It's from the heart, really…

A blessed Christmas to Lino and all of his fans everywhere.

Predicting the Predictions

Yesterday our friends at CatholicGuyShow.com made their 2011 predictions for various members of the TCGS crew, as well as the show itself. While we're not so audacious as to make our own predictions, we thought it might be fun to give our take on what they think will happen. So here are our comments on those predictions, with an indication of whether or not we think they'll occur. We rate the predictions on the following self-explanatory scale:

SOLID "YES" ⇔ LEAN "YES" ⇔ NEUTRAL⇔ LEAN "NO" ⇔ SOLID "NO"

Lou Ruggieri

1. The Assistant producer title is dropped, and Lou becomes co-producer with Maureen.
   
   SOLID "NO" — As much weight has Lou pulls on the show, we've seen in years past that promotions happen at a glacial pace at The Catholic Channel. Not gonna happen this year, no matter how deserving it may be.


2. After years of waiting, Lou will get married by the end of the year.
   
   LEAN "NO" — We think that there's a good possibility that he'll get engaged sometime in 2011, but Lou strikes us as a man who doesn't rush into anything. Even if he does get engaged, expect the engagement to last beyond the end of the year.


3. Lou will get 1,000 friends on Facebook. And he'll join Twitter.
   
   NEUTRAL — We think the 1,000 friends on Facebook is certainly doable. But there's no way he's going to find time for Twitter in his busy schedule.

Maureen McMurray

1. Maureen will start down the path of confirmation.
   
   SOLID "NO" — We really hate to be so negative about something like this, but Maureen's been on the show for a total of three years now, and her "God-O-Meter" hasn't really moved enough during that time to predict that she'll start RCIA next year. Besides, what would we do if the show did away with Are You Smarter Than A Bad Catholic?


2. Maureen will book a guest that becomes a show regular.
   
   LEAN "NO" — While we don't think it's impossible, the show already has four regulars: Kayla Riley, Mark Hart, Father Rob Keighron and Father Jim Chern. Is there really room for another… and more importantly, would Lino want another regular?


3. Maureen and her husband Danny will conceive a child.
   
   LEAN "YES" — Believe it or not, we can actually see this one happening. Aside from the obvious joy of the occasion, it would certainly provide a lot of material for the show.

Lino Rulli

1. Lino's autobiography will crack the top 50 best-selling NY Times list.
   
   SOLID "NO" — For a couple of reasons. First of all, the NYT best-seller lists only display the top 35 books, so even if Lino theoretically got in just behind that point, his book wouldn't get listed. Secondly, the number of books that Lino would need to sell to reach the list would be staggering… it's impossible for us to get an exact figure because those kinds of numbers are not commonly released, but we estimate that he would have to sell a couple hundred thousand books in one week to reach the best-seller list. We see that happening in the span of a month or two, but not in one week.


2. Lino will dabble in TV work, and be featured in a program that can be seen nationally.
   
   NEUTRAL — Lino dabbling in TV work is almost a given. But him being featured on a nationally-televised program is far from a given. We think there's just enough anti-Catholic bias in the mainstream media for Lino not to get a fair shake here.
   
   
3. Even if its not discussed on air, Lino will become engaged.

SOLID "NO" — First of all, there's no way that this won't get mentioned on air if it actually does happen… but will it? As with Lou, we just don't see events of that type happening that fast. Lino would do well to take his time if he gets in a serious relationship.

Father Jim

1. Father Jim will never, ever defeat Lino in Who's More Catholic.
   
   NEUTRAL — If they were still playing under the old rules where callers cast all of the votes, then this would be a SOLID "NO"… all you need to do is flash back to July and August of 2009 (when Father Jim won four weeks in a row) to know that it's doable. But now with Lou and Maureen casting the votes (and the callers relegated to breaking ties between them), there's not as much anti-Lino bias to fuel decisions that would favor Father Jim. That's not to say that Father Jim couldn't win a game on his own… some of those 2009 games he won were real stinkers on Lino's part, and nothing precludes Lino from having another similarly bad game next year. It's just going to be a lot harder… Lino is very good at this game.

Father Rob

1. Father Rob will bring alcohol to the studio at some point this year. Drinking with a priest on-air will ensue.
   
   LEAN "NO" — As much as this would fit Father Rob's character, we think that he has just enough common sense to know that doing something like that would be a bad idea for everyone involved.

The Catholic Guy Show

1. The show will broadcast on location to a west coast city for a week.
   
   NEUTRAL — Not for an entire week, no. It could happen for a few days, though… and if you consider Alaska the "west coast", then it's already confirmed to happen this coming June, when Lino will broadcast from the Great White North in a prelude to his friend Goob's wedding.


2. The show will not add a new everyday on-air personality.
   
   SOLID "YES" — No need to fix what isn't broken. The only possible exception would be if a new intern joins the crew for the summer, but that would only be a temporary situation.


3. The show will get a two-year renewal, due to Lino's engagement.
   
   LEAN "YES" — He'll renew the show, but not necessarily for two years, and definitely not because he'll be engaged (see our answer to that question above). Has everyone so quickly forgotten that his 40th birthday is just a scant 300+ days away? His contract expires in September and his birthday is in October, so we think there's no way that he won't stay on past the end of his contract to celebrate the big four-oh on the air in grand Catholic Guy style. Beyond that we can't really say. Our prediction: he'll re-up for a year, but no more.

Contributing to the delinquency of four minors

At the end of the first hour of today's show, Lino apologized for something he wasn't even sure he did. On Saturday, Greg Willits took his four boys over to his in-law's house to pick up his daughter from their care. Upon returning to his van where the boys were waiting (and listening to the rebroadcast of Thursday's TCGS), he opened the door to hear Lino posing the question of being with "a prostitute smoking crack cocaine" in response to Father Rob complaining that him getting nabbed by a red light camera was a case of entrapment. Either unable to remember the incident or not believing that it could've actually happened, Lino and crew didn't want to waste time trying to find audio that might not exist. Well, we don't consider it a waste of time at all... and we just happened to find it right here:

LinoRulli.net: going the extra mile for Lino fans everywhere.

Christmas parodies a dueling

Did ya catch Gus Lloyd's appearance on today's Catholic Guy Show? Well if you didn't, you missed a solid 15 minutes of good memories... including excerpts from their Christmas songs mocking each other that they put out two years ago. But who needs excerpts when you can listen to the whole thing? When we launched this site nearly two years ago we made both songs into music videos, and we re-present them now in their entirety for your viewing/listening pleasure!

First up is Gus' parody, The Catholic Guy Who Stole Christmas:

Not to be outdone, Lino put out a whole album mocking Gus entitled A Catholic Guy Christmas: