Man About Murfreesboro - blog - funny - politics

It was all Elliot Spitzer all the time yesterday. Around the Boyd-Reed home, there was a frank and open discussion about the issues of politics, power and sex.

Spitzer is an idiot. His actions show that all he really cared about was seeing how much he could get away with. That's why a misdemeanor solicitation charge has become a federal violation of the Mann Act that could mean 20 years in prison. It appears that he spent around $80,000 over the years on expensive prostitutes. He's also an idiot because he was caught using the same methods he used to break up other prostitution rings on his way to the governor's mansion.

The right wingers all say "This is Bill Clinton all over again. This is what happens when you get a Democrat in charge." Sure, like David Vitter, Mark Foley and Larry Craig. Dr. Laura Schlessinger (Remember her? No?) blames Spitzer's wife for not giving him what he needs at home.

The one to blame here is Spitzer. He had a promising career, a loving family, money and power. He's pissed it all away. And when he resigns, Hillary loses a super delegate.

I upgraded my phone recently. I dropped my Sidekick 2 and it went blank. Dead. Shuffled off this mortal coil. It was an ex Sidekick. So I complained to T-Mobile, reminded them that I've been a loyal customer for 4 years and got a sweek discount on a Sidekick 3.

It still sucks as phone, but it's great for texting, chatting and web browsing. It takes higher resolutions photos, includes support for mp3s (but not making your own mp3 ringtones) and Bluetooth (sort of. You can use one of those Lt. Uhura ear thingies, but you can't sync contacts with a Mac or use the phone as modem).

So there are some problems, but until I can bring myself to buy an iPhone, this is it.

About the Bluetooth earpieces. I'm not a fan. My brother Scott has one and evidently loves it. I can see where they would have their place, while driving for example. But I see people walking around downtown with these things hanging off the sides of their heads like jewelry.

I could see maybe using a set of Bluetooth stereo headphones. I could even get behind using an old-school Bluetooth telephone receiver. Now that's cool.

Admiral William Fallon is quitting his post as the man in charge of military operations in the Middle East. Fallon was the first Naval officer to hold the post (you'll note a surprising lack of inland water in the Middle East) and will most likely be the last.

He also holds the distrinction of being Gen. Petraeus' boss, but Bush went around Fallon to talk with the general directly. Ooooooh burn.

Finally, it was Fallon who told Bush that attacking Iran was a bad idea. So, he has to go. Bush listens to his officers on the ground, see. And if they don't tell him what he wants to hear, he'll find some other officers to put on the ground that will.

Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died yesterday at the age of 69. Gygax and a partner created the game back in the late '70s and it is still the gold standard of role playing games. I've spent no telling how many hours reading about, planning for and playing D&D. In high school, it was an obsession that took up most of my weekends while my parents were working out their divorce.

I met my wife during a game of D&D. So, I have much respect for Gygax. That being said, the Fark headline about the story made me laugh out loud:

Gygax's death has spawned any number of iterations of this theme. It is important to note here that these were created out of love. As gamers, we deal with the deaths of our characters all the time. Death is rarely the end of the game. So you have to forgive the community for coming up with lists like this:

It is a testament to the nerdcore gamers among us that, in the comments to this list, someone pointed out that No. 2 on the list was slightly flawed:

Here's another example from woot.com. My favorite: “Heart condition? Wow, I always thought it’d be owlbears that got him.”

I never met the guy and never played the game outside of the friendly sessions among my geekier cohorts. But he did have a great cameo on an episode of "Futurama" as part of Al Gore's Vice Presidential Action Rangers. It was Gore, Nichel Nichols, Steven Hawking, Deep Blue and Gary Gygax. When Al introduced Gary he said "I'm very [rolled some dice and checked the results] pleased to meet you." Heh.

So that collective sigh you heard yesterday was the exhale of 20 million gamers all crying out at once. He will be critically missed.

The Democratic nomination is still up in the air. Pennsylvania is seven weeks away. Their vote has never mattered before. Now managers at TV stations all over the state are seeing dollar signs.

