I just want to start by saying that I hope that everyone had a fantastastic holiday weekend!  I know I did as it was mine and Tessa’s first Thanksgiving together!  Poor thing had to work until 7 am Thanksgiving Day so she was worn out most of the day having only managed to sneak in a two hour nap before we went to my aunt and uncle’s house.

After feasting and visiting for a couple of hours, we drew names for Christmas gifts and then dropped a plate off at my Aunt Pat’s who was working on Thanksgiving then went to go see my mom in her new apartment.  From there, it was off to Spartanburg to visit Tessa’s grandmother for yet another feastly visit!

After meeting members of her family, we decided to go home and rest.  Upon arrival, we decided that rest wasn’t in the cards so we decided to gear up and head to the outlet mall in Gaffney for some midnight Black Friday shopping.  Needless to say, the crowd was a force to behold but we managed to get some Christmas shopping done even if it was mostly for ourselves!

We got home and finally crawled into bed around 4 am and slept in for most of the day then ventured out for food, more shopping and even a movie!  We hit Red Robin for some gourmet burgerage then ran over to Garden Ridge and Old Time Pottery to find some Christmas decorations before checking out the 7:50 screening of Due Date starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis.  The film was a hilarious venture in the woes of travel quite similar to that of 1987’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles starring Steve Martin and the late great John Candy.

Due Date  \m/  \m/  \m/  \m/

Considering the striking similarity of Due Date and Planes, Trains & Automobiles and considering Tessa had never seen the latter, I decided to make a run for Best Buy before they closed to pick up the film so she could see it.  BIG MISTAKE!  Best Buy is notorious for being Twisted Todd’s tantalizing toy store and had fantastic deals on some of mine and Tessa’s favorite shows such as My Name is Earl and The Big Bang Theory.  We both already had the first seasons of both shows but all seasons were on sale for just ten bucks each for Earl and fifteen for Big Bang.  Oh, and season three of Metalocalypse happened to be there as well….oh yeah, Twisted was naughty!

So, needless to say, much of the remainder of the weekend was spent glued to couch with eyes fixated on the TV!  I think we left only to go to my cousin Ray’s house to watch Carolina whoop Clemson’s ass Saturday night but that was about it.

It was a great long weekend that was FULL-filling, entertaining, a tad productive and VERY restful!

What do you think! Is the wife right on this one?  Listen to the audio from the story and tell me what you think! Should this dude just let go of the fact that his brother in law hooked up with a chick in his son’s race car bed while he had all the family over for Thanksgiving dinner!  Plus the fact that the guy left a present for the dude’s son to find!

HERE’S THE AUDIO!!

Sex in a race car bed wow

If you’re a nerd like me, you spend a lot of time going through the various Discovery Channels as well as National Geographic and Smithsonian. This particular movie comes on Smithsonian at least nine times a week and I think I’ve probably seen it five times. Surely someone else has seen it and noticed what I’ve noticed.

It is called The Rivals. It is a nice little documentary about a blue collar town’s football team and the arch-rival rich kids who live by the sea in Maine. In this case, the poor kids are really, really poor. They are as poor as the people who live in the little towns you drive through on the way to the beach. Really, really poor.
And the rich kids! They are super-rich. They didn’t even have football till a couple years ago. Till then it was all soccer and sailing and rowing and probably cricket or croquet or whatever else rich people and Europeans in movies do.

Conveniently, both high schools have really good football teams…by Maine standards. They are good enough to play for state championships! They are as good as it gets…in Maine.
Once they get to that part, the whole thing just falls apart because you realize everyone in Maine sucks at football.

Also, literally everyone in Maine is white. There isn’t one non-white person anywhere in the entire movie. Not even in the background just hanging out somewhere apart from the film. Nowhere. Not a Mexican kicker nor a black linebacker nor a Samoan safety. Literally everyone in Maine is 5′5″ and white.

So, if you watch this movie, understand you’re dedicating two whole hours to watching a movie about two of the best football teams in all of Maine and also that the best football teams in Maine would lose 54-6 if they played the worst team in Alabama.

Otherwise I spend my time watching The Walking Dead on AMC. If I’m tired on a Sunday night and go to bed early, I’ll get up early so I can watch it on Monday morning. My long-standing love affair with zombies isn’t well-documented but it will be when someone opens a museum about me.
This show isn’t typical zombie fare, however! It definitely takes place during a global zombie apocalypse and there are definitely zombies everywhere. What separates it is the atmosphere Frank Darabont creates. Most of the great zombie movies have been made by guys who just make zombie movies or they’ve been send-ups of other great zombie movies. Now a different kind of film maker is taking it on and the whole thing is really sort of refreshing. It manages to be captivating and intense and dramatic in a different way than the movies George Romero and Dario Argento have done over a span of nearly a half-century.
What I am saying is I highly recommend it and it is great.

Over the weekend, Tessa and I joined her mom to go see the new Harry Potter flick up in Spartanburg.  Granted I am not as big a fan of the series as Tessa and her mom are (who’ve both read the books), but I do enjoy the films and have caught every one in the theater.  Not to mention that this is the beginning of the end being the first installment in the two part finale from having split the final book into two films.  Definitely can’t wait for part two!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1  \m/  \m/  \m/  \m/

I spent the rest of the weekend resting and bracing myself for what is sure to be an intensely chaotic week since Thanksgiving is just TWO DAYS AWAY and then Tessa and I are diving into the pit of madness that is Black Friday shopping!  May God help us!

Friday night after work I got to take the Planet van out to the latest venue in Greenville, T.K. Fiddler to catch the GNR Tribute band, APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION.  The place looked quite nice and the sound was pretty good as MODERN DAY SLAVE took the stage as the opening act for the evening.  I’d have to say that the venue has some potential!

Saturday, Tessa and I rode up to Hendersonville, NC where I was broadcasting live at Industrial Ink as they were offering Planet listeners $20 tattoos!  I got there early around 2:20 (the broadcast wasn’t scheduled to begin until 3) and there was already quite a line for sign-ups to get ink!  Within an hour, they were booked solid and began giving away rain checks to be cashed in anytime before the end of the year.  As a matter of fact, Tessa and I are going back after holiday shopping on Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend – granted that we don’t spend all our money!

Last night me and the boys of DETHRO TULL got together not to rehearse but to record!  We have been in the process of recording for some time now but have hit various speed bumps and snags but are back on course and last night went exceedingly well as Bogie (Blake), The Kid (Jesse) and I managed to record several takes for three different tunes!  So far, the rough cuts of what we have already done sound great!  Can’t wait until we are done!

Well hello deh-

I feel bad for the Mexicans.  Mi familia really gets a bad wrap.  Gringos always say “Oh you don’t know the language, come back from where you came, ya hear?”  And I agree with those comments from Papa Neal.  But if I could, play Oprah’s Advocate.  Damn, English is tough to learn!  I mean holy Clear Channel!  And here’s why I say this.  Many of you know I have a seven (almost eight) year old daughter named Grace whom is the reason I am alive today.  (I was choking on a hot dog, she punched me in the nuts, I coughed in pain and the dog popped out of my mouth.  And in true Naked Gun fashion it popped over into my Aunt Fuzzy’s mouth)  Back to the foreigners and my kid.  My child and I argued for 45 minutes today about footprints.  We were walking out back by our creek in the sand.  She said, “Look at our feetprints Daddy!”  And it began.  “But Daddy, if it’s more than one foot it’s feet, right?”  “Yes, Grace”  “So, it’s feetprints!”  And this continued, even while I was taking a leak in the woods.  Friends, the point here is this.  Yes, foreigners should learn English if they plan on really making it in this country.  Only make sense.  But good Mattman almighty, it’s gotta be soooooooooo hard. 

Well goodbye deh,

-Maffew

DeadLindsayLohan.com

Betty Crocker now offers a PMS SOS iPhone app. According to the Betty Crocker folks, “When it’s “that time of the month,” most girls could really use a couple of things: a little advanced warning, a bit more understanding and support, and a lot of chocolate … That time of the month well then the app will set the girls up with a coupon for a chocolaty Warm Delights dessert … And guys get to be forewarned with a text and a coupon for a dessert too haha wow!

Well last weekend was fairly uneventful and thankfully so!  I swear I just wish life would slow down sometimes!  I mean who has time to stop and smell the roses?  At least I don’t seem to have the time anyways!  However, being busy can be a good thing!  No ‘idle hands’ here!

Last night though, Tessa and I went out to Longhorn Steakhouse after I got off work and then did some grocery shopping and rented the new Adam Sandler comedy Grown Ups on Blu-ray.  The movie wasn’t very good as far as a story goes but it did have some pretty funny material in the film which redeemed it.  Not bad.  Definitely worth a rental.

Grown Ups  \m/  \m/  \m/

And that’s all I got for now!  I’m working on something good in the realm of mistaken identity!

Unfortunately, Halloween weekend came and went too quickly!  However I did enjoy going to some haunted houses with Tessa and our friends Kelly and John.  The highlight of the night was Gallows Hall on Main St in downtown Greenville!  This haunted attraction was run by theater folks and not just good ol’ boys with masks and chainsaws so that alone gave this one a unique spin and the theme was that of the story of George Burroughs, the minister who was condemned during the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century.

When we got there, we had to sign a piece of paper which I think was intended to be a waiver of some sort.  When we got in, Tessa was called by name to lead the group and choose the door of our fates.  Along the way we encountered a demented cheerleader in a room of mirrors that terrified poor Tessa….as I shoved her out front as she approached!  Bwahahaha!

Before heading home we also hit Nightmare Dungeon which had some good thrills too including a runaway train at the end.

Saturday we slept in then hit Best Buy to grab some movies including John Carpenter’s The Thing on Blu-ray which Tessa had never seen.

We then went to PetSmart and Tessa found an albino looking cat that she fell in love with and adopted.  His name is Bones but you can call him Bonesy….

We just watched movies and spent time with our newly adopted feline for the rest of the day and lit our jack-o-lanterns at night.

Incidentally, we actually went to church on Halloween then went to go see the new Saw film.  I am glad to see the franchise finally come to an end because they were running out of tricks to keep the series afloat.  Plus I thought it ended well bringing the films full circle in its conclusion.

Saw 3D  \m/  \m/  \m/  \n

After the movie, we hit the mall then WalMart where we ended up buying more horror movies!

Now that Halloween is over, it’s time to look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas but with one little speed bump in the road this year: Election Day!  Man, I am sick as crap of all the political ads chock full of muckraking and smear campaigns!

I, myself, have always leaned Republican because of my rather conservative views.  However, since the election of Obama and the rise of these dangerous extremists known as the ‘Tea Party’ (not to mention my dissatisfaction of Mr. W Bush), I have questioned my own political standing….if I ever truly had one that is!

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in being unflinching in your morals and codes of ethics, but the lack of cooperation and bipartisanship in our government is quite alarming.  Instead there is only bickering and no one is willing to back down or meet halfway.  Like I said, I believe in standing for what you believe in, but no one group can run the entire country.  Even if it did, people would still disagree.  It’s in our nature, it is what we do.  No one is going to see eye to eye but common ground must be found somewhere somehow.  We are all human and, most importantly, we are all Americans.

I heard someone say that they are not going to vote today. It makes me wonder why people think that the issues don’t effect them. Hopefully, you can make up your minds with something that should be important to you -your money and your future. The only way a democracy works, is if citizens young and old, are active participants. The alternative to a democracy is not very appealing to me. I couldn’t imagine living with a dictator or communist government. If you don’t vote you can’t complain. We as a Americans should vote because someone gave you the right to vote. Men and women loose their lives every day in Afghanistan and Iraq. They fight for our freedom. You should vote because you can. One vote does make a difference. Its your money! Its your its life and your future! Therefore, we should vote for someone who shares the same values. Otherwise, you get what you deserve. Most Americans want taxation with representation. If we can’t pick decent people to governor us, then we should accept blind faith in a government that doesn’t represent us. Its just business- you should hire the best person to work for you. Nikki Haley and Vincent Sheheen are good candidates. I think the negative press has tainted their images. I plan to vote for the candidate that I feel will be the best for the State of South Carolina .