You mess with Harpo Marx, you get the horns.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

OK, Things have got strange around here...

...when of the last seven posts on this blog, all but one of them is about rappers. The one other?

"Bike for Health"

by Jorge Carlito Viejo.

Since when is JCV the most sensible one around here?

Just for the record, I haven't been on a bike since Scunthorpe United were in the first division. Actually, I'm not sure the Buttered Scuns have ever been in the first division. I mean the real first division and not the second division that was called the first division and is now called the Championship, even though the Premier League is higher.

I have actually been on a bike though, unlike Scunthorpe United. I mean, they've probably been on bikes as well, and probably even do a little bike training now and again, but I was referring to their never having been in the first division, which is really the Premiership as the first division, now called the championship, is really the second division. The second division, which is really the third division, is now called League One, just to help clear up matters.

I use to ride a bike regularly when I was young and didn't have this visceral fear of the chain snapping free and wrapping itself around my personal bits whilst whipping by at 60 miles per hour. Am I making sense at all, now? That's the kind of week it's been.

Anyway, I just hope Arsenal demolishes Chelsea tomorrow, that's all.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Go Jizzles, Go!

A quick roundup of the Snoop-Doggy-Dog community football league that Stew mentioned. The teams:

  • Orange County Jizzles
  • Diamond Bar Doobies
  • Anaheim Shades
  • San Bernadino Bongs
  • Ontario Cheeches
  • Chino Chongs
  • Fullerton Flygirls
  • La Puente Titos
  • Corona Coronas
  • Pomona Girls Gone Wild III (Whoops, that is actually the title of Snoop's latest G.G.W. video)
  • Santa Ana Santas
  • Cerritos Doritos
  • Fountain Valley Gangstas
  • Seal Beach Baywatchers
  • Rowland Heights Roaches
  • Mira Loma Mellows

He's doin' it for the chizzle, my bizzles.

Snoop Dogg has taken up community service as his banner, that or he was given some community service I’m not really sure which it is. Anyway, the West Coast rapper is now sponsoring a youth football league complete with a “Snooperbowl” at the end of the year. While this is certainly a worthwhile effort it will mean a change in the terminology and lexicon of the game as you can imagine. DOUI once again springs to the aid of Snoop-ball and are developing a glossary of terms for the new sport.

Flizzle on the plyatch – Flag on the play, usually a bandana conforming to no known gangs colors.

Rizzlee my bizzlee – Referee, although in the Snoop league they don’t wear prison strips but the latest in denim accoutrements.

No hizzle sprizzle offizzle - No huddle spread offense.

Zzone blizzle – Zone blitz

Illizzle J-Lo – Illegal motion in the backfield.

Call out to my nizzles – Audible

Punk’d da fizzle – Sack

That should give them a good start on getting the hip hop version of football going. I only hope they stay true to the sport, there’s no room in football for violence.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Diddy's Last Stand

OK - Last Diddy post for awhile from me.

I am however, being a visionary comic artist (The Royal Mail, 1897), prone to look into the future. As I mentioned in a previous post, Diddy (formerly P. Diddy, formerly Puff Daddy, formerly Puffy, formerly Sean "Puffy" Combs, formerly Sean Combs, formerly Little Sean-Sean, formerly Cher...wait, scratch that last one) has been changing his name at an exponentially rapid rate, meaning that one day his every utterance will be a name change.

Therefore, as he is a rap "artist", this process is bound to turn up in rhyme, accompanied by an incredibly loud and stale beat. Below, I have looked into the future and seen Sean's last rap-sodic efforts. Travel with me to this time of Puffy senility for a little Diddy called Diddy's Last Rap:

Diddy's Last Rap

By Sean "Puffy, Puff-Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Dangley, Dungly, P., Poofy, Poof-Duddy, the P Section of the White Pages" Combs - (copyright 2007) - excerpt

Hello, my name is Diddy, or at least it was called Diddy,
I changed so many times y'all, cause I didn't think it was pretty.
I've gone from Puff to Daddy, all the way to G. Gordon Liddy,
William Shatner the Third, Man-donna, and Watter Mitty
Puttin' all my money in the kitty, Lookin' at my girlfriend's titty,
Hangin' out in New York City, Chewin' out my old gray biddy,...

Etc... for another twenty minutes. You really have to mumble it to get the right effect.

Diddy or Diddy Not?

More possible name changes for P. Diddy/Diddy/etc. Why? Because we can! Also, the poor bloke is going to need them at the current rate of exchange. Also, it's fun!

