Vh1, formerly a channel that played music videos (ask your parents), had some kind of tribute to The Who broadcast tonight.

Having watched it, as well as all the various docu-promos that MHD Channel (a joint venture of CMT, MTV and VH1, a subsidary of Viacom) could dig up, I can only come to one conclusion: It’s time to hang it up. Please. You are on the razor’s edge of embarrassing yourselves. I’m begging you. Go home and lie down.

It’s not that Roger’s voice is starting to sound like Vito Corleone’s. It’s not that the vibe of the show is less anarchic rock lightning captured in a bottle and more small-market PBS pledge drive. It’s that every fucking concert is starting to sound like CSI: The Medley. Seriously, Pete. Stop taking the money. When Sean Penn got up and made the statement that “The Who never sold out”, he obviously doesn’t get CBS on his tin-foil hat. At the network upfronts this summer, I think they announced CSI: Gatlinburg would be premiering this fall. The opening credits are a montage of Dollywood to the strains of “Squeeze Box”. Sean also doesn’t remember the ‘82 tour when The Who were sponsored by Schlitz. Schlitz Rocks America! Not surprising. It happened sometime between Spicoli and Shanghai Surprise.

While we are on the topic, take Peter Fonda with you. That poor bastard must be broke. I saw him on an infomercial, decked out in the Easy Rider jacket, hawking Time-Life Sounds of the Sixties Flower Power. With dead eyes he kept reading off of those cue cards like a pro. Who else has shilled for Time-Life in order to gouge nostalgic baby-boomers to buy music they can hear on the local oldies station or download off the internet?

Oh, that’s right. Roger Daltrey.

Make all the money you want, boys. More power to you. It’s your legacy to do with as you please. The best performers know when to get off the stage and leave the audience wanting more. Just a thought. At least Entwistle and Moon went out like rock stars.

Meanwhile, the soundtrack to my teenage years is marred by this fucking douchebag every week. Thanks, for the memories.

Prepare for the worst.

The beloved marketing of Anheuser-Busch products will go from this:

to this:

You have been warned, comrade.

Channel 5 got on a story that Channel 2 should have picked up on two years ago. It was about a placement firm whose only motive is to place your money in their account.The story sat in WKRN’s lap all wrapped up in a nicely wrapped package with a pretty pink bow. Instead, they send Turko-lite out to find out why it took longer than an hour for Mee-maw to get her glasses form Lenscrafters. Because, apparently, that’s messed up.

Two years ago, I was looking for a job and was contacted by a alleged placement firm. The zany details can be found here. Not learning from my little adventure, Mr. and Mrs. Coble dove in to that same shallow pool a few months later. My fault, apparently for not outright naming JL Kirk as the firm engaged in scammery. Kat Coble worked her internet sorcery and a whole shitstorm erupted from there. Threats of A Big Lawsuit were issued from Haldane/Kirk/Xenu et. al.

All of this information and the details were sitting in WKRN’s happy little Nashville is Talking aggregator/community site. Brittney Gilbert sat just a few feet from alleged journalists who were perfectly capable of chasing this story down. They didn’t. Which was supposedly the whole point of a news operation running an aggregator/community blog thingy. Or, so I have read.

Channel 5 gets high marks for picking up the story, albeit two years after it surfaced locally, and ran not just one story about what a ripoff Transforming America turns out to be, but two stories.

Not so fast Channel 5. We have to deduct points for your Ice Cream Trucks Gone Wild story. What a pile of unsubstantiated nonsense and innuendo.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates followed one man in Columbia. The state took Ronald Decker’s children away for neglect. He’s charged and awaiting trial for the rape of a 4-year-old girl. But he’s allowed to sell ice cream to children.

Ok, so he’s a shitty father. Clearly, he can’t provide for his children by driving an ice cream truck. But he’s charged, not convicted, of raping a 4 year old girl. Being accused isn’t the same thing as guilty. Unless you are OJ Simpson.

According to news reports, Frosty Treats hired Michael Dean in 2002. He is classified as a violent sex offender convicted of rape in 1986. Ivan Pryor is also a violent sex offender convicted of attempted aggravated sexual battery.

Here’s my question, did any of those involve children? Are children really the target for Dean and Pryor? How many rapes has Michael Dean committed since the Reagan Administration? Meanwhile, Channel 5’s video shows mug shot after mugshot of scary black men. Because you don’t want precious little Hunter, Dylan and Jaden to be anywhere near scary black men. Ice cream truck drivers or not. BECAUSE YOUR KIDS ARE AT RISK. Or at least that’s what our focus groups tell us get better ratings.

One more pot shot at News 2. If you are going to broadcast a story about what a hazard the interstate signs are to motorists, make sure the reporter isn’t driving and looking into the camera endangering those same motorists in order to appear dynamic. Lame-ass. Good thing you pulled the video. Wouldn’t want to look stupid.

The following things happened yesterday while at work.  No kidding.

1.  At a Turkish family’s home, about a dozen relatives were milling about while I was there to fix the phones.  It was a simple matter of getting them back into “the switch”.  One of the family members slipped into the bathroom next to where I was and proceeded to play the ass trumpet.  For five solid minutes.  The whole time I’m on the phone with the secret special department that handles these phone issues, I’m hearing this sound in the background.  I hope it was the grandfather.

2. A Redneck gentleman had requested a DVR be installed out in his storage shed, where he spent most of his time.  He had the shed set up as the ultimate bachelor pad, if Karl Childers happens to be the ultimate bachelor.   During the interminable wait to get the equipment on his account and get it updated,  he launched into a stream of consciousness rant about several topics, mostly concerning how this country is “going down the goddamn shitter”.   One of the more memorable rants was about working at the Nissan plant when it first opened.

“So I’m working on the scissor lifts and there was this fine ass little girl about five foot tall who was a welder out there.  She was a pretty looking thing.  Well, she’s working up on the lift and sets the torch down an the stinger is facing up.  She squats down to pick up a tool and that fucking stinger burns her right in the twat.  She starts fucking screaming bloody murder.  I get her down from there and it went right through her jeans and burns her twat.  We got to be pretty close after that and she tells me later that burn was the best thing to happen to her sex life.  It did something down there and she says her twat became more sensitive.  I broke me off a piece a couple of times.  We were real close.”

His cell phone rings.

“Yeah.  Yeah, I know!  I’m the only around here who knows what the fuck is going on you fucking nitwit!”

“Who was that?”  I asked already knowing the answer.

“That was my fucking wife.  That’s why I spend all my time out here.  I go in there to sleep, eat and take a shit.  Hey, want to hear a song I wrote?”

3. The news came on at another customer’s house and the story was about nursing home patients being molested by their caregivers.  The customer proceeded to tell me about her mother who is in a nursing home and how the male caregivers have to watch out for Mom.  Seems without any virile males in Momma’s age range, she is a little frustrated.  We go now to the transcript of the story.

Customer:  So, Momma is in this here nursing home and she be getting horny as hell.  We thought she had a urinary tract infection, too much information I know, but it wasn’t.  Turns out, it was a banana.

Me:  (jaw agape)  Do what now?

Customer:  I know!  A banana up in her!  Couldn’t believe it.  Didn’t know whether or not to tell my brothers.  Sheeeit!

Me:  Did you tell them?

Customer:  Yeah, I told them.  I made one of them go with me to buy Momma a dildo.

Me:  Do what now?

Customer:  Yeah, do you know what it’s like going dildo shopping for your mother?

Me:  Can’t say that I do.

Customer:  Well, we were walking around and my brother says, “What size do we buy her?”  I said, “Banana sized, I guess”.

The fucking sale of my fucking house has fucking fallen through. Apparently, the fucking buyers are going through some fucking personal problems and won’t be able to hold up their end of the fucking deal.

Fuck it Dude, let’s go bowling.

Posts around here have been sparse in recent months. To my dear and devoted readers, tough shit. I’m not your blog monkey. A wiser man once said, “I do this to entertain me, not you.” That’s so true, I wish I came up with it first.

There have been plenty of things to vent my spleen about here lately, but I just can’t squeeze out the five hundred or so well-crafted words about current events, celebrity deaths and embarrassing tales of my youth like I used to. Unlike during the Golden Age of Blogging, I have a goddamn job now. Not a job like when I owned the company and could sit in my office and fuck off online while my inexhaustible supply of cheap Guatemalan minions toiled to make downtown loft living a reality for struggling twenty-somethings making six figures a year. No, this is a real job with timecards and accountability and expectations of work being done. Something that many of you find foreign and vaguely threatening.

