The “Four Things” free-post game has been passed around the blogosphere long enough that it has finally made it all the way to the Awesomest Blog Ever, this one. That’s right, my buddy Adrian tagged me, and now I am “it”. This should be patently hilarious, so lets go.

So last night, I’m talking on the phone with the Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony on MUTE — those marathon one-hour phone conversations get to be a bit much if you don’t have the TV on in the background — and one of those goofy GoldenPalace.com viral marketers runs out onto the stage. I was temporarily distracted, although not as much as the time they paid a porn star to run out onto a green at a PGA Tour event with no shirt on and their website address temporarily tattooed on her back…

Earlier in the night, before I was on the phone and Muting the Olympics, I watched in horror as a marching band dressed in clown costumes — full makeup, hats, baggy pants with frilly ruffles, the whole deal — came out playing the Village People’s “YMCA”. Or maybe I’m imagining that…two straight nights of sleeping in my basement guest room on a futon have left me out of sorts, so to speak. (Painting my bedroom, so sleeping there would be akin to fumigating myself, or something.)

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No, wait, I wasn’t imagining it.

Somehow that makes it so much worse.

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Saturday night, we headed out to La Mesa, where we enjoyed margaritas, burritos and a extradinarily confused waiter. The confusion is the funny part, so I’ll just pick up the story there and let you imagine for yourself how tasty the drinks were.

Two nights this week, I was bored. With nothing to do, and desperate for entertainment, I watched the Winter Olympics. More specifically, I watched women’s figure skating. Even more specifically, the short program and then later, the long program.

This marked a first for me, or at least, a first since the 1994 Olympics (Kerrigan/Harding) when figure skating got higher ratings than the Super Bowl. Its true, you could look it up. But that was more national soap opera than sport. This was the first time I’d ever watched a legitimate figure skating competition of any kind. And the first time I’d seen people dancing on skates since “Sesame Street on Ice” at Vets Auditorium in Des Moines when I was about 4 years old.

I’m one of those guys who will only watch NASCAR for the crashes. I don’t particularly like watching guys drive in a circle for 3 hours. I do like watching them smash into things at 190 MPH. This is probably why I always run my cart over the barricades in Go-Karts, because like the street baller who knows how to throw down from watching SportsCenter but can’t hit a 5-foot jumper because no one watches highlights of jump shots, I only see crashes and thus emulate that.

Last week, my parents were out in Las Vegas for a few days (I noticed these trips started about 10 years ago when I moved away to college, and have become more frequent now that my brother is married and living in Omaha as well. But that’s neither here nor there). Thursday night, as I was getting ready to go into the Homy Inn for a beer after work, my phone rang and the following conversation took place.

My buddy Cliff, who went to see Coldplay last night, told me they were in fact, not depressing, “even for you”. So I stand corrected. They’re apparently quite dynamic live.

Fiona Apple, on the other hand? As he described it, and I hope he doesn’t care if I run this, because its the funniest thing I’ve read all day:

Sometimes you read a passage so patently original, so hilarious, you wish you’d written yourself. This is one of those.