Live Blog! Pennsylvania roadtrippin' - it's business time

It's 11am and, after an absurd amount of checking and double checking our equipment, our boss has finally given his blessing for Adam and me to start our 8 hour drive to Breezewood, Pennsylvania. I'm pretty much gonna be living in my boss' car until Friday night. That is, assuming Adam doesn't kill us both with his patented knee-steering; sometimes we drift toward large tanker trucks filled with toxic/corrosive chemicals, and I need to alert Adam to this danger with a timid wimper. That usually gets the job done.

Anyway, to help pass the time on the road, we are keeping a 90s theme - that decade flew by for me. Sure, I wasn't even 10 years old until the Nagano Olympics, but whatever. Time flies when you're eating fruit roll-ups and trading pogs. Hopefully I can post pictures from my phone so the few people reading this can enjoy my pitiful descent into childhood.


2:30 Update

I (Adam) just finished my first driving leg and after splitting a small pizza at "pepe's pizzaria" in some podonk town in CT, I've elected to put my life in Evan's hands to lose my blogging virginity. After reading the previous snide comments about my driving skills it seems appropriate to first note our near death experience from evan turning into on coming traffic just 5 minutes after taking the wheel (ps macarena just came on the radio..great time for a pouch of gushers)...were now about to enter the dirt-hole of America with the hope of seeing Snooky and running her ball like figure off the jersey turnpike. This assumes our base model SUV can withstand the impact. I think If there was a cheaper "no radio" option given to our boss, we'd be sitting in silence - that's how bad this shoebox on wheels sucks. I'm gonna sign off tho. I'm sure Evan will post an update soon for the 3 people who are reading.

6:45 Update

Ok it's Evan again; Adam wants to drive the final 70 miles through the rain in a car with headlights that are maybe as bright a single birthday candles. Sure, Adam, be my guest. I'll take this opportunity to defend my driving skills - I was taking a left and a car came speeding toward us so I cut into a parkinglot in the exit lane. I'm sorry for saving our lives!

Anyway, we found a great radio station that has played Will Smith's "Parents Just Don't Understand" and some Uncle Kracker song. Made it through New Jersey without contracting any diseases, too! Nothing interesting to report in Pennsylvania so far, except that their road signs are really bossy; I've seen "Don't Tailgate" and "Hitchhiking is Against Safety Laws", which only make me want to pick up a stranger and get on the ass of the minivan doing 45mph in front of me.

Hopefully we will have some good pictures to post later tonight from the ride, and maybe a good story from wherever we go get dinner.

9:30 Update

We are at the hotel we booked in Breezewood. I jut want to say right now that I have never seen this many gas stations in such a short stretch of road; there were easily 6 different stations within a quarter mile of each other. In other words, this place sucks. Unless you are looking to prostitute yourself to tractor trailer drivers or murder a drifter and harvest his organs.

To continue my thoughts on Pennsylvania road signs, they are frequent and unnecessary. Here are a few more I saw: Remove Sunglasses; Turn Headlights On; Stay in Lane; Pass With Care; and my favorite, Headlights On? That one is just patronizing. Like your mother asking if you remembered to put on clean socks and underwear before you head off to school. YES mom, I'm not stupid. Like how could anyone forget to turn on their headlights. The thought never occurs, "Wow, it sure is dark out here in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, I wish there was some way for me to see where I'm driving..."!

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the trip so far. It's tough to get a good picture of anything with my iPhone camera, but tomorrow I should be outside the car a little bit more and will have some better ones.

Note: the red circles represent gas stations, the blue arrow is my hotel room

high five: countries better equipped to host the World Cup than Qatar

There were a lot of big sports news stories this past summer: the NFL locked out; the NFL locked back in; everyone fell in love with Mike Vick again; the NBA locked out and no one cared; the Bruins won the Stanley Cup (yep hockey playoffs in late June, love it); the Red Sox choked harder than a baby at the Lego Store. But in America, one big story garnered few headlines. Oh, did you not hear? FIFA is massively corrupt, so instead of playing the World Cup in a country that, you know, excels in the sport AND in accommodating human life, the voting panel decided to roll the dice and try something retarded. I mean, different. No wait, I meant retarded, my mistake.

The World Cup is going to be held in the desert. So, I hope everyone enjoys the next couple World Cups, because in 2022, it'll be the end of international soccer as we know it. All the players will die of heat exhaustion. The games will be endured in 112 degree heat and split into 3 periods in some misguided attempt to play an outdoor sport in a desert nation. Hell, some countries might not even show up, if the conflicts in the Middle East get worse. Maybe then, my beloved Faroe Islands can finally earn a spot in the finals.

#5 - South Africa, home of the Vuvuzela

We have no one to blame but ourselves

They already proved they could do it - the 2010 World Cup went pretty smoothly. Any time the biggest problem at the host country is the amount of noise the crowds make, I'd call it a success. Sure, the noise was really annoying, but that's just how the Africans roll, and we gotta respect their culture, right? I mean, the World Cup had never even been in Africa before, let them have some fun and blow on their horns. They have enough problems without everyone else in the world telling them how annoying they are. Plus, at least they have normal weather for soccer, relative to other parts of Africa.

And the vuvuzelas are probably our fault anyway. Africa is some kind of parallel universe of first world nations, like a haven for items that never should have existed. People are walking around proudly in their 19-0 Patriots shirts commemorating a Super Bowl they never won. This is our idea of chariy - here, have some shit no American in their right mind would ever use! That'll help with AIDS, hunger, and civil wars ravaging your continent, right? Does it sound like these people built and maintain a factory to make plastic horns? No, the vuvuzela was probably some attempt to unload useless 4th of July crap and feel good about helping in Darfur.

Angry Cooper Rants: Concerts (Again)

I'M BAAAAAAACK. In an effort to revive this blog we've come back with a new outlook on how to post, when to post, and what to post. Logically most of this background discussion and the little break we took was directed at making sure I'm not posting stupid stuff 20 times a day. Have no fear though, I'm still angry. And according to the people whom I drank with this weekend I keep ranting.

So I might have done something like this before but I happened to go to a concert last weekend and Evan's been pressuring me to get something done by Wednesday. So here we go, ten things that bother me about concerts.

First off, the loud concert. (Notable offenders: Every rock band ever)

piss off