End of summer brings blues, football, notes

It's Labor Day weekend, which is a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that it's a three-day weekend and the NFL season is about to start. The bad news is that summer is nearing the end.

I've long championed my love of summer. I also proposed a new season system, under which summer would officially end Monday night.

Every year, I hear people talking about how excited they are for fall – for the falling leaves, the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, the coming Christmas season. Every year, I get sad as the days become shorter.

This week is the unofficial end of summer. You may be happy about that, but I'm not. Still, it's time to empty my pockets of my summer-ending notes:

• I'm appalled that the state Legislature seriously considered a bill to end daylight saving time in California. Actually, the bill would just allow residents to vote on it, but really?

People want to end sunny evenings? They want to create a world that resembles summer in Alaska, with just a few hours of daylight every day? They want to let the Snow Miser win the famous Sun Miser-Snow Miser battle ("Year Without a Santa Claus," 1974)? Please.

If we get rid of daylight saving time, what's next? Christmas? Kittens? Laughter?

• For my money, there is no household item with a name that better reflects its purpose than a sewing machine.

Not only is it for sewing, it's a full-blown machine, with pulleys, levers, motors and pistons. (I'm guessing. I'm not knowledgeable about what pistons do.)

Second-best household item name, from my friend Danny: A juicer.

• The NFL season kicks off Thursday, so this former sports editor will share his predictions.

The Raiders will go 9-7 but miss the playoffs. The 49ers will be 4-12. Several high-profile players will suffer serious head injuries and the league will continue to be popular.

• For my money, the best autumn opportunity in Solano County is the Cool Patch Pumpkins Corn Maze in Dixon.

According to its website, the maze will open sometime this month. It's the world's largest corn maze. And it's in our county.

Do yourself a favor. Go to the Cool Patch Pumpkins Corn Maze.

• Here's the description of nearly every Netflix or Amazon TV series that I've watched with over the past year: A dysfunctional detective with a dark secret in his/her past works to solve a strange crime in a dark, hopeless town.

Who wouldn't love that?

• When the Golden State Warriors switched flagship radio stations from longtime home KNBR (680 AM) to KGMZ (95.7 FM), it was a milestone move for Solano County radio.

Yes, Solano County.

Among the stations carrying the Warriors will be KUIC 95.3 FM in Vacaville – largely because it's close to 95.7 on the FM dial and fans will be able to find it.

But consider this factoid: This is the first time a major Bay Area or Sacramento pro sports team had a Solano County affiliate.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Big Floss perpetuates big dental lie

We've heard it a million times (or at least every six months): Floss. Floss. Floss.

Daily flossing will save your teeth.

It will prevent heart problems.

It will improve your life.

The value of flossing has been considered fact – as widely accepted as the need for exercise, that sitting too close to the TV makes your eyes rectangular and that swallowing apple seeds leads to trees in your stomach.

Turns out it's not necessarily true.

A recent damning article by The Associated Press revealed that there is no scientific evidence that flossing helps prevent cavities. None. Just like there's no scientific evidence that if you are hit in the back while crossing your eyes, they'll stay that way.

The federal government has recommended flossing since 1979, which is the same time it issued the controversial warning that disco dancing could be fatal, which was subsequently disproved by Gloria Gaynor's anthem,"I Will Survive."

The floss news was shocking, particularly since it also isn't proven to reduce plaque.

Leading to the question: What could be behind this wall of lies?

Big Floss.

The worldwide amalgamation of floss producers. Seriously. Do you realize that the global market for floss will hit $2 billion per year in 2017?

That's a lot of string, some of it is waxed, most of it wasted by being wrapped around fingers. And Big Floss realizes that if the public knew that the use of it didn't make a difference, it could create a huge cavity in industry earnings.

When The AP contacted the henchmen of Big Floss – including Procter and Gamble and Johnson and Johnson – they either declined comment or acted like they had a sore tooth and couldn't talk. Neither is impressive.

According to The AP's article, Wayne Aldredge, president of the American Academy of Periodontology, acknowledged the weak scientific evidence and the brief duration of many studies. But he urged patients to floss to help avoid gum disease with a strange analogy.

