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7/31/04: Friday Night Is Killing Me Dear Jaguar, Yes, I know you are a British company. But please stop pronouncing the name of your car as jag-you-are in your commercials, if you want us to keep buying them. To be honest, this pronunciation makes you guys sound like a bunch of g-lords. It sounds way cooler to pronounce the word like this: jag-wahrrr. Thank you for your attention in this matter. Sincerely, Hans Bungle "Hope is on the way" is just not good enough. I am terrified that they think this is going to get the job done. It's wimpy and annoying. Where are all the great slogan-writers? Today a couple of things made me really angry. I won't go into too much detail, but one of them was work-related and one of them was family-related. To the person who perpetrated the work-related nonsense: text removed for issues of job security But to the guy who scammed my 77 year-old father out of twenty dollars on the street: if I ever find out who you are, and I have a good opportunity to do it without going to jail or you killing me, I will break both your legs. You are the lowest form of scum to be found in a city that houses a glorious menagerie of scum-based life forms. You probably don't have internet access, but if you are reading this, clean up your act. I feel for you that you have no money, I really do. I'm sure you have untold problems that I don't know about, problems beyond your control, problems that turned you into the fine piece of shit that you are today. It's not that I don't have any sympathy for what brought you to this place. If you can't find a paying job in America today, I understand. Go sell drugs. Go panhandle. Go write to your congressman. Go rob banks. At least there's an element of risk, and therefore some twisted sense of honor, in that. But to prey on the elderly, my father in particular, is irredeemable in my eyes. You are truly the worst of the worst. I hope the bedbugs are gnawing at your brain as I type this. Speaking of people for whom I have little to no respect, I was walking home from work tonight and I spied the horrible insulting lady from the elevator (scroll down to 7/10/04 if you need to be reminded). I tailed her the down the block towards my apartment, snapping pictures, trying to get a decent shot for all of you. Alas, the hag proved to be too nimble. She moved quickly, darting between pedestrians, bobbing her head like a ratty, gnarly old chicken. Observing her for this one block, I came to the conclusion that she is legitimately insane. She is unaware of the concept of "strangers." She spoke to nearly every person she walked past, usually in a friendly tone, but that made it even creepier, because I already knew what a nutter she is: what a beautiful baby you have! Yuck. Scary. Keep her away from your kid. She also had three or four hostile outbursts (this is all in one block!): she cursed at cars who were speeding past, preventing her from crossing the street. Never mind that they had a green light. They needed to be cursed at, dammit! She also had to wait for a moment on the sidewalk for someone to walk in front of her perpendicularly. She started screaming at him: You motherfucker. Watch where you're going! Fuck you! She's definitely crazy, but not enough for me to feel sorry for her. Just enough for me to want her dragged away in a butterfly net. Sorry for all the negativity on this Friday evening. The wife and I were both groggy and tired tonight, so maybe I'm just feeling grouchy. Happier news: it looks like Schweppes has reintroduced their wonderful raspberry ginger ale. My roommate Scott used to buy this all the time in college and I got hooked on it. It was delicious. I saw a bottle of it in the supermarket today and had to have it. The label has changed, but hopefully the product has remained the same. It is chilling in my fridge right now, and I plan on uncorking it and reviewing it tomorrow. I hope I am not disappointed. There are many other things from 1991 that seemed like good ideas then and now seem not quite so good, My ear was pierced, for Christ's sake.* Pierced twice. Pierced in like '88. Wore a zirconia stud for about a year. Realized what a chump I looked like. Took out the stud. Let the hole close up. Walking in a mall in 1991 or so, decided to get pierced again. This time, a variety of earrings: the zirc piercing stud, a gold stud, a nice silver hoop, even a miniature penny. I was happening. We've got a couple of more weeks until the one year anniversary of The Blackout, and I must admit I am feeling a bit nostalgic for that night. It really reminded me of New York in the 70's: transistor radios playing through open windows, oppressive heat, doormen out on the sidewalk talking to people. No cable TV or internet or cell phones. It was like retro night. Thanks to Irvingbird for the excellent transcript of the balloon debacle. You can view it in yesterday's comments. Amazing. So the Unit may be staying put or going to LA. I can now root for the Yankees with pride. Without my usual guilt. Unless we get him. If we don't get him, I don't think we're going anywhere in October. I actually really like Giambi and I hope they
figure out what's wrong with him. He's a good interview and seems like a decent
fellow.
I wonder if Will Smith might finally be able to actually beat Mike Tyson. It might be the only fight left that could earn Mike some of the money he needs. On Hill Street Blues, the original sergeant (Sgt. Phil Esterhaus) played by Michael Conrad would go over the day's wanted perps and scheduled busts and whatnot, and then he'd send the cops on their way with the famous line: "Hey, let's be careful out there." It became a national catchphrase. Kerry and Edwards need to find out who came up with "Hey, let's be careful out there" and get him or her to work on their new campaign slogan. Pronto. Anyway, Michael Conrad died after a few seasons and was replaced by Robert Prosky (Sgt. Stan Jablonsky). Prosky did a good job and even had his own sign-off, which wasn't bad: "Let's do it to them before they do it to us." Not bad at all. Actually, it was probably a more accurate encapsulation of what policemen actually think each day. Anyway, I think if the show was airing today, I should play the Sergeant, and my line would be: "Guys -- let's stay outta the papers." I said that to one of my co-workers as he left today. He was going out drinking, and I just told him,"Try to stay outta the papers." Good advice for a cop on the beat or a drunk at the bar. * it still works for some people, but definitely not for me. I do want to get a nice thin gold chain again, though. I used to wear one and I was real sexy, believe me. 7/30/04: Old Slang, New Slang: it's all hella swell to me I gave $25 to Mr. Kerry tonight. For some reason, I followed Chris S.'s advice and wagered against Bush, despite my gut telling me Britney knew better when she said: "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and just support that...and be faithful." I mean, what she's saying makes total sense. Logically, that's exactly what we should do. But she's only like 22 years old. How can she possess such wisdom? I'm going to play it safe this time. But I don't think the American political scene has heard the last of Ms. Spears. Somebody's ass got fired today at CNN for sure. Did anybody catch what happened? Right after Kerry's speech (I only caught the last five minutes or so -- damn, he sweats like Moses Malone), CNN lost their regular audio feed and began broadcasting the audio from the event producer's microphone, a microphone which should only have been transmitting into the earpieces of the people who were helping coordinate the event. So for like a full minute, all anyone watching CNN heard, while we saw Kerry waving and acknowledging the crowd, was: "Balloons! Balloons! I need some balloons...more balloons! Get me some more fucking balloons! Jesus, where are the balloons. I need more got-damn balloons! Balloooooons!" Nicely done. Then they lost audio when
Aaron Brown threw to the convention site, and had to drop that interview.
Then Jeff Greenfield's key light burnt out, so he was in the pitch black for a
few moments. Then Larry King referred to the young whippersnapper from
MTV, whose name is Gideon something-or-other, as "Gordon." Then Tucker Carlson
spoke.
So what's the consensus on the Kerry speech? 8.5? He seemed pretty composed and forceful from what I saw, and the early reviews are very positive. I am actually getting excited about this election. I may vote in as many as twelve states. I haven't felt this kind of buzz since Dukakis poked his head out of the tank. My only complaint was the sweat, yo -- he should have busted out a hankie at some point to wipe off that upper lip. He'll learn. Oh, and his plan for Iraq seemed pretty vague, to the point where I was embarrassed that he didn't have more to say. I know it's just a speech and not a full platform, but "we're going to enlist other countries to join us and we're going to bring our troops home" seemed simplistic, optimistic and inadequate. I would have been like, "Iraq? Fuck that! That's Bush's problem. I ain't going NEAR that hornets' nest. I'm going to appoint W. to a new cabinet position called 'Secretary of Cleaning Up His Own Mess' and let him figure it out." I still sent Kerry $25 towards his iPod. Edwards is on his own. Remember when Reagan tried to appropriate "Born in the USA" as his song back in '84? Good to see Bruce putting his tunes to use in the right direction. It would have been cooler if they played "Incident on 57th Street," or "Fade Away" or "It's Hard to be a Saint in the City," but I see their logic in going with "No Surrender." Everybody loves an underdog, right? Speaking of Bruce, while "The Rising" does not rank among my favorite Springsteen albums, I respect his efforts to deal with 9/11, and I think for the most part he handles it gracefully and sensitively. It's been three years: has any other musician made a real and decent effort at discussing those events? I give him a tip of the cap for a job well done, although generally speaking I prefer songs about cars and girls. It's official: I trust El Duque and his decaying body way more than I trust Contreras. We could have saved ourselves some serious cheese on that deal. Oh, I forgot, money is meaningless in Yankeeland. Spend, print, spend, print. The Unit is on the way, methinks. Time for me to stop backpedaling and enjoy the run. I was thinking about the song "Kiss on My List" for a minute or two today. While I grant that it is one of the catchier cheesy pop songs of its time, I somehow can't help feeling angered by the lyrics. What a desperate attempt to force two words together incongruously: kiss and list. What kind of a pitiful scrub would create such a thing, a "list of the best things in life"? And how disappointed he (he = Hall and/or Oates; probably Oates) must have been when the girl told him what he could do with his list. I was so tired at work today, I thought about how lucky it is that I don't have my own office (there I go again! being saved by my own lack of success), because I would have closed the door and nodded off for about three hours. That would have been swell, actually. Think we should bring back "swell"? In my dad's yearbook (Senn High School, Chicago, class of '44, one year behind Harvey Korman), that was all anybody wrote to him. It was "To A Swell Guy" and "To a swell basketball player" and "have a swell summer." Of course, that swell summer ended up taking place in Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended radio school and hooked up with a girl from Liz Waters dorm (the "virgin vault" as it would be known 43 years later when I arrived in Madison). And in the fall, it was off to fight in WWII. No fun. I much preferred the house parties at 222 N. Bassett Street. It's where I learned about life and became a man. And you wonder why nobody calls us "the greatest generation." We had it too good. Kerry's speech: pretty swell, I think. During my tiredness at work, I let my mind wander with some of the corny show opens I've been working on. My attention could only muster the proper level of corniness for about half of each open, so I'd end up with stuff like this: "There’s definitely something to be said for subtle food, the kind where you can just make out a hint of this or a trace of that. But when it comes right down to it, I want a meal with CONVICTION: food that’s full of bold flavors that stand right up and announce their presence. Today I’ve got three dishes that aren’t afraid to kick you in the crotch, drag you by your hair down to the curb and make you smell that dog shit." No way we can air that, right? 7/29/04: The people have spoken Another great thing about Chicago is people actually go to the street fairs. And they aren't quite as lame as they are here. Lame, yes. But not as lame. So Tony Pierce got his iPod. If you want to be cynical you could probably find a dozen reasons why it's wrong to ask people who read your blog for money so you can buy an iPod. But I say it is a wonderful experiment in blogonomics*, and it's a chance for Tony's readers to offer an outpouring of appreciation for the daily bursts of joy and insight he brings to their lives. I am proud to have been a part of it. I gave $11.99, my reasoning being: that's what I've paid for plenty of lousy books at Barnes & Noble, books I forgot within three days of reading them. Now here's a guy providing wit and style and occasionally something that genuinely moves me, and doing it for free. Every day. Twice a day. $11.99 is the least I can offer (as well as the most, based on my means). It turns out Apple got wind of the scheme and coughed up the last $63 themselves. It'll be interesting to see what impact this
has on his blog from here on out.
