Well… it’s official. Everyone has lost their minds, their cool, and their sense of humor. Furthermore, CBS has lost the largest ratings they may ever see.

What I have to say has no bearing on pretty much anything, but I can’t help myself: this Don Imus controversy should have either happened a long long time ago, or not at all.

But that isn’t really what is on my mind. What’s on my mind is someone I used to work with. Jason Whitlock.

For three years I worked with Whitlock on his afternoon sports radio program on KCSP 610 Sports. Our show was good, but our management didn’t know what to do with it. Part of the reason the show was so entertaining is that Jason is the master of launching himself into the middle of the controversy du jour.

Wouldn’t you know it, this morning I wake up to coffee, Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, and my wife exclaiming, “Eric! Jason Whitlock is on T.V.!” I don’t typically find Whit being on t.v. all that surprising, he’s often on t.v. However, he’s not often on the Today Show on NBC talking to Matt Lauer about Don Imus, Jesse Jackson & Al Not-So-Sharp-ton.

See, what I mean; the master of launching himself into the middle of the controversy du jour. Of course, I watched. I couldn’t help but snicker to myself as I could see Jason snickering to himself as if to say, “I can’t believe these people took the bait and I’m in the mix now!” I can believe it, though, because Jason is the first person I’ve heard make any sense of this whole thing. Just read the first few lines of Jason’s column this week:

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again. Read the rest.

I can only respond with a phrase Jason made famous on The Doghouse: “Ihmm!”

Place your bets, XM or Sirius… who will pick up Imus’ wildly successful show?

Finally, a quick, public heart-to-heart to Jason: dude, couldn’t they have found a better back drop for the set you appeared in front of? Looked like a law office scene the ripped from an Olan Mills studio. I can almost guarantee you don’t have one of tose green lamps in your pad.

I felt compelled to pass this flammable little morsel on to my faithful reader (big ups M.O.M.). You can follow the same trail I did from Blankbaby to Al Nye to be reminded once again why McDonalds still sucks.

Turns out the secret ingredient that keeps McDonalds Chicken McNuggets so fresh and so clean is butane. That’s right: lighter fluid. A gram of which, by the way, has some wicked side effects; ingest a mere five grams and you’re partying with Anna Nicole!

The worst part is that the FDA approves of Ronny McD’s use of butane… on our food. Really?

So, who else is using lighter fluid as a preservative?

“Would you like fries with that?”

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than six months then your name is probably M.O.M. and you probably recall my committment to take on 30 with a vengence. I am making good on that committment every day.

My friend Peter Inzerillo once told me that 30 is “the age of clarity.” The age at which so much comes in to focus. I am beginning to understand what he means.

I started looking at what I value the most over the last five months. It just started happening. I didn’t decide, “I’m going to examine what I value most out of life.” It just kind of happened.

Funny what I found. I wonder if these types of values change, too? Still, I’ve come to determine that I value stability (believe it or not), my community, and opportunity. General items I know, but in the interest of brevity and being thought provoking I’m going to leave it at that.

Armed with these new found revelations I began job hunting and am happy to say that my search was relatively short compared to some. This past week I accepted a Web Producer position with uclick the online division of Andrews McMeel Universal. After tieing up some loose ends with my current job and a few days rest I’ll start later this month.

To say that I am excited is a vast understatement! If you only knew the killer things going on inside that company, and if you only knew some of the amazing people that make everything happen you also would be elated. Plus, I’ll be working with comics and games… what could be better?

Check out uclick when you get the chance. We’ll be taking over the world soon.

Wow, it’s amazing what a Thursday evening without The Office will do to your head! Whilst watching television tonight three things occurred to me. They are as follows.

1) What up America? Seriously, you leave that kid Sanjaya on American Idol… really? This kid is a dweeb. He needs to give Julia Roberts her mouth back.
As if keeping the pubestach on wasn’t bad enough, America, you kept Antonella “NSFW” Barba. I’ve seen your pictures Antonella (who hasn’t, they were even on USA Today’s site I believe) and they are about as hard to look at as your singing is hard to listen to.

