If you haven’t seen the list of band for this year’s BIRTHDAY BASH CLICK HERE!!! Every year that I’ve been with this station, I have looked forward to the Birthday Bash!  Its not just about the bands but more the P1’s that make this event a true celebration!  This year is will be like no other..  Looking forward to talking with some of the bands and I’m gonna need your help with that!  You know the line up of band now so think of questions that you would ask them!  Email me with those and a phone number and the band could be calling you to answer your question!  Dexatnight@yahoo.com!   Here’s the interview from last year with Creed!  Awesome Conversation with Mark! Did not know he went to Clemson! Check it out!

Today is the day before we leave on our 5 day cruise. Nine is nervous about being on a ship. His roommate Moike is his emergency contact. Matt is excited because he has been on a cruise before. He says he feels extra sexy. I am anxious. I will probably over pack and forget something that I needed. Fatboy is worried about having to spend money. My Fiance P1 Fireman thinks he can fit in scuba diving and clift diving on this trip. I say no to both ideas. Maybe I will snorkle. Jeff Lewis Neal is happy that he will get a lot of mic time. He wishes he can go on the trip.

Friday I am Bahama bound!  I am so excited.  5 days at sea with The Rise Guys.   We are headed to the Caribbean from Charleston .  I have never been on a cruise, or have I traveled out of this Country.  Of course I think of the “Love Boat” or Gilligan’s Island.  The Poseidon Aderventure  and the Titanic are movies that taught me some survival skills. I will also be sharing a room with P1 Fireman.  It is a month before our wedding.  We will see if this will test our relationship.  Especially, if one of us gets sea sick.  I am so looking forward to hanging out with the P1’s.  I hope to meet some new people and party on the fun ship!  I will try to blog everyday so you can be a part of our hilarity on the high seas.

In reality, I’m more likely to be lost in the Bermuda Triangle like so many people used to be but don’t seem to be anymore.
I’m not afraid of boats or the water. Maybe I should be, but I have a reputation for being bull-headed and stubborn because I am…bull-headed and stubborn. I have reason to be afraid. Dating back as far as I can remember, I’ve had terrible luck with boats and lakes and oceans and water in general.
When I was around five years old, I had a run-in with paddle boats at Santa’s Land in Cherokee, NC. Paddle boats are great fun if you’re just hanging out in a pond. You drive the boat like riding a bike and it’s a good time and in boner pill commercials you see old people paddling around in ponds holding hands before they go have disgusting sex.
Rather than a lemon party breaking out, my paddle boat ride ended when I fell in the lake while trying to feed a monkey. That’s the great part of their paddle boat lake. They have animals, like monkeys, living on islands. So you paddle around and feed the animals. Or, if you’re me, you fall in the water and proceed to flip out when some stupid lady goes, “OH MY GOD THERE’S A SNAKE IN THE WATER!”
To summarize to this point, I’ve fallen into a nasty pond and I am freaking out because I’ve been told there is a snake in the water with me. I can’t climb back on to my own paddle boat, and there is a curious and potentially deadly monkey staring me down from his island home in the North Carolina mountains.
Thankfully, a nice man took a chance and hefted my husky behind from the brown water. I almost pulled him in the way the Royal Rumble went down with Sid Vicious and Hulk Hogan in 1992, but he kept himself on the boat and rescued me from having to wade 100 yards in chest-deep water.

Example #2, the pirate ship ride at Ghost Down. You know, the one that swings to and fro and looks like a pirate ship. You’ve definitely seen one here or there in your life. It’s a fun time. And it barely counts as a boat, but for the sake of my theme it definitely does.
At this point, I was probably 4-6. It seems like it was before my Santa’s Land trip, but it very well could have been the same one. We were at Ghost Town. I was in redneck heaven watching dudes dressed like cowboys shoot each other and pretend to be shot. I saw some proud Cherokee people sacrifice their dignity and do rain dances with fat pale face tourists. Like me! To top it all off, we rode the pirate ship! And my mother freaked out in a way that scarred me for a good portion of my childhood. Her blood-curdling screams of terror scared the hell out of me like few things ever scared a small child. It was like hearing someone get stabbed, but watching them have a good time on an amusement park ride. I wasn’t the same again till I went to Disney World with my grandma’s church group and rode the roller coasters with my cousin. My cousin turned out to be far more manly than my mother, who it turns out had no place on the pirate ship since she was terrified on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Example #3, Disney World! The trip with my grandma’s church group started out well. I was on a bus with a bunch of old people and a few other kids. Mainly old people. I have no idea why the old people wanted to go to Disney World but more importantly I did not care. This was my chance to visit the Magic Kingdom and I could never miss such a thing. Unfortunately, this was the continuation of my nautical numbskullery. I don’t know if they still have those cool little sprite boats, but they did when I was there as a kid! Mine broke down.
The ferry…it broke down, too.
The submarine ride where it seems like you really go under water but I’m not sure if you actually do…it broke down, too.

