Ok, how the hell am I supposed to top this?

Point Break LIVE!, the Brechtian blockbuster which garnered a "Seattle P-I Best of Seattle 2004" award, as well as rave reviews across the nation, tells the story of former college football star Johnny Utah -- Keanu Reeves in the film -- who goes in pursuit of the surfing, bankrobbing, skydiving, bare-hand-fighting adrenaline-junkie-cum-Zen-master Bodhi Sattva. The show features armed robbery, big-wave surfing, car chases, explosions, and no less than two extended skydiving sequences.

Best of all, the starring role of Keanu will be selected at random from the audience each night, with the lucky winner reading their entire script off of cue-cards. This method manages to capture the rawness of a Keanu Reeves performance even from those who generally think themselves incapable of acting.

I just know this show is gonna set back my plans for Suzanne Somers Presents She's The Sheriff: The Interactive Exhibit. Well, that, and that Suzanne Somers won't return my calls. How about a water park thrill ride based on The Chevy Chase Show?

Now if you'll excuse me, gentleman, I promised to take Mrs. Lincoln to Ford's Theater tonight. We'll continue this tomorrow.

(Thanks for finding this, Bodhi Sonya. But your surfboard still BOTHERS ME)

Most readers of this site know there's a lot of Wikipedia I just can't swallow. Not so for this restaurant, though:

Maybe this was an Iron Chef ingredient battle gone horribly wrong? "Your recipe must include... WIKIPEDIA!!!"

Actually, I'd like to challenge all chefs visiting this site to make a Living Indefinitely recipe - sauteed Living Indefinitely with bay leaves, or mushroom Living Indefinitely on broccoli?

Overheard on the internet:

Steve: "Steve took home gold in men's spelling"

Brady: "Was this the all-around, or just the vowels?"

Steve: "it was an individual gold in the monosyllabic class, but I'm part of the 2008 'Dreem Teem.'"

Brady: "S-U-A! S-U-A!"

The truth is far more disturbing.

Attention Male Golfers! How many times has this happened? You arrive at the golf course, and soon you’re on to 18 holes with your best buddies. After drinking sport ades, water, beer, and whatever, you’re on the 3rd hole with no rest room in sight. There are no trees or bushes around and you just gotta go, what are you going to do?
Introducing the UroClub™!

Special wholesale prices are directed to encourage club makers to brand UroClub™ and include it in their accessory lines, just like gloves or umbrellas.

I can follow the train of thought from UroClub to UroBrella, but... gloves?

Please everyone go wash your hands right now. No, take showers. Several.

I share a hometown with well-balanced individuals like Randy Savage and Emo Philips, so it's no surprise that locals feel the need to voice their frustrations in bizarre ways. The local paper used to have a column called "Sound Off," where you could call in anonymously and make any sort of comment you liked. Those in town made the most of this opportunity - "Sound Off" had a lot of wild theories, a lot of name calling, a lot of just crazy stuff. The all-time best was a person who called about a man who had gone to one of the local supermarkets and, in their words, "put his reproductive organ in the cole slaw." This, the caller said, was a man to be admired because he was taking a stand against the status quo, or something. My parents, wanting us to witness democracy in action, let us call all the time.

I don't know if there's still a "Sound Off" or not, but Downers Grovers (and what to call DG residents was a hot topic on that page) have not forgotten how to complain, as is evident from the Downers Grove entry in Wikipedia. A few examples:

On Friday nights in the summer, antique and specialty cars park downtown in an informal car show which aggravates commuters and those that wish to park in the downtown area.

Ogden Avenue is one of the busiest automotive retail strips in the country, and second only to 159th street (Orland Park) in the state. Luxury Motors, located on Fairview Ave, is one of the largest online automobile dealers in the world and is renowned for their sleazy, chain smoking, Italian employees.

By the way, the user who wrote the above made only one other contribution to Wikipedia, consisting of the word "ETRUSCANS!"

In 2001, writer Michael Hornburg published a novel entitled Downers Grove, set in the town. Many reviews say this book sucks.

If anyone should edit Wikipedia to include the cole slaw guy, somebody let me know, OK?

I happened to be in Washington D.C. this week for work, and happened to be a few blocks away from where, apparently, every important person in the world was attending the wake for NBC's Tim Russert. On my way to catch a subway on my eventual way back to the airport and home, I walked by the headquarters of Washington's NBC affiliate, which someone told me was near Russert's own neighborhood. Out front various people had left flowers, notes and other things in Russert's honor - one person left a six pack of Rolling Rock, which I thought was a little brazen in D.C. Another, recalling Russert's "FLORIDA FLORIDA FLORIDA" whiteboard from Election Night 2000, left a faux-whiteboard that said "HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN - Russert in a landslide."

It was a sweet set of gestures in a town that's known for discord and ruthlessness, and it reminded me that life is too short to tell the people we love how we feel. And so I have something I want to say.

