Scott Says

How did Halloween become a holiday? What’s the common thread with modern costumes? What has the approximate thickness of mosquito boogers?

 

 Razor-sharp Halloween observations [5:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (30)

It’s Halloween again, the one night each year when children across America go trick-or-treating, only to have their candy taken away because some crazy person might have loaded it with a razor blade.

I also used to be told not to eat apples or any other fruit, in case they were poisoned. This was unnecessary advice to give a 9-year-old. As Charles Darwin noted in his book “The Origin of Species 2: Gettin’ Specieser” (now a major motion picture), rejecting healthy food on Halloween is as natural a human survival instinct as the one that makes old people spend so much time discussing their bowel movements. (more…)

How many grams of fat are in Hardee’s latest concoction? Which ingredients were terrible ideas? What would make hummingbirds delicious?

 

 Good gravy - a breakfast burrito [3:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (23)

Until last week there was a void in this country, and the only thing patriotic Americans could do was hope some brave, ingenious institution would fill it by inventing a breakfast burrito with 60 grams of fat.

Luckily we have Hardee’s. In a press release titled “Hardee’s gets a little bit country and a little bit Español at breakfast,” Executive Vice President of Marketing Brad Haley said his company’s new 920-calorie Country Breakfast Burrito “represents the first time that hungry breakfast customers can get eggs, bacon, ham, hash browns and sausage gravy in a portable form that can easily be eaten on the go.” Needless to say, it also contains cheese. (more…)

Here are two blogs that mentioned my columns:

http://www.collegeotr.com/university_of_illinois_urbana_champaign/rush_event_3169

http://www.blogsformitt.com/?p=155

What happened when they cut me open? Did I have to fend for myself in the days after surgery? What is my mother’s first name?

 

 Surgery? Piece of cake [3:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (24)

A month ago my doctor told me I had a legitimate medical condition, one that is about as appropriate to talk about in polite company as, say, your great-grandmother’s libido. (I know what you are thinking and, no, I was not pregnant.)

It was not exceptionally serious, but it required surgery, and afterward I was basically confined to bed rest for a few days. I was nervous initially, but that was set aside when Wikipedia confirmed the procedure is totally safe and more than 18 billion people undergo it every year. (more…)

What happened when Playboy magazine held a casting call on campus? How do they select girls to appear? Did I get to see any of them naked?

 

 This column contains no nudity [3:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (31)

One of the thrills of writing for a newspaper is covering what we in the business call “hard news,” by which I do not mean front-page type stories of great significance. I am always asking myself: As a columnist, how can I use my tiny amount of journalistic street cred to possibly see people naked?

An advertisement in the Oct. 1 issue of The Daily Illini sought models for Playboy’s upcoming “Girls of the Big Ten” issue, so I called the number in the ad and spoke with Eden, a casting director. She was quick to invite me to an Urbana hotel to see how the process works. (more…)

Yesterday’s column, about monkey civil rights, was my first to receive outside publicity. Jason Rosenbaum of the Columbia (Missouri) Tribune posted about it in his blog, available here: http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/politics/2007/10/shock_the_monkey.html

Rosenbaum and I went to grade and high school together, but don’t hold that against him.