I'm back on blogger...dogger.

It continues to bother me that almost every single sleeper worth throwing your lot behind is in the South region, but I guess life is all about playing the hand you're dealt and it's pretty obvious the Tournament is a metaphor for life. So within this somewhat perverse context, I decided to do my part for all the daughters entering their father's office pool, all of whom I'm sure read Cheddar Ted, and the lay people just looking to fit in for the next couple weeks.
Here are the top 40 teams based on the 2008 draw.

Teams 1-8 are the most likely to make the final four:

1) Memphis
2) UCLA
3) UNC
4) Georgetown
5) KU/Tennessee (interchangeable)
7) Texas*
8) Duke/Xavier (interchangeable)

*This is the biggest wild-card of the bunch. They played St. Mary's early in the season and won by 18, but that score is not telling since the game was played close until Texas pulled away at the end. If these teams meet in the second round, the stage is set for the Dalton rule to prevail (This rule, established over the course of my four year high school basketball career, basically states that it is nearly impossible to beat a hard-nosed opponent twice or three times in the same season, especially if the final match-up is in a play-off situation. The New York Giants are the most recent example of this rule). That said, Texas is dangerous and volatile. It's conceivable that they will just tear through the lower half of the bracket and give either Memphis or Pitt a run for their money. 

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Teams 10-16 are basically a lock for the sweet 16 but all face very tough opponents to get into the Elite 8:

10) Pitt*
11) Clemson*
12) Louisville
13) Washington St.
14) Wisconsin
15) Stanford
16) Drake

*Both Pitt and Clemson are hard-nosed and balanced enough to make it to the elite eight or even the final four. In fact, Coach Bob Knight predicted PITT to win the whole thing and in my underdog pools, I have them in the final game, losing to Georgetown in what would definitely be a magnificent tribute to the most blue-collared conference in Division I sports: THE BIG EAST.

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Teams 17-26 are ranked based on talent alone. They are definitely dogs to make it to the sweet 16, but they have the talent to pull it off:

17) Marquette*
18) USC*
19) Notre Dame
20) UCONN
21) Butler**
21) MSU
22) West Virginia***
23) St. Mary's (see Texas explanation above)
24) Vandy
25) Indiana****
26) Oklahoma

*Marquette and USC are definitely the most likely teams of this milieu to make it to the sweet 16. Both had disappointing losses in their conference tournaments and both have something to prove.

**Even though Tennessee is a special team, Butler is dangerous and for a ranked team, remarkably underrated.

***West Virginia is back. Bob Huggins is almost inexplicably likable and Joe Alexander is channeling Kevin Pittsnoggle like some type of Mountaineer Soothsayer.  This team could definitely beat Duke. The truth is, Arizona might be a tougher game (at least according to Greg Anthony's Bracket)

****Indiana is an interesting team. A classically wounded powerhouse, this team could bow out in the first round in a depressing display of no heart and teamwork or they could say, "This is for Kelvin Sampson" and make a crazy run to the final four. Remember that this is the team that gave UCLA its toughest regional game in last year's tournament – a second round bruiser that was basically a home game for the Bruins – and all they did was add a great freshman in Eric Gordon. The Hoosiers are talented as hell, but their mental instability is the ultimate double-edged sword. Ironically, they remind me a lot of the 2000 UNC team who came in as an 8 seed, knocked off an overrated 1 in Stanford, and made it to the final four.  

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Teams 27-40 all are capable of first round wins, but are not totally exciting:

27) Purdue (I know nothing about this team)
28) Kent. St.
29) Miss St.
30) A & M
31) UNLV
32) Arizona
33) Davidson*
34) Gonzaga*
35) Miami
36) Baylor
37) Arkansas
38) BYU
39) Oregon
40) Kentucky

*It's unfortunate that these two likable squads face off in the first round and face an almost unbeatable opponent in the second round in Georgetown.                                                     

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This is list is obviously subject to change, and I feel that the NCAA Tournament selection committee did fans a great disservice by placing six extraordinarily dangerous teams – Memphis, MSU, Pitt, Marquette, Stanford and Texas – in the same bracket, but in the name of responsible punditry, my rankings, by obligation alone, took that into account.

Last thing – If you're in an auction or draft, stick to your guns and pick a cache of teams you can be proud of. Go for the hard-nosed teams with earnest coaches. They're the ones that are most dangerous in the tournament and also the teams you can feel happy about pulling for. Select the teams that match-up with the way you play the game, and throw your lot in with them. It will be your safety-belt in this rollercoaster of madness.

I'm not a big commerce guy, even though I've had a few finance internships and I buy stuff sometimes, but seeing Bear Stearns collapse has been kind of an emotional experience for me. While it probably means I'll never get arrested for sexual harassment (I honed my rap "e-battling" skills on the Bear Stearns web server during my '03 internship at the Metrotech offices in Brooklyn), it also means the company that literally sold paperclips to its employees to save cash early on is dead.

You know, I'm not sure charging employees for necessary office supplies is the best way to foster goodwill in the office, but at least it sent A MESSAGE. A message that financial responsibility was going to be the M.O. of the firm. And that's what it was...for a while.

Bear was a throwback company. They had posters of their top employees in the office, they seemed to value public service more than other firms, and they had the ultimate "Ace" up their sleeve, the older bloke with the flair and joie de vivre of a recent MBA grad, but with the experience and humble wit of a sage.

It was a company to be proud of. But then 383 was erected.

At first it was exciting. Armed with state-of-the art conference rooms perfect for telecommunication seminars and a cafeteria that could easily "break bread" with Frank Gehry's culinary oasis in the new Conde Nast building on 42nd, 383 towered over Madison avenue with a message clear as day: Bear had finally earned its place among the financial giants of Midtown Manhattan.  

 

I was initially taken by the building just like the rest of them. But my internship ended and I was back in an academic environment, so naturally I started thinking. Was this great architectural achievement a symbolic break from the ethos on which the company was founded? Was Bear getting too big for its britches?

They definitely weren't charging for paper clips anymore. In fact, they were passing out pens and leather-bound resume folders like their employees were playing SUPERMARKET SWEEP at a Staples. That's all good and well, I guess, but this generosity and showmanship was just half a double edged sword, and the other half was forged with MOXIE. A moxie that could one day lead to leveraging most of your liquid assets in an alarmingly volatile climate.

Bear will probably be remembered for its fantastic demise - images of JP Morgan employees raiding the beautiful building on Madison avenue for documents to see if the company was worth acquiring - but I'll remember it differently. I'll remember it for the blue blood that once coarsed through the building's water. I'll remember it as the last firm to still hire employees on work ethic alone. So what if their banking division was packed with fancy Ivy League grads and ambitious MBAs? The backbone of the firm was in Brooklyn and it was built on blue collar high school grads and responsible employees that knew how to safely manage an account without too much risk. The Bear Stearns I'll remember is the Bear of Metrotech, BK, right off Jay Street. It didn't have a fancy "stock ticker" or "fountain sodas," but it had posters of Ace Greenberg and non-scannable ID cards. Its library was full of copies of MEMOS FROM THE CHAIRMAN and the cafeteria boasted a remarkably unhealthy cuisine.

Today, the good people of Cheddar Ted mourn Bear Stearns. It's hard to see this company - our company - go under. Ace, You're a great man and a throwback. You accomplished something to be proud of.

Arielle in THE LITTLE MERMAID

Dorothea in BEBE'S KIDS

Jasmine in ALADDIN

Pocahontas in POCAHONTAS

Esmerlada in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

Mulan in MULAN

Helen Parr/Elastigirl in THE INCREDIBLES

Ursula in the form of Arielle in THE LITTLE MERMAID

Anastasia in ANASTASIA

Tzippora in THE PRINCE OF EGYPT

I forget how I literally become a manic depressive lunatic during the NCAA tournament, but in the words of NAKED EYES, there's always something there to remind me and this year it happens to be a horrible slate of match-ups in the South Region.  The fact that the three most blue collar squads in the field, Memphis, Pitt and Michigan St., are the 1, 4 and 5 in the same side of a region is just real tough to stomach. Throw in Duke's easy jaunt to the elite eight and I really have NO IDEA WHAT THE NCAA TOURNAMENT SELECTION COMMITTEE IS DOING WITH ITS TIME.

