Realizing that most of my readers only hang around for the delicious recipes and insightful movie reviews I will now continue with my blistering pace of one movie review a year.

But first, a delicious recipe. The secret sauce on Steak-n-Shake’s Frisco Melts is one part 1,000 Island dressing and one part French dressing. You’re welcome.

Back to the movies. Angel and I just watched the worst movie ever made. The highest degree of hyperbole cannot over-state the vastness of horridity that is The Happening.

Angel and I kept pausing the movie to discuss whether or not it was a spoof or some kind of homage to Ed Wood. Maybe it’s a genre film? A tribute film? Does anyone do tributes to some genre where nobody knows how to act or write or direct? Is this a comedy?

This is a horror film. Wait, let me re-punctuate that. This is a horror film? What kind of horror film has you laughing hysterically through the whole thing and a gag real that doesn’t even elicit one single chuckle?

We even watched the special features to see if M. Night spoke about the kitschy B movies he was trying to emulate. He was trying to emulate those right? ‘Cause he flippin’ nailed it…hard! All he talked about in the special features was how dark this movie was and how they were really trying to go for a “hard R” rating. The only reason this got an R rating was because it was so incredibly offensive to our sense of taste. Any person with opposable thumbs should be outraged.

Go rent it now. Witness the spectacle.

Mark Wahlberg was the lead in this movie and I want to use him as a segway into this next thing. 

[segway] Mark Wahlberg [segway]

There are a few SNL-isms that have made their way into my home and vocabulary. The “Mark Wahlberg Talks To Animals” skit was one of those skits that make you laugh the first time you see them and the more you see them the funnier they are. This skit has added “Now I’m gonna talk to a goat” to my arsenal of one-liners that nobody thinks are funny but me. SNL fans will also understand why “I said we” is another one I try to use as often as possible.

Lilly turned one year old today. For her birthday I gave her a piece of my broccoli from dinner and let her lick my feet.

A few nights ago after Riley went to bed Angel and I decided to give Lilly an early birthday party by tormenting her with socks.

Tonight while I was downstairs working on a new tune (you can hear it in the background if you listen closely) Angel shot some video of Lilly fighting with herself and eating her foot. We’re so proud to have such a smart dog.

Riley got a new haircut this past weekend. Over the past few months he had developed an insanely persistent habit of twirling his hair. I mean all the time. Both hands on top of his head all day long, every day. We’ve tried various methods to get him to stop but the one that he finally agreed to was to get a haircut like his buddy Nicolas. Of course it’s the same haircut that I have but looking like dear old dad just didn’t seem to appeal to him quite like looking like Nicolas.

On Monday Angel’s Uncle Rickey died. Rickey was 53 and was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy eighteen years ago and was given only seven years to live.

This is Rickey and Riley from a few years ago.

As soon I got home from work on Wednesday we drove down there so we could be at the funeral on Thursday. It was a pretty rough few days but it was very nice to see the people who came out in droves to pay their respects.

We got back into town late last night so if I haven’t replied to your email yet I’ll get to it soon.

We decided to take Lilly with us since Angel’s family hadn’t met her yet. Driving nine hours in a compact car with an oversized dog is not easy. Lilly tried every conceivable position she could think of to get comfortable. Here are a couple of pictures of her efforts.

Angel’s mother’s dog Picco greeted Lilly with a big old smile as soon as we got there.

This is Angel’s brother Matt, her mother Connie and Riley before we left for the funeral. Yes, Matt is really as huge as he looks.

Uncle Rickey was buried just a few feet from Angel’s brother Marcus who died of Spina Bifida in 1984. This is why Riley’s middle name is Marcus. This is Marcus’ grave if the pic is too small to tell.

OK now for some comic relief.

Riley always wants me to record him on the computer either talking or singing or screaming or rapping or whatever he’s decided would be funny that day. I’ve got hours of this stuff. So today Riley decided that raspberries would be comedic theme for the day. He was buzzing his lips so hard that he blew two gigantic snot snakes out of his nose that reached all the way to his bottom lip. Listen to this mp3 and you’ll hear the magic at about 15 seconds in. Then there’s some more general foolishness after that.

Download the mp3 here.

There are occasions when I spend an inordinate amount of time amusing myself by recording music that is completely worthless but is wickedly entertaining…to me at least. This morning was one of those occasions.

I was lying in bed and had an idea. I wondered what it would sound like if I recorded a drum solo and then took the MIDI information in that solo and transferred it to a different instrument such as piano. So I tried it and the results were pretty interesting.

I took the drum notes and kind of split them up between three pianos, two electric pianos, and one bass. This took a few hours but it proved to be a rip roarin’ good time.

I took some of the highlights from this eight minute monstrosity and (poorly) edited them together into one mp3 that is a little less than two minutes long.

If Frank Zappa had ever written music for a piano band this is what it would have sounded like.

Click here to download the mp3.

We were all goofing around in the back yard tonight and Angel was playing fetch with Lilly when Lilly stepped right in a pile of her own poo poo.

Lilly’s piles are sizeable to say the least. You don’t really step in one as much as you trip over one. But Lilly managed to plant her foot right in the middle of it. Angel said “Those flies are probably thinking ‘Get your foot out of our food, dog! That’s totally disgusting!’”

I have decided that there is no such thing as bad root beer.

Since Angel is no longer working we’ve had to make some sacrifices – horrible, gut-wrenching sacrifices such as buying cheap soda instead of Coke.

Root beer has proven to be quite the little trooper when it comes to flavor at any price point. You can buy Aldi’s root beer for something like $1.29 for a fifty pound bag and it still tastes awesome. Why is this never the case with cola? Cheap cola always tastes like garbage.

Coke is clearly the standard by which all cola must be judged. Don’t even try and step to me with your Pepsi filth. I can own the Pepsi challenge 100 times out of 100. It’s like asking me if I can tell the difference between strawberries and compost.

Though Pepsi has clearly established itself as a complete failure in the cola market I will concede the fact that they almost redeemed themselves a few years ago with Pepsi Blue. Does anybody remember that stuff? I think is was a mixture of cotton candy and amphetamines. Twenty ounces of that stuff coupled with a Pop Tart would turn me into a workaholic machine in the morning. It would push back my morning crash until 7:45 AM at the earliest.

The new Mountain Dew Voltage is pretty much a Pepsi Blue redux. It contains ginseng this time instead of uppers but we all know that ginseng is the poor man’s crack so it’s basically a wash.

I usually try to stay away from soft drinks with words like “Voltage” in the title. It seems like those sorts of drinks are usually reserved for community college football players and guys who have Billy Squire songs as their ring tones. But even though I try not to look the cashier girl in the eye when I buy one, I have to say that “Voltage” really gives my taste buds a charge.

Sorry for that.

A few more of my favorite, though lesser known, sodas and I’ll shut up.

Dr. Slice. The only place around here that has it is the walk-up Chinese joint. What gives? I love this stuff. Their use of “Dr.” is nowhere near as laughable as Wal-Mart’s Dr. Thunder but I’ll give it a solid C+ on the name choice.

A&W’s cream soda. This is not that pink stuff that some posers would like to call cream soda. This is old school cream soda, that looks like urine. Classic. Love it.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I found all of the CDs with the original tracks to The Drew Johnson Band’s album “Invention of the Wheel”. I was able to read the CDs with Angel’s PC and copy the files to my PC. It was a lot of fun for me to go back and listen to those tracks so I thought I’d share.

I put together an mp3 of me talking through the song “Lulu’s Machine” and explaining a lot of what’s going on. There are a bunch of clips of guitar tracks, vocal tracks, drum tracks, and bizarre tracks played by themselves so you can hear what they sound like exposed, along with my commentary on what we were thinking and trying to accomplish.

For anyone who was a fan of The Drew Johnson Band I think you’ll find this interesting and informative. You’ll also probably hear some things you’ve never noticed before. And there are a few pretty good laughs to be had also.

This mp3 is about twelve minutes long so grab some popcorn and set your phones to vibrate. Hopefully you’ll have as much fun listening to it as I had making it.

Click here to download the mp3.

Remember when you used to go to youth convention with your church’s youth group? Me too. Remember how every year they would do some sort of presentation titled roughly “Listening To Rock N Roll Will Cause You To Be Demon Possessed”? Me too. Remember how they played “Another One Bites The Dust” backwards and it said “start to smoke marijuana”? Me too.

The Drew Johnson Band should have been one of the bands in their presentation. This band deliberately tried to rob your soul. Near the end of their song “Lulu’s Machine” they used backmasking and until now (unless of course you just happen to know how to reverse audio) the hidden message of this evil band has been a mystery.

You can now learn why you quit your job and grew your hair long after only one listening of “Lulu’s Machine”.

The secret is revealed in this mp3.

“It’s all in good fun. It’s all in love.”

There are some other very bizarre vocals going on in that section but I don’t remember exactly what’s happening there. I found the discs with the original tracks to all of “Invention” tonight but my PC won’t read them since they’re formatted in ancient sanskrit. If Angel’s PC will read the disc I’ll find out what those other vocals are and put them up here tomorrow.

Yesterday we went to the Botanical Gardens because we thought that heat stroke and dehydration was a small price to pay to get to see some plants.

I am unable to save the kid from a sure spinal cord injury and carry this water at the same time – now hold this.

Riley learns that what goes up must get scared.

These are the trees that money grows on. Just ask Dale Chihuly.

Chihulyhulahoop.

This is why we can’t have nice things. The lady we bought Lilly from suggested that we get Lilly her own mattress to sleep on. We just so happened to have Riley’s old crib matress so we gave it to the dog. Here’s what she thought of that idea.

Riley had been drawing on the sidewalk with some of his chalk when Lilly decided to give it a taste. This was way funnier right before the picture was taken when she hadn’t yet licked off half of her pink mustache.

We walked to the store tonight to pick up a prescription for Angel. We thought it would be nice to walk instead of drive because the weather was pretty tolerable but mostly because I’m fat again.

The quickest way to the store is to cut through the graveyard behind our house, so we did. Angel was pointing out the dates on some of the gravestones to Riley and explaining to him what they represent. After checking out quite a few Riley said “Almost all of these people have died.”

Maybe he just didn’t quite get it or maybe he has a sense for the undead.

When we got home with Angel’s drugs she was reading the possible side effects. She read them out loud. “Weight loss, decreased appetite, diarrhea, vomiting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Promises, promises.”