Being called to the principal's office is an odd experience for a grown man. It's even more odd for me.

He's got a nice office, my pal, the principal. Much nicer than mine (if I had one). Deep plush chairs, floor to ceiling bookshelves--it's nice to see what the referendum managed to pay for. He'd sent me an e-mail that morning, and I'd purposely shown up late so he'd be ready, but he got held up in a meeting, so I killed time rolling a pen down the side of his desk and seeing how close I could get it to the edge before swiping it off. When he finally came in, I was caught in the act of retrieving it from under his desk. If it's odd to be called into the principal's office at the age of 31, it's probably even odder to walk into the office and see one of your teachers rooting around where your smelly size-12s spend a few hours of the day.

When we got settled, I got the scoop: A group of parents showed up at the board meeting ready to register a "concern" about the "lack of writing taking place in [my] classroom." The principal and the curriculum director steered [them] away, and settled the group down. I got all hot under the collar, the principal let me settle down, then assured me they were behind me a hundred percent.

Trouble is, it wasn't a group of parents. It was one parent.

A parent I get along with just fine.

A parent concerned about the lack of supplementary grading assistance and the decreased writing assignments overall. Concerns we aired once upon a time.

I think I got played.

At long last...my new car.

More debt. More checks to write.

But isn't it sweet? And even though I look damn good already, I look even better driving it. Now can somebody loan me some gas money?

Daniel Craig shows some clips of Secretary Rumsfeld having some fun at the podium. Not to be missed.

Here's a list of people who owe me $20 (nicknames are used in places):

Dewey: "There's no way the Democrats are going to take any power in this election. The American people are just a bunch of sheep."

Tso: "There's no way Blagojevich is going to get reelected. His corruption has caught up with him."

Tso: "Iraq will not be a deciding factor in this election. America still supports the war."

Rinney: "You're not going to stay sober and watch CNN all election night. That's not possible."

Karl Rove: "[The Republican polls are going to stay in power.] You've got your [electoral math], I've got the math." (said to an NPR reporter, but I bet him through absentee ballot)

George Bush: "The Democrats want to cut and run." (after taking the house, Pelosi denied any such plans, and now that she's all but certain to become House Speaker, people actually started listening to Democrats.)

Look, people, how many times do I have to say it? You think elections don't change anything? What just happened: the President ate his own words, Rummy resigned, and the Democrats aren't talking tax-tax-tax, run-run-run. They're talking higher minimum wage. They're talking redirecting oil funds. They're talking pay-as-you-go.

And did anyone see Tom DeLay's comment: "The Democrats didn't win. The Republicans lost"? Strange thing for "The Hammer" to say, a man for whom there are nothing but absolutes. When convicted, he'll be saying, "They didn't find me guilty--they failed to find me innocent." And he'll be passing on the soap while saying it, too.

I'm drunk, but this time on elation. And gin.

We had a half day today because of conferences. Normally, I head to Best Buy to waste my hard-earned money on a crappy DVD--last year it was the Special Edition of The Fly; the year before that, Evil Dead II. But I found out I'm not, after all, registered to vote, and while I support wholeheartedly American complacency and the voting gap that lies stinking like an abscessed wound over my generation, I nevertheless felt a transitory yet persistent urge to throw my lot in with the rest of the disenchanted, sick-of-swiping-politicians voters and cast my ballot for the "anybody but the rest of them" party. As much as humanly possible, anyway. So I stopped-and-went along 90 to the Blue Line and hopped a train to the Daley Center (in its resplendent Halloween glory; see image and note below), where I did Late Registration Voting.

It's a humbling process. I should probably point out that I was still attired in my suit-and-tie from conferences, and since the Maiden concert was over and done with, I'd gotten a haircut mere minutes before the meet-and-greet yesterday. So I was looking relatively dapper. As my colleagues like to point out, I clean up good. As I like to point out...well, seriously, ladies, who wants a taste?

But I could have been wearing Armani delux and still received the same treatment.

My first mistake was bringing a book. White guys wearing Ipods, dressed in ratty clothing with hair hanging down their face over a copy of Critique of Practical Reason don't draw a second glance on the Red Line. (Trust me--I know, except substitute Kant for Hustler.) But wearing a rumpled shirt under your suit and carrying a copy of Eleanor of Aquitaine, for some reason, brands you a Hillary-ite. (I'm not saying I'm not one, just that I was labeled.) Seriously, several people passed me tracts. One guy told me he hated New York. Another said he would pray for me. And this was all from reading a fucking book. Or, better still, reading a book about the most powerful woman in the twelfth century. Had I carried a copy of Dr. Phil, I probably would have been safer.