2) Hello Black Donnellys. Good bye Sopranos! Please please please do not run away from us like the goodfellas on HBO.

3) Finally, how big are these rolls of toilet paper going to get? Charmin is actually offering rolls of tp that are equal to four normal sized rolls. That must be the size of an orange Gatorade cooler! Save a tree why don’t ya.

Steve Wilson is one of my dearest friends in the world. We came up through college together.

After college Steve married Sarah and they moved to Nashvegas so that he could pursue his dream of being a record producer. To make ends meet he cleaned water coolers, picked up trash and various other manual labor type jobs before finally getting hooked up with some of the right folks.

He now produces records full time and I’m very proud of him. Today, though, I couldn’t be more proud of him as I learned that he’s been nominated for a Dove Award!

Dove Awards are given out to those in the Christian music industry who have demonstrated a level of excellence that is well above average in the past year. He was nominated for his part in writing the song “Sound of Melodies” (iTunes link) as performed by the group Leeland in the category of Rock/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year (run on sentence?). He says it’s a little thing, but in truth it is a great honor and he should hold his head high (but stay a little humble, bro!).

Congrats man! You deserve this more than anyone I know. I’m more proud of you than you’ll ever know.

I can’t wear contacts. My eyes are too dry or something. Good thing I don’t mind wearing glasses.

I had an eye exam for the first time in years – like seven, actually – and it turns out my eyes have more than doubled in suckiness. So, I took the opportunity to update my frames also.

I made the mistake of first looking for frames I would like on the Country Club Plaza at the Optical Shop of Aspen. I should have remembered the simple equation Plaza + Aspen = Unaffordable, but I didn’t. Thank the Lord for the interweb.

Enter modernglasses.com, while they won’t ever be nominated for a SXSW Web Award, they do offer a great service: boutique level and designer eye frames at great prices. I saved well over $300 on a pair of frames and lenses (with Crizal, no less).

Whilst searching for a new frame my friend !jon asked if I was getting “a pair of glasses like all the ska-kids wear?” Well, I guess so, I told him. “Oh man… those are so lame! They look like your trying to hard to be cool!” Hard to hear your trying to hard to look cool from this guy!

Trying to hard to look cool? Really? Do I come across that way? I always feel like I’m trying to hard to suppress my coolness. Seriously, I have to dial it way down all the time.

I wonder if my friend !jon feels this guy is trying to hard to be cool?

Yesterday I received an email from someone who was a part of the Barack Obama pre-campaign informing me I should log onto BarackObama.com today to watch an official announcement. I say was because today that person is now a part of the official Barack Obama 2008 Presidential campaign.

Obama made his announcement and intentions official this morning on the steps of the courthouse in Springfield, Illinois.

I’m just going to say this up front: I will unashamedly campaign for Obama on this blog. I think the man has the right idea about politics and how they should be used, first and foremost for the betterment of this country and its people as well as the betterment of the rest of the world.

Furthermore, as much as I now like President Bill Clinton and what he was able to accomplish in office, I think it is time for a fresh face and name in D.C. Seems to me Hillary will only bring more of the same old politics and legislation. I certainly don’t want to see another Bush or anyone affiliated with he or his family in the White House.

Who knows what will play out over the next year and a half of campaigning. I am sure at times it will disgust us all as campaigns tend to do. My hope, though, is that there will be more “A-ha!” moments than the same old “whatever…” feeling.

If you don’t know much about Obama, you should learn. I for one am happy to see someone running with an actual chance that seems to represent my thoughts and feelings without weighing them down, or padding them with platforms of appeasement (gay marriage, stem cells, etc.).

On a completely superficial note, Obamas website is boss!

Tonight Jen and I attended our nephews elementary choir and band Holiday concert. I left thinking two things.

First, I apologize to my Dad and Mom for putting them through that in sixth grade. This band was small. My sixth grade band, with me on the alto sax-a-ma-phone, was double the size of this one. Which means double the awful!