I'm reading and hearing a lot about the hand wringing going on because it is taking so long to pick a nominee. So far, I've remained neutral on the matter. My guy, Bill Richardson, dropped out long ago and I've resigned myself to vote for whomever the Dems nominate. These people who are worried that the campaign is getting nasty are naive. This is not a nasty campaign. 2000 was a nasty campaign. This is nothing.

I have faith in the democratic process. Let it go all the way to the convention if need be. With Hillary's big wins in Texas and Ohio yesterday, she is within 125 delegates of Barak. Neither candidate can get to the magic number now, so it is going to go down to the super delegates. If that's the case, then Hillary will win. The Clintons have a lot of political capital to spend and the super delegates are particularly vulnerable to that kind of influence.

Regardless of the outcome, the Democrats will be putting up an historic candidate and the Republicans will be putting up another in a long line of old, white guys who try to scare you into voting him him.

Rush Limbaugh took time to apologize to Obama yesterday after he laughed when a caller compared Obama to Curious George. During the break someone must have told Rush that it wasn't a good idea to compare Obama to an ape.

Patrick Swayze has five weeks to live, according to press reports that say he has pancreatic cancer. Wow. What do you do when you know the end is coming and so soon?

We finally hooked up the Wii. Rozzy has really taken to it. She loves to bowl and to see her box is to see what a 3-ft whirling tasmanian devil would look like. Because she is so short, nearly every flailing punch is a body blow. Her electronic opponents aren't sure how to handle it.

She's created a Mii for herself and for her best friend, Perla. She wants to make them for everyone in her class.

I enjoy my Netflix account very much. It lets me watch some obscure films that I would never get to otherwise. At the same time, there are some aspects to it that I just don't care for. For instance, if you browse the new releases, you're given four categories: popular new releases, popular new releases in your favority genre (in my case anime and animation); popular releases from 1 year ago, and popular releases from your home town.

It's this last one that I don't like. What does it say about Murfreesboro that "Epic Movie" is one of the most popular DVD rentals? Without fail the popular new releases from Murfreesboro are slasher flicks and really stupid movies. It's depressing. Not in an end-it-all sort of way, but in a Holden Caufield sitting in a hotel lobby peering at the cross section of society kind of way.

It's Leap Day. Tradition states that on Feb. 29, a woman can propose to a man and, should he decline, he should soften the blow with a kiss, a pound note and a pair of gloves.

Dollie has a classmate who was born on Leap Day. The 28-year-old graduate student will be celebrating her seventh birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's this evening.

Suppose for a sec that you were at a casino in the Virgin Islands and you put $20 in a slot machine. Now suppose the bells and whistles start going off and the machine says you've hit the $5.15 million jackpot. That'd be sweet, right?

Now suppose, while the machine is spitting out 5 million in quarters, a casino manager comes by and unplugs it, claiming it was an "obvious malfunction and the casino is not responsible for malfunctioning machines."

What would you do? Would it help your answer to know that this actually happend to a man who also happens to be an attorney?

We had a scary incident on a county school bus recently that has the locals up in arms. A high school senior sexually assaulted (some reports say "raped") another student. The entire episode was caught on the bus's video camera. Now parents are calling on the school officials to hire aids to ride the busses and keep things like that from happening.

I have to agree. There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when my kids will be riding the bus to school. I cannot imagine how crazy I would be if something like that happened to one of my kids.

You cannot blame the driver. His or her job is to drive the bus and deliver the kids to and from school. The driver watches the road. What shocked a lot of people was the fact that this student was screaming for help and none of the other students stepped in.

When I read this story, I immediately emailed a link to Dollie, saying how glad I was that she was out of that system.

I don't want to turn this into a "In my day we didn't blah blah blah" posts. I saw some stupid things during my school bus rides, but never anything like that. I will relate the story of the worst thing I ever saw happen on a school bus.