Pee - This is clearly scatalogical, but he is a rap artist after all.
Diddyopolis - Not every rap artist has a town named after them (Exceptions: Eminemville, Tennessee; Notorious Big, Montana; Ice T, Kansas, and Jacksonville, Florida)
Diddyodeopolodingodeputydawgdingdanaling - OK, I'm reaching here.
Deepak Chopra Jr. - Speaks for itself.
This Little Diddy - It's a name and a nursery rhyme!
Puff, the Magic Diddy - 60's stuff is so in.
Diddy-Squat - Scatalogical AND a pun.

My new motto, "Don't let the P get in your way."

Earl, when I heard that Bo Diddley was still active on the music scene I was delighted, name change or not. I happened to love his…what’s that, sorry folks F. Johnny is trying to tell me something… P. Diddy? Not Diddley. Sorry folks I was confused by the consonant and have now read the entire article that Earl was alluding to. Sounds a bit full of himself concerning the P but I can understand that a man with a P in from of his name might get a little self-conscious.

Since I’m an expert in the naming of various celebrities and native Chinese mammals, I would be remiss if I didn’t help the poor man with a new moniker. Here follows the list that you all dread.

Crab Puffy (Martha would be proud)
Diddy P. (pronounced “Did he pee?”)
P. Ditty (I hear he’s musically inclined)
Puffin Daddy (would make him popular with the Eskimos)
Sean Combs (sorry, too original)
S. Combs
P.S. Combs
Honey-combs
Lulu Roman
(he can bring back the whole Hee-Haw genre)
Tone-Def
Beyond Beyonce

Well there it is in all of its glory, now if you’ll excuse me I see some boxes with my name on them. Actually they’re labeled so they DO have my name on them. Adios.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Bike for Health

Man, if there is one thing Juan Carlos Vega like to do after a whole day of sitting around on a couch eating papas fritas and watching Univision, it is to get my J-Lo style behind up off the couch and go outside for the invigorating exercise, and my favorite form of exercise is a nice bike ride through the ghetto. Yes, I dodge cardboard boxes and broken bottles, I swish around sharp corners and dodge rampaging crack addicts, I zig and zag through alleyways full of spent 9mm casings, and I break a thick and oily sweat as I power pedal through the piles of ash and cinders from the crystal meth factory that blew up. Man, this is how come I am so dang blasted how you going to say buffly hot to the Mrs. Juan Carlos and company. But it is not enough for me to just ride my bike through war zone-like neighborhoods of this fine city. No, I need to take it to the next level, for I am the how you going to say Juan Carlos Vega. That is why when I bike ride for health through poison-immune-super-rat-infested streets on the north side of town, I make sure to use a really ugly bicycle. Yes, that right. Thanks to Japanese smart persons, I am able to get healthy while ride a hideously absurdly ugly bicycle. Thank you, smart persons. My fourteen pack abs thank you, and so do the ladies.

Hey Diddy, Diddy!

Yahoo! Entertainment (yes, I'm lazy this week and relying on Yahoo! for news - actually I'm very busy this week, but lazy sounds funnier)...where was I before that parenthetical? Ah, yes, Yahoo! Entertainment confirms that Sean "Puffy" Combs, AKA Puff Daddy, AKA P. Diddy, is completely mental. He has changed his name once again.

He is now only "Diddy", which happens to also be the name of my mailman's schnauzer.

The Did-man explains: "I felt like the 'P' was getting between me and my fans and now we're closer."

Clearly the only thing between him and his fans (besides his 20,000-person strong entourage) is the gulf between sanity and madness. Funny, he didn't say anything about crack or reefer influencing the decision. So it's natural madness, is it?

Diddy went on to point out, "During concerts, half the crowd is saying 'P. Diddy'--half the crowd is chanting 'Diddy'--now everybody can just chant 'Diddy.'"

They're not chanting "Diddy". They're chanting "Ditsy".

Of course, the only logical progression this can have is that Sean "Puffy" "Puff Daddy" "P. Diddy" "Just Diddy" Combs will again change his name in less than 3 months. The rate of name-changing seems to be growing exponentially, so that, in 10 years time, he'll change his name every morning when he wakes up. 20 years from now, every utterance he makes will be an attempt to change his name, so that in the end, he will have no name and will just be referred to by the media as "that washed-up fruitcake with the name-changing obsession."

Stew, perhaps we should help the poor bastard out by suggesting some names to use in his old age? Otherwise, he'll spend his golden years frantically thumbing through the White Pages and Baby Naming books.

