The Carnival Freedom aka The Golden Corral of the Sea

Ahoy hoy everyone, I know you are all dying to know why I have not commented on the Packers glorious win in Super Bowl XLV and the reason is because I have been on a week long cruise with my family and I’m 29 years old and that’s not weird and I don’t care what anybody says.

We departed on Sunday from Fort Lauderdale on the day of the Super Bowl. I was really nervous, not so much for the outcome of the game, more so that I would miss the game because Time Warner does not offer service in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.

I caught most of the pre-game on the top deck with every one else on the ship, there were 3,400 people on board, the ship was massive. There was a smattering of GB and Steelers fans; most of the crowd appeared to be neutral.

So no shit, about two minutes before the coin toss, the satellite feed goes out. I started freaking out as you can imagine. I was seriously considering jumping ship, figuring there had to be someone in Cuba that had a flat screen, Direct TV, and chips. If I jumped off now, I could probably invade the Bay of Pigs before the Black Eyed Peas took the stage at halftime. I’m not kidding, a mutiny was brewing on the top deck that would have made those Egyptian protestors look like pussies.

But the game came back about two minutes into the first quarter, the Packers dominated, then made me physically ill for two quarters by letting Pittsburgh back into the game, then domination again. What a game for the ages. The icing was the orange Gatorade poured on Mike McCarthy after the victory that paid out 5 to 1.

Nothing more can be said about the Pack, they are the greatest team that ever played the game of football and they are going to be twice as good next year.

The rest of the trip was like living on a giant, floating orgy of food.

Ever wake up and have a craving for two omelets, infinity bacon, and a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch but with vanilla ice cream instead of milk? Well then a Carnival Cruise is just for you. I cannot reiterate how much food is available on these ships 24/7. Way too much. I’m still feeling pangs of guilt.

I took one picture the entire trip. ONE.


You can tell where my priorities were at. I got to see Key West, Cayman Islands, and Jamaica, I swam with stingrays and climbed waterfalls, but the trip would have been a total loss without winning one of the almost daily Ping Pong tournaments onboard the ship. Not kidding.

The first tournament, I made it to the semi-finals but some sloppy play on my part caused me to lose to some Eastern European guy, 17-21. The next tournament I battled two old guys i.e. hardened veterans and an Asian guy to face my arch nemesis in the final match. My arch nemesis is, you guessed it, my brother, Joey Wollin. The pressure got to me and he soundly beat me, casting a large shadow over an otherwise very enjoyable trip.

But the final tournament of the ship, on the last day, I beat this chick who was really good, my dad, and then once again I had to square off against my brother who is frickin awesome and he beats me all the time and I get really riled up just thinking about it. I could not imagine a more horrific scenario than my brother winning TWO pieces of ship on a stick and me having none.

But I channeled by inner Forest Gump and defeated my younger brother, the way God intended, and now my trophy is nestled comfortably between my 1st place WWITB kickball plaque and the Champion of Hammersley Road trophy that I earned by reigning over Joey Daniels in a series of feats of strength back in the summer of 2007.

My children will have some very large shoes to fill some day that’s for sure.

Super Bowl Fever

Ever since the NFC Championship Game, I have been unable to channel my attention to anything other than the Super Bowl for more than about 3 minutes at a time. I set a record this morning though, I managed to slog away at an appraisal for a whole 8 minutes before I got caught up in the firestorm that is the Finley tweet regarding the team photo scheduling in Dallas, which I proceeded to get sucked into for a good hour.

I think ESPN, Fox Sports, and the Press Gazette have done a pretty good job so far providing content every hour on the hour for a game that is still 9 days away so I think it’s up to me to provide some insight into the lighter side of Super Bowl coverage, in numerical order for your reading pleasure.

1.) I think it is fine when the local DJ’s superimpose Packer radio highlights onto existing songs but I am just not a real big fan of dedicated Packer novelty songs. To me, they are just an insult to Robert Brooks, who perfected the Packer novelty song in 1996, thus rendering all future Packer novelty songs obsolete. Why eat hamburger, when you can eat steak?



