ApeDonkey Power Rankings 3/29/11

Top 5

1. Houston - This is a big week here in Houston. The Final Four is coming along with all the attractions and events attached to it, as is the Shell Houston Open. The weather has been great here all week and should hold up through the weekend. Now don't go looking for me at any of the events around town because the only thing I like less than people is crowds of people. So I encourage everyone to get here spend your money and leave my city in one piece. We may never get another Super Bowl but the Final Four will be back in 5 years. See you then.

2. El Real - The only positive to getting the Power Rankings out so late is that I'm able to include El Real on the list. We've been waiting for this place to open for months. I was hoping to check it out when Southbound Food did their live broadcast from there a couple weeks ago but I left San Antonio too late and was unable to make it. We decided to wait until they started serving lunch so we could go at an off hour. That's always best with young kids. We finally made it over today and the food was a great as advertised. I went basic with cheese enchiladas, queso, rice and beans. The wife had the fajitas that came with a cup of this frothy garlic butter that I could have drank by the glassful. If you're a margarita person definitely get it on the rocks. It's simple, strong and delicious. Minus the two customers who were obviously pissed that I had procreated, it was a great experience.

3. John Harris - It was announced last week that John Harris will be getting his own national show working the overnight 1am - 5am central on Sporting New Radio. I've listened to Johnny since his days as the college football expert all the way through to his show with Raheel. By the way, I was completely wrong about the pairing of John and Harris. They've consistently produced a fun, entertaining show following John and Lance on 1560 The Game. I fully expect Raheel to continue killing it from 10-12p with a rotating list of guest hosts including David Nuno and Richard Justice.

Now back to John and his new show. Barry and I discussed this and thought this was a great move for John. His encyclopedic sports knowledge plays perfectly with the late night national caller. No one is better equipped to take calls about teams coast to coast and be able to talk intelligently about the entire roster. Johnny going national feels like a kid from the old neighborhood making it. He's made so in a sense we've all made it. I wish him all the best and any time I'm up at that hour, I'll be sure to check him out.

4. Shameless - Thank God for Shameless. Of the shows that had season finales the past couple of weeks, Shameless, Californication and Big Love, Shameless was the only one that gave us an excellent satisfying finale. After a little bit of a shaky start, Shameless has come on to be my second favorite new show of the year just behind Terriers and ahead of Rubicon. Of course, it's the only one of those three to get picked up for a second season. William H. Macy was the name going in to the season but Emmy Rossum has been the breakout star. She's given us a powerhouse performance as Fiona, a young woman just trying to keep her family together and raise her five brothers and sisters. It's really been an outstanding first season with strong performances from all the Gallagher kids. If you haven't checked it out try to catch up before season 2 starts next year.

5. Birthday Party - We celebrated my son's 2nd birthday this past weekend and if you weren't part of my immediate family, you weren't invited. That's because I'm a good human being and I know no one wants to be bothered with a kids birthday especially on a big sports weekend. The 2nd birthday is the one time you can get away with a simple "party" like this. Birthday number 2 lacks the milestone factor of the first birthday and the kid still doesn't know what the hell is going on. By the 3rd birthday they are starting to get it and from 4 on you're screwed. Just open up the pocket book and kiss your weekends goodbye because you'll be going to a birthday party every weekend for the next ten years. So happy birthday Cash. I hope you enjoyed your Barry's Pizza and cupcake and we'll do it again next year.


Bottom 5

1. Fucking Thieves - If you follow me on twitter and why wouldn't you be then you probably already know about my truck being broken in to and having my ipod and macbook stolen. My wife and I talked about this and considering all the vital information we had on the laptop like our businesses accounting, art files, tax information, etc. We would have rather they taken the truck and left the computer. Luckily, we do an off site backup for critical client files but what we are learning is that Carbonite apparently is running their servers with 28800 dial up modems. Here we are five days in and we are still restoring files to our new laptop. I could have manually transcribed the missing files by now.

Now let me tell you about the top notch security in the shopping center where Grand Luxe and Nordstrom's Rack is locate. First, when we realized what had happened, my wife had to literally chase the sixty-something year old security guard around the parking lot before I was finally able to get his attention by repeatedly honking at him. Once we had his attention and told him what had happened his reaction was priceless "really? I've been patrolling the area." Uh, yeah sure you were.  He tried to write a report but couldn't find a pen among the hundreds of old lollipop wrappers in his very intimidating golf cart. In the end we'll be alright. Home owner's insurance covers items taken from your car in this kind of situation but I could live without the pain and headache of it all and if the person who did it ends up in a burn unit soon, then all the better.

