Our National Pass Times:

We need new sports.  Our National Pass Times, over the years, have devolved into three immense disasters.  We, as fans, are the ones enabling all of this.  But I don’t think it is necessarily because we love Football or Baseball or Basketball so much that we would spend money on the sports unconditionally.  I think it is because of boredom.  I think it is because of lack of competition.  What else are you supposed to watch at 1 o’clock on Sunday afternoons between August and January? 

Why hasn’t anyone invented any real, new sports in the last 500 years?   Arena Football is not a new sport; it is just people playing football on way to small of a field, it’s horrible.  UFC has made its way onto the national stage nicely, but it is not a format you can challenge the NFL, NBA or MLB with.  I guess you can say NASCAR is right up there with the big three leagues but it really caters to a more specialized demographic.  The same thing with PGA Golf, you can’t expect a real diverse fan base there.  The Daytona 500 and the Masters will never captivate the entire nation the way the Super Bowl does every year.

So let’s take a look at the current state of our big three leagues that everyone loves so much.

The National Football League:

The idea of millionaires, fighting with billionaires over nine billion dollars is not an idea that sits well with a country still reeling from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  One thing that we must keep in mind is that, as usual, the richer of the two sides, the billionaire owners are the ones locking out the millionaire players, so this is much more the owners fault then the players.  

We have to look at the culture as a whole.  If the culture and personnel currently employed within the NFL ever went on to create any other sort of business, it would likely not be able to stay afloat for more than 15 minutes.  Basically you have a collection of some of the richest people in the world who have bought football teams, most of the time, not because they love football but because they want something to brag about at the Yacht Club to their friends.  These teams are looked at as an investment to the owners, not as a business.  There is a big difference. 

Then the owners bring on board a massive supporting cast of characters that actually run the day to day operations of the team.   Then the massive supporting cast is tasked with collecting, what they see as the least stupid professional football players that they possibly can.   And this is where the system breaks down, culturally.

The football players view their sport as a business because their union and agents sat them down in a chair and told them that it was a business.  Meanwhile, the owners look at the whole thing as an investment for themselves, like a 250 million dollar savings bond.   The players, who think they are business people, demand financial transparency from the owners which actually would make some sense, if the owners were business owners per se.   But the owners look at themselves as 32 guys who all happen to own football teams, not 32 business owners of football teams.  So it kind of makes sense that they feel as though they should not have to divulge their financials to a bunch of football players.   After all, if you buy a share of Google, the Google employees don’t demand to see your finances in order to determine if you are paying them enough or have purchased what they think are enough shares.  That would be ridiculous. 

Basically, this is the kind of perplexing stalemate that will always ensue when rich people start to argue about things.  It’s never about logic and reason and what is good for the end product or industry, it’s about what’s good for me right now, and how many different courts and lawyers do I have at my disposal to get it.   I expect the arguments between the players and owners to last exactly as long as it takes for this thing to really start costing them money in which case, we will have football again, maybe a shortened season, but it will happen. 

And we will watch the games and go to them and spend money at them because the majority of us are way too dumb to understand that the NFL players and owners are treating us all exactly like Pakistan treats the United States.  Just keep giving us our billions and we promise to deliver something to you someday.

The National Basketball Association:

While I will miss NFL football in the unlikely event the lockout lasts into the season, I hope the NBA just folds as a result of their impending lockout this summer.  What an absolute garbage product that league has turned into, in less than 10 years.  I hope the NBA players think they hold as much power as the NFL Players Union and demand all sorts of unreasonable crap out of the owners.  I then hope the owners fire all of the current NBA players and go get new ones if they choose to continue owning their teams.   This is one situation where I am counting on rich people to do the right thing and stick it to the players as much as they possibly can, to the fullest extent of the law.

Never in my life have I seen a sport, with the exception of modern fixed boxing, that relies so heavily on media hype, then the current NBA.  Every playoff game this year has been built up to be some sort of epic battle between two teams with such storied history that you won’t even be able to watch it without smashing your television in amazement.  Then you tune in for 5 minutes, just to find out that you are watching the Bulls play the Heat in some sort of sporting event that loosely resembles organized basketball.  Every single player is screaming at the referees every time they commit some sort of a foul, nobody has made a shot outside of three feet from the rim in like 30 years, players named Joakim Noah are yelling anti-gay slurs into the crowd, and half the players aren’t even really trying to play well for various personal and financial reasons.  The broadcast that you are watching, if you are one of the lucky people who actually get TNT, is full of wonderful, top notch human beings like Marv Albert and Charles Barkley who between the two of them have slept with ever male and female prostitute in America.

Nobody has made any sort of layup in the last 10 years without immediately screaming at the top of their lungs into the stands like the Incredible Hulk after he smashes a tank.  As though making a layup in basketball is such a difficult prospect, such a momentous achievement that we should all act like we have just conquered the Roman’s at the battle of Carthage after doing so.  Combine this shit product with the fact that only 8 different franchises have won NBA titles over the past 30 years and your sport is basically swimming through a world of crap. 

With any luck, the owners will lock out the players for so long that the majority of the league will be contracted, leaving the 6 relevant NBA teams that are left to duke it out with each other, once a month on Pay-Per-View, much like the current UFC.  I then hope the NHL takes over for the NBA in the cities where NBA teams were contracted.  At present, the NHL is a far superior and reasonable athletic product.  

Major League Baseball:

If you watch ESPN, you probably think that Major League Baseball consist of four teams, The Red Sox, Yankees, Mets and The Phillies.  The Mets, while finishing dead last in the NL East last season had more games broadcast nationally on ESPN then the Rangers and Giants combined.  For those of you who don’t follow sports, the Rangers and Giants played in the World Series last season. 

Combine this annoyance with the fact that the four aforementioned teams have been poaching all of the top rate talent in the league for the past 20 years taking full advantage of the non-existent salary cap.  

We then came to find out that every baseball player who hit a home run between 1990 and 2007 was injecting every possible kind of steroid he could get his hands on in the dugout in between at bats.  Nobody seemed to notice that Barry Bonds basically transformed from a skinny kid into a horse who could swing a baseball bat in about 9 months time.  The man’s head grew 7 inches wider in one year.  His Head!!!!   It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to know that people don’t hit a growth spurt in their late 20’s that causes their head to grow to nearly twice its original size. 

