Good morning and greetings, extreme weather fans. It was a bit breezy on the westside of town last week, as the trade winds were gusting along the coast. The winds brought with them chains of pelicans, who flew by in glorious formations, with many stopping at the remaining arch at Natural Bridges to shower, shave and recharge their cell phones, which they keep in their bills. That’s right, cell phone bills. Can you hear me now?

So you may be wondering, how windy was it? It was so windy that on my wife’s birthday on Saturday, she didn’t have to blow out the candles. Unfortunately, her wish did not come true, as when the candles were extinguished, the basketball season still wasn’t over.

My wife and I follow the advice of that wise sage Phyllis Diller “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” Our marriage is still a work in progress, although she is constantly saying that I never listen to her. At least that’s what I think she said.

So getting back to my wife’s hoop dreams, if you’re an NBA fan, last week was a good one for you, as there were back-to-back overtime thrillers at the start of the conference finals. I realize that professional basketball on TV is not watched by every American with a pulse, with the main reason being the lack of constant violence, as players don’t smash into one another play after play until only the non-conscussioners are left standing. Basketball is a much more graceful sport, played by seven foot ballerinas with wing spans the size of pterodactyls and contracts even bigger.

But as basketball nuts were rejoicing, it was not a good week for the folks in Moore, Oklahoma, as a killer tornado packing 200 mile an hour winds tore through the city, leveling everything in its path. The photos of the destruction were terrifyingly amazing. I remember being instructed as a young child to wait 30 minutes after eating before going swimming and never turn your back on a tornado. And the world’s most dangerous food is wedding cake.

It was a scene of total devastation, as buildings, homes and schools were leveled by a storm that lasted less than an hour but will affect lives forever. It seems, like my subconcious wanderings, that the weather continues to get wilder and wilder, and if this is not global warming, than God is really pissed off about something. And he wanted me to remind you, his last name isn’t “Dammit.”

Perhaps he’s peeved because people litter. I originally supported the death penalty for litterers, but I’ve mellowed over the years and life without the possibility of an egg roll would suffice. I’m still amazed that as I stroll around in 2013, some morons still treat the earth like their personal ash tray. Listen, if you want to suck in that tar and nicotine into your lungs, be my guest. But I would really appreciate if you would not exhale, thereby not polluting my air space and that way getting double the carcinogens to build a straw mind and an unhealthy body. That may sound cruel, but I’m not living in Marlboro country.

And don’t get me started on the slaughter of African elephants by poachers fulfilling the Chinese insatiable need for ivory. I’m not of big fan of extinction, but that’s where these giant creatures of the forest are headed. And Asian gangs are to blame, as I may have to call for an international ban of all chow fun products. What do you get if a herd of elephants tramples Batman and Robin? Flatman and Ribbon.

Continuing on the litter front, the other day I was driving by a fast food establishment, which will remain nameless, (Burger King) and I saw a woman toss her lunch out of her window and onto the ground of the parking lot. My immediate reaction was wanted to strangle her and then go in and order the new Memphis pulled pork sandwich with an Oreo shake. This woman needed a severe scolding or a lobotomy, although I doubt either would have helped. So I opted for the strawberry banana smoothie and some blood pressure medication.

I’m always wondering, where are these people’s consciences, where are their souls? Now, this isn’t the world’s worst offense, like murder or pirating a cable signal, but it leads me to believe that these people, like the batteries in my transistor radio, are dead inside. Which brings to mind the words of Marilyn Monroe, firing back at her critics when she said, “It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.” Works for me.

So where is this all leading? Well, while our military is racked by gross sexual misconduct, troops still dying in Afghanistan and the IRS being called in for a major audit, spring flowers, gently prodded by April showers, continue to bloom.

We had a little rainfall on the morning of May 12, so I put on my Doobie Brothers raincoat, grabbed my camera and headed out into the pleasant storm. I didn’t have to travel much further than my front yard, as this year, the roses are blooming faster than I can make bouquets. I’d like to think that it’s my organic gardening technique, but that would be giving myself more credit than when I graded myself in college at Syracuse.

I cut back these beauties in the winter, and as a way of saying thanks, they came back with a vengeance I haven’t seen since Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas hit the big screen in ‘War of the Roses.” Let me end with a flowery quote from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. ““I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.” Thank you and good night.

On to some late night humor. “During a Senate hearing yesterday, Senator John McCain said it was too hard to always have to update apps on his iPhone. No one has the heart to tell him the device he was holding was a garage door opener. A new international poll finds the least popular country in the world is Iran. After hearing this, North Korea said, “What do we have to do?” –Conan O’Brien

“Anthony Weiner has formally announced he is running for mayor of New York City. “Weiner said, ‘Nobody will work harder to make it better.’ As opposed to his first campaign promise, which was ‘Nobody will work better to make it harder.'” –Jay Leno “Everything’s going bad for President Obama with Benghazi and other controversies. But Obama’s trying to turn things around. He’s sending in SEAL Team 6 to bring back Justin Bieber’s monkey.” –David Letterman Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia the head of the religious police said he believes that Saudi citizens who use Twitter will go to hell. Let me get this straight. Tweeting leads to damnation. But filling a palace with kidnapped beauty contestants — that’s OK?” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Really, Tea Party? Really? You’re surprised that you’re targeted by the IRS? You named yourself after a group of people who proudly and historically violated tax laws! Look, if I had a vanity license plate that said ‘Weed 420,’ I might expect to get pulled over now and then. “Prince Harry this week toured the Jersey Shore with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. It was the first meeting between the Prince, of the House of Windsor, and the Governor, of the House of Pancake.'” –Amy Poehler

“If you think Benghazi is worse than slavery, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, Tuskegee, purposefully injecting Guatemalan mental patients with syphilis, lying about WMDs, and the fact that banks today are still foreclosing on mortgages they don’t own, then your hard-on for Obama has lasted more than four hours, and you need to call a doctor. “The Obama administration is experiencing multiple scandals, and the Republicans are having multiple orgasms. Three scandals at once? Rush Limbaugh today said, ‘I feel like I’m on Oxycontin again.'” –Bill Maher

So that’s our last blast for May. Birthday wishes go out on Tuesday to my sister-in-law Wendi Gilbert, who lives by the simple philosophy that any day involving chocolate is a good day.

We’ll catch you showing the Miami Heat and a national TV audience why you look like an-up-and coming NBA superstar. Aloha, mahalo and later, Paul George fans.

Good morning and greetings, Presidential Election fans. Wow, what a wild and tragic week we had running up to Tuesday’s election. Hurricane Sandy wreaked unbelievable havoc and destruction along the east coast, with the most severe damage occurring in my home state of New Jersey and New York. These two states and the New York Jets were declared a state of emergency while requesting federal assistance about what to do with Tim Tebow.

This incredibly powerful freak storm left behind a surreal landscape of devastation. We’re talking homes destroyed, towns under water, millions without power and heat, the New York subway system ground to a halt, a rising death toll and Halloween being cancelled in many places. So much for eat, drink and be scary. There was talk of cancelling the election, as how were people going to get to the polls? By canoe?

The final word on Sandy comes from Yankee fans, who said if the storm had been named Hurricane A-Rod, it wouldn’t have hit anything.

But we are still on track to vote to see who will occupy the White House for the next four years. So with some big help from the folks at randomhistory.com, let’s take a look at some fun facts about previous presidential elections. Or as either Donald Trump or his hairdresser once said, “How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?”

The first official presidential election in the U.S. took place in 1779, with George Washington becoming our first Commander-in-Chief. While in office, the Father of our Country did not chop down any cherry trees, refused to serve a third term and made history by becoming the first president not to blame his troubles on the previous administration.

Under the heading of “I did not know that,” prior to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution in 1804, the presidential candidate who received the second highest number of electorial votes was named the vice-president. The oldest presidential candidate to be elected was Ronald Reagan at age 69, while the youngest was John F. Kennedy at 43. If he had been elected in 2008, John McCain would have take over the title of oldest elected president at age 172, er, 72 years old.

In the 1984 presidential election, Reagan received both the highest number of popular votes (54,455,075) and the highest number of electoral votes (525) in history. As a Hollywood actor, Ronnie once played the role of football star George Gipp in “Knute Rockne, All American.” Because of this, I would tell my son before he stepped onto the floor before a big game, “Sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper.’