2. Mad Men - Great news coming out of Hollywood this week is that Mad Men season 5 is a go. The bad news is that we won't get to see it until sometime in 2012. The Sopranos think that's a long lay off. Part of the deal to bring the show back for a fifth season is AMC asking for the producers to cut two minutes from the show to open up more ad time and/or cut two regular characters from the cast. I'm fine with either or both of those options. Go ahead and take Betty or Bert or Ken. I can live without any of them. Bert makes the list because I can't stand people who don't wear shoes at work. If you need to cut a couple of minutes, I say go for it. I don't watch commercials anyway so no skin off my back. Just get your shit together and get Mad Men back on the air. Preferably before my kids graduate high school.

3. President Trump - The most shocking thing I heard more than one time this past week is "I'd vote for Donald Trump if he ran for President." The first time I heard this I stopped in mid conversation to verify what I'd just heard. People apparently think he'd have a good shot to fix the economy which that may be true, I don't know. I did remind them that he's gone bankrupt a couple of times but people do learn from mistakes. My biggest issue is that these people are forgetting one important issue. Donald Trump is a buffoon. This is the guy who hosts Celebrity Apprentice. Do you understand the national embarrassment of having state dinners at the gold leafed white house? Air Force One would be renamed The #1 Air Force One. I haven't even mentioned the hair. That is not presidential hair. You have to go all the way back to the early 1800's and Andrew Jackson to find a coif as crazy and unpresidential as Trump's.

4. Movie Reboots - I was reading an article yesterday that after The Dark Knight Rises they are planning to reboot the Batman series. What? I'm not a fan of all the series rebooting or the term rebooting. Teen Wolf as a Twilightesque show on MTV? The Karate Kid learning Kung Fu from Jackie Chan? Completely recasting and starting over with XMen? Ugh here's how a series is supposed to naturally progress. The first one is great and ground breaking. The second isn't quite as good but you add more villains to make up for the quality and by the fourth and fifth installments you've brought in Joel Schumacher to drive it into the ground. That is the life cycle of a movie franchise. It's tried and true and should not be messed with.

5. Elite Eight - Saturday Nicole Zierlein wrote a very touching blog post about her husband and young sons watching the elite eight games and specifically the Butler game together. I highly recommend you read it. If I wasn't a soulless robot, I probably would have been brought to tears. I on the other hand had a much different experience with Saturday's games. I had a little wager on Florida to beat Butler so I was intently watching that game. With a few minutes left, my wife who couldn't give a crap about basketball and is an incurable workaholic didn't know what to do with herself since she was without her laptop and couldn't work. After she complained of being bored and wanting to go out I finally agreed to go when the game ended. Little did I know the game would head to overtime. Being a man of my word though I said we could leave and I'd listen to overtime in the car. Well that was the plan. From the minute we closed the doors on the car my kid decided to be the loudest most irritating human on the planet. She channeled Lloyd Christmas and sang the words "Wipey, Dipey, Dipey" over and over again for a solid half hour until we finally reached the restaurant. After a nice dinner, the wife wanted to return some pants to The Gap and get a different pair. I was fine with that plan. The Gap was in the same parking lot and she rarely takes a long time doing stuff like that. We were in the store maybe 5 minutes when the 2 year old was going so apeshit crazy I decided I'd take him to the car and listen to the Arizona/UConn game while the girls finished up. I don't know exactly how long they were in the store but I ended listening to nearly the entire spectacular second half of the Zona/UConn game in the car with an exhausted, screaming 2 year old. Come to find out, my 6 year old had recently earned $20 from her grandmother and decided she wanted to buy herself something at Gap Kids. The problem is the self proclaimed fashionista had to actually touch, try on and examine every item in the store. And what did she finally emerge from the store with? A fucking pair of sunglasses. That's how I spent an outstanding Saturday of college basketball.

Can't Trust'em

There are things in this world you just can't trust. Some of them are common sense. Some you learn from personal experience and others still are well kept secrets. Now there's no substitute for life experience when it comes to recognizing trap doors but being the generous person I am, I feel it's my duty to give you a good base of 25 people, places and things that cannot be trusted.

Never Trust...

