Another Goody For The Oldtimers

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..

Flunking gym was not an option...even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting?

I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

Road Test: A Year Without TV

One couple decides to go through their first year of marriage sans television.

Part One of Two

When my husband (then fiancé) suggested we start our married lives together TV-free, I thought he was joking. We hadn't moved in together yet, but weekends with this Big Ten grad, sports lover, and Fantasy Football devotee almost always involved at least a glimpse of some game on TV. Had he gone crazy -- or was this truly a brilliant idea?

Assured by his promises of more quality time as a married couple -- and the chance to stop zoning out in front of the tube together -- I agreed. So after our wedding bells rang, my newly betrothed and I moved into a condo together. Our TV had a new home, too: a locked storage unit in the basement. Here's how we endured:

The Plan:

Television wasn't completely off-limits -- we just wouldn't have it in our home. If my husband wanted to watch Sunday-night football, he had to make plans to watch it at a friend's house or at a bar, or drive 45 minutes to watch with his dad. Likewise, if I wanted to unwind with the latest Boston Legal episode, I had to go to a girlfriend's place. But at home, it was time to talk, read, and enjoy the first year of marriage.

The Beginning:

At first, we both felt the TV withdrawal. My morning routine felt empty without Katie and Matt at the Today show. Gone were the days when my husband could de-stress after work with a good Seinfeld rerun. Life seemed less complicated when I could lose myself in a funny Friends repeat, or when the TV could simply provide background noise for our tired nights. Was marriage really this quiet?

We both felt a little left out when it came to conversations with friends. My husband was no longer well-equipped to play Monday-morning quarterback with the guys at work. And when a friend mentioned Laguna Beach, I was reminded of a fun weekend there, not an MTV reality show. Was this really a good idea?

Then my husband hit rock bottom. After 88 years, our hometown Chicago White Sox had made it to the World Series. My husband was fine following his routine of watching the previous games with friends. But imagine my surprise when I walked into our cable-free condo to find him staring at our television -- game in play. It was fuzzy, but viewable with the aid of an antenna-like concoction he'd created. I had to laugh -- it was quite a relapse.

Road Test: A Year Without TV

Part Two

The Adjusting:

Once the World Series ended (and the White Sox won!) and we returned to our no-TV routine, we actually liked not having a television. I replaced the Today show with National Public Radio. Dinnertime became just us -- communicating about our days, our goals, our lives. Days of the week were no longer defined by shows on TV -- as in, "I have to be home by nine because it's Apprentice night" -- but were now based on what we would do together that evening.

We started new projects, like painting rooms in our condo. I made countless messes in our kitchen trying out new recipes for dinner. We stopped taking shifts to walk Buddy, our golden retriever, and began taking him for long evening walks together. My husband started playing chess on the Internet, and read more books in a few months than he'd read the entire previous year. We were enjoying our new life so much that we didn't know when we had ever found time to watch so much TV.

The Verdict:

What does our TV future have in store? Ask my husband, and he'll likely say a wide-screen, flat-panel LCD with a built-in DVD player and virtual surround sound. Someday maybe. But the current plan is to make it a full year before pulling our old 32-incher out of storage.

And for now, as peculiar as it may seem, this TV-free experience is giving us a priceless gift: the ability to kick off our marriage with a solid foundation of communication. Having no TV has challenged us to stop watching other people live their lives and to start living our own. I recommend turning off the tube to all couples. I guarantee you: It's reality TV at its finest.

Good "Super Coloassal" Morning to Ya ! ! ! .......

Jon...... I love the face lift on the home page. It's always good to see the home page change cause that means a new CD is on the way. Whoa ! ! ! I love it. I'm excited about the NAMM web cast and the other surprises in store for us. About the leaking.....you may want to talk with Sony. Cheese 101 gave us a link to their page that showed Joe's Art Work and song titles. It's funny you're mentioning this cause I was thinkin' the same thing. Joe should have first rights to release HIS info. As always you do a great job with the site. Thanks for everything. I hope the little tike is doing good as is the rest of your family. Take care. Peace.

SteveeT. I'm with you bro....STOKED ! ! ! ! To put it mildly.

I had to laugh this morning I was trying to remember how to spell Colossal. In my mind I went.....Let see....C O L O....backward ass.....L Yea!! that's it......lol.....

The mind is a terrible thing to waste......Isn't it?...lol....

Joe.....Thanks for everything you do. Your music is the best and moves millions. Take care....say Hey ! ! ! to your family ,band and crew from us.......

Have A Great Day Everyone ! ! !

Zinc Master - you cheat!! hehehe

hey just watched Crossroads....."You lookin for me Willy Brown?" that is such a stonkin film....Go Steve!!

gruskada

some days a lot of good stuff comes my way - other days, i am pretty quiet around here

Keniko

Thanks for the wishes.

