With regard to the Packers\’ allegations against the Vikings for tampering with Brett Favre – the AP reports that Favre and Viking offensive coordinator (and former Badger) Darrell Bevell are good friends:

\”The person said the league already has reviewed evidence provided by the Packers, and team officials believe a league examination of telephone records would indicate more than “normal contact” between Favre and Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, a former Green Bay assistant.\”

Set aside for, a moment, all the jokes about what \”more than normal contact\” means. Here\’s the smoking gun:

If that\’s not proof, I don\’t know what is.

Today, this came through the wire at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Carlene and Duane Schultz thought creating a corn maze featuring Brett Favre\’s image on a Wisconsin farm would be anything but controversial.

The husband and wife said Favre is still welcome at the Schultz\’s Country Barn in Eleva, even though they\’ve received a few grumbling comments after the quarterback said he was considering a comeback and wanted a release from the Packers.

The Schultzes have had mazes created in their cornfield for the past three years and sold tickets for people to walk through it. The couple decided this spring to use Favre\’s image as a \”thank you\” after the quarterback announced his retirement.

Aren\’t children in Africa dying because we\’re in the midst of a corn shortage? Shouldn\’t Duane Schultz be making ethanol or something?

And finally, WisconsinEye recently filmed a few segments of the Joy Cardin Show on Wisconsin Public Radio. (I am biased, as I\’ve been on the show a couple times.) This segment includes a really interesting take by MATC history instructor Jonathan Pollack, who discusses the news about Favre in the larger context of Wisconsin culture. It\’s worth a watch.

So, the people who read this blog regularly (and thank you for doing so, incidentally) have probably noticed that I have completely disappeared for a week. It has been a busy week consisting of snacking, napping, and trying to avoid any discussion of Brett Favre. I\’ve also been plowing through the excellent HBO John Adams series on DVD – although if there were some kind of award for overacting, Paul Giamatti would likely win a lifetime achievement award for this role alone.

However, given that I wrote a blubbering, emotional post following Brett Favre\’s retirement announcement (and followed that up with an equally hagiographic appearance on TV), I feel that I need to provide an update.

I\’m not really sure what I can say about l\’affaire Favre that hasn\’t been said already. But given how heartsick I was when Favre retired in March, it makes it all the more difficult to handle what he\’s trying to pull now. Retired legends only have one thing that matters – their legacy. And it\’s excruciating to watch Favre set his legacy on fire with this disastrous comeback attempt. It almost gives one some perspective on what it might have been like to grow up in Buffalo as an OJ Simpson fan, only to see your hero murder his reputation (and other people) in his retirement. Fortunately, Favre hasn’t killed anyone yet – although I’m close.

One of the reasons Favre has been deified by the media is because he\’s the very antithesis of the character he\’s now playing. He\’s always been a tough, no-nonsense team player. I even explained away his previous offseason Hamlet acts by recognizing his threats of retirement as bargaining chips to get better players. I figured it was a strategy to force management to bring in better players.

But we\’re now finding out that he actually really is as self-absorbed a prima donna as he showed in those offseasons. It’s like finding out Santa Claus runs an underground reindeer-fighting ring. Last night, he threw GM Ted Thompson under the bus by complaining about Thompson not re-signing guys like Marco Rivera and Mike Wahle – both guys who went bust when their reached their new teams. On the contrary, Favre should be kissing Ted Thompson\’s feet for surrounding him with so much talent without wrecking the team with bad contracts. Is Favre better than Aaron Rodgers? Of course he is. But the fact that people still believe the Pack can be a playoff team with Rodgers at the helm is a testament to Ted Thompson\’s maneuvers.

Let\’s get real – the Packers aren\’t trading Favre (if Randy Moss in his prime is only worth a fourth round pick, what is Brett worth for a year or two?), and they won\’t release him. They hold the cards – either Favre tells them he\’s willing to commit to them 100%, or they just tell him to stay home and collect his paychecks for the next three years. Those are the choices. So Brett has to decide whether he wants to drop this pathetic \”woe is me\” act and get himself ready to play. If not, I hope he has the Sunday Ticket, because he\’ll be watching all the games on TV for the next three years.

