Perhaps you've heard this by now, but there's a death row inmate in Ohio who is suing the state to prevent his execution. The essence of his argument is that since all approved methods of execution would result in cruelty as a result of his obesity, he cannot be executed by the state.

You've got to admit that's pretty clever using the system against itself. "You can't kill me because I'm too fat, and you can't make me lose weight because then you'd just kill me." Check and Mate! What this really proves is that you can have your cake and eat it, too.

This fellow sounds like a true Kingpin of Crime at work to me.

Damn, that's one fat criminal.

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Another Independence Day come and gone. July 4th is without a doubt my favorite holiday, though I don't care for picnics, fireworks, or parades. Ironic? I don't think so. If others enjoy their crowded public places, I'll stay in my own suddenly quiet neighborhood. Everybody wins.

My brother and his girl were disgusted by my favorite Independence Day activity: watching the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Sure, it's gross, but it's much more entertaining than, say, Easter Sunrise Mass or a Christmas Day NBA double-header. (While it's not quite Thanksgiving Day NFL football, the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition only takes 10 minutes, barring overtime, and I'm not forced to watch this with the very same extended family that I try to avoid for the rest of the year.) How can you not love a competition that was cancelled by promoters in 1971 to protest "the reign of free love"? And I'm not alone in my appreciation of this grand event: it's estimated that nearly as many people showed up just to watch this year's contest as ran in Atlanta's Peachtree Road Race earlier the same day.

Maybe all of this success is because of the unique nature of the competition as a quintessentially American event complete with hot dogs, gluttony, and red, white, and blue bunting. When asked why he competes annually in this contest, 2007-08 champion Joey Chestnut summed it all up, "I love to eat. I love the competition. And... it's Fourth of July, and you can get away with it on this day, push your body this hard over something silly like this." Damn straight, Joey. It sure beats running a 10K.

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Back on October 24, I blogged about my affinity for Atlanta radio station 96 Rock, which has been on the air in the Atlanta area for my entire life. Apparently, Clear Channel Communications was listening. And 96 Rock is no more, out with not quite so much as a whimper.

As of November 17, 96 Rock has been replaced with Project 9-6-1, moving their focus from "classic rock" to "active rock." Frankly, I don't know what's so active about their rock, since their website advertises that they play songs from "Metallica, AC/DC, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Ozzy, Nirvana, and Korn," 11 bands who have combined to release 4 albums in the past 3 years. Four of these bands haven't released an album in a decade!

Rodney Ho of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an article on the changeover that was published this weekend. It includes the following great quote:

John Dickey, an executive vice president for Atlanta-based Cumulus Media, said he hopes this move will benefit his station, the struggling alternative rock station 99X. "I'm surprised they dropped the name 96rock," Dickey said. "It's like blowing up the Varsity and renaming it Project Fast Food."

I suppose that there is a lesson to be learned here. Since Aesop would say that I usually learn the wrong thing, I don't think I'll dwell on this one for too long.

So long, 96 Rock. Thanks for the good times.

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In the late 80s, I watched Marc Summers as the host of Nickelodeon's Double Dare. By the turn of the millennium, I was watching Marc Summers as the host of the History Channel's History IQ. Now I watch Marc Summers as the host of Food Network's Unwrapped. This progression pretty much sums up the aging process: messy childhood, know-it-all teenager, forced-to-cook-for-yourself adulthood.

(Note that I never watched Marc Summers as the co-host of Lifetime's Biggers and Summers. I simply refuse to watch anything on Lifetime. It's a channel devoted to the equivalent of after-school specials for housewives.)

You watch most television personalities play characters. Usually poorly. I enjoyed David Hasselhoff for his "portrayals" of Michael Knight and Mitch Buchannon. I'm fond of William Shatner for playing Captain Kirk and about one hundred guest star appearances, all of them equally way over-the-top. And don't get me started on My Favorite Martian / The Magician / The Incredible Hulk star Bill Bixby. (I'd recognize Bix before some members of my family.) But Marc Summers always plays Marc Summers.

I'm pretty sure that in another 25 years, I'll be flipping channels and still see Marc Summers, looking none the worse for time, hosting a show deep into my cable dial (maybe hosting the show You've Fallen: Can You Get Up?). It's a comforting thought, really. Some things don't change.

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I'm making up for my total lack of pictures during July with two YouTube videos today. These are both my brother's and mine 30-second submissions in the Heinz Top This TV commercial contest.

Mine first:

And Trey's:

Watch them. Enjoy them. And be assured that should either one of these videos make it into the 15 semi finalists (of a field of well over 2,000), you're going to be voting on one of them as your favorite over at YouTube.