I think I may start a drive for a bag of Doritos. Nacho Cheese flavor. The big bag. The one you should eat with a bunch of friends or over the span of two weeks, but instead end up eating the entire thing alone in front of a meaningless college football game. If you are feeling like you want to be part of an even more important piece of internet donation history, Chris S. sends in this advice: "there's two days left before the donation
rules change. i know you all have credit cards, i've seen you all blow way more
than $25 on booze, gambling and other luxuries, so if you haven't done it yet
c'mon. when they announce how much money they've raised this week, you can take
pride in the fact that you were a part of it. I don't live in Boston, but I'm sure the people there are pretty fucking annoyed at the whole Democratic Convention situation. I know my blood is boiling about the RNC coming to NYC at the end of August. My wife's company (Viacom) has told all employees in their Times Square offices to work from home that week. They don't want anybody in the office. They said if you absolutely need to, you can come in, but you have to let management know exactly where you'll be and when. Now that may be an overreaction, but who knows? It's not that I'm afraid of a terrorist attack during the convention, even though I acknowledge it's a possibility. It's more the inconvenience they are causing, and the fact that they are going to be disrupting a city that is already pretty good at disrupting itself. Here are a few reasons I am offended by the GOP's decision to hold their convention in my fine city: 1. You know that Bush is going to invoke
September 11 as often and as cheaply as possible. He is going to point out
that he has kept America, and New York, safe for three years, while battling Al
Qaeda overseas. He will say something like, "The turrurists are on the
run. But they can't hide. You know that, I know that, and they
learned it themselves in Afghanistan and Iraq." He won't mention the fact that
the 3,000 people our city lost were lost on HIS WATCH. Nor will he mention
the cost in
human lives of his
misguided war in Iraq. So in short, George W. Bush is returning to New York, a city that was deeply wounded three years ago, a city that continues to heal today, and he's undoubtedly going to exploit those wounds for his own gain. He will exploit them against the wishes of the people who are wounded, people who voted more than 4 to 1 against him. He will exploit them while increasing the chances that we get wounded again. He will exploit them while disturbing our daily routines, keeping a lot of us from getting to work, inconveniencing nearly all of us -- all with a dubious economic benefit for our city. Anxiety will be needlessly high. I wish they'd stay the hell out of my city and hold their event someplace like Houston, where they have friends. A city that could use a convention. A city that could handle it. And we get this from Bloomberg: "New York will be a great place during the convention." By what standards? I guess it will be great if you're a cockwad delegate getting wined and dined all over town while the locals put their lives on hold. Otherwise, it's going to be hell. And I gotta deal with it. Ah, fuck all those guys. Let's complain about baseball. Michael Kay in particular. If you wonder why the ex-jocks in the booth sometimes gang up on Kay and remind him that he never played the game****, it's because he's a fucking know-it-all, and he really doesn't know all that much. Tonight he wrongly corrected Singleton when Singleton made a reference to what I have determined to be an old Doris Day song. In between pitches to Jeter, they cut away to a beautiful shot of the moon shining down on the water in Toronto. Singleton said, rather eloquently, "sailing along on moonlight bay." Kay jumped in and corrected him, or at least unnecessarily embellished him, in one of those windbag addendums that asshole younger brothers need to make when someone else says something clever at the dinner table. Click on the douche to listen (beware: possible audio): Am I being a dick for wondering about the "parasites" that have struck Kevin Brown and Giambi and now Giambi's wife? Is it possible these are the type of "parasites" you get from sex with unsavory strangers when far away from home? I just wanted to mention something about the women my friend was talking to in Chicago. We have received several rather crude responses about the way these ladies look. First of all, my friend did not kiss them, he did not get their phone numbers, he did not attempt to go home with them. He was just talking and having fun. Secondly, I wonder if all the comment-leavers themselves would hold up to such scrutiny about their looks. Lastly, having been there, I can vouch that neither of the women in question was ugly, despite what the photos might tell you. They weren't supermodels, either, but they were more than decent-looking when judged fairly (fairly=through beer-swollen eyes at 3:45am). Thank you. * Just because I am making lame puns involving
the term "blog" does not mean that I accept this word. We still need a
better word for this. 7/28/04: Regressing and Fessing like Debra Messing Freehold's own Bruce Springsteen once said, "One step up and two steps back." After publishing this thing I humbly refer to as a website for a year and a half, I should be coming up with some snazzy new design ideas. New fonts, new tables, some multimedia shit. Instead, I am finding it hard to even get my pages to publish correctly. So I am taking it back to a simpler look, sort of what you might get from a 12 year-old geocities resident in early 1995. I call it verbungle classic. Hopefully I'll have less problems if nothing else. Truth be told, I don't care how the page looks. I know you come here for the content. The stuff you can't find anywhere else. I know this because you told me when I came over to do my laundry last week. Thanks, mom. Part of the problem is that my laptop has a
decent 15" monitor, so the site always looks "good"
My wife reads "Us" Magazine on a semi-regular basis. I hope you don't judge her for this, because if you do, you gotta judge me too. I gobble that shit up like popcorn. It's a very satisfying piece of fluff and it's always fascinating to see how vapid our nation's celebrities really are. In honor of all the fine work the folks at "Us" have done over the years, I am going to start posting a semi-weekly quote from one of these celebrities, pulled from the magazine, that shows just how out of touch and imbecilic they are. Here is this week's: "We're like the gay Beatles!" Yeah, sorta. Except for everything. Today at work one of my co-workers started talking to me about her job, and how it's not a bad job, but it could be better. Everything she mentioned that was bad about her job was worse for me in mine. On top of that, the stuff that she takes pleasure in leaves me completely cold. It was one of those slaps in the face where I thought, "WTF am I still doing here? Good Lord!" It came down to two things: I truly enjoy the company of the people I work with (with a few dozen notable exceptions), and I am a hopelessly inert motherfucker. I actually started thinking, "Damn, I need a new job." I have that thought about once every 3 months, and it usually passes within a day or two. It's not anything particularly wrong with the job itself; it's more that it just ain't right for me. Maybe in another five years I'll figure out what to do. In the meantime, feel free to offer me a cool job. Whenever I talk about work here, I am reminded
of the hard rules you get in
almost any practical discussion of "how to blog." There will be some
combination of the following statements: There are, to my knowledge, four people I work with who know about my site (only one that I know of actually bothers to read it on a semi-regular basis). I write about my work in my blog. I sometimes say negative things about my job here. I sometimes refer to other employees, if not by name by some specific event or characteristic that they could easily use to identify themselves. There are several people at work who I haven't mentioned it to -- people I like and respect and I'd love to share it with. But I am already in violation of several of the golden tenets of work and blogging, and I am sure I could already get fired or severely reprimanded for the stuff I've posted on here. so I best keep it down. Co-workers: shhh. I don't know what any of that means. Here is a good and real guide to blogging if you're interested. 7/27/04: Chicago sleeps in I guess I should describe a few more stupid adventures from Chicago. I hesitate to do so, because most of the stuff is embarrassing and pretty unamusing and really shouldn't still be happening to a man my age. Another reason I'd kind of rather not is that I am generally not the hero of these stories; I am more what you might call "the asshole" of the stories. One of the assholes, anyway. But what else have I got to talk about? The Yankees and Red Sox? Missed the game. Saw the highlights of the fight. Seemed like a pretty decent fight. Was a pretty huge win for the Red Sox. But they're still a bunch of g-lords*. I could talk about the election or the RNC and how annoyed I am that it's gonna be here in NYC. And how annoyed I am that I can't leave town that week. But you don't want to hear me whine. No, I guess I have to recount my stupid bar stories for you. And I have to give you some pictures as well. It was Chicago, after all. One of the sweetest words there is. 1. On Thursday night, in a story that I
forgot until the next day, Dillahunt, Brady and I were in the bar, and we
were drinking 'em down with authority and efficiency.
Dillahunt even slammed two full pints of beer in the span of a minute and
a half. Good work for a married father of three. And I say the
following in a spirit of true repentance: Jägermeister was consumed**. We
were definitely in unbearable fuckhead drinking mode. Anybody who walked
by us could smell our obnoxious fumes. The only nice thing we did was buy
about 5 drinks for a down on his luck Joe who Dillahunt befriended. He was
grateful and promised that he'd have his mom make DIllahunt a home-cooked
meal the next time we were in town. Otherwise, we were pretty loud and not
as funny as we thought we were. At one point, Brady asked, "What are
the chances one of us gets slapped in the face tonight?" I responded
to this by resoundingly slapping Dillahunt across the face and saying,
"100%." Dillahunt will probably abduct one of my children someday
for that one, but as of now he has not sought revenge. Deep in his
soul, he must know he deserved it. 2. You know how usually in a bar the line for the ladies' room is ten deep but the men's room is wide open? Well in Ravens bar at 3am Friday night, the situation was reversed. The men's room line was at approximately fifteen d-bags and counting, and the bungmeister had to go. There were only maybe two women waiting for the ladies' room. My friend****, who had been chatting one of these two up, mentioned to me that she had let him sneak into the ladies' room ahead of her because there was no line. I know, kind of a weak move, but when ya gotta go, ya gotta go. I asked her if I could do the same and she said sure. I am a legendarily quick pisser, so I didn't think it was such a big deal. I also didn't think it was such a big deal that I took an extra moment to document just how wrecked the ladies' room was. That's a secret the ladies have been keeping from us for awhile. They just as nasty as we are. Kind of disappointing. I would think that having to sit down to squirt would make one more respectful of one's bathroom. Nope. Anyway, I was probably in there for 45 seconds to a minute total, and when I got back there were now like four women on line, and they were good and pissed. Being a chivalrous type, I immediately tried to shift the blame to the nice woman who, I pointed out, had given me permission to use the bathroom. Of course, she was already in the bathroom, so I was left to face my critics alone. In truth, they were right. But I didn't appreciate them getting all up in my grill. One woman was about to have a conniption and was all but shoving her fingers in my face (she must have really had to pee! ha ha!). Then her Ferris Bueller-looking boyfriend (who was totally lit) starts in on me. Him: "You can't do that, man. You
can get arrested for that shit." It kind of ended there, but later he came up to me and tried to befriend me. He was actually a pretty mellow guy, must have been putting on a macho show for his girlfriend. He's human. But he's no cop. 3. There was another guy there that night who wanted to brain me for something I said in the presence of his sister. My friend was chatting to the sister at the bar and asked if I could hold his seat for a minute while he took a leak. Another friend and I stepped forward and were talking for a minute when I accidentally let the word "penis" go. Not about my penis or my friend's penis, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't even talking to the girl when I said it. I was commenting on how the next generation of people is so physically superior to our generation. I think I said something like, "They have better hair, better clothes, better penises..." The next thing I know, my friend says some guy at the end of the bar wants to kill me. I decided to go straighten out the situation, as I felt that it was clearly a misunderstanding. My friend was like, no, stay away, the guy is pissed but he's not going to do anything. I couldn't let it sit. I had to find out what I said that was so horrible. Later, I was reminded that maybe I said the word "penis," but I didn't recall this at the time (and the word "penis" in a bar at 3:14 am doesn't qualify as horrible anyway). I was in disbelief that the guy was pissed. When I went over there, I quickly determined that Jocko was nuts. He had that wild-eyed, unfocused rage, like Brad from Real World San Diego. He mentioned that he had wanted to kill me "because that's my little sister, dude." I showed him my wedding ring and assured him that I had no designs on his not unattractive but sorta weird looking sister. He calmed down but proceeded to tell me that he was Armenian and liked to fight. He wanted me to know that these two things go together like bacon and eggs over easy. He told me maybe eight stories about guys he had punched out, and felt no remorse for the fact that some of them, by his own admission, didn't deserve it. We eventually became friends when I referenced System of a Down and showcased my vague understanding of the Armenian genocide. I am glad he didn't go all Roy Jones, Jr. on me. 4. On Saturday night I proved once again what a bastard I am. There was a young couple at one bar we were at (a bar with a photo booth), and my friend took an interest in the girl. We invited them on to Ravens with us, and to our surprise, they showed up about an hour later, eager to share our good company. I decided to occupy the boyfriend so my friend could chat up the girlfriend. As the night went on, and it did indeed go on, I started to realize there was some moral ambiguity to my actions. This was a young couple, probably already doomed to failure like most young couples are, and I was contributing to a situation that was putting their (5-year!) relationship in deep jeopardy. My friend was unleashing his most charming 3:47 am bullshit, and the young girl was loving every minute of it. Granted, she was a free woman, entitled to make her own decisions, but I couldn't help feeling sorry for the boyfriend guy. His woman was being stolen from right under his nose. So in the middle of whatever half-baked crap I was telling him, I would periodically throw in a "Dude, how can you stand there like that? You need to get your girl out of here." I was honestly concerned for the guy, and I felt like his relationship with his long-term girlfriend took precedence over whatever my friend had planned for the evening and beyond. But I also felt some allegiance to my friend, and dammit this girl seemed to be really into him. And the boyfriend seemed OK with it. But still I felt bad. He was just a kid, and he seemed confused and sort of helpless about the whole thing. So I kept waffling between, "Hey, you guys have been dating for five years, huh? That's great" and "DUDE, are you nuts? Step in there and tell her it's time to go." As always, conflicted. Finally, the guy freaked out. "I don't have to listen to this," he said, and marched up to his girlfriend. "Let's go. Now!" he said to her. He had done pretty much what I suggested, but now I felt like I had shortchanged my friend. I got the dude's attention again and said, "Hey, calm down. Everything's cool." I was hoping to buy my friend some more talky talk time. The young kid was clearly pissed at me more than anything else. "You're the most manipulative person I've ever met," he said. I hadn't meant to be, but maybe I was. I was really just trying to look after all three of them. What an officious asshole I can be. I apologized to the guy and assured him that I could barely manipulate my legs to keep from falling down. Once again, he was sufficiently soothed to avoid an incident. The couple stayed for awhile and then went home together. No harm done, right? Boy, I bet they fought like gangbusters the next morning. Maybe even broke up. So unnecessary. Oh well, it'll probably save them some agony in the long run. 5. Got up around 10:45 on Sunday and had a flight at 2. After a little too much dilly-dallying******, I started to worry that I might be late. Thankfully, Appleton-bound Dave and John offered to drive me (Brady was bed-ridden at this point), even though it wasn't really on the way. We left at 12:20 -- if we had hit bad traffic, which you usually do in Chicago, we would have gotten to the airport at 1:30 or later. Luckily, God loves a hung-over man and He ushered me right to the self-check-in window******* by 12:48. Traveling is good for the ego. Now matter how ashamed and incompetent I might feel on any given day (that one in particular), I am encouraged by the utter hopelessness of the average human. People really can't help but fuck up, you know? There was a guy trying to check in at the self-check-in window who was just sort of muttering to himself, not even pressing any buttons, looking very confused. One of the guys behind the counter (greatest secret of the self-check-in window: people are actually there to assist you!) asked him if he could help. The guy handed him an e-ticket printout. The worker guy said, "It's 1pm. Your flight left at 9:30 this morning. I can't help you. You need to go talk to someone over there (pointing to the endless line of sad sacks who are too suspicious of modern advances to have discovered the self-check-in by now)." Did the guy think he could just bluff his way onto another flight? Seconds later, a party girl stepped forward with a similar problem. Seems she overdid it on Saturday night and slept through her flight. Wow, people are just pathetic. Even more pathetic than me. At least I know to schedule my flight for the afternoon. I made my flight easily, and even got to eat some O'Hare popcorn before I left. Home by 6:30 pm. Life can return to normal. 6. Have the bars near you caught on and scored one of the new internet jukeboxes (displayed here by verbungle.com spokesmodel Rodney Manfredi)? Sure, they're charmless, and part of the fun of going to a new bar is seeing the obscure/lame/excellent CD's/45's they have in their jukebox. But it's pretty cool to be able to hear almost any song you want whenever you want. If you don't agree, throw a few more quarters into Buck Hunter II. OK, that should cover Chicago. Even though I have some serious doubts about his character, watching Bill Clinton speak is a near-pornographic experience. Especially after four years listening to the bumblings of El Busheristo. I went down to Duane Reade to pick up some TP tonight. After the lady gave me my bag, I started to leave. "Do you want a receipt?" she asked. It took all my power not to say, "No, it's OK. I'm just gonna be shoving it up my ass." * g-lords is short for "gonad-lords".