So unlike the aforementioned many of you, I don’t get to bitch about every little thing in my life on the company dime.

Or the government’s dime for that matter. While we are on this topic, indulge me for a second. State workers are pissing and moaning about cuts in payroll and a couple thousand have been offered some kind of buy-out deal from the Employment For Life program that they feel entitled to. Now I have some friends who are state employees and of course they aren’t included in the kind of folks we are about to discuss and are selfless public servants who do a fine job each and every day. However, in the course of my professional life I have had many opportunities to interact with several different departments of state government. From my field observations, a more worthless brand of human life you won’t find outside of a crack house or a Star Trek convention than in any random State of Tennessee cubicle farm.

Imagine a floor of an office building devoted to say, the Department of Environmental Conservation. Each and every time I go in there, the staff is lethargic to the point of narcolepsy and visibly annoyed that they are roused from their stupor to take your stupid form that you are required to fill out by law and turn in to them. Though they proudly show you the thousands of dollars of Darth Maul merchandise adorning their desk. In fact, as you look around, you notice that each cubicle is decorated in a manner where it is obvious that it took hours. These are not people who are planning on going anyfuckingwhere. Ever.

Here’s how Dollar Phil Bredesen needs to chop the deadwood out of the budget. Hold a Cubicle Decoration Contest. First five hundred entrants get a prize. A pink slip. That will send a message to the rest of these mouth breathers to do something other than suck off the taxpayer’s teat.

But, I digress.

The point of all this is, I don’t have the time to update here on anything even minimally approaching a regular basis. Posts here will be legal, safe and rare. Or is that abortions? I can never keep those two straight.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of posts waiting to be written about the floods in the Midwest, Amy Winehouse, Don Imus and the upcoming political season. I just don’t know when I’m going to get around to it.

I have better things to do.

0540–Unbelievable. As the Mrs. is getting set up in the driveway, this goober pulls up and starts looking at our wares. Even more unbelievable, he buys the crappiest pet cage we have in all of it’s rusted glory. It was the one thing we didn’t think any one in their right mind would buy. He’s going to keep chickens in it.

0640–These people are like garage sale zombies. Mindlessly shambling from one yard to the next looking for treasure in a manure pile. You know, if zombies did that as well as the whole brain eating thing. On the plus side, they give us money for this junk.

0740–The Brown Invasion. If the Mexicans want to endure a treacherous border crossing and the very real possibility of being sent back to whatever backwater shithole they came out of in order to buy up my used linens. Then I say open the borders. Mr. Bush, tear down this wall.

0810–Out of coffee. Still drinking booze, though.

0857–Out of booze. Drinking sand. Half of the stuff is gone. It won’t be missed. Only the good junk is left. No accounting for taste. Thankfully, the couple from the trailer park up the road were looking to redecorate. And kudos to the hipster with a taste for Americana that snapped up $25 worth of CD’s. Still, no one has made an offer on the Kinky Friedman documentary, Asshole from El Paso.

1003–The Doldrums have set in. The freak parade is starting to wind down. All the garage sale nuts have been at it for a couple of hours. Now we deal with the stragglers. Within the next hour will come the hagglers who want to Christian you down over a $1 chafing dish or some shit.

The Aftermath–Not a bad take.  As I type this a Guatemalan is backing up his truck to load the pool/foosball/air hockey table.  We unloaded just about everything except all of my CD’s/DVD’s and books.  Sorry I didn’t have any gospel, granny.  Try this Jason and the Scorchers Live disc,  it rocks.

The important part is that the garage is now empty enough to be usable.  We’ll try this again in the fall.  I have even more crap in storage.

Tomorrow is the big Garage Sale. We are unloading a sizable amount of crap valuable household items. Included in the sale will be parts of the massive Sarcastro compact disc collection. Most of which has either been loaded to iTunes or was not a very rewarding purchase in the first place. Come and get me recording industry goons! I’m reselling your precious intellectual property that in many instances I paid full retail price for the pleasure. Nevermind your faulty premise that you are somehow still owed money once you have already been paid for the product you have brought to market. If the auto industry used the same idiotic business model, Toyota would expect payment for someone borrowing my car. So bring on your hired guns and rat-faced shysters. Your threats are meaningless. I have enough bullets and food to start my own FLDS compound! Well, I will once I sell all these goddamn CDs, DVDs and pointless VHS tapes.