Allow me to start with a few meager suggestions:

P. (It's simpler than "Diddy"!)
Puff Cracky
P. Diddley
Gomer
Puff Squid
Crack Daddy
Marie
P. Squirrelly

Can you imagine that this fellow was once hooked up with Jennifer Lopez.

Hmmm... That would explain the madness.

DOUI - Like Madonna on horseback..only more painful.





So far August has been a crazy month around the Miller house which has, oddly enough, now been sold. Yes, we have made the big leap and are changing domiciles as I offer this post apologizing for not writing enough lately. I've had about as much luck finding time to write as Madonna has riding glue factory rejects on her birthday. (Note to self, cancel horseriding lessons with Prince Charles) Anyway, I will endeavor to make more frequent posts in the coming days. They probably won't be long, although that's never too much of a problem, but they will be filled with as much humor as a man who is buying a new house can muster. So if you see a post that looks oddly like a suicide note in the coming days, just ignore it, unless of course it is accompanied a picture of yours truly hanging from a noose.

Todays offering comes from a thought I had this morning as I drove down the interstate listening to the local sports show. Someone on the show made a humorous reference to Hooked on Phonics, the program that we were led to believe was going to make our little tikes get their MBAs by the third grade. Always the inquisitive one I got to thinking what other programs might be offered in this similar dynamic way to the youths of our fine land.

  • Lassoed by Algebra - a robust three-week program to the finer points of algebraic structures and how they can propel one into the world of mathematics. Aimed at children 4-6. Tony Waters - Age 5 "I never thinked of numbers as letters, why would you do that?"
  • Coalesced with Cantonese - from the exciting world of foreign languages comes our dynamic two-week course on this fun branch of the Chinese language. Hey, we all better learn it soon!! Aimed at toddlers. Amy Poershke - Age 2 "排匯物" ("Poo Poo")
  • Hitched to Gourmet Cooking - who wouldn't want their child to attend Le Cordon Bleu and be the next Paul Bocuse. Learn the finer points of haute cuisine in our three-day course aimed at those pre-teens afflicted with anterograde memory dysfunction. Leo Shelton - Age 12 "I cooked what? When did I do that?"
  • Shackled to Kabbalah - give your young one a push toward fame with our 10-day study of the mystic Jewish religion so popular with celebs (not celebates, I mean Madonna is involved for heaven's sake). Aimed at 4 year olds and the Madonnas, Demi Moores, and Britney Spears's of the world. Mick Jagger - Age121 "I mean like mate, dis is all mystical and t'ings."

Those and many more too numerous to mention when my mind is on closings and labeling of boxes. I'll hopefully see you all soon.

Cuidado! Jellyfish!!

According to Yahoo!, jellyfish are invading the world.

Steven Speilberg, you need to go back right now and remake War of the Worlds to reflect that man's most primal fear is not being disintegrated by martians, but being maimed by rogue jellyfish from another world. If, that is, you can stop laughing (and have time between all those trips to the bank.)

It's a little bit difficult to get too worked up over a fish named after the weaker partner ina PB&J sandwich. Let's face it, jellyfish do have stingers and venom. They are creepy and alien looking, with numerous tentacles. They also woudl explode into pulp in the path of a moderately poorly aimed volley of uzi fire. Also, they are helpless on land and fairly slow in the water. How terrifying can something aquatic be if Lassie can outswim it?

Now if jellyfish could fly, the paranoid people at Yahoo! would have something. Just think of it, flying, tentacled, venomous jellyfish swooping around the seaside resorts and suddenly, without warning, moving inland towards Tokyo.

I sense a Godzilla tie-in for this baby.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

A Primer of British Sport

Many people ask me, whilst accosting me on the street for autographs and serving me with legal papers for comments made on this blog (you know who you are you greedy, humourless bastards), Earl, why do you call soccer, football. I always give them the same answer: "Piss off, git!" No, sorry, that's the answer I give when people ask why my hair is so out of control. The football/soccer answer I give is much simpler: "Because football is what it is supposed to be called."

This usually results in a discussion about the unitque qualities of the games played in jolly old Britain. Whilst I am primarily a footie fan (Arsenal!), I do have some casual knowledge of the other sports played in Blighty, and have decided that I can head off a great deal of inquiries along these lines with the following:

EARL FANDO'S GUIDE TO BRITISH SPORT

What follows is a brief description of common British sports, designed to help non-Brits gain a simple appreciation, and to give Brits themselves a right old snort.

