If you ever give me cill bumps, that will get you there. If you’ve been in the rotation for 25 years and I’m still not tired of you, you have a pretty good chance too.

Today, I decided to promote Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” from four to five stars. It might just have the sickest intro in the history of Rock and Roll.

And who amongst my age-group peers doesn’t remember the video fondly?

How good was the year 1984 for new music? There are 7 albums released that year that I still listen to to this day. Two of these are definitely in my list of top 20 albums of all time. You can tell me which two.

• 1984, Van Halen
• Born in the USA, Springsteen
• Purple Rain, Prince
• The Unforgettable Fire, U2
• Like a Virgin, Madonna
• Reckless, Bryan Adams
• Private Dancer, Tina Turner

No wonder it seems like music quality has gone downhill ever since.

You might contend that I took a step down with those last two, but I just listened to Reckless from start to finish while on a road trip a couple of weeks ago, and it’s better than you remember.

Batman is still the rage in our house. Before the Muses parade on Friday, my sister and I took the little kids to get some grub at a po-boy shop. While we were seated, another guy came through with his face all painted for Mardi Gras. Vanya stared at him a long time, and when he came over, Vanya asked very seriously, “Are you the Joker?”

He shrugged and replied, “Yeah. I’m the Joker.”

I thought this might scare the kid, but he didn’t seem too concerned, and when he caught the guy’s eye several tables away, he raised a hand and shouted, “Hi Joker!”

Later during the same meal, I looked up, and he was tapping the shoulder of a sheriff’s deputy seated behind him and shouting, “Look Papa, a fireman! Look! A fireman!” Thankfully, the deputy just ignored him.

Apparently the deputy didn’t feel like mixing it up with the Joker.

We had a great night out on Bourbon Street. I haven’t worked up the nerve to check the pics and video that I took, but I’ll post some of that stuff by the end of the week.

This reminded me of a story I had forgotten. Our friends from Boston — Josh and Lisa — newlyweds themselves — arrived to Stacie’s rehearsal dinner a little bit early. Not finding anyone there yet, they decided to go grab a drink somewhere close, and Lisa suggested the place right across the street.

Josh is a midwesterner, and over there, gentlemen are still gentlemen. I’ve heard Josh say, “shucks” in frustration, and he wasn’t even trying to be funny at the time. When his new wife suggested a drink at the Penthouse Club, he assumed that his new wife was just clueless. Amidst much stuttering and stammering, he managed to spit out an objection.

	Wedding Pic — Wasn’t That Nice?

Lisa’s response (read in a heavy Boston Accent) was something like, “Theyah just boobies Josh! Get ohvah it!”

I realize now that I haven’t posted much about Stacie’s big day. There was one post where I offended the bride by referring to it as “that wedding,” but that’s it. I had started a long post about the weekend, but I never finished it up or posted it. So sorry Stace!

The wedding was in the St. Louis hotel in early December. It was one of the most fun weekends I’ve had in years. My abs were sore for two days from laughing nonstop. The group of people that came into town for this one were one of the most fun that I’ve been around, and the only thing that would have made it more fun would have been if Stacie, Mark, and Mrs. theskinnyonbenny had had enough time to roll from bar to bar with us throughout the day.

I carried my camera around with me nonstop, but I didn’t get too many good pictures. I seem to have had a talent for capturing people with odd expressions on their faces that weekend. Some of those are worth a chuckle, and I’ll post a handful of my favorites as pictures of the day over the next few days.

Enough time has passed to fade the flood of fun times that I had originally intended to share, but a couple of things still make me chuckle. First, was texting from Lisa’s cell phone while she was in the bathroom:

Lisa: So, just between us, does Mark have a big joint?

Stacie: I wouldn’t know, being a virgin and all.

	Try not to think about whether Mark looks like that new homosexual trust lawyer character on Big Love

(Lisa returns from the restroom and sees this on her phone…)

Lisa: I’m SOOOOOO Sorry! These guys had my phone while I was in the restroom.

Lisa: But since they asked….

Every response there was perfect, and they had me laughing for hours.

Another thing that still has me laughing is my mind’s view of Shelly, sitting in a chair with her crutches propped precariously, using her hands to push her breasts up and to the center until they resembled a Venn diagram. As I approached the scene, she was telling someone in her Jack Nicholson voice, “You can’t handle these titties!”

We also learned that there’s more to Carmel than the studious, dedicated mother who watches the kids at tailgate parties while reading religion textbooks for school. She morphed into a tireless, wild, dancing fiend. Perhaps she was so much fun because Eddie skipped the wedding to watch the Saints game, perhaps she would have been that fun anyway. But we may have to start getting Eddie to stay home with their kids, so that fun Carmel can come hang with the grown ups.

From: ______________
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 9:04
Subject: BRAG Lunch today

The BRAG Lunch is a monthly, informal round-table lunch
for developers within the Greater Baton Rouge area. It is FREE and open to
developers of all skill levels.