So, I’m trying to get stuff quasi-sorted and arranged this morning so that tomorrow is just a matter of pulling it out into the driveway and watching the money roll in. That was my first mistake.

The first “buyer” screeched to a tire burning halt in front of the house and asked if the thing we trap Sarcastro Junior in when we can no longer tolerate his vandalism and just want to hear him keen like a banshee was for sale.

I had no idea.

She asked about price.

I had no idea.

Nevermind that I had told her that we weren’t going to have anything ready for sale until Saturday. She was undeterred by my lack of interest in being thrust into the merchant class.

I was forced to call higher headquarters.

Mrs. Sarcastro informed me that the jumper thingy wasn’t for sale and it would be the repository for Junior during the garage sale. I then relayed this info to the buyer.

But, the Mrs. vacillated and said, “Well, if she wants to pay $15 for it, sell it.” As soon as I looked up to give this woman a renewed chance at it, there went her car in a screech of tires and a cloud of dust up to the next yard sale.

No sooner did I turn back to sorting through junk sentimental family heirlooms, than another minivan pulled up. Out staggered a woman who had not heard that tube tops with horizontal stripes had gone out of style for forty plus year old obese women. Her makeup looked as if it were put on with a wooden spoon. She smelled like a half empty bottle of beer that has been used as an ashtray half way through a college party. Not to be too cruel, but she looked like a clown smuggling inner-tubes.

Again I tried in vain to explain that we were not, in fact, having a garage sale for another 24 hours. She acted as if I was speaking Chinese and proceeded to stagger into the garage while telling me her life story. Sadly, she was not speaking Chinese. It would have been easier to conceal my disinterest. After some inquiries about some useless shit in a pile of even more useless shit treasured possessions we are reluctant to part with, she stumbled down the driveway seven dollars poorer.

As she did so, three carloads of hatchet-faced broads came cruising up. All demanding to know prices of items that may or may not be for sale. Again, I explained that the yard sale was not until the following day. They looked at me if I were wearing a conical hat and building a Great Wall.

One particularly dessicated nag looked through my CDs and inquired, “Do ya have any Meatloaf?”

At that point the youngest one chimed in, “What’s Meatloaf?”

“It’s a group” came the stupefying reply.

At that point, I turned on the hose and chased them out of my yard. I quickly closed the garage door, went in the house, closed the blinds and made plans to be heavily medicated during the actual garage sale.

Y’all be sure to come on by!

In the wake of having The Talk with the boys about all things biologic, the hits just keep on coming.

The other day, Mrs. Sarcastro gave out the warning that she was starting her monthly reign of terror as determined by the lunar cycle.  As always, I am appreciative of such information as it gives us time to stockpile supplies in an interior room of the house such as a bathroom or closet where we can wait out the storm until the danger passes.  They boys were fairly non-plussed.  They only had one question:

“So are you wearing a pad or a tampon?”

Let this one roll around in your brain for a few minutes:

Say that a blogger gets fired from his or her day job for blogging. (Recent high profile media examples here and here.) It is a common enough tale to become almost a cliche.

But what would your reaction be if you found out a spiteful blogger, for no other reason than to fuck you over and with whom you had some petty online disagreement, went and outed you to your corporate overlords who didn’t take too kindly to your potty mouth and intemperate opinions? You get shit-canned and your online arch-nemesis is crowing over his/her “victory”.

What would your reaction be?

The first emotional reaction would be to go all Nazi Ed Norton and make him/her bite the curb. As appealing as that sounds, the real drawback to that plan is that in addition to being unemployed, you would be facing numerous felony assault charges.

Instead, could your honor and desire for revenge be better served in a court of law? If someone intentionally and willfully engaged in behavior that caused you to lose your source of income, and you could prove their intent, are they exposed to the ugly end of a big fat lawsuit full of compensatory and punitive damages and what not?

I await the Solomon-like wisdom and Matlock-like legal expertise of all seven of my readers to hold forth with their opinions.