BARRETT-JACKSON AUCTION BLOGGING

Random thoughts from a gen-X car geek:

• This has to be the greatest collection of geezer sleds ever assembled in one place, at one time.
• If I see one more ‘Tri-5′ (1955-1957) Chevy, I swear I’m gonna puke.
• The same goes for all those Blow Pop-colored T-Birds.
• I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen a Mustang tonight since the Boss 302 in the 4 o’clock hour.
• A quarter million for a Hemi ‘Cuda is one thing; a quarter million for a replica Mercedes 300SL is something else entirely.
• Ne’ertheless, I’m glad that most 70s Detroit iron hasn’t yet inflated to the point where it’s out of reach for us young bucks.

THE BLOGGER AS TEASE

No, I’m not on one of my little unannounced hiatuses. I’m working on a major non-blog addition to this website. It’ll be forthcoming when it’s ready . . . which won’t be for a week or two, but when it gets here, you may regard it as worth the wait. Especially you old-school TBPers.

I wonder if I left you any clues about what it might be?

R.I.P. JOHNNY

A lot will be written about the passing of Johnny Carson in the coming days. All I have to say on the topic is this: I am 33 years old and I have never accepted Jay Leno as the legitimate host of the Tonight Show. That’s Carson’s gig, in perpetuity.

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT FROM TBP

To the drivers of southeast Wisconsin on this wintry day:

TURN ON YOUR FLARPIN’ HEADLIGHTS, YOU ADDLEPATED GOOFS. JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE TRACTION DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN BE SEEN. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T NOTICE, THERE IS A BLIZZARD GOING ON.

SEARCH ENGINE ANSWER GUY #8

I am all out of clever introductions for Search Engine Answer Guy. Therefore, feel free to supply your own slyly ironic comments about the strange things people search for on the Internet, keeping in mind that I don’t really comment about the obvious porn searches that show up in my referral logs. (If you read them, you’d have no comment either.)

how the bcs works

In mid-October, Beano Cook and Mel Kiper, Jr. meet in a Philadelphia fishmonger’s warehouse, where they slit open the belly of the fattest grouper they can find. They cast the fish’s entrails on the USA Today sports section. Any teams whose weekend scores are gut-splattered are automatically eliminated from the national title game (this, unfortunately, is what happened to Auburn this season). They continue gutting fish and casting entrails until only 25 teams remain untainted by piscine viscera. These 25 teams comprise the initial BCS poll.

Following that, a team of underutilized actuaries meets weekly to come up with complicated mathematical formulae designed to weed out those teams which DisnESPN bears a personal grudge against. This year’s algorithm took into account strength of schedule, yards allowed, opponents’ records against BCS top-25 teams, and distance from the nearest Whataburger, which was factored in to ensure that Texas would go to the Rose Bowl and Cal wouldn’t. (This also allowed Utah to grab the last spot over the Golden Bears.) The algorithm is applied one last time at the end of the season to determine the BCS invitees.

The bowls then pick which teams they want to appear based on a careful set rules: no bowl is allowed to invite more than two teams per year. This silly, frivolous rule created the “split national championship” last season which enabled Nick Saban to pay off his mortgage before leaving Baton Rouge.

Lastly, Oklahoma and Southern California play in the title game. A little-known statute appended to the end of the National Beet Pickle Awareness Week Act of 1996 forever established it as law that Oklahoma, Southern Cal, Florida State, Nebraska, or Miami must play for the national title every year, or Congress will immediately begin an antitrust investigation of the NCAA. Thus far the system has not drawn attention to itself, but when a 6-5 Miami team faces off against 3-8 Nebraska for next year’s crown, Congress will probably have to reconsider its decision.

college composition useless

I double-dog-dare you to read my referral logs and still think that.

what american teenagers are told about sex

deceased contemporary singers

Well, if they’re deceased, they’ve pretty much stopped being contemporary, haven’t they?

2004 december 11 posted classified ads of used autos used furniture and used trailer for sale by private owner in u.s.a and uk

Had to leave town in a hurry, eh?

the name of the guy with the afro who paints on tv

Bob Ross.

most useless college degree

Oh, hey, that’s easy: the one that you get simply because you heard it leads to a high-paying job.

lynnrd skynnrd official web sites

www.ourfanscannotspellthenameofourband.com

keith urban sucks

Not so loud! My wife will hear you . . .

film majors end up doing what?

