Fun Names for Prosthetics Stores

Stub Hub
Stub Club
Money for Nubbins
Nubbin' to Lose
I Got Plenty o' Nubbin'
Stubby K-Mart

Viva America

I had a very American Fourth:

1) I drove from the nation's capital to Pittsburgh. 2/3 a tank of gas -- GONE! USA!

2) I had burgers for lunch. Not boring old cow meat, mind you -- BUFFALO BURGERS. Nothing says America like eating a majestic animal.

3) I went to a game at the best baseball stadium in America -- Pittsburgh's PNC Park. The team stinks on ice, so they make up for it with great in-game presentation (scoreboard, announcing, music), great views, excellent promotional giveaways, and nice nods to team history. (The Pirates beat the Brewers 5-3, but it's the NL Central so I'm not sure it actually matters in real baseball standings.)

The only sour note was the crowd cheering to choose "Born in the USA" as the patriotic song of the day. No one actually listens to lyrics anymore. Last weekend, I saw a bride and her father dance to "Lady Marmalade" at a wedding reception. Open your ears, people.

4) I tailgated for 4 hours near the stadium and watched the Pittsburgh fireworks display. I rate it very good. Fireworks are hard to rate, though. You definitely know when they stink, but after a certain point they top out at "very good." In the cartoons of yesteryear, we were promised that tying someone to a Chinese rocket and firing them in the air would result in fireworks that produce a portrait of that person. Is anyone working toward making this a technological reality? If not, why not? Can we pull people off of cancer research and make this happen?

5) I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST SO HARD IN BALLS THAT I TORE A TENDON. Wait ... that wasn't me. But hooray for that guy.

The Road Ahead

Day one of my "Highway to Hell" 2007 tour is complete ... Thursday takes me to Cincinnati, Ohio, for the longest stop of this journey. Then it's on to Chicago (Monday), Duluth (Tuesday), UP Michigan (Wednesday-Friday), Kentucky (Saturday), Atlanta (Sunday) and DC (Monday). BUCKLE UP.

Hot Diggety

The Coney Island hot dog belt is coming home ... an American finally wins with 66 eaten in 12 minutes, taking down Japanese champ Kobayashi, who had 63. The previous best for the event was only 53 1/2. Both men obliterated the record. This is a real McGwire/Sosa moment for the world of competitive eating. Let's drug test these guys right now so we can preserve the dignity of the sport. I don't want to look back five years from now and think, "Huh, both those guys were pretty skinny for competitive eaters," and then read about how they were extracting extra stomach acid then reinjecting it just before the event. When a 91-pound guy (who used to be 325 pounds) eats 73 hot dogs three years from now, I don't want to feel like the whole sport has been stained forever.