So guess who didn’t watch the Academy Awards last weekend? Me. I was too busy selling my TV for a case of hand towels. The story’s way too long and my arthritis has been acting up so I’m not going to write about it here. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of hand towels now and I’m only a little bit upset that I missed the Oscars. Doesn’t matter, though. I’ve got my own awards to give out. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you The First Annual Bratton Awards, chosen by me. For the record, nobody’s getting a gold statue or anything. If I had gold statues lying around, I’d melt them down and sell them for cashola. On to the awards!

The Fatso Award goes to…

Family gatherings are fantastic. They’re a time for relatives to come together and enjoy each other’s company. I don’t see my family much (for various reasons: jail, voluntary institutionalization, mercenary work), so I spend my time with other families on their happiest days. It really brings a lot of joy to my weekends.

The Radisson in downtown Scranton has these nice banquet rooms that people rent out for weddings or baptisms or reunions or whatever else they want to celebrate with their families. On Saturday mornings, I put on one of my work suits and head over to see what they’ve got going on. It’s really easy to figure out because there are these signs they put up in the lobby telling you who and what is going on in each of the banquet rooms. One week it might be the Yomimuri Family Reunion and Nathan’s Bar Mitzvah, the next week it’s Jimmy Kerry’s 40th Birthday Bash and a pancake breakfast from the Rotary Club. I like to think of it like Banquet Hall Roulette and I look forward to it all week – especially the Bar Mitzvahs. Those are a gas.

Love is in the air and I’ve got to find a way to bottle it because I’d make a killing.

Most years on Valentine’s Day, I like to dress up in a little diaper and walk around with a bow and arrow shooting at happy couples. I intentionally miss because I don’t want to go to jail or see anybody get hurt, but sometimes I’d just like to nail those nitwits in the forehead for rubbing their relationships in everybody’s faces. Other days, I ditch the bow and arrow but I stick with the diapers because it’s a lot easier than finding a water closet every time I have to go potty.

I want to know why St. Valentine got a holiday but St. Louis just got a crappy city.

I know I told you that I don’t vote, but it looked like it might be a good place to meet some foxes so I decided to vote on Tuesday. Seven times. Twice in New Jersey, once in New York, and four times in Connecticut. That’s the beauty of being able to make your own driver’s licenses. That machine really opens a lot of doors for me, politically and otherwise. I didn’t meet any broads but I did find a really great burger over in Newark. It made the whole trip worth it.