Guest Editor

   High Above Courtside has the honor of being your Guest Editor this week. Journalslavia is one of the nicest spots in the AOL world. It is a pleasure to be able to share a few journals with you that are much enjoyed here at HAC.

      Some people get down on journals, blogging, etc.... They say that it is the height of banality- "I got up, brushed my teeth, ate some Rolos, went to bed."  That happens. Part of opening the floodgates is releasing a few drips. Still, if you let a shallow wannabe Bombeck or two steer you away from the Blogosphere, I feel sorry for you.

   "Just play it again, Sam."  How many bad scripts do you think the Casablanca guy went through before he stumbled onto that gem? Did you know that a North Carolina high school coach cut Michael Jordan from the JV team?

   Don't get blown away by the classics. Moby Dick is a fishing story no better than fifty I heard waitressing as a kid at the local lobsterman's tavern. A bad episode of The O.C. still has more buff guys and exposed thighs than any of that Wuthering Heights  nonsense they force on you in English Lit. MacBeth  is just about a guy with an absolute nag of a wife. The Great Gatsby is  simply a bad Melrose Place episode.

      "So we beat on, boats against the  current, borne back ceaselessly into the past " is some good stuff, but so was the last Vanessa Carlton CD with the video where she plays the piano on a flatbed truck driving through some suburb. Hopefully, somebody likes one or the other. If not, there's always porn. Knock yourself senseless, killer.     

   There is joy in simplicity. Sure, we're no Hemingways here for the most part....what do you want for nothing? Lighten up. Celebrate the small things. Read a blog. It's free, it will be appreciated by the blogger, and you may enjoy yourself. See the blog....be the blog...

      I may as well introduce myself.....I'm Stacey, aka 'Thumper' or "The Smurf." I'm a female sports blogger, which is funny enough....but I'm also 5 feet tall, French (born in Rouen), overeducated and underemployed. I have two young daughters and a 35 year old child that I happen to be married to. I was raised near Boston, and I was lost to sports fandom by about 5 years of age. I just moved to Cape Cod, and I haven't found a store with a proper cheese section yet. Properly tanned, I can be passed off as Portuguese, even in Fall River.

      I started my career teaching, then I got more degrees and ended up counseling. I used to drive from a rich suburb that Joe Perry lived in to a nasty school for criminal teens in a squalid ghetto. I coached a basketball team that is one looming conviction away from having the entire starting five in jail. Then my Catholic fertility reared up, and now I'm a housewife with two kids and a sports page. It's all good.

      My writing experience is limited to drawing up lesson plans....and this very blog you are visiting as we speak. I managed to win the All Star Blogger contest, and AOL sent me to last year's All Star game. I also disturb the staff of Sports Bloggers Live with incessant bad humor. I tell a lot of jokes. Not  all are funny. I succeed by sheer volume. "Quantity has a quality all its' own," Stalin once said, when asked if 10,000 shoddy tanks can beat 2,000 good ones.

      Since then, it's been a non-stop love affair between the good people of AOL and yours truly, America's Sweetheart. I get so many hits to this journal, I can't be sanctioned to fight in Nevada. See that site counter on the side of this page? I've rolled that sucker so many times, epileptics have gone into seizures watching it.

      I really don't mess around at all. That's just the kind of girl I am. Smashmouth style. Undeniable competence. Blue eyed soul. Brains, beauty and brawn. Sophisticated, but gully.

   I've accidentally gone to a formal party at a million dollar house in my Duxbury High School soccer uniform(the game went 4 OTs, and I'm punctual before stylish). I lost a potential $15,000 bet on a blocked field goal attempt, then went out and bought four pairs of shoes. "Lite Piano" is next to "Biggie Tribute" ('you can't touch my riches, even with MC Hammer and those .357 girls)in my Radio AOL presets.

      I write the kind of journal that you can kick back and smoke a fat a** blunt to. My style is like pouring a Scorpion Bowl into a word processor. Marvel in my much-maligned magnificence.      

