Bud Gott's Amazing Blog-O-Rama!

This is Sam. Sam is a...well, I don't know what exactly Sam is. He's a dog, we know that much.

Sam recently won The World's Ugliest Dog competition (a real thing) for the third year in a row. Congrats, Sam!

(And thanks to Angel for sending me the pic!)

Why does the word 'why' have an 'h' in the middle of it? We totally don't pronounce the 'h' when we say the word.

Come to think of it, why do any words that start with 'wh' have that 'h' there?

No wonder foreigners say that the English language is so hard to learn.

Watever...

Earlier this week I saw Cheryl Ladd in a t.v. commercial having something to do with menopause.

Cheryl Ladd's responsible for a very special first in my life - my very first, uh, how should I say this...my first, uh, "excitement." It actually happened while looking at the above picture in Tiger Beat or one of those kinds of teen magazines.

And, no, I didn't save that actual picture. I just found the above one on the web.

Anyway - thank you, Cheryl!!!

It's sort of weird seeing her do a commercial for menopause now, but I'll tell you something - she STILL looks great!

I saw THE FANTASTIC FOUR last night. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a great movie but it was a very fun movie. I definitely got my money's worth out of it. It's a good Summer movie!

I often hear people say that there's not much good rock music being made these days. Between rap and hip-hop (what IS the difference between them anyway?) and country music dominating the radio waves and sales charts, it's true that rock isn't as big as it once was.

However, there is some good new rock music out there. For example, the band The Killers. I got their cd HOT FUSS the other day. Actually, my friend Bob lent me his copy and I burnt it. It's one of the best new albums I've heard by anyone in ages.

You've probably heard their hit songs "Mr. Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me." They've also got a new single called "All These Things That I've Done." If you like any of these songs, then you should seriously consider getting their album.

It's solid! Every song is at least good...and some of them are flat out great. The Killers have sort of an 80's sound to them and if you know me at all you know I love that kind of sound.

I love discovering a great new band and getting into their music. Unfortunately that doesn't happen for me as often as it used to.

Still learning how to use this new blog page of mine and I figured it was time to learn how to add pictures here.

If this works, you should be seeing a picture from a few years ago of me with my niece Amber.

I'll tell ya, some days I just can't stand the heat. Today is one of those days. I'm not sure what the temperature is, but it's damned hot and humid out there right now. Of course, I'm in the middle of mowing the lawn. Maybe the temperature wouldn't be so bad if I was laying on a beach right now.

One thing about cutting the grass...I've found lately that I tend to get pretty deep philosophical thoughts while I'm doing it. Of course, you need to be careful while doing this. You don't want to be so deep in your thoughts that you mow over your foot and cut off a toe.

That reminds me of a great severed-toe-joke I made up a couple of weeks ago. Well, actually I can't remember it now. When I remember the joke, I'll share it with you.

As I'm writing this, I'm listening to the "Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too" cd by New Radicals. I just got it yesterday from my pal Dave. This cd's got a lot of very good stuff on it. Thanks, Dave!

Back to cutting the grass now. Don't worry - I'll get back to you later with my severed-toe-joke.

A date and I went to see BATMAN BEGINS yesterday. About a half hour into it, the film stopped playing. I told the management and they fixed it a few minutes later. Then it stopped again. The manager came in and gave all of us people in the theater free passes to come back to the theater at any time to see any movie we wanted to. Then they tried to get the movie playing again...and it broke again. The manager came back in and gave us MORE free passes.

They finally got the movie to play properly. It was annoying that it kept stopping, but hey, I walked out of there with 2 free movie passes!

As for BATMAN BEGINS itself....wow, what a great movie! I think it's the best of all of the Batman movies. Yes, even better than the 1989 one with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That movie was great, but I always felt Tim Burton made it too dark. Plus, face it, it was Nicholson's movie. He's what made it great.

BATMAN BEGINS is a great telling of how Batman came to be Batman. Christian Bale is, in my opinion, the best actor yet to play the role.

If you're a Batman fan, then you've really got to see this movie.

I read in the paper today that it's singer-songwriter Marc Cohn's 46th birthday today.

Whatever happened to Marc? "Walking In Memphis" was a fantastic song! I had the album it came from and it was a damned good album. I know Marc put out some more critically acclaimed albums after that, but he was never able to come even close to the success of "Walking In Memphis." It's a shame - the guy has a lot of talent.

I saw in the paper that it's also Huey Lewis's birthday - his 55th. Wow.

I've always liked Huey a lot. His first four albums are totally worth owning if you like great 80's music.

So, I was driving down Route 13 (a very busy highway in my area) today and I was about 20 feet behind three guys on motorcycles. One of the guys started doing wheelies on his bike.

It was ridiculous! Sure, it's cool that he's capable of doing wheelies but it's totally NOT cool that he was doing them on a major, very well-traveled busy highway.

I was worried that he was going to tip over and crash. I was also worried that I might not be able to slow down in time and then I'd run over him.

On second thought, he'd kind of deserve that happening to him.

Asshole.

What can I say about this great holiday and fantastic country that hasn't already been said countless time before by millions of people?

I'll say this...I love America and I am VERY proud to be a citizen here.

It's the greatest place on Earth and there's absolutely no other place I'd rather live.

God bless America.

I go into work this afternoon but I'm trying to watch as much as the Live 8 concerts as I can before I need to leave.

I'm really not digging MTV's/VH1's coverage of it. They keep hopping back and forth between things, cutting to commercials while performances are going on, only showing one song by certain acts, etc.

The coverage should be a LOT better.

I think it's been so long since MTV's focus has actually been on music that they actually forgot how to properly cover musical events.