7/24/04: It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission The airport delays were awful. Two and a half hours in total. After awhile, I decided to head into the airport TGIF's and get a beer. In my mind, I have always romanticized airport bars and hotel bars. I imagined them as a place for people to come out of their shell a little, to talk to strangers, and to share the common experience of being away from home. I always thought the people who inhabit these bars must be special; they all have reason to be in more than one place at a time. They have people to visit or important business to attend to, and loving families who are eager for them to return home. Nope, it turns out they're just a bunch of regular old shitheads. I got the hell out of TGIF's as fast as I could. After a tough day of airport delays and
baggage delays, I finally made it to my friend
Brady's (brand new, beautiful) apartment by 10:30 pm. We sat on his roof and had a couple of
beers and soaked in the splendor of the Chicago night. At one point, a
The night was lots of fun. Coldies were consumed. Cigarettes were quasi-smoked. I had a long metaphysical discussion with a lapsed Mormon dude and his girlfriend. We eventually came to the same conclusion: Mormonism is sorta weird At one point, Mike D. and I hatched an evil plan. Brady had told us that his friend was coming over today (Friday) to help him install a brand new door on his roommate's bedroom. We knew that Brady would be working on this door all day. So we decided that upon our return from the bars tonight, we would kick down Brady's brand new door and then throw some wadded up money at him to settle our tab. We even had a payment plan worked out for the eventual actual replacing of the door. I was in for 25%; Dillahunt for 75%. We were willing to invest as much as $400 total in this joke. Unfortunately, I blew it by kicking down a different door in the apartment when we returned home last night at around 4. It was going to get replaced and discarded soon anyway. Brady wasn't that happy about it. It is a bathroom door after all. You need a door on the bathroom. He said he knew he was mad at me when he woke up today, but couldn't remember why. Then he saw the door leaning there against the wall and remembered. A hot pocket also mysteriously appeared on the floor today. Under intense pressure from one anonymous reader and my own nagging sense of what's right, I must admit that the term "gaylord" is inappropriate. I will refrain from using it after this paragraph. As someone who is not currently gay and has only been gay for a few evenings in his entire life, it is not my place to decide what is offensive or not. I just wish the person who keeps complaining would stop being such a gaylord about it. There. I'm done. Gaylord. Gaylord. Gaylord. OK, now I am really done. Sorry. One thing we did last night that could have gotten ugly but didn't was stage a nice old-fashioned chicken fight. I grabbed Dillahunt on my shoulders, the Red Bull guy (whose name was Dave, and whose identical twin Ed was the guy who came over to install the door today, very confusing) grabbed Brady and we went at it. Dillahunt is perhaps the ultimate top half of a chicken fight tandem. He's light, he's aggressive, and he's tenacious. He was clawing and biting Brady, but the fight was basically even when an ambulance stopped and the guy yelled out that his money was on "the guy in black" (Brady). The ambulance was probably just slowing down thinking we'd be needing them any minute. We took it as a nice friendly warning and dismounted our chickens. To be continued. 7/23/04 5pm Newark Airport Update: Severe Thunderstorm Warning OK, I have about a half hour before my flight boards, so I am going to hit you with a late-afternoon blitz. Please excuse typos and incomplete/erroneous thoughts. I was supposed to be on the 5:45 to O'Hare, but there are thunderstorms in the Chicago area, so I have been put on the flight that was supposed to leave at 3:15, and is now scheduled to leave at 6. You got that? What a mess. To quote Dinny's softball recap of 5/16/04: "Whose brilliant fucking idea was it to make O’Hare the central hub of all U.S. air traffic? One thunderstorm and everything in the entire COUNTRY gets fucked up. I was supposed to go to Indiana and couldn’t due to weather. Fine, at least that’s nearby. But my father was flying back to NYC from Atlanta and was delayed for 3 hours because of delays at O’Hare. What bullshit. We need a major transportation hub someplace fucking beautiful where there are no weather issues. Hawaii is a good bet. Someone start drawing up the plans." Of course, I am flying into Chicago for
Chicago's sake, so the hub choice isn't really a factor in my delay. Doesn't
mean I can't bitch. I am meeting Mike at the hospital. Actually, I meant to type the word "airport," but in a slipup that might prove to be prophetic, typed "hospital." Mike is a dangerous man. That's him in the picture, attempting to drive his Nissan pickup telepathically. I've got much better pictures of Mike, but none are really appropriate for public view. Mike is capable of incredible feats, both physically and intellectually. I've seen him do one armed pullups without a problem, I've seen him run the 40 in under 4.5 seconds, I've seen him nearly dunk a basketball at 5'5" tall. Rumor was that he killed a guy with one punch in Eau Claire*. Mike got one "B" in college, and was valedictorian of the UW law school. The problem with Mike is that he sometimes gets headaches and begins using his powers for evil instead of good. Most people who have met him can share at least one story of an encounter with Mike that went awry. He loves a challenge, and he is relentless in his pursuit not just of victory, but of the complete demoralization of his opponent. If he does you wrong, it's best to let it go, because it's only going to get worse if you respond. Let's hope he's on his best behavior this weekend: willing to climb tall trees or smash his face on a streetlamp, but not so lost in the moment that he pees on me under the table in a bar. We shall see. Just a quick note on the use of the term "gaylord." At some point, many of us have sarcastically referred to something as "gay," meaning lame, stupid, corny, etc. I think the use of the term is most prevalent among second graders. Some adults like using the term, too, even adults who are enlightened enough to know it's offensive when used this way. They sort of justify it by saying they're using it in a "can you believe people used to actually use this word?" kind of way. I remember when Quentin Tarantino was called out on his use of the "N" word, he responded that the only way to take away the power that a terrible word like that has is to shout it from the rooftops until it becomes meaningless. However, Quentin Tarantino is wrong about this one**: the only way to know if a word is offensive is if you are in a member of the group being referred to. If you're not black, you have no idea what the word means, and no business using it. The same goes for the flippant use of the term "gay." Maybe you know you are not using it with malice, but the offensiveness of the word lies in the feelings of the person who that word refers to. Which of course you can't know. So stop using the term "gay" to refer to things that are lame. There are plenty of other words that mean this. However, none of that goes for "gaylord." Gaylord stands. * Upon further examination, the man was merely
hospitalized. 7/22/04: City Folk and Country Folk I actually leave for Chicago straight from work Thursday, land at 7:30 pm, and I should be spruced up and ready to have some fun by 9pm. I want to thank my wife for making this trip possible. It will be good to see all the fellas. I think I may bring the ol' laptop for the sake of downloading pictures, and that means there may be an update somewhere along the line. If there is a post, it will probably consist mostly of photos. Photos of drunks. Tell me, who doesn't like photos of drunks? It seems like every day I am delivered another reminder of why I am not upper management material. Not that I want to be; managing people is just about the most thankless fucking job in the world. Especially if you're a guy like me who'd rather just be everybody's best pal than tell them they're doing a bad job. (Note to some of the people who used to work for me: there were times when you were doing a bad job and I didn't say anything. You should consider this a compliment, because it means I valued your friendship more than doing my job.) Boy am I off the path here. What I was getting at was an email exchange that indicates why flakes like me are best kept out of the corner office. This email arrived as our company was preparing to move to our new location. It came from a woman I work with who has her own office. She is a director-level employee. I like saying that. Here it goes (first email on top for your convenience):
I am a top-notch employee. This picture is Mike and me imitating VC and Fred Weis. An interesting development at work is that our new office seems to be mysteriously draining cell phone batteries. Verizon customers seem to be hit the hardest -- their phones aren't making it through a single workday. They also get lousy reception in the building, so I assumed maybe the phone was using up its battery by searching for service all day. But now Sprint phones are starting to drain, too. I have no idea what it is. I'm guessing electromagnetic field. Hey, I was only kidding about no more sports posts. I am going to keep posting whatever I like, and of course people can choose to ignore it if they like. That's the beauty of the ol' internet, one of the few things out there that's truly free and pretty much unregulated. You don't like it, go visit Wil Wheaton's blog or something (no link provided). 7/21/04: Come on, baby don't you want to go Based on your comments, I guess my sports musings don't cut it. I will try to limit them in the future, because ultimately it's you who pays the bills. If I piss you off, the landlord's gonna come knocking, and then he's gonna boot us out on our ass. There'll be big stacks of verbungle.com letterhead piled up among the garbage bags outside verbungle.com headquarters. We don't want that. Or maybe we do. The Verbungle has been a little dry and flaky lately. I need to bolster it with some good stories, or take a little hiatus. One such hiatus is coming up this week, and it might provide some good new stories as well. I am leaving Thursday morning for my annual visit to Chicago. Three days of mindless fun. I like Chicago. Here are some of the things I will probably do in Chicago: -eat bacon
ü You know what sucks about naming your website "verbungle.com"? You never, ever get any accidental hits from people who searched for the word "verbungle." It just doesn't happen -- well, actually, last week we had our first visitor who had done exactly that. So the name has gotten us one hit. It was a doozy, though. Tipping is such an delicate art, and so few people do it well. I am a hack tipper. I generally overtip, and then sometimes I will totally forget a real important one. There is nowhere to go for advice on this stuff, because everybody has different opinions. How much should you leave for a housekeeper in a hotel after a three night stay? A weeklong stay? When should you leave something in the tip jar at the coffee shop, and how much should you leave when you do? I think we should also institute a system of tipping in generic office settings. Not a bonus system, just a couple of bucks here or there. Say your boss asks you to do something that you think is beneath you, and you do it without complaint. Wouldn't it be nice if he slipped you a ten for your troubles? There have been several times this week when I would have appreciated a tip, and also a few when I would have liked to give one. I would work at least 35% harder if I thought it might result in a nice fat tip. So I take it my sports bullshit is not welcome. I have one more post to go before Chicago. Tell me what it should be about, if you're so smart. The trayline saga is tempting, but long.
7/20/04: Unreadable Sports Nonsense Times is rough for sports fans. Or at least for me. I don't want to sound too crusty or out of touch, but I'm finding it harder and harder to feel passionate about any particular sport or team. Maybe it's just getting old and realizing that sports are kind of silly. Maybe it's the fact that my teams are either spoiled rotten (the Yankees) or just plain rotten (the Knicks). I have to admit I enjoy particular games (like Game 7 last year between the Yankees and Red Sox) and matchups (Pedro vs. anyone). I love Mariano/Jeter/Posada/Bernie. There are still breathtaking athletic feats being performed every night in every sport. Sports, when you strip away all the contracts and lawsuits and steroids and shit and expose their pure competitive essence, are still fun. Maybe that's all I ever should have hoped to get out of them. But there was a time, when pop culture bottomed out in the early 90's1, that I used to fucking tear my hair out over sports. One sport, to be precise. One team, to be honest. The thugs who helped ruin modern basketball, the early-mid 90's New York Knickerbockers. The guys who helped inspire the NBA to move the three point line in, as if to say, hey guys, try this one. Enough with the 2 for 18's. We were a team of weirdos and hacks and
tough guys: CBA refugees like Mason and Starks and wild-eyed butchers like
Charles Oakley. Deft veterans looking for a ring, like Derek Harper
and Doc Rivers. One trick ponies like Hubert Davis and Anthony Bonner.