Sure, people defend Favre because they recognize how much he loves to play the game. But we all knew that when he retired. We all thought that his desire to retire had to be SO STRONG that it overrode his obvious love of playing. But the way he’s whining his way through this comeback is disgraceful – and he’s ripping apart my favorite team in the process. That’s not to say I wouldn’t welcome the sight of him back in a Packer uniform – but if he’s going to string this along with the Brett Favre Pity Fest any longer, he can just stay home and let us all move on. Somehow, I think we\’ll get over it.

26 years. And now, suddenly, Milwaukee is once again the center of the baseball universe.

At 7:00, I received the following one-line e-mail from one of my friends. It said, simply:

\”I\’m not gay, but I\’d like to kiss Doug Melvin on his mustachioed mouth for pulling this deal off.\”

And that\’s how I found out the Brewers had pushed all their chips to the middle of the table for this season.

I\’ll spare you all the third-rate analysis about whether it was a good deal or not. For all the hot air on message boards by people claiming to know a lot about baseball, nobody will ever really know what would have happened had Matt LaPorta stayed a Brewer. We\’ll never know what the effect of LaPorta being gone will have on other prospects, who might now get a chance to step up. It\’s never just a one-plus-one-equals-two calculation.

But here\’s what we do know for a fact – that Doug Melvin has, to quote my buddy The Gooch, \”balls the size of Jupiter\” for making this deal. And it\’s the lack of certainty I mentioned above that makes this such a great deal. Let\’s say the deal doesn\’t get done and Ben Sheets walks away at the end of the year. For the forseeable future, you\’re looking at some good young starters, but no ace. And maybe you bring up LaPorta and maybe he provides some good offense, but a 30 home run hitter isn\’t exactly what the Brewers need at this point. (They need a leadoff hitter that doesn\’t need a GPS device to find first base, for starters.)

But the scenario that developed today is the way any business should run. If Sabathia helps them make a playoff run, that means more revenue to the team. Packed stands through the remainder of the season and in the playoffs may mean the team can make a competitive offer to Sheets in the offseason. I\’ve seen some suggest that anything short of a World Series victory means the Brewers have had a disappointing system. Let\’s not get ahead of ourselves, here.

Obviously, Doug Melvin wants to win now. But if the Crew can make enough money down the home stretch to put the team in a better financial position to retain their core talent in the next few years (Fielder, Hart, etc.), this will have turned out to be a good deal regardless of how the season ends. (At least that\’s what I\’ll be telling myself when Ben Sheets is attacked by a crocodile on the field and the season goes in the tank in September.)

All night, I kept watching ESPNews, with the bright red \”breaking news\” banner coming on every five seconds. And every time it crawled across my screen, it was as if Jennifer Connelly was whispering it directly into my ear.

\”Indians Trade Pitcher C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers.\”

\”Indians Trade Pitcher C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers.\”

Sadly, my TV did not take the extra step and offer to make me a sandwich.

Plus, it\’s not as if the Brewers haven\’t had good luck dealing with the Indians. Remember, the Brewers relieved the Tribe of Jeromy Burnitz in 1996, in exchange for the rotting corpse of Kevin Seitzer. Burnitz went on to hit over 30 home runs in 4 of his 5 full seasons with Milwaukee. The 35 year-old Seitzer played 86 games with the Indians and retired.

And who can forget July of 2000, when the Brewers sent Bob Wickman, Steve Woodard, Jason Bere, and a signed John Jaha home run ball to the Indians for Richie Sexson? That was such an easy deal that Dean Taylor, who was to general managing what Madonna is to music, was able to pull it off.

So, upon reflection, here are the big winners and losers from the Sabathia deal:

Winner: ME! WOO HOO!

Loser: My wife. With the Brewers competitive late in the season, I might as well be living in a bio-dome in my own basement. Chances of my popcorn bowls making it into the dishwasher just dropped by 50%.

Winner: Tom Haudricourt, of the Journal Sentinel. He was on this story, and was accurate throughout.

Loser: Tom Haudricourt, of the Journal Sentinel. While his reporting was timely and accurate, he actually showed up on one of his own blog comment threads and publicly attempted to fellate himself for essentially doing exactly what a beat writer for a team in the middle of a major trade negotiation was supposed to do. In attempting to shoot down two dopey anonymous commenters, he actually wrote the following:

I don\’t need to ban hayseed whatever or cauleys. They both know I took them to the wood shed and they have to live with it. We are still the only source confirming this deal, as far as I know. I was ahead of it from the very start, saying it would be LaPorta and two lower-level minor leaguers. I shot down all the Hardy and Escobar nonsense and went with the truth. That\’s all I need to know, and I appreciate all those on the blog who know what I did.

Pure class.

Winner: Buster Olney, ESPN. On the above message board, there\’s a lot of mention of who scooped whom when it came to this story. Haudricourt deserves credit for doing his job. But even though Olney may not have been getting a lot of original info on this story, I think it takes a lot of stones to go on national TV and declare the Brewers as the frontrunner in the biggest trade sweepstakes of the year. Every major league team has a beat writer that has their fans convinced that their team is about to trade for Johan Santana or whatever. But it is unique for a national writer to step out and predict something so bold and be right. So good for him – now maybe I can start taking someone seriously who actually refers to himself as \”Buster.\”

(Incidentally, I got a kick out of ESPN continuing to say \”Buster Olney has learned that the Indians have agreed to trade Sabathia to the Brewers,\” well after it had been on the Journal-Sentinel website. Really, Buster? You \”learned\” that secret piece of information? Did you \”learn\” how to use the internet at about 6:00 tonight?)

Loser: Tom Oates, Wisconsin State Journal. Just last week, Oatsey gave us a column explaining how C.C. Sabathia was out of the Brewers\’ reach. A few days later, when it started to look like the Brewers actually were in the running, he tried to cover his tail with a column explaining why the team needed Sabathia NOW! Just more evidence that the only requirement for writing a sports-related column at the State Journal is the ability to turn on your computer and type complete sentences that don\’t reference genitalia.

Winner: Inebriation. If the Crew makes it to the World Series, it\’s going to be a Brew Town Throwdown. Believe that.

Loser: Former Brewer Eric Young, ESPN. When asked about the trade, \”EY\” decided he had some reservations, for the following reason: Sabathia is left-handed, and the Cubs have a lot of good right-handed hitters. Brilliant observation, since the Cubs and Brewers only play a handful of times the rest of the year. Actually, I think Sabathia is around to help the Crew in the remaining 80 games, not necessarily the sprinkling of games against the Cubs. But now that the precedent has been set, I demand to know what Franklin Stubbs thinks about the trade.

Oh, and make sure you go vote for Corey Hart for the all-star team. I probably voted 50 times already. And I didn\’t even need the DNC to buy me cigarettes. Plus, there has to be at
least one creepy flesh-colored beard in the All-Star game. So follow the link below.

And here\’s an interview with LaPorta from a month ago:

In June of 2005, with the impending selection of Andrew Bogut with the #1 pick by the Bucks, I put together the team\’s \”All White Stiff\” team. It looked like this:

Paul Mokeski
Randy Breuer
Jack Sikma
Larry Krystkowiak
Fred Roberts
Brad Lohaus
Frank Brickowski
Danny Schayes
Mark Pope
Joel Pryzbilla

I left off Toni Kukoc, as he was European and didn\’t count. And I\’m happy to announce the addition of Jake Voskuhl to the list. My fingers were crossed that they\’d snag Brian Butch with their second round pick.

In any event, the Bucks returned to their roots tonight with the selection of Joe Alexander. I actually think it\’s a really good pick. We keep hearing about what a great athlete Alexander is – I watched plenty of his games this year, and I think he has a lot more vertical athleticism than lateral. But near the end of the year, he was one of the best players in the country. He carried West Virginia through the Big East tournament and through a couple NCAA tourney games in impressive fashion. It also appears that he plays with a bit of a mean streak, which I\’m always a fan of. I specifically remember him making a block during the NCAA tournament and glaring at the guy whose shot he threw.

Of course, I think the Bucks\’ best work was done earlier in the day, when they traded Yi Jianlian and the corpse of Bobby Simmons to the New Jersey Nets for Richard Jefferson. RJ will give them some athleticism and defense at the small forward position, as well as some decent scoring punch. I had thought getting rid of Simmons\’ horrible contract would be near impossible, but John Hammond managed not only to pull it off, but get an all-star in return. Those of you who read my draft night meltdown last year may remember that I\’m not a fan of Chairman Yi, so I\’m not shedding any tears that he\’s gone.

And there\’s no chance the Bucks are done dealing. Defensive dead weight like Charlie Villanueva is as good as gone. With the Bucks in desperate need of a pass-first point guard and a guy like Kirk Hinrich out there to be had, it only makes sense that Hammond would make a play there. Sure, they could have drafted a point guard, but guys like Bayless and Gordon are in the Mo Williams mold – and DJ Augustin is a midget.

Other draft night observations:

It was a bad night for Travis Diener. Not only did the Indiana Pacers trade for T.J. Ford to run the point, they traded for Jerryd Bayless to back him up. Diener actually played quite a bit for the Pacers last year, and did a serviceable job when Jamaal Tinsley got hurt. Now it\’s pretty clear he\’ll be looking for a new team.

ESPN went on and on and on about how they were setting draft \”records\” for all the freshmen being taken in the first round. First of all, draft \”records\” are completely meaningless, so it boggles the mind that they would spend so much time talking about them. Secondly, it\’s the second year of the requirement that players play in college for a year, so all the players that would have skipped college before are now freshmen. So of course there are going to be more freshmen drafted. ESPN owes me a half hour of my life back.

Can Jay Bilas discuss a draft pick without discussing someone\’s wingspan? What on God\’s earth does that have to do with anything? At one point, he tried to talk up Virginia guard Sean Singleton by saying he had a longer wingspan than Allen Iverson. Really? Then he must be a Hall of Famer, too.

The extra attention the Knicks get simply because the draft takes place in New York has got to stop. Yes, we know their fans always boo their pick. Yes, we know the team stinks. But this attitude that somehow New York fans \”deserve\” a winning team simply because they\’re in New York is complete nonsense.

How easy is \”foreign correspondent\” Fran Fraschilla\’s job? Just plug a player\’s name into these sentences: \”[NAME] is really young, but he\’s got a lot of raw ability and the [TEAM WHO DRAFTED HIM] are going to be able to stash him away in Europe for a couple years while he gets better.\” That\’s pretty much it. For EVERY foreign player. Pretty soon, Europe is going to be the favorite place to hide for seven footers and serial killers.

The person I feel most sorry for tonight? Dominic James. Just think – at about midnight tonight, he could have been celebrating being the first pick in the Developmental League draft.

Here\’s the audio of me on Wisconsin Public Radio discussing 3rd party candidates. I was at the Memorial Union Terrace last night, so you can tell I start off a little groggy.

Okay, a quick admission – occasionally, I google my name to see what people are saying about me on blogs. Don\’t judge me – you know you\’ve done it too.