In 7th grade, I knew a girl named Tammie. She and I sat near each other in most classes because our last names were almost always together in an alphabetical list. During this particular semester, crossstitching was popular. Everyone was required to take home economics and one of the big projects was to complete a crossstitch pattern.

So, I was admiring Tammie's work, which she carried around in a clear plastic bag.

Later that day, I saw Tammie again and she was angry. Her coinpurse with around $6 in it was missing. She was certain one of our classmates named David had stolen it. David was a big guy, very popular and hung out with the right cliques. He played football, wore all the popular labels, and was a loud, obnoxious guy. But I didn't think he was a thief.

Tammie was convinced because David had asked to see her crossstitch work and she'd handed him the bag with the coinpurse in it. She knew David and I rode the same school bus and asked me to keep an eye on him during our ride home.

I looked up at David as we were riding over a bridge. I saw him throw a beaded coinpurse with the name "Tammie" on it in red out the window and into the Duck River.

The next day, I told Tammie, who immediately went to our teacher. I was called before the assistant principal to tell what I knew. I did so, after asking that my name not be mentioned when confronting David.

I heard later through various sources that David tried to play it off as a joke. Word got out and he lost a little of the luster he once had. But not much. Later that evening my mom asked me if I knew David. It turns out my mom knew his mother. She told him that when he got home from school that day, he stole some money from the house and went on a shopping spree. His mother happened to see him at a store and asked him where he'd gotten the money to buy all the stuff. He yelled at her, called her a naughty word and ran off.

It didn't take David long to figure out it was me who ratted him out. In fact, that began a several-week campaign of harrassment inwhich David would yell at me whenever we were away from school, asking the age-old question "Why did you square up?"

For those unfamiliar with early '80s slang, to "square up" was to tell on him. Calling me a "square" was the same as calling me a "rat" or a "tattletale." I usually ignored him, but after a while, keeping my "smart" mouth in check became an issue. Once I responded to his questions with my own, "Why did you steal that purse?" I risked turning the encounter into a more physical one.

We eventuallly learned to avoid each other, me so as not to get clobbered and he so as not to have to face the fact that he was a thief. After a while, it was forgotten. Well, sort of. I still remember it. I'm betting his mom does, too.

One more thing this Leap Day. An obscure White House official by the name of Timothy Goeglein was held up to public ridicule today for the high crime of plagarism. Goeglein, who serves as Bush's liason to the Religious Right, writes a column for his hometown paper. Or, he turns in other people's work as his own.

There is a character on the current season of "The Wire" who is what's known in the trade as a "fabulist." He makes up great anecdotes and quotes and either attributes them anonymously or otherwise fakes it. It's not quite the same as plagarism.

On the show, the noose is closing in around the guy. Two of his editors are discussing the problem and one says to the other "Do you think the first time he did it is the first time he got caught?"

Once Goeglein was caught, by a blogger named Nancy Nall, the flood gates opened. It seems like Goeglein was a habitual copycat (and not a very good one). Take a look at this column that appeared in the New York Sun back in June and compare it to Goeglien's in the Fort Worth News-Sentinel in July. You won't have to read long. The first paragraphs are nearly identical:

This was not the column that got him in trouble. This was one dug up by commentors on Nancy's blog.

Anyone who knows me understands that I like to think of myself as an amateur futurist. More than being an early adapter, I'm looking forward to the giant leaps forward in technology that will revolutionize our life – Star Trek stuff like transporters, stasis fields and replicators.

Dollie jokes that when they perfect the technology that lets someone put a chip in your head and plug right into the computer, I'll be first in line. She's not far off. But all my reading of science fiction leads me to believe that you don't want to be one of the first generation when it comes to that sort of thing.

Anyhoo, that's why technological developments like this one pique my interest. It is a digital Bluetooth display that can be implanted beneath your skin. Micro pellets are "tattooed" on your skin above the device (which is powered by an energy cell that can draw power from your blood stream). The pellets become clear or dark depending on the signal from the subcutaneous display.

