I'm Thankful I Wasn't at that Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is a time to gather with friends and family and to be thankful for the people and events that shape our life. I enjoy spending time with my family, but I can’t say the same for the following 5 families. So here is my list of the top 5 families I would not want to spend Thanksgiving Dinner with.

The Jim Nantz Household

Jim Nantz has divorced his wife. Even worse for Jim, the court ruled that Jim’s wife, Lorrie, will receive $1.5 million a year for child support and alimony for their 15 yr old son. Along with cash and Jim’s self respect and dignity, Lorrie also gets their Connecticut house and Jim must pay $700,000 a year for a country club membership for Lorrie. Prior to that, Jim had spent approx $1 million on jewelry and clothing on his wife the past nine years. There is no doubt that Thanksgiving dinner would awkward between the two. Good thing for Jim, he spent his Thanksgiving in Dallas with Phil Simms. I feel for Jim Nantz and offer some encouraging words from Eddie Murphy (before his career tanked from god awful movies like Daddy Day Care and Pluto Nash)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyInZF4xsUY&feature=player_embedded

The Octomom (Nadya Suleman) household

This woman is a nutcase and a drain on society. I don’t have the slightest clue what drove that woman to have 8 kids, but then again I don’t understand women. (Seriously they need to make a Rosetta Stone software package for women) Maybe, she is a spotlight vampire doing anything she can to get any and every ounce of attention from people, or she is addicted to pregnancy. Perhaps she had children in hopes of attracting a husband in the same way men use puppy dogs to get dates, who knows. Whatever the case, I take satisfaction in knowing that Octomom was breastfeeding her children Thanksgiving dinner alone, because even her family thinks she’s a crazy whackjob.

However, I am thankful for the Nadya Suleman breakfast special at Denny’s. What can be better than a platter of 8 eggs, no sausage, and the guy behind you pays the bill?

The Gosselin household

“Jon and Kate plus hate” drew the attention of America this past summer. As a disclaimer I have only seen 5 minutes of the show, but I do know that Jon probably just got tired of being Kate’s bitch. With that said, running around with a 20 something blonde when you are a father to 8 children is total d-bag material. Not only does the tension between Jon and Katie create awkwardness at Thanksgiving dinner, the 8 children provide a logistical nightmare. My personal feeling on kids is to never let them outnumber you, so 2 children will be the most I ever have. Why? Because you can’t play a zone defense against children, Man-to-Man is the only way to go when it comes to diapers, bath time, and dinner time. Having 8 children running around and screaming while you try to cook and serve dinner would drive me insane.

Jon should be thankful that another women loves him for his Ed Hardy t-shirts.

The Rick Pitino household

I’ve been making a lot of fun of Rick Pitino lately, so I’m gonna go easy on him. Most likely, his wife kicked him out of the house and Rick spent thanksgiving eating a turkey and gravy TV dinner in the Louisville gym. I guess that’s the price you pay for not keeping your turkey baster under wraps.

The Tiger Woods household

Wow, where do you start? This past Friday is a perfect example of the idea that there are two sides to every story. If you ask Elin Nordegren-Woods about what happened on Friday she’d tell you that she single-handedly saved her husband’s life by busting out the window with a golf club that she just happened to have in her possession a few houses down from their home and dragged all 6-1ft 220lbs of Tiger out of the window. This is a peculiar statement because why would you bust out the rear window of an Escalade if the doors were locked, when all you have to do is call On-Star which is standard on all GMC vehicles, and have On-Star unlock the doors? Now if you asked Tiger after he awoke from unconsciousness, He would tell you that he was attacked by his ridiculously hot, yet psycho wife.

Either way the Thanksgiving dinner hours before the “crash” must have consisted of Elin chasing Tiger around the house with one of his irons trying to kill him. To be honest, I hope alcohol and drunk driving was involved for the sake of everyone; otherwise Tiger’s got some explaining to do, and he can start by answering the simple question of why.

http://www.someecards.com/card/3295#

Now for something we can all be thankful for!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY

Bandt

Thursday Night Football tonight!
The Dolphins travel to Charlotte NC to clash with the Panthers!