In any event, this morning I found out this wonderful tidbit about some German dude named Christian Schneider:

From Wikipedia:

\”I Am Your Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)\” is a novelty dance song by German composer Christian Schneider and released by Gummibear International that received international and internet meme success, in part, due to its corresponding 30-second video clip.[4][5] The song has since been released in at least seven languages and has virally spread worldwide with more than 30 million plays of the corresponding videos on YouTube and MySpace.[4] With the song ready-made for ringtone use one critic commented \”he\’s the ultimate cross-platform, cross-cultural phenomenon YouTube was designed to unleash.\”

Naturally, I had to see this \”Gummy Bear Song\” that bizarro Schneider had composed. Here it is:

\”Hey Jude\” it ain\’t.

I\’ve always thought one of the keys to racial reconciliation in our country would be for people of all races to figure out what they have in common. In this case, I think we can all agree that no matter what color or creed you are, we can all get together to loathe Europeans. Unity!

About a week ago, the Today Show was on in the background as the Shuff-haus was getting ready for the day when one of my favorite things occurred. Today aired a segment it\’s producers likely would have been deemed completely non-newsworthy if not for the sensational video they had.

The seven minute story was about jerky teen boys playing Fire in the Hole. Apparently FITH is the act of ordering a soda at the drive thru, yelling \”fire in the hole\” and then pretending your soda is a grenade and the server is Charlie peeking out of a tunnel in \’Nam. Now teenage boys being destructive and mean may happen all the time, but it becomes national news when they have videotaped their A-holishness and posted it on YouTube.

Now some TV programs, like Maximum Exposure and World\’s Wildest Police Videos, are up front about their products. They show shocking and titillating videos because they know viewers can\’t turn away. There is no moralizing or any attempt to find some deeper truth. It\’s, \”check out these awesome explosions and skateboard accidents.\” I enjoy these shows and so do you, whether you admit it or not.

But the Today Show fancies itself as being a little more high-brow than that. We\’re news, dammit! So what we got instead was a very serious Matt Lauer interviewing a FITH victim and condemning these mean teen boys. Taking a cue from a Bart\’s People segment, Lauer runs up the score by lamenting, \”here\’s a hardworking single mom just trying to earn a living\” who doesn\’t deserve this kind of abuse. Well no kidding she doesn\’t deserve it, Matt! But she\’s not on your show so you can make your bold defense of hardworking single moms. She\’s on your show so you can play over two dozen clips of drive thru workers getting humiliated with Mountain Dew facials! (I counted.)

\”Oh gosh, that\’s just terrible the way you got drenched with pop. Let\’s see that again. OK, now once more in slo-mo. Oh, that\’s just awful, this video we\’re showing over and over again that will get people buzzing and boost our ratings. Oh that\’s just awful. You didn\’t deserve that. Don\’t run that clip again. OK, maybe just once more.\”

National TV news does this kind of thing all the time. Just once I\’d like some honesty like, \”OK, here\’s what we have for you tonight. First, we have some gently-edited Obama campaign talking points. Next we have some alarmist stuff about a disease you\’ll never catch. Then we\’re going to do a story about porn later. C\’mon, you know you\’re intrigued. Stick around to see provocative clips where we\’ve fuzzed out just enough nudity so we won\’t lose our FCC license.\”

And speaking of honesty, here\’s something else I\’d like to see. I\’d like every national news broadcast to start out with the reporters and anchors announcing who they voted for in the last elections. Government officials have to release information about their business and investment dealings so the public can be assured they aren\’t doing things to line their pockets. Similar disclosure from the mainstream media would be nice so the public would be constantly reminded that decisions about what is presented as news and how that news is reported is coming from liberals.

OK, I got a little sidetracked there. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, someone needs to throw a soda at Matt Lauer.

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday, June 25th,) I\’ll be on the Joy Cardin show from 7 to 8 AM to discuss third party candidates in Wisconsin. It\’s a follow up to this piece I wrote for the Wisconsin Interest magazine. Be sure to tune in, and call if you want to chat.

Shame on both you and me. Here we\’ve been going on, living our daily lives, without recognizing that the single greatest television show in our lifetimes is currently airing deep down on the cable channel dial.

I am talking, of course, about \”My Big Redneck Wedding,\” which currently airs on CMT (formerly known as Country Music Television, I think.) Each episode features a set of two self-described \”rednecks\” planning their wedding – generally on a budget akin to what you spend on pizza every month.

I can\’t do the whole series justice in just one post, but let me describe just one episode, in which Gail and John from Maryland get married:

• John proposes to Gail by writing \”Marry Me\” in urine on the street.

• John constructs a wedding arch out of beer cans, which is used in the ceremony.

• As his wedding gift to his wife, John gets a stuffed animal out of an arcade claw machine.

• John and Gail get married upstairs in a flea market.

• Centerpieces are made by stuffing flowers into Budweiser tall boy cans.

• Before the ceremony, Gail can\’t find her dentures, and John\’s mother offers to lend Gail hers.

Yet the high point of the episode occurs when John sits down with his grandmother to write out his wedding vows. They read as follows:

I wish I could put your love in a locket;
Because you\’re hotter than a hot pocket;
We did it in the back seat, we did it in the zoo;
I don\’t care where we do it, as long as it\’s with you.

Like manna from heaven, YouTube has provided me with a clip of this inspired poet at work. And be sure to catch the last line of the clip, in which I\’m pretty sure John means to say \”Thesaurus.\”

I have about four more episodes waiting for me on TiVo, so I better get to them ASAP. And when you\’re watching with tears streaming down your face, as I was, feel free to cut me a check to thank me for the tip.

A friend alerted me to the fact that there appears to be a music festival coming to Madison this September. It has been dubbed the Forward Music Fest, and features a couple of my faves, Neko Case and Bob Mould.

What I found funny is the quote the festival organizers used to promote Neko:

\”I\’m a die-hard Neko Case loyalist, so it should surprise nobody that I went to see her at the Barrymore last night. The show was sensational – and I can\’t really describe what it was like for fear of sounding too much like a lovestruck teenager. Let\’s just say I was catatonic – other people in my area were dancing and clapping, and I stood frozen with my hands jammed into my pockets. She\’s just impossibly good.\”

What music expert wrote that? Well, it was this genius.

So I\’m thinking that at the very least, the use of this quote to promote the show has earned me a backstage pass. I\’m fairly certain that when people see this show gets my seal of approval, it will bring hundreds of new bodies in the door. Let the letter writing campaign begin.

For those of you who haven\’t seen me recently (that means most people, I think), I am sporting a lush, flowing urban beard. My original thinking was that a beard was a good way to go incognito, but I have recently begun to think that it actually makes more people look at you, which wasn\’t the intent.

What I figured out tonight, however, is that a beard is completely incompatible with eating corn on the cob. The family grilled out tonight, complete with steak and corn. And by the end of the meal, I believe half my food had nestled comfortably in my facial hair. I wiped my face with a napkin, thinking that would do the trick. But an hour later, I actually had to go into the bathroom and shampoo my beard in the sink to get the smell to go away. (At the time, my two year old son was doing his Beavis and Butthead impression while trying to go potty, and he stopped to look at me, as if I was the weirdo.)

Incidentally, the beard will be making its world debut on the \”Here and Now\” show this week, but it has yet to decide what it wants to talk about. What I do know is that the beard is already being difficult, demanding the TV set be catered with corn on the cob.

UPDATE: Savvy commenter reminds me of this video. And it all comes full circle.

\”You see, there\’s a point in the song where we mention the devil, and we think the viewers may not get the reference, so put this devil costume on and walk around.\”

Monday was an epic day for golf, as two events took place that will forever change the course of golf history. In one event, a golfer was crowned champion after years of dedication and hard work, earning the praise and adulation he so richly deserves, and forever altering the way children and their parents think about the sport. In the other event, Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open. (Yawn.)