Nobody outside of the East Coast even watches baseball anymore.  Hence you have teams like the Indians who have the best record in baseball and about 11 fans coming to watch every game.  And then yeah, that’s pretty much Major League Baseball for you.  

Baseball would be well off to just follow the NBA’s lead and contract to a point where you are left with a handful of relevant franchises that people actually care about playing one another.  Do we really need the Pirates or the Royals or the Padres of the world anymore?  Would anyone even care if they went away? 

We would also benefit from a huge decline in having to listen to baseball sportscasters incessantly shoving their idea of how baseball is some sort of a sacred spectacle that we should all stop in our tracks and worship the nostalgia and history every time some guy runs 90 feet.   Not a lot makes me more sick then listening to Joe Buck precede an everyday baseball broadcast with some sort of  historical montage, ripe with images of the sport from the 40’s and 50’s as though anyone really still gives a shit. 

It’s not that these are bad sports at their fundamental level, but the money generating machines that they have been forced to turn themselves into has made them bad, period.  As soon as you take anything that is not about money and make it completely about money it will go to hell quickly.  This culture has made Disney and ESPN and ABC and players and owners and sponsors and merchandisers Trillions over the years but are the sports any better for it?   Are the cities that harbor these teams better for it?  Are the fans that pay for the stadiums and arenas and baseball parks and team merchandise getting any sort of a return on their investments?  Or are we all just getting screwed out of the sports that we once loved while a handful of people get ridiculously rich? 

Booze II

This is a follow up to the immensely popular blog posting “booze”.  Unfortunately for myself, I do not have a shortage of such stories.  Writing these down often makes me wonder how I am alive and have never been to jail.  This is not fun for me.

I’m just going to crash at Dan’s: 

Myself and several friends partied the night away at a popular spot in Cleveland’s West Bank of the Flats which, at that time, was just a massive river-walk of bars and debauchery.  This particular bar was an 80’s themed bar and offered a drink, mostly consisting of Bacardi 151, called the Top Gun.  I had five of these drinks, over the course of about three hours.  I remember doing the shoulder dance with some forty eight year old lady for at least two of those hours.

At the time I lived in Cleveland Heights which would have been a fairly hefty cab fare, clear across pretty much the entire city.  So I got the brilliant idea to just walk to Dan’s apartment (basically across the street) and crash there. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t call Dan until I had arrived at the entrance to his building.  After about 3 harassing, one after the other, 4 AM phone calls to Dan, he finally answered his phone.  I told him that I was at his apartment and to let me in.   He then told me that he was in Canada.  He had told me that he was going to Canada, which is why he wasn’t out with us in the first place.  I don’t know why I thought he was home or how I could have forgotten which country my best friend was in. 

So I call a taxi, after all it was my only recourse.  The taxi said he would be there in ten minutes.  So I grab a seat on the sidewalk, on top of a retaining wall with a bunch of plants behind me. It was one of those huge concrete, decorative planters with a bunch of Tulips and shit in it.  At some point, I laid back into the plants and must have gotten very comfortable because I didn’t wake up until 9 AM the next day.   Now, at the time, I was working weird shifts and had weekdays off.  So I remember this was a Monday morning at 9 AM in downtown Cleveland. 

More responsible people, who were likely on their way to work were bustling by me in the streets. People were offering me change.  They thought I was a vagrant instead of some kid that got so hammered at an 80’s bar that had missed his cab and passed out drunk in a flower bed for five hours.  I took their change.  How I did not get arrested or mugged is absolutely beyond me.  My cigarettes and lighter were stolen. 

How I got rabbit punched on St. Patrick’s Day:

I am not sure which St. Patrick’s Day this was but as usual I started drinking downtown at around 8 AM With my friend Steven and some other friends.  Steven is one of these people who can drink all day long.  I on the other hand am really not.  You can find my friend Steven on any St. Patrick’s Day, still going strong late into the night, generally with lipstick all over his face, his shirt missing, his pants filthy, but still ready to party. 

I cannot do this.  Generally by 2 or 3 PM on St. Patrick’s Day, I am so shitfaced, that all I can think about is getting home and passing out.  So after a day of bar hopping, who knows how many shots, green beers, cocktails and at one point being thrown out a bar because Steven knocked over a ladder which broke a window, and calling a newscaster a shithead while he was live on the air, it was time for me to get home. 

We had taken the early bus from Steven’s house in Old Brooklyn downtown in the morning so I assumed I could just take the bus back to his place now in the late afternoon.   He told me that his door was unlocked and I was welcome to go in and pass out. 

Unfortunately, I had no idea which bus to get onto to get back to his place.  I did not pay close enough attention that morning.  Adding to my confusion was the fact that I was absolutely hammered and could not properly communicate with anyone.  So I basically just got onto the first bus I saw.  I passed out on the bus and woke up with the driver yelling at me.  I had reached the end of the bus line and I had to get off.  I needed to be in Old Brooklyn, but this bus had taken me to a town called Parma Heights.  Luckily I was able to locate where I was on a map at the bus station and found that I was less than two miles from where I should have gotten off. 

So I began to walk, in the rain from Parma Heights to Old Brooklyn.  It is now about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I am wearing a green lay that I came to realize had colored my shirt and neck green throughout the day, and I am completely shitfaced.  

I did not piss at the bus station like I should have.   Now I am stuck in a very thickly settled, residential area with nowhere to relieve myself.  It is the middle of the afternoon, so I couldn’t really just duck behind a couple of trees like you can do at night.  Finally, I reached a boiling point, I couldn’t hold out any longer.  I did the best I could to hide myself behind a tree, on some guy’s tree-lawn in order to urinate.  I began to relieve myself on his front lawn.  I thought I had gotten away with it and was sort of laughing to myself when out of nowhere, some guy, who I assume was the home owner, ran up behind me and rabbit punched me in the back.  I learned the hard way about how painful it is to be punched in the kidneys while urinating.  It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me in the back and exited out of my junk.