"It's like building a house and not painting two sides of it," he said. "Ultimately those two sides are going to rot away quicker."

Says who? Big Paint?

Aldredge also said that the impact of floss might be clearer if researchers focused on patients at the highest risk of gum disease, such as diabetics and smokers.

That's . . . wait, what? DIABETICS ARE AT HIGHER RISK FOR GUM DISEASE?

This just turned into a full-fledged panic attack. As a diabetic since age 14, I'm . . . wait a second. Do they have any evidence that proves that? Or is Big Floss just trying to once again take advantage of diabetics?

Let's get back on point. In addition to Big Floss, I assume that dental hygienists play a role in this conspiracy.

Think about their jobs. They're paid well, but they spend the day cleaning our teeth. At the end of an hour scraping gunk off someone's teeth, I suspect you want to make a point, if only to get out your aggression.

Dental hygienists always tell us to floss more. They always act like we're slobs. (Or maybe that's just me).

Might hygienists be in cahoots with Big Floss? I fear it's possible.

Still . . .

Despite the stunning lack of evidence that flossing helps, I will likely keep flossing. And so will you.

We'll do it for the same reason we stopped eating apple seeds when we were old enough to know better.

There may be no scientific evidence that apple trees can grow in our stomachs, but why take a chance?

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

I want to be famous enough for an AP obit

Early in my journalism career, it became a running joke: I could parody obituaries written by The Associated Press.

They always, always, always started the same way: The person's name, why they were meaningful, the word "died" and the day. Then a period. Then a three-word sentence, saying their age.

Bing Crosby, who partnered with Bob Hope on a series of "On The Road" movies and was one of America's greatest crooners, died Sunday. He was 73.

Harry Caray, the play-by-play voice for more than five decades for four major league baseball teams, died Tuesday. He was 81.

Always the same. Which got me to thinking: What would my obit say? Perhaps more interestingly, what would be a cool obit to have?

Again, this isn't about the obituary that will run in the local paper ("Brad was a beloved husband, father and master to his dogs, with whom he played cards until his last days . . ."). This is about having a claim to fame that is enough to get you an obituary by The Associated Press. And having that claim to fame be something that people enjoy.

Right now, it would most likely be something like this: Brad Stanhope, who wrote columns about pet monkeys, space travel, his mechanical ineptitude and ironically, obituaries, died Tuesday. He was 53.

Wait. That's how old I am? I better get busy! This is getting fairly close to being practical, not whimsical!

Anyway, think about for what most of us would like to be remembered, which is really what this is about. Of course there are only so many Mother Teresas or Jonas Salks or Steve Jobses, so it's more likely that most of us will be remembered for something unique, not for making a worldwide change. My choice?

Something quirky enough that everyone connects with it, but not so much that I got bugged about it all the time.

Like Bette Nesmith Graham. You know, the mother of Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, but more importantly, the inventor of Liquid Paper. That's the stuff we used to "paint" on paper when we made a mistake with our typewriters, which were . . . oh, never mind. But when Bette Nesmith Graham died in 1980, you can bet her obituary read "Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented Liquid Paper and was the mother of Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, died Tuesday. She was 56." (What? 56? I've got to get busy!)

That's a good example. So is Larry Waters.

You remember him. He's the guy who tied a bunch of weather balloons to his lawn chair and floated at 15,000 feet above Los Angeles, using a pellet gun to shoot the balloons so he could come down. He dropped the gun and got tangled in power lines, causing a brief blackout.

His obit? "Larry Waters, who tied weather balloons to a lawn chair and floated 15,000 feet above Los Angeles in 1982, died Tuesday. He was 44." (What? I'm on borrowed time?)

You get the point: While many of us are past the point of being a president or rock star or famous actor or discovering the cure to a dreaded disease, we still hold onto the hope that we'll do something that makes us worthy of an obituary by a wire news service.

So here's my dream: "Brad Stanhope, who famously had a pet monkey that served as his butler and later drove a flying car to work, died Monday. He was 153."

I've got plenty of time!

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Musings on great art, the color palette

Mrs. Brad was talking with a friend and I was listening.