Pat Riley, aging every year, eyes getting more hollow with every manly
press-conference in front of the brick wall outside the locker room,
pursuing the championship that would validate
I loved them the way my dad loved those teams from '70 and '73. Where those teams were a study in motion and teamwork and synchronization, all parts moving as one, my team was a clumsy, angry, relentless bunch of brutes who yelled at each other and felt entitled to a championship just because they worked so hard for it. At one point or another, I loved every guy on that team but Charles Smith. Oh, and Greg Anthony. He could effortlessly dribble away 22 seconds without advancing the ball past the three point line. He was a punk and a Young Republican and he always launched a three the instant he saw his sub sitting at the scorer's table, ready to check in. Nobody else loved 'em. Nobody outside New York. They were tough to watch. But they seemed like a family to me. The '92-'93 team in particular. Sure, the '94 team came closer, and I loved that team, too. But there was no Jordan in '94. In '94, we needed a cheap call to get past the Bulls and then we lost to Houston in the finals, making it seem like maybe we were never as close to a championship as we thought we were. Nope, '93 was the season when it was supposed to happen. It was my last year in Wisconsin. I was working on the trayline* at the University Hospital and trying to figure out what to do with my life. My friends were all graduating and moving on to real jobs in faraway places. I was drinking too much, earning too little, and generally floundering without charm or style. The Knicks became a real cause in my life, and their wins and losses defined my days and my moods. They made me scream. They made me stand up with my hands on my head in disbelief. They made me do a little dance. They made me lose sleep. I thought about them during trayline. I cared what message Mase had inscribed in his hair. I worried about Starks's state of mind. I went bananas every time the Oak-man chucked an outlet pass into the blue seats. And despite the fact that they would often go eight minutes without a basket, they were a 60-win team. They were absolutely not scared of the Bulls, even though they should have been. They didn't give a fuck about Jordan's reputation. He was just another guy in the way, a guy who needed to get guarded and hounded and occasionally dropped. It's just another measure of how great he was that he torched them in the end, once again. But I think they earned his respect. I think I may have seen fear in his eyes a couple of times. Were he a lesser player, he might have gone into a shell and let the Knicks trample him. But he just got more motivated and more focused, and he got what he wanted in the end. He always did. But there was a moment, when we took a 2-0 lead on the Bulls in the conference finals, that I thought we had the bastards beat. It was a great couple of days in between games 2 and 3; we were unblemished and we could just sit around and talk about how they had to beat us 4 out of 5 now and what are the odds of that? All we need is one of these 2 in Chicago... We didn't win any more games that year. But I think this article beautifully sums up how I felt that year, what that team meant to me, and just how significant the Starks dunk was. To us, anyway. It was absolutely electrifying, the greatest moment by far of my sports-watching life. Like the Knicks, I had no idea things would never get so good again. 1Raftery et al, The Death and Rebirth of American Popular Culture, 2004, p.136 * to be explained in a later entry 7/19/04: Jockstrap Mystery Unraveled I have decided to start keeping a week's worth of entries on this main page for the time being. I don't know if this is better or worse, but I am going to try it. I will reset it each Sunday and then let it build up through the week until the following Saturday. Today (Sunday, actually, despite the date at the top of the page) was one of those days where I had about ten things that I wanted to do, and did none of them. But, in a pale imitation of the wonderful Tony Pierce, I will present you with multiple entries today (2, actually), even if technically one is marked Sunday and one is marked Monday. That's just a trick to make it seem like you're getting one post every day. Pretty sneaky, huh? Not that much to say, really. I almost went to see a movie. I almost played softball. I almost cleaned up around the house. But instead I watched the British Open and part of the Yankee game and took a couple of naps. The nasty weather didn't help. One of the good things about drinking with
Ambrose is he has an opinion on nearly every possible subject.
Often when I am in my local Dirty Deli, waiting on line to purchase some overpriced foodstuffs, a person will come into the store needing only one item, an item they know the price of, an item for which they have exact change. Rather than wait in the line with the rest of us idiots, this enterprising person will create their own EZ Pass lane: they'll walk right to the very front of the line, even in front of the person who is in the process of paying, and then they'll hold up their item and toss their 79 cents onto the counter before marching out of the store. They won't waste a precious minute of their time waiting on line. Now, if indeed their money went into some magic slot and counted itself, I'd have no problem with it. But the truth is, the cashier has to take that money, count it, and put it in the register (and possibly even ring up the item in question). All that shit takes time. Time that rightfully belongs to the suckers in line. Now I admit that I myself have committed this offense in the past, especially when I sensed that the line was not being managed efficiently. But I don't do it anymore and I don't want you to do it either. I bet they don't do it in Vermont. That should be the new standard of behavior for New Yorkers. As you're about to steal a cab from someone who was waiting before you, or as you pretend not to notice the elderly woman standing in front of you as you occupy a seat on the subway, or as you piss on the street*: what would a Vermonter do? I truly love red onions, but I guess I need to accept that they don't love me. I thought this site (via Metafilter) was pretty entertaining. If you are bored at work you should have a look, although some of the pictures have scrotums and stuff in them, so be careful (in fact, that link has a scrotum in it). I am feeling a little sad and old on this Sunday night. Sometimes you think back on your life and wonder if you're proud of any of it. I have that nervous feeling again tonight, like my homework's not done. I kind of wish I could go back to school. I'd do my homework this time. I swear. (beware, possible audio) The Reader Challenge may be winding down, but one of today's answers was so moving I thought I'd give it its own front-page mention. The Question: Moment in your life you would
relive, (good or bad) real outcome and desired outcome, if different. It's enough to make me want to keep posting those stupid challenges. * I still say pissing on the street is an
acceptable thing to do, but others might disagree. 7/18/04: Of Meters and Men Here's the thing about meter-vaulting: to do it right, which is to do it without cracking open your balls or skull, you don't need to be the strongest guy, or the tallest, or the best leaper. You just need to be some reasonable combination of all that. I'm certainly not strong. I don't jump very high. I guess I'm fairly tall; my height varies anywhere from 72 to 77 inches*, depending on various factors including temperature, humidity, environment, present company, and mood. And I can vault over any small to medium-sized parking meter you put in front of me. The first person I ever saw vault a meter was D. Lee in maybe 6th grade. We were walking down MacDougal Street one day and he just went, bwoop, right over the top of that thing with no problem. I was in awe of him that day, and not just for that: I had also recently learned that in 5th grade, he staged a makeout party at his apartment. Hero of the Day Material.**
But like a space shuttle launch, if even the teeniest thing goes wrong during a meter-vault, you are just absolutely fucked. Here are a couple of cautionary tales. Know your meter. Both times I've seen a meter-vault go badly awry it was because the vaulter underestimated the danger/difficulty of the meter he was facing off against. New York City, 1995: I was leaving Phebe's, the charmless but cheap bar that used to occupy the SE corner of Bowery and E. 4th street. Something had me in a good mood that night, because I ran down the block, heading East, vaulting over every meter I saw, bwoop, bwoop, bwoop. My friends struggled to keep up with me, vaulting a meter of their own here or there as necessary. Finally, we arrived on the corner of 7th street and Avenue A. It was there that I saw the mother of all meters, a truly daunting vault. The meter itself was pretty high, although not too high to vault, just on the tougher end of the vaultable meter scale. The real problem was that next to the meter was a "No Parking" sign******* that really fouled everything up (see diagram). You couldn't approach from the side with the sign, because you had no room to get a running start. You couldn't approach from the opposite side, because you might very well smash yourself up against the sign after you had cleared the meter. There was just very little space in which to operate. The only viable option was to approach the meter from an angle perpendicular to the street, and vault towards the street. This was complicated further by the meter's position: your natural landing area, if you approached from this angle, would be right on the edge of the curb, which could potentially mean death. A successful vaulter would have to take a little something off his leap so he could come up safely short of the curb, or give it a turbo boost and launch himself into the street. Not easy. I stood there studying it for maybe five minutes, calculating angles, trying to figure out if it was possible. I probably looked like Sergio Garcia lining up a putt to win the Masters. Finally, one of the local winos came up and got involved. He was probably 55 years old, drunker even than me, and of course he had an opinion. He couldn't understand why I was deliberating for so long; it looked easily vaultable to him. "You just have to go at it this way," he said, angling himself towards the street and giving a mock demonstration of traditional vault posture. As if I didn't know how to vault a parking meter. "I know, I know," I said. "But this one is pretty tricky. I don't know if it's worth it. Sometimes you just need to walk away." Now the guy was getting pissed off. "Nah, you can do it easy, man," he said. He was now excitedly rubbing his hands on top of the meter, probably remembering some particularly satisfying vault from his youth. "I don't know, man. I think I might let this one go." He'd had it now. If this young punk wasn't going to even attempt it, he was going to take matters, and meters, into his own hands. He gave it a little trial push to see if his tired old legs and arms still had the power, and seemed satisfied that they did. He took a run, got a decent leap and a solid push, and he was airborne. He easily cleared the meter. Not bad for 55 and drunk. But. But he hadn't given enough thought to sticking the landing. He should have. His feet landed squarely on the edge of the curb, and his ankles buckled instantly and grotesquely. His legs collapsed, and his torso fell backwards. His head smashed against the meter and made a loud "doink" sound not unlike a Chris Lee scoreboard home run. Novice. He was dazed and definitely in some pain. Nothing too serious, but his hangover the next day was going to be a little more intense than usual. As he sat there, muttering and trying to pull himself together, I could think of only one thing to tell him. "That's why I didn't want to jump that one." I turned and began heading towards 7B, strangely unsympathetic toward my fallen comrade. But I was confident in my decision: sometimes you just need to walk away. New Orleans, 1996: I was there making a cameo in a film about The Big Easy******** called "Drunk and Not Nearly As Funny as They Think They Are, Volume 18." I played the part of "wasted fratboy type #12,987." Anyway, in the middle of the revelry, I decided it was time to bust out the meter vault and increase the fun quotient for all involved. Well, the New Orleans Department of Parking Enforcement must have known that among the millions of drunken morons who come and lay waste to their beautiful city year after year would be a couple of meter-vaulters, because they decided to make all the meters in town about 5'6" tall. Too tall for me. I don't know if they did this as a deterrent, to discourage idiots like me from even thinking about it, or if they did it so they could laugh their asses off when we creamed ourselves. Well, I gave it a go. But I hesitated a little in my jump, which is one thing you can't do. You've got to commit to that shit and follow through. So I had a bit of a subpar leap, and my balls were definitely on line for a solid whacking across the top of the meter. My ball-protection instinct took over at this point, and I actually got a pretty good push with my hands, which got me right to the top of the meter, balls clearing by millimeters. Unfortunately, my hands kind of got stuck under my legs and I couldn't free myself to get all the way over the meter. I was just kind of perched there like a big stupid parakeet, and then I lost my grip and fell straight down, bruising my verbungle on the top of the meter as I tumbled down. (I fell forward, so technically I did complete the vault.) People must have enjoyed watching that one. It was God's way of punishing me for my callousness towards the Vaulting Hobo the year before. I should have heeded my own advice. Then, last night at 3:49 am, Ambrose, Abby and I left the Abbey Tavern on 26th and 3rd after some good bullshitting and Bud-pounding. The Cicada even made a brief appearance before fluttering off into the night. The bartendress had given us two buybacks, which was pretty cool of her. Maybe it was the fact that I tipped her $5 after the first one that inspired her to give us another at around 3:30. If so, it worked. I gave her another $5. Stupid of me. We didn't need that beer anyway. Whatever. As we walked outside, I saw a beautiful meter that wanted so very badly to be vaulted. After talking about it for a few minutes, I gave it a shot. I cleared it with relative ease and felt good that I had met the challenge. Now Ambrose was interested. You could tell he wanted to do it. He was gauging it with his hands, trying to get a sense for how hard it would be. Abby was getting pretty annoyed. She had been patient, sitting and listening to us ramble about baseball and stuff for about four hours in the bar. Now he was wasting more of her time, and threatening to do himself bodily harm in the process. He definitely could have made it, but it's also possible he might have screwed it up and really clobbered himself. I hopped in a cab as they continued debating. The cabbie and I both yelled a couple of words of encouragement (not "Fuck her, I did," which was actually called for in that situation), and then drove off as the two silhouettes got smaller and smaller through the back windshield, eventually becoming one. I wonder if he made it. Murcer had some tough moments this weekend, but he generally picked up his game and I kind of enjoyed the combination of Singleton and Murcer. Two announcers are really more than adequate to cover the majority of professional sports, don't ya think? * This phenomenon is known as "Giant
Steve." It's been scientifically documented and it can be quite
frightening to behold if you aren't prepared for it. There are certain
days when I look down on men as tall as 6'3". My being basically
inflates with power and I develop a menacing, snarling personality to
match my enhanced size. If you see Giant Steve, just try not to make