The first general election presidential debate was held on September 26, 1960, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Prior to this, presidential candidates occasionally debated, but never on TV. Tricky Dick had not completely recovered from a hospital stay and looked pale, tired and sickly. He also refused to wear any makeup, and as a result, he had a heavy five o’clock shadow look on the black-and-white TV screens from that era. JFK, by contrast, was tan, confident and relaxed with Marilyn Monore sitting in his lap during the debate. For Nixon, it was a Watergate,er, watershed moment.

The presidential election is traditionally held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Or in the words of Gregg Allman, “They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday is just as bad.” November was chosen as the election month because it was a convenient time for farmers, when the weather was still nice enough to travel to the county seat, as the bulk of their harvest chores and Halloween trick-or-treating was done.

The Obama-McCain 2008 presidential election was the first time in U.S. history when two sitting senators, although McCain was probably dozing, ran against each other for president. Only two women have ever won the nomination of a major party in a U.S. presidential election: Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984, and Sarah Palin was the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. However, Palin was the only one who could see Russia from her house.

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George Bush when the Supremely Inept Court stopped the Florida recount of ballots, giving George W. the state’s 25 electoral votes, for a total of 271 to Gore’s 255. This went down as the biggest heist in history until Saddam Hussein’s ordered his son to rip off $1 billion from Iraq’s Central Bank just hours before the U.S. began bombing Baghdad.

So let’s end with the following oaths. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And more importantly, I’m Geoffrey Gilbert and I approve this blog.

For today’s photo recap we are going back to the lovely evening of October 7. The clouds were lining up nicely as I hit Stockton Avenue for the sunset cruise, and as this day turned into night, no man nor beast walked away disappointed. Or to quote the great Woody Allen, “Today I saw a red and yellow sunset and thought, how insignificant I am! Of course, I thought that yesterday too, and it rained.”

On to some late night. “Halloween is a day when we all get to fool people into thinking we’re someone else. Or as Mitt Romney calls it, campaigning. We had the last presidential debate. A very subdued Mitt Romney. If you saw it, Obama would talk, and then Mitt would say, ‘what he said, but from a white guy.’ In the last three weeks, Mitt Romney has come out against tax cuts for the rich, against war, and suddenly for regulations, for teachers, for auto bailouts, for the UN, for birth control, for foreign aid. And what I love is that at this point it’s too late for the Tea Party to do anything about this except act like they’re okay with it. At this point they’re at this point they’re like Jerry Sandusky’s wife.” –Bill Maher

“Michelle Obama is with us tonight. She’ll encourage us to vote early. Most Republicans are opposed, because they believe that voting starts at conception.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Today Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president. This news surprised many elderly Americans who thought they were the same person.” –Craig Ferguson “The debates are over. All that’s left right now is to set up and rig the voting machines.” –David Letterman

“Michael Brown, the former director of FEMA who was forced to resign after Hurricane Katrina, has criticized the president. He said Obama may have acted too quickly this time — instead of taking the wait-and-do-nothing approach that worked so well during Katrina.” –Jimmy Kimmel “Donald Trump, did you see him today? He was giving candy only to kids who could show their birth certificate and their school records.” –Jay Leno “President Obama now has a 52-point lead with Hispanics. However, Mitt Romney has a 90-point lead with the people who hire Hispanics.” –Conan O’Brien

“The hurricane has interrupted the presidential campaign. Both presidential candidates are taking measures to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. President Obama is staying in Washington to coordinate relief efforts. And Mitt Romney is moving his smaller homes into his larger home.” –Conan O’Brien “This storm could mean the biggest power outage since the Yankees in the playoffs. Economic losses could reach $20 billion. And most of that is in paper towels.” –David Letterman

So that’s our election day special. Birthday wishes go out to my old backcourt running mate, Aromas’s own Doug MacKinnon. In my greatest days of basketball glory, Doug was right beside me, picking and rolling, as our opponents were helpless to stop us. The bigger they were, the harder they fell. We were legends in our own minds. Now we both have great futures behind us.

So remember to vote early and vote often. We’ll catch you being named last season’s sixth man of the year and alongside Linsanity, exploding out of the blocks this season with your new Rocket team. Aloha, mahalo and later, James Harden fans.