HAVE SOME RICE PEE LAYFUH, BUBBA!!

I threw my back out last night.

As I get older, this happens more and more often. I still remember the first time I threw my back out at 18...I stayed in bed for several days and was hardly able to move.

These days, I announce "I just threw my back out" and then go pick up a television or something. It's painful as hell, but at least I'm used to it and know that I didn't snap my spinal cord in two or anything.

My boy stole my wrist pad that keeps my wrists all happy-go-lucky when I type this shit in.

He loves that wrist pad. If he gets the chance, he'll snatch it off the computer desk and take off with it. We usually find him hidden in a corner, eating as much of the foam rubber wrist pad as he can shove in his mouth.

Well, this morning I can't find the stupid thing. I have a feeling he took it in his room sometime yesterday and hid it from me for snacking purposes later.

And you can't exactly communicate with the kid about it. You can't say "Andrew...where's my wrist pad? I know you've hid it somewhere."

Because he'll just say "Dadadadadadadadadada".

And ... you know...what the hell is that supposed to mean? Is he blaming me? Did I do something wrong in his upbringing ALREADY that has him blaming me when things go wrong?

I'm not sure.

What I am sure of is that my wrists are getting VERY tired already.

Those of you keeping score...two tired wrists...one sore back ... and a partridge in a pear tree.

Aha!!

I found my wrist pad!

I went in his room, where he's snoring like a congested bear (it's the croup, mind you)and quietly looked around this toy junkyard that he calls a bedroom.

I caught a glimpse of my wrist pad underneath his crib. Apparently, the little geek was planning on a mid-morning wrist pad snack under his crib later on.

I guess I foiled THOSE plans!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

I feel like Snidely Whiplash.

I just spent WAY too much time trying to find a picture of Snidely Whiplash to illustrate this stupid antedote.

So yesterday, I stayed home all day, just like I like it on Saturdays.

After Susie brought Andrew home from the doctor (a mild case of croup which means I can't really send him off to the freak show to work as "Seal Boy" just yet), Andrew laid down for a five hour nap. Apparently he got a steroid shot at the doctor's office combined with a little medicine. Knocked his baby ass loopy, it did.

I laid down for a few minutes which turned into a few hours.

Susie did the same.

We adults woke up and Susie ran to K-Mart while I watched my DVD of "Rock and Roll High School" with the director's commentary on, because I've always wanted to know what the hell was going on behind the scenes on the set of the film.

...Apparently a whole lot of nothing.

Susie came home with some balloons for Andrew to help him realize that being sick is cool because you get balloons. She bought me some socks that I doubt I ever wear because they're made of wood or some uncomfortable shit like that.

...And she bought the blank video tapes.

I KNEW what the blank tapes were all about.

It was time.

Time to have to watch the video that she shot the other night of an old man's retirement party from her office.

My wife works for Carquest...the auto parts store.

There's a huge Carquest distribution center here in town and she works out there. No, she doesn't actually peddle auto parts. She takes care of all the new hires, fires people who fail drug tests, etc. She works in human resources.

Anyway, she has to go to all these retirement parties and company functions all the time. Something about how they like to have the human resources people there at these occasions. Personally, I think she might be out blowing goats or something, but not this last time, because I actually saw the video of the old man's retirement party.

Okay. We live in Alabama. I wasn't raised here though, so that means I have all of my teeth and no friends who are actually named "Bubba".

At Carquest, it's only natural that my wife works with at least one Bubba. Hell...one of the top five people in the company is named Bubba, so you know there's going to be more than that.

The guy who retired is named Bubba.

Anyway, we set the camcorder up, set the VCR up, and I get ready to watch the video of a two hour retirement party for Bubba.

Holy shit.

It was like the movie "Deliverance" had been catered.

There were more backwoods hillbillies at this retirement party than in the entire state of Kentucky. Between everyone shown on video there were probably 11 teeth (my wife and her pearly white 32 choppers never got on video). Bubba himself spoke a language that would have had Jodie Foster in "Nell" scratching her head and going "huh?"

The video was actually a roast. Where his longtime colleagues got up on a stage and talked sweet trash about Bubba.

Apparently, Bubba HATED three foods...rice pilaf, tacos and pizza.

One of the guys decided to capitalize on this hatred and brought all three foods out on stage as a joke on Bubba.

