Melissa Times

You Think YOUR Mother Freaks Out On You






We all have stories of how our mothers lost their minds after something we did she considered wrong.  But nothing beats one mother in Rochester, New York who doesn't appreciate her son's prank on her and Dad.  Trust me.

See the video here.


One person's vote DOES count.  Even in the LPGA.

One Person's Vote DOES Count. Even in the LPGA.






The LPGA Safeway Classic took place last weekend in Oregon and Juli Inkster was only three shots back of the leader and had a chance to become the oldest women ever to win an LPGA tournament at 50.

Before she took on the 10th hole, she was interviewed by the Golf Channel.  Afterwards, Juli took a few practice swings with her 9-iron and played the hole.

Enter Anonymous Fan.  Anonymous Fan was watching the tournament on the Golf Channel, and saw that Juli had put a weighed "doughnut" on her club for those practice swings after the interview.  Anonymous Fan knew using a weight during a round was illegal, since you can only use one before you start play for the day.  

So, Anonymous Fan e-mailed the LPGA to tell them how Juli broke the rules.  Tournament officials read the e-mail, reviewed the footage, and disqualified Juli from the tournament at the end of her round.

Juli's response?  "I had a 30-minute wait and I needed to loosen up.  It had no effect on my game whatsoever, but it is what it is.  I'm very disappointed."


The Etiquette of Golf for Pros

Katie Jo Guest Blogs About The Science of Perfecting Your Child

Guest Blogger: Katie Jo and the Science of Perfecting Your Child




This week, news came out that a drug used to decrease genital deformities has an interesting side effect..... It makes really, really, straight girls and, therefore, greatly decreases the chance that they will be gay.

Now, for just one moment, let's address the fact that I must have been on Mars when the news came out that science has discovered a way to alter sexual orientation.  Last I heard, there was a raging debate going on as to whether or not people are born gay or choose to be gay.  Doesn't the very fact that science has discovered if we give a baby girl a pill, she is more likely to be straight, lend support to the fact that being born gay is just like being born with blue eyes or being born left-handed?

So, our "liberal" media must have gotten it wrong this time, and forgot to report the biggest social medical breakthrough in years:  science has discovered how to make you straight which must mean it is only a matter of time until science figures out how to make you gay.

Talk about funny practical jokes.  Are we headed towards a day where grandpa's punch at the wedding gets spiked with "gay juice" and he is grabbing the groomsmen during the photos?

But I digress...

Science will continue to reach new heights and since necessity is the mother of invention, those new heights will inevitably reach into the realm of the greatest mystery of how we become who we are.  And is it possible to change us? Can we take away the gene for diabetes, Alzheimer's, Down syndrome, gay, left-handed, curly hair? Will we continue to move forward to a society of sameness in order to feel more connected and loved in society? Is that what we want? A world of white, straight, tall, blue-eyed, right-handed people with straight thick hair? I don't.

In the grand scheme of things, the only thing that makes me feel like a minority is being gay.  It is the part of me that makes it harder to have children, harder to have a career, harder to get married.  It adds an extra level of difficulty to my relationship with my family, friends, mentors, bosses, etc.

So, given all this extra weight that my minority status adds to my life, would I take a pill to make me straight if there was one out there? How much easier would my life be with a handsome husband and naturally-conceived children? Would my friendships be easier to maintain if there wasn't the unspoken divide between the life of my straight friends and me? Would I change it all if I could? Would I give my babies pills to try to save them from a life where they may have to deal with being gay and the inevitable alienation that comes with being different?

No.  I can say that definitively now.  Call me traditional, but there is something beautiful and freeing about deciding to be all natural.  My journey, I realize, is the same as everyone's.  I am here to learn how to love unconditionally.  That means loving God unconditionally and the world he created and honoring those that he created, me included.  My life's challenges were not planned.  No one plans to be different.  But we all are in some way.  That is what makes us all connected.  Folks just take different routes learning to accept their differences and the differences of others.

I don't want to imagine a world without the neighbor with Down syndrome or super models, Betty White, Stephen Hawking, Michael Jordan, Carrot Top, The Situation, Olympic athletes, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Elton John, or John Wayne.  Our differences make it fun.  I hope we figure that out before we figure out how to make all the differences go away.

See the original news story here.

Dog saves his own life by honking a car horn.

Dog Saves His Own Life By Honking A Car Horn






An 11-year-old dog in Pennsylvania was accidentally left in the hot car.  So that's when the Chocolate Lab started honking the horn until hi owner heard it, realizing her mistake.  She got Max out of the car, gave him water, put wet towels on him, and took him to the vet.

The dog is fine.  

Source:  NBC Philly


Katie Jo, A Bug, and the Fight for Life

Katie Jo, A Bug, and the Fight for Life


One of the things I admire most about my girlfriend, Katie Jo, is her community.  A Georgia native, Katie has been able to maintain a large group of friends from high school, college, graduate school, and various jobs.  Another group of her friends is the "Book Club."  I put this in quotes since I have teased many times on The Bert Show that I'm not sure they actually read books.  My take on their monthly meetings is like a shirt I recently saw....they Read Between The WINES.