2.) I think the same could be said about Reggie’s Prayer, the 1996 (what a time to be alive!) hit film starring Reggie White, MC Hammer, and Mr. Miagi. Why does Hollywood continue to make movies when they already have this:


As scary as this sounds,this is only the SECOND greatest acting performance in Brett Favre's film career.

3.) I just posted this clip on my Facebook profile but I think it is worth repeating. Look closely for the smoke bomb used to make the scene look more like 14th century England and less like a shitty park in some suburb in America.

4.) I’ve made my first step towards a chronic gambling addiction by signing up with one of those overseas betting web sites. I did for the sole purpose of making a proposition bet that B.J. Raji will score in some capacity during the Super Bowl. Maybe another pick-6, maybe he’ll get a TD as a fullback, hell maybe they’ll throw him in as a kicker, I don’t know, but the fact that he will score is a LOCK, a LOCK I tell ya.

5.) Let’s hope Mike McCarthy doesn’t adopt a Homer Simpson style of playbook strategy and roster management. If I see Jordy Nelson run a play where he spins around in a circle and falls to the ground, I’m going to punch someone in the face.

Distracted in Appleton

I know most of you are dying to know how fast I ran the 2011 Perkinstown 3-Mile Snowshoe Race last Saturday and the answer to that question is BLAZINGLY. I left behind a trail of puddles as I cruised through the Chequamegon National Forest knocking over small children, elderly citizens, handicapped people, people, people that are my girlfriend, orphaned children, and anyone else that got in the way between me and my 37:17 finishing time.

I finished 48th out of 185 in the men’s division and 9th in my age bracket, but I am pretty sure that the 47 dudes in front of me cheated. In fact, I’m positive they did.

Jess was right behind me but she lost some minutes due to some impromptu text messaging on the course. She loves that blackberry. She really does.

I don’t know what was so important that she needed her phone during the race but one thing is for certain, if she got a text, her reaction was “OH…..MY GOD”. The “OH…..M Y GOD” response gets used quite liberally with Jess. Whether finding out that her mom won the Powerball or if she just found out her friend Staci ate a turkey sandwich for lunch, you can bet Jess will be calling out to that Big Guy in the Sky about such a monumental turn of events. It’s pretty cute, actually.

Not to change the subject, but every morning this week, when the alarm clock went off, I instinctively banged that snooze button, crashed back on my pillow, stared blankly at the ceiling, and had the following inner monologue:

Packers…..Packers…...Bears…..Packers…….Bears…..Bears?.... Packers!..... Clay Matthews……Packers…...

This would continue for three or four more snoozes before I was forced to get up and drive to Appleton and pretend to give a shit about work.

I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have done a productivity study in the State of Wisconsin this week. I would have liked to know how exactly we were all collectively distracted from our tasks at hand in an objective measure. Im sure it would have been record breaking.

Especially, last Tuesday at 2:00 when Ticketmaster.com started selling tickets for the NFC Championship Game for a 60 second window at face value. I didn't know they sold out so quickly, I was on that piece of shit website for what seemed like forever. I was on there so long, that I started to become fluent in that gibberish language you needed to type to verify you weren't a spammer. But after about 45 minutes I was like "Flugg this schlipt, I'm getting the fundarck out of pheere" and I walked away empty handed. No big loss, who wants to watch the big game surrounded by a bunch of FIBS anyways.


Stay warm today everybody, it is colder than a biscuit out there. Go Pack!

Hotel California, Packers, New Years, Rotten Lettuce Farts, and Wollining

Man, I got a lot on my mind right now.

I am slogging away on this appraisal right now and Hotel California just popped on WAPL. I got excited, not because I like the song, but because once it is over, it will mark the longest time possible before more Hotel California gets aired again. Hotel California is probably my least favorite classic rock song of all time. To quote his Dudeness from Big Lebowski…ahhh man, I hate the fucking Eagles. It just ended and now I can go back to work, knowing that Hotel California will not be playing again for the rest of the afternoon. Bonus that it is not double play Tuesday so I will not have to be subjected to another horrible Eagles song.

