Every week, Baton Rouge has free shows on Friday evenings and Sundays at noon. Many of the acts are very good -- our best local acts are up there with any town's. On top of that, we have a Blues Week, Fest for All, Earth Day, and Corporate Cup race downtown, all featuring free live music. New Orleans hosts French Quarter Festival (which perhaps has become my favorite), and Jazz Fest is right around the corner (which has fallen sharply in my list of favorites, because it costs $75/day, and I can see the same local bands for free at all of these others). I've never made it to Lafayette's Festival International, but that's supposed to be right up there too. I should hyperlink to all of those sites, but that would be a lot of work.

I spent a good bit of time the last two weekends doing work on the boat. Theskinnyonbenny family has been looking forward to our annual Easter voyage, but the list of boat chores was long, and I hoped to complete as many of those as possible before we left. One chore -- repair of a ripped sail -- was a firm requirement do be done prior to departure.

Hopefully, you all had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day. After last year's cold rainy Saturday, God back around to loving the St. Patrick's Day parade in Baton Rouge. We got our usual beautiful Saturday, where you can be cold in the morning and sunburned by evening.

The weekend before last, we went up to Chicago to celebrate our friend Brent's 40th birthday. I should insert some sort of "holy shit, we're getting old" type of observation here, but the fact is, 40 doesn't really seem all that old any more. Besides, I'm only 38.

Suppose you're a song, and you live on my ipod. And suppose you're the type of song that would like to be as highly rated as you can be. In other words, you're an over achiever of the mp3 community. How do you get that coveted 5-star rating? If you ever give me chill 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.

A description of my post.

When I left for work today, Vanya was in the den, still in his pajamas, watching a Batman cartoon. When I came by the house at lunchtime, the same episode of Batman was blaring, the volume through the stereo turned up to full blast. I could hear the noisy action from the driveway as I got out of the car. I may never know how the same episode got turned on hours later or how the volume got cranked to the max.

You can read the boxscore for yourself, and you've seen about the TV ratings already. Here are some stats that you'll only see on theskinny.

Two weekends ago, when we went down for the NFC Championship game, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I were eating oysters and drinking our lunchtime cocktails at a restaurant called Bourbon House. It happened to be the next shop down from the place where our dear friend Stacie had her rehearsal dinner, and my view out the window happened to be a place where the ladies dance in an exotic style. Penthouse Club, I believe it might have been called.

I just received this invite to a lunch today. The emphasis in the message is mine.

Did everyone get a gander at the giant hog on Greg Oden?

Let's spend some more time thinking about Super Bowl XLIV.