Marla Gibbs, you sweet, sassy screen star, you made 227 much more than the weak, pedestrian sitcom it probably would've been without you. While Jackee may have brought the sex appeal, and Hal Williams may have brought the Hal Williams-ness, it was you, Marla, that taught us how to love again, for the first time. I think.

Last night I dreamt I was telling my wife off for some slight or other (I even remember dreaming that the slight was more minor than my towering temper would indicate). So I stumbled in to make breakfast and tell her about the weird dream I'd just had.

At that moment, she says, "I had a dream that I was yelling at you about something."

We're thinking of hiring a marriage counselor to sleep next to the bed and referee these soporific squabbles.

When you think historic preservation, think Balki:

Harford was first settled in 1790, and it's a shame that none of the original cabins still stand in the historic little village. There remain, however, several houses dating from 1840 and before, and Bronson Pinchot is determined to restore them to their original appearance and function

I'm going to write some sentences that, like the above, have an ending you'd never guess was coming:

The issue of protecting the nation's manholes has long perplexed city planners, and Alex Trebek is determined to keep those holes covered. By men.

Millions of Americans are confused by frogs every year, and Susan Lucci is determined to bring about better interspecies relations.

Removing Senator Kennedy's brain tumor requires unparalleled precision and skill, and Sheila E is determined to remove it safely and get the Massachusetts Democrat back to the Senate.

So apparently Bronson Pinchot has been buying up every piece of the historic town that he can get, to turn it into a... historic town? I don't know all the details, but it's pretty safe to assume that he'll do one of two things. Either he'll turn Harford into Balkitown, a planned community based on the Perfect Strangers universe (town motto: "Oh no, Cousin") or he'll buy a time machine and rule the town from 1840 on, and he and Cousin Larry will hatch a harebrained scheme to prevent the Civil War from happening.

In a related note, the lady from I Married Dora has started buying houses in my neighborhood. Should I be worried?

Thanks Cousin Yoshi

One of the worst things you can do in the wild is disturb a hive of bees. Highly social creatures, bees swarm and sting anything they perceive as a threat to the colony, giving their lives so that the colony can survive. A bee attack on a human is serious business - it's a life-threatening attack, and even if you do survive, there's a good chance that you'll a) have serious physical injury and/or b) describe the attack with phrases you'd only expect from a member of Motley Crue describing one of his OD's. For example:

"I 'was' bees," Connell said. "I had bees all over me, and I remember brushing my hair back and tossing dust on my hair and suddenly my arm 'was' bees," he recalled. "The hand that I'm using to knock the bees out of my hair is now a bee hand."

...

"There was the typical bee in your nose, in your eyes, bee in your mouth, in your eardrums," Connell said. "I remember putting my finger in my ears and shoving a bee further into my eardrums."

Attention readers from Phoenix: is having a bee in your nose truly "typical" where you live? Cause up here, it's pretty rare.

Did you know Ohio has an official state rock song?

In 1985, the Ohio General Assembly approved "Hang on Sloopy" as Ohio's official rock song. The Ohio General Assembly adopted an official rock song after Joe Dirck, a columnist for the Columbus Citizen-Journal, wrote a column about the State of Washington considering the adoption of its own rock song. The Ohio General Assembly responded by making "Hang on Sloopy" Ohio's rock song.

I can't believe 23 years have gone by before I found out. Here's the best part of the resolution passed by the legislators of Ohio:

WHEREAS, Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town, and everybody, yeah, tries to put my Sloopy down; and

WHEREAS, Sloopy, I don't care what your daddy do, 'cause you know, Sloopy girl, I'm in love with you; therefore be it Resolved, That we, the members of the 116th General Assembly of Ohio, in adopting this Resolution, name "Hang On Sloopy" as the official rock song of the State of Ohio; and be it further Resolved, That the Legislative Clerk of the House of Representatives transmit duly authenticated copies of this Resolution to the news media of Ohio.

There's an official movement for Oklahoma to follow suit, while a blogger in Madison suggested some potential state rock songs for Wisconsin. But nothing for my beloved home state. (Though I have long held that the national anthem should be "Land of a Thousand Dances.")

All that ends now. I hereby propose that New Hampshire's official state rock song should be "Disco Lazy Time" by Indonesian pop sensation Nidji:

Aside from being catchy as hell, this song has possibly the greatest nonsensical lyrics since "Louie Louie":

Wake me up tonight
Drive me to the town
Sleep with me tonight
She's my lovely wine
Nothing is forever
Nothing is for real
Do you have to leave me
Why don't you just kill me

If time is the loneliest people
Then life is the loneliest time
If time is the loneliest people
This is disco laziest time
I want you, I need you

If you're looking for why a band from Indonesia should supply the state rock song for New Hampshire, I can only offer a very tenuous connection: the Jakarta-based blogger who introduced me to this amazing song, Kopi Susu 2, once lived in New Hampshire. That's good enough for me.