Second, how about dem Packers, eh? I could not be more excited about that game yesterday, I’m still smiling from that pick by Williams to end the game. I still can’t believe the always reliable David “Always Make ‘ers” Akers dropped not one but TWO field goals. We can finally receive some vindication from the 4th and 26 debacle back in 2003. Now we just need to bring the pain (and the stick ‘em for Jones) to Altanta. Saturday can’t come soon enough.

Third, my new years resolution to play more video games this year is going pretty good so far. I’ve really fell behind at work over the holidays and probably should be working some late nights coming up but that will not stop me from logging in some hours with the Playstation 1 tonight. Wish me luck.

Unfortunately, my other new years resolution to spend more time at Cropsey’s is going dismally. I haven’t played numbers in almost a month and don’t even get me started on the zero dollars I spent gambling on bowl games. Get your head out of your ass, Benji.

Fourth, I’ve also started a new diet and workout regime because I’m going on a cruise with my family pretty soon and I don’t want to scare the fine vacationers on Carnival when I take my shirt off outdoors for the first time in 2011. The diet is going really well so far, I’ve been farting more frequently and when I do fart, it smells like rotten lettuce. If that is not a good sign, I don’t know what is.

Fifth, I invented a new word. It's a verb. The verb is to Wollin and the action is to take an hour to seal plastic wrap over a window to prevent drafts and then get everything just about complete and then touch the hair dryer to the plastic wrap so it makes a huge hole and you have to start all over again. Here's a sentence example: "Yeah I really Wollined the shit out of my family room window this weekend, it totally sucked." Feel free to get that one going.

Well that’s about all I got right now. Sorry for not blogging in so long, I was sort of swamped over the holidays but I have a big snowshoe race coming up this weekend that I will be sure to fill you in on.

Animal Crackers

I love the week before Christmas. The last of my shopping is complete. Snow is still fun. Trading Places is on TBS. Life is good.

Life was so good yesterday that I decided to take a break from work and grab a bag of my favorite cookies to get into the yuletide spirit. Actually, I don’t know what category frosted circus animal crackers falls under but I found them in the cookie aisle so I am calling them cookies.

So I when I got home and cracked open the bag, you can imagine my surprise when I found this gem of a frosted circus animal cracker.



Here’s another nice piece of shit. Seriously, what the hell is this creature?



Ditto for this little guy. Is that a dorsal fin? Since when were sharks allowed in the circus?


If you thought these few monstrosities were a fluke, think again.



The whole bag was filled with pink and white frosted blobs of God knows what. With sprinkles. If I were I kid, I would be disappointed. Hell, I’m an adult and I’m disappointed. This is just plain lazy. You can do better than this, Nabisco.

Roundabouts: When People Stop Acting Polite…and Start Getting Real

Roundabouts. Believe it or not, I see the utility in these God forsaken things and I am actually learning to like them. At first I thought it was just because I thought it was hilarious to yell, “Look, kids! Big Ben!” every time I entered one but even after the novelty of that wore off, I still find myself liking them.

I know I know, the audacity! What is liberal-leaning Ben going to support next…High Speed Rail from Madison to Milwaukee!?

Not likely. Don’t get me started on passenger rail in Wisconsin, that’s not why we’re here today.

Roundabouts are the new wild west of the roadways. In the past 6 months, I’ve seen three roundabouts get constructed between my work and home so I’ve gotten quite astute at observing the nuances of these things. There are three basic approaches to a roundabout.

1.) No Holds Barred

These people typically drive an SUV or truck and chuckle at the idea of yielding before entering a roundabout. Yielding is for pussies, they think. So is signaling. Think of a bully or any asshole you knew in High School and I guarantee they take the No Holds Barred approach to roundabouting.

2.) Normal-Style

Slower than No Holds Barred, occasionally yielding, but still no signaling.

