz-happy, slap to the face that comes with loose tobacco. And, I just can’t get over the whole spitless notion and the fact that this reminds me a lot of that limp-wristed pouch tobacco stuff. The pouches always seemed a bit sissified, you know?

“Be a man. Be a Klugman,” Zorak once said on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Some of that logic applies here. Who wouldn’t want to be manly like that gruff-but-loveable Jack Klugman?

Still, I figure I’ll buy some from time to time. It’s a change of pace, at least. and tastes pretty good. I’m curious to see whether Camel’s marketing attempts will be enough to make this product popular.

Rot in hell, MasterCard!

I was watching television the other night when it happened -- a MasterCard commercial came on that had the Ramones in it.

That's right -- the Ramones. The detergent-voiced jerk narrating the commercial was saying something about jeans and referring to rebellion or some such rot when a short clip of the Ramones appeared (I didn’t show that hear, obviously – I opted for a great performance from the band instead of repeating MasterCard’s faux pas).

That kind of thing just drives me up the wall. How in God’s name can a soulless, evil bunch like the schemers at MasterCard get away with smearing a punk legend in order to get a few more people addicted to easy credit and high interest rates?

Companies like MasterCard are very responsible for the rotten economy we’ve got now. They’ve spent the past few decades trying to convince people that patience is not a virtue – buying junk we don’t have money for with credit is a lot more fun than saving up for things, apparently.

MasterCard and their ilk have played games with interest rates in hopes of squeezing some more cash out their overburdened customers, giving out credit cards to high school kids and setting up on college campuses and handing out cards to people with no verifiable income. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, MasterCard had to run out and use the Ramones to hawk their crap.

There’s just something inherently wrong with people intent on stealing our money using a bunch of rebels like the Ramones to further their insidious ends.

It’s probably just as well that three of the original four Ramones are dead and they didn’t have to watch the band’s legacy get tarnished in such a crass manner.

Now I remember one of the reasons why I don’t carry credit cards – I hate MasterCard, Visa and virtually any company that issues the things. If I could do without that debit card I’d be rid of it, too.

My new HDTV and what I’ve lost

A tragedy happened last month – our trusted 29” RCA tube television dropped dead.

My wife and I have had that thing for about a decade and we hated to see it go. Still, we saw the death of that television as an excuse to go out and buy a 1080p, 42” LCD television so that we could take advantage of the wacky, wonderful world of HDTV.

The television is a thing of beauty. The picture looks great on it and the TV fits very well in our living e.

There is a major, major, major damned problem with HDTV sets, however. My NES, Super NES and Sega Genesis look pretty rough on that set. I figured I’d mod those systems to S-video one of these days so as to improve the picture.

Ah, but the SNES is connected with S-video and the picture still isn’t great. Drat. It seems that the native, 240p signal those old consoles put out doesn’t play well on a 1080p set.

That, folks, is a major drag. Sure, I could plug my old systems into the television in the bedroom (it’s a tube TV), but that wouldn’t solve my problem of playing games late at night in the living room.

I can get buy on my Sony Playstation, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Wii on the new television, but those systems will never touch the appeal of the classic systems as far as I’m concerned.

By the way. That Nintendo Wii. Don’t buy one. Once the novelty wears off, you’ll realize you’ve got a system with the graphical capability of a Nintendo Gamecube but with a worse controller. Yeah, I know that Wii remote is innovative, but so was the Atari 5200 joystick. A suck controller is a suck controller whether it’s innovative or not. The Wi-Fi support is terrible, too, as the main purpose of it seems to be using it to buy Wiiware – terrible, nasty little games that hog up the system’s pitiful amount of internal storage. The only system I’ve owned that was more of a personal disappointment than the Wii was an Atari Jaguar. That’s saying something.

I suppose that’s to be expected. I mean, come on –  my dog likes to wee on bushes in the backyard. Whenever I hear the word “Wii,” I think of my dog hiking his leg up on a fence post. Somehow that seems very fitting.

Here’s a tip for those of you with Wiis, by the way. The crap games that go to that system sell much better on eBay when they are unopened. Keep that in mind the next time a well-meaning relative gives you a Wii game – it’s not a total loss because some sucker out there will be willing to purchase it on eBay and will pay a premium if the stinky game is in its original, factory shrink rap.

