A friend of ours hooked us up with tickets to see the Broncos and Bears last night at Invesco and here are 5 quick thoughts on that experience:

1.       Just before opening kick off, fans at Invesco were treated to a performance by the “Thunder Storm”, a team of high-speed sky divers who parachute onto the field going about 50 miles an hour.  I gotta admit…it was pretty impressive.   Especially considering that back when I was a kid the only high-speed falls you could see at a football game involved the guy sitting three rows from the top of the stadium who started tailgating 19 hours before kick off.

2.      Apparently the NFL is really trying up the overall entertainment value of games this year.  During one TV time out last night, Referee Ed Hochuli came out and bench-pressed two Volkswagens. 

3.      You know the guys who roam the sidelines with those concave plexiglass contraptions that supposedly have microphones in ‘em?  How much you wanna bet that whole thing is just a practical joke that the game production team has been playing on an unsuspecting intern for like 20 years now?  And if it’s NOT some kind of joke, couldn’t they just figure out how to make the microphone smaller?

4.      Technology being what it is these days, the Broncos have set up a program where fans can text the word “respect” to 78247 and security will come and deal with any issue concerning obnoxious or unruly people in the stadium.  For the entire first half I kept texting the message “smug looking guy on field wearing number 6 jersey for Bears is beating my team”…unfortunately, security never showed up.  Neither did the Broncos defense.

5.      And speaking of Jay “Cry Baby” Cutler, boy oh boy, did the Bronco fans have it in for him last night.  In just s few minutes of listening to the fans around me, I learned about everything from Jay’s personal hygiene habits to his emotional make up to his relationship with his Mom.  As for getting a reaction out of Cutler I didn’t see much…from what I could tell, the look on his face seemed to say the following:  “my team is winning, I make 646 gajillion dollars a year and my new hometown has really great deep dish pizza….so yell all you want.”

Tickets?  Free. 

Concession costs for a family of 5?  $122 dollars. 

Jay Cutler QB rating?  106. 

Kyle Orton QB rating? 78.4

Bears 27, Broncos 17. 

Call me when the regular season starts.

The last time I tried to shower in a hotel, I couldn’t find a bar of soap for the life of me.

After running out of patience for my bumbling around Anne finally said, “Hey..knuckle-head, the soap is right here!” and she handed me a little cardboard box that said “Waste Reducing Exfoliating Body Cleanser” on it.

And here I had been foolishly looking for something that said S-O-A-P.  What was I thinking?

The back of the package said the following:  This ergonomically shaped soap has been designed to eliminate the unused center of traditional soap bars.  This soap is cruelty free and contains no animal fat or by-products.  This carton is made from natural recycled packaging printed with soy based inks.  Enjoy your shower and don’t forget to wash behind your ears!

Okay, I made the last part up…but all the rest of it is true. 

Here are 3 quick thoughts on my most recent soap-tastic discovery:

1.        I’m a guy who really enjoys the small details of life and as such I TIP MY HAT to the person who spend that much time thinking about how to make a better bar of soap.  Talk about micro-analysis!  Clearly this is a person who needs a hobby of some kind.

2.       Ergonomics is “The science of equipment design intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort”.  If we now have ergonomically designed soap that must mean that somebody somewhere actually got so fatigued and discomforted that they couldn’t finish their shower.  Wow…that’s a scary thought. 

3.       There’s a picture of this bar of soap on my blog at 995 the mountain dot com.  Take a look at it and tell me if I’m crazy here….but doesn’t it look vaguely….uh….anatomical?  I may have to research it some more but my suspicion is that it was designed by a group of horny 14 year old boys right after spending an entire weekend looking through their father’s back issues of Playboy Magazine.  I don’t know that it cleans any better than regular soap…but I find it oddly compelling none the less.

In closing allow me to say this:  It’s SOAP people…let’s not overthink it, okay?

As any decent recovery program will tell you, the first step in curing an addiction is admitting that you have a problem in the first place.