Enough about me....let's check out the talent

:      http://helpshari.typepad.com/shari_kurzrok/  

      This lady needs your help. I kid around a lot, but check out this site and do what you can. No person stands taller than when they stoop  to help others...and I think you can write it off.

     This lady is illin' like a villain, so if you're, ummm, late with your donation, send it to Toys For Tots. .          

 

http://journals.aol.com/aangelisqt/dontgoquietly/  

  

  Beth is young, pretty, intelligent, observant, insightful, creative, funny, and fresh. Beth is also buck nutty like a Snickers.  No worries....a little eccentricity is good in a writer- it helps with the press later if she gets Big. She knows how to write. She's a Lean Mean Teen Quote machine. Check out these gems:  

"So, I think I accidentally threatened someone via eBay."

About Antigua: "For the price of buying him a few drinks and a meal or two, you get to brag back home about your Latin boyfriend."

"To enter the contest, you needed an original song about why you shouldn't do drugs, or why they are bad, yanno? Anyway,  if you win you get five thousand friggen dollars"

"I'm in a whole new world of pain.. and kinda hungry. My next workout is called "cupcakes" .. that's where I put on a 20 pound meat suit and take on a couple lions. I call it cupcakes because that's the name of the hungriest lion."

"I really really hate conflict with people. It's such a waste of my time to sit there, get totally pissed and angry at some idiot, probably a complete stranger, about how right I am..I try to ignore them..... If they flip me off I just follow them home and steal their things, then resell them on eBay. It's  win-win. "

" I think I am scarred, if not forever, then  at leastfor a good week.I don't ever plan on attending any little league event, nor am I entering my kids in any sports. Theywill play an instrument and take dance lessons, even if it's a boy. I'm sorry- that's the way it's going to be.   "  

"Drowning fat kids in lakes isn't what I am all about. Didn't you know it's only French Canadian midgets?"  

Beth's Thoughts While Shopping...."I wonder what they think I look like? 
a suburban teenager wannabe housewife? 
making vegetarian dinners from a recipe, 
maybe'....."

"Yea, New Jersey is one of those really weird places you hear about. If you grew up here you probably hate it, but once you leave you realize you really have an emotional attachment to white trash and overpopulation. "

 

   That's talent, folks. Roaming in this girl's journal is like being repeatedly smashed in the face with a bottle of Atavan. I can read her all day.

      She didn't respond to my request to feature her journal, but I phrased it so that I'd run it unless she responded in a bad way. If she finds out and has a problem, I'll remove it. I defer to greater talent and better legs.

   "We can settle this like gentlemen, or we can get into some gangsta s***"            

 

 

http://journals.aol.com/sieblonde/Pfft/

      Some days, you need CNN, while some days you need to follow some suburban mom as she builds a backyard garden.  

   

    Susan is also a sort of NRA den mother to what I believe is called the Georgia Teen Pistol team...girls who can pull off a shotgun wedding without the old man.    

  

       This is a Garden Journal at  heart, though....Susan will either finish her yard or die trying. I'm sure there are mountain soldiers in Afghanistan that aren't working as hard as she is. This stuff has been going on for months, and she has the pictures to prove it.     

    I didn't pick up on whether Susan lives in a hurricane zone, but if a Category 5 wrecks that stone wall after she impacted vertebrae building it......well, let's just say that I'd be anywhere but that yard when ol' Susan comes out and sees that her stuff has been scattered to the four winds. With a year of her life wasted and another year needed to clean up the rubble, she might start laying hands on people.

      All because a Mom wants to look at a nice yard while she floats her hard-earned Chill Time away in her pool. Forced onto a jury at her trial, I wouldn't convict if she killed someone afterwards, to be honest.  

 

       

 

       http://journals.aol.com/halosusie/HalosRecipes/

 

        Nothing fancy on the surface, here. This is a woman who is sharing out some recipes. 

 -  Baked Apples w/fruity & nutty filling

-  Deep Fried Ice cream w/raspberry sauce OR Carmelized Apples

 -  OUTSTANDING Baked Ham with MY Special fruity Ham sauce

-  Vermicelli Salad

-  Best Chili Recipe  

-  Spinach Balls

 -  Sweet Crunchy sweet Potato's

-  Raspberry Balsamic Chicken Breasts, with raspberry sauce  

      Girls....insurance people tell us that you'll live 78.8 years. You'll be married for about 50 of them, and you'll only be really pretty for 10-20 of those.