eye contact. 7/16/04: It ain't bragging if you can do it This is one of those days when I have a lot of shit to post and I should probably wait until the work week, when some of you puds might actually look at it. But instead, I will give you some weekend love, and still save a little for next week. Enjoy. It must have been sometime in late Spring/Early Summer of 1986. I was watching an interview with RUN-DMC on MTV. They were touring to support their third (and third best, and last good) album, Raising Hell. It was the album that blew them up to nationwide star status, and they were clearly loving life. Run: "We played a show in
Philly last night."* Run: "Well, this time we've got some more serious songs on there. We got a song called "Proud to Be Black" that's a little more serious, makes you think. But don't worry. We got our usual braggin' rekkids on there too. Everyone's gonna love it." He was my hero. He was bragging
about bragging, and since that day or, who knows, maybe even before it,
I've really enjoyed listening to people brag, boast, talk shit, whatever
you want to call it. I don't think less of them for doing it, as
long as they're artful about it. When a guy hits an open layup in an
NBA game, and then runs back downcourt screaming at the top of his I suppose we should draw a distinction between bragging, which technically is talking about how good you are and what you can and will do, and reporting, which is just telling stories about shit you've done. The truth is I like them both so long as they're done right. I have spent countless hours on the phone listening to my friend Professor Dave update me on just how great his career is going, how awesome he is at what he does. Then I will waste an equal amount of time telling him about how I killed some guy on the basketball court or something. It's satisfying, like getting good news. You take joy in the joy your friend is feeling over his achievements, be they real or merely perceived. Like when Pete hit the 285 foot-plus HR in softball the other day, I fucking enjoyed reading about it. I could sense his pride in what he had done, and that made me happy. So what if my own jealousy acted up a bit and made me question the accuracy of the 285-foot sign; that's just jealousy. The man in me is delighted for the man in him. I would do anything to experience a moment of pure athletic triumph like that. It makes the hair on my neck stand up just thinking about what he must have felt as he crossed home plate. I bet he was doing everything in his power not to scream or guffaw or do a stupid dance. Act like you've been there before, they always say. What they don't say is you don't know if you'll ever be there again, so you better enjoy it while you can. I hope he grinned like a bastard once he had a moment of privacy. So I say all this as a preamble to a pathetic bit of reporting of my own, one that goes all the way back to 1980 (sometimes you have to dig deep). It was 5th grade. My teacher, Mr. Smith, had decided that we should elect a class president. I was, it must be reported, the smartest kid in the class. Not the most popular or the best athlete, but sort of the brain, if you will, of class 5-407. I didn't really want to be president of the class, but somehow I ended up running anyway. It was me against two of the more popular kids, John and Cecil. Cecil told me that he smoked hash and made out with girls just about every weekend. Very effective bragging. John was somewhat famous already because he once (maybe 4th grade?) allegedly got a blowjob from a short, cute, pudgy blond girl named Laura. What a blowjob could possibly entail at this point in a boy's sexual development I don't know. But John was a good-looking kid, sort of a Cali-surfer type, a great athlete, an excellent student, and generally someone we were all very impressed with. Anyway, on the day of the big election, they made the three of us stand outside in the hall while the other kids voted for president. I remember very distinctly that John was doing his King Tut Strut back into the room, so sure was he of his imminent victory. Then we looked at the final tally and I had won something like 24-2-2. Not sure if it was a secret ballot or just a bunch of kids acting like sheep, but John did a complete double-take that I'll never forget. Tuttus Interruptus. Anyway, I became President, and pretty much did nothing once I took office. (Hot-button issue that year: should girls be allowed to play on the class whiffle-bat-spaldeen-self-hit baseball team, which faced off against teams from other classes? In my heart I felt "no," but I publicly stated "yes." What a phony.) That story was better in my head. Isn't that always the case? I'm sorry if it disappointed you, because I plan on bragging more in the future. Anyway, if you are leaving a comment, feel free to include your own boast about some cool shit you once did or some cool shit you can and may one day do. My buddy Navy Dave, formerly Columbia Dave, unofficial ambassador to Madison, Wisconsin, is on that aircraft carrier right there (he's the one in the blue jacket). The ship is the USS Reagan, and the shot was taken just as they passed through the Strait of Magellan. I wish him the best and I want you all to do the same. I wonder if there is a Strait of Verbungle. (photo courtesy PH3(AW) Elizabeth Thompson, US Navy) Can any of you tell me what PH3 (AW) stands for? We have a new picture gallery from perhaps the summer of 2000...? The wife got her flowers. I hope you are all happy. If you look closely, you may be able to see the Strait of Magellan. * I don't have a transcript of this
interview, so I am largely bullshitting when I pretend to have exact
quotes. But the important lines are exact. I swear. 7/15/04: Stuck in Lodi Again Would you believe I am holding off on publishing a beautiful photo for national security reasons? I swear it's true. Hopefully I'll have it up by Friday. Who was it that predicted I'd stop coming home semi-drunk three times a week? When does your prediction take effect? Hopefully not tonight. Tonight was one of those nights that should have been a strong one for the ol' bungmeister. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to post, stuff which I guess will have to wait until tomorrow if I remember what it is. Because tonight I got home too late and too tired and too full of beer. I went out after work with some co-workers. We have the convenient bar downstairs that makes it real easy to do just that. I was supposed to meet up with Greg W., but he bailed at the last minute. He said he wanted it made clear that he would prefer to stay home and work on algorithm he had developed for solving for the lyric stumpah than hang out with me in public, and yes, he said, he was prepared for me to call him out as a soft-sac on my website in front of like eight people, if necessary. I said I'd get back to him.
So a few of us went to that downstairs
bar, and it was plenty lame: Even though they had $2 Coronas and the bar was right in our very building, and it was raining outside, me and Emily (possible first-time verbungle.con reader. Hey, Emily!) decided to split for browner pastures. We hit a dive bar on 14th street between 7th and 8th. It was just what il dottore ordered. We had a couple of Stellas and chatted with the British bartender. He was pretty nice, gave us a buy back after two rounds, and the music was generally good. He played some interesting 80's stuff, and then I recognized the opening bars to "Major Tom," a bizarre and neither good nor bad continuation of the David Bowie Major Tom saga. I started singing along, somewhat in jest: "4...3...2...1. Earth below us..." The bartender was happy that I knew the tune. I asked him who sang it again, and he was like, "Peter Schilling." That was all I needed to know, but then the guy played an entire Peter Schilling album. He wanted to educate us on Peter Schilling. The bar we were at had a huge front window that was left open. There were seats on each side of the window, so if I sat on the inside, Emily could sit on the outside and smoke, and we would still be sitting right across from each other. What a great idea. Why don't all bars do this? They should charge extra for those seats on the outside. Anyway, we sat and listened to Peter Schilling and met a barfly couple who was also sitting at that window, and by the time I got home all the good posting thoughts were gone. Here is what tonight was supposed to be about, sorta: -I had an anti-AOL rant. Sure,
this is like tossing newspaper on a forest fire, but I've actually always liked AOL.
I recently re-signed up with them, on an el-cheapo plan for internet
access while traveling. Then I no longer needed it, so I called up
to quit. It was then that I faced the nasty
exploiting-old-people's-ignorance side of the company. Apologies to
Pete B., who
maintains one of the most popular goddamn pages on the internet (in
addition to his own page, a cult favorite). I'm
sure all our corporate daddies play hardball when a customer tries to
leave, but it's still disgusting when you experience it firsthand. The
"account specialist" I spoke to was clearly trained to not let people
quit. After I politely declined all of his "we really want to keep your
business" offers ( "Did you know you can still enjoy AOL even if you
already have your own high-speed connection?", etc.), he brought out a
threat, clearly meant to scare someone who has limited knowledge of how
the internet works (which I think is still a big part of their subscriber
base): "Ok, I hope you have a firewall, with AOL you get firewall
protection. If you don't have a firewall, your computer could be
wide open to hackers and viruses and..." Thanks but no thanks,
douche. I can just picture Edna in St. Louis. She's 63 years
old and just got a cable modem. Now this guy scares her into
ordering service she definitely doesn't need. That's rotten. -I wanted to thank Deb for the excellent suggestions on how I can get revenge on my neighbor. They were all a bit ruthless for my present situation, but I will keep them in mind if anybody ever runs me over with a tank. It would have all been better if I were more soberer. 7/14/04: Let the backlash begin I was thinking about that bitch who insulted me in the elevator the other day, and how so many moments go by in life where someone shits on you without cause, and you don't adequately respond for whatever reason. Often it's a matter of timing -- the elevator arrives at your floor just as you're clearing your throat and mentally assembling the perfect return of serve. So you just get out, and the asshole keeps riding all the way up to the top floor. And you convince yourself that what comes around goes around and eventually she'll get hers and all those other comforting clichés that make such sense when you end up on the losing end in life and have no answer. Deep in your heart, you know that it might be years, if ever, before something proportionately shitty befalls the motherfucker in question. But you really don't have a lot of options outside of willing bad things their way. So that's what you do: you just move on, unless you are a psycho, in which case you plot revenge. I think Elevator Hag is in deep need of a little revenge. Nothing too serious, but if I am ever on the elevator with her again and there are no strangers around, I will say something obnoxious or perhaps fart in her presence while staring her down. I hope her henpecked scrub of a husband is there, too, to soak in my foul emissions. I am open to suggestions. I watched with a combination of nausea
and disbelief the non-stop Clemens parade at the all-star game tonight.
When will Baseball stop overestimating the emotional connection between
Clemens and the public? My opinion: fans in Boston loathe him.
Fans in New York and Toronto are deeply indifferent towards him. In
fact, I cannot recall an athlete (besides Clemens) performing at such a high level for so
long (and make no mistake, he is one of the greatest athletes any of us
has ever seen)
Another thing about Clemens: he may be the best pitcher of all time (I say not quite), but he's never been for one instant the guy you'd want on the mound with all your verbungle.com shares, or your mother's heart pills, or the World Series, on the line. He's had some great clutch performances over the years, but he's also fucked up and melted down just as often. And because he's so emotionally distant, it's hard to feel sorry for the prick when he shits the bed. The wife is going to Toronto tomorrow. At 12:35 am, I went down to our local Duane to pick her up a travel toothpaste thingy. As I left the building, I heard the unmistakable throbbing beat of "Do a Little Dance, Make a Little Love, Get Down Tonight." I looked across the street and saw an SUV with both doors flung open, music blasting out, two guys standing around and a blond dancing in drunken circles on the sidewalk. Now you might just dismiss this group with a wave of the hand and a muttering something like "Assholes." And I won't argue with you on that; the evidence supports it. But I still felt a certain sense of wistful appreciation for them. Out rocking on a Tuesday night, turning their Cherokee into a disco and sucking every last drop of pleasure out of their buzz. One of the guys kept nervously saying, "OK, that's enough. Let's go." I'm guessing it was his car. I'm also speculating (and hoping) that he was the most sober of the three. I'd like to think that the three of them had gone out for a beer after work, and that beer showed up with some friends, and all of a sudden it was 11 o'clock and both guys had designs on hooking up with the lady. One guy was the obvious choice, sparks were flying, and the other guy was just taking up space; even a dead man could see that. But Bachelor #2 just kept hanging in there, like an overmatched prizefighter who doesn't have the good sense to go down. As the night played out, whatever chemistry the two lovebirds had has given way to the stubborn perseverance of Bachelor #2. I bet he's the one with the wheels, too. It looks like he's going to be here all night, screwing things up for the other two. The blond just wants to dance now. The guy who should rightly be making out with her (a move they'd both regret almost instantly) is now just another player, standing around on West 72nd street and nodding his head to the beat. He's still got hope, but things aren't adding up the way they were an hour ago. So he'll wait. They'll all wait. And it's only 12:35 am in New York City -- maybe something will happen yet. Two of the three will end up knowing; it'll be their secret. Awkward eye contact at the water cooler. Emails sent to straighten it all out, clarifying where things stand. But that's for another day. Right now it's time for patience. And disco dancing. I think it's also time to officially launch the backlash against Dan K. First he writes the softball recap, and does such a good job that people are basically lining up to blow him, and then he answers the lyric bustah as well. I'm officially sick of him, and I intend to take him out at second next week if he's within 20 feet of the base. Fucker. He claims to have purchased a piece of verbungle merch., and if so, I forgive him. Spiderman has come a long way since his Electric Company Days. (beware, possible audio). I was just thinking about how remarkably well I'm aging. I mean, I'd like to lose some weight, I've gotten quite a bit uglier over the years, and my brain seems to be slipping a little. I don't smell as fresh as I once did. But I have almost all my hair and I can still run around and play ball every night. I got no damn complaints about nothing. Okay, this is a risky thing to say, and I might very well go back on it, but here goes: if the Yankees acquire Randy Johnson for the stretch drive/postseason, i will renounce my fandom (fanship?) as it applies to the New York Yankees baseball club. It just wouldn't be right to pull for this behemoth. Not to say they'll necessarily win, but rooting for them goes against all decent human instincts. I'll always support the core guys, but I will not call myself a Yankee fan again for the calendar year 2004.* Enough is enough. I know, enough was already enough. But I can only turn the other way for so long. After the season, I will re-evaluate all of this stuff. * - if you stumble across some free tickets to a game, I will certainly accompany you and act for all intents and purposes like a Yankee fan for the evening. Thanks very much, I appreciate it. 7/13/04: You overdid it, homes The big leaguers know how we roll on Clarkson Street. So I didn't beat Dipak 7-3 in pool/pong as I predicted yesterday. In fact, he beat me four out of five in pool before I came roaring back with 5 straight wins in ping pong. So it was 6-4, me. I have this sneaky feeling that each of us is going to secretly practice so we can win next week's showdown. I know I am. You better be ready, you son of a bitch. I'm gunning for you. While we were playing pool,