Satriella

hey - what am I cheating on.

I got a lot of good stuff (in my opinion) that was worth sharing - so I did.

Satriella: My fave line from Crossroads is:

" I keep it right here on my hip... Next to my whip!!!!!"

962: lol bro, the last studio album Pablo recorded w/ Mr. Big was Hey Man in '96, and it was during that time and after that Paul made KOC.... After that, the Big crew picked up Mr. Kotzen, lol, and recorded a few more albums.... Oh, and Mr, Kotzen is another phenom!!....

BTW, this review I found on amazon (for Burning Organ) sums up Pablo the best way I can think of: Paul Gilbert makes fun out of simple rock songs with terrifying guitar solos. The beginning of track "My Religion" shows what he came for: a sequence of arpeggios with tapping that is so clean and pretty it makes you hit the "<<" button of your CD player to hear it over and over. Really amazing.....

Oh, and Amen bro on your thoughts of the DramaGods album!! :-)

njbeast: Brotha, I told ya!! :-) Webmaster Jon Luini thank you.... Thank you for everything, and thanks for trying your best!!.... :-)

peaceandguitars: Hang in there bro, we're rooting for ya!!....

Keniko: The mind is a terrible thing to waste......Isn't it?...lol.... .... LMAO bro, I feel the same way! ;-)

Super Colossal for G3!!

Zinc Master....we all have computers obviously. And believe it or not, we all get the same informative stuff you get. So all we're doing is having to read it twice ! Get it? Sorry if I'm coming off as an ass...

gruskada....welcome back..

Howdy People!

Good to see the T2J CD finally coming out :-)

Good to see Joe's new CD coming out.

Dave Separated by oceans and thousands of miles the telepathy goes on....... I checked out the availaility of 'Blackout in the red room' and 'Wasted in America' about three days ago and was pleasantly suprised to find that they were both re-released in 2005 (March and Sept if I remember). Classic albums - they should have been huge.

Can't post to all so 962, Cube, Slansh, 'Chelle, Naty and Mikey 'Hi Guys!' Simon sorry I don't get round to hooking up with you and Mikey I haven't forgotten about the DVDs.

Anybody in here noticed that Andy Timmons 'Cry For You' on the Bootleg DVD is filmed at the 90th Anniversary Ibanez gig from a different camera ?

SOTD - Orion - Metallica (mainly because I just can't get my fingers around the 4/4 - 6/8 timecahnge lmao)

Take care folks.

btw NJbeast, nice to see you come out of the shadows bro'

Cube, our ground rodent here in Ontario (who actually lives in someones house during the winter!!!) is predicting an early spring... Whaddya rely on in Winterpeg for prognostication??

mikesb LOL, yer close ,, if burton can find the bottle he left outside in a drunken stupor in the fall, its gonna be an early spring.. its actually been ok here,, only like -5 or so.. for jan, its -10 right now , thats the coldest its been..

cuthbert1776

re: iPod case

How about - failure to adequately warn, improper instructions, negligence.

hey guys

962 k ill figure a way out!!! thx !!! ya maybe thats wat ill have to do use the damn formula and put it up on the fretboard!!! anyways hows life and music???/

"The scroll bar is on the right hand side of the browser window, boys."

I don't want to start a flame war here, so I'll be done with this after this post, but under this logic, I should just post random spam here, because if people don't wan to see it, they can just scroll through it.

Zinc Master - it appears that you are sincere about posting info for others to see. That's great. I would suggest, however, that you start your own blog. You can get a free one from http://blogger.com/ or http://wordpress.org/. Heck, I might even read it, but I don't want to see general news here, and certainly not so much of it.

Having said that, this is just my opinion. Perhaps other people get their interesting general news from Satriani.com courtesy of you? Maybe a good compromise would be to just link out to the article, like most blogs do anyway...

SupaaDave - thanks. I usually pop back and post in when a new album is in the works, at least, though I do always lurk quite a bit... BTW, is DoTheStu still around?

cuthbert1776

May want to check out http://www.accurint.com/

Accurint® is the most widely accepted locate-and-research tool available to government, law enforcement and commercial customers. Its proprietary data-linking technology returns search results in seconds to the user’s desktop.

Joe: WOW... im freaking out here... i cant wait... im sooo excited... for the new cd to come out that is,lol, and to see you. So come to Spokane. lol. Thanks for all the hard work and time you put into your music. You are... amazing... lol. Love ya man. Have a wonderful day :)

oh yeah Joe... are all those songs listed going to be on every ones release? Like... Is There Love In Space... the last 2 songs listed are not on the one i have, i have to specialy order it to get those last two. So are all the songs listed going to be on every ones release?... Thanks man.

2005 Mensa winners

The Mensa Invitational once again asked members to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's {2005} winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting sex.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: ! Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth plodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature: