Updated: 10/20/2005
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12/31/3: OK, I've got my Resolutions page going, and, in an ominous sign, I have already included a few disclaimers and excuses right off the bat. Here is a hummingbird in deep cover. Possibly working for the shadow government. Aren't hummingbirds supposed to be incapable of sitting still? This one was just chilling like that for about three minutes. Well, another bear expert was mauled to death by bears. To achieve the rank of "bear expert," shouldn't you at least be keenly aware of the first important rule of bear analysis: Don't Fuck Around With Bears. Until these guys begin observing that, I will refer to myself as Bear Expert Grand Master Level 16. Going down to San Diego today to visit Davy, who's still in the Navy, and probably will be until he's about 48. We're going to play some new drinking game he discovered that he likes to call "Rear Admiral says that's an order" -- I hope it'll be fun. I'll be sure to take some photos. 12/30/3: Lord, I cannot handle any more shopping malls. Another 6 hours or so in the mall today left me wondering what I did wrong to get to these exact miserable coordinates on life's peculiar graph. I felt like this mannequin looked, and I resented her because she didn't have to live through the day with me. I still love it here, just need to stay the hell out of the malls. Which I plan on doing. The only redemption I found at the mall was a giant sporting goods store called Sport Chalet. I realized that outside of electronics, sporting goods are possibly the only area of merchandise in which I can lose myself for more than ten minutes. Hockey masks, clinchers, dirt bikes, dart boards, basketballs, mini-basketballs, catcher's mitts, sneakers, sweatshirts, caps, golf clubs, ping pong balls, rifles, tents, and tons more stuff that I'll never buy but I'll always be able to look at longingly. It kind of salvaged my day today, even though all I bought were three pins for pumping up various balls -- 99 cents. They didn't even have a good pump -- just a stupid little one that you squeeze with your hand, for ten bucks. One of them had clearly been returned already, you could see the box had been half-assedly taped back together. I asked the guy if these pumps were any good, and he was like, Yeah, as long as you only need to put a little air in the ball. He said it takes a LONG time squeezing the little balloon to fill up a ball. I was toting a mini-basketball around the store with me (I kept restraining myself from taking a couple of jumpers on one of the beautiful hoops they had set up), and the guy goes, it'll be fine to pump up that ball (motioning to the mini-ball I am holding). As if a) I was buying this ball, and b) I would be so concerned about this stupid $8 ball's ability to stay inflated that I would buy it its own personal pump for $10. Thanks, but I think I'll hold out for the pump that is fully capable of inflating balls of official size and pressure requirements. Re: what I was talking about in terms of physical basketball, check out this photo from the Lakers-Celtics game the other night. 20 years ago, benches might have emptied. Now I am not even sure a foul is called on a play like this. Either way, it shows you how brutally ugly the game has become. A guy like Paul Pierce, one of the most creative scorers in the league, just getting bashed around without pity. As Michael Jackson continues his astonishing physical decline into what is looking more and more like a mediocre-to-slightly-above-average circus clown, I am actually having a strange reaction to the constant barrage of Jacko clips on the news. Instead of marveling at how grotesque and freakish he has become, I am looking back on footage from three to five years ago, when we all thought he had already gone way around the bend in terms of his appearance -- you know, the weird armored kneepads, pale skin, elfin nose, etc.-- and thinking, Damn, he was normal back then. He looked good. I wish we could get back Michael '98. He was so handsome and presentable. This mad cow shit is no goddamn joke. You know this is just the beginning -- it's not like they caught the only infected cow. I'm aware that they have checkpoints throughout the cow-to-meat process, but it's not like this particular cow was on vacation in the UK, got drunk and had unprotected sex with another cow who was infected. There's more of 'em, I'm afraid. And it's going to be ugly when it all shakes down. It makes me proud of my stance back in '95 when I was opposed to naming the Food Network softball team the Mad Cows. They called me a killjoy, but even then I knew the old CJD was no laughing matter. It's just a stone's throw from the rage virus in "28 Days Later." I truly hope they are able to isolate this cow and secure the food supply. Until then, it's a good time to be a vegetarian (although I could already be infected from my carnivore days), and it'll be nice to see a few more veggie dishes popping up on menus in restaurants that have sneered at vegetarians in the past. I have been thinking up some serious resolutions for 2004. They have the earnest hopefulness of a perennial failure, so I think I am on the right track. I will post them later this week. 12/29/3: As I was watching the guys playing hoops at Laguna Beach and itching to get into a game despite just finishing a rough week with the flu, it occurred to me that it's not just the NBA that's gotten rougher, clunkier and harder to watch. Somehow the defense-heavy, forearm-in-your-gut-as-you-shoot-a-jumper style of play has trickled down to the schoolyard as well. Which is kinda weird, because I attributed a lot of the NBA's awkwardness and physicality to players who were grotesquely bulked up on steroids, along with a few other factors. To think that the average guy on the street has taken the worst elements of what he sees in televised NBA games and integrated it into his own game at the park is puzzling to me. But it's definitely happened. I've noticed it in games I've played in, too. I even notice it in my own game. I had attributed the steady dulling of my skills to age and the fact that I'm now a fat pig, but I think maybe there's something darker at work. Maybe the planet shifted on its axis just a teeny bit, so now all of us are slightly off-balance, a world full of mini-Charles Oakleys. The game has just become so hard. This is not just nostalgia -- I remember watching and playing in games that had a flow, some sense of rhythm, some back and forth. Now it seems like every man on the team must expend insane amounts of energy just to get a shot up at the basket. And there's always someone clutching and grabbing at you as you try to go by them. I want to find a place somewhere where there is still no-D 80's-style ball being played. In the meantime, I'm going to head back down to Laguna Beach later this week and give the fellas a little taste of the East Coast. My heart goes out to John W. and all fans of the pathetic Minnesota Vikings. That must have been a real kick in the (already sore) nuts. As long as I am in Cali, I think I will post at least one photo a day. I am a tourist; we take lots of photos. Photos to one day convince ourselves that our life was full of golden moments, that it wasn't a big waste of time. I think I will start taking pics on a smaller resolution, these take a while to load (I know, I can shrink the pics down after I take them as well). For now, I like the big clear screen-fillas. Here is the birdman of Santa Monica (click to view):