1. a red headed quarterback.
2. a left footed kicker.
3. a skinny chef (submitted by Heath Parker. Although anyone who's eaten Jaime Zelko's food will disagree.)
4. a white yard guy.
5. anyone who likes to sit in the last row of the movie theater.
6. a man with bedazzled jean pockets.
7. anyone that doesn't like dogs. They're trying to hide something.
8. anyone you play fantasy football with.
9. a Conference USA team to pull over a 4 team parlay for you.
10. the football knowledge of a Cowboys "fan".
11. the 45 year old guy all by himself at Dave & Busters.
12. your order is correct in lane B at Whataburger.
13. a car salesman that doesn't smoke.
14. a guy who doesn't have a favorite team.
15. cat guy.
16. anyone who votes straight ticket.
17. anyone that doesn't know the difference between a Texas and Tennessee accent. Most of Hollywood.
18. anyone on television.
19. anything a kid gives you.
20. anything a teenager tells you.
21. a front runner. Yeah, I'm sure the Lakers, Yankees and Cowboys were always your favorite teams.
22. the guy that can't work a grill.
23. anyone who hasn't held a blue collar job.
24. the guy who wants to go to the mall.
25. bloggers.

OK so who else should not be trusted?

I Kroger. Do you?

I have a question for all the married guys out there. Do you do the grocery shopping? If not why?

I've been the primary grocery shopper for our family since D and I have been married. Early in our marriage she tried the "let's go shopping together" move and I had to quickly squash that. This should be a lesson for everyone, grocery shopping is not a team sport. Anyone that has worked in the corporate world can tell you the best way to inefficiently do anything is to assign it to a committee. Whenever I breeze by a couple shopping together, I always get the same jealous/kill me stare back at me from the husband.

I find that the hour or so I spend in the grocery store is some of the most peaceful time I'll have all week. I put in my headphones, call up a good shopping playlist (last week was The White Stripes) and go to work. I can generally drown out the whole world this way. There was one instance where one of the bus stop moms was standing 6 feet from me waving, her mouth agape like a retarded kid on the bus. Of course, then she went and reported to D that she saw me in the grocery store listening to my ipod as if she'd seen me checking into a hotel with the neighbor. Alas, that's a story for another time.

Aside from the hour of peace let me share some of the other benefits of being the grocery shopper:

• Remember before you had kids, when you could take something to read and spend some good quality time in the bathroom without a 4 year old standing in front of you whining? This is that time again.
• You now own the power of the statement "if you don't like what I got then you do the shopping"
• You can now pick the brands you like, the cut of meat you want, that ice cream your wife never buys.
• You never again have to deal with your wife coming home with the groceries during the 4th quarter of a 3 point football game and wanting your help bringing them in. You now set the shopping schedule.
  
• When your wife's friends find out you do the shopping, they'll think you're a better husband than you really are.
• You get to enjoy all that music your Justin Bieber addicted 8 year old never let's you listen to.
• You get to enjoy those Tupac songs your wife won't let you listen to around the kids.
• There's always at least a few attractive women doing their shopping.
• Samples.

Maybe I'm different but these things are more than enough reasons to get me to the grocery store. But whether you're a man or a woman, I just ask that we all follow three simple rules that will make the shopping experience more enjoyable for us all.

1. Only one person at a time - No couples clogging up the lanes, please.
2. No kids allowed - There should be a law that kids too big to ride in the cart or too young to drive are banned from grocery stores. I'll campaign for any candidate that gets behind this.
3. No cell phones - if you need to talk on your phone, go find a space park and get out of the way. I don't want to hear what Madison did at cheer camp and stop swerving back and forth making it impossible to pass.
   

Wanna watch me melt?

A few years ago, I had to make a tough decision for the betterment of myself, my family and every other relationship in my life. I had struggled for years with depression and anxiety. Even though I had been advised by doctors, psychologists and family members to seek help, my ego never found enough evidence to believe them. Then one day when my daughter was three, I realized how short and relatively mean I was being with her. The next day I made an appointment with a psychiatrist and have been under his care since. Seeking help for this shortcoming has been one of the best things I've ever done.

Well, that time have come again. Four years ago, I lost about 120lbs. However, after I started taking antidepressants, I started to gain weight again. Since then I have gained nearly all the weight I had lost back. I know if I continue down this path, I won't be able to enjoy all the pleasures in life the way I would like.

I knew that once again I needed help. This week I signed up at Quick Weight Loss Center. I had been very skeptical of this place because of their terrible name. Through testimonials and an aggressive radio ad campaign, I decided to check them out for myself. I have been very happy with the program and staff to this point and I'm very confident I will see results very soon.

I am looking to lost 130lbs and I know I can do it. I'm going to document my journey here on this blog. My struggles and my triumphs will both be here as public record. Feel free to ask questions or make comments. As I shed the pounds and get my sexy back, I only ask two things of you. Don't fall in love with me and don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
Here's pictures of where I was and where I am today.