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January 2007
Stocking up on Castro Death Goodies in Miami
The NFL Miami Experience
Maybe you’re in town for the Super Bowl, and you’ve already bought all the officially licensed NFL merchandise you can stomach, and still have some people on your list to buy for — perhaps a whimsical neighbor, your quirky dog walker or that person who seems to have everything.
You might want to head down to Sentir Cubano, a Cuban-themed gift store on Calle Ocho (Southwest Eighth Street) in Miami, on the corner of 31st Avenue.
The store’s featuring a “Celebration Kit”, a selection of merchandise to mark the impending death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The kit comes in a great little gift bag (with a dog-bodied Castro head on it), and retails for $11.99, a priced-to-move bargain.
What you get
Here’s the store’s Maria Vazquez showing the roll of Castro toilet paper that’s part of the kit.
There’s a little tab on the roll that says “Make Your Wish Come True!”
Might want to brush up on your Spanish
Then there’s a bottle of cider, with instructions in Spanish on the label to open it only when Castro is dead.
“We sold 2,000 bottles of this already,” Vazquez says.
The kit also comes with a miniature Cuban flag to wave as you wear your commemorative T-shirt, which like the bag, sports Castro’s head on a dog’s body.
Here’s what the T shirt looks like:
The rough translation of the message is “when the dog dies, the rabies are gone.”
Other gift options
For the subtle touch, the Castro toe tag model would be the ticket.
My favorite part of tag’s info is the (Satanic) case number: 666
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A Glimpse at the Super Bowl “Media”
So little time, so many questions
Media Day is that part of Super Bowl week where the players must submit themselves to a solid hour of questioning from anybody who has been able to garner a media credential for the game …
… including these two guys from a Mexico City TV station, who brought along a puppet Compayito, to ask questions in a high Spanish-accented falsetto.
Yes, this wasn’t quality time for serious sports journalism. It was more like a heavily supervised surreal field trip.
We, the “media” got free reign, and for once, these powerful men who are used to communicating with muscle, were left to defend themselves with only their tongues and mental guile.
“Are you smarter than the average bear?” comedian Mo Rocca, working for NBC-TV’s Tonight Show, asked players on the Chicago Bears.
While Black Entertainment Television personality Toccara asked flirty questions to players, including Indianapolis defensive tackle Darrell Reid.
“What do you do for the ladies on Valentine’s Day?” she asked.
There were NFL players from other teams playing media roles, some officially, such as New York Giants Michael Strahan, who is the big guy in the middle of this media pack …
… and others like Oakland Raider Warren Sapp, who was allegedly working for the NFL, but seemed to spend most of his time approaching good-looking female TV reporters and saying, “Can I borrow you for a moment?” before putting his arm around her in a hug for the cameras.
“I’m a player and a playah — I’m just not a player right now,” Sapp explained to this Fox Sports TV reporter:
He would have had a tough time finding an opportunity to become acquainted with Ines Sainz, a TV reporter from Mexico, who was making the most of the sunny day, and seemed to blanketed in zone coverage from photographers and reporters who apparently needed a break from focusing on the players.
What was the subject again? Football?
A reporter for The Golf Channel spent the time interviewing players on what they thought of Tiger Woods, and ABC-TV’s The Jimmy Kimmel Show employed two former contestants on American Idol to try to get the players to sing the baseball tune, Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
And there were a whole contingent of reporters who asked Jesus questions to players who seemed happy to frame the Super Bowl in a religious context.
“You look at who Christ is and why he died on the cross,” said Colts center Jeff Saturday, “and that’s what it’s all about.”
Reid Ferrin, a reporter for the Christian group Athletes in Action put it this way:
“There’s no greater question to be answered than where are you going to spend eterntity,” he said.
I hope it won’t be at Super Bowl Media Day. For this would surely be hell.
And somewhere in the mix of all bewildering stew of frivolity and religiosity was U.S. Marine Sgt. Reina Barnett, dressed in camouflage, and holding a boom microphone while she asked the players to send a special messages via the Pentagon Channel to the troops stationed in Iraq.
Accidental SuperBowl Tourists
“A bowl thing” going on
If you’re a football fan, you couldn’t ask for a better ringside seat than the ones that Pauline and Michael Nightengale had Monday.