12/28/3: What's more irritating than someone in the first blissful stage of new gadget love, I ask. Today I went out to Laguna Beach and took scads of meaningless pictures of everything I saw. I welcome you to view a few of them. More evidence, IMO, of California's blatant superiority to New York. People dancin', people laughin', a man selling ice cream. The trick is staying away from the mall, and finding a place you can walk around a little bit. 12/27/3: Another tremendously dimwitted thing NBA announcers love to say is, "You know, the first team to 100 usually wins in the NBA." In today's NBA, the first team to 100 should win by 20! This statement is the height of obviousness. Maybe if they said, first team to 38 usually wins, that would be interesting...whatever, it's so incredibly stupid -- the first team to any number usually wins -- they're ahead! Reaching a number as high as 100 first means they are ahead with very little time remaining! The first football team to 60 usually wins. The first soccer team to 12 usually wins (ok, the first soccer team to 1 usually wins). Let's just carry on from this point under the assumption that we all accept these truths to be self-evident. We don't need announcers who have little concept of the basic arithmetic involved in keeping score reminding us of things that are so obvious that the family dog can figure them out on his own. The Clipper announcer kept talking about this 100 point bullshit tonight, he even called it "Lawler's law". Of course, when the Clippers reached 100 with a 5 point lead and 30 seconds to go, he was proven correct, as if by magic. To me, the biggest artistic compromise a person can make is to do a posthumous ad. It started with those Gap ads: "Sammy Davis Jr. wore khakis." "Jack Kerouac wore khakis." "Jim Varney wore khakis." Then there was Jim Henson and John Lennon pushing Macintosh. Don't forget the horror of those Coca-cola commercials featuring Louis Armstrong, Humphrey Bogart et al. Today I saw Steve McQueen shilling for Tag Heuer. How bad do these celebrities need the money that they are willing to endorse a product from beyond the grave? We have fond memories of you, why would you choose to foul everything up with an ad for a product you can't even use (because you're dead, remember)? Also, as an advertiser, wouldn't you rather see your product in the hands of someone who is alive, keeping intact for a moment the myth that whatever it is you're selling holds the secret to eternal life? As of 12/27/03, I hereby boycott any product promoted by a dead person (except Coke). And I welcome any and all photoshopped incongruous dead celebrity ads that you can send my way. It boggles my mind how quickly we grow frustrated with the shortcomings of our tremendous technology. I am sitting in bed on my laptop, borrowing someone else's internet access, and I'm pissed off because a page is loading too slow. What happens if you use the red-eye reduction feature while photographing an albino?
12/26/3: Since it's still the holiday season, I thought I would pass along this bit of Christmas cheer, from an officewide email that was forwarded to me: "I hope whoever took my money has a very Merry Christmas on me. Thanks for making mine even brighter. You must have needed it more than I did." As a product of New York City, I enjoy spouting off every now and then about all the things I missed out on, the regular childhood I was denied. I'm sure my upbringing is responsible for the love of mall life that I often claim to feel. You know, when I was a kid, we never had toilet paper in a size bigger than a four-pack. So when I go to the Price Club or Wal-mart of any of the hideous compounds in any of the innumerable strip-malls out here in the suburbs of Southern California, I am a little blown away. Aisles and aisles of oversized shit you'll never need, right at your fingertips. And then there are the glorious outlet malls, where you can get a Gap T-shirt for $4 less than you can at the regular Gap. It seems pretty heavenly to me. People are always railing on the uniformity of the suburbs, the fact that you have to drive everywhere, the lack of the special little places that New York is full of. And I've always been like, you're just saying that, you know you love the suburban trails of wonder and happiness as much as I do. But then I was driving around today and we went to about three malls, and it really is stifling. It's just as congested and unpleasant and unfriendly as New York or any other city, only your anger is expressed from behind the wheel of a car instead of face to face on the sidewalk. It's a culture of cowards, cutting each other off and then refusing to make eye contact at the light. Today we saw a pedestrian in a mall crosswalk screaming at, flipping off, and finally kicking the door of a car that had come too close to him. The driver just sped away as fast as possible. And the food, stores and architecture are the same all over the place. It's wearing me out already. Since I got my awesome digital camera, I have been really eager to take some pictures, but there's been nothing exciting to photograph, just a series of one-story malls as far as the eye can see. We did drive by the nuclear power plant, but I was a little late on the draw so I got a terrible shot. But since I must post something, here is a photo of the quant little coffee shop that I am sitting in as I type this. I want to announce how sickened I was by Latrell Sprewell's antics the other night. Whatever about Dolan and how he's driven the franchise into the ground. So what if he said some mean things that Sprewell took personally. That may all be true, and I wish we had a better dude in charge than we do. But let's look at Latrell -- the guy who was screaming and taunting and acting like he can score 30 every night. Forgetting that on most nights, he's perfectly likely to go 4-14 and be almost completely unnoticed for the entire game. And the media reaction to his ridiculous outbursts was overwhelmingly, stupefyingly positive. After being warned by the refs to calm down, Spree kept right at it, drawing a technical that brought the Knicks within three in the final minute of the game. Yes, the Wolves won, so who cares, but if I am his coach at that point I am thinking, how far in life can I go with a guy who acts like this? 33 years old or whatever he is, and behaving like a wounded teenager. The eternal gullibility of Knicks fans and the "whoever's on top this minute is in the right" mentality of the sports media is just tremendously disappointing. Knicks fans will say insane things about Spree like "He has heart" or "He's clutch" or "He's such a New York player" and everyone forgets that the guy took every other game off as a Knick, that he had the practice habits of a hobo, that he really had that one great playoff run as a Knick (which had as much to do with Allan Houston and LJ as it did with Spree), and that was it. Where was he these last two years when the Knicks couldn't make the playoffs in one of the worst conferences in the history of sport? He was on a shitty team, and he played like he didn't care. He's a bad teammate and a pretty bad guy. I don't hate him. He can be completely charming off the court and breathtaking to watch on it, but he's a streaky player on both ends of the floor and there was no justifying his antics the other night. And I don't think there are more than five coaches in the league with the guts to stand up to him. On paper, I really like this Wolves team, and they had to do something to give Garnett some help, but I predict their season ends with some very nasty words said about each other in the press. Cassell will take bad shots, Wally will slip and fall on some hair gel, Sprewell will disappear, and nobody will get the ball in to KG where it belongs. Then Spree will shrug his shoulders the way he always did when the Knicks lost, as if to say, "You and I both know it's not my fault." And the fans will eat it up. 12/25/3: My ability to own and safely operate a laptop with a built-in wireless card is comparable to mankind's ability to safely possess the atomic bomb. Meaning, I am not nearly smart enough or righteous enough to be trusted with the awesome and dangerous power that I now possess. I am now sitting in my wife's parents' house, surfing the internet and updating the bungle on somebody else's wireless internet connection. Thanks, whoever you are. The scary thing is not just that cyber-morons like me are able to get online all over the damn place because it's so easy, it's also that we have no idea how vulnerable we are making ourselves by doing so. Like the atomic bomb, our wireless technology now gives us far greater power than our limited morality and intelligence can harness. But I am all for it until I end up on one of those identity theft commercials or some guy in Belarus turns verbungle.com into a mail-order bride service. Or my computer itself gets stolen. Then I will wish I had a bog ol' desktop with a dial-up connection, but until then I am strongly in favor of laptopedness. I am remarkably still quite sick, although my spirits were buoyed by the arrival of a digital camera courtesy of Santa today. Now I want to get better so I can go photograph some cool shit instead of my own hand holding the instruction manual. 