With that in mind….My name is Mike Casey….and I’m addicted……to……. salsa.

Not just any salsa mind you, but specifically Herdez brand Salsa Casera. 

Sure, I’d spent a lot of years just using salsa recreationally….maybe with friends…maybe a little extra on the weekends….but it wasn’t until someone introduced me to the zesty, tangy goodness that IS Herdez Brand Salsa Casera, that my addiction really started to spiral out of control.  To borrow a phrase from the Simpsons, “It’s like there was a party in my mouth, and EVERYONE was invited.”

I started the same way all salsa addicts do….a little chips and salsa after work just to relax…..maybe an extra dollop or two on my burritos….and before I knew it, I was putting Herdez Salsa on everything from breakfast cereal to ice cream, just as an excuse to keep using…..and before long, as my salsa needs continued to increase, I was actually INVENTING meals in order to hide my addiction.  ‘Brunch’ actually exists…..but only in the mind of a stone cold salsa junkie could there be completely fictitious meals such as “Linner” or “Dreak-fast”. 

And then of course, as happens with any self-destructive cycle of addiction, I eventually hit rock bottom. Instead of going through a 10 oz jar of Herdez Salsa Casera every couple days, I was now buying a family size container and polishing it off before lunch time every single day. 

Finally, after a three day bender in which I had taken money out of my kid’s piggy banks and hocked important family heirlooms in order to get the money to buy more Herdez Salsa Casera, I found myself strung out at 2am, crawling around the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, looking for anything…anything man……a sprig of Cilantro….a mini chunk of fallen tomato……just one spilled drop of that Salsa-rific nectar, I’ll go clean tomorrow, I SWEAR!

That was a dark day, my friends…a dark day indeed.

Fortunately, my family staged a salsa intervention before it was too late, and with the help of some qualified professionals and a free-ketchup program that helped ween me away from my salsa dependence, I can say I’ve been clean for 6 months now. 

But I’ll be honest with you…it’s a struggle everyday…..and sometimes I find myself jealous of people who can just use Herdez Salsa Casera recreationally without having it completely take over their lives. 

But if you happen to be one of those people….the next time you sit down to casually enjoy a burrito, or a quesadilla, or some chips….take an extra moment or two to really savor the magnificence of Herdez Salsa Casera for me…..and remember….the first taste is always free…

Ever watch David Byrne’s “promotional video” for Talking Heads 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense”?

Wow…talk about re-defining weird.

Click here to watch it.

I’ll be the first to admit there have been any number of really horrific fashion trends that have come down the pike in my lifetime…including but by no means limited to: bell bottoms, platform shoes, feathered hair, disco shirts, leg-warmers, 80s mall hair, the Flash Dance off the shoulder look, parachute pants, the mullet, the grunge look and skin tight acid washed jeans just to name a few….

I also understand that part of the deal with fashion fads is that they tend to be favored by impressionable young people between say the ages of say 12 and 22, which is a demographic I’m long past, but for the love of all that is good and holy, can someone PLEASE explain the fascination that the next generation seems to have with wearing their pants not actually ON their waists but somewhere between their knees and ankles?

Yesterday I was in line at a sandwich place grabbing some lunch when I found myself behind two young guys….somewhere between 16 and 20 years old I’m guessing, and both of ‘em were showing full on-butt right there in the store!  Without even TRYING I coulda told you the size and color of their underoos in addition to a few other LESS discreet personal details that I’d rather not even think about…let alone discuss.

These pants were well beyond saggy…or baggy…or droopy…..or even poopy…….they  were riding so low that an extra dose of super strength ‘dungaree Viagra’ wouldn’t have had a prayer of gettin’’em up again.

Man, if my parents had EVER found me out in public wearing my pants around my ankles they woulda dressed me in saran wrap and farmer’s overalls for the next 6 years of my life!

