Living in Victoria, you learn some things about the town you call home. For instance, the trash guy always leaves my can in the middle of the street, the traffic light on the corner before work is exactly 90 seconds long, the greasy hamburger stand is always on the move, and of course, anytime something new comes here, the whole community rushes to check it out.

I find proof of this everytime a new business or restaruant opens. One minute, it's hot stuff you can't find a parking spot, in 7 months it's like a ghost town.

Academy opened here. It was front page news last week. Literally FRONT PAGE news. Everywhere I went, it was the talk of the town. Which is funny because once in a bar conversation a guy told me how strange we were. "Big enough to be a city, but behaves like a small town," he murmured.

I saw an ad that said they had NFL licensed merchandise, so I decided to check it out. (See my blog "The Great Football Experiment" if you're wondering why.) I didn't find any NY Giants stuff at all, just these other two teams you may have heard of...

But I did find some remarkable things. Academy looks and feels like a sports themed Wal Mart. That's it. That's the big mystery, the sauce. I couldn't place it for awhile, but I finally placed it when I found odd merchandise througout the store. (In case you are wondering, Wal Mart does the same thing with merchandise placement on their sales floor, that is the reason you go in to buy bread, but come out with a pocket knife with a built in calculator.)

So... without further ado... I give you the top ten non sports related items I found at Academy.

1. Hanging Monkeys
2. 10 piece Xmen study set
3. Power Rangers backpack
4. Louisiana hot sauce
5. Benches
6. Fuzzy Thongs
7. Slinkies
8. Star Wars Pez
9. Hair Remover
10. Highlighters.

Now for the fun part. Let's make up a sport that utilizes these 10 items and go down in advocate blog history.