Luckily, I'm putting Indiana in the final four and predicting that the championship game will be a rematch of the BIG EAST finals, so I can at least ride a manic wave of giddiness until the weekend, at which point two of my final four teams will probably be eliminated.

I guess dementia still is possible when dealing in the realm of March Madness.

Last thing - for those of you in Los Angeles, I will be holding a Julius Hodge memorial service in my living room this Saturday. It will begin at 7:10 EST for NC St.'s first round match-up every year and will last shorter than it should. R.I.P. Julius. I'm still waiting for another "example."

Clem the Feinschmecker writes, "I just put you in the acknowledgments section of my thesis, which is due in 8 days."

If "true blue" were in a Latin/English dictionary, there wouldn't be a picture of you, but only because you wouldn't want it that way. There'd be your thesis acknowledgement, however, as part of the "e.g. section."

I've always considered you to be an erudite cat and an honest scholar, and I'm honored to officially be a part of your academic pursuits. I would say I hope you finish your final semester at Harvard with the grace and earnest dedication you showed in the previous seven semesters, but there's no point. I know you will.

Gutta Cavat lapidem, Clem the Feinschmecker. Good luck at Oxford next year.

The reason Los Angeles has no backbone: Adults don't act their age.

As a writer, I spend a lot of time agonizing over the parlance I employ in my interactions. I'd love to be able to constantly spout off memorable lines and cutting quips, but I find that most of the time I'm using words and phrases that I don't even like.

Like last week I probably said "meta" seven times. That would be cool, except I hate this word more than I hate the phonetics of "ditto" times the implications of "awk" divided by the inverse playfulness of "rambunctious." If PEMDAS is at play, which it always is, it becomes clear that the quanification of my hatred for the term is almost infinitesimal in value.

I'll say this though: I love the word "iota."

Another pair of words I quite like is "bullish" and "bearish" I'm always trying to say things like:

"That's a nice spinach and artichoke dip. I'd have to say I'm feeling pretty bullish about this crudite!"

Or:

"Obama's gotten a bit played out. I'm slightly bearish on enthusiastically supporting him right now."

Finally, even though I never thought it would be possible, I've at long last succeeded in seamlessly integrating the word "absolutely" into my lexicon without sounding like a completely pompous bloke. Saying "absolutely" has actually made me feel more articulate without forcing me to abandon the commonplace vulgarity that informs my speech.

My conversation has become sort of a back and forth tennis  match between urban colloquialism and a sophisticated type of Elizabethan vernacular. Neither side can falter, however, as the line judge is clear. My words form an impasse. There is a permanent state of deuce.

I might be overly partial to this flick since there's an off chance it's actually named after me and my brother, but I've been thinking a lot about the scene where Bill and Ted encounter Rufus and their future selves outside the Circle K, and I'm decently positive this is one of the most intelligent scenes in film history.

I'm no cinefile, but I do "work in film," and I've seen enough of them to wax philosophical in the only way it's possible to wax about film: superciliously. So think back for a moment to that scene outside the Circle K. Just beneath the surface, there are some pretty powerful forces at play: specifically, man's stuggle with a personal sense of perspective.

Present Bill and Ted are some pretty stressed out dudes. They have good reason to believe they're about to flunk out of school, Bill's worried about his lusty father, and Ted's got military school on the mind. They just met this futuristic bro, Rufus, and dementia is NOT something they need right now. But then future Bill and Ted, cavalier and care-free as Bill and Ted are supposed to be, roll through in a magical phonebooth and are like "Listen to this bro Rufus. Tell the princesses we say hi!" And they dial some historical code and take off. They're the same dudes, but from a temporal perspective, the differences between them are remarkable.