My second mistake was assuming I'd remember the address. I found the building no sweat--only a complete and utter illiterate would have trouble disembarking and walking through the wrong door. I remembered that much from a Chicago parking ticket many moons ago. But I couldn't remember what suite in the Cook County building it was, and the "Information Desks" were anything but informative. The good news: I now know where to apply for divorce. Hey, you never know.

My last mistake was missing the deadline in the first place. Like an utter cretin (but not an illiterate one, I hasten to add), I assumed I'd registered when I moved, when, more likely, I reminded myself to register, forgot the reminder, and assumed I'd done it. Doing late registration seems to be like registering for unemployment--you get a lot of judgmental, "how the hell did you end up here looks from the people behind the desk, you fill out a lot of paperwork, you wait in uncomfortable plastic chairs that somehow mold to not fit your butt, and you listen to other people (losers, unlike you, who screwed up somehow, which is why they're there, even if it's not why you yourself are) screech about long lines, paperwork and uncomfortable chairs.

One interesting wrinkle: I had to vote that day. Late registration precludes you from the Nov. 7 experience. Good thing I did my homework and knew how badly both governor candidates sucked the royal root.

An even more interesting wrinkle: no-votes are possible. You can leave ballot boxes blank. It's the only form of two-party protest I can think of.

And you even get your I voted today sticker to put on Nov. 7.

You can rock at a Maiden concert on a school night.

Yes, indeedy, the Maidens rocked the house at the Allstate Arena Wednesday night. I whined. I puled. I howled. First about the late hour; then about the new album they were playing start to finish.

Let me tell you something: they rock.

I'm still digesting A Matter of Life and Death, but there are songs that scream "old school" to me. "These Colours Don't Run," or "The Greater Good of God." I've only listened to the songs in the car--I need to get them on my MP3, or in my living room. But I don't even know all the lyrics yet, and the only reason I know there's an anti-war theme is because of the bigass tank on the cover. My car is ok for acoustics, but the Allstate leaves much to be desired.

So there I stood, 31 years old, wearing a secondhand Hawaiian shirt and my dog-chewed concert jacket, cheering like a loon along with the appropriate lyrics from "Iron Maiden" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name." I'd never gotten to wail along to "Fear of the Dark" (it being post-1985 work of theirs), but I did not miss my chance Wednesday. They put me to shame: Dickinson has got to be past 50, yet he can still run and bellow high notes nonstop without even breaking a sweat. They had energy. They had depth. They knew how to put on a show.

When I left, my ears were ringing. My head was splitting. I needed a shower. I needed a drink. I needed to pull out all my Iron Maiden tapes and play them back to back until one a.m.

So why was it, then, that in the car, after fiddling with the radio for a while, I found myself singing lustily along to George Michaels' "Faith"?

Not exactly the capper for my first metal concert in over a decade. I swear, I have ADD for music taste.

Woke up this morning with a sore throat, throbbing head and eyes glued shut. Thanks a pantsful, Tso--you gave me your cold. Staggered into school to make sure plans are in place--normally this wouldn't be an issue, but, well, anyway, who cares about the details. When coming out of school on a day you're supposed to be out sick, if anyone sees you and you're not hobbled over in pain, with glands swollen like footballs, you're automatically playing hookey. So I gave myself a limp and made like I couldn't talk--instead, I relied on pantomime and exaggerated facial gestures to convey a simple message: Sick. Can't come in today.

"Oh, okay," one colleague said on her way in. "Next time, though, leave your damn plans in the mailbox."

More sub-par sign language ensued: Office closed. No get in.

"Then get a janitor to let you in," the colleage said, storming off in a frenzy of righteous indignation over a morning interrupted by nonsense. Down the hall, I heard her muttering to someone, "Probably hung over from sniffing glue, the idiot."

And another heaping pantsful to my colleague.

On the bright side, macaroni and cheese is good breakfast food for my condition. Hopefully it'll knock me out long enough to recuperate, after which period of time I can maybe finish a set of papers so tomorrow isn't too painful.