The English couple sat in two plush seats nestled next to a booth of SuperBowl merchandise in the lobby of the Miami Airport Hilton, where the Chicago Bears football team is staying until next weekend’s game.
And the Bears were everywhere — hulking men in the street clothes, happy to be here, happy to talk to the fans that had arrived early for the big game.
But the Nightengales, in Miami for a layover after their 10-day Caribbean cruise, didn’t quite know what to make of them and all the fuss surrounding them, including a big Bears banner hanging in the lobby that simply said “Finish.”
Finish what?
“Does this have to do with a bowl thing going on?” Pauline asked a security guard at the hotel. Pauline deduced that these big men all around them must be athletes.
“They look like healthy, powerful guys,” she said. “Big and chunky,” added her husband.
Definitely not cricket
And when the Nightengales were on their Celebrity cruise, the Americans on the cruise made a big deal of seeing some sort of American football game on the ship’s big-screen TV.
“There was a great cheer when they announced they would show the game and then two-thirds of the ship’s passengers disappeared,” Michael, a doctor from Surrey said. “Just the Brits were left on deck.”
Exporting SuperBowl fever
So, he asked me, “Is this the next round?” “This is the SuperBowl,” I said. “It’s like the World Cup in America, except it’s not for the rest of the world.”
The doctor nodded. Now, if this had been a cricket team, he said, he’d know everybody.
So as the Bears players sauntered by on their way to waiting buses in the parking lot, he was more interested in reading the instruction booklet to his new camera than taking in the passing scene.
Just don’t ask about the Roman numerals
“What does this mean?” his wife asked about the SuperBowl poster next to her chair.
The poster had a game date of 02-04-07. To her, that meant April 2 - In England, the day of the month is listed before the month - so she couldn’t figure out why people were gathering this week for a game in April.
Within 10 minutes, I had the Nightengales up to speed on the upcoming game, possibly enough to make them even care enough to watch the game from England. “We’ll have to try to watch the match,” Michael told his wife. “Maybe we can get it on the Internet.”
The woman with the gift bag in her hand
The Nightengales weren’t the only accidental tourists who found themselves in the middle of the SuperBowl hoopla.
Not far from where they sat, Karen Privett, 60, from the Chicago suburb of Naperville, was standing there holding a little Bears outfit for her one-year-old grandson. The one-piece outfit had already been signed by several of the players.
“I was hoping to get Lovie to sign it,” she said, scanning the lobby for Bears coach Lovie Smith.
When Privett and her husband, a salesman traveling on business, arrived in Miami Sunday, they had no idea that the hotel they were staying in was the same one where the Bears were. Privett isn’t much of a football fan, and her husband grew up as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
But this was an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted.
“When we got here, the players were all over the lobby,” she said. “I called back to my friends and said we might not be sitting in the stands, but I’m getting their autographs.”
A group of players walked by and she scanned the faces. No Lovie. And no other players on her wish list, either.
“I don’t have the young run back guy,” she said.
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Rock and Roll Hydrate
Will it come in a “Purple Haze” flavor?
A California company is marketing a Jimi Hendrix-themed energy drink, bringing beverage immortality to a rock star who died of a drug overdose 37 years ago. Story here.
Hey Joe, what you doin’ with that Red Bull in your hand?
The “Liquid Experience” drink will undoubtedly be the kind of boost you’ll need to negotiate Crosstown Traffic, especially during those days when The Wind Cries Mary.
Some Hendrix fans will likely be miffed that their guitar hero has been reduced to a marketing tool for a drink company.
But we here at The Blogaroni have already embraced the notion that there is really no such thing as a counter-culture hero over time — yesterday’s anthem of rebellion is tomorrow’s credit card commercial soundtrack — and that one day all rebels will be swallowed by the great maw of commerce.
With that in mind, we have been imagining what other beverage products linked to aging rock-and-rollers we might soon see in the marketplace. Here are some Blogaroni predictions:
The Born to Be Wild Berry Smoothie
Inspired by the band Steppenwolf, this is certainly a drink that will get your motor running in the morning. You’ll start your day firing all of your guns at once, exploding into your work space like a true nature’s child. With any luck, it won’t get you fired.