I may not be in the ideal position to offer fashion advice to today’s youth, but let me go ahead and throw out these 3 quick suggestions on the droopy drawers trend anyway:

1.  Dear Young Person: Trust me when I say, you’re never going to look better in a pair of jeans than you do at this stage of your life, so go ahead and WEAR ‘EM!  Around your waist!
2. I’ve been told that the baggy pants trend was inspired by ‘prison chic’, because inmates aren’t allowed to wear belts in the joint.  If you really want to get a taste of prison life, get rid of your ipod and your cell phone and all your possessions, move into the smallest closest in your house and have your parents serve you lukewarm gruel for about a month.  That’ll give you a much better idea of what prison is like than wearing baggy pants will.
3. There’s only one excuse for ever wearing your pants around your ankels and here it is:  if you’re in the bathroom taking care of business and someone opens the door and yells “Fire!  Fire!” and you run out of the house to safety without stopping to pull up your pants….then I’ll cut you some slack.  But that’s it.

Otherwise, when it comes to where you decide to wear your pants:  Just Say No To Crack. 

You’ll thank me when you’re older.

But…which animal was the most insulted? The panda or the poodle?

Story link is here.

My old college buddy Jay has always had a big spider phobia.  I guess when he was a kid, someone told him that the average person swallows a couple dozen spiders over the course of their lifetime…usually when they’re sound asleep….and that statistic just stuck in his head for long enough to give him the spider willies.

Now, as a guy, when a buddy tells you he has an irrational fear of something, you’re under a man-law obligation to make fun of him.  I don’t think that rule is written down anywhere….it’s just understood. And being a firm believer in man-law, I made fun of Jay and his spider phobia for the first 10 years I knew him…..until sometime in the early 1990s when I was living in Seattle and sharing a house with 4 friends, including Jay the spider-boy.  My room happened to be in the basement.

So one night I’m laying in bed and I start hearing very strange noises coming from the other side of the room.  Not loud noises..but noticeable.

So I make like Horton the elephant and train my ears on the sound…..trying to figure out what exactly I was hearing. 

A mouse scurrying in the walls?  Nah…..too quiet to be a mouse.

Maybe a cat outside my window?  Nah…..definitely wasn’t that loud.

The more I listened to the sound the more I could detect a slight change in the pitch every couple seconds.  Almost like the sound, whatever it was, became more clear….and then more muffled….and then clear again….and then muffled again….

After letting this drive me crazy for a good 15 minutes, I got up and turned on my bed room light.

And there, on the wall directly opposite my bed…..was the single….largest…spider I have EVER seen in my entire life.

You’ll think I’m exaggerating but I swear it’s body was at least the size of a dime…..with its legs extended it looked like it was the size of my hand…..okay….maybe not THAT big…but BIG!  I found out later

This thing was SO big that I was actually HEARING it walk across my wall……..from the OTHER side of my room………and the change in pitch I mentioned?  I had posters on my bedroom walls back then and when this monster spider walked, his feet made one sound when they were on dry wall, and another more muffled sound when he walked across one of my posters.

In general, I’m a firm believer in live and let live.  But when you’re laying in bed and you HEAR a spider walking across your walls and you turn on the light and SEE a spider that looks like something from a Japanese horror film, well……there just aren’t many options at that point.

So I grabbed a Size 12 Nike tennis shoe, splatted mister spider across my wall, and pushed my bed out into the basement living room for the next week or so.

And the really unfortunate part of the story is that all of a sudden, it just didn’t seem right to make fun of buddy Jay and his spider phobia anymore. 

Fortunately, there’s lots of other things for me to make fun of him for.

Click here to listen to the audio version of today’s In Case You Wondered.

You’re familiar with those shaving mirrors with the suction cups you stick on the shower wall, right?  Possibly one of the greatest inventions of the last 100 years or so…

I’m sure the more staunch environmentalists among us would point out that it’s a significant waste of water and decidedly un-green to shave IN the shower but honestly, I think those folks just need to lighten up sometimes…it’s not like I’m burning piles of Styrofoam in my back yard or anything.