The Book Club is actually the first of Katie's community to welcome me with open arms.  Literally with open arms, as they all greeted me years ago after a Q100 appearance in Midtown, walking over specifically to meet me after one of their nearby meetings.  One of the women in the Club, who also went to graduate school with Katie, was especially enthusiastic about my new status as the girlfriend.  The fact that she also went to Vanderbilt in my home area of Nashville didn't hurt in my taking an immediate liking to her and her genuine love of her friends.  And now I was one of them.  

But I never thought I'd have to see this same woman say goodbye to her 8-month-old daughter.  Her stoic cadence walking down the aisle of the church, as I stood in attendance at the funeral Friday, reflected a mixture of sadness and peace.  Elle had been a triplet, the only girl in the trio and the only one who fought for her life as soon as she was granted it.

Given the nickname "Bug," this little warrior inspired us all with the typical smile and involuntary kicks of a baby, and a tube in her nose reflecting her body's struggle.  I had the honor of spending some time with Elle and was touched by the soulful stare she would offer back to you.  I had fought for my second chance at life nearly a decade ago.  She was simply fighting for her first.

That fight ended this week as doctors realized there was nothing more they could do, however Elle's short life brought enough people to fill a large church to capacity.  Childhood songs during the service, like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and "Jesus Loves Me," brought many to tears, but once the preacher began talking about Elle you could hear the babies in the crowd begin to stir.  Their need to move around, an echo of a squawk here and a grunt there, made me wonder if some saw more than we did.  I imagined Elle there with her family, finally able to play as a healthy child, summoning the other kids to join her.  I was hoping they saw her and were just trying to accept the invitation.

No one knows how long they will live, and too many of us try to shorten it by our actions.  But I learned today that you don't have to have a long life to inspire many.  You just have to fight.  Fight until your last breath to simply live.  And live to love everyone around you.  It is one of the things I admire most about Katie.  And what I admire most about Elle.

As Jenn Hobby told me before I left work to go to the funeral, now Elle can be a Guardian Angel to those brothers of her's.  And since multiples tend to have a stronger bond than most siblings, I believe Jenn's words to be true.

Is Chivalry Dead? His Girlfriend Thinks So.





Photo by FOX

A woman was hit with a baseball during the Braves game Monday night because her boyfriend didn't make the effort to help her out.  Fortunately he is an Astros fan.

The woman was struck on the right arm by a foul ball.  Why didn't she see it coming? Because her boyfriend DUCKED OUT OF THE WAY at the last second.

The guy, now nicknamed "Bo the Bailer" in Houston, says he lost the ball in the lights and that's why he moved.

Good thing he was able to retrieve the ball and get a souvenir.  His girlfriend can't put her bruise in a nice case on the shelf.

See the video here.

Oh, and by the way, they broke up a few days after this incident.  She says it was not only because of the truly foul ball.  He even went as far as calling her a "stupid sl*t" on Facebook and threatedned to post "naked pictures and video" of her.  Charming.


My Epic Conversation  with Michael Cera.

My Epic Conversation with Michael Cera







Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, and Edgar Wright came into the Bert Show studios Tuesday to talk about their movie "Scott Pilgrim vs. The Word," which opens this weekend.  After our on-air interview Wright, who directed the movie, noticed something on the counter in front of me - my Wizard Magazine - before I had a chance to show it to him.  He seemed impressed.

Yes, I am a subscriber to Wizard.  What is Wizard? The magazine for all things geek and thanks to my hoarding skills I still had the issue featuring Cera from a few months ago.  I brought it in to have them all sign the cover, which they graciously did, but I also got internal bragging rights since none of them had a chance to see the magazine!  Cera asked me where I got it, mentioned that he was also in the Green Lantern issue, and we even looked for a subscription card inside my copy for him to take! This picture was snapped after we realized I had already dumped those obnoxious white cards from the magazine.  (But I wished I had one then!)

For you non-geeks, I recommend you not only see the movie but also walk away from this blog knowing the movie is based on a series of books.  Both are an epic of epic epicness.


Gamers Aren't Just Human

Gamers Aren't Just Human






A boy was at the gorilla exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo when he dropped his Nintendo DSi XL.

A gorilla named Bawang saw it and started trying to figure out how it worked, flipping it and pressing her eye to it a few times.

After a few minutes one of the trainers showed up and Bawang threw the DS into the crowd.  The trainer then gave Bawang an apple.

It turns out the gorillas are trained to do what Bawang did.  If anything falls into the cage, they know they get a reward if they throw it back.


Check out pictures from the 2010 Transplant Games - including my Silver Medal!

Transplant Games 2010 - Madison, WI




                                                 

See the highlights from the Games here, and be sure to pay close attention around the 11:40 mark.

I'm Spending My Summer in the Water...in Wisconsin?

Creepy Kid Mantras






While hanging out in Nashville last weekend with my family, we sat around the kitchen table playing Scrabble.  My sneaky mother tried to play an incorrectly spelled word, and I reacted like a kid by saying, "cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater."

That started a discussion of all those poems and lullabys we learned as kids, and the conclusion we made is that most of them were pretty creepy.  Here are a few examples:

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.  Had a wife and couldn't keep her.  So he put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.

Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Rock-a-bye baby on a tree top.  When the wind blows the cradle will rock.  When the bow breaks the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.

Huh? As an adult looking back at these, I'm shocked I didn't turn out shell-shocked.  

So next time those DVDs of Barney, Einstein, or Dora get on your nerves, at least know their lyrics don't mention kidnapping or dying.