Karma is laughing its ass off at me.

I was picked to read the Inspiration of the Week during announcements next week. Here's a snippet of what I came up with:

"Don't think of challenges as something to be ignored. Think of them as challenges. Just that. To be challenged is to know you are alive."

I made the mistake of confiding to Tso about this upcoming speech. "I'm totally pumped," I chirped as we made our way into the city (The Best Man at Victory Gardens, totally worth $25, in case you're wondering). "It's a chance to do some of that high-quality speechwriting they're always yakking about on West Wing."

Tso grunted.

"Plus, I get to stop them from whining for a while. Losers."

Then, on my way home, my Check Engine light goes on. No problem: I can hit the mechanic Saturday morning.

Due to an evening of casual boozing, I wake prematurely, and spend forty minutes standing stupidly in my kitchen, watching a coffee pot with no water in it percolate. I've had four hours sleep, and I've got a splitting headache. No problem: I down a quart of coffee once I remember the water, and head over to the mechanic. Where they scratch their heads, stick their hands into their pockets and shrug. "Can't tell you the problem, buddy, except it'll cost about $1500 to figure it out."

Pass.

No problem: I guess it's time to start car-shopping. I begin this task like I do all other major ones in my life: by calling everyone I know and whining about it.

Dad: "Stop crying. Tell VWW I'm an employee and you'll get a free coffee mug."

Brother: Nobody home. Whined into machine.

Girlfriend: Nobody home. Outgoing message sounds vaguely amused(?)

Tso: "Stop crying, you pussy. Let's go drink breakfast."

Principal: "What do I care? Get your ass in on Monday regardless. And don't call this number any more."

Dial-a-Prayer: "What did you expect after 143,000 miles? Idiot."

So after a short breakfast I'm on my way to various dealerships in Arlington Heights, Schaumburg, Palatine, anywhere I can find something driveable, reasonably priced, and something I won't get my pants pulled down over when negotiating. We managed to hit two, maybe three dealerships, only to see smoke pouring out of my hood on the way.

No problem. Just park in the Gulf Road median, pop the hood and stare in disbelief at the gaping hole in the overflow tank where a cap used to be. The mechanic forgot to put it back on.

No problem. Just hit every car parts store, Ford dealership and bum with a suspicious bulge in his pocket that might be a radiator overflow cap. All to no avail.

No problem. Just hit the mechanic on the way back (only by now it's pouring rain, and the smoke is mixing with it to form a finely-tuned paste over my windshield), watch him fumble and fume over the car for twenty minutes, then finally find the cap and screw it back on.

By now, it's six hours since I left my house. In that time frame, I've managed to eat lunch, work myself into a nervous breakdown, look at three cars, hit five car parts store, spend $8 on coolant I now don't need, and wind up right back where I started: with a wounded car and empty wallet.

And a splitting headache.

"I am this close to losing it," I grumbled on the way home, making a space between my fingers no bigger than his dick.

Tso grunted. "It's a challenge. It's how you know you're alive."

"Screw you."

To celebrate the end of this hellacious and utterly pointless day, I've drank three beers, eaten a TV dinner of chicken, mashed potatoes and peas, watched Welcome to the Dollhouse and daydreamed of firebombing every mechanic on I. Park Road from here to the Windy City. With napalm. And a Zippo lighter.

To consummate my pending bankruptcy, I will finish my six pack, flop on the couch and watch Lou Dobbs reruns, allowing the miasmic fugue of CNN to explain to me what the problem is with the world today. By the time I wake up tomorrow, I could very well be a full-fledged member of the Republican party, or xenophobic, or obsessed with rooting out terrorism in every Mexican immigrant crossing over. That way, at least I'll forget any crippling car payments that might be looming presently.

Hey, don't raise any eyebrows in my direction. It's a miracle I can even spell right now.

Grammar Wars

The counselors were pleading (perhaps in vain) with my seniors to apply often, apply early for college in the fall. Then one of them collected her evaluations. "Oh, what a relief," she breathed breathlessly, pawing through them like they were coupons, "so many positive comments! Nobody said I suck!"

Then, her eyes narrowed on one in her hand and she sucked in a lungful of air. "Wait a minute...this one says I suck!"

All the while I was sitting at my desk, my fingers laced underneath my chin, a look on my face I'm told is labelled the "near-suicide" look. Or the "I wish I was on my bicycle" look. Or maybe the "What kind of soup are they serving today?" look. I don't know. I have so many looks.

In any event, all I wanted to do was get back to the toils of secondary education (teaching ballads about how to drink ale). Enough of this crap (planning for a future more successful than mine).

So when the counselor turned on me, I was startled. "Why can't you teach them better adjectives than suck?" she demanded, not realizing that she'd teed it up for me and I wouldn't be able to resist giving it a whack.

"Actually, you just used it as a verb," I replied. And cooly blew smoke off my metaphorical pistol.

The class erupted. The counselor surrendered her ground good-humoredly and exit, stage left. I turned to face my class.

"When you're all gossiping about this," I said, "and I'm pretty sure you will, put me in a cape. I think this whole thing would be much more dashing if I were caped."

Sometimes...God, sometimes I love that place.

Tale of Two Cities--the Musical at the library yesterday. Listening to it in the car. Not half bad. Envisioning a chipper, upbeat singing Madame DeFarge is a bit of a stretch, but I can only assume that will last only so long in the show. Lyrics for the songs available here.

The First Days of School

The First Quiz

I spent three and a half days covering early British history, culled from a variet of sources, most notably the Oxford Illustrated History of Britain and benditlikebritain.com. Some of my slides read things like, "55 B.C. Julius Caesar invades." Parts of the textbook read, "Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 B.C." I said things like "remember the date 55 B.C."

Skimming the quizzes, I suspect perhaps I didn't drill them enough.

I keep forgetting the basics: Seniors + work = whining. Even with the best of them.

The good news: I'm looking forward to Round Ten tomorrow morning. As W.C. Fields said, "If at first you don't succeed...quit. No sense being a damn fool about it."

Obviously, Fields is no help to me whatsoever at the moment. Never thought I'd say that.

Drug-Sniffing Chihuahuas

Yes, I'm a freak for these damn dogs. So is Layback. They're training these water-bottles-with-legs wonders to become security dogs, according to MSN.

The First Days of School

First Full Day

Not too bad, all things considered. It's always a relief when the students don't bum rush me on the first day. Good of them to wait until Labor Day.

Of course, my room are still a mess. The LCD on my ceiling is nice and everything, but at present it's purely decorative. My first classroom is still about as spacious as a broom closet, and my seventh hour classroom has been disembowled by a newly-transplanted teacher in there. However, as I cracked to a co-worker, "We'll break the 180-day mark next week. There's cause for celebration."

So you trudge home after a hard day's work, only to remember: there's work yet to do. There's lesson plans to finish (writing "Medieval introduction" on the syllabus in June was a piece of cake compared to coming up with an actual Medieval introduction for August); AV requests to put in; AV presentations to construct so the AV request isn't completely pointless. And so on.

But not tonight. At least, not all of it. I've got a book to read and a steak to cook.

I came up with a pretty good one-liner if anyone wants to steal it:

Me: Make sure you back up all your work. That's why I always have my flash drive. Everything I work on, I put on that.
Student:What if you lose it? Do we still get a zero?
Me: That's why I save it on the server here, too.
Student: What if the server here crashes?
Me: Well I also e-mail myself copies of the work too.
Student: Just for sake of argument, what happens if the e-mail doesn't work? Or there's a virus?
Me: Then God obviously hates you. No wonder I'd give you a zero.

8 Ways I Have Proved Myself an Idiot in the last Seventy-Two Hours.

What's that, you ask? Only eight? Not an even ten? Go screw yourself.

8. Thought garage door was broken until I pushed on it. Real hard. Neighbors stared and murmured to each other. Two teenaged girls giggled from across the street. I swallow and strike a masculine pose.

7. Popped my head into my new classroom today. Met resilient wall of storage boxes. Surly, overworked custodian supervisor tells me I had to put in a work order in order to move me into a room I don't want, with no filing cabinets, not enough space, no windows or ventilation and science lab-type counters along the perimeter. "Sign here, asshole. In triplicate. What are you gonna do anyway, I'm union."

6. Hauled Kim's VCR and stereo into bedroom in effort to set up after hours entertainment studio. Universal remote won't connect, so I waste ten minutes on the Web, twenty minutes on hold with Zenith, and eighteen talking to a representative of Magnavox Televisions. After giving her my model number, I'm informed my television doesn't exist. And I say, "That makes sense. Thanks."