Except it sounded like gibberish: They were discussing art.

I like art. Specifically, I like Art Howe, Art Monk, Art Garfunkel and Art Linkletter. But on a different level, I enjoy works of art. The statue of David. The statue of Willie Mays. The painting of dogs playing poker. Finding Waldo. All the great art of the world.

But colors? They make me laugh.

In the discussion referenced earlier, Mrs. Brad and her friend were looking at a color palette, discussing the names. As if they made sense.

Sap green. Payne's gray. Cadmium yellow light. Quina-cridone magenta. (To be fair, they didn't say those. I found those on a color wheel. But they said words like that.)

It was all mumbo jumbo, which is typical. Everybody takes what we understand and makes it complicated.

It's like medicine, where they come up with drugs that start with X or Z to treat a malady that has a multisyllabic name ("Take new Xaxoplaxin, to treat the symptoms of Ribertosom Syndrome.")

Similarly, listen to the sideline reporter at a sports event, explaining how your favorite player has an abrasion on his head and a contusion on his hip. Oh no! It's serious: a scrape on his face and a bruised hip.

Anyway, it's the same thing with colors, although there's apparently a reason for it.

Turns out that, contrary to what I believed in my childhood, there are more than 64 colors.

Seriously. Shocking, right?

Sixty-four seemed like a lot – and that was the outer limit, of course, because that was size of the Mac Daddy of crayon boxes, which only rich or artistic kids possessed. The 64-crayon box with a sharpener? To me, that must have included every conceivable color, a fact made obvious by the inclusion of not just blue, but sky blue and blue-green.

(We can't ignore, of course, the "flesh" crayon. Not only was that racist, it was wrong. That was not even my skin color. And it creeped me out to call it "flesh," which seemed like something a monster would eat.)

Anyway, it turns out there are more than 64 colors. And it turns out that the naming committee for the colors has the freedom to go crazy.

Cerulean blue, by the way, is next to patholo blue on our palette – which actually is a color-mixing guide. In other words, it allows you to combine burnt sienna with raw umber and come up with a new color (medium slumber?).

You want your house to be white? Do you mean eggshell, alabaster or chiffon porcelain?

That's a blue shirt? Do you mean navy, Aegean, azure, admiral or arctic?

And those are the fundamental colors – the ones that Big Paint, the conglomeration of major paint producers, largely agree on.

Here's all I know: When Cassius Marcellus Coolidge was painting, he probably didn't use terms like eggshell, raw umber and patholo blue. The great Coolidge likely used white, brown and blue on his masterpiece.

Who's he? Oh, I guess I get to play the role of art expert now: Coolidge, of course, was the American genius who painted the "Dogs Playing Poker" series starting in the 1890s.

Sap green, indeed.

Brad Stanhope is a noted art critic and former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

What price safety? Maybe we should ask Graham

Safety first. Unless, of course, it makes you look like Graham, because sometimes safety is overrated.

Even car safety.

First, a caveat: I'm not talking about safety belts (why wouldn't you wear them?) or air bags (one of the great advances of modern society). I don't mean vehicles that are determined to be particularly safe (I can't afford a Hummer and don't have a Subaru or Volvo, but I respect them). I look forward to the self-driving cars. Until then, I would be OK with wearing a helmet while driving if someone I respected said it was a difference-maker.

Safety is important. But if you're talking about having a body designed to survive car crashes? No thanks.

Sound crazy? You haven't met the aforementioned Graham.

Yes, Graham.

He's the interactive, life-sized sculpture version of a human designed by an Australian artist out of silicone and hair (like Pamela Anderson!) to represent how a human could best survive car crashes.

It begs this question: In an era when athletes take performance-enhancing drugs to excel at their sport, does it make sense for a serious commuter to undergo surgery to be able to survive any car crash?

You might want to look at Graham before you answer.

The Aussie artist, named Patricia Piccinini, consulted with trauma surgeons (my theory: One was Aussie singer Rick Springfield, who played Dr. Noah Drake in the 1980s on TV's "General Hospital") about what would help a human survive a car wreck.