The man yelled something about calling the cops but by then I had run a good block away from him with no intentions of slowing down.  I glanced behind me and noticed that he was quite a rotund individual with no chance of chasing me down, even as drunk as I was.

After much trial and error, and having walked through a Taco Bell Drive through, I made my way back to Steven’s house to find him already there and past out.  Had I waited another 30 minutes, I could have just taken the bus with him and avoided being rabbit punched by an obese man in his front yard. 

The North American Golf Tour:

 One summer when I was 23 or 24 me and a good friend were invited to play on a local golf “tour” called the North American Gold Tour.   We accomplished this marvel, by demonstrating, to the “commissioner” that we both carried a 5 or less handicap throughout an entire calendar year.  We were able to prove this to him, by scanning and emailing copies of our own scorecards to his yahoo email account.   These scorecards were not from any sort of commissioned, supervised events, they were just me and my friends golfing and drinking as usual, doing a half assed job of keeping score and then emailing the scorecards to this guy who allowed us to join his golf tour.   So I immediately found the entire thing ridiculous and refused to in any way take it seriously. 

For the sake of this story, you also have to keep in mind that this particular tour, went by what is known as the Callaway Handicapping System.  All that you need to know about this system is that it is incredibly complex and complete bullshit.

The story starts the night before my first tournament.  My friend had a party in his yard which I attended.  I had to be at this tournament at 7 AM the next day and it was only a few miles from where the party was.  So it made sense for me to crash there and then head to the tournament the next day. 

The party got a little out of control.  Myself and my friend Matt mixed up a batch of what we called Blue Goo.  This is a plastic milk bottle, that you wash out, then fill with nearly an entire bottle of Vodka.  You then add sugar and a packet of Blue Kool-Aid.  We were a classy bunch back then. We drank the entire thing and past out around 4 in the morning. 

We woke up to my alarm two hours later and had one hour to get to this golf course and play in the first ever golf tournament of our lives.  My friend Matt has always been able to mask a hangover a lot better than I can.  When I am hung over, everyone around me knows about it. 

I arrive at the golf course and am immediately paired up with two of the biggest, straight-edge, Kaki-short wearing yuppie douche bags I have ever seen.  These men were taking this very seriously.  Meanwhile I am in jeans and am wearing a collared shirt, but only because I have to in order for the golf course to allow me to be there. 

I realize after about two shots that attempting to play golf was a huge mistake.  My sluggish pace and general disdain towards my playing partners has already worn their patience with me thin.  On top of all this, it turned out to be one of the hottest days of that summer and I could not have possibly been more hung over.  After I tee-off on the fifth hole, I told my playing partners that I had to go piss in the woods.  But I could not make it to the trees before vomiting in front of them right there on the tee-box. 

My playing partners walked off sighting the tournament rule that if someone in your group is slowing you down, you do not have to wait for them. 

I lumbered on alone, after about 12 holes; I was so hot that I took my shirt off.   My shirt smelled like Vodka and my jeans were absolutely soaked with perspiration.  This was one of the longest days of my life.  After all of this, I was really not golfing all that badly.  I was basically playing scratch golf. 

Little did I know that I was in the third to last group.  And it was customary for all of the groups who finished before mine to wait around the 18^th green and watch all of the other groups finish.  I hit a terrible approach shot about 25 yards over the 18^th green into all of these spectators.  They then stood in amazement as I come into view as a person with no shirt on, visibly hung over, sun burnt, tired, and sweaty, and dirty man.  At this point I was just dragging my golf bag behind me, not even able to lift it off the ground. My lips were a bluish, whitish, dehydrated hue and I couldn’t breathe without wheezing.  Several people went as far as to ask me if I was okay and if I could continue.  I was forced to play my chip surrounded by this mass of men who are all wearing their top of the line golf polo shirts and khaki pants, looking at me like I am some sort of criminal.

I managed a great up and down and ended up paring the hole.  A member of my group begrudgingly signed my scorecard vouching for its accuracy.  After all, it was accurate.  I ended up 13 over par for the day, not exactly a great round. I quickly got myself into the club-house to find my friend Matt in similar shape, drinking about a gallon of Iced Tea.  Before I could sit down, the Tour “Commissioner” asked the two of us to follow him into a ball room that was part of the club house.  We handed him our scorecards, and he yelled at us, mostly me, for a good five minutes about how he expected better conduct out of us.  I didn’t understand this.  How can you expect anything out of someone you had just met, for a period of five minutes, 6 hours earlier? 

In a stunning turn of events, my 12 over par, combined with the complete horseshit of the Callaway Handicapping System won the tournament.  I had the eighth worst score of the day, but thanks to their ridiculous handicapping system I walked out of there a winner. 

The look on those yuppies faces as I walked out of that club house, with three hundred of their dollars, fighting a horrendous handover, smelling like a bottle of vodka, with no shirt on, is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.  I dry heaved in the parking lot a couple more times, tossed my clubs in the back of my truck and went home.  I never played on the North American Golf Tour again. 

Captain Matt:

At one point in High School, myself and my classmates were forced to take a comprehensive, 11 page exam designed to figure out what sort of career best suited our personalities.  Even at the time, I felt like I was taking a quiz that someone had clipped out of a Cosmo.  Nonetheless, I answered every question to the best of my abilities with one hundred percent truth behind each of my answers.  I waited a week to get my results back, which for some dumbass reason, were given back to us in yellow envelopes, like these results were of some kind of national security risk.  I opened my envelope and there is was, right in the top middle of the first page. 

“After review of Matt’s entries and answers we feel Matt’s ideal career choice should be…  Tugboat Captain” 

I immediately found this result curious as I had never been on any sort of a boat in my life.  I had never set foot in any ocean, I lived in Ohio and I had never even thought about perusing any sort of nautical career.  How could a kid, who had not spent 15 minutes of his life, in any sort of body of water, be told that he should become a Tugboat Captain?