I mentioned to Dipak that I thought I might get nice and toasty drunk
during the Sunday Night
Softball Game. I wish I had put this prediction in writing, as it
proved to be deadly accurate. When I got home from softball I was
pretty much cross-eyed. My wife immediately noticed. "I am not drunk, and I can't believe you're criticizing me after I came home and brought you peaches." That's a fact: I did stop and get her some peaches on the way back from softball. Still, I was quite obviously grandstanding about it to deflect from my naked shitfacedness. She pointed out that in her estimation, I have been coming home drunk three times a week lately. It's a pretty good estimation. I'm not coming home can't-find-the-keyhole drunk, but having a bar downstairs from my office has definitely made it very easy to stop for a couple on the way home. I need to keep that shit in check. Because it wastes money and it makes it hard for me to come home cross-eyed without repercussions after Sunday Night Softball. No high-quality wife wants a husband who comes home drunk three times a week. I was too drunk, as it turned out, to update the old website despite having hundreds of beer-soaked witticisms and observations flowing through my head. All I wanted to do was sleep. So I did. I got 8-plus hours for the first time in maybe six months. Then I had some fucked-up dreams, at least one anyway. I was on the way to work, but I had forgotten to do something on the home computer (update the website? how pathetic would that be?), so I brought the laptop to work with me. I decided to do my personal business during lunch hour, so at around noon I went downstairs with the laptop in tow. Somehow, Chelsea Market turned into a beach on an overcast day. It was warm enough to go into the water, so I did, and began typing on my laptop while I waded out further and further. I was sort of typing with one hand while the other hand struggled to keep the computer above the surface. I was up to my chest and there were some decent-sized waves, so it was a bit of a challenge. I was also beginning to worry that I would be late coming back from lunch and I'd get in "trouble" (whatever that means). But the water was soothing. As I stood there fretting about all my problems, my cell phone rang. I set my laptop down on top of the water so I could take the call, and to my delight, it floated pretty well. On the line was a guy I used to work with, a guy I've mentioned before, a guy who wore bow ties every day and was very well-connected in the movie industry. He asked me how I was doing, and I told him everything was OK, how are you, the usual BS. As I was talking, I noticed my laptop drifting further and further out to sea, and I sort of kept one eye on it to make sure it didn't get away from me completely. He asked me about a couple of other guys we used to work with, guys who were pretty good friends of both of ours, and I told him that they had moved to LA to pursue a screenwriting career together. "Those idiots," Bow Tie Guy said. "Why didn't they call me? I could have totally hooked them up with meetings and stuff." "I don't know," I said, watching my laptop disappear into the horizon. "Listen, I gotta go." I clicked my phone shut and began swimming further and further into the ocean, deeper and deeper over my head, pursuing the S.S. Toshiba. I'd have a lot of swimming to do if I was going to retrieve whatever it was I was working on and still make it back to the office in under an hour. I don't remember if I made it or not. I woke up at around 5 am and I rubbed my cheek. I stupidly slid into home plate again last night, and carved up my leg a little bit. It was also crusted with dirt which I painstakingly scrubbed off in the shower. Now, rubbing my face, I could swear my cheek was covered with the same little dirt granules which clung to my leg earlier in the night. Only they wouldn't rub away. It turns out it was just stubble. But I kept clawing at it and it freaked me out. I think I may have been drinking Bud Dragon, Anheuser Busch's entry into the opium-laced beer market. I actually woke up with that anxious hungover feeling, the what did I do, what did I say thing, after a measly game of softball. I win. If you like the image at left and you've been holding off on your verbungle.com purchases because of your aversion to anus-bearing T-shirts, now is the time to act. Support verbungle.com and the King of Beers with one single small purchase. 7/11/04: Take My Ass to the Cleaners One sure sign that my ass is getting
older is the decrease in the frequency with which various friends decide
to call me up drunk at 3 in the morning. I did receive 2 calls from
Chris W. about two weeks ago (upon review of cell phone call log: 5:46 am,
7:34 am), hoping that I could complete the line, "When you're lost in the
rain in
Went to Old Timer's Day yesterday in the Bronx. Don't go to Old Timer's Day if you can avoid it. It's a bit like watching one of our Sunday night softball debacles. Difficult. For one thing, there is a big difference between a 66 year-old "Old Timer" and 39 year-old Kevin Maas, who was clearly auditioning for a September roster spot. There was one fabulously botched hotbox yesterday that ended in a full embrace between catcher and baserunner. We could use some of that spirit. Luis Sojo ended the game with a 420 foot homer to left center off Ron Guidry. In a another striking similarity to our Sunday night festivities, everybody just walked off the field after the home run. His team had already been winning, 3-2, and it was the bottom of the third and final inning, so they were only batting for fun. Not sure why they just said fuck it after that. I guess they were on a timer. The "youth" game afterwards was pretty good, the usual dumb fans doing the usual dumb things, and I swear I bought four warm beers for $32. Unreal. At least I got to watch Mariano pick up another save. One more note: the Fuji blimp was flying within a high pop-up's distance of the stadium. When I was a kid, the blimp was just a little speck way out in the sky, like the moon. Now that shit circles the stadium menacingly for the entire game. I don't like it. I am predicting a big turnout and a big win for softball tonight. I also think I will take Dipak 7 games to 3 in the pre-softball pool/ping pong challenge. 7/10/04: Ha ha, you have insulted me, stranger! A final thought on The Invoice Game: I don't want to make it sound like I was the only practitioner of this bizarre ritual. Indeed, at one time most of my department was probably using this strategy. I don't want to take all the credit/blame for it, even though I probably deserve it. I heard a bizarre (and probably false) rumor that Dave Chappelle has converted to Islam. We'll have to wait and see. One, if it's true, and two, what it means for the show that every asshole loves to quote. I came home from work (and happy hour) today at around 8, and there were about four other people waiting for the elevator when I got there. The five of us poured in together. I was dressed in an untucked button down shirt and khaki pants. Just a typical fool coming home from his daily shit-sacking.* As I got in the elevator, one dude was sort of blocking all the buttons, not in an aggressive way, but in a way that indicated he'd rather press the button for you than let you press it yourself. I usually like to take responsibility for my own button-pushing, but I am also willing to let the desperately good Samaritans get their kicks. "Could you hit 11, please?" I asked innocently. He hit 11 for me. We're riding up in the elevator and I'm sifting through my mail, when button-pusher's grotesque wife says, "You yuppies who just moved in need to learn to hit the buttons yourself. It's a dog eat dog world out there." I couldn't help making a face at her. A young woman, the only other person on the elevator whom she could possibly be speaking about, kind of gave her a courtesy chuckle, but I was just scowling and trying to ignore this crabapple. "Hey, she can laugh, why can't you laugh? It's just a joke," she said. "Come on, you're a tough guy." Here's why I couldn't laugh: 1. I am not a yuppie. From what I remember about
this term, it is: 3. It wasn't at all funny. So she had insulted me and was angry that I hadn't enjoyed the insult as much as she wanted. I wanted to gouge her stupid, drunk-on-cough-syrup, walking-to-the-corner-in-your-rarely-washed-nightgown eyes out. But instead I just said, in a friendly tone, "Yeah, I kind of resent the yuppie comment." "Come on, you're a big boy." Before I could say, "Hags** need to learn to keep their yapping mouths sealed," we had reached my floor. I just got out. I am done with the Upper West Side, and all the local crazies who think it's the last unspoiled bit of countryside in America. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. "It's not the nerdy thing that people might think it is." Uh, yeah it is, Uno Man. I was wondering what happened to all those lonely flash mobbers. How much do you want to sock this guy? I have decided to stop complaining and start an email campaign to have him reassigned to clubhouse reporter, a job which Dinny reminds me he was actually pretty good at. What will they do with Waldman? Not our problem. Maybe she can go back to musical theater. I am going to the Yankee game today and sitting in the sun through the old-timers game as well as the regular game. Then I have dinner at my boss's house. This is a great opportunity for me to cut back on the $7 beers, behave myself, and show up for dinner without a red, swollen, sunburned nose and a ferocious drunk on. We'll see what happens. This is not funny; it's actually quite tragic. Click here and then read about the man raised as a chicken. Thanks to Val for the lonk. * - term "shit-sacking" © PB/CW 1999. Used without
permission. 7/9/04: The Secret Shame of The Invoice Game I am still getting used to rush hour subway headaches. Today the #1 train was packed nice and tight, and as we approached 42nd street, some creepo (seated, looking kinda like Ignatius J. Reilly with headphones and a fannypack) starts yelling out with everything he's got, "This is 42nd street, transfer available for the Brooklyn-bound number FIVE train. 34th street will be next." Every stop, this crazy fucker is yelling out incorrect transfer information. People were just staring at him in disbelief. Some chuckled, others retreated carefully to far corners of the car. Eventually I got off and transferred to the #2. Awhile back I promised an explanation of "The Invoice Game." Here's how it worked: my old boss was a real cheapie. She never wanted to spend company money on anything (except perhaps gin and tonics during her standard three hour lunch). I was the person working directly beneath her, and rather than deal with the honcha herself, folks were always coming up to me to request all the equipment, supplies, and services that we needed to keep the ol' company rolling along. I was no expert; I couldn't tell them to trim their orders down or retract them altogether. It all made perfect sense to me. So I would nod sympathetically and say, yes, of course we'll order that $4000 of equipment for the studio. Sure, let's bring in that freelance editor for five days next week -- the work needs to get done, after all. I was about as benevolent a captain as you'd ever hope to find. We had a book of Purchase Orders which were required for ordering anything that cost more than 79 cents. I'd dutifully take down the order from whatever employee was bending my ear about it, and then I'd transcribe this info into the P.O. book, taking care to get an exact total, including tax, for what we intended to order. I would then set the P.O. book in my boss's in box so she could authorize the purchase. Pretty standard. Of course, when she got a look at the total, she'd balk every fucking time. She'd call me into her office. "Why do we need new lighting fixtures all of a sudden?" she'd demand to know. I don't know, I thought. Because the Lighting Designer requested them to light the new show? I'd make up some feeble excuse for why we needed them. She'd say, I won't sign this until you can justify to me that we can't get by with what we already have. She was just doing her job, I guess. So then I'd go back to the requester and say, you have to come in and explain to my boss why we need all this stuff, because I don't have the expertise. The requester inevitably had a triple reaction. First he'd be indignant that he was being forced to defend every detail of what in his mind was a very simple and absolutely necessary order. Then he'd decline to talk to my boss about it, out of fear. Finally, he would make some vague threat that if we didn't get this stuff, the company would come to a grinding halt and it would be on my head. Unable to broker a meeting between the two sides, I did what any cowardly low-middle-manager would do in that situation: I just ordered the shit we needed without getting the approval. My thinking was that by the time the hell came around to be paid, I would have long since left the company for a professional basketball career. What would actually happen: the equipment would come in, the day would be saved, and I'd have at least a week of false peace while I waited for the bill to show up. When it did, I would do one of two things: I would toss it into my top desk drawer, so I could buy some time and decide what the hell I was going to do with it. Or I'd give it my preliminary "OK per SRC" signature and toss it into the boss's in box, hoping that she'd be in a "Blazing Saddles"-style signing frenzy, and would just approve it without examining it. The bill would be sent on to Accounts Payable, the folks would get paid, and I would be a hero to myself. This never worked once. Instead, the boss would see the bill and send it back to me with a ? on it, as if to say, can you explain what this equipment is for and can you give me some proof that I OK'd it? Then I would toss it into my top desk drawer, where unsigned invoices go to die. A couple of weeks would go by, and I would intend to somehow get my boss to sign the bill. I really would. But I just couldn't figure out any possible way to make it happen. So the bill would sit there as weeks turned into "30 Days Past Due." Sometimes I'd receive a duplicate invoice -- the vendor was rightfully wondering where their fucking money was. I would file the second invoice in the top drawer with its twin. Sometimes at this point I would throw out the original, the one with the ? on it. I would now be in a deep panic, knowing that a phone call from the vendor was only a couple of days away. I would avoid picking up my phone, or when it rang I would ask a co-worker, "Should I pick it up?" Eventually I'd pick up and there'd be an irritated vendor on the other end. After they explained that they hadn't been paid in 60 days, I would say something like: "Oh my God. I am so sorry. That's terrible. I remember signing off on that invoice and passing it on to my boss for approval (often not completely untrue). Let me check into it and see what the hell happened. Our Accounts Payable department is a little discombobulated right now (again, not an outright lie, but deeply dishonest and morally reprehensible)." Then I'd wait a day or two before I called them back with the results of my search: "I checked with our Accounts Payable Department (astonishingly, often I would actually check, so this is still technically not a lie! But this action reveals the depth of my madness.) and they have no record of ever seeing the bill (true again, but perhaps the reason they hadn't seen it was because the only existing copies were sitting in my top drawer). Can you do me a favor? Can you send me another copy and I will personally rush it through and see to it that it gets paid immediately? I am really sorry about this (I truly was)." The next day we'd get another invoice stamped with "duplicate" and "past due" and