Football - Called soccer by Yanks (in order to avoid confusion with American football, which is played with the hands and based on rugby), this is derived from one of the world's oldest forms of game-playing. The rules were codified in the late Nineteenth Century so that British schoolboys and factory workers would stop kicking the crap out of each other and focus more of their attention on the ball itself. Spread around the world by British sailors almost as fast as the clap, the sport is now played in every nation in the world, and, in most nations, is the most popular sport. The exceptions are the US (where baseball and gridiron football are kings), Australia (Aussie Rules and pub fighting), Canada (hockey and hockey fighting), and Papua New Guinea (anthropologist skull bowls).

Football is played with the feet and a round ball. The object is to kick the ball into the opponent's goal whilst injuring the opposition as effectively as possible. The only player allowed to use his hands is the goalkeeper, who uses them to punch and maul as many opposition forwards as possible. Football is called "el jogo bonito" ("the beautiful game") by Brasilians, presumably because they are keen on violence.

Rugby - A game derived from football, of which there are two types. Rugby League and Rugby Union. Rugby Union is played with more players than Rugby League, because the union demanded it and that's just way things work in Britain. The ball may be carried by hand in Rugby, and the goal is to touch the ball beyond the opponents' goalline, which is, strangely enough, called a "try". (Shouldn't it be referred to as a "done it" or "have done?") Trys are worth 4 or 5 points depending on which league you're playing in and the mood of the union on that day. Points may also be scored by kicking the ball through the goal for a conversion or a penalty, the points scored to be negotiated with a government arbitrator and at least 4 ministers of sport, transportation, and television broadcasting.

Rugby also includes scrums and rucks. No one, not even rugby players, are certain as to why these things are included, as they involve teams locking arms and generally making a mess of things, while someone flings the ball under the pile.

The object of the game is to scored more trys than the New Zealanders and Aussies, who have got far too good at this sort of thing.

Cricket - Cricket is the game that Rounders was dervied from, rounders being the game that baseball was derived from. Of course rounders is primarily played by girls and in America, most girls play softball. All of this is terribly confusing.

The most exciting thing about cricket is tea, which generally involves some scrumptious sandwiches and pastries. Don't miss the scones, particularly the buttered ones.

The object in cricket is to hit the ball and run to the other wicket, thus scoring a run. Meanwhile, another player will be running to the wicket you just left, so that it doesn't get lonely. The players trying to hit the ball are called the batsmen, which sounds like a rock-n-roll band fronted by Bruce Wayne.

On defense, the ball is delivered to the batsmen by the bowler, who does not wear funny looking shoes. Cricketers dress all in white, so the grass stains show up really well, which really impresses the birds.

Tennis - Everyone knows about tennis but I just wanted to remind you that in Britain it is played on grass. Isn't that weird? Tennis in your garden. Only in Britain.

Hockey - Hockey is called "field hockey" by most of the rest of the world, in order to distinguish it from ice hockey, which, strangely enough, is played on ice. Field hockey is played on grass, like eveything else in Britain (including the horse racing, tennis [see above], motocross, basketball, and Formula One.) The players in hockey wear skirts, including male players, which provides no end of laughter for footballers, rugby players, and cricketers.

Golf - Golf in Britain is just like golf in America and Europe, except without trees, in 40-degree (Farenheit) weather, in a rainy gale. That's summer in Britain for you.

Lawn Bowls - This exciting and dramatic sport consists of people tossing (in Britain the word is rolling, to avoid confusion with another, ahem, popular activity) wooden balls along a finely manicured lawn. This leads to one inescapable conclusion about the British. British people are more obsessed with grass than Cheech and Chong.

Highland Games - These are the legendary games of Scotland where stout men run about in kilts tossing cabers (no, that doesn't mean what you think it does) and performing other athletic activities. The Scottish women come out to watch the men and see if the kilts go askew, because kilts are pretty much all the men wear. Considering the weather in Scotland, wearing nothing but a kilt is a far more challenging feat than heaving a log 20 meters or so. This phenomenon does explain the rather steady downturn in Scottish birthrates, that and the misthrown cabers.

Steeplechase - Horse racing on grass with fences. Yes, this sport is so ridiculously hazardous that Fox Television will soon be releasing a series called "World's Wildest Steeplechase Races", hosted by Vince Gill and Christina Aguilera.

Darts - Finally, a sport anyone can compete in. Darts are primarily contested in pubs. What better place to throw small, sharp objects, than the local establishment for serving alcoholic beverages. Next Britons will be knife-throwing at the off-licence.