3.) Yearning of the 4-Way

There are plenty of people that yearn for the golden days of the 4-Way stop sign and these people gots to go. You mostly see them in front of you during rush hour. They are the ones that make a complete stop because they see another car coming from 3 miles away. Then we have to sit there for five minutes because there is inevitably a procession of cars going No Holds Barred style next.

When you eventually get through said roundabout, it is almost automatic that you will get stuck behind this same person going 50 mph down Highway 41 in the left lane and preventing you from passing, further exasperating your patience. At least they signal though.

My point here is that you have to be AGGRESSIVE out there, people. Be a man, take what is yours! The whole idea of roundabouts is to prevent the waste of energy from stopping and starting your vehicle, so look ahead and punch that gas, let the other guy slow down, do whatever it takes to prevent outright stopping and for the love of God, signal when you exit the roundabout so others have a chance to punch in there. Together we can make roundabouts work.

Well maybe not the roundabout in East De Pere by the bridge, that one is a real boondoggle. The new one on Ashland and the exit of Highway 41 though…that one is inspired.

The Gift of Not Gift

Many of you are probably starting to scramble for holiday gifts, which consequently involves parking debacles, long lines, and poor service when you go shopping. Navigating the mall this time of year is not fun to say the least.

But it doesn’t have to be so difficult. This year, consider the idea of getting someone a Not Gift. For example, one of the best Christmas presents I ever gave my parents was when I grew my hair out for a year in 2003 and then got a hair cut for them for Christmas. I gave them the Not Gift of not having a son that looked like a hippie.

Now I realize it’s too late to grow your hair out but maybe consider growing a shitty beard for the holidays and then having it shaved Christmas morning for your loved ones. Unless of course, you grow an awesome beard which is a gift to the entire world. I can only grow patchy Amish neck beards, so my Not Gift could potentially have a lot of clout.

I’d like to take moment here to declare a Not Gift for Jess. We are celebrating our one year anniversary this Saturday and I want to commemorate the occasion by retiring my brown leather jacket from my wardrobe. Apparently Jess never watched Charles In Charge growing up because she doesn’t seem to realize that brown leather jackets are cool. Nobody’s perfect. At any rate, I know she will appreciate the Not Gift of not being seen around town with a brown leather jacket wearing boyfriend.


But before I do [Tear] I’d like to say one last goodbye to my old friend before decommissioning this well-traveled, well loved article of clothing.


Here is a great picture of my college buddy, Pete, having a grand old time with the brown leather jacket. Look how proud he is to be seen with me! I think this was in 2004.


Me and the BLJ on Full House Mountain in San Francisco back in 2007.


Me and BLJ have spanned continents together. Here I am bringing my coolness to Australia, hanging out with the armor of Ned Kelly in 2009. Notice his armor on the left is leather clad and almost the same color as mine. He was ahead of his time.

Ahhhhhhh good times. You will be missed BLJ, you will be missed.

Jess, I know you are reading this so now I am going to make it official: I will never wear my brown leather jacket again. Period.*












*Except for my birthday, whenever you are out of town, and weekends. Love ya, babes!

Free Packer Viking Tickets and Dane Cook Reviewed

Here are the steps needed to take to get free tickets to the upcoming clash between the Pack and the Vikes next Sunday.

1.) Download this picture.



2.) Print it out on 100 t-shirts (no caption, the pic speaks for itself), let’s say at 5 bucks a pop
3.) Drive to Minneapolis on Nov. 21
4.) Set up shop at the Metrodome parking lot
5.) Sell said t-shirts for $15 apiece
6.) Take the $1000 profit, buy some scalped tickets, use the rest towards beer, food, gas, and if there’s money left over, treat yourself to a Caribou coffee.
7.) You’re welcome.

Of course this all contingent on Brad Childress having a job next week, which is a 50/50 proposition but if the Vikes manage to eek out another win and Childress manages to cling on to his job for another week, you better believe the people of Minnesota are going to be clamoring for Brad Childress rape van t-shirts, this much I can promise you.

Then again, my first foray into novelty t-shirt sales was a disaster. If you don’t believe me, you can ask the garbage bag full of navy blue t-shirts that simply say “43,560” across the chest that’s gathering dust in my closet right now. I really thought they would be a hit at a real estate analyst conference I went to a few years back. They weren’t.

I wanted to use a Brad Childress rape van as a transition into my next bit, a review of the Dane Cook show last night at the Resch Center. How are the two related? I’ll get there in a moment.

First, I thought the warm up comedians provided more laughs than the main event. I don’t know if it was because they were funnier or because I had to pee pretty much the entire time Dane Cook was performing but in the future, I am going to avoid slamming an extra large, spiked Dr. Pepper before any show with limited opportunities for bathroom breaks.

Second, when the warm up comedians were finished, there was video introduction that went on a little too long followed by, not kidding, at least 20 security personnel to escort Dane on the stage which I thought was excessive and a little pretentious.

The show itself was pretty good. Dane Cook is a hell of a story teller and a pretty good singer too, surprisingly. The rendition of the Revenge of the Nerds theme song at the end was particularly inspiring. And his routine was all new stuff, for me it was anyways, although it was very familiar to his other routines in the past.

In general, the show was exactly what I expected except for one thing. He did not pander to the audience one time. No references to Lambeau Field, no references to Krolls or Stadium View or some local establishment, no references to anything. When I pay for $30 for a comedy show and $15 on top of that for the mafia extortion Ticketstar fees, I expect to be pandered to, at least a little bit, or else I feel ripped off.

At the end of the show, Dane and the three other comedians did a musical finale where they sang this chorus (that’s still stuck in my head) “that’s probably a bad idea” and then they took turns doing one liners, most of them referencing their previous comedy bits. When they got into this rhythm, I immediately thought of all the local or immediately topical jokes ripped from the headlines they could have done during these riffs.

If Dane or any of the other comedians did some research or even picked up a newspaper, they could have said something like, “hiring Brad Childress to coach your football team”, followed by “that’s probably a bad idea” and BOOM the crowd would have went berserker, I know they would have, and they could have ended on a high note. Pandering accomplished, on to the next town. But they didn’t and that’s kind of a bummer.

Headlining Entertainers coming to Green Bay, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. We like references to us. We like Packers and drinking and putting cheese on stuff. The stereotypes about us are true. It shouldn’t be THAT difficult.

Stuff I listened to in Middle School is NOT Classic Rock

I was listening to the radio the other day when all of a sudden “When I Come Around” started playing on 93.5 WOZZ. At first, I thought, sweet, they are playing Green Day on the classic rock station now. Then I thought, oh shit, they are playing Green Day on the classic rock station now.

First of all, I’m all for Green Day becoming part of the classic rock canon some day. I mean who doesn’t love the wild shirtless lyrics of Billy Joe Armstrong? The bong-rattling bass of Mike Dirnt? The competent drumwork of Tre Cool?

But you shouldn’t be classified as classic rock if you are still actively making music towards your original core demographic. Green Day still successfully fills up stadiums for teenagers, just like they did back in 1994, therefore they don’t even meet the bare minimum standards of classic rock.

To be eligible for classic rock designation, your band should to have break up and get back together a few times, unsuccessfully reinvent yourself at least once or twice, release a few albums that flop on the billboard charts, disappear completely for a few years and then eventually wind up on the Indian Casino and County Fair touring circuit. If you get booed for attempting to play some new stuff, you know you are classic rock.

Then again it could just be me that is out of touch with what is going on in the music industry. On the way to work today, I heard not one but TWO of possibly the worst lyrics ever committed to song.

The first one, I’m sure you heard before but you probably didn’t realize how lame it is. “Party on the White House lawn, wake up Barack and Michelle and let ‘em know that it’s on”.

I actually like the song “I Like It” before this part, hell I can fist pump like the rest of them. In fact, I basically invented the fist pump, it's one of my signature moves. If you see another Jersey Shore-based music video that features head bobbing and extreme shoulder shrugging, you know they are copying me.