The result? Graham. He looks like the missing link, even on his website in which he appears wearing only gym shorts: www.meetgraham.com.au.

Graham has an extra-thick rib cage with air sacs to help absorb the blow of a collision. He has a flattened face and larger skull. He has thicker skin (which might come in handy when people make fun of him). Graham's legs are multiple-jointed, going both ways. They end with hooves.

Graham might survive a car crash, but his social life would be a train wreck.

A CNN.com article about Graham quoted David Logan, a crash investigation expert at a research center in Melbourne, as saying, "It's really about understanding the physics behind road crashes, and (Piccinini) did a fantastic job of interpreting that and creating something that is really able to be digested by anyone from what is some quite complex physics."

Well, maybe.

Once I saw Graham, I couldn't stop thinking of what his life would be like. On the worst days of my life, I look like a male model next to Graham.

It's interesting to think about what could make us more able to survive auto accidents (which kill 30,000 Americans a year) and nearly any advance is a good one.

But Piccinini's creation – Fordenstein? – brings to mind wisdom shared by Richie Cunningham in a classic episode of "Happy Days," when he spurned his father's desire to move to a bomb shelter due to fear of nuclear war: "I'd rather live now than just survive later."

Pretty deep, right?

Graham's appearance, however, brought a more salient observation by my friend Teresa.

"He might survive a car crash," she said. "But he'd never survive middle school."

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Lassen Park camping trip ends with a whimper

There are many synonyms for cold: Frigid. Brisk. Nippy. Shivery. Icy. Glacial.

Here's another: Camping.

That's the main takeaway from a recent trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park by Mrs. Brad and me.

We decided to camp at Lassen for the first time since our sons were in elementary school. We would again stay at the ominously named Summit Lake campground, but global cooling obviously hit the region since our last trip.

How else do you explain mid-July nights that prompt whimpering?

Yes. Whimpering. You'll see.

First, the great part. Lassen Park – east of Redding, in northeastern California – is spectacular. It's one of our state's hidden treasures, a 106,000-acre park with geysers, Lassen Peak (10,500 feet!), isolated lakes and more than 150 miles of hiking paths.

It's a fantastic place to camp and relax. Until night. Then, it's a fantastic place to freeze.

Mrs. Brad and I arrived on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, with the temperature around 75. Of course, our campground was 7,000 feet above sea level.

Of course, we saw snow (in July!) in the park.

Of course, we knew it would be chilly at night.

Of course, we underestimated it.

We set up camp. We walked around the campground. We ate dinner. We built a fire. We tried to avoid getting smoke in our eyes. We went to bed at about 9:30 p.m., after watching the sky fill with stars.

As we crawled into our sleeping bags, we knew it would be chilly: The weather app on my phone told me so. We wore hoodies and put an extra blanket over our 30-year-old department-store sleeping bags. Good enough, right?

Wrong.

It was cold. It was uncomfortable. Our pillows felt like they were filled with sand (does pillow stuffing freeze?). I struggled to fall asleep and so did Mrs. Brad. After several hours, knowing the sun would soon come up, I checked my watch.

It was 11:30 p.m. Oh, no.

It got colder. I slept. I woke up. I shivered. I rolled over. I grabbed a coat and used it as an extra blanket. I slept. I woke up. I checked my watch. It was 12:15 a.m., 45 minutes after the last time I checked.

The endless night continued. Every once in a while, Mrs. Brad and I were awake at the same time and spoke. Through chattering teeth. We commiserated.

Finally, morning. Finally, sun. I  turned on our car and it was 41 degrees. It felt colder.

Soon, though, it was a glorious day, perfect for a hike (where we saw more snow!), relaxing, reading, dinner, fire, stars, bedtime.

Night No. 2 was different. I wore my big jacket to bed. I wore jeans. I wrapped a blanket around me, like a mummy. I was prepared for an endless night of cold. So was Mrs. Brad.

This time, I slept until 1 a.m. The cold only woke me four or five times the rest of the night. Mrs. Brad? Not so good. The next morning – after I got up at 6 a.m. and paced around for an hour, looking for the first patch of sun – she awoke and told me she was miserable.