Ronnie Brown’s season is over just as the Dolphins’ season is at a crossroad. Sitting at 4-5 and seemingly miles behind the ever improving Patriots in the AFC East, they must travel to what is sure to be a hostile crowd at Bank of America stadium and somehow pull out a win without their offensive linchpin in Brown. The Panthers, also 4-5 are feeling much better about themselves after beating the Falcons last week but are already out of the conversation to repeat as champions of the NFC South. This is a must win for the Panthers because they are behind in the Wild Card chase. I would expect a defensive game and the stats support my claim. The fins are ranked 7th in rush defense which should cause fits for the duo of Williams and Stewart. Miami QB Chad Henne will have tough challenge facing a pass defense ranked 4th in the league, partly due to turnover differential. The Cats have pick off 8 passes in the last three games. This secondary knows how to come up with takeaways which should come as no surprise to anyone because Jake Delhomme throws against them at practice every day. Look for a close game that should be entertaining if you love defensive football as much as I do. In the end, I think the Panthers pull it out because of their bruising running attack and the secondary holds Henne in check.

Speaking of Thursday Night Football make sure to get your FFL lineups in. Game time is at 7:20pm cst.

Also if you are struggling to set your FFL lineup for your IDP league no worries Sitzmann has you covered! http://idpguru.blogspot.com/


Banter and other thoughts

Just when you thought it didn’t get better than double stuffed http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/post/236999337/giant-oreo-cookie-cake-via-thedailywhat

Another reason why the NFL needs a rookie contract cap http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_/id/6307/revisiting-mith-rodgers

I’d say money well spent

For the first time I actually listened closely to the lyrics of “Brown Sugar” by the Rolling Stones and now feel regretful for rocking out to that song so much.

I was watching women’s volleyball on the Big Ten network then they cut to Men’s basketball at Northwestern. EPIC programming failure

Is it just me or are Cailis commercials during family TV time are probably the most awkward moments in your household. But then again, you could be eating dinner at Rick Pitino household.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=4392828

Welcome

Welcome to The Bandter, or what I like to call my first attempt at blogging. Like anything in life, with the exception of death and taxes, I can’t guarantee that this blog with be worth your time or that you will somehow find self fulfillment. It will be a place that I will use express myself and share links that I find with all the readers. This platform is a colossal blank canvas without a “color by numbers” so I don’t have the slightest clue where this will end up, but I can’t resist the urge to find out.

I’m Johnathan Bandt. I was born and raised by two wonderful parents in Janesville, Wisconsin. I have a pretty awesome sister who is three years younger than me. I graduated Janesville Craig High School in 2007 and I currently attend the University of Dubuque and plan to graduate to the “real world” in May of next year. I am a flight operations major at UD. Currently, I have over 200 hours of flight time and have my instrument rating. My passion for flight burns hotter than a Pratt and Whitney J58 turbojet, partly because I saw the film “Top Gun” at a very young and impressionable age and because I have been surrounded by aviation since birth. I can’t imagine anything else I would rather do. I know it sounds clique to say that aviation is my calling, but then again, that is why we have cliques. But the two biggest influences in my life have been my parents. They raised me to be the individual I am today and where the first to expose me to aviation. My father builds and flies remote controlled airplanes and he shared the hobby/sport with me at a young age and I continue to fly RC planes today. He never was a pilot himself because he claims he is to “reckless” to be one. My mother first got me involved in flying lessons during my junior year of high school and started me on the path I will follow the rest of my life. I can’t thank my parents enough for their everlasting support of my goals in life; they are the reason why I am living my dream.

Another passion of mine is sports. I love football, baseball, college basketball; my favorite teams are the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers, UW Badger Football and Basketball and UD Football and Basketball. I am probably the most kinetically uncoordinated person you will ever meet so I never played any of the sports listed above in an organized fashion. With that being said, I will voice my thoughts and opinions about those teams in this blog as if I have played those sports. Like I mentioned before, the extent of my athletic experience is limited, but I did run cross country in high school and loved it. At first, I struggled to finish 3 mile races under 30 minutes my freshmen year in HS, but three years later, I was finishing races in nearly half the time and qualified for the WI State Cross Country Meet in 2006 with the best teammates anyone could ever have. I was recruited to run for UD, but I decided against running because, quite frankly I’ve been there, done that, and got a t-shirt, furthermore running in college would only hamper my real goal in life, which is to fly and be the best pilot I can.

So there you have it, John Bandt in a nutshell. This is only a small sample of me and my personality. I could continue to go on and on describing my background, personality, favorite Green Bay Packer memories, or my flying experiences, but I figured that this would be a good stopping point. All those ideas will be discusses and other nuances of myself will be revealed to you in future posts as I paint this canvas one color at a time.

Bandt