He pronounced the rice pilaf "rice PEE-layfuh".

He must have said "Rice PEE layfuh" twenty times. He kept shoving it at Bubba like a little kid shoving a dead frog in a little girl's face and yelling "RICE PEE LAYFUH!! RICE PEE LAYFUHHH!!!"

Bubba handled the situation pretty well for a snaggle-toothed retarded guy. He grinned that toothless grin and shook his head violently "no".

Still...Bobcat Goldthwaite Jr. kept screaming and shoving the Rice Pee Layfuh at Bubba until the joke was deader than Chondra Levy.

Then...the roast went pretty well until the end. There's this local lady who is kinda a quasi-celebrity in the city. She shows up at these types of functions and serenades the man of honor. It's obvious the lady thinks she's onstage at Radio City Music Hall when she sings...she belts out the songs like she's auditioning for "Cats" or something.

So she's going to town on some song I've never heard of while Bubba sits in an overstuffed chair. It's the end of the roast and she's closing it out as a special guest. The crowd is in awe that Important Local Lady is actually gracing their presence with a song she seems to be making up as she goes along.

All of a sudden, this guy...older than dirt ... walks into the camera range, bends down and hugs Bubba in his chair. The audience breaks into applause.

"What's going on here?" I ask Susie.

She laughs.

"He had to go to the bathroom," she said. "I think the audience thought it was a touching moment but he had told Bubba he had to go to the bathroom and wasn't sure he'd be done by the time Bubba left."

...Only in Alabama.

After that horrific experience, we watched the "Trading Spaces" marathon on TLC.

As we all know by now, I'm hopelessly addicted to "Trading Spaces" now since the cursed Olympics disrupted my avid television-watching schedule.

I've decided that if I were to go on the show, I'd want Vern to decorate my house.

Vern's a slight, seemingly gay Asian decorator. I have all the respect in the world for the little bastard. The guy can come up with some great ideas and he very rarely does anything stupid like paint big polka dots on the sofa or stuff like that.

I would NOT want Genivieve or however you spell her name to do my house.

The woman's a hottie. No doubt about it. She probably has the finest rack of boobs on television today.

But she's a complete idiot when it comes to decorating. Granted, I have the decorating skills of a beaver with ADD, but I know enough to not vomit on a canvas and call it artwork.

Genivieve doesn't.

Plus, she wears the EXACT SAME CLOTHES in nearly every episode. A black t-shirt that's two sizes too small for her, and black jeans with no shoes. The first time I saw her wearing it I thought, "Man...that's a pretty hot ensemble". But she NEVER CHANGES. She probably stinks like a backed-up septic tank by now.

And Laurie. My God. This woman is lucky to still be alive. At the beginning of the show, the homeowners go over what they would "like" to see done to their homes.

Laurie is mentally filing her nails while they discuss this.

Then the homeowners specifically state what they DON'T want done to their homes. This is where Laurie perks up and takes notes because she's out to screw with people's heads.

Last night, this overweight woman SPECIFICALLY said they could do whatever they wanted to her bedroom just DON'T REMOVE THE CEILING FAN.

I'm a fat guy myself and have a ceiling fan in our bedroom. I know in the summertime, all these layers of fat can make me a tad warm in bed and that ceiling fan is a life saver. So I completely understand Chunky's request.

What does Laurie do first?

"Get rid of that gawdawful ceiling fan."

As much as I hate it, this is what makes the show appealing to me. I'm glued to my chair for the next 45 minutes, waiting to see how the big lady reacts when she sees she's going to be sleeping in pools of sweat every night for the rest of her life.

What REALLY sucks is when the lady finally saw that her ceiling fan was taken to the curb yesterday and thrown away ... and she's OKAY WITH IT because her bed now has a hastily thrown-together canopy over it.

Dammit woman...GET ANGRY!!! You may have a canopy now...BUT IT'S GOING TO BE 110 DEGREES IN YOUR BEDROOM THIS SUMMER!!! That canopy is going to be used to soak up your perspiration every hour!!!

Sheesh!!

It's a love-hate relationship I have with this show. It's like I can't turn away from it. It's a car wreck of a show and I highly recommend you get addicted to it like I am.

...Then maybe my Sunday morning updates would start making better sense to you.

And check me out down below...I'M TY!!!

Then again...I always knew I was.