From Oscar Wilde…

A mask tells us more than a face.

One more interruption…move along, nothing to see here…

Funny? No, ridiculous!
Smart? No, stupid!
Friends? No, people who don’t give a rip about you!
Good times? No, bad experiences that will bite you in the butt, sooner, rather than later! (Oh, wait…those are multiple bite marks I see!)
Grown-up and mature? No, infantile!
Cool? No, lame. Very, very lame.

Excuse the interruption…

When they look you in the eye and say, “I don’t do that stuff anymore,” and then proceed to post photographic “evidence” on the web, you can’t – and won’t – trust anything else they ever say.

Just a thought…let the reader understand…

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog perusal. Thank you.

We had our own little “Soup-er Bowl” get-together at our church last night. In preparation for the evening, the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie” and I were out Saturday getting decorations, etc.

Here’s what I discovered…

• Hardly anyone in Atlanta is/was a Seahawks fan. We found tons and tons of Seahawks banners, pennants, signs, window decals, etc. Right next to them were the empty spaces that once held the same amount of Steelers banners, pennants, signs, window decals, etc. They were sold out at almost every place we went!
• The Steelers fans in Atlanta are absolutely, positively crazy! You could tell who had been buying the sold-out Steelers paraphernalia – they were walking/driving around with all that stuff on their cars, their bodies, their kids, and yes, their pets!
• Regardless of which team you root for – or don’t root for – that “Made in China” officially-licensed NFL stuff is way overpriced! And some of it reminded me of that old George Carlin line…
  

  If you put together two things that have never been put together before, some schmuck will buy it!

Well, enough Super Bowl stuff for me for another year. I didn’t really have a dog in the fight, and since I had jumped on the Steelers bandwagon earlier, the game turned out OK by me.

And actually, after a wintry day’s worth of “research,” I’ve about changed my tune on the commercials, too. They weren’t all that bad.

OK, it’s snowing here in north Georgia. It’s coming down pretty good for our neck of the woods. It looks cool and all that. But it can go ahead and get to 70 degrees as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, and I betcha if you go to our usual local mega-mart right now, you’ll have a real hard time finding bread or milk. I’ve always wondered why there’s a run on bread and milk when wintry weather comes to our neck of the woods. Milk and bread. Whatcha gonna do with milk and bread if the power goes out?

OK, I didn’t see very many of this year’s crop of Super Bowl commercials in “real time” – that is, I didn’t watch but a few minutes of the game – so I had to check ’em out this morning.

Fortunately, you can see ’em all in a convenient package over at Google Video.

UPDATE: A more complete catalogue is available over at iFilm.

I’m the guy who cares more about the ads than the game, and I just felt a little…underwhelmed this time around.

Having said that, my favorites were the Budweiser Wave and Clydesdale American Dream ads.

Some of the others were amusing. Some were pretty silly. But, hey, what do I know? Somebody somewhere thought they were worth $2.5 million per 30 seconds.

A couple of other related thoughts…

The Burger King king is still the creepiest ad character.

And,

Doesn’t anybody have any new ideas for movies these days?

…but if I ever make it there, I hope it sounds just like this CD, and I hope I can take it all in à la Papa Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, Moleskine and all…

What a way to spend Sunday! Started feeling really rotten yesterday evening. Got home from our usual Saturday stuff, and went to bed. Well, went to “couch,” so as – hopefully! – not to pass it on the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie.” I slept for an hour, was wide awake and freezing for two hours, slept for two hours, then wide awake for three…you get the idea. Got up this morning and went to church, baptized, kind of preached, then headed off to a funeral this afternoon.

Just now back from the funeral, and I now have a fever of about 100.7. So, I’m pretty much packing it in for the evening. Maybe I can sleep…

Anyway, I’m unwinding right now to the Verve Music For Lovers series by some of the great names in jazz from over the years. Pretty good unwind stuff, and especially with Valentine’s Day right around the corner…

At this very moment, Astrud Gilberto is telling me in her own inimitable way that It Might As Well Be Spring.

A cup of Sleepytime, a real girl from Ipanema, medicine about to kick in…who could ask for anything more?

And then there was that unfortunate foray into hip and happenin’ names for the blog, like… SofaSpud.

SofaSpud?!?!? What in the world was I thinking?!?!?!

I’ve been poking around in my archives, and I found the very first post I ever posted – waaaaaaayyyyyy back in April, 2002!

The very first post was this profound and earth-shattering bit of writing…

well…i’m on…now what? that’s the question i’ll be trying to answer in the days ahead…along with other ones that come to mind…i’ll rant…i’ll rave…i’ll wander around in my head and in my world…and i’ll try to make it worth my time…and yours…stay tuned

Notice the hip and happenin’ all lower-case style. Notice the title of the blog. Notice the tagline…

from the heart for the mind…from the mind for the heart

Wow! Those were the days!

From that late April night almost four years ago, we’ve been from A Boy and His Stuff, through Straddling the Gap, and finally(?) right here to Just Charlie.

In the words of Jerry Garcia, who undoubtedly stole them from Gary Lamb…

What a long strange trip it has been!