Local REO Speedwagon fanclub blamed for string of gingerbread house arsons.

Hey now, BM here...no, not Bowel movement, BIG Matt you fools!
I have decided to follow my fellow blogger Teresa's example and step out of the closet and admit something that few know, I enjoy balsa wood gliders. I simply do not find any fault in a quality balsa wood glider. I suppose my obsession began during my senior year in high school. The year was 1997...

I was enrolled in Future Tech 101 and our first project was to construct a balsa wood bridge that would support at least 35 pounds. The idea was to cut, glue, and construct conjoining triangles enabling the bridge to hold maximux weight. Being as I have little mechanical abilities, I more or less "wung it;" my project was a mess of misshapen triangles and ill theorized patterns. It did hold the 35, but that was merely a formality. My hopes of designing the city of the future were buried, until our final project which was to construct a balsa wood plane. I'll spare the needless building of dramatic tension...let's just say that my science geek buddies of Future Tech. '97 coined my final project to be graded by the professor as "Bower's Great Flight." The jocks, however, referred to it as "Flight of the Masterbater," since Masterbater was a nickname I had earned in the gym class shower after accidently body-checking Betty Thurston in a coed floor hockey game.

Anyway, the glider must have caught a jet stream or something because it sailed down the hill and across the practice football field. Needless to say, my professor called it "The best balsa wood glider flight I have ever seen." Yeah, that's right!

So, after battling 5 years of an addiction to sinus decongestants in suppository form, and surviving 3 suicide attempts with a K-Mart price labeling gun, I have bought a brand new balsa wood glider at the local Dollar Store. For those interested, it's the Silver Arrow (plane #3) of the "Air Aces" high-performace glider series by Kidco. According to the package, the Silver Arrow's wingspan is approx. 18 inches. There is also a "choking hazard" posted for those with small children. Apparently large children, possibly those with pituitary disorders, will be okay.

So listen closely jocks, after picking up the shattered pieces of my late teens and early twenties, the Masterbater is about to take flight again. If you can't find me, just look up...

BM

ps- If Betty Thurston is reading this, there is room on this flight for two.

Rapper steps out of the closet for a moment.

White Girl Rap

Put your hands up, Put your hand up, Put your hands up
T step to the mic

I step up to the mic
I bust a rhyme
I know your gonna like

I’m the girl you’d least expect
To bust it like this
But I’m up on deck.

I was born and raised up in the port
I grew up a good girl
Well of sorts

I anin’t exactly from the hood
But I grew up next door
If you would.

Now you know I got street cred
I wasn’t in a gang
Which is why I ain’t dead

Now I perform comedy on stage
With I-factor
They are all the rage

I do improv off the top of my head
Make of scenes
Meet guys named Fred

Try to make a lot of the funny
Make people laugh
Don’t do it fo the money

I say what is on my mind
Whatever comes out
Is crazy you’ll find

Now you know my rhymes are hard
I can even get medieval
Just like the Bard

Now I need to step in the closet
Put the rhymes away
And go write some sonnets.

So now you know how I kick it
Come check us out
Just buy a ticket.

White Girl OUT!!!!

Pay me…and ticket master...to entertain you.

In the immortal words of Billy Joel “I am the entertainer.” Well, I flatter myself that I am. And speaking as an entertainer, I know it’s hard to make a living performing. You need to have people buy tickets to see you so you can make money. This is why I have no problem paying for tickets to a show. But when I go to buy Green Day tickets (yes I said Green Day…I’m a fan from way back to Dookie) that are $33.24 and I pay $44.40, I have to ask…why? I feel ripped! When did Ticket Master start taking all of my money? Why shouldn’t Green Day get it? I know Pearl Jam tried to fight this in the 90’s, but all they learned is: you can’t fight “the man.” Well, “DAMN THE MAN! SAVE THE EMPIRE!” We don’t need Ticket Master! They don’t need $11.15 of my money. They provide a service I don’t need and I’m sick of paying for it! Let Mellon Arena handle ticket sales, or what about Green Day? That would be a great way for them to make money. Instead I have to pay $11.15 for my $33.25 to get into the correct hands! That is some service fee. I realize this may sound a bit hypocritical, since I-Factor out sources our ticket sales to the Funny Bone. But that’s where we perform and there’s no service charge. So take your $11.15 away from Ticket Master and come see an I-Factor show. At least you’ll leave with $3.15 in your pocket and a smile on your face.

An Idle Brain Teetering on a Piece of Driftwood

Anyone out there? Good. Big Matt here again with more thoughts. Since my last post in which I attempted to turn logic upside down, I've realized that this BLOG business can be quite addicting. Here are a few more thoughts that have dogged me throughout the years that I thought I'd share.
Sometimes I think about life this way and it helps put things in perspective:
The past...just a collection of memories, a scrapbook in the brain that may or may not be so accurate. How can we be sure our brains aren't skewing what we've stored? At the very least, time distorts what the brain remembers, so the past is somewhat irrelevant at best, but besides that, it's already gone. The future...hasn't happened yet and there certainly is no guarantee that it ever will. So the future, in and off itself, is totally irrelevant since it can never really exist anyway considering we are perpetually in the "now." And what about the "now?" Visualize the "now" crammed into inch of space. That inch can be cut in half an infinte amount of times, making the "now" a virtually infinetly small period of time. And essentually, that's our life.
How about this one? We all know that light travels at a certain rate. Look up at the stars at night, we are literally looking years and years and years and years into the past. For all we know, every other sun in the solar system has burnt out millions of years ago...yet we see them. Star gazing is, in fact, time travel. So...even though it make take the light from the stars millions (maybe billions) of years to reach our eyes, it also takes a measured amount of time for light to bounce off everything I'm looking at now and then to reach my eyes and be processed by the brain: this computer screen, my floor lamp, my recharging cell phone, my mouse, my body, etc...I'm looking into the past right now. All of us are perpetually looking into the past, all the time. Now, although we are only looking a millisecond backwards in time, keep in mind that everything is reletive, even time. A millisecond compared to a much smaller incriment in time is a very, very, very, long period of time. Thanks to relativity, for all I know this computer, my floor lamp, my recharging phone, my mouse, and my body may have been swept underneath history's floor mat a long, long time ago and "I" am litrally just an idle brain teetering on a peice of driftwood.
I know, what a bunch of nonsense. I agree. I won a free itunes song off a Big Slam Pepsi bottle so I think I'll download "Low" from Craker's Kerosine Hat. 118 gallons of Pepsi later I will hopefully have the whole album, but I may have to pee.

BM

Crossing the turnpike, with more style than it probably takes

Ok, ok the super bowl is over, and my Eagles have lost. You can't say it wasn't a close one. Okay say whatever you want. The only problem was that I was at a superbowl-watching party where 2 people said to me (separately): "It's weird to be watching this with only one person in the room who actually cares."

A friend's Dad seems to think that Conference pride is important/exists. So he was rooting for the Patriots since like the Steelers they are in the AFC. I would call this ridiculous if he didn't come to most of our shows.

I thought that Pittsburgh should have been a little more supportive of the Philadelphia Eagles than they were. There are a few reasons why I think this:
1. The Patriots beat the Steelers in the AFC Championship, and
2. Philadelphia is the birthplace of our nation.

I just don't understand what it is that Pittsburgh has against the city of brotherly love. Or may I do.

When I first moved here about two years ago, an innocently begun conversation with a native Pittsburghers about where I come from devolved into this:

Her: We don't like Philly because everything is always about Philly. You never stop to think there is a world outside of you.
Me: I never knew Pittsburghers felt that way. Maybe that's because we don't really care and kind of don't have to.
Her: That's just it. You don't realize you are part of Pennsylvania.
Me: well, I'd like to tell you what we think about that. But we don't care. It doesn't matter that you are out here thinking that. You are wasting your time.

Somehow in the end, it all boiled/deep-fried down to Primanti Brothers Sandwich versus the Philly Cheesesteak. I am sick of this discussion. Both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are fat, fat cities, with Pittsburgh soaring ahead if mullets weigh more.

I do get teased, so sometimes it's easier to not say where I'm from, and to keep a lid on my accent. Sometimes though when I am feeling up to it, I'll mention where I was born and raised (on the playground, spending days), and I get something like this, from the other night: "Are you from a suburb, or Philly proper- but I guess there's nothing proper about Philly." HAHAHA. Another Iron City for this incredibly creative drunk guy.

I didn't realize that, when threatened, my own personal hometown pride comes out swinging. "Birthplace of our nation?" I am surprised as anybody.

So, to Western Pennsylvanians: Your beef with Philly is completely irrelevant and you are wasting good energy that can be spent on say, soaping your windows with football propaganda or watching Channel 11's team coverage of light drizzle. I understand though. In Philly, we don't like New York very much. And they don't even care. We waste good energy that can be spent on, say, boxing Apollo Creed , or cracking bells. Perhaps its like the food chain: the big apple is to the cheesesteak as the cheesesteak is to the sandwich with the fries on it.

I am not saying I don't like Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, I have come to love it here. I even find myself saying "we" when I am talking about the city, for example, "In Pittsburgh, we get used to the hills" or "we ignore crosswalks" or "we just break into people's houses in the middle of the day while they are still at home."

And did you know that the Lewis and Clark expedition kicked off in PITTSBURGH?? Hello, how could I not love it here? Maybe I should rethink the birthplace of our nation thing, and just measure places on the availability of a wide range of Tastykakes. Philadelphia 2, Pittsburgh 1.

Preaching Politics to a Perch in a Punchbowl: My Upside Down World Theory

Ok, alright, let's just settle down and listen. I'm going to share a theory with you that I concocted back in 7th grade when I was still curious about the world and thought that I could be anything I wanted if I tried. That was before the cable bills began rolling in.
Ok, I'm going to tell you how you can dig your way into an upside down fantasy world. Ok, here are are in Pittsburgh, Pa. and there is a rabbit hole going straight through the Earth right into China. So basically, if I looked down my end of the hole and Chin Ling looks down his end of the hole we will be looking eye to eye. But how can we both look "down" the same hole but be eye to eye.
Now to the upside down world...simply jump feet first into the hole. Suspend disbelief and assume you keep falling and falling without the laws of gravity. (If you keep the laws of gravity intact you simply would have to shimmy "down" the hole after reaching the center of the Earth and fight gravity as it pulled you back to the middle) Anyway, you fall and fall toward the other end of the hole. Now, Chin Ling would look down the hole on his side and see the bottoms of your feet coming up at him; you are "falling up" feet first but you who jumped into the hole in Pittsburgh still have the same sensation of falling "down" the hole. So the people in China see your feet emerge up from the hole as you finally tumble down and out the bottom. Hmm...you arrive in what is essentially an upside down world.
Just a thought.

Shakepeare for the year 2000.....5

To Blog, or not to Blog. That is the question. Technology now allows us to blog. but how do we? why do we? maybe we just do. kind of like improv, right? why do we? how do we? like blogging, improv is mystery only made better by technology. So saddle up and prepare for the improv blogging journey of a lifetime.