The Blue Cooler Wars-The First Great Battle Is Fought

Blue Cooler Recap: I and my then wife gave it to Tony and Carrie and forgot about it. That Christmas they tricked us into taking it home again. War was declared. They thought living in another state made them safe. They learned that was not the case.

So the following months when we got together it went something like this: Check their car, is the Cooler in it? Did you look in our car? Open the trunk and make sure it's not there. Lock the doors and hide your keys. Did you search the house? Check behind the shower curtain. Will it fit under the bed? The Blue Cooler changed possession a couple of times. Other plots to give it away were discovered and foiled.

So in April of 2005, when My Bro bought a new house in Oregon, we put into action our plan. We had the Cooler at this point and spent many hours in our War Room implementing a scheme to not only deliver the damn thing but do it in a way to demoralize the enemy as well. We had directions to their new place but we did not go directly to it. We did some recon and searched for ways to spring our trap. I parked the truck two houses away and my wife jumped out with the Cooler and ran up to their house from the one side that had no windows looking out. She then hid the Cooler in a big clump of bushes beside the house and ran back to the truck. I then parked next to the house and we got out and rang the bell. Tony came out, told us to stay where we were and then searched the truck. Even though he didn't see The Blue Cooler, he was still suspicious. He would get nervous when one of us left the room. We of course knew this, so we would go out of our way to go outside or disappear upstairs and watch him scramble to make sure that no treachery was afoot.

To her credit, Carrie wasn't as crazy as Tony. Her problem was that she is nice and trusting and didn't take this as seriously as the rest of us. What that meant for Tony was that he was outnumbered and facing very motivated opponents. We were staying for the weekend and that night we set the plan in motion. Whenever my Bro and I get together we play Mario Party into the wee hours of the night. I will write a post on the Mario Parties later. This also includes some adult beverages. Well, many beverages. So when we finally retired for the night, Tony and I were feeling no pain. About four in the morning the linchpin of the whole operation woke up. My ex was an early riser. Very early. Butt crack of dawn early. She put on a robe, drank some coffee and went outside. She grabbed the Cooler and took it to the garage. Anyone who has ever moved knows what the garage looks like three weeks after the move. Their garage wasn't any better. She unstacked a bunch of stuff, placed the Cooler down and stacked all of the stuff on top of it. As part of the plan, the things she used to bury the Cooler were sleeping bags and other summer gear. Stuff that they won't touch for awhile. She then went into the kitchen and cleaned up after the Mario Party to cover up the treachery. How could someone who cleaned the kitchen do something like hide The Blue Cooler in your garage?

I don't know how long it took them to find the Cooler, but Tony did not acknowledge that he had it for months. My guess is that it stayed hidden for awhile, just sitting in the garage to whole time. This is also the time that Carie turned to the Darkside and decided that we were going to pay. All that summer and fall, they tried to get us back but we stopped them every time. We even managed to find the Cooler and smuggle it back in their truck before they left our house. They found it while driving home. Tony must have been so proud of himself thinking that they got us, only to find it in their truck 20 minutes later. That phone call made us laugh for days. They were final able to get us in November, about a year after the whole thing started. We found it outside of the house in some bushes. Ironic I suppose.

But that wasn't the end of it by far.

The Blue Cooler Wars-War Is Declared!

We left off with Tony taking the cooler home with a turkey and instructions to keep the cooler. Fast forward to that Christmas at Mom's house. We did the usual stuff; food, presents and general merry making.

Sometime during the evening, my Bro causally told me that he has the blue cooler to give back to us. I then reminded him that he was to keep it, that we did not want it back. For most people, it should have ended there.

Not for Tony.

This is the important part of this saga and I want to point this out. The blue cooler was freely given and received. A contract was made. We gave it them (don't think you are getting off the hook here Carrie) and they took, understanding the terms of the deal.

So you can appreciate our surprise, when that night, we unloaded the truck and found the blue cooler. I believe that was the time it became “The Blue Cooler.” Again, let me point out that we were the victims. We were the ones hoodwinked (I'm so glad I got to use that word...love it). How did this happen? Why did it happen?

I called my Bro for an explanation. All he could tell me was "Your name was on the damn thing with permanent marker. It is yours." Yes, he did sound very self satisfied. Even proud of what they had done. Here is the most important part is that they were in Portland. They believed they were safe from my justice. Safe from my righteous anger.

But they were wrong. So very wrong.

The Blue Cooler Wars-Opening Salvo

Members of my family who read this blog have asked me if the Blue Cooler will make an appearance. The answer has always been yes, but I wanted to tell the stories right. Those of you that know the saga will have to be patient as I write about the events and people that have made this the epic struggle what it is today.

It started small, like most things do, in 2004 around October. My brother and his wife-to-be Carrie came up to visit us from Oregon. I don't remember why and it really is not important. I am sure, however, that I handed my Bro his ass in Mario Party that trip.

Somehow the conversation turned to Thanksgiving, and to the fact that Tony had not grabbed a turkey yet. Well my wife at the time, being the efficient shopper that she was, had purchased a couple of birds at a good sale price and stashed them in the freezer and asked if he wanted one of them. He said that he would but he had a long drive home and was worried about the turkey thawing out.

Amazingly, the stars had aligned and the answer was shipped to us the week before. Every year we ordered a bushel of Hatch green chilies from New Mexico. We actually would spit an order with my then mother-in-law in Illinois. She would buy the chilies and send us our half. That year our order was sent in a heavily taped blue cooler. She wrote our address on the lid with a permanent marker and affixed the shipping label on the side.