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There was a time, not so long ago, that I wanted to go to Comic-Con in San Diego. Once upon a time, it was a great place to revel in comic book fandom with the artists and publishers themselves. That time has past. Goodbye, Superman in Action Comics, hello Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man, the Movie. Now the event is just another hype factory for Hollywood. If months and months of incessant, repetitive commercials for toys and bedspreads at Wal-Mart, fast-food tie-in "premiums," and soft news stories covering the actors' personal lives isn't enough to sate America's desire for overblown marketing, well, now there's Comic-Con, where the price of admission is just $65 and your soul.

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The Natural History Museum in London has announced the discovery of kryptonite deep in a mine in Jadar, Serbia. In the words of British geologist Dr. Chris Stanley, "the new mineral does not contain fluorine [which the green Kryptonite in Superman Returns contains] and is white rather than green, but in all other respects the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite. We will have to be careful with it -- we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!" Dr. Stanley may have more to worry about than just the life of Superman. That rock could result in the destruction of Earth as we know it.

Most people are aware of the existence of green Kryptonite, the one thing that can hurt the Man of Steel. But just as dangerous are the other colorful fragments of the planet Krypton, including the little-known white Kryptonite!

That's right, what those miners in Serbia have unleashed could be the doom of us all. And they should have known better. Has anyone ever seen a movie in which something great was found buried deep in the Earth? No, you haven't, because nothing good has ever been found buried deep within the Earth. As we all know, the Earth only contains hibernating aliens (The Thing, Quatermass and the Pit), overgrown lizards (Journey to the Center of the Earth, Rodan), disfigured mutants (The Time Machine, C.H.U.D.), murder-inducing stones and metals (Blood Diamond, Goldfinger), and scene-stealing lava flows (Volcano, Dante's Peak), none of which are very benevolent.

How could this Serbian white Kryptonite hurt us? I'll let an expert in Kryptonite explain:

"All forms of plant life!" Someone needs to tell Al Gore that a bigger threat to the world's biosphere than global warming has been unearthed on the European continent. Everything from the towering redwood trees to the ocean's plentiful plankton are now endangered by the Serbian chalky white Kryptonite. Without the food-chain's essential link, Oxygen-producing plant life, how long could humanity hold on? Could the extinction of the entire world's population be the last laugh of the recently deceased genocidal Serbian leader Slobodan Milosovic?

Only time will tell if we will survive this latest threat from beneath the Earth's crust. You'd best be careful with your new mineral, Dr. Stanley. The whole world is counting on you.

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So this is Christmas? I must say that this Christmas was probably more enjoyable than recent years past. No one argued. No one threw punches or food. No one stormed out and drove home. (Though my father is sleeping in his car tonight. But it's just out of appreciation for tradition.)

The lack of friction around the table this year made me realize that I often hear people talk about their dysfunctional families' holidays, but I never hear anyone talk about their functional families' holidays. I think it's about time that the June Cleavers and Donna Reeds of the world speak up. Is Nixon's "silent majority" too busy enjoying the holiday season with their sweater vests and sober relatives to tell the rest of us that we're screwed up? Or are they just smart enough to lay low, lest they find themselves co-starring on a very special holiday edition of Cops with my father?

I even enjoyed a better than average gifting this year. The only thing I asked for was socks, but in addition to the socks, I also received 12 pairs of underwear and a fog machine. Wowee! I'd say it was "like Christmas," except for the fact that it actually was Christmas. In this case, my extensive mental inventory of useful sarcastic cliches has let me down, leaving me grasping for words with which to describe the event. (Sarcasm just can't be used to describe satisfaction.)

The 12 pairs of underwear made me wonder about why we call them "pairs" of underwear. A quick internet search reveals that back in the day, only nobility wore anything over the coverings of their genitals, so there was technically no such thing as "underwear" until the last few centuries. (Unless, of course, you were hanging out in a royal court wearing a codpiece or tunic.) Modern legged outerwear evolved from two, unattached leggings (a pair of hose, to be precise) to become the single garment that we now call "a pair of pants." As I understand it, the word "pants" evolved from the word "pantaloons," a type of legged, female underskirt garment designed to cover their highly coveted naughty bits. This would make "pairs of underwear" a vestigial etymological remnant of a bygone wardrobe in our lexicon.

Note that since "pants" originated as a type of underwear, modern outerwear "pants" should properly be referred to as "trousers" since "pants" is specifically derivative of a type of undergarment and "trousers" are outerwear for the legs. This appears to be yet another difference in American and British English languages. They get it right, whereas we American's don't care what you call it so long as you can't see our legs.

It turns out that "men's cotton briefs," such as I received for Christmas, weren't even invented until the 1930s in Chicago, Illinois. Named for the 20th century male undergarment called a "jockstrap," they were designed and sold by a company which would later adopt their brand name as the company name: Jockey.