This all takes us up to more recent stories. This summer, I’ve been stranded on Lake Hartwell on a broken down boat, then caught in a monsoon later on the same day. I’ve fallen down the stairs on a house boat and compressed my spine like someone stepping on a Coke can. I lost my hat, sat on my glasses, cut my legs, stubbed my toes, and bruised myself in mysterious ways. It’s all part of a day on the lake if you’re me. It’s like the water unleashes my inner Jerry Lewis.

Other maritime mishaps also highlight my youth. Don’t worry. I can’t fit them all in fewer than 1000 words. There are simply too many, and I am simply too wordy.

When I was 2 or 3, I was going to some daycare here in Greenville. I have no idea which one, but I remember it was around the time I was wearing cowboy boots and fire suits as part of my daily attire. It wasn’t GrrAnimals. It was GrrAnderson. Bordering on GrrAntreville. Osh Kosh B’Homeland Park.
Anyway, one day we went to the YMCA to learn how to swim! I was 2 or 3. It’s one of my earliest memories. I don’t remember this part, but apparently my parents forgot we were going to take swimming lessons that day. Fast forward through breakfast and some play time and some dude I’ve never met before is throwing me into a YMCA pool in my tighty whities. Eventually I did learn to swim, but not that day. That day I didn’t learn much of anything, but remember you pay people to do this stuff to your kids.

Another time, I was probably 7 or 8 and our summer vacation found us in Myrtle Beach! I was there with my mom. My dad never went on our beach trips. He only went on our Pigeon Forge trips. We never went anywhere else. Myrtle Beach, Pigeon Forge, and that’s it.
So we were in Myrtle Beach! Exciting. Beachfront hotel! More exciting! One evening, I remember playing in the pool while my mom sat in a chair reading some stupid book probably written by John Grisham or Robin Cook. There was a couple in the hot tub and they were doing something I decided was sexual in nature. I had no idea what was going on, but I was taking mental notes all the same. I kept up the splashing and the playing so Moose never got suspicious. My attention, though, was on the drunk chick and why she was pretending her boyfriend was one of those Fry-Guy spring horses at a McDonalds playground. A few minutes later, two old women are on a second story balcony and they’re yelling at the people in the hot tub and pulling a good old-fashioned “WILL YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN?” routine. The drunk people in the hot tub are angry because their fornication has been interrupted by old women. They were yelling, too. They said I didn’t know what was going on. The old women asked me if I knew what was going on so I answered and I told the truth. A few minutes later, hotel security showed up and the Myrtle Beach PD showed up and nobody went to jail but nobody really went home happy, either. Except me. I was glad I got to be in an untelevised episode of Cops.
Also, that Robin Cook must be one hell of a writer because I’m pretty sure Moose never put the book down during any of it.

With a history like that in the water, there’s a good chance no one will see me alive again on the mainland after Friday when I board the ship. The Poseidon Adventure could become The…uh, Posninedon Adventure. We could all be aboard the Carnival Nine-tanic. I don’t think even Mandarax can help me now!

Hey guys, hope all is well.  The best TV show in the history of TV shows is clearly “Eastbound and Down” on HBO starring Danny R. McBride as Kenny Powers.  It returns with a new season on September 26th.  The premise is Kenny is a former major league baseball pitcher who has been reduced to teaching P.E. at a middle school in Shelby, NC.  He’s a former steroid abuser, still a racist, still a cokehead, with the occassional X trip.  All the while, teaching middle school kids.  He’s most definitely white trash.  But, surely there are others in real life, in professional sports.  So I researched and came up with this.  I wanted to do a Top 10 but here’s my Top 9 (in honor of my soon to be son James Alan.)

1. John Daly
Hmmm. Does JD bear any similarities to KP? Only all of them.

Alcoholism? Check
Garish behavior? Quintuple Check
Questionable wardrobe choices? Infinity check
Less-than-athletic physique? Yup

While Daly hails from Kentucky and Kenny F’n Powers hails from Shelby, North Carolina, that’s where the differences end. Despite the fact that one is fictional and one is real, I’m still about 80% surprised that these guys haven’t been named as co-defendants in some sort of strip club brawl in southern Illinois, or something.

Daly is a chain-smoking, frequently divorced, alcoholic who treats golf more as a burden than as a career. And all accounts indicate he’s rocking a pretty seriously gambling addiction.

Kenny Powers is a foul-mouthed, blindly patriotic alcoholic who gets laid on the reg.

I’m politely asking someone to set these two guys up with a Jet-ski dealership sooner rather than later.

2. John Rocker
Putting John Rocker on this list is like filling in the “Free” square on your BINGO card. It’s nice, but it’s so easy it’s not even fun. Even producers of Eastbound and Down said that Rocker’s antics helped them craft the beautifully flawed protagonist that is Kenny ”You’re F’n Out” Powers.

To Rocker’s credit, it’s pretty impressive that he so effortlessly was able to anger an entire culture. To his detriment, he did so in the easiest way possible: by being really, really, really, really racist and ignorant in public interviews. Good job, John.

While KP occasionally suffers from what we will euphemistically call “overenthusiastic patriotism,” he never really dropped the racial hammer the way J-Rock did when he opened his less-than-Ivy-League-educated mouth regarding the virtues of diversity on an NYC train trip. What the hell was he doing riding the train, anyway?

3. Karl Malone
While not technically “white,” Karl Malone models himself after more than a couple aspects of life that could certainly be considered “white trash”. He’s by almost all accounts a great guy, but certain tendencies could lead people to think he’s perhaps a bit of a redneck.

First off, how does the most dominant power forward in the heyday of the NBA spend his off season? Well, Malone spent it by splitting his time by ranching (a little odd) and touring the country in a full-sized 18-wheeler with a beautiful desert landscape painted on the side. What? Yes. Unfortunately, an image of the rig is not available online, but I promise I saw it on NBA Inside Stuff when I was 13 and the image has not left me since.

Case stated and proven.

4. Ben Roethlisberger

This one shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone. If you’re a superstar pro athlete with the world at your fingertips and you manage to keep squandering your good fortune with motorcycle accidents and sexually aggressive behavior, you might be a redneck. Excuse me. “White Trash”.

Seriously Ben. You’re a Super Bowl-winning QB with national notoriety and more money than Scrooge F’n McDuck. If you need to be any sort of aggressive when it comes to tapping ass, you might want to re-evaluate your approach.

And if you’re looking for an adrenaline rush, rather than play Evel Kneivel on your bike, try a pastime that thousands of other NFL players rely on. It’s called “not taking your NFL career for granted and jumping on a damn motorcycle.” The sublime pleasure of knowing you still have a career may not be as heart-pumping as crashing your hog, but it lasts a hell of a lot longer.

The best thing about watching people like Ben is the fact that these guys generally get worse as they get older. Right now, Ben is in the “Kevin Durant” stage of white-trashdom. We see the frequent flashes of brilliance and continue to hold our breath to see what his eventual ceiling will be. If it’s anything less than “head-butting Taylor Swift at the 2013 Kids’ Choice Awards”, I’m going to be quite disappointed.

5. Jason Williams
If KP is good ‘ole boy white trash, then Jason Williams would be representing the urban version. White trash can take many forms, and although mullets, gold chains and football jersey can be good indicators, they are by no means the only indicators. Williams’ freaky shaved head, countless tats, nauseating nickname (White Chocolate? Ugh) also point to someone who may not be presenting the best humanity has to offer.

While he was a standout basketball player for Florida, it turned out the fourth time was a charm when he violated the teams substance policy. He was kicked off the team, and, consequently, out of school. When asked about his favorite experience in college, Jason explained that his expulsion was his favorite memory. A world-beater in the making, folks.

The clincher, though? He has WHITEBOY tattooed on his knuckles. Though the eight letters match up on the eight knuckles, to the untrained eye, it probably looks more like WHIT EBOY . You have to think these things through, Jason. He’s also gotten in scraps with the NBA and team management for tossing out some racial slurs at Asian fans sitting court-side and publicly declaring that his team, the Grizzlies “sucked” and is the “worst in the NBA”.