In case you haven\’t yet seen highlights on ESPN, yours truly netted the lowest score in the Monona Municipal Golf Course men\’s Monday night league this week. This is about as likely as John Daly being named \”Sexiest Man Alive.\” Sure, Tiger won one of the most exciting major tournaments in history, and sure, he gets a big trophy and millions of dollars for his efforts. But I feel I have won the coveted \”trophy within.\”

My golfing history is a long and sordid one. I actually played a lot as a kid, even making my high school golf team. (Thus, I can say I played \”three sports\” and sound as legitimate as all the guys who played football, baseball, and basketball. I played golf, baseball and basketball.) At some point after high school though, I put down the clubs for a decade. I just couldn\’t handle the stress of the game and suffered a David Duval-style meltdown. Those who have played with me will tell you that my language on the course has probably earned me a full years\’ worth of rosaries when I finally get around to going to confession. At one point, I threw three of my clubs up in a tree at the Mee-Kwon golf course north of Milwaukee. But that\’s another story for another time.

What\’s important now is that my game is starting to come around. Nobody is happier to see this than the golf courses themselves. In my golfing career, I have probably single-handedly undone most of Gaylord Nelson\’s environmental achievements with the damage my golf game has wrought on Wisconsin\’s sensitive habitats.

Of course, nobody\’s going to confuse me for Tiger Woods just yet. But in a strange way, I think watching as much of the U.S. Open as I did actually helped me. I realized that even the best players in the world don\’t hit perfect shots every time, and that helped me relax. Of course, my ample handicap helped, too – but every stroke of that was earned, given how poorly I had played in the past couple of weeks.

There\’s so many people to thank for this achievement, but I would be remiss if I didn\’t first credit myself for all my hard work, dedication, and willingness to starve my children so I have more money for greens fees. Imagine how hard it is on me when my starving little children come up to me, begging for bread crumbs. It just breaks my heart when I have to push them away and say \”maybe next week.\”

And if I may, I\’d like to offer some words of encouragement to the other golfers in my league – keep practicing, and maybe one day, you will get to touch the trophy. Until then, I plan on being insufferable. (I told my wife I beat a bunch of scratch golfers, and she said I should fit right in, since I scratch myself all the time.)

So I figure if my position as \”citizen journalist\” means anything, I should be willing to experience things to which no man would ever willingly subject himself, then report on it. Which is why on Friday night I agreed to watch \”27 Dresses\” with my wife. Almost as if I was embedding myself with the female gender, like a war correspondent.

First of all, the Brewers were getting hammered, so it\’s not like I was giving up a lot. Plus, you could do a lot worse than watching Katherine Heigl for an hour and a half. And as busy as she is cleaning up after me and the kids, my wife doesn\’t get a whole lot of chances to do \”girly\” stuff. So I agreed to suck it up and go along – which I kind of had to do, since I picked the last movie, \”I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.\”

The first thing you need to know about this movie is that it\’s pure science fiction. It\’s one of these flicks where Katherine Heigl somehow manages to get into her 30s without having a single meaningful relationship – which is preposterous, because Kate is other-worldy hot. This movie makes \”Kung Fu Panda\” look like a Ken Burns documentary.

It\’s also one of these movies where everyone is either a newspaper columnist about love issues (seriously, there have to be maybe three of these people in America), or works at a high-powered ad agency. And for effect, they throw in that it\’s an \”eco-friendly\” ad agency, at that. Barf. At one point, Heigl\’s character\’s sister really hits rock bottom and has to go get a job designing hand bags. It\’s absolutely true.

Anyway, eventually she falls for some marriage columnist, who – gasp! – actually has some misgivings about marriage. Of course, this guy doesn\’t make a single humorous or insightful comment throughout the entire movie – yet, somehow, he is the guy that this woman finally falls in love with. That\’s what\’s frustrating about movies in general – people don\’t really talk the way they do in real life. Think about it – those are the times when you laugh the most. When you\’re with friends discussing things that come completely out of the blue. But, sadly, your regular conversations don\’t serve the purpose of moving the plot along. Anyway, all this guy has going for him is that he\’s (I guess) good looking, although he has a weird haircut that clearly is meant to draw attention away from his big ears.