all sorts of other menacing accounting terms. I would march it right into my boss's office with a look of intense mock exasperation across my face. I would plop the new invoice, with all its special markings, on my boss's desk, and then I'd say something like this: "(Insert Boss's Name), I don't know what's going on down in Accounts Payable (I really didn't), but this is an old invoice that never got paid. I submitted it like two months ago. This is really embarrassing. (All true.) I know you signed off on it, but they seem to have lost the original bill (there ya go: a thick, satisfying, outright lie). Can you just do me a favor and sign off on it right now so I can personally deliver it to accounts payable? This is really frustrating how this keeps happening." Within seconds, I'd have the signature I needed. I'd hand-deliver the bill to Accounts Payable, and I would politely ask them to kindly put a rush on it, while scratching my head and saying something like, "Yeah, I don't know what happened with this bill the first time." I wouldn't go so far as to directly blame them for the snafu, but they may have sensed my disappointment. Equipment had been ordered and installed. Bills had been received and paid. We all kept our jobs. It was a triumph of incompetence. That, friends, is how you play and win The Invoice Game. I know what you're thinking: I'm a scumbag. A chicken. An idiot. How could I let the innocent folks in Accounts Payable take the blame for my charades? Well, I don't really know. Maybe you're right. I am not (that) proud of any of it. I was in a lawless environment, a land without accountability, and I succumbed. And nobody ever got yelled at or fired or anything: failure was our S.O.P. Here's to me for getting shit done. This picture is not that interesting except that the deli you see used to be Twin Donut, where I had my famous game of Robotron at lunch in 1983 -- a game which found me completely on fire, a game where I entered a zone in which my hands and eyes separated from my mind and began to operate on their own supernatural plane. A game that made me (and several of my friends who stuck around to watch the carnage) late for Mr. Baumann's science class. That parking lot on the right is also the place where Chris W. and I parked the U-Haul (containing all my earthly possessions) overnight in 1995. Imagine the attendant's surprise when we returned pie-eyed to the lot at around 5am and demanded the U-Haul back so we could go on a shit-housed tour of NYC's darker corners. Maybe a larger hand was guiding us, a hand playing a cosmic game of Robotron with our truck. And maybe this hand entered that untouchable zone where perfect actions do not require thoughts, because we survived. At around 7, as if we had summoned it, "Yellow Ledbetter" came on the radio. We rocked out to it, then we went home, slept, and moved the next day. I don't need to see any more TV shows featuring idiotic people being force-fed gross stuff that they don't want to eat. It is not entertaining. Now that I have been spouting bullshit here for over a year, I get to dip into the archives for a little recycled content every now and then. Here is where I was one year ago: 7/9/3: My office is located in a shitty neighborhood. I say that with a great deal of authority, because the streets around our workplace are actually lined with feces -- equine, canine, and most definitely humine. We are right up against the west side of Manhattan. As we walk east to go get our lunch everyday, we encounter so many disgusting objects that we have created little games to make the trip more bearable. As we are dodging huge shit-piles, we will play "Dog or Human?" We also do used-condom counts -- I think we've seen close to ten on one block when the weather is warm and the lovin' is easy. We once saw the box for a giant vibrator called "The Rabbit." Rats and crazy people and incredibly foul odors -- we are on the cutting edge of unpleasantness. But today, as we strolled back from a peaceful pizza lunch, something caught my eye. Have a look and draw your own conclusions. Yes, it sure fucking looked like a severed human finger, possibly wrapped in some bloody gauze. And before you ask, yes I used my digital camera to snap these shots. My boss and my co-worker and I were just mesmerized. We stood around the thing for about 5 minutes, trying to figure out for sure what it was. When we finally left, a man who had seen us studying the thing approached us and said, "That's a human finger, isn't it?" When we said, yeah, we think so, he was like, "I knew I wasn't crazy." When we got back to the office and shared our news and photos, a few people were shocked that we hadn't called the police. We had actually thought about it for a minute, but we weren't really sure what it was, and it seemed no more criminal in nature than the rest of the detritus on those sidewalks. Some other people eventually went back to have a look, and the object had been tampered with and now sort of just looked like a tube-shaped piece of bloody gauze. The "nail" had disappeared. And bloody gauze just isn't news in our neck of the woods. As my boss pointed out, "We stopped taking pictures of shit years ago." Finally, thanks for the encouraging thoughts left in the comments section yesterday...I really wasn't feeling any more insecure or hopeless than usual, but I guess it came across that I was. Still, it's nice to hear kind words from people I respect. That means everybody but you, Lenny. 7/8/04: Yes, That's A Urinal Cake Rasputin's dick.* That's the answer we were looking for.** Some of you were definitely on the right track. I myself thought it was an elephant dick upon first glance. Special credit to reader "Guess Who" for correctly identifying the woman as Eastern European. Prior to our recent relocation to
Chelsea Market, my company was divided into two offices: the Production
and Operations teams (including me) were located in the shitweeds of West
52nd Street, while the Marketing, Programming, and Website folks were in
midtown (6th avenue and 47th street). Now we're all under one
roof, and I naively thought that maybe we'd start getting to know each
other. When I started with this company, we all did know each
other. As my boss was fond of saying in those days, "Oh, so you want
to pitch a show? You need to talk to Matt S. One thing to
remember: he's also the guy to see if you need a garbage can for your
desk." It's true. We had no idea how to run a company, and everybody
was wearing multiple incongruous hats (see Dinny F.: IT supervisor/studio
manager).
But now it's official: we've gone corporate. I realize it when I walk down the hall past dozens of co-workers I've never seen before. I try to say hello, but they turn away as if I'm hitting them up for spare change. There is a clearly marked line between the midtown posse and the scumrods from W. 52nd. And I think the company is getting more buttoned up as a whole. My 52nd-streeters with our old way of thinking are on the express lane to extinction. You can see it in the faces of the people you walk past. Things have changed. People are assigned to logical jobs and they perform those jobs with some degree of dedication and enthusiasm, in the hopes that they may better the company and themselves as well. Systems are in place. Shirts are tucked in. I must stick out like a sore thumb. Whatever, these young kids may make better money than we did (and do), but they'll never know the thrill of watching "Barnyard Bazaar #24" in the comfort of the conference room. Our office is actually a very interesting place to be right now. There are tons of union construction guys yelling at each other because the job is way behind schedule, and then you have the 52nd street kids with our immature nonsense, and then you have the 6th avenue crew with their fancy clothes and clenched anuses. We've already seen a couple of very strange and troubling things, including someone who defecated in the men's room (I know, not that strange in and of itself), chose not to flush, pissed all over the seat, and left a piece of paper across the seat with the following message scrawled on it: "catch my nuts, liver lips." There are some troubled folks in our office right now. One such troubled employee chose to quit a couple of weeks back. He asked me to write his resignation for him, as English is not his strong suit. So I did. Then his boss told him she was too busy to write a recommendation for him, so he'd have to write it himself and she'd sign it. He asked me to write this as well. So I did. I believe I set some kind of office ghostwriting record that week. Both notes were short and to the point and full of absolute horseshit. Good luck to you, my former colleague. Often in nature we come across two species that are natural enemies. Usually, when you observe firsthand the terrifying and sometimes beautiful struggle between the two, you find one to root for. For instance, most of us like the mongoose over the cobra. Seeing a rabbit outrun a crazed fox also brightens my day. But it's not always the victim who earns our admiration. I enjoy seeing grizzlies yank stupid salmon out of the stream and chow down on 'em. That's just neat as hell. Occasionally when two such competing creatures encounter one another it's impossible to pick one over the other. Sometimes both animals are so fierce and proud that you want them both to win. Other times they are both so detestable that you wish they could both die if possible. Usually, though, you can make a pick, even a halfhearted one. Here is one such difficult matchup: The Subway Journaler vs. The Guy That Tries to Peak at What the Subway Journaler is Journaling about. I find the subway journaler to be a bit pretentious, jotting down all their clever musings on urban life, hoping to be seen and envied by as many straphangers as possible. Yet I can't help but root for them against the assholes who sidle up next to them to read every word they write. In fact, I think I may start bringing a journal on the subway with me and writing down a bunch of stream-of-consciousness BS while I wait for a snooper to come 'round and sit down next to me. When they do, and I am certain they have locked their eyes on my work, I will write the following: "There is something about shitting one's pants on the subway that makes me see that man can truly be free, if only he can break away from ridiculous, random societal expectations. Ahhh. There, I just did it again. And no one can tell! What joy! Oh, it feels mushy and terrible. I need to go home. But first, as I get up to exit the train, I will "accidentally" fall ass-first onto the unsuspecting fool sitting next to me. Serves him right for reading my journal." * - Band name! (Editor's notes: 7/7/04: Thanks, Bob If you happen to go to Montreal, prepare yourself for a couple of hours at the border each way. On the way back on Monday afternoon, we spent a good hour and a half stuck in traffic, but it wasn't as bad as on the way there, cuz we knew what we were getting into. We busted out the laptop and watched an episode of "The Office" on DVD. That killed a good half-hour, and then we scooted into the duty free shop to get some tax back and buy some duty-free stuff. We bought 2 six-packs of Maudite, a fine, strong beer from Québec. I kind of want to start a new page, or maybe a running column on the main page, devoted to things that verbungle.com wholeheartedly endorses. Not sure exactly how I want to go about it. I guess I could look at how any of the ten million other existing blogs handle stuff like this, but it's more fun for me to dick around with it myself. I inevitably come up with the same solution that everybody else came up with five years ago. Still, I disagree with some of the fundamental principles of blogging. For instance, I know that if you want to drive people to your site (and even the most modest bloggers want people checking their site), you are supposed to spread the love by constantly linking other sites. In theory, I respect this system. I link you, you link me, the traffic stats increase, and the world goes around. But the truth is, I rarely see a site that I can put my full support behind, so I just end up linking the same two or three sites all the time. I could flood my "endorsements" page with lots of links to sites I've barely heard of or don't really like that much, in the hopes that they would do the same for me, but that would be kind of dishonest. If this means I will always be stuck with three readers, so be it. Better than recommending stuff I don't care for. So I guess what I am saying is I am going to
make an endorsements page, which will consist of a long list of items that
verbungle.com feels strongly about.
I am enjoying the first of those 12 Maudite beers as I type this. My dad instilled in me at an early age that there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a beer before bed on a Tuesday night. This tradition was reinforced for me during my senior year of college by my roommate Dale. Up until that point, I would only crack a beer if I planned on having thirty of 'em, except for the occasional meal-based beer. Dale thought a good beer and a huge bowl of popcorn right before bed would comfort your belly and relax your mind. I'm not sure where he read this, but it made a lot of sense at the time. We were living in an apartment with six guys, and the other four (besides Dale and me) were often studying until 11 or 12 at night. Dale and I had the house to ourselves, and we took advantage with nightly beer drinking/philosophy/popcorn/TV sessions from maybe 10 until 12. We had heard of the famous drinking game "Bob," based on the old Bob Newhart show, and since that show was airing on Nickelodeon every night at 10:30, we decided to give it a shot. The rules may vary slightly depending on who you talk to, but we kept it simple: take a drink every time someone says "Bob," and take two nice long drinks anytime someone says "Hi, Bob." It's pretty damn fun -- you could easily go through two or three beers in an episode. You know, maybe 20-30 "Bobs" and four "Hi, Bobs". And Bob himself is so soothing that by the time the show is over, you're half-asleep and your troubles are gone. It never failed to surprise me just how often they used Bob's name, in all sorts of awkward and unnatural ways. Sometimes his name would be used five times in one conversation -- a conversation involving Bob himself. Imagine if I was talking to you and I kept referring to you by your name throughout the conversation: "So Douchey, remember we're going to that show on Saturday. Oh, Douchey, don't tell me you forgot. Douchey, what am I going to tell Howard and Carol?" It was weird. I began to suspect that "Bob" the game took hold while the show was still being produced, the writers got wind of it, and they started purposely stacking each show with as many Bobs as possible. Then one night an episode came along that totally confirmed my theory. There were 75 Bobs (and we took a drink with every one) and maybe 10 Hi Bobs. It was fucking insane. I was keeping track, too. These numbers are not exaggerated. No character could open their mouth without the word "Bob" tumbling out soon afterward. Here's to the Bob Newhart writing staff, for allowing credibility and plot to take a back seat to a silly, silly drinking game. They risked their jobs for us. Played good hoops tonight. Won a bunch in a row. Feel sore and sleepy. Thanks to Ambrose for the fine picture at right. Any guesses as to what it is (be as specific as possible)? Please utilize the comments section for this purpose. If you've already seen this item and know the answer, please don't guess. I also wanted to say a happy birthday to the USA, land that I love, land of Paul Westerberg and John Starks and Bonita Applebum. Land of high fives and special massages and fake moon landings. I missed you this weekend, and it's good to be back. Things haven't been so hot for you lately, but I have great hopes for you someday. 7/4/04: Let's hear it for the Red, White and... Last night at dinner the waitress was
clearing our table and "accidentally" spilled about a quart of mussel
juice on my arm, shirt, and pants. She was very apologetic and I was
very understanding, and I thought nothing of it as I headed back to the
hotel to change before going to see "Spiderman 2" (very good, not quite as good as I
expected).