Is it even possible to just BECOME a Tugboat Captain?  Wouldn’t I have to work my way up through some sort of tugboat ranking system?  Or could I just show up one day, show them this test and immediately be named the captain of a tugboat?  Wouldn’t some sort of pervious management experience be required?   After all, I would be in charge of tugging enormous boats around some kind of body of water.  I’m not sure you can obtain that sort of responsibility just because it perfectly suits your personality.  How large is the crew on a tugboat?  It can’t be more than a two or three person operation. So that must be the lowest form of “Captain” imaginable.  This test basically told me that I should go be the captain of a floating tow truck. 

This particular test really failed me.  I don’t even need to try it out, I know for a fact, that I would hate every minute of my professional life, had I become the captain of a tugboat. 

Even stranger, about 6 of my friends from this particular class were told, on the same test, that they should all become Park Rangers.   These were all kids who were in my English class when we got our results back.  There were only about 30 people in that class.  Therefore according to the state of Ohio, 1/5^th of the kids in my 11^th grade English class should have become park rangers.  Can you imagine how astronomical the odds are of that test even being remotely correct about this were?  Six out of 30 kids, from the middle of nowhere Ohio, all of whom were in Mrs. Roth’s 3^rd period English class, were all destined for a fulfilling life as Park Rangers.  My friend Bob, who nobody has ever considered outdoorsy, was told to become a park ranger.  The sheer thought of Bob, prancing around the woods in a park ranger uniform makes me laugh my ass off every time.   It would be like if Jack Black was a park ranger.

Another friend of mine who is now an architect was told to become a grocery store supervisor on this particular test.   I find this one pretty hilarious, because by the time he had graduated from High School, he was already a grocery store supervisor.  Granted, he didn’t stop there; he paid his own way through college and is now an architect.  What in the hell is the State of Ohio doing telling 16 year olds that they should strive to become the supervisor of a grocery store?   Is that really a career choice to them?  Talk about setting the bar low. What is this 1952?  No offence to all of the great grocery store supervisors out there, but I feel like you end up as a grocery store supervisor, not so much work towards becoming one. 

My main point being, America has the wrong people doing the wrong jobs.  I don’t know what kind of crack squad of savvy motivated personnel they had putting this test together but there is no way they had any idea what in the hell they were doing.  I feel horrible for what must have been thousands of kids who took these results seriously.  There is a pretty good chance that those Bozo’s ruined a lot of young people’s lives with their horrendous feedback.  I honestly look at the “Which 80’s Hair Band best suits your personality” test on Facebook as a much more reliable judge of my character, than this test was.

What if everyone were to have listened to the results of their test?   The world would be overrun by park rangers and low level management.  No boats would be able to get into port because none of the tugboat captains would have any idea what the hell they were doing.   Oil spills would be an everyday occurrence, you would never be able to find anything you needed at the grocery store, and you wouldn’t be able to go outside without being harassed by park rangers. 

Now, what these people should have done is take a step back and give the kids more of a broad approach?  Maybe not give them such specific vocations?  Maybe you tell me, that my personality is well suited for leadership in stressful situations, instead of “Hey, go become a tugboat captain”.  Maybe you tell Bob and my five other friends, that their personality is best suited for a job that rewards their physical fitness, offers flexibility and takes into account their authoritative assets not “Hey, how about you all become park rangers”.   How about you tell Raymond to become something other than a grocery store supervisor?

When you look at what we are expected to do in High School, this fiasco of a test was kind of just par for the course.  Why in god’s name, we have High School kids dissecting animals is still beyond me.  I have managed to make a fairly good living for myself without once having to identify a crawfishes urinary tract.  But who knows, that sort of information might have come in handy, had I become a tugboat captain.   

Bush Vs. Obama; A Timeline

Let us take a look at the past five years of our nation’s history in terms of foreign relations, terrorism and our economy.   Some factual information may have been slightly altered in order to add comedic pinash. 

The final two Bush Years:

2006:   The financial calamity had not yet shown its ugly face so Bush decided to spend a lot of time dealing with illegal immigration from Mexico.  A novel idea with the proper follow through but the resolutions got completely bushed when they began building a fence along the Mexico border.  A fence that would never be finished and a fence that accounts for less than 10% of the US/Mexican Border.  The Mexican’s promptly continued digging their tunnels, which they have always used to get into the United States only now; they were laughing their asses off at our president while doing so.   

2006:  Our two wars between Iraq and Afghanistan plugged on.  At this point, we were doing a lot of expensive walking around those two countries.  We were not accomplishing much with our reactive approach.  But we were accomplishing spending 110 Billion Dollars a year.  Bush launched a massive drone campaign designed to blow up every deserted mountain along the Afghan/Pakistan border.  He nearly succeeded.

 When asked how things are going in Iraq, Bush responded with…"It's bad in Iraq. Does that help?” -George W. Bush, after being asked by a reporter whether he's in denial about Iraq, Washington, D.C., Dec. 7, 2006

2006:  Vice President Dick Cheney shoots his friend in the face because he thought he was a quail. 

2006:  George Bush met with the Texas Longhorn Football Team. 

2007:  The nation finds out that Bush and Cheney have been water-boarding suspected terrorists in their basement with all the windows closed and the lights turned off.   Bush and Cheney call this “enhanced interrogation techniques” and then go back to playing war with each other in the woods behind the White House and shooting bottle rockets at each other. 

2007/2008:  The housing bubble began to burst.  Bush spent most of time trying to combat illegal immigration and steroid using baseball players.    

"First of all, I don't see America having problems." --interview with Bob Costas at the 2008 Olympics, Beijing, China, Aug. 10, 2008

2007/2008:  The housing bubble completely collapses and America finds itself on the verge of the worst financial disaster in the better part of a century.  After several panicked speeches to the nation as well as allowing his administration to be effectively strong armed by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in order to hand nearly 800 Billion Dollars to banks and insurance companies Bush summed it up like this…

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

2007/2008:  Bush basically spends the end of his term coloring and eating Hot Pockets in the Oval Office and the nation elects Barrack Obama to the presidency.    The Dow finishes Bush’s run in office hovering somewhere around 7900.  This was its lowest point since the cretaceous period.

