What a Croc

On our recent trip to Disney World my wife and I discussed the proliferation of Crocs into the American world of footwear. I know you might be saying “Dude, that is not much of a revelation,” as Crocs really took off a few years back. But that is my point exactly. Hasn’t this shoe fad had its day? It’s week? It’s month? It’s year? I mean really shouldn’t we be getting ready to discuss it on I Love the 2000’s.

When we were at Disney World every other person had on Crocs it seemed (including my wife and daughter- so embarrassing). Hell, even dudes are wearing these things now (I prefer to believe these men were Euro’s). Please don’t tell me how comfortable they are… because even if they make your feet feel like you are walking on clouds you look like a D-bag wearing them (I give a pass to kids).

So let’s all band together and forsake all that is pure in this crazy world. Stop buying these freaking things. Throw all Crocs already purchased where they belong, in the closet with your parachute pants, jean shorts and tight-rolled jeans (which my wife informs me are coming back in style… oh the horror).

Disney World

Okay – I know I have been MIA for like a month, but I have been working my arse off recently. Plus I took the family on a wonderful trip to Disney World two weeks back. So let’s recap our little Disney extravaganza.

I have a friend at work who says she does not understand adult Disney enthusiasts… Well she sure does not understand me, because I love Disney World and the overall Disney experience. I love seeing Disney through my daughter's eyes. Every ride, parade, fireworks show and attraction brings joy and excitement.

CJ (my daughter) really became a rollercoaster enthusiast when she found out that Daddy would buy her a trading pin for every big ride she would try. By the end of our six day trip she had pins for Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, The Tower of Terror and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Actually, enthusiast might be an overstatement, since she would bury her head and not look up till the ride was over, but at least she would try right?

Overall it was an outstanding trip and I can’t wait to hit WDW again next year. If loving Disney is wrong, I don’t wanna be right! Enjoy the pics!

The Agony of Defeat

The agony of defeat… those were the words of great Jim McKay that opened ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Well I have been defeated in my mission to blog for 25 days straight. My blogging operation was defeated by one thing… the 4th of July holiday, ok maybe my old friend Coors Light contributed to my downfall as well. I had a wonderful break, but man it really killed my blogging abilities. I fully accept defeat in this task, so no more e-mails. The pictures are from the 4th of July festivities. All I can say is well played Uncle Sam, well played sir.

Mr. Lineback

I recently found out my High School Drama teacher Phil Lineback passed away earlier this year. Mr. Lineback (seems weird to call him Phil) was my favorite teacher. He was the kind of teacher who made you feel good about yourself, while still letting you know your better self was out there and within reach. He would yell (he was a stickler about memorizing lines) occasionally and was not afraid to show his true emotion. But you always knew he was trying to get the best out of you. He and Mrs. Rice (his office mate) always had an office full of students prior to the beginning of school. Why? Because they were the kind of educators that would make a student that may have felt like an outsider feel a part of something. It’s strange reaching an age when your teachers and friends parents start to pass and it not so much of a shock, as a fact of life.

Favorites - High School Edition

I love Facebook because it gives you chance to reconnect with old friends from high school and college. It's so interesting seeing what everyone is up to today as well as flooding you with memories of days gone past. Ahhh… Living the dream, the high school dream. Today’s blog will feature my favorite moments from High School (we will get to college soon enough).

Jr. Spec – North Central High School was filled with unique traditions and experiences, but one of the best is Jr. Spectacular. Better known as Jr. Spec, this theatrical performance (dude that is some stretching of the term theatrical performance) is written, directed, and performed by members of the Jr. class. Sounds nice right? Like “oh the Jr. class got together and put on a little show together.” How sweet? Nope you got it all wrong… the Jr. class divides themselves among social groups and competed against each other in a battle royale that is part social experiment-part drama camp. This is not to say that I did not enjoy it… in fact I loved it. The real fun was the summer before my Jr. year at our “writers meetings” which basically amounted to me and the other writers (again very liberal use of the word) seeing how much we could make each other laugh and deep discussion of how crazy hot Michelle Freckelton’ s mom was.


















Operation White Cloud – Another tradition at NC (not so unique) is Senior Skip Day, or Senior Slop Day (not sure on the origins of the slop term) as we called it. Now part of this tradition is pulling pranks on the school in the morning before taking the rest of the day off. I still remember some daring seniors releasing a greased pig in the lunch room my sophomore year. I was asked to participate in a secret mission known as Operation White Cloud. Which was your run of the mill toilet papering of the high school. But really it was so much more, as this was intricately planned attack with over 20 guys broken in to four squads of TP warriors… ok the prank kind of sucked but we had a wicked time doing it.

Prom – Oh so good looking… Yes, I was oh so good looking on Prom night. My date could barely keep her hands off of me. It was great seeing all the kids I grew up with cleaned up and looking PIMP. My date was not too bad either.

Radio/ TV Class- Three hours each day with Chris Ponder… sign me up, dude was a freaking riot. This class was so much fun because basically all we did was dick around for three hours and talk about the Wonder Years. Plus it was a great class to skip.

Repertory Theater – The most dope class in high school by a long shot. It was another great dick around class (what do you mean I need to learn my lines... blasphemy!) I may not have been much of an actor, but man I perfected my BS skills in this class.

And there you have it… Reavo’s Favorite High School Edition.

Quickie

Alright tonight will be quick because I got home late... We will go back to the favorites theme tomorrow, but tonight I have to share a really cool moment.

Tonight was my daughter's last softball game of the season. And after the game all the girls got individual participation trophies. But they also gave two special awards, one for Mental Toughness and another for Most Improved. Caeleigh got named Most Improved and I am such softy I almost started to cry (what a wuss, right?). Its so funny, how your child's accomplishments can provide such joy... This is my favorite moment for quite sometime.

Favorite Things - Vegas Style

My new mission is to blog everyday for the next 25 days. Why? Because I have not been blogging as much as I had been and I thought maybe by challenging myself, I will be able to rise to the mission at hand. To accomplish this goal I am going to go all Oprah and theme these blogs as my favorite things. Each day will be a list of my favorite things. So I hope my loyal reader (I refuse to believe I have multiple readers) like finding out all of my favorite things over the next 25 days... if not, check back 26 days from now.

First topic on our Reavo favorite’s tour is my favorite things about my favorite vacation city… Las Vegas!

The Flamingo – My first trip to Vegas was for Joe Taylor’s bachelor party and we stayed at the Flamingo and it has a special place in my heart to this day. Yes, I have stayed at much nicer hotels (Mirage, Caesar’s and Green Valley Ranch) since that maiden Vegas voyage, but there is something about the place Bugsy built that I really love. I just can’t figure out what that smell is in the casino.

The Ellis Island Steak Special – The best deal in Las Vegas in my opinion is this bad boy. Ellis Island Brewpub is connected to a very interesting (and by interesting I mean depressing and scary) little casino adjoining the Vegas Super 8. Now don’t let that scare you off of this place because for $4.99 this dump serves up a 10-ounce filet-cut steak, served with salad, vegetable, potato, garlic bread, rolls and a beer. Holla! This is a must for any guy’s trip. Is it a great steak? No, but I didn’t get mad cow disease or food poisoning there either, so I got that going for me.

The Bellagio Fountains – Greatest free Vegas attraction, enough said.

Fat Elvis at the hotel formerly known as Barbary Coast – First off THFKABC is my favorite place to gamble on the strip (I refuse to call it by its new name, so like Prince did back in the day I call it the hotel formerly known as Barbary Coast or THFKABC for short). It is a charming little joint with nice dealers and reasonable gambling limits. But the super secret awesome feature that THFKABC has is it’s afternoon Elvis Impersonator known as; you guessed it, Fat Elvis. Another must see and it is free, a rarity in today’s Vegas.

Sahara Poker Room – Not the classiest or best smelling poker room on the strip (by a long shot), you are probably wondering how it made my list. Well it is by far the luckiest for Mr. Reaves. In fact I won the 11:00pm tourney here a few years back. So to recap, this place smells nasty, has rude dealers and cocktail serve is lousy, but I will go back every trip to LV in the hopes of lightning striking twice.

Snackus Maximus – This is the pool side snack shop at Caesar’s Palace, the food is alright, but reason it make the list is its name… It does not get better than Snackus Maximus.

And there you have it... Reavo's Favorite's Vegas Style.

Cubs Sweep the Sox

Quick hit here... The Cubs are putting the sweep on the White Sox tonight and I love it... God Bless the USA and the Cubs. All Sox fans are dirt bags in general and should be ashamed of themselves. That's really all I have to say about that.

The Real "Crazy" World

I admit it folks, I was ready to give up on the Real World. I was ready to throw in the towel on my old TV friend. Ah but then the crafty folks at Bunim/Murray Productions (the production company behind the Real World/ Road Rules Universe) unleashed Real World Hollywood. Just when I thought I was out they pulled me back in!

The new season of the RW is truly a carnival of TV madness. Whoever cast this edition of the RW deserves a fat raise because I guarantee they had to hang out at some pretty strange places to find this group of morons and nut jobs.

The all star of this loony bin is Joey… Joey is a body-builder who would like to be an actor. Joey is also an alcoholic with some serious rage issues. I know, let’s put this ticking time bomb on a reality TV show surrounded by alcohol and panty-droppers. Brilliant! The thing I find most disconcerting about crazy Joey is the he has this hulking body, but a very small almost miniature size head. On top of have a pea sized cranium and some serious crazy eyes , Joey does this thing with his hair were he spikes it straight up in the air with massive quantities of hair gel. He looks a little like the Slim Jim Guy (not the Macho Man).

The other character that has made this season exceptional is Greg. Greg won an internet contest to join the cast, so he dubbed himself the chosen one. This aspiring male model (not enough of those in the world) does not have girlfriends, instead he has associate females. This guy is pure comedy; he loves to pull “pranks” on the other roommates. For example he put rocks in another roommate’s bed and stole a female roomies underwear. Those are some ingenious “pranks”… watch out Ashton, dude may be trying to steal your gig.

Here is the rub, these two are so awesome (truly train-wreck TV) the that rest of the cast is just window dressing and their characters have been totally neglected other than supporting the story lines of the two lead knuckle heads (Roomies unite in hatred of Greg and unite in fear and then later support of Joey). All this would be fine except both these idiots left the show last week! Greg got “fired” from the cast "job" (yeah doing an improv class was so tough this guy kept blowing it off) and Joey left because he could not handle staying clean around the rest of these drunks.

So what to do now? I mean without the stars, the last few episodes are going to be really disappointing unless you enjoy watching Sarah put on makeup or sleep (this chick may want to get checked for narcolepsy). I guess I just have to wait for these two to premiere on the next RW/RR Challenge.

Cat Killer

It’s funny the wacky shiz you remember from your childhood. I remember my third birthday I had a wicked Cookie Monster Cake. I recall being royally POed that ET got beat by Gandhi for best picture of the year. And I definitely remember crushing big time on Kim Fields, Tootie from Facts of Life fame, back in the day. Tootie if you are out there, you missed out because as you can see below I have moves.





Back to the topic at hand...But the one thing I have heard about, but don’t remember is the day I killed a cat. Hold your horses PETA freaks. When I was a wee lad of three years of age (yes I remember the Cookie Monster cake that same year, but not taking a feline life, sue me) my mother and I came to visit my Grandparents in Indy and we brought our new cat with us. Now the way my Moms tell this story, this cat was a hellcat. This kitty would claw the heck out of my mom in the middle of the night and was generally kind of a d-bag (can a cat be a d-bag?).


Well long story short (too late) I guess I was a chunk as a toddler and a clumsy chunk at that… I was watching Sonny and Cher with my Mom and I rolled right of the couch. Question? What the hell kind of parenting is that? I know, where is child welfare when you need them? Anyway as I rolled my happy arse back up on the couch, I apparently had some blood on my super sweet PJ’s. My Granny asked my Moms if I was OK (Maybe she should have asked before my mother let roll off the couch like a freaking weeble-wobble?) because she saw the blood. Well you guessed it; I fell on the cat and crushed the poor kitty like a beer can at a fraternity party.


The next day I woke up and wanted to play with my cat and Grandpa told me that the cat had bolted after being taken to the Doctor for treatment of a stomach ache. I guess I was not very sharp at three because I bought that happy horse crap.


When I was in High School my Mom filled me in on the real scoop. I am sorry Mr. Cat… So sorry, I barely knew you. RIP.