How miserable?

"I woke up during the night and could hear myself whimpering."

That, thankfully, was our last night before continuing to a hotel, which had a heater, air conditioning, shower and a bed. Paradise.

We love Lassen and would do it again. But next time, we'll go in the summer when it's . . . oh, never mind. We went in July!

Perhaps it's time to update our sleeping bags.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Making my bucket list official

Climb Mount Everest. Run with the bulls. Skydive. See Stevie Wonder perform.

When people talk about their "bucket list," they usually include items like that. Our bucket lists, of course, are the things we want to do before we die. As people age, they become more aware of the bucket list. Then it recedes.

I say that because it seems that 40-year-olds talk most about bucket lists. My 85-year-old dad? Never talks about it (or perhaps he does, but has the volume on the TV turned up so loud no one can hear him).

Anyway, it's valuable for me to share my bucket list – partly because it creates a sense of accountability, partly because it might inspire someone, partly because I'm expected to turn in 500 words a week on a subject of my choice.

My bucket list is different from yours. That's because we're different. And because my bar is set low.

Here we go . . . before I die, I hope to:

• Eat at Athenian Grill.**
• See a ventriloquist perform without cringing.
• Have my teeth cleaned by the dentist without sweating through a shirt.
• Remember that the food at the Solano County Fair sounds exotic and delicious, but usually leaves me bloated and sluggish.
• Go big.
• Go home.**
• Watch a full movie on the Lifetime Network without laughing.
• Travel to Turkey . . . or eat turkey.**
• Make an actual list of buckets: Mop, water, wooden, metal. Mo . . .
• Remember whether or not there's a second "e" in judgment (or "judgement") without looking it up.
• Get to a movie early enough to see all the pre-show programming.
• Dye my hair jet black and insist that "it's always been this way."
• Rip off each side-view mirror from my car while backing out of the garage.**
• Teach my dog to poop in the toilet.*
• Watch "The Bucket List," a 2007 Morgan Freeman/Jack Nicholson movie.
• Drink a cup of coffee every morning for a week.**
• See the Giants, 49ers and Warriors win championships.**
• Find a loophole that allows me to retransmit, rebroadcast or make another use of the pictures, descriptions and accounts of a sporting event without the express written consent of the team or league.
• Go to a concert for an Air Supply tribute band.
• Show up late to the Air Supply tribute band's concert and explain that I was making good progress, then I got lost in love.
• Challenge a traffic ticket while wearing one of those white wigs and calling the judge "your eminence."
• Time travel to be a star of a 1970s "blaxploitation" film.
• Become the first person to officially not like Sara Lee.
• Drive away from a gas station with the gas pump still connected to my car.**
• Go to an air show at Travis Air Force Base.*
• Have Stevie Wonder see me perform.
• Get back to my birth weight.
• Write a 500-word column about my bucket list.**

(*Probably won't do this. **Have already done this.)

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

5-minute guide to political conventions

If you're like me, you're having a hard time sleeping. It's like opening day of baseball season, Black Friday, the day the new season of "Game of Thrones" starts and the day a new iPhone comes out, all rolled into one.

The political conventions start this week!

Republicans gather Monday in Cleveland, which should be (but isn't) named after Grover Cleveland, a Democrat who was our 22nd and 24th president. That's right, the Republicans are meeting in a city we associate with a Democrat.

A week later, the Democrats gather in Philadelphia, which should be (but isn't) named after Phil Mickelson, a conservative Republican golfer (is there any other kind?). That's right, the Democrats are meeting in a city that we associate with a Republican.

With the quadrennial (look it up!) pomp and circumstance, many of us have a hard time understanding what's happening. So following is a five-minute guide (depending on reading speed) to the conventions, with facts and tips:

All delegates aren't created equal. Delegates, of course, cast the votes to determine who gets to represent their party. Most are pledged to vote for certain people and most are there for the parties. But there are some special delegates, called super delegates. They have super powers, such as the ability to run through walls, stay awake during boring speeches and drink unreasonable amounts of alcohol.