The Lite My Fire Beer
You’ll be trying to set the night on fire with this new lite beer brewed in cooperation with The Doors. Whether you’re a rider in the storm, or just some American woman, this is the brew for you.
Orange Hush
Deep Purple’s gone heavy on the taste with this citrus soda.
Stawberry Alarm Clock Daquiri Mix
You’ll detect traces of incense and peppermints in this new party mixer.
Inna-Gadda-Da-V8
Iron Butterfly’s version of the popular vegetable juice cocktail. The drink to have when you’ve got nothing else better to do for the next 17 minutes.
Creedence Clear Water
This exciting new beverage has created a revival in the bottled water business, and is clearly a preferred bottled water to the attempts of other rock bands to capitalize on the market, especially The Doobie Brothers, who have found a resistant marketplace to their product, Black Water.
Cream soda
You’ll clap a ton over this new beverage that will become the sunshine of your love and have your heart pounding like a double-bass-drum infarction.
Feelin’ Gravy
Slow down, you’re moving too fast. This Thanksgiving, trim that turkey with a mellow gravy patented by Simon & Garfunkel.
Dance to the Mueslix
Cereal maker Kellogg’s teams with Sly and Family Stone to bring you something extra-funky to pour into your morning cereal.
Ain’t No Mountain Dew High Enough
You’ll want to stop in the name of flavor, after you taste what The Supremes have done to this popular soft drink.
Job Application — Head Coach, Miami Dolphins
Dear Applicant:
As you know, it hasn’t been easy for the Miami Dolphins management team to pick a new head coach from the scores of suitable replacements who have come forward.
Please forgive us for our procrastination, but unfortunately, we are no closer to picking a head coach than we were a week ago, and the list, rather than getting shorter, just keeps getting longer. And we’re getting beaten up on talk radio about playing favorites with some candidates.
So, to restore the faith of our fans, we have decided to evaluate applicants in a completely objective, unbiased way. We’ve decided that the next head coach will be picked solely on the answers to the following five-question Employment Quiz.
Just select the answer that applies to you. Each answer comes with a corresponding point score.
When all of you have had a chance to complete the quiz, we will pick the guy (or gal, that’s how open-minded we are) who has the highest score.
Good luck.
1. Does your name rhyme with “Hula” ?
No — 0 points
Yes — 10 points
2. How many times have you been fired from a head coaching job at other NFL teams?
1-3 times — 5 points
4 or more — 10 points
never NFL head coach — 15 points
3. Which job best describes your current status
NFL coach — 2 points
TV commentator — 1 point
Radio commentator — minus 5 points
son of former Dolphins head coach — 10 points
4. Complete the following sentence. “Nick Saban is _”
“somebody I admire” — 0 points
“dead to me” — 2 points
“the AntiChrist” — 5 points
“some guy trying to fill my shoes at Alabama” — 10 points
5. Imagine that your Miami Dolphins are one game away from having a perfect season. Before the game, you tell your team …
Win at any cost — 0 points
Just do the best you can — 5 points
Lose on purpose out of respect for the ‘72 Dolphins — 10 points
The Fidgeting Weight-Loss Plan
The Invisible Spiders Diet
We here at The Blogaroni had a radio channel-flipping accident the other day, finding ourselves listening to diet doctors who, much to our surprise, made a sensible and extremely doable suggestion.
Weight loss through fidgeting.
Getting the jumpy on your health
It turns out there has been lots of research on this topic, and some diet doctors say that the difference between slim and plump people may be in their differing abilities to sit still. Story here.
![underwear200[1].jpg](http://www.palmbeachpost.com/shared-blogs/palmbeach/cerabino/media/underwear200%5B1%5D.jpg)
To do this sort of research, scientists rigged up study subjects with special motion-detection underwear, shown here. They learned that hours of conscientious fidgeting can add up to hundreds of calories a day, which over time, could end up as pounds lost.
We here at The Blogaroni are not sure how to fully activate motion detecting underwear, but we are adept at fidgeting, with a secondary natural talent for nail biting.
So, without further ado, we present …
The South Florida Fidgeters Guide to Weight Loss.
