Life of Brian

This morning Donna and I went to Columbia, SC to watch some friend’s kid play in a baseball tournament. He plays on an 11 & under “traveling” team that seems to play in these tournaments every other weekend all over the state.

Gotta run into bucks. They have two different complete uniforms, there is an entrance fee for the team to get in, meals and if it is more than 100 miles away there are hotel rooms. The place we went to today charged $5 a head to get in. The players get in for free (if you don’t count the entrance fee,) but parents and sibling have to pay to watch. Priced an aluminum bat recently, the $20 bat from Wal-Mart won’t cut it, the bat they want costs about a hundred and a half. Most of them have their own custom air brushed batting helmets.

I don’t know if the team picked up the tab for it, or a parent bought it, but both teams seemed to have a small radar gun that they used to track the opposing team’s pitcher’s speed. I’m sure the level of microwave energy coming from these things is low, but if my kid was a pitcher, he’d have a metal lined cup for his jockstrap. Wouldn’t want to take any chances with his still developing family jewels. 🙂

This happened yesterday morning and then when blogging time rolled around in the evening I had forgot all about it (why I remembered tonight is a mystery.)

Donna was in the kitchen when a UPS truck pulled into our driveway. Sarcastically she said, “Go ahead Mr. UPS Truck, feel free to use our driveway to turn around.” Whenever they delivery stuff to us they just park in the street and traipse across the front lawn. She then said to me, “Go to the door he is brining something to us. Are we expecting anything?” As I headed to the door I replied, “Who knows?” At any given time there is a pretty good chance we expecting something and it turns out we are, just not what he had for us this morning.

As I opened the door he handed me a large envelope and promptly spun around back to his truck. As I walked back towards the kitchen Donna asked, “Well, what is it?” “An envelope and it is from CitiMortgage,” I answered. Our mortgage had changed hands to Citi several months back so we both wondered what this might be about, they were selling our note again, they decided to call in the note, we were late on a payment, what?

Well inside that UPS delivered envelope was a come-on to refinance our mortgage with them! They were offering 6.05 vs. our current 6.5%. As an incentive they were also offering $500 off our closing costs. They were promising about a hundred buck a month saving, before figuring in the closing costs remaining after they chipped in their portion. Thanks, but no thanks. Gotta give it to them, sure was impressive to have it UPS delivered.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so the folks over at Girls Gone Wild HQ must be pretty happy. I stumbled onto an infomercial for a GGW knock-off this morning called Wild Party Girls. Instead of $9.95 for a video, really usually 2 because they throw in a “free” one, these guys are giving you two DVDs for Free!* (*$5.95 shipping and handling)

Not only are the DVDs free, but they are going to toss in a free hat. It is one of those foam trucker hats that have become, for some inexplicable reason, fashionable again. The hat is bright red with a white front panel. On that white front panel, in matching bright red lettering, are the words “Wild Party Girls.”

It might as well just say “I’m A Loser” on it. This thing screams, “Hey look at me, I’m a schlub! My idea of excitement is to watch girls expose their breasts.” The only purchasers of these things that can’t be considered perverts are, the people who aren’t supposed to buy them in the first place, boys 17 and under.

Does the buyer of these type of videos think that if he wears that hat around, nubile young women will just lift their shirts and flash him, hoping to get a starring role in the next series of DVDs?