At any rate, I’m kind of mad someone out there could have designed an HDTV television set that could reproduce signals from old video games, VCRs and DVD players. The HDTV we bought is great, but I had no idea I’d be stuck playing a damned Wii unless I wanted to plug in, say, my Genesis and hope for the best.

The Bandit Run? Sign me up!

I ran across something the other day that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun – the Bandit Run.

What is the Bandit Run? Back in 2007, some fans of Smokey and the Bandit got together in their Pontiac Trans-Ams and retraced Burt Reynolds’ legendary trip from Texarkana to Atlanta. The Bandit Run has become an annual event and the participants spent a week in May running all over the South and having all sorts of fun. If you aren’t familiar with the fine movie that is Smokey and the Bandit, you either weren’t alive in the 1970s or you’re completely ignorant of pop culture.

At any rate, I – your old friend The Hawg – would love to take part in that fine event. I’d need a Trans-Am, of course, but I’ve always wanted one of those. I found one yesterday for sale near here that is available for the low, low price of $6,500 – a bargain when you consider that sum can get you a 1999 Trans-Am with one of those Corvette LS1 engines in it and an exhaust system specially tuned to frighten your neighbors.

Ah, yes. I could see it now. I’d be motoring down that open highway in my Trans-Am with my Arkansas “THEHAWG” vanity plate and absolutely killing off about a week. What could be better than that?

I’ve always wanted a Trans-Am or at least a Firebird. In fact, I was about to get a piss yellow Firebird before I went to college (I’d dubbed it “The Male Machine” and everything). My parents told me they’d either buy that car for me or they’d give me a 1981 Cutlass they were about to trade in and buy me a computer.

I chose the Cutlass and the computer because I’m a damned moron. Gearing up for the Bandit Run, however, would allow me to correct that error. Of course, I’ll never be able to convince my wife that I need to buy a Trans-Am so I can disappear for a week and drive it all over the South with a lot of other Smokey and the Bandit fans.

Still, I can dream. Besides, I’ve been working solid since 1994. That’s right – The Hawg hasn’t had a real vacation in over 15 years. I’ve wasted my youth on college and working, so I ought to be able to do something utterly ridiculous and totally fun now that I’ve hit middle age, right?

By the way, if the Bandit and the Snowman started their run in Texarkana and were bound for Atlanta, how the heck did they wind up in Fayetteville? That’s all the way up in northwest Arkansas! That discrepancy in the film has driven me nuts for years.

‘Where have you been, The Hawg?’

For some reason, it occurred to me that I’ve been slacking in visiting and reading blogs as of late.

Why? Ironically, I’ve been wrapped up in a project at work that is partially the result of what I’ve learned by running this blog full o’ nonsense.

Yes, I started The Arkansas Realtor a few weeks ago with the help of the fine folks at Positive Real Estate Professionals – a great little site that is home to a growing real estate community.

Here’s the thing – I’m a public relations guy by trade and it’s in my best interest to use every outlet available to get my employer’s message to the public. A blog that is on a network that gets a lot of traffic is an ideal avenue, right?

Of course, the debate has been raging over the past few years about whether traditional media will be rendered obsolete by blogs and the Internet. I’m in a great position when it comes to that – a lot of people still read newspapers and we public relations cats want to reach them. A lot of people wander around blogs and we want to reach them, too.

So, I have the luxury of not having a dog in that fight. That’s a good thing, really. I’m a former newspaper man and, as such, my sympathies lie with the papers in that regard. I’ve seen a lot of friends and acquaintances laid off from newspapers over the past couple of years and that’s a damned shame.

I was visiting with another PR guy who is a former newspaper man about the state of print media in Arkansas. He pointed out that the old model which sustained newspapers for years is broken. We can’t go back to how things were. Something will have to change.

I hope the boys in the press figure out how to adapt and do it soon. An objective, independent press is vital. Why? Without professional journalists around, we’ll get the bulk of our news straight from the government, corporations and other groups with a vested interested in what is reported and what is not.

That’s not a pleasant prospect, is it?

At any rate, I’ll be a frequent visitor to my favorite blogs again soon. I’ve got to get the aforementioned blog off the ground first and I’ve got another project I’m working on that’s taking up a lot of time (more on that later).

Need a ceiling fan?

Ah, ceiling fans – like the heck out of them.

We’ve got five of the little darlings here at Casa de Hawg and keep them running all year long. They keep things cool in the summer (a necessity in Arkansas) and circulate warm air in the winter (not really a necessity in Arkansas, but dandy just the same).

Need a ceiling fan to enjoy the level of comfort to which we’ve become accustomed around my house? You can run around from store to store or save some time and head on over to Hanson Wholesale Ceiling Fans and find the largest selection around and shop right from your favorite Internet connection.

The great thing about the Internet is that you’ve got everything right at your fingertips regardless of where you happen to live. Wonderful stuff, yeah?

Music Monday – the Pursuit of Happiness

I must officially be a curmudgeon because this is a whole lot funnier than it was 20 years ago.

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So, how was your 4th of July?

I think the above video pretty well sums up our holiday.

We shot off fireworks. A lot of them, in fact. Then we came in the house and the kids went nuts.

Who’s in the video? There’s my son, Michael (white shirt), my daughter Brenda (the girl in the black shirt who came in looking confused), my nephew William (green shirt), my niece Meghan (red shirt) and her friend Rachel (brown shirt – the girl who kept eating in spite of the chaos around her).

Of course the constant commentary is from my wife, Marci.

Enjoy!

Lucky kids!

The other day, I went and posted the picture over to the left as my Wordless Wednesday submission.

That’s my daughter (on the left) and one of her friends at the famed Arkansas Skatium in Little Rock. Because of economic necessity, my daughter stays at a Methodist church here in Benton during the summer as my wife and I are both stuck at work all day and no one is home to watch the little nipper.

At any rate, the church hauled the kids up to the Skatium a couple of weeks ago. I was envious as hell, of course because it’s too damned hot around here this year. It’s been pushing 100 degrees regularly over the past couple of weeks and it seemed to me that going out ice skating would be a very good thing to do in all this miserable heat.

My kid had a good time and I got to leave the office for a few minutes and get a picture of her. That’s a pretty good day.

The following week, the church was supposed to take the kids out horseback riding. Because of the heat, however, they chose to stay inside and have snow cones instead. Good choice.

My traffic joke

Folks, commuting from Benton to Little Rock to work every day is rotten. The traffic is miserable, indeed. How bad is it? Let me tell you…

So I was driving to work down I-430 and I saw this fellow walking down the side of the road. Since the traffic was just crawling along, I was able to simply roll down my window and holler at him.

“Hey, man! You need a ride?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m in a hurry.”

Heh, heh.

Wordless Wednesday – Escaping the Heat

Check out the other Wordless Wednesday participants or submit something of your own!

Yeah, this is Arkansas

One of the stories that's swept our beloved Natural State this week is one of an escaped pig that wound up in a swimming pool.

Curious? Of course you are! None other than the mighty Arkansas Democrat-Gazette covered the story and took a ton of pictures. Frankly, I’m grateful for the pig as his exploits gave us a break from the usual news of shootings and mayhem in Little Rock.

Last week, a truck full of pigs was heading to a sausage factory. The truck overturned and a bunch of pigs escaped. One 800-pound hog eluded the authorities for awhile and finally turned up in a swimming pool owned by one LeAnn Baldy.

Baldy lives in a neighborhood near the I-40/I-430 intersection close to Little Rock. The authorities apprehended the pig, but the rascal gave them a good chase for a few days at least. Good for him.

Here in Arkansas, it seems that critters are routinely ending up in swimming pool. I well remember an incident at a country club in Marianna, Ark., when I was five-years-old.

My parents had just taken jobs with the school district over there. Mom was a district psychologist and dad was the superintendent of curriculum. They got paid very well to go to work in that town and one of the perks of the job was that they were members of the country club there.

We were in the pool at the country club one day when someone pulled up in his pickup truck, opened the tailgate and tossed his Labrador retriever in the pool.

Now, the strange thing about that was that this was the mid-1970s and Marianna is in the Delta. In other words, those folks didn’t fully grasp the fact that the War Between the States had ended and the South lost. They didn’t allow blacks in that country club, but they laughed it up when someone threw a dog in the pool?

Thank God that struck me as odd way on back in 1974.

Years later, I still feel cheated

A few years ago, my wife and I took one of our cats to the vet.

The veterinarian gave us this card which was proof of our membership in Cats of the Revolution. I was excited, thinking that card would guarantee me an army of angry cats I could deploy against my hated enemies.

With such an army I could – dare I say it – rule the world. Yes, supporting the Revolution clearly meant I was on my way to violently grabbing some real power.

Sadly, I was wrong. I flipped over the card and read the Solemn Pledge that supporters of the Revolution are to take:

“I hereby swear that I shall uphold the tenets of the Revolution. I shall always keep my cat protected from the indignities of parasitic invasion. I shall bring said cat to the veterinarian regularly and will continue to do so all the days of our lives together.”

So I signed the pledge and stuck the card in my wallet. It’s stayed there over the past couple of years and I found it again today when I was fishing for something else.

I paid a visit to the Cats of the Revolution Internet site, played a game in which I helped a cat avoid parasites and couldn’t help but wonder about a couple of things. We have purchased flea collars for our cats and take them to the vet at least once a year.

But is that enough? Are we still active supporters of the Revolution? What do those cats hope to achieve through their Revolution? If I am a more effective proponent of that Revolution, will I still get the coveted army of cats to use against my enemies?

A more important question is this – why do I keep junk like that in my wallet, anyway? I really don’t have a good answer to that one.

Baby proof that house

Back when I was just a little The Hawg, I burned the heck out of myself on a furnace.

How? I was learning to walk and I pulled up on it. My mom tells me that was a scary event – almost as bad as the time I shut myself in a refrigerator when mom was cleaning it out.

Here’s the thing – infants and toddlers can get hurt easily. So, baby proofing a home is important, right? To protect the little critters, then, items such as baby gates and cabinet locks are important.

You can find out about such safety items and even take a look at a blog about child safety over at KidSafe. Pay that site a visit, huh?

Music Monday – Wall of Voodoo

Just the thing for a Monday morning. Enjoy!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

More proof that The Hawg is great

I had this great idea for Father’s Day this year.

My son is out of town visiting my wife’s family, but I figured I could still have a good time with my daughter and my wife on the holiday, right? I told them that it would be dandy fun if they took 30 minutes or so to simply tell me how great I am.

Strangely, they refused to do that. Oh well.

At least Windy over at Windmill on the Hill thinks I’m great and has presented me with the “Over the Top” award (great content over there and the layout absolutely puts my little blog to shame – click that link up there and go visit).

I appreciate the award, certainly. I’m terrible at passing these on, however. So, I’ll leave it at this – if you also think The Hawg is great and you own a blog, grab a copy of this award for your very own. Anyone who will acknowledge my greatness is obviously someone of taste and sophistication and deserves an award.

A cold day in hell?

I have absolutely hated Microsoft for years.

Specifically, I’ve hated that company ever since I got a copy of DOS 4.0 and thought it broke my computer. Yes, that operating system made my computer lock up regularly and that was unusual back then.

I hate Microsoft for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98. I avoided Windows ME and was stunned when Windows XP turned out to be a solid OS.

I hate the fact that everything in the world is compatible with Microsoft so you feel like an oddball if you’re using something else. I hate the fact my wife blocked my attempts to buy a Mac. I’ve wished that company nothing but ill for about two decades now.

So, when Microsoft does something right – well, that’s worth mentioning. Folks, Windows Live Writer is a heck of a program. It’s free, fast, small and makes blogging a whole lot easier.

I’m using it to deal with this post, in fact, and I love it. What is it? Simply put, it’s a word processor that is dedicated to blogging and it’s far easier to use than the text editors that are built into blogs.

To set up my Windows Live Writer, I simply gave it my blog address and password. The program is now tailored to work with Blogger and I was up and running within seconds after installing Live Writer. And I don’t have to deal with weird things like junk code and such popping up here and there (a problem with more than a few Internet-based text editors). Furthermore, I can simply save a post and get back to it later through Live Writer, pull posts directly from my blog and fool with them through the program and do all sorts of neat things.

One of my favorite features is the photo editing one which allows the user to throw all kinds of effects on a photo (“color pop” and “tilt” are my favorites, and I’ll get around to using that sepia filter one of these days).

While there are some great features that come standard with Live Writer, there’s also a “plug-in” option that allows for some heavy customization of the program. Microsoft maintains a site full of plug-ins and there’s an active community coming up with all kinds of handy stuff.

Every now and again it seems Microsoft can get something right. That’s good to know.

Not surprisingly, that’s my kid…

For my Wordless Wednesday entry yesterday, I posted the dandy photo just off to the left.

That’s a photo of the Benton Maniacs – a softball team to which my daughter, Brenda, proudly belonged.

Yes, those seven and eight-year-old girls had a tough time of it this year. They won two games this season and one of those was by forfeit.

This photo was taken right before their final game of the season. Obviously, the win-loss record didn’t get their spirits down. That’s a good thing.

The photographer told them to “act silly,” perhaps as an attempt to relax the kids. The resulting photo is my favorite one of the lot.

My kid, by the way, is the oddball wearing the wrong jersey. That kind of thing happens when you give kids two different uniforms – invariably, there will be one child who will wear the wrong one. Of course, my girl turned out to be “that kid” on picture day.

Oh, yeah.

Anyway, the odds were stacked against the Maniacs this season. A softball team, see, has 10 players on it. The Maniacs’ roster had but 10 girls on it, meaning there were no substitutes available. The Maniacs wound up fielding eight or nine players more often than not, so their record should really come as no surprise.

At any rate, the children had a good time this year and that’s what counts, right?

This entry is part of the Tell Me Thursday event – a project that I think is a great idea.

Wordless Wednesday -- those wacky Maniacs!

Be sure to view the other Wordless Wednesday entries (or submit something of your own).

Music Monday -- the Beatles

Ah, "Strawberry Fields Forever." One of my favorites of all time. Enjoy!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

The Hawg makes a wise purchase...

My wife tells me I've got too many video game systems around here, so I bravely defied her and bought another one off of eBay tonight.

I couldn't help it.

Let me explain. I've got an Atari 2600, an Atari 7800, a Nintendo Enterainment System (NES), a Sega Genesis, a Sony Playstation, a Nintendo 64, a Sega Dreamcast, a Nintendo Game Cube and a Nintendo Wii around here. A few years ago, I sold my Magnavox Odyssey 2 (because it wasn't that great) and my ColecoVision blew up. I also got rid of an Atari Jaguar because it is the Chrysler Sebring of the gaming world. As for handhelds, I've got an Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear and Nintendo Game Boy SP.

With all that and the tons of games stored all over the place, why would I go out and buy another system? That's kind of complicated.

Not too long ago, our beloved 29" RCA television gave up the ghost. We've got to replace it and we're getting one of those huge, HDTV things in the next week or two. I thought the NES would look great on it, but there's a problem there.

As any NES fan knows, the original, front loading systems are problematic when they get older -- that 72-pin monstrosity that curves all over the place just plain goes bad after a time. A few years ago, I picked up a much more reliable top loader unit, but there is a problem with that system in that it has no RCA plugs. You've got to rely on that weird RF box to connect the thing to a television set and I'm afraid it would look absolutely horrible on a huge screen. If it doesn't look to great on an old 29" television, how bad will it be on a large high definition set?

So, I went out and bought the beautiful red and gold system pictured above -- the Retro Duo. Believe it or not, that thing has S-Video outputs and (I'm told) can play both NES and SNES games and use all those cool SNES controllers. So I plunked down $45 on eBay and got one tonight. I'll have flawless video and the reviews on it make me hopeful I can play SNES and Super Famicon games as well as my existing NES library. Not bad, huh?

Hey, there's not much I can do for the old Ataris and my trusty Sega Genesis has RCA plugs built it. And, of course, there are no connectivity issues with the newer systems I own. I figure replacing my old top loader NES with the Retro Duo was a good move.

It's too bad my wife doesn't agree. We'll see what she thinks when we're playing Super Mario Kart or she's zipping through a Zelda adventure, huh?

Of course, I'll post up a full review of the thing once it comes in. I can hardly wait.

Little Rock's best kept secret and turning 40-years-old

Since I live in scenic Benton, Ark., and commute about 20 miles a day to get to work in Little Rock, I wind up going out for lunch quite a bit.

My friend Dave and I head to a spot called the Chinese Kitchen at 11401 N. Rodney Parham Road quite a bit. We love the heck out of it as it's both inexpensive and tasty as can be.