Watching direct-to-video exploitation crap whilst muttering, “I could do that.”

how did jessica simpson lose weight

Easy. After being forced to support her sister’s “singing” “career” she lost her appetite.

beaver tails supplier

This is just a hunch, but have you tried a beaver? They should be able to supply you with at least one . . .

rod stewart necrophilia lyrics

Okay, I could handle the mod phase, the folk-rock phase, the disco phase, the despoiler-of-Motown-classics phase, even the “Tony Bennett with a fright wig phase” . . . but that is going just a bit too far.

difference between chaps and chops recipes

Even if you cook your chaps for six to eight hours, they’ll still be tough and leathery. And if you eat enough chops, you probably won’t fit into your chaps any more.

pronounce chorizo

A-cid REE-flux.

80 s song on jcpenney commercial

“Let My Love Open the Door” by Pete Townshend (not The Who).

things that were cool in the 90s

Irony. Cynicism. “Post-modern” everything. John Grisham. Punk rock. Flannel. Pickup trucks.

REAL-LIFE ETHICS

Suppose you were on your cell phone and your dentist’s office rang you up. Then. when you answered, they said, “This is Dr. So-and-such’s office, would you please hold?”–is it rude to hang up immediately, or should you wait at least five nanoseconds?

Just wonderin’, that’s all.

WHAT I’M READING THESE DAYS

• Who Killed the Slide Rule? by Lech Traanik
• The Joy of Yodeling by O. Leo Leahy
• Practical Beverage Service by Dee Kantor
• Norway Welcomes You by Sven Jagonbak
• De Mortuus by Neil Nizzi-Boneham
• Cooking with Wild Mushrooms by Ewell Ralph
• Finish the SAT in Record Time! by Mark Hasty

THE SIX PERCENT SOLUTION

Somebody has finally conquered Ye Olde 96er, the six-pound burger at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, PA–and it’s not the sort of person you might think at first:

A 100-pound female college student is the first to meet the Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub challenge: down the restaurant’s six-pound hamburger — and five pounds of fixins’ — within three hours.

Kate Stelnick, 19, of Princeton, N.J., made the five-hour drive with two friends from The College of New Jersey on Wednesday, after they saw pictures of the monster burger, dubbed the Ye Old 96er, on the Internet and on TV’s Food Network.

“I just saw it on TV and I really thought I could do it,” Stelnick said, after downing the burger in two hours, 54 minutes.

Being married to a woman of similar size to Ms. Stelnick, I don’t see what’s so shocking about this–there’s not a direct relationship between body weight and food capacity, as I have discovered many a time. Mostly when I was looking for a Popsicle, utterly convinced that I’d just bought a box yesterday . . .

A SMALL ISSUE

Yes, I know I haven’t been posting much lately. Having a two-month-old cuts into the blogging time. I assure you I’m alive and well (or at least as well as anybody with a perennial November-to-April sinus infection can be) and haven’t hung up the blog machine. I’ve been working on a couple projects, some of which will soon see light around here, and one of which would be great fun to pursue, but might ultimately prove to be of no interest to anyone but me. And I’ll announce the winner of the last TBP Challenge tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a bunch of mutton recipes.

DRIVEN TO DIS-TRACTION

Written as only a man who’s just spent several days knocking around the upper Midwest can do.

Being A Catalog of Midwestern Highway Sins, on Behalf of Both the Driver and the Designer of the Road (with Noted Observances of Each)

Part the First: Sins of the Driver

• Timid freeway-entrance merging (Minneapolis)
• Malicious speed-limit obedience (Des Moines)
• Passing on the right when there is no reason not to pass on the left (Minneapolis)
• Being undecided about whether to drive 10 MPH below the speed limit, or 35 MPH above it (Illinois)
• Hurrying up to enter a roadway in advance of a vehicle, in total ignorance of the two miles of empty road behind said vehicle (Iowa)
• Refusing to drive in the right lane despite the fact that your vehicle is moving slower than continental drift (Wisconsin)
• Unusual incidence of peeing-Calvin decals (Missouri, Kansas)
• Deification of rusty Volvo 240s (St. Paul, MN)

Part the Second: Sins of the Engineer

• Developing a grandiose freeway plan, then building only a tiny fraction of it (Milwaukee, Omaha)
• Posting purely fictional speed limits (Beltline Highway, Madison, WI)
• Thinking that posting a “PODUNK, NEXT SIX EXITS” sign at the edge of a town of 200 people is hilarious (Iowa)
• Funneling all traffic into or out of major shopping areas into single access points, then not placing traffic signals at those access points (numerous Minneapolis suburbs)
• Believing that people who don’t work downtown will gladly pay to park there for shopping and/or entertainment, when the mall is a lot closer to where they live anyway (just about everyplace)