KATHERINE HEPBURN IS DEAD AND I'M NOT FEELING SO GREAT MYSELF

I guess I join the rest of the world in saying "Kate Hepburn is dead?!? Didn't she already die in '94?"

I'm sorry, but when Hollywood actors get really old and quit making movies, to me they're already dead.

I haven't heard so much as a peep out of ol' Kate in years.

Hence, I thought she was already worm food.

I think my fondest memories of Kate Hepburn will always be Martin Short's dead-on impressions of her from "On Golden Pond".

Goodbye sweet Kate.

We hardly knew thee.

But seriously ... I think that was by choice.

Saturday, the highlight of my day was taking my son to one of the local malls to play in a new free playground that they have erected inside the mall.

(Hee hee! I said "erected"!)

Anyway, we get there and it's a bunch of animals for kids to climb on.

Andrew's having a ball playing on these things. He'd climb on something, come running over to me to babble about what he just did and reiterate what I had just witnessed, then go repeat the process.

So anyway, he's playing, I'm making a grocery list and I hear "ROWF! ROWF! ROWWWWWRRRR!!!"

Naturally, I think a belligerent mentally handicapped person has entered the fray and is about to eat the children in the playground.

I wasn't too far from wrong.

One of the fathers of the children had decided that sitting on the comfortable furniture that dots the area wasn't as interactive as he would like.

So he was on all fours, crawling around on the floor, scaring the bejeezus out of his own kid AND the other kids.

He was roaring like a lion in a courtyard in the mall, so his voice was reverberating all throughout the mall. Several children (i.e. not just mine) went running to their parents' arms when this guy started his barking sea lion act.

I wasn't alone in staring at the guy like he was some kind of freak. All the parents focused their attention on him as he howled at the children.

Even his kid was embarrassed and she was probably 2-3 years old.

Finally, El Creep-o's voice went hoarse, he gathered up his humiliated child and they left.

The silence was overwhelming. I think all the kids left in the playground area were shellshocked.

The whole incident inspired me to send a message to all parents and soon-to-be parents out there.

No matter how high you might get on a Saturday morning, try to keep your bearings about you and remember that nobody wants to see you act like a tiger-boy in the middle of the mall.

The world's smartest hippie Mattie Gee dropped by the house last night to "help" me install a new CD burner on the computer.

("Help" means "do it himself while I sat in the recliner behind him and kept offering some of my possessions to pay him in some sort of bizarre barter system")

My CD burner just kind of popped and fizzled on me last week right after I had asked everyone to submit their Mellow 15 songs.

I had the opportunity to download and burn a few of the discs before the thing collapsed on my raggedy ass.

Now I'll be able to finish the job.

...At least until the RIAA decides to sue my ass for having too many MP3s for their liking.

It'd be nice if they said "10 MP3s are too much" or "100 MP3s are too much".

But nooooooo. They've got to be all VAGUE about the amount of MP3s that they don't want you to have.

Bastards.

I sure hope 1,291 MP3s isn't the magic number they're looking for.

If it is, they're going to sue my ass for millions of dollars, I'm not going to be able to pay it and I'm going to be getting a swastika tattooed on my ass by an Aryan leader in Oz.

I just know it.