12/24/3: Happy holidays, everybody (and I think I can count you on one hand). I am still quite sick out here in 70 degree Southern California, but what a great way to recover. My wife's family is being kind to me, and I am just sitting around, watching TV and looking out the window into the sunshine. So Isiah Thomas is now running the Knicks. What a classic case of Good News, Bad News. Layden's gone? Yes! They replaced him with crazy Zeke? No! The way I look at it, anything is better than Layden, but Isiah is a little too high-profile for me. He's gonna want to coach the team, and that's not gonna work, and eventually he'll get fired, we'll still suck and it'll be 2007. As corny as they are, this year I am definitely making some resolutions. I enjoyed this sentence: "Rodman was arrested in October in Las Vegas and charged with driving under the influence after crashing a motorcyle while doing stunts outside a strip club." 12/22/3: I think this probably happens every year: people recommend that I get a flu shot, I scoff and say that I never get sick, and then I get KO'd by a hideous, fanged flu. I am as sick as a very sick dog right now, and I sat on a plane for 6 hours yesterday so I could make it to SoCal for a more pleasant recovery environment. Every time someone I know flies, I like to get a meaningless little report on how their journey was -- airport traffic, security, lines, terrorists thwarted, turbulence, food served, flight attendant attitude, delays in landing and taking off, crowdedness of flight, movies shown, etc. You probably find this completely mundane. So here is mine: Traffic to the airport was intense. It took about an hour and twenty minutes to go from W. 72nd street to JFK. On the way there, we listened to WINS, which kept reminding us about the terrorist threat being raised to Orange and that airplanes are still Al Queda's weapon of choice. It also said to get to the airport way earlier than normal, due to the security measures. And we were actually running way later than normal at the time. We got there about an hour before our flight, and discovered that there was no line at all. We checked in instantly and had a good half hour to kill before boarding. I was really, really ill, and a little dazed as we trudged through the bleakness of JFK's American terminal. Why do other cities all have nice, modern, cheery airports, and ours looks like its floor hasn't been buffed since 1972? As I was sort of stumbling towards Au Bon Pain, where we planned on eating our last ground-bound meal, I accidentally nudged the rolling suitcase of a haggard, angry flight attendant with my foot. I apologized in the strongest voice I could muster, and she turned to me and said, "You should really be more careful" through a forced smile. I was so sick and so out of patience that I almost laid into her, but my energy failed me and I couldn't think of anything smart-assed enough to put her in her place. So I let it go. We ate our little pre-flight meal, bought about 7 magazines at Hudson News, and headed off to the gate. Security was minimal and unenthusiastic. The flight was already boarding when we got to the gate, so we went right on. And who should greet us as we boarded? None other than the nasty lady whose bag I kicked. The flight to John Wayne airport in the O.C. was only about half-full, so the wife and I had a row to ourselves. Then a child in the row behind us began screaming and kicking Meeri's seat, and the mom looked at us, shrugged and basically told us to get used to it. So we asked the evil witch stewardess lady if there were any other empty rows, and she said, "I really don't know...you'll have to go and check for yourselves." Which we did. We found one that was empty near the back, and we just had to deal with a mild bathroom smell the rest of the way. We passed on dinner -- all that was left was some mystery beef dish. Movie: Finding Nemo. Turbulence: Minimal. Terrorist attacks: zero. Delays: none. I tried to sleep the whole way, but airplanes are just not very comfortable. Now we're here in Beautiful Southern California, and I am wheezing and holding the back of my head. My wife's mom compared me physically to Geraldo Rivera yesterday. But I can look out the window as I type this and it's the endless green of the golf course they live on, and the foothills behind it, and I am glad to be away from NYC. One thing, though: people here REALLY get into the whole Xmas lights all over the house thing. I find it unsettling. Apparently there is an Arab family who recently moved into the neighborhood, and they have totally failed to get their house all spritzed up for Santa. The nerve of some people. 12/20/3: Obvious basketball comparison of the day: Travis Diener and Mark Price. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, but I am the first to say it in the same paragraph with the word "megaphallus." Anyway, he's real good. I know the U. of Wisconsin sports program has made huge strides since I left school, but it seems like we'll never really turn the corner and become one of those schools whose reputation is so strong that blue-chip recruits flock there by the dozen. In football, we rely on a bunch of humongous milk-fed dudes from Up Nort' to block for an offense that is always run-first. In basketball, we play that annoying, D-first, 57-49 final score brand of ball that rarely turns out an NBA player (the wonderful Michael Finley aside -- and that was back when I was living on West Wilson St. in Madison). Every year, our hoops team has at least one awkward-looking mountain man type that makes us look kinda pitiful. Still, #18 in hoops right now, a Final Four appearance a few years ago, and a Bowl game every year in football. And at least we're not Duke. Had a fun night with Chris W. last night, although there was no real turnout. I think it's mostly my own fault for failing to organize a real night out in advance. Still, any night when you eat a slice of vegan birthday cake that a stranger hands you in a bar can't be all bad. OK, maybe it could, but it wasn't. Any night out when you can wake up the next day with at least one joke that doesn't make you cringe can't be all bad. Last night's was my new euphemism for having to take a dump, inspired by the Tibetan food we ate: "I gotta go free Tibet." There were lots of laughs. Mostly at jokes that, in the naked light of a sober morning, weren't that funny. That's why The Bar is so great. Everything just becomes about 60% better as soon as you walk in the door. You're cold? Come warm up. Tired? Pull up a stool and rest your elbows on our beautiful wooden elbow-supporting structure. Thirsty? Choose from a selection of fine beverages from around the world. Ugly? Not in here you're not. Other people are ugly? Not in here they're not. Stupid? So are we. I love The Bar, and it will probably be my eventual undoing. And there is no better bar than 7B, no matter what anybody says about its decline. Still a great mix of people, a great and loud jukebox, and a beautiful horseshoe bar. Earlier in the night, we were at Mona's on Avenue B, and the bartender there was a little new. He hadn't really grasped the concept of the buyback yet. Chris and I were alternating rounds and after maybe the 4th round, he told me that my drink was free, but not the other. So that's sort of a half buyback. We were just about ready to leave, but we decided to complete the experiment and see if Chris would then get half a buyback when he bought the next round, which indeed he did. So we did eventually get a whole buyback, although an unorthodox one. Sort of like a triple-double with assists, rebounds, and steals. We'll take it. Perhaps the bartender was using that buyback system because it helps prevent him from giving away too many or too few buybacks. It simplifies things for him a