Just today, I got pepper steak with an egg roll (a darn good one if you like that type of thing) and some of the best fried rice on the planet (just a little egg, soy sauce and pork -- nothing weird). Throw in a root beer and my bill came to $5.48. Outstanding.

I've never had anything bad there, in fact. The portions are plentiful, the ingredients are fresh and you just can't beat the place if you're interested in some Chinese food for lunch (or whenever else).

There are only a few drawbacks to the place, really. The lunch menu could stand to be a little larger and they make a very good catfish fillet (seriously!) but don't provide lemon for it. Also, the restaurant is very small as it seems to be mostly geared for takeaway orders (we've never had a problem finding a table, though). Finally, the restaurant is closed on Monday and that's thrown us for a loop at least twice.

There are a few places off the beaten path in Little Rock that are well worth discovering. The Chinese Kitchen is one of them.

Turning 40-years-old sucks

As I whined about last week, my 40th birthday was on June 16. I'm not happy about it one bit.

Luckily, I made it home on the afternoon of my birthday from some out-of-town meetings. The kids are gone (my son is in northwest Arkansas visiting my wife's family and my daughter is at a Girl Scout camp) so we'll have the place to ourselves until Friday afternoon.

That's pretty nice, actually. We've not been able to do things like finish conversations with each other for years.

Hanging out with my wife without a child running past and making racket every few minutes has certainly taken the edge off of officially hitting middle age. Don't get me wrong -- having the kids back in the house will be great. Regardless, I'm enjoying the quiet.

And that's when...

Take a good look at the above photo as it's very important.

That was made by my friend Dave for two reasons. He obviously hates Halle Barry (I'm not sure why). But Dave put that photo together to illustrate a concept we came up with a couple of years ago.

Back then, there was this fellow who was found in a bush outside of a hotel. He got extremely drunk and was discovered crying and covered in his own vomit. He had also managed to pee his pants.

So we developed a phrase to describe the exact point where an individual experiences the most intense personal humiliation imaginable -- "That's when he pissed himself."

Yeah, it's great stuff. Think about this example. There was a prosecuting attorney a few years ago who liked to cavort with female prisoners. He was caught in the act with one.

What happened next? He lost his job, his wife left him and his career was over. So the exact moment when he was caught with the prisoner is the one that marked the beginning of the period where he lost everything.

That's when he pissed himself.

Remember Gary Hart? It looked like he might have a shot at the presidency in 1988 until he was caught with Donna Rice. Henceforth, he will be known as the guy who was caught with Rice and is politically dead as Geraldine Ferraro.

That's when he pissed himself.

You see? That's one powerful phrase there, isn't it? I hope it catches on and is trotted out whenever someone engages in activity that is so humiliating there's just no other good way to describe it.

Little Rock -- not even the ice cream man is safe

While murder and mayhem has become commonplace in Little Rock, a story from this weekend was shocking enough for even people used to the city's skyrocketing crime rate to take notice.

It seems a couple of teenage thugs decided to shoot an ice cream vendor on Saturday. It seems 23-year-old Holly Crain had the audacity to try to make a living by selling ice cream in southwest Little Rock when a couple of punks hot her inside her ice cream van.

Crain, fortunately, appears to be recovering just fine. She told the cops a couple of toughs demanded money from her while she was on the job. She handed it over and then was shot by one of the grateful kids. Two 16-year-olds connected to the shooting have been nabbed and charged with robbery, theft and attempted murder.

Folks, that whole story is just pitiful and stands as more proof at what a filthy cesspool our capitol city has become. Not even an ice cream vendor is safe in Little Rock these days? What the hell is going on in that city, anyway?

I've become used to hearing about shootings in Little Rock. The fact an ice cream vendor was shot strikes me as particularly pitiful, however. Perhaps the ice cream salesmen should consider purchasing some heavy armor and armed escorts.

Actually, this month has been fairly atypical for Little Rock so far. Sure, we're used to turning on the evening news here in central Arkansas and hearing about the latest shootings in Little Rock, but the ice cream incident was unusual. One that was downright detestable happened last week when two soldiers were shot outside an Army recruitment center in west Little Rock.