1. Stay sweaty
Avoid air-conditioned comfort. Instead, sit in stuffy, humid rooms, or better yet, out in the sun until your skin gets clammy and moist. This will make you itchy, which will lead to scratching, a form of fidgeting. It’s hard to sit still when you are itchy.
2. Drive across Palm Beach County
If you think the traffic’s bad going north and south on Interstate 95 or Florida’s Turnpike, try a midday journey across the great waist of Boca Raton, or from West Palm Beach to Wellington and back.
This will activate the inner-fidgeter in anybody.
You’ll do enough toe-tapping, finger-drumming and seat squirming to burn a boatload of calories. The trick is not to pull off into a Taco Bell and order something big and gooey just to give your clenched jaws something to gnaw on.
3. Venti? No, not big enough
Sure, that Starbucks coffee is strong and tasty, and the venti size is quite a jolt of fidget-inducing caffeine.
But there’s nothing that’ll get your motor running (possibly right off its moorings) more than a 64-ounce tub of hours-old convenience store java.
Your heart will be palpitating the drum solo to Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
4. Ignore the sea pest warnings at the ocean beaches
Getting stung by a Portuguese Man-o-War jellyfish is no fun, but it will get you fidgeting — almost as much as the yearly arrival of those microscopic sea lice (usually between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day).
The sea lice cause something known as Sea Bather’s Eruption, which is a fancy way of saying that they get under your bathing suit and bite the smithereens out of your tender loins.
The pain is a small price to pay for the dozens of calories you will be burning as you claw at your inflamed skin in a futile attempt at relief.
A brief history of wedding proposals at football games
Altaring the game of football
It all began several years ago, way back in January of 2007, back in the days when college football bowl games were named after corn chips.
It was at the end of a particularly wild overtime game between Oklahoma and Boise State, with the winning score coming on an a trick play called The Statue of Liberty, which was named after a famous monument of some sort.
Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important was that after Boise State’s running back Ian Johnson scampered into the end zone on the game’s final play, he didn’t just celebrate the win on the field with his teammates, which had been the custom in those days.
Instead, Johnson headed straight for the sidelines. And little did anybody realize at the time, that he — and the game of football in America — was heading with him toward disaster.
Going long
Johnson, with a national TV audience in tow, knelt on the sidelines in front of his Boise State cheerleader girlfriend, Chrissy Popadics — and no, that is not a name invented by Charles Dickens — and proposed marriage to her.
Oh, if only she said ‘No.’ But who could blame a girl for being swept off her feet, literally this time, by the boy who just won the football game?
Bring on the copycats
Unfortunately, 
football is a game populated by players with little imagination. Once some player misbehaves (sack dance, trash talk, painting faces, hair too long to be contained in a helmet, end zone touchdown theatrics, etc.) those actions are more likely to be copied than scorned or ignored.
Before the marriage bug hit college and pro football, the most annoying copycat ritual was the dumping of an ice-filled drink container on the coach’s head in the waning moments of a victory, which by now has gotten so abused that 10-year-old rec league players do it to their coaches/dads.
Last year’s bad idea becomes next year’s style.
But no game-related stunt has grown as quickly and pervasively as the on-field wedding proposal, which has steadily escalated into a “Can-you-top-this?” atmosphere that culminated in the current calamity, as evidenced by today’s joint announcement by the NCAA and NFL to institute a series of escalating fines leading to suspension and/or annulment.
Recapping the history
Johnson’s stunt in 2007 was copied five times the following season, and seven more times during the 2009 season. College cheerleading squads were inundated with applications, and Las Vegas oddsmakers started taking bets on potential wedding combinations.
The practice also spread to the pros
And this is where it began to permutate. The most notorious stunt was by NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens, 
who after catching a touchdown pass on Monday Night Football, raced beyond the end zone, and proposed marriage to a woman he didn’t previously know who was sitting in the first row of seats behind the goal post.
Owens produced a prenuptial agreement from one sock and a pen from the other, handing it to his bride-to-be, later identified as Wanda Wannamaker, of Tonawanda, N.Y., who said “Yes”, streaking tears on her red-and-blue face paint, splattering on her skimpy halter top, which seemed to be a brave clothing choice on a 17-degree night in Buffalo. The marriage proposal (which drew a delay of game penatly) deeply annoyed the hometown Buffalo Bills fans, and Wannamaker later backed out of the deal, citing a high blood-alcohol level that night, hypothermia, and a mistaken notion that Owens was “that guy on the Campbell’s Chunky Soup commercials.”