Watch the roll-call vote. This is merely a formality, but it gives the state delegation leaders a chance to pimp for their state on national TV. You learn all kind of things about states as the leaders say things like, "The great state of Mississippi, which ranks 50th in education, health care, life span and drug use – but only 47th in drunken driving arrests – casts 41 proud votes for the next president of the United States, Donald Trump!" Or, "Colorado, the first state in the nation to legalize marijuana for recreational use, casts 33 votes for the next president of the United States, Hillary . . . umm . . . umm . . . are those nachos? . . . "

Lunatics make a scene. The branch of each political party (that favors mandatory gun ownership or thinks we should provide free health care to pets), gets to make a scene. Sometimes they get a speaker, but more often they create some sort of "spontaneous" demonstration that makes a home viewer wonder if it's really happening while the "normal" delegates ignore it.

Straw hats. You will almost assuredly see some. Enjoy it. You won't see them again until the 2020 conventions.

False drama. There is almost always some question about who will be the vice presidential nominee or whether there is a backroom deal – this year, that will be particularly heightened during the Republican convention, due to Trumpmania. It is always like sports rumors at the trading deadline: All smoke, no fire. It's highly unlikely Chuck Norris will be the last-minute Republican vice president replacement for Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, or that Hillary Clinton will offer to be co-presidents with Michelle Obama. But it will be rumored.

End of civility. If you like politics, enjoy the final weeks before we descend into more than four months of accusations, name-calling and mud-slinging. You think it's been ugly so far? That's nothing.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

How to assemble a great marriage plan

A friend told me recently about a Bay Area couple whose job is essentially assembling IKEA furniture for people.

It seemed insane. Assembling things? As a couple?

Then I thought about it: Mrs. Brad and I have spent many years assembling things, establishing a solid working relationship. Most furniture in our house and all the electronics have been assembled on site. I once (kind of) built a shed. She's an engineer.

Could we do what the IKEA couple does? Could that be an early retirement plan for us – a way to pick up extra money and do something together?

(Harp music plays, revealing Mrs. Brad and me in someone's living room, preparing to assemble a box of furniture parts into a beautiful IKEA product.)

Me: OK, I'll open this box and we'll get going. LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!

Her: That's not the box! That's a table. Put away the box cutters.

Me: What? Oh. Sorry, I was thinking about getting my phone to stream the Giants game. Is this the box?

Her: (Taking away the box cutter) I'll do it!

Mrs. Brad opens the box and lays out the parts. After struggling with my phone for several minutes, I grab the instructions.

Me: This doesn't make sense. It's in Spanish. Or French. Something.

Her: Find the English version. It's on there.

Me: Are you sure? Oh, here it is. Thank goodness. I thought there was eight pages of instructions. OK: Assemble the parts.

Her: I did that.

Me: OK . . . um . . .

Mrs. Brad begins assembling parts. She pulls out a tool and connects two parts.

Me: WAIT! You are supposed to attach A1 to B2. What are you doing?

Her: That's what I'm doing. I'm putting together the base.

Me: Speaking of that, the baseball game is about to begin. Do you think these people have a Bluetooth speaker for my phone?

Her: Don't worry about that. Can you hand me the wrench?

Me: (Looking through her toolbox) Is this a wrench?

Her: That's a screwdriver. A wrench looks like . . . here it is. This is a wrench.

Me: That's what I thought. I just . . .

Mrs. Brad continues to put the furniture together as I watch.

Her: Can you move? You're blocking the light. I need a Phillips screwdriver.

Me: This?

Her: No. That's a slot screwdriver. A Phillips looks like a star.

Me: That's weird. Because J.R. Phillips played for the Giants and he wasn't a star.

Her: What? Could you just get me a Phillips screwdriver?

Me: Why are you mad? He wasn't a star. ARE YOU SAYING J.R. PHILLIPS WAS A STAR?

Her: (Moving me out of the way.) Never mind. I've got it.

Me: I'm hungry. When will we be done?

Her: We just started. How can you be hungry?

Me: Why are you getting mad at me? I'm just trying to help. I had no IKEA you'd get so upset! Get it? Ikea?

Her: (Deep sigh) Can you hold this board while I attach it to the crossbeam?