5. Bumped into a former student at Union Station and spoke with her for about twenty minutes. As I filled her in on the goings-on at her alma mater and congratulated her on what I was sure was an outstanding internship, she continues to look puzzled, confused, and then downright petulant. Ten minutes later, as I'm walking down Adams Street, I realize she was a student from a different school, and that she was probably headed to an actual career.

4. Spent forty-five minutes checking answer keys on my Amazing Series of Vocab Tests only to discover the answers in the back of the book. Straight to the liquor cabinet--"Oh, look here! John left tequila! And it's only a year old!"

3. Got bombed at 11 a.m.on the Monday before the Monday before I go back to school. See #6.

2. Cleaned out garage, currently filled with Kim's detritus from medical school. Stacked boxes carefully on side of wall, leaving room for the car. Realized I'd stacked them over my detritus, including school files for August, my tool box and extremely fragile fishing gear. My back screams at me as I dig them all out.

1. In renewed effort to be healthy, bought several pounds of fresh vegetables: carrots, spinach, tomatoes, collard greens and kale. Made room for it in the fridge by throwing out the carrots, spinach, tomatoes, collard greens and kale I bought a month ago in an effort to be healthy.

The idiots are filming themselves! Come see the idiots!

The world is going to hell.

Virginia Heff, in her NY Times blog Screens, profiles LonelyGirl15, a homeschooled teen who passes all the time she's stuck in her bedroom because of domineering parents, making short autobiographical/philosophical video posts (called vlogs, I guess) for the world to see. She just sparked controversy over a tiff between her and her producer/boyfriend danielbeast. Her parents won't let her go hiking. No, wait, her parents do let her go hiking. And so on.

I still remember when blogs were all the controversy: "What, now semiliterate idiots can vomit their meaningless opinions all over the Web?" "What, the vacuum of cyberspace is now filled with musings about how annoying it is when someone eats all the chocolate out of the Neopolitan ice cream?" Meaningless tripe, all of it. I should know. Just look at this page, for god's sake.

Well, I guess the joke's on me--now we don't even need to be sub-sub literate. We can post videos instead.

I'm not particularly talking about Heff's primary subject. Lonelygirl knows enough about lighting and editing to avoid visual incoherence, and although there's only so much depth you can squeeze out of a lazy eye, it does function as a metaphor quite nicely.

But then I made the mistake of looking at some of the responses she got, ranging from the rambling to the snooty to the downright nasty. Look out, web talent scouts. Got your hands full here. Yowza.

Web videos sound great until you start wading through them. It's enough to make me long for the days of scrolls and quill pens. If all this is the stuff replacing books and films that require a few neurons firing, I don't want to be around when they put together 3-D filming techniques. Watching some frat bozo drink beer through a watering can from all possible angles of his living room would just be too depressing.

And the comments. Need I get into the comments? They outweigh the posts by pages, and the videos by hours. And who cares anyway?

For example, Rupert Brooke was born on this day, in 1887. If his "The Solider" had had a comment function when first published? "Hey, uh, Rupe, if that's your real name, I just want to say, like, your poem sucks? Um, I liked the extended metaphor of the soil as homeland and everything, but like, you could have said something about American involvement. We totally saved your asses. Wilson for Winners in '16!"

In my own effort to contribute to the Web's detritus, let me pose what the volume of empty-headedness of 75% of youtube's content says about the direction of our media culture? That it's easier and easier to find your own voice because of the ease of access to all these nifty tools? Or that it's going to be harder for anyone to be heard fighting against the cacophony of crap cluttering up the bandwidth anymore?

The world is, like, so going to hell.

Well, maybe I'll be proven wrong. I doubt it--I rarely am. But maybe video publishing will unearth a new generation of thought-provoking, challenging media for the world to consume. Of course it will, because I am so getting a vid camera! With an appropriately shaded nook in my classroom and enough interesting lesson plans, I could...get myself fired.

Just realized, folks--before I noticed, I'd spent forty minutes looking at a bunch of posts about a teen girl on camera. All because of a NY Times article. Which won't do me any good. Thanks to our beloved president and the Patriot Act, right now my ISP is on record at having drooled over adolescent video blogs. Send me cigarettes when they send me to the Pen.

Free Josh Wolf!!!

