My Weekend

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to move four cubic yards of dirt? Neither have I, but I got to “experience” it this weekend. A friend of mine needed help filling in his old Koi pond, and since I’m a really nice guy, I agreed to provide my services … AT 8:00 A.M.! I figured it would be an hour of moving a small pile of dirt, but didn’t realize that this pond was an 800-gallon pond! The good news is that I’ve discovered some muscles I never knew I had. Also, the sharp pain that continues to throb this fine morning served as an excellent alarm clock for me.

Thanks to that three hour workout, my body was willing and able to accept large quantities of beer, which I fully indulged in, hoping to numb the pain. Unfortunately, the physical pain was then mixed with emotional pain, as the Nittany Lions came up short, and the Irish unfortunately came back to win (was that Andy Reid coaching the Michigan State team?). But, at the very least, the Phillies swept the Marlins this weekend, and are somehow in the driver’s seat for the wild-card. Don’t worry, I’m only cautiously optimistic, because, after all, this is Philadelphia, and our sports teams take great pride in finding new ways to break our hearts.

One recurrent story that I saw this entire weekend was the lead-up to the first NFL game in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area a little over a year ago. I’m shocked that many people are complaining that this game is going to take attention away to the areas in and around the city that still are disaster areas. My take on it is this – sometimes sports is a good cure-all, and in this case, it absolutely is. The city needs some positive story, maybe even a distraction. Not that this is anything like 9/11, but remember how comforting it was when sports was back on television?

By the way, some of these commercials during the football games are god-awful. I’m shocked that companies are paying large sums of money to advertisers who produce worse work than a Kevin Federline song. Those Pepsi commercials with the Pepsi Machine going up against Reggie Bush make me want to jam an ice-pick in my ear.

Speaking of commercials (sorry I’m jumping around so much), there is one out that talks about the phone companies who are not letting other companies compete against them. The commercial basically calls them a Bell monopoly (for those of you who don’t know, in the U.S., there was a telephone company called Bell that was basically the only phone company around. The U.S. government broke the company up, and they splintered into several smaller companies). Anyway, there is nothing wrong with the commercial, EXCEPT that it was done by a group of cable companies. These guys have better sweet-heart deals than the phone companies do. This commercial really makes my blood boil. Sorry, I had to rant. Anyway, enjoy your Monday.