little. The buyback is a tradition of such undeniable genius that I can't believe it hasn't spread further into other sectors of commerce. Everybody wins in a buyback situation. The bar keeps you there, buying drinks and waiting for a buyback. You end up getting drunk, spending tons of money and still feeling like you won a raffle or something. Notice that restaurants come and go every six weeks, but bars basically last forever. Admit it: you've been going to the same bar for ten years now. And if they don't give you buybacks, they should. If I ran a store, there wouldn't be "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" sale items. There would be a general practice of giving away free shit, but not an explicit policy. It would be at the cashier's discretion if they felt like throwing in a pair of socks on the house or something. I'd be rich. 12/18/3: So I'm in Eddie Bauer tonight, buying some gloves for my office buddy, doing my holiday duty, helping fuel the economy and probably making Bush even more invincible than he already is after the essentially meaningless capture of Saddam. I am at the counter with the gloves, in the left lane. As I am being rung up, a dude walks up to the counter in the right lane, and approaches the right-side cashier woman. So far, commerce is flowing beautifully. Everyone is in their proper positions. Then the holiday cheer is put to the test. The guy places a brand new pair of black jeans on the counter, then opens a bag and says, "I would like to exchange these pants for these pants," and produces another pair of black jeans. A transaction that takes place thousands of times a day in Eddie Bauers from Albany to Walla Walla. Except this pair of jeans, the pair he is attempting to return, look to be about 14 years old, are a completely different style, and the entire ass area is worn all the way through as if this guy had tunneled out of a prison cell while wearing them. Cashier: "Oh wow...um, you've had these for awhile, haven't you...about how long have you had these?" Guy (who by all appearances was not broke or homeless): "Not that long." These jeans were definitely from before 1997. Cashier: "I think you've had them for quite a while. Look at this area here (pointing to shredded ass area)...that's just regular wear and tear. The product isn't defective. You've just worn them out." Guy: "uhhhhhh." Cashier: "I'll tell you what -- I'm gonna go ahead and give you an even exchange this time, but going forward, you can't be returning pants that you've worn out and exchanging them for new ones, OK?" Guy: "Uh---uh---uh. Uh-huh." Guy nods with some degree of appreciation, and then leaves. There's some NYC holiday love for you. Then tonight, I'm doing laundry. This is one of my assigned tasks within the marriage. I take it pretty seriously. I have strong opinions about laundry, what's right, what's wrong, how ruthless is too ruthless, etc. It's my job. Anyway, for maybe the second time in two years, the change machine in our building's laundry room is blinking to indicate it's out of change. And I have lugged 70 lbs. (really) of laundry down there at this point. I need to do this laundry. I run out into the 25 degree night in my scrubby laundry T-shirt, and I go to a couple of stores to get as many quarters as I can. I need almost $20 worth. I get about eight. I run into my wife, and she goes out to seek more quarters. I go to get things started in the laundry room. A nice man who's just finishing up his drying notices that I am short on change and says he has "a shitload" of quarters upstairs, and offers to go get them. No, there was no mention of etchings or backrubs. Just a kind fellow looking to do another fellow a good deed on laundry night in the big city. So he goes back upstairs, and in the meantime, my wife comes back with another seven dollars in quarters. So now I only need a dollar or two from the guy, which I purchase from him when he comes back down. He's got a little tupperware thing with maybe 12 bucks worth of quarters in there, and he sets it down as he folds his laundry. Another guy comes in to start his laundry, and he also buys some quarters from the Patron Saint of Laundry Quarters. After I get my stuff in the washers, I go back upstairs. Boy this story is starting to drag. Anyway, later that night when I go back downstairs, kind quarter man is down there again, and he asks me if I've seen his tupperware thing that should be full of quarters and bills. It's nowhere to be found. Somebody fucking took it. I felt terrible. I told him I hadn't seen it. He just kind of stumbled up the stairs in his Michigan basketball jersey, shaking his head. Then I ran into another guy down there, and I asked him if he had seen the quarter thing. He said no, and he might have been telling the truth, but he added, "Not the best night to be leaving quarters around." Scumbag. For those who keep track of these things, Marv Albert's toupee has begun to turn blonde. 12/17/3:
I love New York. Don't let me forget that. Tonight, on a rainy-ass Wednesday, I ate delicious German Food, drank beer in a strange smoky (despite the law against smoking) second-floor bar, saw two lousy bands in another random dive and made it home by a little after 11. The first band was called the Paris Hiltons, following in a long line of successless bands that named themselves after pop culture phenomena. Didn't they learn from the mistakes of Buttafuoco and the One-eyed Wives? Anyway, they were less terrible than their unforgivable name, and they were followed by a girl band called the Julie Bridge something. We ran out the door as they busted into "Cult of Personality." Crapola. Still, people swarming all over the city, checking shit out. This is excellent. Master P's brother, a rapper named C-Murder, has been convicted of murder. My new rap name: C-Lottery Winna. I am getting a digital camera for Christmas (I peeked), and I intend to rob a page from my new online hero Tony Pierce by posting some got-damn photos every day. I am thinking of posting a minimum of four daily photos that help summarize my experience from that day. Although I don't know how exciting pictures of my desk and my cable box will be. Baseball is really starting to kick ass again. It's December, and it's way more interesting than any of the sports in season. Another thing I realized -- in ten years on the job, I have only given my 'all' maybe 14 times. Today I worked a pretty serious day, felt spent and greasy and manly on the way out, and then I looked at my watch and realized I had only been there for nine hours, and I had taken a full hour lunch and spent at least an hour checking shit out on the old internet. So seven work hours is the best you can get from me. I can stay at work for up to 12 hours without a problem, but I need some fuckaround time thrown in there. Multiple consecutive hours of concentration and labor do not agree with me. The following is one of those "shouldn't have posted it" sequences that I normally delete -- but today, in the spirit of Christmas and all the other religious holidays (both longstanding and made-up-to-get-in-on-the-action), I offer you this unedited, small-brained nugget of love. Wash it down with some egg nog. "Sometimes I feel sort of guilty for concerning myself with the small things in life, the things that some might call trivial or even meaningless -- warm laundry, people who cut in line, new digital cameras, mashed potatoes, sports, acute ball itch, etc. Am I wasting my time? I guess the reason I do it is because it's in these things that I can find certainty and truth. When Sherman Douglas did that fake behind the back pass and went in for the layup back in '87, I know from experience and from my own two eyes that it was some sweet shit. When I drink hot soup, I am happy. But if I try to figure out how I feel about a huge global event, like say the war on terror, I am inevitably left frustrated, because it's so hard to tell what's true and therefore what's right and wrong. Even ace reporters relying on multiple sources can't be sure all the time. Why is the truth so elusive? Because people fucking lie. We do it effortlessly or we do it painstakingly. We do it when we need to, we do it for fun, and sometimes we do it for no reason at all. George Bush lied to the American people 14 times today. So while I believe in the concept of a 'War on Terror,' it's impossible to listen to the updates on said war. I bench 275. There. I just lied. Dick Cheney does worse than that between bites of Honey Bunches of Oats each morning. Over the course of the next 24 hours, thousands of courts will hear cases in which one or both concerned parties are lying under oath. It's almost always easier than telling the truth, and nothing's more appealing than easy. And when we're not lying, we are just getting shit wrong. Even in this era of electronic surveillance and fact-checking and covert intelligence, people fuck up the story about 80% of the time. We're human; we screw up constantly. Read Peter Vecsey's column for a week and you'll see. To dig for hard truths to big questions is to throw yourself onto the mercy of other people's competence and integrity. People you don't even know. People whose motivation you don't know. And as much as I don't trust America's leadership in this (endless) war, I feel even less sympathetic towards our enemies. Think about religion: all that stuff was reported and passed down thousands of years ago, without minidisc recorders or Betacams or any hard evidence that it happened. Just eyewitness testimony. How am I supposed to believe one religion over another? Why should I believe anybody's witnesses more than somebody else's? These dudes lived hundreds of years ago, in a primitive age, when news traveled by mouth and by horse. I don't know if these witnesses were drunk or stoned or dishonest or crazy or stupid or just liked telling stories. And these kids today are so sure that Mohammed or Muhammad was on point (note that we don't have an agreement on a Western spelling of the dude's name) that they are willing to crash jets into buildings. Crazy shit. Just as crazy as David Koresh. I know, it's not just religion that's fueling the hatred, it is the continuing policy of occupation and exploitation that the US has adopted across the earth. But you must be not just desperate and hopeless but also pretty sure there's a 'paradise' on the other end of your act of martyrdom to go through with some of these things. I can't justify terrorism, not only ethically, but from a logistical standpoint. Historically, it just doesn't work. And then I see a nose hair dangling out my nostril in a most unpleasant way, and I think, I can take care of that. That I understand. I hate us and I hate the people who hate us. So rather than trying to come to terms with that, I choose to focus my energies on things that I can wrap my small mind around, like my magic box and a beautiful, curving frisbee toss." Saw this on the street today:
That's pretty much actual size. What do you think it is? 12/15/3: I almost forgot to mention that I watched some of the Miss America pageant from 1984 the other day. Normally I don't think it's fair to belittle someone for the way they look, but since this was a beauty pageant, and the women in it presumably represent the hottest their generation had to offer, I feel it's necessary to tell you how hideously ugly the contestants were. OK, Vanessa Williams won, and she is pretty much indisputably beautiful, although she was a few years away from getting herself completely together. But the other ladies -- to quote Spike Lee, "They be ugly, mugly dogs." I am fairly certain one of them was a man -- a man that looked a good bit like David Schwimmer -- and he wasn't even the worst of the crop. 80's style is just so irredeemable -- the women were wearing hideous unflattering baggy dresses with belts and shit, and their hair was absolutely incredible. The hair in particular robbed these women of any smidgen of sex appeal they may have been born with. But the women were also just plain ugly. It was remarkable. How could our sensibilities have careened so far off the tracks? But the reason I bring it up is because one of the women (I believe it was Miss Alabama) said of her future plans, "As a math major, I may one day design a future Space Shuttle." That was terrific. It forced me to realize how low I am setting my goals -- I am pretty happy if I get out of work at a reasonable hour, eat some decent food and post something stupid to this website. I need to look beyond this day to day nonsense. But I also don't want to overstep my bounds. I am thus announcing that I may one day jump over the Snake River Canyon on a Vespa. I recently stated that you should get full (or at least some) credit for coming up with an idea that has been already been thought of by someone else, as long as you are reasonably sure you came up with the idea independently, without any inspiration from the original idea-haver. Today, I created a word, "scronads," that I think needs to become part of the lexicon (it practically defines itself). And a search for "scronad" actually turns up zero hits. I was pretty excited about my new word, and I was ready to give it its world premiere here tonight, but then discovered two mentions of "scronads" elsewhere on the web. My heart sank, but I swear I came up with it on my own as sure as these other two geniuses did. So I feel entitled to a small slice of the scronad pie. And it makes me realize: 1) you need to come up with a damn good idea to be truly original at this point, with every clown and his cousin blogging away with all their bullshit. 2) It's the creation that's important, not the creator. It is my duty to spread the word of scronad, even if the idea was not technically mine. 12/14/3: Last night I went to a couple of holiday parties and got my drunk on. I stumbled home and then went back out to purchase some Gray's Papaya hot dogs for my wife and myself. Shows you once again how alcohol impairs your judgment. As a vegetarian, I really slipped up. Oh well, it just made my hangover a little more intense, and I can still taste the onions. Ugh. I feel like this guy looks:
I think it's only a matter of time before Williamsburg hipsters are rocking the "Just Captured" look. In fact, I saw this guy working at Urban Outfitters:
None of this is really very funny. Saddam's capture is all over the news on this snowy, rainy, slushy Sunday. I have a few opinions about it, but I am actually already sick of everyone talking about what it means, how Bush is gonna parlay it, etc. It's sort of like the blackout and the tragic departure of Andy Pettitte. I know it's a very big deal, but it just wears me out to hear everybody's cockamamie opinions. Therefore I will spare you mine. But if you have one that is unique and brilliant, I am all ears. Getting less press today are the first-round playoff games in my fantasy football league. My team Nimphius was solid today, but as of 10:08 pm Joe Horn is going crazy for New Orleans and I think I may be doomed. Losing the division on a technicality hurt, losing William Green to drugs and domestic abuse stung, too. And now the inevitable end. Another 50 clams down the tubes. Warning: the Don Cheadle NFL commercials have returned. Try to avoid them if you can. 12/12/3: I went to a holiday party tonight that was 70% Greek. I mean real Greek, not fraternity/sorority Greek. The Greeks take themselves pretty seriously. But they were kind and seemed to understand that I could never be Greek no matter how hard I tried. They were OK with that. So we ate pizza with goat cheese and phyllo dough and we had some cookies and some beer and I listened in on a few conversations. I learned that not only are Gyros not authentically Greek (how could I not know this?), but that most people in Greece have no idea what they are. There were five people on the couch who looked suspiciously non-Greek, and they started playing a game in which each person was required to shout out a specific 'dirty' word (penis, nipple, anus, and a couple of others I can't remember). There was enough of a din at the party so that you sort of had to be listening to them to make out what they were saying, which I was. They were cracking themselves up, too, amazed that the rest of the party was generally indifferent to their little game. Maybe I wasn't drunk enough, or maybe my default setting is to be critical of strangers, but I found them annoying. Just a little. Of course, in high school I played a very similar game on occasion. If you were a kid who cut class all the time, you managed to locate other kids who did the same thing. If you were cool, you went to the park and smoked pot. If you were me, you either a) went into Stuytown to play basketball with the 35 year-old still-live-at-home dudes, or b) decided for some reason to hang out in the school library. They had some magazines in there -- I remember reading the Ebony magazine where they went to Magic Johnson's house and he had an "Isiah Room." Lord knows they probably had some fun in that room. There were also a lot of responsible kids who would go to the library to study for exams and work on papers and stuff during a free period, kids who had plans for productive lives. I remember sitting in there with another screw-up, a towering delinquent named Hardy Fischer, and we'd play a game which consisted of whispering a chosen word back and forth across the table at increasing levels of volume until we were shushed by the librarian. The two words I distinctly remember using were "zany" and "smegma" (this was when the term "smegma" was brand-new to us). Once we were reprimanded, we would return to our Sports Illustrated or Ebony and give the librarian a gesture of contrition, like "Pardon us, what were we thinking?" Within a minute, we were at it again. And it got pretty damn loud. Inevitably, the game would end with me shouting the word "zany" or whatever the specified word was, and the librarian kicking us the hell out. I think Hardy always respected me for really committing to the game. When we received the boot, we never argued at all, just packed up our things and shook our heads as we walked out amidst the stares. Two men ahead of their time. Incidentally, Hardy was also the master of returning to a class he had not attended in weeks, bearing only a self-penned, Juan Epstein-style note from his "parents" explaining his absence. My two favorites: "Please excuse my son Hardy Fischer for the dates
February 13th through April 9th. He has been undergoing intensive
psychotherapy. and "Please excuse my son Hardy Fischer from class from October 12th through December 18th. He has been battling stomach cancer." I wonder what ol' Hardy is up to now. I hope he's screaming in somebody's library. I also hope stupid Clemens comes back next year. He and Andy can have a little slumber party down in Houston, Pettitte can have a "Roger Room" in his crib. They'll be ready to shoot some pheasants by mid-August. 12/11/3: I was up before the sun today, yet I still managed to be almost late for work. That's what happens when you get caught up in a good game of Donkey Kong, Jr. It was pouring and I just missed the bus. I sprinted after that thing and caught it after three blocks. I haven't run that far that hard in months. It set the stage for the day -- I was always running a little behind, and busting my ass to catch up on stuff. I worked 10 good hours today and I put out a bunch of fires and pulled other employees from the wreckage about six times. It was one of those days when I wish somebody knew the lengths I to which I went so shit would get accomplished. In other words, it was an unusual day. No deep-space meanderings at my desk. It was also a day in which I actually uttered the phrase, "This is me closing the door so we can talk about Eminem's venereal diseases." Unfortunately, the person I said it to failed to come through with the scoop, if there was one, despite a connection to Eminem's people. So it was a sort of fulfilling day on some level, but it ended with me wrapping up a FedEx package to go to Knoxville, TN and wishing I could find some damn bubble wrap. Oddly, after I improvised with some styrofoam plates to cushion the package and set out on my walk to FedEx, I came across a piece of bubble wrap blowing through the street that must have measured 11' by 11'. Just an awesome piece of bubble wrap. It must have been a reminder of something. The loss of Andy Pettitte today was a serious kick in the stomach that I was totally unprepared for. I really liked and respected that dude, even if he's a squirrel-huntin', bible-thumpin' Friend Of Clemens. I Probably wouldn't have 10 words to say to him if we were sitting at the same table at Joe's Shanghai, but I admired the way he went about his business and I'd trust him with the keys to the car I'll never own. There will be much more about this terrible development later, including some bold predictions about Pettitte's future (it isn't pretty, you traitor) and what the hell the Yankees are doing to their team. The upshot is this, though, as far as my feelings for Pettitte: he's dead to me now. He turned his back on a city that loved him, a city like no other, so he could go play in the hellhole of Houston (apologies to the reader in Houston). This despite us ponying up more substantially more dough than the Stroh's (correct spelling) -- it is a wet dream for Yankee- and NYC-haters everywhere. Sleep well tonight, for tomorrow your sheets will be stained with Yankee Pride. Yuck. "He said if he were to run, he would focus his efforts on the third of the electorate that's not aligned with either party and with the 100 million adults who are non-voters." OK, as long as you promise those are the only people you'll allow to vote for you, OK then. OK. Promise? 12/10/3: Darryl Strawberry, the eternal fuckup. The King of the
Second Chance. I think you can tell a lot about a person by putting them to the
Strawberry test: when you see Straw at a Maryland basketball game, rooting for
his son, looking remarkably fit and youthful for a man who has been through the
shit he has, do you: ? I love reading tons of shit about the JFK assassination that I immediately forget, but the thing that bothers me is that everybody has to have a thesis. OK, that's not the real problem -- I can understand that if you study something exhaustively, you inevitably draw some conclusions. What is fucked up is that so many of these researchers --non-professionals, for the most part -- need to eliminate every piece of evidence that conflicts with their theory, even if to do so requires using faultier reasoning than the theory they are shooting down. This douche Gerald Posner is a good example -- he feels that he has conclusively proven that there was no conspiracy. He even wrote a book called "Case Closed" (check out the tremendous bias even within this half-assed review of Posner's book) about it. The arrogance to call a book that probably does not solve anything "Case Closed" is pretty excellent (this title was also used by Patricia Cornhole, who "solved" the Jack the Ripper Case). The Warren Commission had the same attitude towards their interviewees --- we know what we want, so tell us that or we will ignore you. Not to say there was a conspiracy, but you'll never be able to prove there wasn't. Even if LHO fired all the shots. When I look at Billy Donovan, I wonder if there is a smaller subset than the intersection of "Successful Coaches" and "Redeemable Humans." 12/10/3: I can't remember being this out of touch with the NBA since...well, since I first got in touch with it (that would be 1983). I have stuck with it through some tough times, and I've defended it against some allegations that, it turns out, were probably right all along. When friends said the college game was more pure, more exciting, more passionate, I always stood by my NBA, citing the talent level and the lack of garbage zone defense. Now there is zone in the NBA. 20 years ago, people said NBA players didn't bust their ass on D; now they play so much D that when a team breaks 100 points the fans all get chalupas. I have supported this league through 20 long years, the way your dad maybe always bought Fords. I just don't know any better. Perhaps part of the reason I am ready to jump ship now is the sputtering jalopy that rolls across the MSG floor these days. The Knicks aren't just bad -- they're wrong. Wrong like "Joe Millionaire II" or "Robin Leach: Talking Food." Wrong like Pat Boone's foray into metal or Justin Timberlake's beat box. Wrong like that German dude who ate the other guy. Just completely off. As much as rebuilding is part of sports, I don't want to waste what's left of my 30's watching Frank Williams pick up his dribble at halfcourt, or watching Van Horn hit three straight jumpers then disappear for a good six weeks. Were Lebron in our lineup, maybe I could overlook the rookie goofups, because there'd be some honey in there with all that vegemite. But there is no Lebron. There isn't even a guy whose name starts with "Le". There's Kurt and Allan and Keith and Charlie. Sounds like "My Three Sons," but it's just another bad year of a bad product, and I can't do it anymore. Some people still watch NYPD Blue, but once Zack started walking the beat, it became clear to most sane humans that it was time to break things off. I want to make it clear that it's not just a case of a quitter giving up on his team. I watched the Knicks when they were ugly and bad before, but at least they had no-names with great names like Ron Cavenall, Eddie Lee Wilkens and Ken "The Animal" Bannister. And I watched them when they were ugly and good, through the 90's. This is not just about the Knicks; my disgust these days is league-wide. A typical NBA game packs the same wallop of excitement as watching John Mayer eat cereal. Even at its best, it's bland, just like its magnificent MVP, Tim Duncan. It's bland like the national anthem or Times Square or Thanksgiving turkey, bland like something that's always going to be there and you're never gonna care. There's parity, I hear, but who gives a shit? Just a bunch of OK teams playing less than interesting ball every night. Give me two dominant, well-balanced teams in each conference and it might get interesting. Get rid of the three point shot, or move it back to half court and make it worth eight. Make the players call their own fouls. Have contests where fans can win a starting spot on their favorite team for a whole year. Get rid of dribbling and charging fouls. Play 4 on 4. Use a women's ball. Use two balls at once. Lower the rims to 9 feet. Play underwater. Arm the players. I don't know what, but something must be done. Until then, a part of me will always love you, NBA. And I will never forget our time together. But now it's time for both of us to move on. P.S. Pre-tournament college ball sucks, too. 12/9/3: Try this: the next time you're getting off an elevator, make strong eye contact with someone who's about to get on, then gesture with your thumb over your right shoulder back towards the elevator, and say, "I left a little something in there for you." At what point does an electric shock become an electro-cution? I was doing laundry tonight and I received about 50 painful shocks in a row. I think it's my new plastic laundry sack. This shit is gonna happen every time from now on. You know what is going to suck? When I get to the age/state of disrepair that I have to do that "lie down to get into the cab" maneuver. You know, where you sort of shimmy your way in, head-first, on your back? Not looking forward to that. A while back, I mocked the scars that appear on Seal's face, accusing him of slicing himself up to give himself a marketing angle. After a quick search, I learned the truth: "Dark-skinned, great-looking--despite (or in addition to) mysterious scarring on his face (contrary to popular belief, his triangular cheek scars are not the result of ritualistic body-modification, but of a childhood bout with tuburculosis)--6' 4" tall and fashion-conscious, Seal quickly captured the hearts of women everywhere, while men seemed to admire rather than resent him." I stand corrected, spelling mistake notwithstanding. 12/7/3: Nimphius fought hard to the end of the regular season, but came up short of the division title. Well, assuming I win my game this week (about a 60% chance), I will actually tie for the division title, but will lose on a questionable tiebreaker: division record comes before head to head. I beat the guy I am tied with in our one matchup, but he still gets the $100. Isn't head to head always the first tiebreaker in sports? Oh, the unfairness. I could have put that hunnert towards a digital camera. I am still accepting suggestions for which digital camera to buy, once I have the money available. New euphemism for a public diarrhea attack: A Story. As in, "Sweetie, we gotta leave this black tie dinner in the next two and a half minutes or I'm gonna have a story." Try it out, see what you think. Since you asked, I present my thoughts on Bruce Springsteen. I have been a fan for much of my life, but periodically I think he's the lamest, most melodramatic and least musical artist of all time. When he sings in that deep phlegmy howl, it's just awful. And then I'll hear "Atlantic City" or something, and I'm like, He's the best. But each album kind of comes and goes for me. Right now, I would say I hate "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and I am digging "The River," which I used to think sucked gigantic moosecock. He's like an old friend that sometimes embarrasses you but then comes through with some incredible act of kindness or generosity that just blows you away. MOJO did a guide to "Buying Bruce Springsteen" last month, and they selected the ten albums of his you should buy. Somehow, they neglected "Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ" and "The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle." What a colossal lack of taste. Those albums have plenty of faults, but they are brimming over with heart and youthful spirit. MOJO is British. 12/6/3: "We ride together. We die together. Bad Boys for life." I don't know what's worse, that line being in a movie that was actually made, or that line being used to advertise the release of said movie on DVD. I have not shoveled one ounce of snow in my whole life. Maybe this is why I'm so pleased whenever I see snow. You are probably thinking, "What a delicate and pampered little tulip Steve is." True, my hands are as soft as the top of a kitten's head, but that doesn't mean my life has been completely free from toil. I once had a job where a conveyor belt went by and you had to yell "Hold the line!" if you fell behind in your designated task. All my no-shoveling lifetime really indicates is that I've never owned a house. So on this snowy-ass weekend, my thoughts are with you, my home-owning, snow-shoveling, heart attack-suffering brothers. Be safe and be thorough. I will be in my apartment, watching snowy football games and scoffing at the flash-mob-style snowball fight that's taking place in Central Park today. 12/5/3: It's gonna snow like gangbusters this weekend. It's a hard heart that doesn't feel at least a little bit of glee when looking out your window at night and seeing all that beautiful snow falling through the streetlights. I think I am going to skip school tomorrow, watch The Price Is Right from 11:00-12pm, then suffer through Midday Live with Bill Boggs from noon-1pm. The cartoons should be on shortly after that. Maybe one of the reasons I hate hockey is because it looks so hard to play. You're on skates, you're flying around like a fool, guys are smashing you all up, and you have to make tons of split-second decisions. For instance, if I was a hockey player, I would have no idea when it was appropriate to shoot and when it was appropriate to pass. In hockey, guys will often take shots that they know have almost no chance to go in, hoping to create a rebound and a scoring chance for a teammate. This is too complicated and counterintuitive for me. In basketball, the goal is to pass the ball in order to create an easy scoring opportunity. Now that I think about it, maybe Allen Iverson isn't the selfish gunner he's made out to be. He's just adopted a hockey mentality and applied it to his own sport. There are several times a game when he draws three guys and just lobs up a crazy shot towards the rim, knowing his team has an advantage on the boards. He's also tough like hockey players are when described by sportscasters. I think we need to make a list of "Expressions that, when modified slightly, make less sense but are somehow more fun to say." I only have one so far: "In a Dick York Minute." I wonder if Michael Kay is tossing in his sleep tonight, knowing that the Yankees' trade pretty much eliminates any chance that the nickname he attempted to saddle Nick Johnson with ("New York Nick" - Lord was that stupid) will stick. 12/4/3: One of the interesting side effects of the digital age is how permanent and unforgiving communication has become. In the business sense, email has made it frighteningly easy to make all your requests in writing. There is really no excuse for just ducking your head into Richardson's office and saying, "I need the updated numbers on the Lerner account by next Monday" when in 11 seconds you can dash off an email to Richardson that says, "I need the updated numbers on the Lerner account by next Monday" and take away Richardson's deniability factor if the work doesn't get done. Of course, in addition to making us all accountable for what we do, it also makes us accountable for what we write -- we have to come through on our written promises, no matter how much we made them just to get the boss off our backs. In the past we could just say something vague and revise it later. Anyway, the same goes for our interpersonal communications. Who among us hasn't made a drunken ass of himself by calling a sober person on the phone and either professing our love for them or talking for 45 minutes about the magnificent grace of Scottie Pippen? Or done the same thing in a bar in front of a bunch of work colleagues? Or asked a humiliatingly ignorant question at the office? Oh, OK maybe that's just some of us. Well, the only thing that allowed us to live those mistakes down and move on is the ability to deny to ourselves just how bad it really was. After all, there was no proof. Well, now that we have the internet, our tendency is to write emails posting our ridiculous thoughts, or even worse, we post stuff on our dorky little websites. And as anyone who has ever hit the "Reply All" button by mistake can tell you, once it's out there, it don't come back. It's a matter of public record, even if only one other person has seen it. Occasionally I will come up with a post on this site that I type up in fifteen heated minutes of what I consider brilliance, then I post it and go to bed. It's not until the next morning that I realize just how stupid and embarrassing the post was. I guess I could remove it if it's shockingly bad and it's bothering me, but in a certain sense it's too late. It's already been seen by all three people who visit this site, and it's no longer just my own stupid thought (perhaps this post will fall into this category). Last night I typed up such a post: it was all about how my therapist compared me to Luis Sojo and how my generation feels like we're entitled to be more than Luis Sojo, and then I tied it in to Lee Harvey Oswald's co-workers at the Texas School Book Depository playing dominoes and eating cheese sandwiches in the break room and how they were satisfied making $1.25 an hour, and Oswald felt he was entitled to a bigger life than all that, and on and on into deep confusion and embarrassment. It had just the wrong combination of feeble humor and big, stupid, juvenile opinions about life. Sounds bad? It was. Only for once I got rid of it before I posted it. Maybe I will release it as a bonus track on the verbungle.com spoken word CD that will be in stores next spring. Enough about Oswald already. As most thinking people now accept, the real cover-up of the 1960's was the moon landing. And now Bush has announced plans for a new space age, with the moon serving as the centerpiece of our efforts. My first obvious thought is that this is good: we are basically acknowledging that the first moon landing was a big hoax, even though we're not doing it explicitly. After all, why would we care about (and spend billions on) going to the moon if we've already been up there four-wheeling and playing golf 30 years ago? This is like the government saying, "No, I'm pretty sure I already paid you back the $10 you lent me at lunch last week, but I'll buy you a beer anyway just so everything's all good." Secondly, I wonder if we now have the technology to actually pull this off; we certainly have the technology to fake it more convincingly. But can we really do it? Remember, in 1969 we lived in a world where you would watch a football game on TV and have no idea where the offense had to get for a first down. Things have changed. Who knows, maybe we can do it. It would really be funny if they worked on it for like eight years and then held a press conference where they go, "You know what? This is silly. There's no way we can go to the fucking moon." The only depressing part of this is that shit must be in a pretty dire place if they feel the need to distract us with a silly space program again. Then I think about it further and ask myself, "Who is more likely than Bush to have been gullible enough to believe the first moon landing?" Maybe this whole thing is the equivalent of a child who has just been tickled clapping his hands and saying, "Do it again! Again!" 12/2/3: Today was a cold bastard of a day. A day that would be cold no matter where you're from. Kick in the nuts, beg for death cold. The only thing that kept me from freezing was Nimphius's return to their winning ways. They are now 10-3 on the year, and have secured a playoff spot. I am proud of the guys, although William Green didn't report to the Browns today, the first day he was eligible to return from his 4 game suspension. Now the league is extending the suspension, and it looks like a return this season is highly improbable. I read a little bit about him, and one article mentioned that both his parents died of AIDS when he was a teenager. Wow. I feel terrible for judging him so harshly. I just hope the best for him. In the meantime, Nimphius is officially dedicating the season to him. A few months back, some kids I work with (I say kids, but they're probably around 25 on average) got in trouble for going to Maxim's website on their office computers. We work for a pretty conservative Christian company, and I guess the suits who run things prefer to view their T & A in the privacy of their own homes. And they probably like it a bit raunchier. Anyway, Maxim made the no-look list (dirtydogfucker.com did not), and when these kids went to the site, they got redirected to the Human Resources Department home page. Then they each got a phone call reminding them that the use of the internet is limited to business purposes and maybe once in a while checking out what Garfield's up to. Word was that anyone going to any of these forbidden sites could face big trouble, up to and including termination, next time. I never had any interest in going to Maxim's website. It's about the shittiest, most generic magazine there is -- the print equivalent of a Coors Light commercial. And I even sort of agree with our company policy -- people shouldn't be checking out bikini babes at work. Just seems like common sense. In fact, I have only read Maxim about three times in my life. Once when the host of one of our shows appeared in a photo spread, and we just had to check it out. The other times were when I was on vacation in some warm climate where you have nothing to do but sit by the pool and read shitty magazines. On one of those trips, I remember reading an (WARNING!*) interview with Curt Schilling that cemented my opinion of him as a windbag. So when my Red Sox fan friend emailed me yesterday to gloat over the Schilling signing, I felt the need to go back and dig up the link. Which I did. Then I clicked on it, went to the site and selected some bits to cut and paste into my response. I am stupid. It wasn't until at least ten minutes after I had sent the email that I realized I had wandered into the forbidden internet zone. So I figure it's a matter of time before I get fired. Or, more likely, the company has only blocked Maxim's home page, not the entire site. In which case I hope the Maxim kids down the hall find their way back in and check out all the babes. None of this changes the fact that Schilling is a big ugly asshole.** * If you work for my company, do not click on this link at work. ** I enjoyed the dictionary definition of asshole:
12/1/3: Do you think Charlie Ward can touch the rim?
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