Just a few things to tide you ovah:

A Friend from Vermont often remarks, semibemoaningly, on her "moosey fate." Eventually that reminded me of a wonderful old spoken-word album we used to own, from some Down Easter types who did a schtick called "Bert and I." The "you can't get theyah from heyah" line in Firesign Theater's Nick Danger bit is likely from that. I was about to order a latter-day recreation of it from Amazon when I remembered: we taped the album before it was lost in the Ice Storm/Flood of '91. A little work with the iPhone, and then some minor jailbreaking of it, and here you go with the one track in question:

Gagnon, World Champeen Moose Callaire!

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Two nights ago, I had wicked insomnia again and some post-workout aches, so I just dabbled on Facebook in the dead of night. Among them was creating this demovitational poster of the kind personal trainers seem to love so much:



Then, looking at the forecast on the fone, I photographed the weather report and promptly lolcatted it:


I CAN HAS CELSIUS PLZ? (At least until the weekend. THAT might be a bit much.)

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Oh, and the Congressman who just resigned in the shirtless sex-picture scandal? He's ours. The gleefullest irony is that he posted this puff piece in a local newspaper a few years back, warning teens about how dangerous it is to put dirty pictures of yourself on the Internet.

Ah, the schadenfreude. It keeps you warm on even these coldest of days.

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Off to deliver a semi-dead drive to supplement the newer, but equally semi-dead one.

I.....have....the power!!!!!!

When confronted with my semiregular bouts of insomnia, either late in the night or after slopping the hogs at 0600, my usual getter-backer trick is to make lists, or recall groups of peeps or places or numbers, or otherwise bore myself back to sleep with facts and figures. During the most recent bout earlier today, I tried remembering some of the names of basketball players from the 70s who formed the primordial fantasy league I invented and participated in, mostly with my friend Dennis, which we called the USBL. We divvied up players from real teams onto eight "franchises" that we owned four apiece, and set out five-man rosters for four quarters a game using dice and Strat-o-Matic style index cards with point and foul values.

In trying to remember some of my almost-40-year-ago rosters, I remembered some famous names (Kareem, Clyde Frazier), some truly obscure ones (Swen Nater, an obscure ABA center who we morphed into a scoring machine because we didn't understand college-level rules of dice distribution when we were making this shit up in eighth grade), but one or two in-betweeners. One of those was a onetime Chicago Bulls guard by the name of Jerry Sloan. For the past 22 years since his NBA retirement, he's been a coach with the Utah Jazz.

Until today, that is- the morning after I thought of him for probably the first time this century. The team announced his resignation today, ending what was by far the longest reign of any coach/manager in any of the four major North American sports.

Now taking his place as the NBA representative to the Pantheon of Old is San Antonio coach Greg Popovich, who's been on the job for 15 seasons. Baseball's Tony LaRussa and the NFL's Andy Reid are similarly tenured. All of those grumpy old men are pushing 60, if not well past it.

Hockey's longest-tenured coach? Our own Lindy Ruff, now in his 13th straight season behind the Buffalo bench, outlasting three owners, one Chapter 11 and a blown call in the Stanley Cup finals. And the mileage on this particular Canadian Tire?

Dude's younger than I am.

Shoot me now. And scoorrrrrrrrrrrrrre!