2008:  Bush and his wife and kids are physically forced to sit in chairs directly behind Barack Obama as Obama makes his presidential Acceptance Speech.  Obama’s acceptance speech is basically Barack calling George a stupid asshole for 45 minutes.  The National Mall erupts with joy and civic pride.

2008/2009:  Barack Obama has taken over the presidency and within the first 15 minutes eradicates most of Bush’s laws, including his laws against stem cell research.  For the first time, in a long time, Michael J. Fox cracks a smile. 

2008/2009:  Obama begins to hold banks and large insurance firms accountable for the billions of dollars Bush gave them.  Magically, the banks begin to give the excess money back.  The Dow begins a steady climb upward.  George Bush moves back to Crawford Texas and immediately begins erecting a fence around his house to keep out Mexicans. 

2008/2009:  Obama drastically decreases the troop level in Iraq and rotates them into Afghanistan where they are needed effectively bringing both situations unto a level of control not yet seen in the nearly decade long conflicts.  Obama’s administration goes to Pakistan and calls them all liars to their faces and basically tells them that they can all go F themselves, we’ll do it all ourselves.  George Bush graduates from Crawford Community College after demonstrating that he actually can read three sentences without making something up in the middle.  In celebration he does cocaine, rips his shirt off and wrestles a Bull to the ground with his bare hands.  All the while, the Bush family shoots guns into the air. 

2008/2009:  Obama stops torturing people.  He also goes to actual Arab countries and makes speeches that speak to Arabs in an eloquent, respectful manner.  The impact of this watershed piece of foreign policy is still reaping benefits today.  This action, to me, is still the greatest piece of offense thus far in the war on terror. This action by our president was the equivalent of an Atom Bomb on top of the Al Qaeda Headquarters.   It demonstrated to a massive region of people that they no longer have to live in a world governed by fear mongers and oppressive dictators.  Somewhere in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden began to cry and pissed in his pants. 

2010:  The Dow has continued its constant rise and is now somewhere between 9 and 10 thousand.  Banks begin to lend money again and turn in profitable quarterly figures for the first time in years.  For the first time in a long time, people begin to think, “Maybe I won’t need to move my mom into the cellar”.  “Maybe I will have a job next week”, “Maybe Paw will not have to defend my house with a gun like its little house on the prairie.” 

2010:  Obama accomplishes pushing Health Care Reform through, something that the previous four administrations have been unable to do.  The Republicans immediately call the move too expensive and begin to piss all over each other demanding a free version of Health Care Reform that only rich people who live near their fat white bodies can utilize. 

2011: The Dow is now just about back to where it was before the housing bubble collapsed.  Companies are returning to profitability and the idea of small business is no longer a laughing stock.  The republicans are so upset by this that they knock Cheney’s wheelchair over on top of Lincoln Monument and then leave him there crying.

2011:  Obama releases his long awaited Birth Certificate from Hawaii which amazingly looks like every other Birth Certificate in the world.  The Republicans immediately pop their collars, tie their sweaters around their necks and begin physically attacking union leaders in Wisconsin and Ohio.

2011:  Barack Obama comes onto television around midnight and announces that he authorized one of the most incredible, surgical military operations in the history of special warfare.  An announcement that culminated in him telling the world that we finally killed Osama Bin Laden.  It was an eloquent, nine minutes of serious, intimidating, confident, prideful dialogue the likes of which I have never seen.  I’ve never felt so much like I had a “leader” in my life as I did while listening to that speech.   It was absolutely gangster yet absolutely perfect and socially acceptable.   

I find myself envisioning how Bush would have approached the same scenario.   More than likely he would have come out wearing some sort of a cowboy hat and bullet vest, saying something along the lines of “Today, on May First Two-Hundred-Thousand and Ten err Eleven, I authorized the thermo nuclear destruction of a town in Pakistan where we think Bin Laden might have been held up.  Our boys in Hazmat suits are now combing through the destruction to verify if we got him.  But I think we did, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED BITCHES!!”  Then he would have shot a pistol into the air and accidently blew an awning off of the East Rooms ceiling. 

2011:  The country immediately erupts into celebration while the otherworldly details of the mission slowly come out.  Steven Spielberg would have been hard pressed to dream up such a scenario.  We all come to find out that the last thing our greatest enemy saw on Planet Earth was a covert Seal Team blowing through the door to his bedroom.  The man who brought the idea of “terror” to all of our front doors met his maker in the most terrifying, intimidating way imaginable. 

Somewhere in Crawford Texas, a slow clap could be heard coming out of the Bush Compound for even they were able to recognize the gravity of what had been accomplished. 

The republicans put down their magnifying glasses and stop scrutinizing Obama’s birth certificate and asked themselves, “What the fuck are we doing?  With these kinds of results in 3 years, does it really matter if this man was born in Hawaii or Honduras?  Obviously he has our best interest at heart. Has anything we have done over the past decade helped anyone in anyway?”    

It’s not easy being a Jew:

I’m not Jewish.  I’m really not anything.  But I am seriously dating a Jew and I have many Jewish friends.  And I must say, my hat is off to you folks and what you are forced to endure every time the Catholics celebrate one of their pagan holidays.    What an incredible pain in the ass it is to accomplish anything for you and I should say “us” now, on such holiday’s, of which you don’t even get to celebrate.   I’ve never really “celebrated” Easter anyway so I went into yesterday, thinking “this will just be a nice normal Sunday”.  Below is a timeline of how myself and my girlfriend’s day went yesterday. 

Saturday April 23^rd, 3:00 PM:

As I do almost every Saturday, I dropped my dirty laundry off at the local Laundromat to be picked up later that day. 

Saturday April 23^rd, 7:00 PM:

We meet up with some of my girlfriend’s crew to celebrate one of her friend’s birthdays.  I planned on being there for maybe a couple of hours, having a nice dinner, and going home after retrieving my laundry from the Laundromat.   Instead, the party turned out to be a blast, and I drank two Martini’s and two Bombay and Sprite’s.  On the way home we forgot to pick up my laundry but I did remember to pick up a chicken sandwich meal and a peanut buster parfait from Dairy Queen.  We then, went home, watched Ghostbusters and passed out.  Never for a minute, did I think about my laundry situation.