Funny thing about this suction cup shaving mirror is that when it gets really hot outside, the thing sometimes pops off the wall and crashes and clanks and clunks its way to the bottom of the tub.  Usually this happens in the middle of the night and the noise wakes up Anne who then wakes me up to say “What was that?  Did you hear something?  Is there someone in the house?”  After a couple years of this I’ve conditioned myself to say “Just the shaving mirror falling off the wall….go back to sleep.”  Sometimes I have nightmares that someone really has broken into my house seeking to do my family harm and I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security by my shaving mirror….but usually I can muscle my way through that idea if I give it 3 or 4 seconds.

So anyway, the shaving mirror popped off the wall again last night, and when I hit the shower this morning at 3 am, I bent over to pick the thing up, and found it stuck firmly to the bottom of the tub.  I must’ve yanked and pulled at it for a good minute and a half without moving it at all.  I even did the old Saturday morning cartoon trick where you sort of walk off in the other direction and pretend like you don’t care if the shower mirror stays stuck to the bottom of the tub or not, and then like the coyote jumping on the road runner, you pull a sneak attack and dive on the thing yanking it as hard as you can in every direction imaginable…and still, it wouldn’t budge.  It was like someone had crazy glued the shaving mirror to the bottom of my tub or something. 

So then I tried sliding it in the hope that maybe if I hit a little puddle of moisture somewhere in the tub the suction cups might relinquish their death grip so I could shave my face and get on with my day, but that didn’t work any too well either.

Now it’s 3:15 in the morning, I’m nekked as a jaybird and I’m sliding the shaving mirror around and around and around the bottom of the tub like some booger-eatin’ moron playing in a wading pool…and still the thing won’t budge.

At this point a smart man probably would’ve called it quits and either shaved in front of the bathroom mirror or skipped it all together figuring his sanity was important than a clean, close, pore-opening shave….but as we’ve discussed before, I am NOT a smart man.

So, I lathered up, turned on the shower, got down on all 4’s, and then proceeded to shave my face using the world’s lowest shower shaving mirror. 

That’s the one thing you should know about me…..what I lack in intelligence and mechanical acumen, I make up for in dogged persistence and outstanding personal grooming.

Click here to listen to the audio version of today’s In Case You Wondered.

Last week my buddy Tom generously invited me to join him at his Country Club for a round of golf. 

Having never belonged to a Country Club myself, I sometimes feel a little intimidated in these kinds of surroundings…but I find that a bit of well-intentioned low-brow humor usually helps me feel at ease.

Here are my 3 favorite Country Club gags….feel free to use them next time you’re hob-knobbing with Biff and Chip and Muffy over at Knotty Hole Golf and Tennis Club.

1.        From what I can tell, lots of country clubs have mandatory valet parking, so after I roll through the lot full of brand new BMW’s and Escalades and Volvo SUV’s in my 10 year old Subaru with the dented passenger door and the broken tail-light, I throw my keys to the parking attendant and say “Make sure you don’t park this near the regular club riff-raff…..all these dents and dings happened last time I was here.  Oh, and be sure to lock the doors….I don’t want the rich folks rifling through my car while I’m gone.”  At the very least, this will confuse the parking attendant long enough that you can move 25 feet away from your car and pretend like it belongs to someone else.

2.       Here’s another important note about Country Clubs, very very few of them deal in cash at all, preferring instead to just have their members sign receipts for goods and services that get billed at the end of the month.  What this means to chumps like you and ME is that Country Clubs are GREAT places to LOOK like a big spender.  So, pull out your wallet frequently and offer to buy anything and everything.  “Who needs a beer?  It’s on me!”  “No, no…let me get dinner…I insist.”  “How about a new putter, a sleeve of balls and a couple dozen of the naked lady tees?  I’m buying.”….What’s that?  Oh….I can’t buy anything unless I’m a member?  Hmm….I see.  Well…I’ll get you next time.  Meantime I’d like a steak sandwich…a bloody mary…and a steak sandwich…..what’s your member number again?

3.       Unless you’re a great golfer, which I most definitely am not, the first tee is always a little intimidating, especially when it’s right outside the club house.  In the 25 years I’ve been playing the game, I have NEVER, EVER not even ONCE gotten off the first tee successfully as a guest at someone’s club.  Sometimes I hook my tee shot onto the cart path, sometimes I miss the ball entirely and take a 3 foot divot out of the tee box, and one time I sliced a ball so badly that it cleared the closest fairway by 50 yards and smacked loudly into the fence surrounding the club swimming pool….sending dozens of women and children running for cover.  In these situations I usually find it best to pull my tee out of the ground and say in as loud a voice as possible, “SEE- that’s why I didn’t join this club.  The first hole SUCKS!”

Look at it this way…..if you’re gonna get escorted off the grounds anyway, you might as well leave ‘em laughing……

Last weekend Anne and I took the kids over to the Denver Museum’s Imax theatre to see a film called “Dinosaurs Alive”.

Here are 7 things I learned on our little voyage.

1.        “Imax” gets it’s name from the shortened version of the phrase “Maximum Image”.  40 minutes of Imax film is 2.55 miles long and weighs about 250 lbs.  An Imax screen is 44 feet high by 66 feet wide.  This is all very impressive……especially if you’re sitting next to your 6 year old daughter and a digital version of Tyrannasaurus Rex comes leaping out of the screen at you.  Due to the impressive nature of the Imax presentation, this means you should plan on having your 6 year old daughter, and possibly your 4 year old daughter, sit on your lap for the rest of the film.

2.       Speaking of Tyrannasauras Rex…he was a pretty big ol’ critter…..measuring up to 45 feet in length, weighing 5 tons, and able to move over land at speeds up to 25 mph.  Some fringe scientific groups now suggest that T-Rex was especially unpopular with his fellow dinosaurs not only because he had a tendency to eat anything in his path, but also because he suffered from chronic halitosis.  Think about it….it’d be nearly impossible to brush your teeth with those tiny little stub arms of his.

3.       From what I can tell about the study of paleontology, field work largely involves laying in a pile of rocks or sand for hours on end and seeing just how deep you can dig using only a paint brush and a toothpick.  This is a good career choice if you are very intelligent, very patient, and/or very very sleepy.

4.       Seismasaurus was the largest dinosaur of the Jurassic period and at a length of 110 feet, and a weight of 30 tons, one of the largest animals ever to walk the face of the earth.  Interestingly, Seismasaurus existed entirely on vegetation.  In my mind, this seems to raise questions about whether a vegetarian diet is really the way to go if you’re looking to drop a few pounds.

5.       In all the time that paleontologists have been studying the dinosaurs, they’ve only discovered 2% of the species that once roamed the Earth.  Back in college, I came pretty close to failing a final exam in my “Intro to Paleontology” class…but I ask you….with this knowledge in mind, shouldn’t a score of 2% on that final have gotten me an “A”?

6.       As a species, modern humans have been around for maybe 200,000 years at the outside.  Dinosaurs ruled the planet for 150 million years and disappeared in the blink of an eye….so let’s not get too full of ourselves here, folks.

7.       And finally……If you plan on going to see the “Dinosaurs Alive” Imax film, and you’re an intellectually curious person who….let’s say…brings a pen and paper to take notes during the film…plan on being mocked by your wife….your kids….and possibly the strangers sitting behind you during the movie.  “Mommy…why does that man keep writing things down during the movie?”  “I don’t know honey…he’s a strange strange man……don’t look at him….”

It’s alright….I’ve gotten used to it over the years…..

Click here to listen to the audio version of today’s In Case You Wondered