I watch The Jay Leno Show once so you never, ever have to.

As most of you probably know, the former undeserved King of Late Night, Jay Leno, now does a version of his former show five nights a week at 10pm. Why? Because NBC is too cheap to produce scripted programs; and most Reality TV viewers are zonked out on meth by 10, so it would be pointless to air Who Wants to Marry a Hare-Lip at that hour.

Tah Dah! Jay Leno - the human Thomas Kinkade painting - to the rescue. His show constantly comes in last in its time slot, but since it's so cheap to produce, he's making millions of dollars for NBC. I'm going to review the show so none of you discerning TV connoisseurs will ever have to view a second of it. You're welcome.

-The show begins with bland theme music and a montage of pictures of Jay back when he was actually sorta funny. These are fucking old pictures, is what I'm saying.

-Jay comes out and stands like an inch away from the studio audience. It's kind of freaky. He needs to be more like Letterman, a good mile away from the audience; entering the fray only to insult them.

-I've seen this show before. It was The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and it aired at 11:3o every weeknight since 1992.

-As some sort of bizarre "Fuck you!" Jay now has a gray version of Conan O'Brien's haircut. He's taking all of Conan's guests and now he has a geriatric twist on his 'do! Still has the same giant ass-chin, though.

-Olive Garden advertises on this bland, predictable, lowest-common-denominator show? Of course they do. Jay and Olive Garden go together like shit and a place to eat shit.

-Jay does his "Jay Walking" skit with some reality TV stars. He asks easy questions to stupid people and they can't answer them because they're so stupid! This was funny when Howard Stern did it on the radio years ago. People who steal go to hell, Mr. Leno.

-I want to kill these "Real Housewives" stars. Really, this is only Round One of this stolen shitbag? There's more? Fuck.

-Finally, a guest. Julia Louis-Dreyfus can be funny, more so when she isn't being "interviewed" by Jay Leno, but at least Jay isn't up there alone, making me want to end my life.

-Julia is looking good. She's 49 and - unlike 23-year-old Lindsay Lohan - doesn't look ashy and near death.

-I can't get over the main point of this show, its sole reason for being: NBC fucking gave up. They are creatively bereft and going broke, so this is them waving the white-bread flag of surrender to mediocrity. If they really want to save money, NBC should just replace Jay with a homeless guy dressed as a dollar sign. The network can pay him with pints of cheap blended whiskey and he can interview his schizo visions in lieu of celebrity guests. The studio audience gets tubs of post-dated velveeta.

-A new feature on the show is called "10 at 10". Jay asks a celebrity, in this case Billy Crystal, 10 questions a raging half-wit might ask if poked through the frontal lobes with an icepick.

-I wouldn't rush out to see a Billy Crystal movie in 2009, but he's a pretty good talk show guest. He has some amusing stories, but the producers of the Jay Leno show are too cheap to fly him to LA and put him up in a nice hotel, so they ask him 10 retarded questions via satellite from New York. Fuck this show with a ball peen hammer.

-More witless shtick and the show mercifully ends. If I ever watch this again, please fly to Louisville and shoe me in the groins.

"We flushed your sin sticks down to Hell!"

Those of you who are lucky enough not to be employed selling vice products to the American public probably aren't aware of this, but after September 22nd it became illegal to sell clove or flavored cigarettes. It isn't illegal to own them, so if you stocked up smoke away; but we can't sell them to you.

At first I thought the ban was kind of funny because I knew it would piss off smug hipsters who drink shitty beer like Pabst to "save money" but have no problem paying outrageous prices for cloves. At work, they'd stroll up to the front counter with their skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts and ask for Djarum Black, the Official Clove Cigarette of Baseless Pretension. Look at it! It's black, like their wardrobe and souls!

But then I found out that Phillip Morris Tobacco is a major supporter of the ban. Hmmm...that seems odd. Why would a cigarette company support the ban of cigarettes? Perhaps because Phillip Morris isn't in the clove/flavored business? And by supporting a ban "because flavored cigarettes target kids," Phillip Morris looks like good guys instead of the soulless cancer merchants they actually are? Yes and yes.

Oh, here's another little wrinkle to the ban. There's an exemption for menthol cigarettes. Yeah, apparently menthol isn't a flavor. Nope, not a flavor, move along, nothing to see here. Cherry? Totally a flavor. Infants want to smoke cherry cigs before they can fucking walk! But mint (which is what menthol is)? Not appealing to kids at all.

So the federal government banned two products that account for less than two percent of cigarette sales. But menthol, which studies say is favored by eighty percent of black teenagers who smoke, is still perfectly legal.

And while we're at it, isn't "regular" a flavor, too? There aren't any flavorless cigarettes. And no, I'm not saying all cigarettes should be banned. I'm just saying a little consistency would be nice. Or at least try to hide the outright hypocrisy.

At times I'm reassuring...

The other day at work a nice old lady (See, I don't hate all old people!) approached me and said, "I have a rather dumb question to ask."

I emotionally braced myself for yet another soul-crushingly stupid inquiry, but her question - while certainly not brilliant - was so far from dumb that three days later I can't even remember what she asked. I assured her that the question was perfectly acceptable, gave her an answer, and she went on her way to buy old people stuff.

A few minutes later she was at the checkout loudly apologizing for her "dumb" question. I walked up to her and said, "Ma'am, let me put this in perspective. The name of this store includes the word 'liquor' but I have been asked on more than one occasion if we sell liquor here. Your question was not dumb."

"Goodness, 'Do you sell liquor here?' That IS a dumb question," she said as she left.

After experiencing momentary happiness for using an example of typical moronic behavior to make an old woman feel better about herself, I quickly went back to wishing I had learned a trade.

Beer

Saturday afternoon/evening I attended a fundraising event called East Coast, West Coast, No Coast; featuring beers from Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware, Stone Brewery in San Diego, and Bluegrass Brewing Co. here in Louisville.

There were some interesting beers to be had. Stone had a smoked chipotle porter that literally burned going down, kind of like when Dane Cook swallows Satan's jizz, only this tasted good. The local guys at BBC had a beer that had been sitting in bourbon barrels since 2005. To put that in perspective, when this beer was originally put in the bourbon barrels someone somewhere actually gave a fuck about Avril Lavigne. Not me, of course, nor anyone I've ever liked even a little bit, but someone cared about her in 2005, damn it. That's some dated beer.

The most interesting beer I tried was Dogfish's Theobrama, made from a recipe circa 1500 B.C. The recipe was found by doing a chemical analysis of fragments from pottery that once held the beer. Yeah, someone from the brewery went all CSI up in this motherfucker.

The beer tasted good and all, but shouldn't the guy who did this be working on...I don't know...medical research or something? I'm sitting around drinking the beer that got Moses drunk while people are dying needlessly. Doesn't seem right...

Scientist #1: "Yeah, I'm working on stem cell research, should have a cure for Alzheimer's in the next few years. What have you been up to, Bob?"

Scientist #2: "I've got a beer that tastes like Megan Fox's vagina."

Scientist #1: "How is that possible?"

Scientist #2: "Well, we've had it aging in there since the filming of the Transformers sequel."

Scientist #1: "I bow before greatness."

Writing the above crap made me think about beer aged in celebrity vagina and which one I'd like my beer to taste like. You scoff at me now, but in two years when it's all the rage remember you read it here first.

Bourbon is aged in fire-charred oak barrels, and Lindsay Lohan's ex-"boyfriend" called her "firecrotch", so maybe she'd be a good candidate, but personally I wouldn't drink anything that came out of that hell-pit. However, Amanda Seyfried? I'll have two pints of that, please.

A lot of you are asking yourselves "Is this a new low?" and "Is he trying to run off the women in his ever-shrinking blog audience?" and the answers to those questions are "Maybe" and "Of course not, I love my female readers."

Ladies, I'm sure most of you don't have a taste for pussy-flavored beer, so if you want to think about that douche from Twilight tea bagging a vat of pilsner, feel free. I'm sure there's a post to be written about beer that tastes like celebrity cock-n-balls, and I urge one of you to write it.

Did this post veer dangerously off course? Yes it did, so I'll try to bring it back. The fundraiser was enjoyed by all and raised a substantial amount of money for charity.

Facebook

I have mixed feelings about Facebook. But then again, I have mixed feelings about everything but microbrewed beer. Still, there are many colors in the Facebook rainbow, and some of them are as annoying as shit.

-How often do you get this update: A friend just sent you a vial of pig sperm. Want to find out who sent it? Click here. So yeah, I'm curious as to who would send me a vial of pig sperm, so I click and it won't tell me unless I subscribe to ten different magazines and join the Air Force. Facebook my friend, it just isn't that important to me.

-Why are people I barely know challenging me to quizzes? You're my cousin's ex-girlfriend; what difference does it make which one of us knows more about Gilligan's Island?

"You know who probably thinks he knows a lot about Gilligan's Island but probably doesn't know as much about Gilligan's Island as he thinks he does?"

"Who?"

"Remember Brian's cousin, Todd, the guy we met at that bar that one time?"

"Yeah, he totally seemed like a guy who'd overestimate his Gilligan's Island knowledge."

"I'm going to challenge him to quiz-off on Facebook. The subject: Gilligan's Island."

"Well played, madame. Well played."

-I joined "Mobsters" several months ago and have not once played it. As in never. But several times a day I get notices that (Insert name here) won a fight with your help! Click here to collect your reward. Keep your reward, because I didn't help you, at least not willingly. Am I "killing the police chief" and "bribing a judge" while I sleep? I demand answers!

-There's an opinion poll for everything, and the latest is Who's Right: Kanye or Taylor? Really? Is this a debate? This Taylor person was accepting a crappy award when a drunk guy grabbed the mic from her and told her she didn't deserve to win. Oh, the dilemma over which one was right...

Having said that, enough crocodile tears for Taylor Swift. "Wah...the nineteen-year-old millionaire who won the genetic lottery had a moment of discomfort. Boo hooo." Yes, Kanye is an asshole. We all agree. Now move along, please.

-I also get this a lot: (Insert name here) took the "Which failed birth control am I?" quiz with the result: "I am a busted condom."

And then they'll comment "I thought I'd be a forgotten pill, or at least the Rhythm Method."

Is my life a bad '80s cop movie? 'Cause I'm too old for this shit.

It started on Thursday with what was just going to be a few beers with a couple of coworkers. Hey, why not, right? But after we left the brewpub we ended up at the Back Door, notorious for being named like a gay bar and pouring drinks so strong it makes my liver hurt to even think about it. Apparently at one point, after a few of those drinks, I threw ice cubes at my friend's date. I'm sure I was making an important point. Or maybe I'm just an asshole. Actually, it was a running joke; no harm done.

Friday night a friend from work had a birthday party, complete with two kegs of good beer (almost unheard of in the Bud Light-dominated realm of keg parties), a refrigerator full of jello shots and a stocked liquor cabinet. I had a ride home, which of course gave me a good excuse to drink a lot of bourbon. While there I encountered a lot of cool people and the most annoying drunk chick ever.

I know this sounds hypocritical coming from someone who chucked ice at a near stranger the previous night, but some people shouldn't be allowed to consume alcohol. For instance, if you're already stupid, and this particular young lady was amazingly dumb, booze will not make you smarter; it'll just make previously happy party-goers flee whichever room you enter.

When we left the party, we ate at Barbara Lee's Kitchen, a nearby 24-hour diner. I'm rarely frightened by a restaurant staff, but sweet heyzeus these people were like an open casting call for "inbred" roles in a Deliverance remake. Our order was taken by a girl whose eyes were so close together she blinked and her left eyelash became entangled with her right eyelash. The food was cooked by Eminem's retarded 8 Mile understudy, then served to us by Andre the Giant's female doppleganger, who communicated with a complex series of wheezes and grunts. I had a drunken desire to mate with her unibrow and give her a rare "pearl headband", but I refrained.

I had to work at 9am the next morning, and I'm pretty sure I was still legally drunk as I drove to the store. To say it was a long day is to criminally understate how fucking long a day it was. Let's just leave it at that.

On any other day I would have gone straight home and took a nap like a smart old man, but Saturday was the Original Highlands Art and Music Festival, one of my favorite hometown events. They close down part of Baxter Avenue so there's drinking in the streets, and I loves me some street drinking. I started the early evening by sitting at a table outside of The Tequila Factory, a new trendy excuse to sell overpriced drinks and mediocre Mexican food. I had some painfully average salsa and two kinda pricey but delicious margaritas as we listened to music and did some fine people-watching on a beautiful day. I'm sure we'll pay for this mild summer with apocalyptic ice storms, wind storms, and plagues of locust later in the year, but I've really enjoyed the relative lack of schweatyness.

Later that night, I discovered I could either pay five dollars for a 16-ounce Bud Light served by street vendors, or step inside one of the bars and pay the same price for a 20-ounce cup of delicious beer that doesn't make a mockery of the brewing process. Not surprisingly, I opted for the latter.

It was about 10:15 pm when I hit the wall. I was listening to a very good local band when I suddenly felt like I was going to collapse. It was time to go home and rest.

I didn't leave the house on Sunday. I sat around watching football. It was just what I needed.

Recent observations...

-The other day I was at Target (Wal-Mart for people who bathe) and I noticed a Blu-Ray version of Bring It On: In It to Win It on sale for $29.99. Are folks going to make the expensive switch to Blu-Ray so they can spend thirty bucks to see a cheerleader movie in hi-def? This piece of crap wasn't even released to theatres. They'll give you the dvd version of the same movie if you buy a twelve pack of Mountain Dew.

-Apparently KFC is test marketing a "sandwich" called The Double Down which consists of bacon, two kinds of cheese, something called "Colonel's Sauce", and...wait for it...two fried chicken breasts instead of bread. Yeah, I thought it was a joke, too. Sadly, it is not.

Yes, this is an abomination, but if the evil minds at KFC are really trying to kill everyone in this country - and what other reason could there be for such a product - they could do much better. I suggest shaping the contents of a KFC Bowl into a ball, dipping it in thick batter, and frying it in human body fat, the kind Tyler Durden used to make soap. Stick that between two fried chicken breasts and you've got yourselves a sam'ich, KFC.

-I suppose it is kind of "socialist" to take care of all sick people, but why don't we seem to have any qualms about being socialist in other areas? For instance, I have no children but pay taxes to keep schools open. People who don't drive pay taxes for highway upkeep. We pay for firefighters even if nothing of ours catches fire, we pay for police when we aren't the victims of crime, and we pay for war whether or not we support it. But for some reason we draw the line at health care. "People are sick? Fuck 'em!" I just don't understand why this is even up for debate. The United States is something like 37th among developed nations when it comes to the quality of health care.

That is fucking unacceptable. It should EMBARASS every American that we've sunk so low. If we can all get together and pay for firefighters, police, schools, war, etc., we can unite to take care of our sick people. If this is really a "Christian nation" as described by politicians from both parties, how can we sit around and choose who gets to live? Do any of the Christian right actually believe the words of Jesus, or is it simply lip service to get votes from people who don't agree with their economic policies? I already know the answer to that, by the way. I pray they'll DO something to prove me wrong.

-Oh, and all of those angry old people screaming at town halls across America need to relax. You see, these old fucks are worried money will be spent to keep people in their twenties and thirties from dying, leaving none to help them live to see one hundred. We get it...you're better than everyone else because you didn't die young. Congratulations on that. No one is going to touch your medicare, so will you please give the rest of us a chance to one day be mean and useless?*

*Joke's on them. I'm already mean and useless.

It's Official: Society is Retarded

The internet is like the cell phone in that both are sometimes entertaining modern conveniences that have undoubtedly made society far far worse than it was before their respective inceptions. For example, there is quite a stir over President Obama's televised address to the nation's children on the subject of the importance of staying in school. Right-wingers are outraged that someone they didn't vote for and who doesn't share every single one of their core beliefs is going to talk to their kids.

I know facts are like nuclear waste to the Dittoheads, but it's a FACT that Ronald Reagan gave a televised speech to school kids back in the 80s; and it's a FACT that George HW Bush followed suite. I was alive during those events, and the "outrage" just wasn't there. The people, if any, who were offended were most likely isolated loners left to stew quietly in their own bitter juices.

But now there's the 24-hour news channels and the internet to supply and distribute uninformed opinion, so the isolated loners are connected. Don't believe me? Hell, you're reading the opinions of an isolated loner RIGHT NOW!

I'm going to guess how this "controversy" came about: Some Fox News flunky said "Obama is trying to indoctrine your children," and it ended up on a million blogs. Suddenly some idiot's half-assed agenda is being reported as if Jesus wrote it on Christina Hendricks' tits. Then several million simpletons who can't be bothered to write paragraphs twittered "Blah blah Obama blah brainswash blah."

The solution to all of this is simple. If you hate Obama so much that you don't want him telling children to stay in school, simply wait for your child to get home and tell him/her that dropping out is perfectly acceptable. Everyone wins.

I read somewhere that this perceived liberal indoctrination will lead to an increase in home-schooling. Oh, that's just fucking great. Exactly what this country needs, more social outcasts who think the Earth is flat.

"Honey, I just realized that everyday life might accidentally subject our child to alternative viewpoints."

"Well fuck that. I want the seed of my loins to be narrow-minded and willfully ignorant, just like us. Let's home school her."

"But...but we're both fucking morons."

"So?"

Fuck it... I'm all for the total collapse of civilization. Since I can already read the internet on my cell phone, someone needs to invent a phone that will give me orgasms and store my excrement, for I no longer have the energy to find drunken whores and public toilets.

Oh, and Happy Labor Day!

Attack of the Old People

Out of all of the old people who came into our store yesterday, only one of them was outwardly crazy, so that isn't a bad percentage, I guess. There were of course several surly old bastards with questionable hygiene, but only a single one of them was certifiable.

He came in wearing brown pants, a brown shirt, and a brown blazer, all in clashing shades, naturally. From now on I'm calling this outfit the Turd Tuxedo. He spoke in confusing non sequiturs, paid for his pint of terrible liquor, and walked toward the automatic exit door.

Here's where the fun began, because I don't believe this man had ever seen a door that opens automatically. He kept staring at it while it was open, then it would start to close as he moved forward, which startled him, causing him to retreat. This went on for several minutes. I fully expected him to shout "LORDY, THE DOOR'S MAGIC!!" and run screaming down an aisle. Finally, one of our cashiers, who is a painfully naive and sincere young lady, said without a hint of sarcasm or vindictiveness, "Sir, it's okay for you to walk through the door."

That seemed to be the encouragement he needed, for he proceeded to leave the building and, although dumbfounded by a door, felt confident enough to operate an automobile the size of a tank. I'm assuming he plowed into a school bus on the way home.

Not long after Turd Tuxedo left I had to process a merchandise return. No big deal, but this was an Old Person Return. What's the difference between a regular return and an old person return? Well, you and I would return wine or liquor if it had obviously gone bad; or perhaps if someone gave us a bottle we didn't like we would return it unopened for an exchange. Old people, on the other hand, like to buy cheap ass shit, try it, and then return it if they don't like the way it tastes. Oh, the crafty fuckers will say "It went bad" but we know what spoiled wine smells like. These cheap bastards are lying to us. Unfortunately, it's against store policy to shout "LIAR! DIE, YOU LOUSY FUCKING LYING SACK OF SHIT!" at the dishonest elderly, so we have to stand there and eat their bullshit sandwich.

The guy yesterday was returning a four-pack of 250ml boxes of merlot. These are what pass for Juicy Juice at R. Kelly's house, and we sell a four-pack for $2.50. And it didn't taste good? Really, oh Sommelier to the fuck-brained, you paid less than three dollars for a litre of wine and it didn't have the "taste profile" you were hoping for? Fuck you! Most people would have tasted the wine, spit it out, and said "Well, I'm a moron for thinking this shit would taste good. I'll never buy that again." But you got up, ate breakfast at Bob Evans, and drove to the liquor store to complain about the taste of wine in a fucking Capri Sun container? Isn't your time and/or dignity worth at least $2.50? No? Then kindly die.

Normally for a return under five dollars I'll just reach into the register and give them cash, but this guy was being a jerk so he got store credit. I hope he doesn't spend it all at once.

A Death Wore a Feathered Mullet Special Investigation:

THE CALIPARI EFFECT

What does it mean when an event that supposedly attracted hundreds of people isn't remembered by anyone?

Yesterday, University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari allegedly made an in-store appearance at a Borders bookstore in downtown Louisville to promote his new book, Success the Douchebag Way. It was reported by the local newspaper and television stations, but attendees and Borders employees have no recollection of the event.

"Something big happened here yesterday," store manager Will Myers said. "I scheduled extra help, and according to the electronic journal we had stronger than average sales, but I can't for the life of me remember any of the details."

And it isn't just the people who worked the event. Eastern Kentucky resident Skeeter Reynolds was at Borders when the event was scheduled, but doesn't remember a thing.

"Yeah, I loaded up the wife and kids and headed over to Loserville, so of course a crack-usin' street gang threatened us and offered to impregnate my 13-year-old daughter," Mr. Reynolds stated. "Heh, joke's on them....she's already pregnant. Anyways, I remember bein' real happy on the ride back to Possum Falls, but for the life of me I don't remember why."

How is all of this possible? University of Louisville professor Sharon McDonald has a theory:

"Look at the career of John Calipari. His 1992-'93 U-Mass team went to a Final Four and had it stricken from the record books. Then his 2006-'07 Memphis State squad was a few missed free throws away from winning the national championship, only to have the entire season nullified. The evidence suggests that anytime John Calipari is involved with something, it's as if it never happened. I call this The Calipari Effect."

Whether this is a paranormal phenomenon or, according to Calipari apologists, an isolated incident, Skeeter Reynolds isn't happy.

"All I know is that I drove clear to Lousyville for nothin'," he said.

When reminded that without Louisville's tremendous state tax burden there wouldn't even be a road to and from his hometown, Reynolds mumbled something about "Pitino" and "baby killer" and walked away.