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 9:00 AM:

I rouse from a long, dreamless slumber in my usual pajama pants and tee shirt.  I roll out of bed and immediately notice that my usual stack of clean clothes is absent from my floor and closet.  At that point, I remember what I had done and that it is Easter and there is a good chance that the Laundromat will be closed and I will be unable to pickup my laundry.  Now over the years, I have become a virtual Gold Glover in regards to making my “second unit” clothing items work for a day or two or three.  But the day before, I made a conscience effort to pack as much shit into my laundry basket as I could to be cleaned.  This included my starting rotation of clothing items as well as a good percentage of my bullpen and third unit items.  I was left with nothing but the stuff that I would have a hard time getting Good Will to accept. 

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 11:00 AM:

My girlfriend and I decided to go out for lunch and eventually hit the driving range as it was a gorgeous day outside.  So I marched into my bedroom and put on my stoned washed Levi Jeans and a graphic, muscle tee-shirt with a huge football helmet on the front of it.  I looked like a man who wasn’t sure if he was going to a tryout for the 1985 Philadelphia Eagles or to a Motley Crew Concert.  I didn’t even remember that I owned this particular pair of jeans.   I can’t imagine why I would have ever purchased them or when they were ever “in style”,   they had more holes in them then the US Healthcare System, and were tight enough in the crotch area to be widely considered, socially unacceptable.  Especially since all of my underwear was at the shackled Laundromat.  I was forced to pair them up with the always popular muscle, graphic tee made famous by ripped UFC cage fighters, not so much overweight 30 year old men in the midst of a mean hangover. 

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 11:30 AM:

We decided to go for lunch at my friends bar in Lincoln Rhode Island.   Surely Dave would have his bar open on Easter.  After a 30 minute drive we came to an empty parking lot in front of his bar and found a note from Dave on the door stating that the bar would not be open for two hours and when it was, there would be a “limited” menu.  So we didn’t feel like waiting two hours for whatever sort of limited menu Dave had to offer.   This really put a strain on my ego.  Now I would be forced to go to some other public place to eat looking like Joe Dirt’s fatter brother. 

We continued deeper into Rhode Island, all the while choosing different places we would like to eat.  One by one, they dropped off the list like flies.  Johnny Rockets – Closed, Chipotle – Closed, Pisano’s Pizzeria – Closed, Panera Bread – Closed.  The only thing that was open was the always delicious Boston Market.  So I ended up sitting in a Boston Market, in Cranston Rhode Island, eating Turkey, Mashed Potatoes and Macaroni and Cheese for lunch, looking like some kind of Cinderella Super Fan who had been hit by a car.  

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 12:15 PM:

We leave Boston Market and get back into my truck and head to the driving range.  Surely, the management of the driving range would not allow the facility to be closed on such a beautiful spring day.   Well they were closed.  My frustration had been mounting all day.  On the way out of the parking lot, I yelled, and I quote, “Fuck my Life!” , prior to realizing that my window was down and that there was a carload of old ladies directly next to me.  They were none to pleased.

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 12:30 PM:

After a solid hour and a half of driving around being repeatedly disappointed we decided to go throw the football in the park.  Luckily the park was open and we had a great time playing catch.  Unfortunately my fun was short lived because I stepped in dog shit and then stepped into a pile of wood chips, which stuck to the dog shit and coated the bottom of my shoe.  So I found myself walking home, in my holy, stoned washed Levi’s, my graphic muscle tee and my shoe covered in dog shit. 

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 4:30 PM:

At this point, I had a chance to unwind and for some reason was stricken by an extreme hankering for Honey Bunches of Oates.  Anyone who knows me knows that this particular cereal is a mainstay in my pantry.   But I had run out the previous week.  Surely the grocery store would be open, it wasn’t.  We pulled into the grocery store parking lot at the same time as what must have been another Jewish couple.  My girlfriend got out and verified that the store was indeed not open.  When I saw this, I slammed my fist into the steering wheel and yelled some sort of expletive.  At nearly the exact same time, the other Jewish couple also realized that the store was not open and in their frustration yelled “Fuck” at the top of their lungs, which reverberated through the parking lot like a gun shot.  I found this situation comforting.  It let us know that we weren’t alone in our dissapointment.  There were probably hundreds of others, just like us, struggling to enjoy their Sunday. 

Easter Sunday April 24^th, 5:00 PM:

I’m still wearing my graphic muscle tee shirt in which I look like a 5^th grader who swallowed a penguin.  I still have my 80’s rocker, nut hugging jeans on, of which my reproductive system will never be the same and now I had my backup skateboarder tennis shoes on because my Cole Han’s are now at home covered in dog shit and wood chips.  And I am walking into a CVS Pharmacy to buy Honey Bunches of Oates.  Luckily they were running a sale on cereal and I made it out of there with 3 boxes, milk and a quart of ice cream. 

We went home and enjoyed our cereal and ice cream and watched Pretty in Pink.  And that was my Easter.  Thanks a lot Catholics.

Ever Notice:

Did you ever notice that aliens never seem to abduct anyone smart?   Every time I hear a testimonial about how someone was abducted by aliens, it is always from some sweaty, cracked out hick in a Disney tank top.  When was the last time you heard of a physicist or some kind of engineer or anyone who has graduated from High School being abducted by aliens?   Is it just a coincidence or do you think the aliens have some sort of an affinity for unintelligent, strung out, white people?   Come to think of it, I have never heard of a black person being abducted by aliens either.  So it looks like we’ve got a bunch of racist, white trash loving aliens on our hands,…. terrifying.   Obviously I don’t think any of it is true, but if it is, and the aliens are judging the entirety of the human race based off of these people, we are all doomed.