Which brings me to my next thought: we gotta beef up the NEA! I think the band played Jingle Bells. However, it could have been the horn part at the end of Radioheads “National Anthem.” The string quartet played with string tracks. That’s not fair to the studio musicians!

The choir, however, was great! The choreography… not so much. Remember in school chorus and Melissa Gilbert and Natalie Jenson choreographed hand gestures to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” It was all in vain, you can’t successfully perform hand gestures when your shoulder to shoulder.

Besides my nephews speaking part, the highlight of the night was the “pee kid” who wasn’t allowed on the risers. He had to stand on his knees and hardly be seen just to the right of the stage. The “pee kid” deserves a speaking part, too!

Over the weekend America lost a legend; Kansas City lost a voice and most importantly a friend. Buck O’Neils history is 94 years rich.

Because of segregation he was never allowed to attend Sarasota High School, or play baseball for Florida State. However, at least he had some opportunity at a formal education unlike his Grandfather who was a slave.

As an adult O’Neil played baseball in the Negro Leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs. He will be remembered by most, though, for his work in preserving the history of the Negro Leagues and the seemingly thousands of stories about the men he played with.

As a kid I remember going to watch the Royals play here in KC and my Dad would point out this man holding a radar gun sitting down low behind the plate and taking notes. “That’s Buck O’Neil,” he’d tell me, “he played baseball a long time ago.” Between innings people would line the aisle way down to where he was sitting and working to ask for autographs. He signed every single one of them and greeted each seeker with that smile that became so familiar in Kansas City.

More recently while working for a sports talk radio station here in KC I was given the good fortune of many personal encounters and conversation with Buck. He loved to talk… about anything! While sitting in the studio with us once, doing the show, we got to talking about baseball, the home runs, steroids and the lot. I mentioned that I was bored with it all, the whole game. I’d rather watch the small ball: bunts, sac flys, hit & runs, stolen bases, spectacular defense, etc. O’Neil chuckled, smiled real big, pointed straight at me and said, “That’s because you’re a baseball man!”

To most that wouldn’t mean much, but to me it meant a ton. I always struggled with feeling like I didn’t belong in the sports radio world. For Buck to say that to me, and agree with me, was great encouragement. He may not have known the weight that remark carried, but I suspect he did.

That was a great thing about Buck. He knew the respect people gave him. He knew what kind of weight he had to “throw around,” and he didn’t do it flippantly. He respected his clout, and never held it over anyones head. He used it to help revitalize a suffering and segregated part of Kansas City, to appeal to Lawmakers to make the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City the National museum for the Negro Leagues and most importantly he used it to break down barriers of race. He never once said a bitter thing about the horrors of racial segregation he faced. No he chose to forgive and encourage others to do the same.

Coincidentally, Buck was one of my wife’s patients during the two weeks leading up to his death. She said he was never short of visitors (family and close friends) and never absent of a smile. Even my wife, who had limited interaction with him, commented on what an inspiring and delightful person he was.

When Buck was rejected for the Baseball Hall Of Fame he said, “Don’t cry for me. I’ve lived a long and plentiful life. Cry for the children who don’t get to go to a good school…” That’s perspective.

Buck, we will miss you: a true National Treasure and a “Baseball Man.”

Take a look at this face. Today is the last it will see of its 20s. I could do a sappy retrospective here. Write a list of things that happened in my 20s, but why?

I got to thinking about it a little last night. Everyone raves about your 20s. They talk about how awesome they are, how much fun you have, how you’re out on your own and full of life and freedom. Psh!

I spent most of my 20s wishing I still had someone cooking my meals, paying my bills and telling me that I was awesome at everything!

So, what I didn’t get in my 20s I’m taking volunteers for in my 30s. If you are good at paying bills, cooking better than my wife – which will be hard for most anyone, those pumpkin spice cookies are uhhhmazing! – or just telling me how awesome I am at everything, then I need you in my corner. All you need to do is reply to this blog to let me know you will gladly volunteer for one of the above three tasks.

Think of it as your good deed for the impending holidays.