At least KP is funny.

6. Larry Bird
A good rule of thumb: if you’re nickname throughout your pro career is “The Hick from French Lick,” you’re probably gonna get a nod on this list. While Bird is a basketball legend and not a walking punchline, he definitely demonstrates more than a handful of the symptoms of the white trash constituency. Let’s dive into them with everyone’s favorite list-making device, bullet points:

* Born in a place called French Lick.
* Mullet.
* Looks not unlike a chicken.
* Married a chick in high school, divorced her 11 months later in 1977, fathered a daughter during that period, but denied his paternity until 1998 when the daughter went on Oprah. Sweet.
* An Oklahoma man sentenced to 30 years in jail requested that his sentence be changed to 33 years to match Bird’s number. Request was granted. That’s a special kind of fan, right there.

7. Steve Howe
If this guy wasn’t a professional baseball player for so many years, he probably would have qualified for his Screen Actors Guild card by making hundreds of appearances on COPS. He was eventually banned from the game of baseball for his predilections. And what exactly were they? That sweet, sweet china white. Blow. Nose candy.  Booger sugar.  The devil’s dandruff. Yayo. Cho-canya.

He LOVED it. He loved it like Tony Montana, Lindsay Lohan, George Rogers, and Stevie Nicks combined. In a surprisingly strong 17-year career, he got suspended for the white stuff seven times. Often times, his suspensions were for full seasons, marring his career with inconsistent play and a tainted legacy.

Of course, I realize that there is a big distinction between having a drug addiction and being white trash, but when you spend such a large portion of your livelihood with bail bondsmen, court hearings, and apologizing for the same damn thing over and over, that line gets a little blurred. I’m sympathetic to the plights of the addict, but this guy is at the very least an honorary member.

8. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“Watch it, Maffew!”  Besides operating under the stereotype that all NASCAR drivers are red necks, Dale Jr. seems to be a pretty stand up guy who isn’t blowing rails at college bars in rural Georgia.

However…

He’s got the twang, the strangely intimate love affair with Corvettes (I know they’re his sponsor, but still), opened a bar named Whiskey River in Charlotte, and a candy bar called “Big Mo”. I have eaten the Big Mo. I recommend that no one ever eat the Big Mo.

Plus, fashion senses of KP and Jr are pretty uncannily similar. Both of them would look right at home in a satin jacket that said in cursive on the back “The Heartbeat of America is Today’s Chevy Truck”. They both also dig on the wraparound sunglasses, despite the fact it’s no longer 1995.

9. Tiger, Tiger Woods, yall!
Nine months ago, I would have been laughed at the building, or at least been stared at uncomfortably for a long time if I had suggested Tiger was a redneck. He was graceful, mysterious, insanely rich, and not white. And he golfed.

However, if we take a look a the rap sheets of KP and Tiger, we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss them as that different.

Banging out waitresses at Orlando-area Olive Gardens and Cheesecake Factories?

KP: Probably
Tiger: Definitely

Gettin’ effed up on the reg and crashing your SUV?

KP: Maybe
Tiger: Definitely

Driving a Buick when you can afford a much nicer car?

KP: Probably
Tiger: Definitely

Owns a tanning bed?

KP: Definitely
Tiger: Eh, probably not

While these are by no means definitive, the purpose here is to look beyond skin color and status when we look for “white-trashedness.” Kenny Powers has opened our eyes to a new cultural dynamic in sports. Has it always been around? Probably. But it sure seems to be a lot more prevalent now. Pray for us.  Tickle it guyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyys!

-Maffew

facebook.com/themaffew

I had the pleasure of interviewing Author Neal Powers on the topic of Post Traumatic Stress in the Military.  Check out the interview!

Click now for the interview with Neal Powers

It’s early here on Thursday morning and Bathwater Roullette is going to happen on the show later. I’m just hoping no one had too much “fun” last night and I get there water. Hopefully it won’t hurt too bad, lol. Other than that, gonna lay around and be lazy today before the weekend gets going and we are off to Spittoono on Saturday night. Office is a mess to, will post a pic soon, then you can ask yourself, how can three fat guys comfortably fit in there, lol. Good Thursday all, the bastard son of Friday,

FB.