In other words, it's a digital, interactive, wireless tattoo. You can, for example, use it like a cell phone. It can be used as a watch. It can monitor your blood. You can just have it display pretty pictures on your skin.

It's crazy. And I'm fascinated. This is, of course, all just theoretical, but so were personal computers when I was in grade school and right now I'm working on a computer smaller than a shoe box with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Speaking of technological advances. My buddy Serenity recently showed me her Kindle, Amazon's entry into the ebook reader market. It is as impressive as it is costly. For $400 you get a portable book reader that has a constant wireless connection to Amazon via Sprint (so no need for WiFi). Amazon has a huge library of books available, including all new additions to the inventory. They are also working to make all the back titles available.

The thing that might make this a reasonable purchase is for someone like Dollie, who is buying several hundred dollars worth of text books each semester. The maximum cost of a downloaded book is $10.

Plus, it will display PDFs, word documents, jpegs and whatnot. I played around with it and found the display highly readable in the somewhat dim dining room of B.B. Kings even without a backlight.

It was a good weekend all around. The kids stayed at my mom's house for a couple of nights. Dollie and I took in a great concert (we shifted our Valentine's Day celebration to Sunday evening) and I got sore playing virtual tennis and boxing on Max's Wii.

I came home from work on Friday and didn't mention the game because Max has yet to fulfill one of the requirements for receiving it. His report card is due on Friday and if all goes well he'll be playing his Wii by the weekend.

Saturday was HeroClix day. I've been named a judge at the local venue, so I ran my first tournament:

500 points – magic vs. super science
All characters must derive their powers either from magical/mystical sources or via technology.

That evening was my monthly game with some guys from the store. We meet at Greg's house once a month for dinner and a couple of friendly rounds. It gives us a chance to hone our game without the constraints of the formalized tournament. It also gives the owner a chance to play without having to keep an ear on the phone and an eye on the merch.

Between the morning and evening games, Dollie and I shopped for art supplies and I set up the Wii and played a few games.

On the way home from the game, I saw a restaurant I'd never noticed before and made note to try it out.

The next day, Dolls and I were planning out our day. She has to visit some historic sites for her museums class and we had tickets to see Paul Thorn at the Belcourt Theatre that evening. We finally decided on an itinerary that included a mall walk, lunch at the restaurant I'd seen the previous evening, a tour of Traveller's Rest, a visit to the library at Fisk University, dinner in Hillsboro Village and Paul Thorn.

First off, I love a good mall walk. The place is climate controlled, level and there are plenty of things to look at. When we're all living in space, mall walking will be mandatory. Trust me on that.

So we went across town to the 'Boro Bistro for lunch. Before it was a soup and sandwich place, it was a LaMar's Donuts and they still serve pastries. This lunch proved to be the lowlight of our day.

Living in Murfreesboro, we're used to new restaurants opening (and closing) so we like to think we're pretty forgiving when it comes to customer service. But the checkmarks againt the 'Boro Bistro kept piling up.

The cashier was new and struggled with the register. That's fine, we were all new once. Dollie ordered the soup and salad bar combo. She asked if Dolls wanted the bowl or cup of soup.

I studied the menu before ordering, as I am a somewhat picky eater and have to be careful about what ingredients go on my sandwich.

I gave them credit for putting their panini on the traditional ciabatta bread and decided to give "the Panini Melt" a whirl (smoked turkey, bacon and swiss on ciabatta). I also asked for cup of cream of potato soup, which was listed in the menu as freshly made.

The menu says: "All sandwiches are made to order. Lettuce and tomato available on request."

The cashier rang up the orders and handed me a cup to serve myself from the soup tourine. I checked the soups and neither was cream of potato. Dolls pointed out the sign above the salad bar, which said today's soups were beef with barley and cream of brocolli and cheese. The cashier might have mentioned that when I asked for potato soup. So I had beef with barley, which admittedly was tasty.