Me: (After holding it for 30 seconds) How long is this going to take?

Her: The project?

Me: No, me having to hold this. My arms are tired.

Her: Poor baby.

Me: Is this still about J.R. Phillips? Because he wasn't very good. Ask anyone!

Her: Can you do me a favor?

Me: I guess so. I'm already doing all the work.

Her: Can you go outside and wait in the car?

Me: I don't understand why you're so mad about J.R. Phillips. I had no ikea a you liked him so much. Get it?

Her: GET OUT!

I slink out, secretly happy to listen to the game in the car.

I guess it wouldn't work. But it would be weird that she'd be so ignorant about J.R. Phillips, right?

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

I hate loud noises, explosions . . . and cats

Editor's note: Brad Stanhope is on vacation. Sitting in this week is his dog, Brandy, an 8-year-old Weimaraner.

Hey, everybody. How's it going? It's been a little rough for me. More like ruff, right?

Hahaha howwwwwwwwl.

Anyhoo, the last few nights have been difficult. I mean it's always a little tough at night because the cats wander around and I see shadows through the sliding glass door that may be cats.

I hate cats. Because they're dumb.

Did you hear about the cat who was asked whether he liked his can of food cut into six or 12 chunks? He said, "Six. I couldn't eat 12." Hahaha howwwwl.

That's a great one. Cats are dumb. My neighbor Scruff told me that through the fence. Then we started fence wrestling, which really angers She Who Pets Me.

But Scruff is hilarious. He tells me new ones every day. Or the same ones. My memory isn't that great.

Anyhoo, back to the roughness.

Am I the only one who notices that there are a lot of loud noises at night this time of year? And by this time of year, I mean . . . I don't know. I can't really keep track of time.

I'm like the cat who knocked an alarm clock off the shelf, because he wanted to see time fly!

Haha.

What's an alarm clock? Scruff said that was funny, so it probably is. But I don't know.

Anyhoo, the loud noises and bright lights in the sky drive me crazy this time of year. Boom! Bang! Rat-a-tat! Sparkle!

I don't know what's going on, but I can't stop from howling, which makes He Who Feeds Me and She Who Pets Me both yell.

It's a weird time. The other day, I chased this cat up the tree, then Scruff told me the cat was so dumb that he climbed the tree because he thought it would raise his IQ.

Hahaha howwwwwwl.

What's IQ?

But back to the loud noises and sounds . . . wait a second . . . there's somebody up front . . . HEY YOU GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! OUT OF MY DRIVEWAY! GET AWAY! GET AWAY! . . . umm . . . never mind. It was the neighbor. I thought it was a mailman.

Anyway, did you hear about the dumb cat? By that, I mean all cats? Anyhoo, this cat thought Meow Mix was a cassette tape with songs.

Haha hoooowwwwwl!

Get it? I don't. What's a cassette tape? Whatever it is, I bet it's funny!

But here's what's not funny: The loud noises and explosions in the air. He Who Feeds Me and She Who Pets Me both say it will be over soon, but I don't believe them. They also told me to ignore Scruff at the fence, but if I'd done that, I wouldn't know all those cat jokes.

Like that one cat who took a blood test and failed.

Get it? I don't.

But . . . let me go roll in the grass, because my back itches. Grrrrr . . . grrrrrr.

Oh. Much better. Let me stretch out and yawn. There, that's nice. That's sooooo nice.

Ahhhhh.

What was that? Did you hear that? Sounds like barking!

Hoooowwwwwwwl! Hooooowwwwl!

I'm going to patrol the fence area, to make sure everything is where it should be. Come along.

Which reminds me, did you hear about the cat who thought Snoop Dogg was a real dog?

Hahaha.

What is Snoop Dogg? Not a dog, apparently.

Anyhoo, I hate the loud noises. They're almost as bad as cats, who are so dumb, they paint garbage cans brown and orange so they can pretend they're eating at A&W. Hahahaha.

I don't know my colors.

I don't know what A&W is.

I like to eat garbage.

But I bet that's funny.

Brandy Stanhope is the longtime pet of Brad Stanhope. Reach her at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.