So, the woodchuck saw his shadow yesterday (at least in PA; the one from Staten Island bit Bloomberg, bless his furry little heart. I bet he made a tasty stew for some homeless people by evening), which is supposed to mean six weeks of winter, as opposed to spring being “right around the corner.” Hate to break it to these people but – at least around here – if spring is here by mid March, that is right around the corner. It’s when we get 8 inches of snow on Mother’s Day (and we have) that winter seems to be dragging on a little bit.

I feel kinda sorry for the mother of the octuplets. Looks like Michael Phelps doing a bong hit has totally ended her 15 minutes of fame. And now she’s stuck with 14 kids. I hope it was worth it. It appears that Phelps’ endorsement career may be in danger (he was pretty god awful in the Rosetta Stone ads he did anyway; maybe he was “rosetta” stoned). I guess he can try to get a gig promoting High Times magazine, or become the official spokesman for the EZGro Hydroponic Gardening System.

I’ve never wanted to live in Arizona (no offense, KP; I’d shrivel up and die in the heat, and there are too goddamn many Republicans there for my taste), but Tuscon area Comcast subscribers got a little bonus during the Super Bowl Sunday night: 30 seconds of porn. Kind of makes Janet Jackson’s Sheriff’s badge encased nipple seem a bit tame, doesn’t it?

In other news (not that it’s exactly new), it was 50 years ago today that the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and pilot Roger Petersen died in a plane crash near Clear Lake Iowa. It was just a little before my time, coming about a year before my conception and 11 months before SU won its only football National Championship (immortalized in “The Express,” which was a box office bomb, but I highly recommend you rent it; my wife couldn’t care less about football – or sports in general – and even she liked it), but their music (among others, like that guy that was named after Elvis Costello) was the music of my very early childhood (though if I never hear “La Bamba” again, it’ll be OK with me).

Everything changed, of course, around 1965 or so, when the Beatles took America by storm, opening a beachhead for groups like the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and many more. Makes me want to break out my stack of singles (first I’d have to find some 45 adapters, though; I wish I still had our old, massive Stereophonic (with its detached second speaker; the sound was great, once the tubes warmed up. Didn’t the Tubes warm up for Iggy Pop?) with the dildo-looking thing that allowed you to play a stack of singles. Not that we knew what dildos were back then.

But you folks in Tuscon know now, doncha?