Did you ever notice how American’s don’t really ever figure anything out or fix anything anymore?  At present, we have bridges falling into rivers, road conditions that rival that of Bangladesh, diseases that have been killing people for decades,  an economy based on lousy service, gas prices at an all time high, a populous that cares more about sports and preventing smoking in bars then education for their kids,  a completely divided government, two and a half wars, birds falling from the sky, oil spills, fish dying, bankrupt cities, bankrupt states and a Federal Government that would be bankrupt if they ever stopped printing money for themselves, a world full of people who hate us and global warming.  But what are we focused on now, marketing, cell phones and making boner pills.  

Did you ever notice how everyone seems to become stupider as soon as they get behind the wheel of a car?   I don’t know why it happens, but people seem to become more and more inept on our roads on a daily basis.  It is not tough to see the evidence. It is as though everyone gets into their car in the morning and then proceeds to hit themselves in the head with a hammer before they pull out of their driveway.  In 2010 alone, I have personally witnessed the following roadside incidents;

·         A woman rammed into the side of a bridge and ripped off her own side view mirror and then just kept driving like nothing happened.

·          A guy who backed into a tree, in his own front yard, in the middle of summer.  And he must have done this at a high rate of speed because his car was basically destroyed.

·         A man who got hit by a car outside of my Laundromat who scrambled to his feet after the crash and grabbed his drugs off the ground and then just ran away. 

·         A man who slammed his kids head into the trunk of his car on accident.

·         A tractor trailer completely engulfed in flames in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

·         Finally I saw, a tow truck attempt to pull a car out of a ditch and effectively yanked his own tow truck into the ditch on top of the car he was trying to tow, destroying the car completely. 

These are events that I have personally witnessed or witnessed the immediate aftermath of, over the past one year of time.  People are terrible at driving cars these days, absolutely, positively terrible. 

Did you ever notice how terrible we are at handling traffic accidents?   In my opinion, if there is a traffic accident that potentially effects hundreds or thousands of people from getting to where they are trying to go, then priority one should be to move the wrecked crap out of everyone’s way.   Unfortunately, more often than not, the authorities spend an hour blocking off lanes, setting up flares, interviewing people, basically just dicking around trying to CSI the incident.  As though it is difficult to figure out which moron managed to slam into the other one with his car on a highway.  Meanwhile, the other several thousand of us taxpaying citizens, have to sit in our cars, burning through our precious gasoline waiting to be allowed to move on with our lives.

 If I had my way, there would be a huge bulldozer, every 10 miles or so, along every highway.  And if you are talented enough to get into a car wreck on a highway, you have about 15 minutes to overcome your injuries and get your car off the road and out of everyone else’s way.  If not, the bulldozer will move you and your car, and anything else in front of it into the ditch.  The cops can then sort it out later.  The bulldozer could also be useful for road kill removal as well as snow removal in winter; it’s a win win situation.

Did you ever notice how 90’s Alternative Rock has quietly become the most resilient genre of music, ever?  They say Rock and Roll will never die.  But more specifically, 90’s Alternative Rock seems to be more resilient then a cockroach in a nuke storm.  I am convinced that I am going to be listening to songs like “No Rain” by Blind Melon and “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” by The Spin Doctors until the day I die. 

What sort of royalties are Jane’s Addiction still collecting after all these years from their smash hits like; “Jane Said” and “Been Caught Stealing”?   I can’t go a month of my life without hearing both of those songs.  You can’t even get yourself away from this music, it will seek you out, wherever you are, and you will have to sit and listen to Perry Ferrell’s bitchy, womanly, pee-wee Herman voice, screeching out of your speakers. 

Why this genre?  You don’t hear 70’s disco music being played with anywhere near this sort of frequency, you can’t even find 80’s hair metal on the radio anymore except a few select songs.   The late 90’s, early 2000’s “Nu-Metal” movement is all but forgotten, grunge has been relegated to radio filler for all of the 90’s alternative rock wrapped around it.  I find it amazing that I can’t tell you the last time I heard the Beatles on the radio but I can tell you exactly the last time I heard The Counting Crows. 

Booze:

I have had a lot of fun on the drink.  I have also had some horrible experiences.  I think that this is true for just about anyone who has ever tried alcohol.   I don’t drink much anymore.  But when I do, I push the envelope.  Having a couple of social drinks just seems like a complete waste of time to me.   I don’t like alcohol that much, so I guess I just assume, that if I am drinking, I minus well get as much in as I can.  Here are a few interesting scenarios that have occurred in my life, that could only have happened with the help of mass amounts of booze. 

The Halloween incident:   A few Halloween’s ago, I dressed up as batman.  A slightly plump, 5’9 Batman, with glasses, but I wore it well.  I then went to the bar with several of my friends.  The night was going great; I had been drinking my favorite cocktail, (Bombay Sapphire and tonic) vigorously for several hours.  It was a laugh a minute kind of evening, everyone was all smiles.  Then it happened, some other short, fat man, entered the bar wearing a Superman costume.   Immediately, I felt as though it was my responsibility to put an end to the Superman vs. Batman rivalry.  

I remember leaning into my group of friends and yelling “This shit ends tonight”!!   I must have said this with some level of seriousness as my friends immediately looked concerned about what was going to happen next.   But it was too late.  I lowered my batman mask and proceeded to tackle the man in the Superman suit.   I don’t think Superman had been drinking nearly as much as I had, as he didn’t really fight back.  I think he was so shocked about what was happening that he couldn’t figure out what to do.  

The bar immediately erupted into cheers as people began cheering for whichever super hero they liked better.  The fun was short lived as we both were dragged out of the bar by the bouncers and physically thrown onto the sidewalk.   Who knew, Superman and Batman could be so easily disposed of by a couple of bouncers. 

The Fence Story:  This is a story I will not be able to tell my grandchildren without laughing my ass off.  Me and my good buddy Dan went out to some bars in the Warehouse District Neighborhood of Cleveland Ohio.  At the time, he lived on the West Bank of the Flats in Cleveland.   This is kind of a hike from the Warehouse District.  We closed down a popular hotspot known as the Blind Pig.   Both of us were absolutely cocked. 

Now, at this point, what we should have done was take a cab back to his place on the West Bank.   But Dan wanted to walk and save the 15 dollars.  Had he known what was about to happen, he would have paid triple. 