This past weekend, I was chilling with some William Morris mailroom bros, and their conversation was so jarringly familiar that I couldn't help but think of Rufus and the Circle K. As they waxed about sweeps, floating, "getting a desk," I romantically mused about these concerns, and how even though I used to feel them, they were now totally a thing of the past. I wanted to be like, "Bros. Haven't you read Camus? NOTHING MATTERS!" But I didn't want to spoil the pinnacle of their tenuous friendships, so I let them joke about rookie mistakes and how HR can be a fickle ally.

I was talking to my buddy Branson about the shifting nature of our personal sense of perspective, and he said, "Do you think we're gonna be chauncing ourselves in three months for having this conversation now?" I was just like, "Maybe."

A lot of people write off EXCELLENT ADVENTURE on account of Bill and Ted's mad colloquial discourse or the fact that they're not so sweet at guitar, but those earnest bros understand that life is about being "excellent to each other," and a little stress every once in a while isn't the worst thing in the world. It at least gets you listening to Rufus.

Maid Marian in ROBIN HOOD

Young Nala in THE LION KING

Lola Bunny in SPACE JAM

Bambi in BAMBI

Adult Nala in THE LION KING

Tanya Mouskewitz in AN AMERICAN TAIL

Living in Beverly Hills has been pretty sweet. Except for getting robbed twice and seeing an attempted suicide, it's been NOT HALF BAD. Even the homeless people are good-natured and somewhat affluent.

There was this one homeless bro in Harvard Square called "Champ," who was a retired boxer and not actually homeless, but he still spent his time posted up outside of the 7-11 on Mt. Auburn in an exceptionally handsome oak brown leather jacket collecting spare change. I usually get along mad well with non-deranged homeless people, so logically we used to kick it pretty regularly. After probably 10 or 15 taquitos and Pelligrinos - my treat - we were remarkably close.

Around October of 2004, when our rapport was at its peak, Champ actually gave me his cell phone number. I was surprised he had a mobile phone, but I guess he also had an apartment in Somerville, so it shouldn't have been that shocking. I tried him over Thanksgiving, but I got some weird Asian woman probably with no relation, and I began to wonder if he was in fact homeless and his cell phone was just a display model.

After that, I got kind of weirded out by Champ and stopped thinking about him, except occasionally on Thanksgiving and whenever I ate taquitos. He also stopped hanging around in Cambridge so he was basically off my radar. At the time I mused that he was training to get back in the ring, but deep down I knew this was just pipe dreams. The dude wasn't Rocky.

I never thought I'd meet another homeless bro like Champ, but this Saturday, outside of the Peet's Coffee on South Beverly I did. This heavyweight homeless contender to Champ was posted up in fresh jeans and an army cap efficiently collecting cash. He literally must have made $14 in the forty-five minutes I spent watching him. As I was leaving, I saw these two young dudes walk up to him unsolicited, each with a dollar in hand. As they walked over he motioned with his finger, reached into his pocket and picked up his cell phone. The kids gave him their cash and he mouthed "thank you" as he listened to his call.

 I hadn't seen since this style of homelessness since the days of Champ and the 7/11. Naturally, I decided to furnish this bro with a bit of cash. He was still on the phone when I passed by, and I didn't want to bother him, but this mad personable homeless bro was kind enough to tell the dude he was rapping with to hold on one second and asked me to "help a brother out!" I was literally dumbfounded, but I gathered myself enough to hand him a dollar. He tipped his fresh army hat and continued his conversation, a dollar richer.

I walked home in the rain thinking about Champ and how he didn't think it was funny when I called him Mr. Wendall. The thing about homeless people is that they're almost always deranged. This is obviously a classic case of the chicken and the egg, but with Champ and this new bro, it was different. It's usually such a drag to encounter deranged homeless people, but when you meet one who's affable and probably not homeless, it's just such a pleasure.

I hate to say this, but the Suns are officially a broke-ass team. Diesel doesn’t fit in, and watching Grant Hill trying to pull these two dribble pull-ups is just sort of depressing. These Suns are dangerously close to being as broke-ass as the Cavs, the most broke-ass team in the NBA besides maybe the Sixers. But it looks like the Cavs are pretty hell-bent on keeping their front-runner broke-ass status: they just acquired Ben Wallace (albeit while letting go of Larry "Broke-ass" Hughes).
 
For the record, other contenders include the Heat, Pacers, Hawks, Nets, Kings, Knicks and the Bucks.

A sad truth about these broke-ass teams is that they're broke-ass because of players who used to be filets of the NBA: players like Ben Wallace, Dwayne Wade, Vince Carter, even a bro like Larry Hughes. They used to be the NBA's shining stars, but shifting team environments has ruined their stocks. It comes down to a simple study in macro-economics: when external factors are at play, the behavior of the individual can drastically change.

In fact, this idea of external conditions as the primary determinant of individual play relates almost perfectly to this comparative theory on African and European economic growth that caught my eye a few summers back. Basically, the theory states that the variance in climate in African and Western Europe directly influenced the proliferation of commerce and industrialization in the regions. Quite simply, since Europeans were physically more comfortable, they were able to work harder and more efficiently. As a result, the European economy grew whereas industrialization in Africa stagnated. Since there was no air condition in Africa, African workers simply couldn’t get comfortable enough to sit down and study or work towards industrial competitiveness. It makes you wonder about Pangea and literally everything that happened from there.

Now I know it’s a bit of a leap both to subscribe to this theory and subsequently acknowledge its connection to the broke-ass players in the NBA, but the truth is, this Camus-esque idea of systemic forces being the primary indicator of success is highly applicable and in a way absolves players and teams from being completely broke-ass. When you examine current broke-ass players like Larry Hughes or Ben Wallace a little more closely, it becomes clear that these dudes thrived within the context of a team that perfectly complemented their talents, but then suffered considerably when unnaturally extricated or after experiencing a drastic internal personnel change.

When Larry Hughes was a wild-card on the Sixers, he wasn’t broke-ass because he’d have some steals and a few nice drives. Throw him in a situation where he needs to be counted on, and all of a sudden he’s more broke-ass than Ross Perot. Consider Ben Wallace. On the hard-hitting Pistons, he was a perfect role player. Throw him on the Bulls and he looks embarrassed to be on the court. We'll see what happens when he joins the broke-ass, Brad Daugherty-less Cavs.

And lastly there's Dwayne Wade, the dark horse for most broke-ass young player in the history of the NBA. I admit he was sick during that special season when everyone hated Kobe Bryant and Shaq was making even Alonzo Mourning look sympathetic, but his style was smoke and mirrors and to be candid, overall just pretty lucky. He was hanging in the air like Jordan, dunking like Cedric Ceballos and making ridiculous shots for a full season, but it was only a matter of time before the horse and carriage turned into a pumpkin and a few seamstress mice. Two years later, Wade can barely jump, those crazy shots aren’t falling anymore, and he is the Posterboy for the wackest commercial campaign since that run of sappy-ass Nomar Garciaparra/Mia Hamm “You’re beautiful” commercials. He is a broke-ass player that may have taken a fruitful ride on lady fortuna's back for one special season, but now the ballyhoo's over and he's just a broke-ass player on a broke-ass Heat team.

Now obviously there are exceptions, but the truth is, even the greats were augmented by specifically-tailored systems. And now more than ever the NBA is about teams coming together with perfect pieces. Take a player out and put him where he doesn’t belong, and all of a sudden he’s broke-ass. Just like back in the influential era of industrialization, the NBA is now all about external forces. Take a bro out of Ghana or Mozambique during that unique time in history and give him proper language training, and I guarantee you he would have thrived industrially because for once in his life, he'd have been comfortable in terms of temperature. But leave him in Africa, and he's just too hot to grow intellectually.

I was definitely feeling pretty weird when I went to see DEFINITELY, MAYBE by myself last night. As I cozied up to a diet coke and Red Vines, I thought to myself, "Cheddar, make sure you're not still doing this for a laugh when you're much older or else you will have succeeded in living the depressing life you're always flirting with in your humor." But last night I didn't care. I was sitting with horrible posture and taking violent bites out of mad fresh sticks of Red Vines.