This is the first time the government has gone after a blogger's sources officially. Obviously, they'll be after me next.

And a federal appeals court just ruled that the government can look at journalists' phone records. This creates an alarming precedent, unless, of course, we can trust the government to use this precedent to go after genuine threats to security, rather than the muckraking that has unearthed so many bureaucratic ills. Obviously, they'll be going after Janice Effington, of 1034 S. Halsted, Apartment 2D. (She knows why.)

JACKSON, MI--Stand-alone condos are da bomb. My aunt and uncle took me on a driving tour of several of the structures--imagine having a house with three bedrooms, a cellar, glass panels on the garage door, ample garage and parking space and a lush green lawn...without having to do any lawnmowing, exterior maintenance, interior maintenance, painting, repairs or anything else encompassing work beyond a minimal screwdriver-twist. There's the stand-alone condo. No wall-to-wall neighbors. No shared common property. Your own mailbox at the driveway end.

The catch? About half a million, give or take.

Off to Jackson's hosting of Midsummer Night's Dream.

Cagle.com cartoons. Not for those with a right-wing frame of mind.

Another freaking Styx concert.

You'd think an hour north to pick Tso's worthless butt up, another hour and a half north to Milwaukee's Summerfest, twenty minutes finding an ATM, another ten minutes parking the car and twenty minutes walking just to hit a wall of sweaty suburbanites making a mass exodus to soak up plastic bottles of domestic beer and buy ridiculously overpriced legs of meat to gnaw on would be something I'd be just as apt to do as seeing how many of my fingernails I could yank out before passing out.

But then, when Styx is in the bargain, that's a different thing altogether.

Crowd: insane. Sound: okay, except we couldn't get close enough to hear it the way it's mean to be heard. Lineup: the same songs for the most part. They still rock, except when the hell did JY Young start singing "Crystal Ball"? And no guest performance this time? I'm insulted.

No, Styx, unlike much of life, does not dissapoint. But the crowd often does.

I saw more fourteen-year-olds chainsmoking and texting each other from ten feet away than I would care to count. It made me sick, and I said so. Tso tried to remind me that both annoying/stupid habits were habits I either had for years, or still have today, but what the hell does he know? He works in a paper company, for God's sake. I'm surprised it hasn't blown away yet.

I saw plenty of potbellied middle-aged men with their overly-painted-in-makeup wives and halfwitted tagalong neighbors cluttering up space in the concert hall that could more advantageously been taken up with...I don't know...beer kegs? Strippers? Empty space for me to stretch my legs out in?

One group spent ten minutes interrupting a significant chunk of "Angry Young Man" and "The Grand Illusion" with an animated conversation about the Milwaukee Brewers. They all had those ridiculous Chicagoland mustaches that Chris Farley, et al made famous back in the nineties in those Saturday Night Live concerts. I wondered if I were overreacting when I contemplated ripping the mustaches off them and feeding them to their wives (who apparently only knew the chorus to each and every Styx song, judging by volume, enthusiasm and slurred vocal performances). I quickly decided, nope, no overreacting here.

And when the band broke into their encore performance of "Renegade," I was pulling a Frank Costanza, yanking on Tso's sleeve and pointing towards the exit. "Come on!" I bawled while Tommy Shaw was droning on about a great audience and the beer capital of the world. "We can still beat traffic!"

Well, Shaw will forgive me. Such disrespect in front of the masters will anger any ardent disciples.

So: that's Styx and the Cult in one calendar year. Sweet. Somebody tell the Black Keys or Big Head Todd to make an appearance before August, and I'll be content.

What kind of friend (who shall remain nameless) meets you at a bar (which shall remain unstated), lets you buy a round of beers (the brands of which shall be omitted), and then lets you drink one after he notices a film of soap in the head?

An ijit friend, that's what.

An interesting forty-eight hours, friends and neighbors. Any water I swallowed went south immediately. Big bubbles of what I can only assume were soap bubbles swelled up in my gut and intestines; I must have made the walls shake on at least three occasions trying to get rid of them. And in case you're wondering, five running steps to the bathroom to take care of all of this business was only a barely tolerable distance.

The good news: the delirium and dehydration allowed me to enjoy two straight hours of Not Another Teen Movie. Or maybe that's the bad news, who the hell knows?

What a way to celebrate the Fourth, I tell ya.