Watch Out for Friendly Liars

Earl Fando is a nice man. I'll say that up front. He dresses smartly in pressed pants, sports coats, bolo ties and fedora hats every single day (except for Sunday when he attends Mass in an ankle length velvet robe and fez). He's the kind of guy you wouldn't mind buying paint from on a Tuesday afternoon.

But occasionally, he is also a doggone liar. To wit, he claims there are big changes coming to the Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas. There are not. Since the time of our forefathers, all things continue as they have. The Dictionary is not going to change. How can it change? It hasn't even caught up with me yet! I started out Five Times Better than a normal human being, and although the blog has frantically worked to improve itself, it is, at best, three point two times better than a normal human blog.

It's like global warming. Everyone says the planet is getting warmer and the polar bears are melting. Well, let me settle that one for you. Polar bears CAN'T melt, so global warming, therefore, must be a lie. Follow the logic trail, people, and these kinds of claims will come crumbling earthward like a pile of Chick-O-Sticks. In fact, the earth is not getting warmer but smellier. Yes, the odors of the earth are intensifying, and if we don't act fast, we will be the stinkiest orb in all the universe. So it's global stench we have to worry about, not global warming, but you wouldn't know this if you listened to all the friendly liars and watched their slide shows.

Earl Fando means well. He's the kind of gent who would spoon feed your sick grandmother her pudding on a cold Saturday morning. He's the sort of chap who would wade across a swollen creek to save a calf from eating poisoned hay on a balmy Wednesday evening. But he's also making stuff up every single minute of the day. Big changes are not coming to the Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas. At least, I don't choose to think so.

If it does happen, it won't mean Earl was right. It will just mean that what was going to be the truth became not the truth and something else which was not the truth became the truth, but that doesn't mean Earl was telling the truth.

It's time to take a stand.

Sincerely,

Nuffy Sarge Noe, esq.

Changes Coming to DOUI

Well, I haven't been posting much this week and I'll tell you why. There are changes coming to this blog and fairly big ones. The layout, for starters, and also several of us have decided to have lobotomies, just to see if that will improve the joke to paragraph ratio. Anyway, this is just to let you know so you won't fall down and die of shock when it happens. If you do, it's obviously something to do with your diet and no fault of ours.

We're not sure when the changes will come, but come they will. Watch this space.

No, don't stare at the screen hitting refresh every 10 seconds. As entertaining as I find that at times, it won't make the changes happen any faster. Just check back every once in a while.

Earl

Will There Really Be Blood? That's the Question.

I just saw a bloated sack of a delicious motion picture called "There Will Be Blood." I will tell you up front, there is not that much blood, so basically the title of the movie is a lie belched up from the Pit of Sin and Lies. Granted, there is a head gushing some dark oil-colored blood at one point, and a few hints of total massacre and off-screen explosions of pure-D gore. But if you go into this saying to yourself, "Well, one thing's for sure. In this movie, there will be blood," you might be let down in every single scene except the head gushing one and the one conjured up in your sick mind where a wayward piano rolling down a sharp embankment rips an old field hockey coach's teeth out.

Anywho, that's neither here nor there. Well, actually, I take that back. In fact, it IS there, at the motion picture theater near you, but it is not here, at the strange little room where I sit and type these things, whensoever I deign to put on a shirt, set down the graham crackers and type something. But enough about my night time habits. Let me tell you about this marvelous five-hour marathon of sullen people called a movie.

"There Will Be Blood" is the story of people who rarely bathe but wear three piece suits and scrabble around in the dirt a lot in the middle of the summer. If this film were in Smell-O-Vision, the odor wafting from the cinema to your house would already have killed your pet dog and probably made you bleed from the nostrils. Fortunately, Smell-O-Vision went out with Eisenhower. So among these dirty past-century people is one particular guy. I forget his name, but he is played by that one guy who killed all the Mohicans by making them try to rescue some lame chick in another movie about there being no more Mohicans. I forget the name. "Something something something Mohicans" or something.

Anyway, the Mohican guy is the star, I assume, and he is trying to find oil in the dankest dust bowls of the American west. He does this by digging a small hole in the earth all by himself, falling into it, spitting on some rocks and rubbing them, seeing oil come out of the ground and accepting that it is oil. Then he lies to some people to get their land, then he just looks really kind of dirty and smelly for a few scenes, then there is an oil derrick on fire. Also, he has a son, but not really a son, because he came out of this basket in the first scene, and his name is "H.W." which stands for George Herbert Walker Bush, because why not have an oil-themed movie with George Bushes nancing around in it in their tiny lederhosen, getting their foreheads rubbed with crude oil by filthy old smelly pretend dads? Why not, I ask you? See, you can't even answer the question. I win.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the Mohican guy. His performance is really amazing, on account of you just want to blast his dirty oil neck with a firehose the entire time you sit there munching your Goobers in the dark theater, surrounded by an entire audience of plus-50's aged people who cackle at random times and loudly state obvious things about the movie, like, "He fell down that hole!" and "He took that baby out of that basket!" and "Agnes, is that stuff what we're looking at up t'the movie screen really happ'nin' or be this a dream of nature?" and so on throughout the movie.

In the end, I walked out of the movie wanting desperately to take a bath, shampoo my beard and scrub all the oil stains off my neck, but even after seven baths, I feel like I will never be clean again. When the movie is over, they remind you once again that the title is "There Will Be Blood," only this time you realize that, despite the title, it is actually too late for there to be blood because the movie is over. So the title appearing at the end is even more of a lie gushing from the mouth tube of a writhing Hades fiend than the title appearing at the beginning.

All of that is to say, this is the best movie of the year.

The End.

Love,

Nuffy

P.S. -- I'll never be truly clean again. I can feel the oil stains on my neck forever.

Super Duper Bowl

Well, the most massive sporting event in the entire civilised world rapidly approaches. However, the FIFA World Cup isn't for another 2 years and 5 months. Instead, that worthy runner-up*, the Super Bowl, is tomorrow. This year, they're playing the be-all, end-all of gridiron events at the University of Phoenix Stadium in sunny Glendale, Arizona, of all places.

Of course, when you think of the Super Bowl you think of adverts. There will be the usual collection of fantastically expensive advertisements tomorrow, during the big game. Here's just a taste of what to expect:

• Coca-Cola plans a spectacular recreation of the car chase from Bullitt, ending with a digitally-recreated Steve McQueen driving through the stadium and running over Eli Manning outright. Those Manning brothers have quite the sense of humour.


• McDonald's plans a special live commerical, during which they intend to deep-fry Super-Size Me auteur Morgan Spurlock. Let's see how Morgan's liver deals with that.


• The World Wrestling Entertaintment plans on stepping up a notch from their controversial commercial of a few years ago by featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake in this year's version. Rumour has it that they're keeping Brittney Spears in reserve, just in case Justin can't get a grip on Ms. Jackson's outfit this year.


• Yahoo! is presenting a commercial that consists of sixty seconds of pleading with Microsoft to offer $5 more per share for the company. At the end, Bill Gates laughs and stands on Jerry Yang and David Filo's heads whilst playing Guitar Hero.
  

So, as you can see, it promises to be a spectacular evening.

However, we know that commercials are not all that the Super Bowl is about. What about the halftime show?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will be the featured artists this year. After the notorious 2004 MTV produced show, featuring Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" and Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl sized ego, the Super Bowl organizers turned to Don Mischer Productions. Mischer started off with two years of geezer rock, as the respectable Paul McCartney and the always disrespectable Rolling Stones played the first two years. This went well despite Paul McCartney changing the lyrics of his his song Jet to include the line "Heather, you're driving me %$#&^%! crazy!!!" a full year before the announcement of his impending divorce. The Rolling Stones show also went quite smoothly, depsite Keith Richards smoking his father's ashes in a bong during "Paint It Black."

However, the NFL was restless for something a bit hipper to attract the all-important 18-30 demographic that had purchased so many Michael Vick jersey, before it became apparently that he was totally mental. Mischer Productions responded by booking 48-year old Prince, AKA The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, AKA The Guy Who Chose a WingDing for His Name. Prince's appearance at last year's Super Bowl was relatively tame, as his female rhythm guitarist only simulated sex with him a half-dozen times during the performance. Plus, she was fully-dressed at all times on the field. It might have been worse had not NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell been standing at the edge of the stage with a loaded .45 revolver during the show.

The NFL feels a bit more comfortable with Petty. He's older than Prince, but has never simulated sex with any of the Heartbreakers on or off stage.

So, outrageous adverts and familiar trustworthy music from one of the legends of rock and roll. What more could a sporting fan desire?

Oh yes, there is the matter of the game itself ...the undefeated Patriots versus the Giants.

Patriots 75, Giants 3. As if anyone cared.

**********
*Just behind the Summer Olympics and The International Bocce Ball Festival in Turin.