My sandwich came. It wasn't right. It was close: turkey and swiss on ciabatta, but it also included lettuce and tomato (which I didn't request) and was missing the bacon. And, while it had the tell-tale grill indentations of a panini press, the cheese wasn't melted and the interior of the sandwhich wasn't hot. I mean if you're going to call it a "melt" you might want to melt something.

"Send it back," Dollie said. But I much more of a curse the darkness sort of guy. I picked off the tomato and lettuce and ate my cold, bacon-less sandwich. Dollie's soup and salad didn't have the promised roll and at no point did the manager come by to see if everything was okay.

Two things I noticed about the manager – he was struggling to run the register and he carried a sidearm on his belt.

I've never seen a manager pack a pistol before, but there he was, ready for trouble. We had a restaurant manager shot to death recently in Murfreesboro, so I can't blame him, but it was still a jarring sight.

We toured Traveller's Rest and our guide was a friendly and interesting fellow. He told us about the famous people who'd slept there and about the interesting goings on. Dollie was specifically interested in how the place presented the topic of slavery. Near the end of the tour, the guide mentioned that there were 27 slaves and 2 freed men living at the plantation. The last stop on the tour was the out buildings. The weaving room had the names of the slaves on the wall inside.

Dolls mentioned that had our guide been a women, we most likely would have heard a great deal more about the furnishings and less about the famous people who'd slept there.

We left the plantation and went to my office to look up some information about the exhibit at the Fisk library. Dolls is working on a project for Tims Ford State Park and was interested in the mechanics of the exhibit, rather than the subject matter.

We left there and went to Green Hills to poke around until time for the show. We ended up down in Hillsboro Village at Bosco's for dinner. It was really great and close enough to the Belcourt that we could walk there from dinner.

Paul Thorn put on a great show. My only regret was that a few songs into it, there was an inebriated woman near the front who kept yelling at him that she wanted to marry him, but her husband wouldn't let her. I looked at Dollie and imitated her.

How do you go from enjoying a good show to saying to yourself, I've got to be on stage too? Who does that?

The show was a sell out, as the guy in front of me in line at will call found out to his chagrine. The friendly booth operator pointed him down the street to a group of scalpers.

At the end of the show, Paul wandered into the crowd and walked to the back of the room. He left the theatre and immediately sat at the merchandice table so he could sign CDs and pose for photos.

We bought his new disc and got to speak briefly. He's a nice guy and I highly reccomend seeing him if you get the chance.

Today, however, I'm feeling a bit under the weather. My boss was sick last week, but came into work anyway. Suddenly, I'm feeling like I've been gargling with motar dust all night. I've been taking some cold medicine but the effect is to dope me up. I feel like I'm walking through gravy. Not only that, but my overzealous Wii playing has left my arms and chest very sore.

My boss told me to get some Zicam. It helped him, he said. I sent Dolls an email, but in my drug-addled brain, I asked her to pick me up some Valtrex. "I'm told it can help," I wrote.

To her credit, she didn't question it. She simply said she'd call the doctor this afternoon. That's what triggered me to give my note a second glance. Zicam is over-the-counter.

I watched "Knight Rider" last night. I can't help myself. That show was so cool when I was a kid 25 years ago. Plus, it gave everyone in my family the chance to reference "The Simpsons."

Heh. I doubt I'll watch too much more of it. They are really blurring the lines between commercials and entertainment. One thing of note: in act one, Mike Traceur got chased out of the Montecito casino – the same casino that Hiro and Ando from "Heroes" got thrown out of and the setting for NBC's "Las Vegas."

Dollie is currently working on an advanced degree in public history. So topics like museum administration, historical accuracy, heritage tourism and reenactments are currently on my radar. That's probably why this story caught my eye.

Evidently, this teacher has been supervising the construction of dioramas for lots of museums, including the Smithsonian. His students spent three years working on this one, hand-painting more than 750 little soldiers, right down to the brass buttons on their uniforms. Materials cost more than $23,000 and labor would have run as high as $130,000

It also seems that the museum's new director, Jeff Hunt, had written his master's thesis on the Palmetto Ranch battle and had written the book that the students used as a guide while building the diorama.

There is a local gentlemen's club called Christie's Cabaret. Most likely they're part of a chain, so you may have one near you. When my office was in midtown, I'd pass the place (which is next door to the Greyhound Bus Station) two or three times a week on my way to meetings.

The Nashville metro council has been doing its best to shut down the adult entertainment industry in town through regulations and licensure. Ironically, they have done virtually nothing about the actual sex clubs, meaning if you go to Christie's, you'll have to remain 3 feet away from the stage and the dancers will keep their clothes on during your lap dance. But you can go up the hill to one of the sex clubs and have sex with strangers in the middle of the dance floor. The difference, in the eyes of the council anyway, is the difference between adult entertainment and a private club.

So, the showbars have to do something to bring in the crowds. I mention Christite's because they've been running a shuttle bus around town. I assume it hits the hotels and maybe the airport. It is conspicuous because it is wrapped in photos of beautiful women with a big sign that says "Follow me to Christie's Cabaret."

Next time I see it, I'll try to get a photo. My boss and I saw it the other day as it tooled up second avenue. I keep picturing a doorman at the Maxwell House or the Hilton holding the door at the end of an evening as a hotel guest steps off the stripper bus and staggers to his room.

What must that ride be like to and from the place? A group of men crowded together with their coats over their erections. Do they chat? Do they even make eye contact?

Going to a strip club didn't used to be something you wanted to advertise to the entire city and in truth, I've seen the shuttle many times, but I've never seen anyone get on or off.

The big brouhaha right now in the Democratic Party is whether the Florida and Michigan delegates will count towards the nomination. The party had declared that the primaries in both states wouldn't count because they bucked the system and moved their primaries up, in an effort to give their voters more of a say in the nomination process. In Michigan, Obama took his name off the ballot (Clinton didn't and won). In Florida, Obama didn't campaign (Clinton did and won).

Now that it looks like neither candidate will get the required number of delegates Clinton is fighting to count Michigan and Florida. And she should, even though it looks a bit unseemly to be changing the rules mid-stream. But the Obama camp has been arguing to force the super delegates to vote for the candidate that carried their states, which would also be a departure from the established rules.

It's a mess and I'll be glad when it's all settled.

My quest for a Wii has ended, thanks to my buddy Sammy. His dilligence has paid off in a big way. He was the one who found out for me that the local Toys R Us was getting a shipment in. Sammy used to work there back in the day and understood that the people there don't really know what's going to be on the trucks.

So he said if I called at 10, right when the store opened, that would be my best shot. I called this morning at 9:59. They had four of them.

"Can I buy one over the phone?"

No.

"Can you reserve one for me?"

No.

I called Sammy. He was asleep, having just come off the night shift. In his groggy state, he agreed to haul his sleepy self out of bed and go to Toys R Us for me. What a pal.

He called from the counter to say that Toys R Us required him to buy two games. I didn't baulk at this because I would most likely have bought a couple of games with it anyway and at least this way I got to pick the games.

Sammy bought the game and called me back to let me know the total:

SAMMY: I want you to know that I bought the last one and the woman behind me was mad.

MIKE: They sold all four within 45 minutes?

SAMMY: She was giving that sales clerk hell because she felt I'd bought it out from under her and she had dibs.

MIKE: Wow.

SAMMY: Yeah, you're going to owe me hazard pay. In fact, I expect my lawn to be cut every third Thursday for free.

MIKE: You can "expect" that all you want.

SAMMY: Just bring the cash.

The search for a Wii goes unfulfilled. Sites like Wiitracker.com aren't any help. What bothers me most about this is that there seem to be some retailers out there who have the Wii in stock, but will only sell it if I agree to either pay upwards of $100 or MSRP or buy some ridonkulous bundle of a bunch of Wii games I don't want for $500.