In that incident, one soldier -- Quinton Ezeagwula -- survived while the other one -- 23-year-old William Long of Conway, Ark. -- did not. The shooter, 23-year-old Carlos Bledsoe, has been caught and charged in connection with the shooting.

It turns out that shooter was born Carlos Bledsoe but changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. He's a Little Rock resident and a Muslim with a chip on his shoulder. Neither one of those facts is particularly surprising.

"I wouldn't live in Little Rock if you gave it to me," my grandfather once said.

I do believe he was right. My family is from Benton, which is located about 20 miles southwest of Little Rock. I live in Benton, too, but work in Little Rock like over half the workforce here in Saline County (seriously -- the Benton Chamber of Commerce has stats to back up that statement).

Back around 1981, Saline County lost its major employers when Alcoa and Reynolds packed up and left the area. Nothing has emerged to replace the jobs that were lost back then so a lot of us head to Little Rock to work.

Meanwhile, plenty of Little Rock residents who have gotten sick of the crime and nastiness of Little Rock have fled to Benton and Bryant in Saline County, Cabot in Lonoke County and Conway in Faulkner County. It is the hope of a lot of residents in Saline County and other areas that have grown due in part to the exodus from Little Rock that we'll attract some employers as populations grow.

That would suit me just fine. I'm sick of the commute and it would appear that you never know when someone in Little Rock will show up waving a gun around and shooting people. Just this month, we've had a couple of soldiers shot while standing outside of a recruitment center and an ice cream vendor shot for (apparently) the sheer hell of it.

Over the past 10 months, we've also had the chairman of the Arkansas Democrat Party shot dead in his office in Little Rock, a television reporter killed in her bed in the Heights (one of the better areas of town) and a bunch of diners at two Waffle Houses terrified as those stores were robbed at gunpoint within minutes of each other. Actually, that was kind of a funny story -- the crook stopped to demand a sandwich while he was robbing the Waffle House on West Markham and got shot in the butt by the cops when he ran out of the restaurant.

Of course, you've had a lot of people get shot and killed over the past 12 months in Little Rock. It's hard to keep up with them all because shooting happen about as frequently as the weather changes in that town.

At any rate, granddad was right. Little Rock isn't worth a damn.

You, too, can cuss like Ty Cobb!

A few months ago, I promised to either come up with a new interjection or revive an old one as my gift to the world on my 40th birthday.

At long last, I'm ready to reveal the results of months of intensive research and thought. I should first mention that I'm unleashing this interjection on the world a bit early -- my 40th birthday is June 16, but I'll be out of town on business that day so I doubt I'll be blogging much on my actual birthday.

So, what's my new interjection? I've borrowed from one of baseball's greatest players, Ty Cobb, that hasn't been used in some time -- fee simple.

Yeah! That's one that you can really get a hold of and spit at people. For example:

That Ty Cobb was one fee simple son of a bitch!

Out of town and working on my birthday? Those fee simple bastards!

Oh, yeah! That Ty Cobb was a complete mess, but he knew how to cuss and his "fee simple" modifier just makes any obscenity or interjection infinitely more vile. Of course, one question must be answered -- what does it mean?

I appreciate the modifier because of my legal background, see. Let's say I own a fee simple estate in a plot of land. That means I own it absolutely and my claim to it is superior to any other.

So, let's say I call someone a fee simple bastard. I am claiming, then, that individual owns the title of bastard and that all others who are called bastards are mere pikers compared to the "fee simple" one. That particular individual is a Bastard (note the capital B) in a world full of bastards.

Besides, phrases such as "fee simple bastard" and "fee simple son of a bitch" are just fun to spit at people through clenched teeth.

So, there it is. And, by the way, contemplating turning 40-years-old is a fee simple bitch. What a fee simple suck-ass age. Damn.

The filthy truth behind M&M's

There are some things in this world that just bug the hell out of me.

One of those things is how cheap, nasty milk chocolate simply dominates the desert and candy industries. That garbage has only grown in popularity since I was a kid and it appears that no end is in site. I well remember a few years ago when my wife made a beautiful cheesecake and then dumped filthy, disgusting chocolate all over it.

I could have cried. I might have cried, in fact.

At any rate, the most vile invention in the already evil chocolate world is M&M's. That slop is the Chicken McNuggets of the chocolate world -- candy made with the cheapest crap available but one that has thrived thanks to an insidious marketing campaign.