Getting out of hand
By 2012, nearly one-quarter of all high school cheerleaders had been offered wedding proposals during the games, and in one much-reported case, a member of a high school bowling team, after rolling his first 300 game, proposed marriage to a 47-year-old alley snackbar attendant, who said “yes” despite already being married and the mother of five children, including another bowler on the team.
And while the practice started after a player made a game-winning score, eventually players were proposing marriage after accomplishing far less heroic actions on the field. Sometimes a good tackle, scooping up a fumble, or making a first down, was sufficient to draw a wedding proposal.
In one disputed incident, a Division 2A kick returner proposed while actually receiving an opening kickoff, creating confusion when his kneeling on the field was wrongly assumed by the kicking team to be his signal for a fair catch, rather than his proposal technique.
During the final debate of the 2016 presidential election, Democratic challenger Al Franken criticized President George P. Bush for not solving the football marriage problem in America, while Bush countered by saying his administration had kept the marriage insurgents from crossing the border to basketball.
The final straw
But it took that fateful game in the 2017 regular season. It was that division-deciding game between the New Mexico Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams. The Rams were trailing by four and it was fourth-and-goal on the Cardinals’ 5-yard line with a few ticks left on the clock. The Rams’ brilliant, child-prodigy rookie quarterback Triggerfish Manning had driven his team the length of the field, and it had come down to this final play.
Manning lined up over center, and began his snap count, but then he stopped, standing up and signaling time out. Fans assumed he was running to the sideline to confer with his coach on a change of play. But instead, he went right for the comely TV color commentator, Coriander Heffalumps-Izquierda, who was standing with a cameraman by the team’s bench.
“I need to know, Corie baby, before this play,” Manning said, his voice booming live over the public address system. “Will you marry me?”
But before she could answer, the middle linebacker of the New Mexico Cardinals, Brash Klezewski, sprinted toward them, straight-arming Triggerfish out of the proposal, and asking Heffalumps-Izquierda to marry him as he pounded on his own chest.
The hometown Cardinals’ crowd went wild. All eyes turned toward Coriander Heffalumps-Izquirda. Even the referees had forgotten to throw their delay-of-game flag. And then the newswoman shook her head sadly at both men before turning toward the Cardinals cheerleaders.
A second later, she dropped her microphone and started running, high-heels and all, into the arms of Cardinals cheerleader Bambi Cho, who we later learned was the incoming president of Lez Boom Bah, the NFL Lesbian Cheerleaders Association.
Triggerfish and Brash were crestfallen, neither of them able to return to the game that day, or for the rest of the season. They left football for good the next season, and are reportedly living in Bend, Oregon, where they’ve opened up a bed-and-breakfast together.
Facing a public outcry from sports talk radio listeners demanding a one-ring-and-you’re-out policy, the NFL and NCAA agreed to the current schedule of fines and suspensions.
And that’s why you don’t see football game wedding proposals anymore.
Tigger in trouble again
Another “re-dickerous” charge?
Tigger, the bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, fun, fun, fun, character from Winnie the Pooh has once again has had his character questioned at DisneyWorld in Orlando.
And as you can imagine, when you are a costumed character, your character is practically all you have. (Just ask Pinocchio.)
This time, Tigger is accused of cuffing a boy at the park, and is on suspension while Disney investigates. Story here.
This isn’t the first time TIgger has been accused of misdeeds at the park. Three years ago, the costumed character was accused of groping a 13-year-old girl with his oversized paws. That case went to a Florida jury, which cleared Tigger. Story here.
In both cases, the incidents involved people posing for photos with Tigger, who is, after all, the most rambunctious of the Pooh characters, and possibly all the Disney characters.
If you don’t want to get handled, pose with Eeyore
We here at The Blogaroni consider Tigger a necessarily edgy performer at Disney, which is part of his appeal. Posing for photos with him is, and should be, a dicey business.
So as a public service, we have culled some photos from the Internet which, we believe, raise questions about the people who would subject themselves and their children to photos with Tigger.
Who gets to breathe? I’m the only one. Hooo, hooo, hooo, hooo!
Tigger seems to be debating some pretend strangulation as a way to liven up this photo shoot.
Trying to make kids too short to ride Space Mountain?
And you thought he just twisted on his tail
Twist and shout, baby. Twist and shout.
A paw man’s paradise?
Here’s Tigger on a good day …
… and here’s Tigger on a bad day.
A license to breed in Florida
Who’s your daddy?
We here at The Blogaroni aren’t ashamed to admit that we’ve lost track of all the specialty license plates available to Florida drivers. With the pressing needs of sports enthusiasts (“Support Soccer”), pet obsessives (“Animal Friend”) and peaceniks (“Imagine”) already addressed, it wouldn’t surprise us if, for example, a “Save the Unicorn” license plate gets added to the ever-growing list of specialty plates.
Fertile territory for license plates
However, I didn’t expect to discover yet another specialty license plate to celebrate the self-inflicted role of parenting. I was driving on I-95 the other day when I saw a car with this unfamiliar plate.
I thought parenting had already reached its quota of state specialty license plates.
Turns out, there are only 855 cars in the state with the Parents Make a Difference plate, which has been around for more than two years already. I’m not surprised there are so few takers. Because, let’s say you are one of those parents who feel the need to fly your banner of responsible procreation to an indifferent world of manatee protectors, share-the-road cyclists, and University of Florida alums. If so, the “Parents Make a Difference” plate is only one of three nearly identical choices you can make.
You might, for example, go with this variation on the theme:
Or perhaps, this one, which has a slightly outdated Republican get-out-the-vote taint to it:
Or you might branch out into the various specialty plates that single out the product of parenting: Invest in Children, Stop Child Abuse, Choose Life, Kids Deserve Justice, or Keep Kids Drug Free
Splitting heirs hairs
The key element to these parenting plates, as you can see, is the pictorial representation of the four-member family — husband, wife, boy and girl. The most popular of these three variations, according to state figures, is the Family First plate, with 1,534 issued.
Which, in the big scheme of things, is a puny number. It turns out that being a good parent is one of the least popular things Floridians chose announce to the world. In contrast, the “Go Fishing” license plate has had 53,379 takers, and the most popular plate, the Florida Panther (the endangered animal, not the endangered hockey team) gets about 100,000 takers a year.
Maybe not enough parenting plate options
For some reason, the parenting plates just can’t compete. In 2005, the most recent year that specialty license plates were ranked by their popularity, out of the 103 different specialty license plates in Florida, the family plates ranked 68th(Family FIrst), 80th (Parents Make a Difference) and 83rd (Family Values).
I blame the family depiction on the plates.
Florida ought to broaden the selection of family license plates. Here are five suggestions:
1. Celebrate Weird Uncles
C’mon, every family has a strange uncle or two. Shouldn’t they have their own plate.
2. Protect the Family, capish?
With a depiction of the HBO Mafia drama The Sopranos featured on the plate. Just a hunch, but I’ll bet there are far more people who want to see The Sopranos continue on HBO than want to tell the world what a wonderful job they are doing raising their cute little children — even though everybody already knows that one day they will turn into teenagers.
3. Gay Parents Make a Difference
Available in two styles — man-man, or woman-woman.
4. Share the Dad
From the designers who brought you the cycling “Share the Road” plate, this would be a plate to honor the complicated lives of guys who straddle two home lives. The plate would picture a silhouette of a guy in in the middle of two family groups.
5. Every Family is Screwed Up in Some Way
This license plate, which would depict the stick figures of the family in a swirling tempest, may not end up as the top seller among family license plates, but it will certainly speak to the greatest number of people.
Hip hop meets hip replacement
On the hood in the ‘hood
We here at The Blogaroni have taken note of a new bad idea to make its way into the fringes of popular culture. It’s — now here’s a surprise! — a byproduct of rap music, in particular, a style called hyphy.
The basics are this: the driver of a car, while the car is moving in neutral, climbs out of the driver’s seat so he can dance alongside the moving, driverless car — or even worse, dance on the roof or hood of the moving pilotless vehicle. Passengers in the car may also join in for the al fresco trauma-unit dancefest.