We get about a quarter of the way back to his place and I, for some insane reason, announce that “I know a shortcut”.  For the life of me I cannot remember where I got this idea as I had never made this particular walk before.  I had never made any sort of a walk like this anywhere.  Certainly not in this state of mind.  But Dan went along with it without much of an argument. 

After a couple minute stumble through an enormous parking lot, we came to a fence.  This fence was 12 feet high with barbed wire on top of it. On the other side, it was woods, which we couldn’t see through, because it was about 2 in the morning.  I convinced Dan, that if we could just climb over this fence, we would be at his apartment in no time.   In years since, I have often looked at this area on Google Maps and always laugh, because this fence is absolutely nowhere near where Dan’s apartment was. 

So I climb the fence first, hammered and laughing as I reach the top.  I tried to straddle the barbed wire but my pants got caught and it tore a gash in my pant leg clear down from my inseam to my knee.  I then fell over the top of the fence, down 12 feet onto the dirtiest, litter covered, wooded hill, imaginable.  Dan was next.  And in a near impossible turn of events, Dan also got his pants caught on the top of the fence and fell down the hill.  So there we were the two of us, with matching slits in our pants, drunk, filthy, bleeding and tired.  But we were over the fence, nothing could stop us now.

At this point, we walked down the hill and through the patch of woods, the entire time thinking we would emerge on the other side and be right at Dan’s apartment complex.  To our dismay, the wooded area ended at the edge of an 80 foot, man-made, drop off into another parking lot.  There was no way down, no ladder, no stairs, and nowhere else to go but back the way we came…..  back over the fence.

At this point, we are blaming each other for this predicament, but in hindsight, it was mostly my fault.  Again, I went first over the fence.   I couldn’t concentrate as Dan was laughing his ass off and I was too.  My other leg got caught on the barbed wire and ripped an identical gash into my other pant leg.  In aggravation, I attempted to just leap down to the parking lot.  Unfortunately a guard rail got in the way of my balls and I crotched myself on it.  To this day, nothing has ever been more painful.   I remember laying on the ground, bloody, my pants destroyed, covered in dirt and filth, having just crotched myself on a guard rail, holding back tears of pain while Dan nearly choked to death laughing.  Dan’s laughter was short lived as he had gotten the idea that he could somehow avoid climbing back over the fence and squeeze under it instead.  Unfortunately Dan was unable to hold the fence up high enough and it snapped back onto his forehead, immediately creating a bloody gash in the middle of his head. 

At long last, we were both on the other side, back to where we started.  We went to the nearest bar to try to clean ourselves up and the bouncer looked at us like we had three heads.  I told him that we got hit by a bus and needed to use his bathroom.  And he believed us.  At that point, we were so dirty and bloody and tattered that someone actually believed that we had been hit by a bus!  After a quick cleanup in the restroom, we walked the rest of the way back to Dan’s and passed out.

Late for work:  One evening after work, myself and some of my colleagues went out for “a few beers” at the bar across the street from my job.   About a dozen beers later, at around 2:30 in the morning, I was in no condition to drive home.   I managed to stumble back across the street to my car which was parked right in front of the door of my job.  I got into the passenger seat, propped it all the way back, and passed out.  After all I had to be back in work in about 6 hours at 9 am. 

I woke up at around 11:30 in the morning, in the passenger seat of my own car, covered in sweat, with the sun beating down on me, still parked right in front of my office.  At some point throughout the night, I had taken my shirt off and was passed out, bare chest, in plain view of all of my coworkers as they arrived into work.  Worse off, I had to wander into work, 2 and half hours late, unable to make any sort of excuses for myself.  After all, how could I lie to my boss when he was able to see me passed out in my car, half naked at 11:30 in the morning on a Tuesday? 

Lube Stop Jacket Guy:   I used to spend a lot of time at what can be referred to as “Redneck bars”.  One thing I have learned since is that rednecks are not to be messed with.  Like most things in my life I learned this lesson the hard way. 

Me and about 3 of my friends found ourselves in some disgusting backwoods dive one evening and for whatever reason were already fairly drunk when we arrived.  About an hour and about 5 shots later I notice a man sitting by himself at the corner of the bar, wearing a bright yellow Pennzoil Lube Stop jacket.   The drunken idiot part of my brain informed me to immediately get up and give this man shit about it.  So I walked over behind him and began singling the Lube Stop….  Penz….Oil jingle into his ear.  This man was not having any part of this because without a moment’s hesitation he turned around and punched me in the face.  To this day, I have never been hit so hard.  I’ve been in serious car crashes that weren’t nearly as debilitating as this strike.   I remember making some sort of a sound that resembled that of a goose getting run over by a golf cart.  I then flew back against the wall behind me and lost consciousness for about eight seconds. 

When I came to, the man in the Lube Stop Jacket had proceeded to also punch my best friend in the face and was already working on another friend of mine. 

When it was all said and done, this man had basically kicked all four of our asses.  I guess it was just not a good day to make fun of that guy. 

Interestingly enough, we all got thrown out of the bar and he got to stay. 

Gyros anyone?  Myself and the aforementioned Dan were again shitfaced somewhere in Cleveland.  Around 1 in the morning, we decided to take a taxi back to a bar closer to his place.  Prior to entering the taxi, we went to a late night gyro stand and purchased a couple of Gyros to eat on the way. 

These particular gyros were not good.   We both took a couple of bites and were done with them.  Now, what we should have done was pitch them out the window or hold onto them until we found a garbage can.  But instead we shoved them into the taxi driver’s backseat pockets, those things where you generally put magazines, not messy food items. 

We arrived at our bar and got out and paid the driver.  He immediately noticed that we no longer had our gyros or any of the garbage that went along with them.  He then, very quickly figured out what we had done.  Dan and I stood there and laughed for a minute, thinking he would just be mad then go away.  Instead the cab driver pulled out a knife and proceeded to chase us about two blocks through the flats. 

Finally we lost him and had to come to grips with the fact that there is a taxi driver, somewhere out there, with a knife, who meant to kill us.  We went to a strip club. 

Sadly, this but a mere snapshot of the drunken tales that I could mention here.  More to come.