Ah, but there's a nasty little secret to M&M's -- that particularly anti-American and environmentally unsound candy was originally developed by the Nazis. Yes, the Mars Company folks (those filthy dogs!) like to claim that stuff was made available to U.S. soldiers in World War II.

That's partially true. M&M's were developed by Hitler's Germany for the express purpose of crushing the morale of American troops. Thanks to a handy tool over at the Mars (those filthy dogs!) Internet site, I was able to design some custom M&M's so that they appear exactly as they did when Hitler and his boys were flinging them at our troops.

Yeah, that's right. Those horrible things were tossed at hungry American troops and bore such messages as "Sieg Hiel!" and "Hitler is great." Go ahead and take a look at the authentic reproductions of the original M&M's at the top of this post. The folks at Mars (those filthy dogs!) should be ashamed of themselves for participating in such madness and actively attempting to undermine the Allies.

We all know that little Forrest Mars got in a spat with his daddy and sulked around Europe prior to World War II, right? The folks at Mars (those filthy dogs!) will tell you that Forrest came up with the Mars Bar and M&M's while he was throwing his hissy fit and he put those in production when he came back to the U.S.

That story is only half true. What was Forrest really doing in Europe? He was working on a candy bomb for the Nazis -- a treat that would explode when broken with a tooth and wipe out platoons of soldiers. We are somewhat fortunate that Forrest scrapped his candy bomb plans and fell back on simply making his evil, awful and nauseating M&M's.

He failed to make a candy bomb, so he went for the next best thing -- a piece of low-grade chocolate covered by the same candy shell that graces Drixoral tablets. The hard shell was essential, see, because it was durable enough so that the Nazis could stamp their propaganda directly on it.

Yeah, go ahead and call me crazy. However, just remember this -- whenever you eat an M&M, you're enjoying a treat that was developed by the Nazis. Don't fall for slick marketing campaigns featuring "cute" pieces of talking candy. Put down those M&M's and pick up a good, American treat instead.

Will Conan suffer the same fate as Leno?

Conan O'Brien, at long last, made his debut Monday as the new host of The Tonight Show.

I was glad to see Jay Leno go, but I can't help but wonder if O'Brien will suffer the former host's fate. Years ago, Leno was a rising young comedian who was an absolute hoot.

Ah, but he took over The Tonight Show from Johnny Carson and became, well, boring. His hyperactivity and unpredictability was toned down and the man became annoying conservative in his approach -- Leno went from a unique comedian to a man who seemed petrified of taking any chances. Leno, upon taking over from Carson, immediately became predictable, trite and more than a bit boring.

Well, Leno's gone and along comes O'Brien. An irreverent fellow who thrived on the absurd and making fun of himself at any given opportunity. Some of the old Conan was present during his Tonight Show debut, but there was something else there, too -- everything just felt, well, so scripted.

When O'Brien hosted Late Night, the whole thing was a mess. Yes, it was a lot of fun, but it was a sloppy mess, nonetheless. Things rarely felt so "scripted," you know? That same feel just wasn't present on Monday night. Yes, the show kicked off with O'Brien making a "to do" list of things to do prior to taking over for Leno. Ah, but wait! He forgot to move to Los Angeles, so we had that play out for a bit prior to Conan's arrival and blah, blah, blah. It seemed just too slick, too well rehearsed. So unlike an O'Brien skit, in fact.

You had to be watching to get the full impact, of course. Oh well.

What was disturbing and can be described is that drummer Max Weinburg -- the man who's banter with Conan was always a highlight of the old show -- was pushed to the background. Andy Richter was back in the fold (he was with O'Brien during the early days of Late Night,) but he was shoved in the background, too. That left us with just O'Brien -- a man who's funny as hell but does need some lackeys to bounce things off of from time to time. Those lackeys were pushed to the background, and that just made things less (seemingly, of course) spontaneous.

At least Pearl Jam showed up and kicked ass.

Hopefully, O'Brien will get more comfortable in his role as host of The Tonight Show and get back to his old shenanigans. I sure hope so. Otherwise, late night on NBC will be pretty much pointless. Jimmy Fallon is busily wrecking O'Brien's old show, so I at least hope Conan returns to form on The Tonight Show.

We'll just have to see, huh?