It’s called ‘ghost riding the whip.”
This is a trend that began in California, and has already started to claim lives. Story here.
The popular online video site YouTube now features home movies of teenagers trying it.
It’s clearly not good news, unless you happen to view the world from the prism of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
What’s next?
We here at The Blogaroni realize that once hyphy gets to be “old school”, there will need to be an even more dangerous form of music-related mayhem that will have to be popularized. At first glance, there may not seem to be many options left, other than just lying out in the road and allowing a car to run over you while the stereo is blasting.
And we do not recommend this.
Look toward the condos for inspiration
Instead, we recommend that the cutting edgy purveyors of hip-hop foolishness learn up from the senior citizens of South Florida, who for generations have been performing wild stunts with automobiles — albeit unintentionally — that make ghost riding the whip look positively benign.
So with that in mind, we here at The Blogaroni have recast some South Florida senior citizen stunts for consideration as the next hip-hop rage:
“Mac’n the chlorine”
Basic technique: Crashing the car through a fence and into the condo swimming pool. When occupants decide to leave the vehicle (before or after submersion) could be turned into a whole East Coast/West Coast style preference thing.
Sample lyric to accompanying song: “Keeping it fresh just like grandma do / takin’ the whip to the swimming po’”
Kerb shoppin’ the whip
![3405131_200X150[1].jpg](http://www.palmbeachpost.com/shared-blogs/palmbeach/cerabino/media/3405131_200X150%5B1%5D.jpg)
Basic technique: Once centered in the parking space, hit the gas instead of the brake with sufficient force to jump the curb and crash through the store window. Can also be done in reverse.
Sample lyric to accompanying song: “Up and over, one, two, three / store’s always open for my whip ‘n me.”
Ridin’ shortie
Basic technique: Slump down in the seat sufficiently to drive from a position where the top of your head is actually beneath the dashboard. You may have to actually sit on the floor between the dash and the seat to accomplish this. This has been popularized by senior citizens of South Florida, who can achieve this simply by sitting as tall as they can in the driver’s seat. In this driving-blind position, these old pioneers of ridin’ shortie have managed highway travel despite not being tall enough to see above the dash. Riding in this style gives the impression that the car being driven on its own.
Sample lyric to accompanying song: Ridin’ shortie to show my soul / hopin’ to avoid that telephone pole.”
Rounding Out the Bowl Game Schedule
Some other bowl games to consider
We here at The Blogaroni figure that you’re probably already clued into to the majors — the Orange, Rose, Sugar, etc. — but probably don’t know the lesser bowl options out there for your viewing pleasure this week:
The Wikipedia Bowl:
Pits two explosive football teams, The Fightin’ Toolbelts of Southeast North Carolina Vo Tech (4-8) against the Harvard (Ky.) Wilddogs (5-7) in an all-important bowl game, in which the winner gets to write its own Wikipedia entry crowning itself as National Champion.
The Sunni-n-Cher Bowl
Saudi investors pairing up with a venerable American entertainer has produced this newcomer to the bowl lineup. The inaugural game will be televised on E!, Pre-game coverage called “We’ve got you, Babel!” begins at 8 p.m., Eastern, 3 a.m. Riyadh.
The Amazon-Amazon Bowl
The North Central Mountain College Snow Bears (6-6) have earned the right to face the (2-10) Santa Barbara Teachers College Wildkits in this bowl game that takes American college football to the wilds of Brazil for the first time. The post-game online auction of the winners’ trophy expires 15 hours after the game’s end.
The You-Tube Bowl
After the NCAA insisted that the hardware manufacturer Conglomerated Screw was not allowed to use its name in tandem with the popular online video site, You-Tube nearly backed out of its sponsorship. But fortunately, the game will go on. It is the only bowl game that will be broadcast solely by video cellphone uploads from fans in the stands.
The American Association of Orthodontists iPod Bowl
The West Virginia Central’s Fightin’ Spelunkers (3-8-1) take on the Cacti Cavalcade of Desert View University (12-0) in a bowl game that will be available on a subscription basis. Prices are 99 cents per quarter, or $9.90 for the entire game.
Another bowl game?
If you know of any other obscure bowl games out there, please feel free to add it to our list.
Happy New Year.
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