      Once you have kids, you can sort of sit home, watch soap operas and blog while Hubby works for the lot of you. It's been that way since caveman times, and he won't question it if properly managed. "Properly managed" is as follows....

      He'll roll in from work at 6 PM or so, and be sound asleep at 11. If you can cook well, one of those five hours in between will be pleasant. If you're good at sex, that takes care of another hour. Baseball games last 3 hours.This isn't a coincidence. Learn how to cook. It's the tastiest Art.

      Read the blog, marry well, and call Halo with thanks while you watch Jerry give his Final Thoughts on Guys Who Love Girls Who Love Vegetables. Don't worry that she's in Georgia or something....you're not paying for the call. 

 

 

          http://journals.aol.com/zbar88/callingtheshots/

     Alex the Phenom gets a lot of attention, but Zach over at Calling The Shots can hold his own like a teen sports blogger should probably be able to. Dedication is admirable, and if there's a path to ESPN, a Youth Blog would probably be on it.

     Kids rule the Internet already, anyhow. Go to a chat room if you don't believe me. The Internet- modern, ever changing, faddish, open ended, abstract, base, sexual and violent- is better suited to teenagers, and it is almost required that an adult give up childish things at some point.

      I was walking Gabby and Melissa when I came across some kids playing with a Pogo Stick. I never had a Pogo Stick when I was a child. The kids came over to play with the babies, and I took the opportunity to borrow the Pogo Stick.

      I'm not much bigger than a kid anyhow, and I had observed them bouncing on it. It couldn't be that hard, no? The key would be to just jump on it full weight, with absolute confidence that things would sort of take care of themselves once the  process was started.....sort  of like sex, right down to  the dueling bedspring sound a Pogo Stick makes when used properly.

      When not used properly, it makes a sound like a woman falling onto a lawn off a Pogo Stick, snarling in the French she lapses into when forced to speak without thinking first. There is also some posterior bruising involved, as well as a charming 7 year old girl saying, "You can't do that....you're old."

      This blog Zach has fashioned is probably the exact opposite of the feeling I had when I didn't Ike Turner some tact into that ragamuffin..     

   I taught high school, and I understand American kids. Properly marketed, Calling the Shots should get Zach at least 20% more physicality in his slow dances at the next school social function. In the great scheme of things, that's what it's all really about anyhow.  

              

http://journals.aol.com/white6416r/DadsTomatoGardenJournal/

 

  This dude is like 90 years old, and reading down this far in the article may just finish him off. It'd be a shame, though....this guy rocks hard, like Godsmack.  

   This isn't going to give you a happy ending oranything...it's just the thoughts of some 92 year old old guy who is pretty much about working in his garden. It is very heartwarming, like when his grandkids get him a golfcart, or when he muses about the cat  who joins him at  the computer.

   The cool thing about this blog is the author. This is a guy who was born during the Roosevelt campaign....TEDDY Roosevelt. They didn't have cars, TV, quality porn,  Buffy the Vampire Slayer or anything. He's probably cooked meals over a cave fire, and fought off brontosauri. 90 years is a long time...a Triple Monponsett, and change.

   By all accounts and demographics, he should have gone to that Great Garden In The Sky in the 1980s....but just look at him now.   His tomato garden makes mine look like pizza sauce. He's on top of the news and the weather. He has a web page. Young women notice him, and give him national recognition. Heck, I'd be happy to party with him just 'cuz he's a 90 year old with a web page. That's pretty cool.

     I get a sense that he's an old charmer who can still cook a fine pasta dinner, drink a bottle of wine, and invite a young lady to dance. I hope I'm kicking this much butt when I'm 90, I can tell you that.

 -  "Depression Era Guy Work Ethics"......This man  doesn't miss a day blogging. I moved 15 miles south in Massachusetts, and I missed 2 months. He's absolutely diesel.......