Not to digress too much, but while still on the subject of Red Vines, there’s a few points I’d like to make before diving Greg Louganis style into this self-indulgent, mildly funny pool of loneliness:

First, I'm a big fan of the Samberg/Parnell Chronic-les of Narnia Video, but I always found it unrealistic that they would be eating Red Vines in a New York movie theater. Anyone from New York who spent their summers at a Jewish Camp in Ojai, California knows that Red Vines, like dudes who don’t feel self-conscious wearing sunglasses and sorority girls from USC who magically become professional in a work setting, are a West Coast thing.

The truth is, one of the best parts about living in LA is you can buy Red Vines in movie theaters and almost anywhere else really. So in the cinema and other places, you can actually drink soda through a licorice that has a big enough tubular radius to make the process simple and, in my mind, pretty fun. But there is one catch: If you like huge sodas like me, you have to bring a real straw along, because the cup is so deep you’d have to drink about a third of it from the side, which is uncomfortable.  Plus, given my penchant for being extremely clumsy, I’d absolutely have spilled my diet coke all over the handsome cable-knit I took from my father’s closet over Thanksgiving break, and I didn’t feel like taking any more chances.  I mean, I was already running some sort of mad scientist titration with my own emotions and from a social standpoint I felt I was running a pretty sizeable risk of running into someone and having to articulate my motivations for this little field trip in a way that could be taken as socially acceptable.

Because when the film started and I saw that cute little girl from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (who’s lost some weight by the way...must have been listening to Greg Kinnear!) I knew that like most of my schemes, this was going to be a lot better “a priori” then in reality. Sure enough, there I was, two hours later, in a theater full of couples and groups of Asian teenagers, tearing up and feeling about as awkward as people who abbreviate the word like "awk." Obviously this flick is real sappy at times, but the truth is, it's funny as hell and as an added bonus, it gives a pretty spot-on history of the development of cell phones in our consumer culture. I also found it to be very honest in its depiction of Will (Ryan Reynolds); he gets to some pretty dark places. As I’m continuing to find out into the quasi-adulthood I’ve recently settled into, plans don’t seem to turn out as you intend, and the idealism that comes with a commencement speech and a summer of trying to find interesting jobs can quickly become a jaded pattern of settling that is termed “being realistic.” But the point of DEFINITELY, MAYBE is that you can still realize the idealistic conception you have for your life within the framework of deep disappointment, something that’s no stranger to Cheddar.

Now the cynics will certainly say it’s contrived -- in the parking lot I actually heard one dude complain to his disappointed valentine about how the whole thing just seemed forced -- but what can you to say to those people except, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” I wish I were a bit more cynical, but then I wouldn’t really be myself, and that seems to be something people are always trying to avoid. As my semi-troubled cousin Irene always says, “it’s better to be hated for something you are then loved for something you’re not.”

All I'm saying is it wasn't the best Valentine's Day, but it wasn't the worst one either.

I've been very much under the weather lately. 

I've always romanticized the process of being sick, hoisting it up in my mind's eye like it was some sort of magical timeframe that gives you the chance to catch up on films and reading, but in reality, it's just pretty horrible. It's made me wonder what my senior citizen years will be like and if I'll be able to keep my good-natured demeanour in the face of crippling health problems.

But I don't need to be thinking about those things right now because I'm on my way back to good health and love is in the air. Yeah, it looks like I'm gonna be able to spend Valentine's Day watching DEFINITELY, MAYBE by myself and then cruising out to the Santa Monica pier to look out over the ocean and listen to emo songs on my iPod.

No I'm not really going to do that...

Definitely...

...Maybe?!

I don't know what it is about this religious holiday, but it seems like every time I look up from an afternoon nap, it's FUCKING ASH WEDNESDAY AGAIN. If you were judging your life on Ash Wednesdays alone, the years would pass you by faster than Michael Johnson in his golden shoes.

But one good thing about Ash Wednesday is it means Lent has finally arrived! So everyone can take a break from boozing and chasing skirts for and engage in some well-needed introspection.

So what is the younger generation supposed to do?