After receiving said cooler, we were trying to figure out what to with it. We had four other coolers and didn't need or want the blue one. So we offered it to my Bro for him to put his bird in for the trip. We also told him that the cooler was his to do with as he pleased.

So we loaded the turkey in the cooler, packed it with ice and sent him on his way believing that we helped Tony have a great Thanksgiving and solved our blue cooler problem.

If it only stopped there....

To be continued.

Bowling Is Not A Sport

I have never been the best athlete around. That’s not to say I suck at everything. I think that I play a good goalkeeper and I can hold my own in basketball as long as you don’t mind that I can’t dribble, shoot, jump or that I’m only 5’9”. I do play some mean defense though.

This fact makes it weird to know that Jordan seems to think that I’m the great athlete ever. My brother Tony tries to disabuse Jordan of this belief whenever we all get together as much as he can.


Jordan and I watch football, baseball and some basketball when we have the time. He wants to know everything and asks millions of questions, all which I know the answer to naturally. Even the crazy eight year old questions. “Why do they get four downs to get a first down? How come it’s called a touchdown? Did he just make a homerun?”

So in my house, I’m the greatest and smartest athletic person in the world. Even sports video games are dominated by me. All of this makes the next part really, really hard to admit.

I lost to a five year old at bowling. Sure he had the bumpers up and I was dealing with the plague (one of those is a lie) but it still hurts. Holy crap it hurts. I want you all to know that Ben, the five year old, is an animal. In fact, he beat everybody except for Keith, his dad.


Of course the kids, Ben’s brother Conner and Jordan, were having way too much fun to notice anything and my sports reign is still alive in Jordan’s mind. The day he figures out the truth is going to suck. Might even feel as bad as losing to a five year old at, well anything.

Oh, in order to able to use the photo of Ben, his Mom Rachel made me write this:

I lost to Rachel too. She beat me by like a bazillion pins. It was terrible. She is the greatest bowler I have ever been around. I was blessed to be in her presents. Is that enough Rach?

I Shall Call Him...

I am succeeding at brain-washing Jordan and turning him into a Mini Me! The first thing he did after we got home from daycare was to change into his jammies and do some quality reading in the bathroom. Well spent time in there if not quite reading yet.

He got his homework done, just math today which he is very good at. Hey, just like me. Someday I will go into greater detail on how in the same semester, I got a B in Spanish (which I can’t read or speak) and failed English (which I use everyday.)

After homework, Jordan goes to his room and brings down a couple of stuffed toys, Froggy and Winnie the Pooh. (As I type this, Jordan has Froggy’s pants down and his shirt unbuttoned, laying face down on a makeshift table. He is checking for a concussion. I don’t think he has totally figured out what a concussion it yet.)

Anyway, he brought down the two guys and had Froggy blocking for Pooh, who was the Quarterback. He put on his Seahawk helmet and ran through the frog and sacked Pooh. He has literally tackled the stuffing out of him and has to have had Wendy perform some stuffed animal surgery. A couple of times.

A little later on, he was doing some slow motion instant replay to see if he scored a touchdown and then to check if he really recovered a fumble. Really super slow motion. I thought he had only two speeds; sleep and a million miles an hour.

He plays imaginary football games and his imaginary team is the Skillet Lickers, my fantasy football team’s name. “It’s the Skillet Lickers verses the Mario, Luigi and Sonic team.”

Next, I will need to get a book in his bathroom for him to actually read.

Sorry Jessica Biel

Well I was going to write a post about the celebrity exempt list. You know the 5 celebrities you can have a fling with and not get in trouble. So I asked Wendy to make her list to go with mine and she named guys that visit the dental office she works at.

So that ended that. And that ends this post.

I'm In An Abusive Relationship With George Lucas

The Star Wars movies in 3D, sounds like a great idea. That is until I started to think about it. Each movie is going to be released one at a time and presumably costing 10 bucks a person. How many times are you going to smack the crap out of me until I learn that you don’t care about me George Lucas?

Let’s take a look back shall we; I bought the first trilogy on VHS. Then the Special Editions came out and I so was amped to see them in the theater I even ignored the fact that Greedo shot first in the new version. I then bought them on VHS as well.

Next, the prequels were announced! Holy bleep, George is making the prequels! We get to see Anakin become Darth Vader. Instead we got Little Ani. I’m not going into how bad the prequels were instead here is Patton Oswalt doing it for me. The language is very salty so listen at your own risk.



After that, the all of the movies came out on DVD and I wanted the first three movies on disc. But of course I needed the whole set so I bought three more movies that I don’t really care about.

Lucas is going to release the movies on Blu-ray next year in two different box sets for each trilogy. Amazon does not have a price listed yet but I’m sure they will dent my bank account.

In 2012, The Phantom Menace will be released to theatres in 3D. Then Attack of the Clones and so on and so on. How much is enough?

Will I go see them? Yes I will. Will I hate myself for going? Yes again. So it seems not matter what George does, I will keep going back to him and he will keep abusing me. He doesn’t care about us the fans. He only cares about what he can do with the technology.

Have you seen Casablanca turned in 3D? The Godfather movies have not been updated or Special Editioned.

Can you please leave well enough alone? Please for the love of Jabba, just leave them alone. I will go to my grave thinking then Han shot first.