But I cringe every time I hear the part about partying with the president, not for the politics, but I just don’t understand why a song about youth, having fun, and partying would want to associate itself with the most authoritative position in the free world. It’s the extreme opposite of rebellion. I can think of about a billion more places to party that would be more fun than the White House. The corollary to this would be like having Lady Gaga write a church hymm. No, thanks.

The other lyric I just heard today and boy was it bad. It sounded like Pink and I don’t know the name of the song but at the end she utters something to the effect of “too school for cool.”

I shit you not. Somebody thought that lyric was a good idea. Lame. Super lame.

I was so frustrated in the car, I almost tuned in to AM talk radio. That’s how bad it got. It doesn’t help that Green Bay has God awful morning talk show personalities. That John Maino on WIXX is a real darsh, someone needs to be an ambassador for microphones everywhere and get a restraining order from him on their behalf.

In the meantime, let’s keep Green Day where it belongs, on 105.7 and 106.7. And play more Offspring too, while you’re at it.

Election Day and Brett Favre's Dong

Election Day is tomorrow and you know what that means? No more stupid political ads on TV, can I get a hoo-rah!?

Unfortunately, that will probably be the best net result once the election season is over, regardless of what candidate wins. I use the term “win” loosely because all the candidates are losers. Nothing is going to change and that is frustrating.

I really like the idea of the Tea Party and their ideology but our current political system will inherently eat them alive. The problem with politics is that some of the very best ideas involve making a hundred million people a teeny tiny little bit better off at the expense of pissing off a disproportionately small but vocal and sympathetic group of people.

For example, if I were in a position in power, the first thing I would do is abolish the penny. Seriously. I’ve explained this before. I would save the American people a buck or two in taxes because pennies are subsidized and cost more to make than they are actually worth and make all Americans a wee bit better off because everyone hates pennies because they smell worse than my the roof of my dog's mouth.

But then two things would happen. Either 1.) someone would write a newspaper story about all the penny factory workers losing their jobs and they would picket and everyone would feel sorry for them and vote me out of office or 2.) the powerful zinc and copper lobbyists would cut my campaign funds and back some other pro-penny candidate and I would be voted out of office. Either way I lose so I end up adding a rider to some useless bill mandating the expansion of our penny factories across the country. Sucks.

Of course this is all hypothetical. If I ever ran for office, I’m pretty this picture I got tagged from facebook over the weekend would surface and derail that pipedream pretty quickly.



Sex Text Favre will be a tough one to bounce back from, not going to lie to you. It’s unfortunate, because my only crime is being really clever at coming up with topical Halloween costumes. Or obscure movie characters from the 80’s. I’m good at that, too.

The other travesty is that I think I have the political experience and acumen to really make a difference if I ran for office. Most of you probably know that I was the first student council president of Danz Elementary School in 1992. I can’t remember if I ran on a platform of budget constraint and fiscal conservancy or putting the principal in a dunk tank booth at our annual carnival but one thing I know for sure; I ran an effective administration then and I could do it again now…all the way to the White House.

But Facebook is going to have me by the balls so what is the point? How is our generation ever going to be taken seriously when running for office someday? I guarantee Facebook has some server storing every picture ever published in order to blackmail our generation when we eventually sober up. How else is that thing going to make money? It ain’t from selling banner ads for ironic t-shirts, that is for sure.

My guess is that Joe Daniels is going to end up running the country, since he is the last man standing on Earth without a Facebook account. May God help us all.

In the meantime, get out and vote tomorrow, and if you really want to make a difference, thank a policy maker for saving you and your future kids a couple of bucks in taxes (if they are making difficult budget cuts). They could use your support. Complain about pennies, too. And watch Walking Dead on AMC, it’s an awesome show and I don’t want it cancelled.


Here's a nice picture of me and my girlfriend and my big fake wang hanging out. You can't tell here but I was wearing crocs. Those stupid things cost $30 bucks! Totally worth it, though.