Roger Grumbel and Former City Council Candidate Kick Off Celebrity Grump-A-Thon

Former City Council Candidate and I, Roger Grumbel, appeared on Alameda's community access cable channel 28 yesterday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. to kick off the Alameda Cultural Heritage Education Society's 18th Annual Celebrity Grump-A-Thon. This year Former City Council Candidate had the honor of throwing out the first complaint, the sheer excitement of which caused the Alameda Daily Noose to erupt into a spontaneous round of applause from off camera.

Members of A.C.H.E.S. will be taking telephone pledges for the total number of hours for which they will kvetch on the air. In order to fulfil the pledge, each participant must rant continuously (with one five-minute break allowed per hour for a bran muffin and some prune juice) for the promised time on one of the following topics:

1. Kids These Days
2. And That Racket They Call "Music"
3. I Mean, in My Day, At Least They Had Words You Could Understand and a Nice Melody
4. Traffic
5. Twist Ties
6. Squirrels
7. Evil Developers
8. Closing Old Gas Stations
9. Loud Car Stereos
10. Bagpipe Music
11. Loud Car Steros Playing Bagpipe Music
12. People Regularly Parking in Front of My House
13. John Knox White
14. Not Enough Parking in the Park St. District
15. Medians Filled with Stupid Flowers That Make It Impossible to Make That Turn in My 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88
16. The Fact That Nothing Ever Changes in This Town
17. Opening New Gas Stations
18. Shopping Carts
19. Those Sorry Excuses for Fish Wrap That Nobody Reads
20. Too Much Parking in the Park St. District
21. People Who Don't Live Here
22. O.K., Maybe Some of Them Live Here
23. But They Aren't Real Alamedans
24. Libraries
25. Baby Pandas
26. The Fact That Everything is Changing Too Fast in This Town
27. Green Plastic Recycling Bins That Cause S.A.R.S. or Whatever Scary Disease Is in the News These Days
28. So-Called Experts
29. Those Darned Blogs on the Interweb That Nobody Reads
30. Lists That Don't End on a Nice Round Number
31. Stanford

The Grump-A-Thon will run for a total of 48 hours or until all of the participants have collapsed from exhaustion. A.C.H.E.S. President Janice Lighter-Merv excitedly proclaimed, "With both Roger Grumbel and Former City Council Candidate in fine form, we expect this year's Grump-A-Thon will set a new record for the smallest monetery loss!"

To make your pledge, call the A.C.H.E.S. Grump-A-Thon Pledge Hotline at 522-2208. Disgruntled operators are standing by to berate you!