Now, all this thinking of underwear has reminded me of an editorial that I once wrote to the University of Georgia's student newspaper, The Red and Black. I took the opportunity to satirize the University community's overreaction to one editorial cartoon by criticizing another by my classmate Mack Williams (now an accomplished animator for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program Frisky Dingo). What does this have to do with underwear, you ask? Simple: "culottes," a French underwear that appears to be a cross between a skirt and shorts. I quote from one of the many, many responses to my letter:

First we had someone decrying Williams' Feb. 26 cartoon as an insult to the soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima, when it should have been plainly obvious such an insult was not the cartoonist's intent. Now we've got someone with his culottes in a bunch over Williams' portrayal of poodles in a subsequent cartoon ("Poodles not often angry or mean dogs," Feb. 28). Poodles! Come down off the ledge, Stephens, and understand that the poodle in that cartoon was a symbol for something else -- the cartoon was not about poodles any more than it was about bulldogs or people with facial hair.

The full text can be read from the archives of The Red and Black online. The event played out in the editorial pages' "Mailbox" from February 28 through March 3, 2003. The highlight of the affair for me was this dialogue exchanged in the online feedback section:

I am stunned at how many people have been writing in about the initial poodle letter. I know Americans are supposed to be irony-free, but this is ridiculous. The letter was satirizing the Iwo Jima complaints. Come on, people, show that you deserve to be at college.

Which received the following response:

He wasn't satirizing anything, it was written by a mixed up old secretary who has his priorities all mixed up. Not everyone is as clever as you think they are.

Now THAT is satisfying journalism.

Hmm. I seem to be rambling. It must be the effects of too much cranberry sauce, Hershey's Christmas Kisses, sweet tea, pound cake, Coca-Cola, and Klondike Bars. I suppose the point of all of this rambling is that I associate 17th century women's underwear with poodles. (But I don't endorse putting poodles into women's underwear. That's just weird.)

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This weekend I learned how to put snow chains on my car tires. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I had to pay someone else to put them on my rental car. I'm so cheap, I avoid valet parking because I don't want to tip the valets a dollar, so paying thirty bucks for someone to put chains on my tires was like willingly participating in state-enforced highway robbery. But I watched the guy like a hawk, and should the ridiculously unlikely events of The Day After Tomorrow ever come to pass, I'll be ready!

The drive into Tahoe was easily accomplished. There wasn't any snow on the ground then. No, California likes to make sure it has you in its mitts before it tries to screw you over. The whole reason that I was in South Lake Tahoe in the first place was for the wedding of one of my oldest friends. I once swore that I would never again A) return to California or B) drive in the snow, both of which I violated for the wedding. If I've never mentioned it before, let me stress my disapproval of snow here now: it sucks. It's cold, it's wet, and it makes travel impossible. Sure, it looks pretty, but like most pretty things, it's just not worth the hassle. Some way, some how, I'll get Jason back for this.

Despite eating my own words (which, unfortunately, I've done more times than I can count), it was an otherwise eventful weekend for me. I gambled in a casino for the first time (and lost my seed money, all 50¢). I had a Coca-Cola Slurpee made from fresh, real snow (better than you can imagine). I attended an informal bachelor party with a table full of lawyers and teachers (but no strippers. It was commented that no stripper was hired because one couldn't be found who knew how to play chess). And, of course, I got to play in the deep, powdery snow with Chere. (Who goes to a wedding without a date?)

That's two weddings I've attended in three months on opposite sides of the country (Panama City, Florida and Lake Tahoe, Nevada), with another one coming up in May in New York City. Even though I don't care for the outdated and unnecessary concept of marriage, I do like free food and road trips. So it all works out in the end. Also I'm pretty sure it won't be snowing come May.

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Sometimes posting to a blog is like being in a food fight: throw enough pie and someone's GOT to get hit in the face. (This column is going Larry King style, baby!)

• Bravo Channel is showing both The Princess Bride and Back to the Future today. Could those be two of the best movies ever made? I say yes!
• Huge underdog University of Georgia today beat (nay, CRUSHED!) the mighty Auburn Tigers, destroying any hopes Auburn had of running for the national title. Go Dawgs!
• Television advertising execs just don't understand: the current Bellsouth ads use the song "Stuck In The Middle With You" to promote that product. The song was written about sitting between recording executives. Can telecom execs be that different?
• Of all the cars I've ever owned/driven, the one I miss most is a 1985 Ford Crown Victoria LTD Country Squire Station Wagon.
• Recent studies say that happy people are sick less often than people who are optimistic or active. That means that a cynical asshole like me will likely outlive the rest of you bastards so long as I'm happy being a cynical asshole. Hooray for science!
• Julia Roberts' single sexiest film role was as Tinkerbell in Hook. Does that say worse things about her or me?
• The National Football League has a patent on confusion; it is simply impossible to tell who is any good from week to week. Some may call this parity or equality but I call it exciting. Chicago: undefeated. Dolphins: incompetent. Final score: Dolphins 31, Chicago 13. I say this, I sure look forward to December 31, when the Dolphins play the currently undefeated Colts.

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