______________ will be starting us out talking on the
Liskov Substitution Principle and we’ll see where we go from there. Should
be yet another great meeting. If you would like to come, please use the
eventbrite link below to register so that we can get a rough estimate of the
space needed.

We hope to see you there!

Liskov Substitution Principle?

Let’s go to Wikipedia:

In object-oriented programming, the Liskov substitution principle (LSP) is a particular definition of a subtyping relation, called (strong) behavioral subtyping, that was initially introduced by Barbara Liskov in a 1987 conference keynote address entitled Data abstraction and hierarchy. It is a semantic rather than merely syntactic relation because it intends to guarantee semantic interoperability of types in a hierarchy, object types in particular.

Well, I hope I would be able to hang in the “we’ll see where we go from there” part of the conversation, because I don’t see myself elaborating on the nuances of Liskov.

Unfortunately, I have something that I have to do at lunch today. But hey, it’s nice to be invited.

I want to apologize to everybody, Portland, fans, the organization. It was very embarrassing. It was something that happened over a year-and-a-half ago. It was taken and sent over a year-and-a-half ago. I’m very sorry and I’m definitely embarrassed for my family and everybody around me.

I’m sure it is embarrassing, but as we all know, he’s got a telephone pole in his pants. It can’t be that embarrassing. If any naked pics of me surfaced — now that would be embarrassing.

Second, here’s a video I took from Canal Street about an hour after the game. Be warned that I had been drinking for about 10 hours at that point, and that I know I drop at least one F-bomb. And it doesn’t come close to doing justice to what it was like there, but hopefully, if you’re interested, you might get some sense of it.

Canal St. After the NFC Championship Gamee from ben schultz on Vimeo.

Canal Street, 1/24/2010, about an hour after the New Orleans Saints won their first NFC Championship.

I also have a couple of short videos from before the game on Sunday posted over here. And if you’ve really got some time to kill, check the other video galleries from that page. Other than “2004,” they’ve all got new stuff posted.

Being in the city after the game Sunday night was amazing. It’s possible that there’s never been a single city at a single point in time that was so collectively happy. Maybe a lot of cities were that happy when the Nazis finally surrendered, but then again, there were a lot of grieving parents in that mix. As I posted to Facebook, the Greeks weren’t that happy to have beaten the Trojans (although I think I put the Spartans. I doubt those were the same people, but that doesn’t really matter.)

Even with more printings, it’s impossible to find a copy of Monday’s Times-Picayune. People are already selling them for $25.

I certainly don’t think that there’s a team that means more to an area than the Saints do to their fans. There will be a zillion stories about what happened after Katrina, but it looked to everyone like the Saints had to leave — just like so many of our other businesses, family members, and friends had to leave. The stadium was ruined; talking heads urged the country to abandon the city altogether.

But as Mrs. theskinnyonbenny put so well Sunday night, “We won.”

And she didn’t mean the team. She meant the millionaires to our left. And the homeless guys to our right. And the old people walking down the street who have been there their whole lives. And those who came after the storm to build new homes. And the fans from Baton Rouge who drive down to watch the game near the Superdome, because they can’t stand the thought of missing the celebration. And you can’t tell who is who, because we’re all wearing the same Saints gear.

We won.

Last Saturday, we had a few people over to watch the Saints game. We ate buffalo wings and white beans during the day.

Culinary aside: I (incorrectly) predicted that after a day of eating wings, beans, and drinking, that Mrs. theskinnyonbenny would have horrible complaints about my flatulence the next day. I thought for sure that she would screech that I needed to see a doctor about the unnatural churnings of my body. But it turns out that it wasn’t too bad.

V didn’t go hungry throughout the day, but he wasn’t much on hot wings and white beans either. So in the evening, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny popped some leftover macaroni into the microwave for him and set the time.

Both she and our friend Lisa heard the microwave beep a few minutes later, and they assumed that it was finished. In the course of three minutes, V was running wild in a different part of the house, so they went outside to drink, leaving the food in the microwave for when his little brain got back around to the request.

Some number of minutes later, Mel went into the kitchen and discovered smoke pouring out of the microwave. She roused me from a half-drunk full, content laziness on the couch by yelling, “YOUR KITCHEN IS ON FIRE!!!”

I went in, opened the microwave door, and was immediately engulfed by smoke. It wasn’t just normal smoke — it burnt the eyes and lungs most horribly. Perhaps it isn’t funny, but I had to chuckle at Mel’s frantic attempts to herd the unherdable children out of the kitchen. They were running wild, wondering what all the commotion was about. Somehow, I noticed that there was still another 47 minutes to go on the microwave timer.

While I was fumbling with trying to get the trash can over to the microwave, she snagged a potholder and had the smoldering mess out the back door in record time. But by then, the smoke had filled the kitchen, and filled the ceiling area upstairs.

Six days later, the smell is almost — but not quite — gone.

So on to the picture…

You will notice that there isn’t much of the tupperware left. Nothing was thrown away. Any missing tupperware is melted into the burnt macaroni.