Fucking Alors! Isn't that the MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION? Well, Mardi Gras's over, and the dust has settled. So even though there's always that little bro, perched on your shoulder, whispering with his sensual voice into your ear, try to brush him off.

For some reason, I really thought this Sylvester was going to be the Sylvester that erased all the computers. I was kind of panicked about it, so I did some preliminary preparation and bought some canned goods and that weird air-tight food available exclusively at space museums. You can obviously eat that stuff in non-gravitatational situations, but it hasn't stopped NASA from pressing it like Sky Mall presses those bathing suits that guarantee no tan lines.  I mean, it's dried fruit. You don't have to be a bloody astronaut to enjoy it. 

But when January 1st passed and I still had internet access and electricity, I started counting my blessings. I also made a few New Years Resolutions, one of which was to start writing in my blog again. So like any life goal, I promised to bring CheddarTed.com back for as long as I could sustain it. Now I'm editing this single post, three weeks after the fact, and thinking that this was a bad idea.

Anyway, the winter break was a pretty fresh one. I forced four idle scrabulous players to forfeit from a 10 shekel an hour internet cafe in Jerusalem, winked to a 13 year-old girl in the Ben Gurion Airport as I poured a mini-bottle of Bailey's into a fresh cappuccino at 11:45 pm on December 31st, and I agreed to join the Israeli Army with this architecture bro after he graduates college next year.  So that should give you at least a perfunctory indication of my mental condition.

But in reality, all signs point to 2008 as being a positive year. I think I'll finally get that Vintage Schwinn I've been talking about for over twenty seven months.

It's nice to be back,

Cheddar

Bet you weren't expecting to see this when you checked Cheddar Ted for the first time in several months, but Cheddar is back (sort of).  What have I been doing? Various things really, but mostly just making movies, making songs and FIGHTING round the world! As you can probably guess, my behavior out here has been near perfect. Am I lonely? Very much so, but emotionally I've never been more level-headed.

Ceteris paribus, life out in LA has been great.  I miss Gritz terribly, but I've been writing up a storm and expect to finish my first feature script, THE ICE KING OF CORONA, by the end of the month.  It is incredibly dark in subject matter, but in many ways it is the deeply uplifting. In my opinion, a film isn't worth watching unless you don't know whether you should be laughing or crying the entire time.

I just wonder if it's "got the legs to sell."

Just got back from LA.  I've been thinking about moving out there, but I'm wondering if it's a good idea.  Even though I fashion myself as something of a modern day urban adventurer, I'm a bit nervous about picking up and leaving.  On one coast is love and Lady Cheddar.  On the other lies hope and broken dreams. As Happy Will noticed last night, I am torn like Natalie Imbruglia. Maror, maror, Blog.  I've been to the lab and conducted some serious testing, and I still do not know what climate best preserves Mr. Cheddar!

Anyway, I've been watching a lot of Millionaire lately, so I'm gonna steal a page out of the great Regis' book and let the audience decide.  Email me at CheddarTed@gmail.com or leave a comment and let me know what you think.  If you think I should move to LA and storm the Comedy Clubs "like they were Normandy" type A on your key pads.  If you think I should remain here in New York, my home, type B. If you think Wichita, type C or D.

My fate is mostly in your hands.

Cheddar

Well, it's Ash Wednesday, and I know †he question on everyone's mind is "It's Ash Wednesday? Again!?"

Yes is the long and short of it.  It's Ash Wednesday AGAIN.  It's like almost as if there were someone up in heaven just twerking the Julian Calendar a bit, because it seems like its always "Ash Wednesday."  Dudes walking around with dirt on their forehead, risking mad fucking up skin like Gritz's, like four times a year, and for what reasons?

Well, blog. I'll answer my own question. On a very special Wednesday in the year 1984 B.C. (Before Cheddar), Jesus was born from the virginal womb of Mary and since there weren't hospitals or anything back then, the birth wasn't as sterile as it could have been.  Jesus fell right out of Mary onto the dirt floor and when they held him up to the people of Pride Rock, he had a bit of dirt on his forehead.