Courtesy of SportsIllustrated.com, one of the greatest conspiracies in modern sports was uncovered:

My buddy Dick Herculanum alerted me to this. “Did I miss the 8 straight Super Bowls the Vikings went to? Read caption under photo.”

I immediately went and looked at the site. This was no hoax — the site literally said the Vikings played in EIGHT STRAIGHT SUPER BOWLS.

That’s when I started to get sharp pains in my temples, followed by shooting pains in my cerebral cortex, and finally debilitating pain in my neck that shot down my spinal cord to my lower back. And then bits and pieces of long-suppressed memories began creeping back into my conscious mind. After a few minutes, I was recalling vivid memories of eight consecutive Super Bowl losses.

Saturday, I woke up in the middle of the night, which is something I almost never do. Once I’m out, I’m out. It seemed unbelievably cold in my house, so I stumbled in the dark to the thermostat and saw the giant LED read-out: 62F. Sixty-two degrees! Holy buttery biscuits of fire! I’d been holding out on turning my furnace on for the first time this season, because that’s a slippery slope of cliches; once you turn that thing on, you’re admitting winter is just around the corner. Hell, “slippery slope” is in and of itself a cliche. Its no good, is what it is. But clearly, I could hold out no longer.

This got me to thinking. My brother, before he was married, liked to keep his house in the low 60s all the time. When I used to go visit him in college up in Cedar Falls, he and his roommates kept their house even lower than that — in the mid-50s, purportedly to save money. All the more to spend on beer, you see. It was like a meat locker. Seriously, you walked in there and you half-expected to see slabs of beef hanging from the ceiling and Rocky Balboa taking swings at them.

Walking in there was one thing. Sleeping there after being at the bars was something entirely different. I don’t know the science, but it seems in my experience that your body temperature drops while you’re sleeping…and it drops even moreso if you’ve had a few drinks. Well, imagine that scenario in a house where its 55 degrees to begin with.

Brrrrr.

A couple of weeks ago when we were out in Colorado, I took advantage of the free postcards at New Belgium Brewery to send a guilt-trip card to Continental Frutiger (CF didn’t make the trip with us). Problem was, I didn’t know his address off the top of my head.

Dick Herculanum said, “Just put 40th & Farnam on there, the postman will get it to him.”

I was skeptical. “They’ll deliver it without an exact address?”

“Of course they will, the postage is paid, what are they going to do with it otherwise? Let it sit in a bin at the post office?”

So I sent it using the estimated address, and earlier this week, I finally got around to asking him if the postcard was delivered.

Indeed, a big tip o’ the fro to you, USPS.

I shot this photo from my driveway one day last week as I was heading into the office. What’s better here: using the name “Top Gun” for a carpet cleaning business, the sweet retro 1980s graphic treatment, or the knowledge that losing to Maverick and Iceman relegates you to a carpet cleaning business in the midwest?

I’m still waiting for an electrician with a business named “Short Circuit”, and “Johnny Five” sewn onto his name bade on his shirt…now THAT would be dominant.

You bet.

Last year, Dick Herculanum and I took a flyer on a guy named THOR, and we went to see him in concert. While he was dominant, his opening band was just as noteworthy. Not because they were dominant, but because they were just so…well, there needs to be a better word for odd.

Their name was Zolar X, and they are not of this Earth. They come from Zolaria, and they don’t speak English. No, they speak in a manufactured language, namely, Zolarian.

Lead singer and Lazor Guitarist Ygarr Ygarrist (don’t ask me how you pronounce that) has neon green hair and antennae protruding from his head. Rhythm Guitarist Eon Flash also has neon green hair. Drummer Qazar Quantor has antennae that move as he drums. In short, its crazy time.

Friday night, I was sitting in a bar in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and behind the bar, a TV blared. Fox’s newest reality show “The Next Great American Band” was on. You know the one: produced by the people behind American Idol, the goal is to find not a singer, but a band. It should be terrible. But from what I saw, its actually decent and borderline good — because the bands are encouraged to sing original songs, and because a lot of the bands are really quite good.