So Heigl\’s character\’s sister falls in love with Heigl\’s boss by pretending she\’s a vegetarian and into the outdoors and animals and stuff. But Heigl is secretly in love with her boss (the columnist comes later), so she sets out to ruin her sister\’s engagement by telling her boss the truth about her sister. So at the rehearsal dinner, to \”out\” her sister, she shows a slide show that shows a picture of her sister eating ribs and being afraid of a dog that it appears is attacking her. Naturally, despite being engaged for what seems like months, the boss immediately calls the engagement off, given the horror of seeing an old picture of his future wife eating meat. I can only imagine what my wife would have said if she had seen me attacking the pan of Rice Krispie treats she made this week.

The rest of the movie is pretty irrelevant. Trust me, you know where the whole thing is going 5 minutes in. Heigl\’s acting is somewhat hit or miss, but I was actually surprised in some spots where she was kind of funny. (Oh, and did I mention she was hot?)

So I don\’t have any grading system, but whatever it is, this movie gets two of them.

And as long as I\’m on movies, here are my grades for some I\’ve seen recently:

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With – B plus. A cute, funny movie that\’s almost like a chick flick for fat guys in their \’30s.

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford – A. Really slow moving, and certainly not for everyone. But I loved how it unfolded, and the last third is really thought-provoking. And I didn\’t even know Brad Pitt was in it until I started watching it.

Michael Clayton – B minus. Entertaining, but a goofy lefty anti-big business fantasy. Certainly the cops wouldn\’t be smart enough to figure it out when all the attorneys working on a case relating to this chemical company start dying. I\’m still waiting for the big Hollywood movie where some poor woman gets breast cancer, then gets the treatment she needs and beats it because of the insurance benefits provided by her employer. I imagine that happens ten thousand times more often than the scenario in this movie, where some chemical kills over 200 people. (Incidentally, if a company made a chemical that killed two people, it would go under. If someone found a rat head in a Wendy\’s frosty, they\’d have to spend millions of dollars to stay afloat – much less killing hundreds of people.)

Before the Devil Knows You\’re Dead – B minus. Begins with a completely superfluous sex scene with Marisa Tomei, who is naked through the entire movie. That\’s worth a whole letter grade. But there are three major movie cliches in this film that must be addressed:

1. In movies, whenever someone pours themself a drink, it\’s always scotch, straight up. You never see someone mix their whiskey or scotch with anything. How many people do you actually know that drink this way?

2. In movies, whenever someone is watching television, they are always watching something that no reasonable human would watch. They\’re always watching Looney Tunes or some kung fu movie or something.

3. In movies, when someone points a gun at someone else, the victim always either gives a long speech, or says \”just go ahead and do it.\” As if, somehow, they have spent their lives perfecting the speech they\’re going to give when someone finally sticks a gun in their face. Needless to say, if someone pointed a gun at me, they would hear a lot of crying and pleading for my life. I would not go out like a man. If they shot me, they\’d have to shoot a whimpering, sad little man.

Lars and the Real Girl: B. This one really divides people – but I tend to be on the more favorable side. Plus, any movie that brings mustaches back is welcome in my book.

Teacher Banned for Classroom Strip

supply teacher was asked to leave a secondary school after removing his shirt in front of a class of 13 and 14-year-old pupils, education authority officials said today.

The incident at Sudbury Upper School in Sudbury, Suffolk, in April was filmed by a pupil on a mobile phone and footage broadcast on internet website YouTube.

Education authority Suffolk County Council said the man was asked to leave the school and the agency which supplied him informed.

\”It is not the case that children were put at any risk,\” said a council spokesman. \”But the school felt his behaviour inappropriate.\”

In the 40-second YouTube footage the teacher is seen to remove his shirt and point to his left bicep – as girls and boys giggle and scream – before getting dressed again.