So, I'll continue to play the waiting game. I've got feelers out there. One of the guys I game with works at the local Wal-Mart. Another buddy has a friend who swears her local GameStop has a bunch of them. I have a list of retailers that I call daily.

There's this episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" in which Barney Fife is planning a hot date with Thelma Lou. He's telling Andy about his plans for romance and a key point of the plan is to play Cole Porter records. It seems that Cole Porter "has an affect on Thelma Lou."

In completely unrelated news, Valentine's Day is coming up and Dolls and I are going to the Belcourt Theatre to see Paul Thorn.

I like him. His songs are clever, his voice has a raspy, whiskey sound that lends itself well to his brand of acoustic songwriting and he has an interesting back story.

I mentioned before that Dad has made it online. He has, thus far, sent me three emails: a warning about Obama being a sleeper agent for radical muslims, a dirty joke involving a waiter using a spoon to tuck his penis back into his pants and an animated gif of a stickfigure wiggling his "3 and a half inch floppy."

And now for something I haven't written about in a while. My weight has been sneaking back up into the uncomfortable zone. I'm still about 15 pounds down from my heaviest, but I'm also about 15 pounds more than my low point (what a great day that was). This seems to be the equilibrium achieved by switching to Coke Zero, increasing my fiber intake and brown bagging it at least four days a week – all the while scarfing snacks, pizza and candy.

However, there is a reunion coming up in May of the MTSU theatre department. Dollie and I intend to go and I will be skinny for it. Mark my words.

So, I've gotten back on the Weight Watcher's point system. It worked for me before and there is no reason why it shouldn't again, provided I keep at it.

Dollie has joined me in this effort and we've been cooking at home more recently. Hopefully, by having a little more control over what I eat, I can make this easier.

Speaking of cooking, in December, Badger gave me a venison loin. I stuck it in my freezer with the promise that I'd do something with it when I got the chance. Last night, I put it in the slow cooker with a bunch of onions, mushrooms, garlic, thyme, rosemary and red wine. The plan was to let it cook overnight and portion it out in the morning.

Last night I had a dream in which I was trying to cook dinner all at once in a single oven. It was a frustrating and ultimately futile task and I awoke at 3 a.m. with the powerful smell of deer roast wafting through the house. I went to the kitchen and checked on the roast before going back to bed.

This morning, the chunks of venison fell apart on my fork. Very tasty. Very lean. Very healthy.

I still haven't made a decision on the whole Hillary/Obama question. I didn't even vote in the primary – the first I recall missing. It's a difficult choice to make and I'll support whichever one the Dems nominate. But there is a problem on the horizon.

Right now, Obama has the big Mo. He's got several consecutive wins under his belt, he's raising big money, he's close, if not ahead, in the delegate count. But it is possible that neither candidate will get the 2,500 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the convention. An open convention is an exciting prospect, but it can ultimately damage the party and hurt our chances in November.

Ever since Kennedy lost the nomination to Jimmy Carter, the Dems have had something called "super delegates" a group of party leaders, politicians and government officials who have delegate status on their own, independent of the election process. There are 860 or so of these super delegates.

If we go into the convention with a close race and no clear victor, these super delegates will have the power to give the nomination to either candidate. That will lead to some hurt feelings all around.

I've mentioned this before, but I feel like I need to again. On Nov. 23, 2005, Badger and I made our predictions about what the 2008 presidential race would look like.

Max and I have been watching the new "American Gladiators." The show is enjoyable enough, but I always fast forward through Hulk Hogan. Every single one of his interviews goes like this:

HULK:
Wow, brother, that was an amazing run on the crapulator. What was going through your mind as those gladiators were coming at you?

CONTESTANT:
Well, Hulk, all I knew was I've got to get it done and . . .

HULK:
You got that right, brother. You think you're going to win tonight?

CONTESTANT:
I'm going to give it my best sho...

HULK:
You got that right, brother. Do you think you've got what it takes tonight?

CONTESTANT:
You bet. I'm going to. . .

HULK:
Okay, back to the action!

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