Gordon said he wouldn't be surprised if the waitress had dumped the mussel juice on me intentionally. Who knows? I suppose I deserve it, being an American and all. There's nothing more satisfying than watching NASA guys high-five after a successful mission. It would be cooler still if they busted out some elaborate pre-rehearsed hand-slapping ritual, complete with the little "birdie flying away/waving bye bye" gesture. Last night I had a bunch of crazy dreams. That always seems to happen to me when I'm sleeping in a foreign bed. In one dream, I kept catching foul balls at a Yankee game. After each one, I would pump my fist and then give the entire crowd the finger, as if to say, "In your face!" The people I was with would remind me that I was probably on TV, and there were kids watching, etc., so why don't I tone it down? I would realize they were right, and apologize, only to do the exact same thing minutes later. I just couldn't help myself. It's probably how I'd actually react if I ever got a foul ball, too. So I am sort of sad to be leaving Canada
tomorrow. I really like it here. It's kind of laid back, almost
modest. In the U.S., we're always bragging about all the great shit
we've done, and I grant you, we've done a lot. But we've also done
plenty that we should be ashamed of. Here in Canada, the list of
accomplishments may be shorter, but so is the list of embarrassments.
If you invited the two countries to a party, it would go down something
like this: Canada would show up on time and bring a bottle of wine.
He'd be polite to people, he'd sip his scotch in peace the whole night,
occasionally cracking a clever one-liner that catches everybody by
surprise. If he didn't leave early, he'd stay late and help you
clean up. Your other friends would be asking you about him the next day,
like, "Who was that dude in the turtleneck with the glasses? He was really
cool." You'd be like, "Aw, that's just Canada, man.
He's always up for a good time."
Meanwhile, America would roll in around midnight, completely loaded from a
previous party.
Fresh from his verbungle.com endorsement, Roger Federer won Wimbledon. I guess it would have been a better story if the American had won it in England on the 4th of July, but I'm still happy with the result. Curiously, I do find myself hating Roddick less these days. I didn't get a chance to sample any of the hundreds of strip clubs that pop up all over the place here, right alongside more traditional businesses. But the magic words are definitely "Contact Dance," which I assume is just a simple lap dance. Perhaps it means a more elaborate dance where you can thrust your sweaty crotch against the dancer in a simulated sex act. I don't know. I'll try to remember to ask the people at the border checkpoint tomorrow. On Pete's advice, I watched a little of the Euro 2004 soccer final. It was pretty exciting, I guess. Certainly several people in the bar were into it, and it was a pretty tame bar. It would have been more fun in a rowdy bar, for sure. But I think soccer may be too subtle a sport for me. Call me a typical American, but I need the instant grats. I prefer the (formerly) constant scoring of basketball to the slow burning tension, occasional strategic offensive forays and 1-0 final scores of soccer. Soccer has too much rejection for me. Such great efforts are made just to set up one legit scoring chance, only to have the ball harmlessly, and easily, booted aside by the defense. And then perhaps the one goal of the game is scored on a fluke or a misplay. I've tried to love it, and I respect the sport and its players, but I definitely need a rooting interest or my mind is wandering. The Greeks were going crazy all over Montreal tonight, though. Good for them. First the success of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and now this. What a run. SPIDER-MAN 2 SEMI-SPOILER ALERT: READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN SPIDER-MAN 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Now that the verbungle.com snippet department editorial staff has been caught off guard by that d-bag quoting a line from "Napoleon Dynamite," we realize that the incessant quoting of movies and television is not ever going away. If we can't beat 'em, we will join 'em by suggesting this breakup line, fresh (and maybe not verbatim) from Spider-man 2. If you are dating a girl, and it's just not working out, and you don't know exactly how to break the news to her, try this: First, make a really sad face, like saying what you're about to say pains you more deeply than she'll ever know. Then say: "I can't be with you. Because...I'm...Spider-man." If that doesn't do it, sort of trail off with,"...if my enemies found out..." And then turn away in mock despair. 7/3/04: Report from Verbungle North Happy 4th of July, everyone! Go harmlessly blow some shit up. That's what the 4th of July used to mean to me: explosions. Lucky I never lost a finger or a nose or anything. The drive to Montreal was a snap. We made
really good time, until we got to the border.
We went out to our favorite Indian Restaurant in Old Montreal last night, and then came home and crashed. Woke up today and got some of those St. Viateur bagels I've been going on about -- and they delivered the goods. We sat outside of a grocery shop and chowed down in the sun. An absolutely gorgeous day to be a young Canadian in love. There are plenty of highly touted food stops in every city that don't live up to the billing, subpar places that coast by on reputation and the generous wallets of tourists (I Latini in Florence comes to mind). But I swear these bagels kick ass. They came right out of the oven, too. They always seem to come right out of the oven. After that, it was time to explore the city. When you're in a different city, especially a foreign city, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what "exploring" that city might mean. Are you there for the architecture, or the culture, or to get a feel for the people? Are you there to dine, to relax, to see ancient sights, to rock out in the clubs at night? Increasingly I realize that "exploring" cities with my wife means shopping for upwards of four hours per day. Which is OK (although I'd rather be sitting in cool bars drinking cold local beers). I wander around by her side, I gawk at the locals, and I usually bring along a book, cellphone, laptop, digital camera or any combination of the above to entertain myself. I may be a dork but I don't care. Right now I am in a coffee shop on St. Denis and you can see my view.
The streets are all pretty well lined with trees, and it's surprising what
a difference that makes in terms of shaping your mood. In New York,
when you walk down a heavily treed street, you notice it right away.
It feels like a treat. Here they're
Now I am back in the hotel, watching Yankees-Mets on Fox, my belly full of smoked meat. That smoked meat at Schwartz's (tourist destination #2) is unbelievable. As a vegetarian, I can justify eating it because the animal in question died for such a glorious cause -- it would be almost an insult not to eat it. We had ours with pickles and fries and some black cherry soda. The wife is doing two more hours of shopping before we meet up for a drink and some dinner. My relaxation level is sky-high, as it should be. There are far too many great things that come and go without me appreciating them as I should. It's only later, in hindsight, that I recognize their true excellence. It's a sad way to go through life. There are so many bands (Replacements, Pixies, Toto) that I don't get into until their reign is over, and then I never get to see them live (OK, I saw the Pixies, but only because they were opening up for Night Ranger). Athletes are the same way: I spent so much time hating Larry Bird and Michael Jordan that I never sat back and marveled at how good they were, and how much fun they were to watch. Another athlete I missed out on was Patrick Rafter. I always liked him, but somehow I never rooted for him in big matches, because he was inevitably playing somebody I liked more. Plus, the press was always jocking Rafter too much, talking about what a regular guy he was, how the other players all considered him a true gentleman, etc. That bothered me for some reason. Then he retired so suddenly. And all the guys who stepped into his place were such jerky little babies (Roddick, Hewitt, etc.) that I missed Rafter. I still do. In the meantime, I am going to try to pick a couple of players to root for over the next few years. My first choice is Roger Federer. The guy plays beautifully, and seems like a decent guy. Another guy I like is Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain. I don't know why I feel you need to know this. I just hope I don't wake up one day wondering why I never liked Andy Roddick. Because it seems like an obvious decision right now. I have enjoyed walking around without a cellphone for the last two days. I feel no need to check messages or call anybody. I am just an anonymous Canadian man, doing anonymous Canadian things on my own time. We have received a correction from West Coast reader Chris W.: "Your latest snippet (“Back in high school, I could throw a football a quarter of a mile") is from of the movie "Napoleon Dynamite," which is full of such lines that will soon be quoted ad nauseum by windbags the world over. I imagine your editors will want to clear up this misconception post haste." We have made the correction and have fired the employee responsible for letting this mistake through. To make it up to you, we have a new, original snippet for your enjoyment. 7/2/04: You're looking LIVE...at an asshole One sports announcer trait I can't stand is the tendency to insert false drama into every moment. It's an insult to the intelligence of the average fan. In fact, I think the gap between fan knowledge and announcer knowledge has never been smaller. So add what you need to, but let us absorb the power of the moment and evaluate just how much it means. The worst ever was Brent Musberger. The guy would introduce a game between the 5-8 Chicago Bears and the 3-10 Detroit Lions with his trademark, "You're looking LIVE...at the Superdome in Detroit, where a couple of NFC Central rivals are about to strap it on and get down to business in the trenches. So sit back and get ready for some old-time smashmouth football, NEXT." I realize the guy has a job to do, and part of that job is selling the product, but he's also got at least some journalistic responsibilities, doesn't he? Stop trying to get us riled up. We'll decide whether to care or not. Michael Kay is giving ol' Brent a run for his money in the histrionics department. He's also an unrepentant homer and an unacceptably poor judge of fly balls. I truly loathe the guy. Here are a couple of clips from tonight's game that show just what we're dealing with. Situation 1: 9th inning, tie game, Bernie Williams at bat, man on first, none out. He hits a medium fly ball to straightaway center. Damon barely has to move and makes the catch roughly 100 feet in front of the fence. Here's Kay's call (click on the douchebag to listen):
Calm down, douche. It was a lazy fly to center. Then, when Kay finally says something halfway interesting, poor yokel Bobby Murcer comes in with one of the old, "You just said something clever, but it flew right past me, so I am going to go ahead and say the same thing in a less clever way, as if I was the first one to figure this shit out" comments. Click on the yokel to listen:
Finally, the game ends in incredibly dramatic fashion. One of the better games I've seen in a long time. And here comes Kay, in our face with his Yankee-loving, phlegmy-voiced call. What happened to letting a great moment speak for itself? Once again, click douchey.
I wonder if these audio files even work. I hope so. You need to know how hurting we are for announcers here. Just give me Kaat and Singleton and I'll be happy. Even if Kaat is pretty darn conservative old guard baseball in his opinions. The guy knows a lot of shit, and he's not such a conspicuous homer. Wherefore art thou, Nomar? I saw a mouse at work today. First little bit of bloom off the rose, I'd say. From what I heard, when they were doing the build out for our floors, there were so many rats they had to cease construction while they exterminated for like a week. They said it was a Pied Piper-type situation. Yuck. I'm sure one of 'em will come around looking for all his buddies. That'll be special. Not one to want to fall more than two years behind everybody else technologically, I downloaded and installed Mozilla Firefox today as an alternative to Internet Explorer. It seems to work a little bit quicker than IE, but it sort of has the graphic sophistication of verbungle.com. The interface looks like it was designed by a tenth grader. Maybe that's intentional. Who knows. I'll give it a shot and see if I can find any measurable differences. I am heading up to Montreal in the morning. Beautiful city, ridiculous smoked meat sandwiches. Worth a suspension of vegetarianism. The sweet bagels ain't no joke either. 7/1/04: The Bungmeister on Race Damn, your Local Bungmeister has been busy the last coupla days. Work, play, sleep. I haven't had the time to toss you a bone, not even a measly little toe bone or something. For that, I am sorry. I hate it when the events in my actual life interfere with my ability to properly 'bungle. It leaves me feeling incomplete and like I owe you, the 7-10 readers of this site, a little treat. But I have no treats today, so I will give you what I got. Which ain't much at all.
OK, a detail that I might not normally include but I will add here is that he is African-American, went to an all-black college, and, from what I can tell, hangs almost exclusively with African-American friends outside work. Because of this, I feel that perhaps he doesn't fully embrace our friendship, with me being a big-time honky and all, and I feel kinda bad about it. But we get along great and never have a lull in the conversation. So it is what it is. Yesterday, a couple of guys decided to get a beer after work, in the bar right downstairs from our office. My office now shares an address with a bar. Have I told you how thrilled I am to be in Chelsea Market? Anyway, it's happy hour, $3 Buds, and I decide to join this little crew for a couple beers before playing hoops (bad idea). I left the office at the same time as X . As we walked through the lobby towards the bar, I asked him if he was going to join us. He said he had plans and couldn't make it. But I pressed him, because he's the kind of guy who only brings positive energy to an evening, and everyone would be happy if he showed up. "Come on, what have you got to do?" I asked. "I'm going to see Farrakhan," he said. While I was kind of disappointed that my friend was going to see a hate-monger like Farrakhan speak, and I also wondered what this meant about the depth of our friendship, I sort of grudgingly respected him for staying politically/socially conscious after he was done with college. A lot of us just sort of fall by the wayside and stop caring and start weblogs about fat guys named Charly. So I was actually mildly impressed that he was going. I said goodnight and thought nothing of it. When I was at the bar, a couple people asked me why he didn't join us, and since I had a couple in me, I answered honestly, "He went to see Farrakhan." Everyone was sort of turned off by that. Farrakhan is kind of a dirty word to a lot of people. I had my beers and then, on the way home, I felt bad for betraying my friend. What if he didn't want anyone, including me, to know he was going to see Farrakhan? Why had I pressed him? And how could I have told people he works with this fact without consulting him first? I felt like a real asshole. It gets worse. This morning, I'm at my desk, and he comes by with the middle finger raised as always, so I say hello. "How was it?" I ask. "It was pretty good," he says, apparently not interested in discussing this potentially inflammatory topic in my cubicle. "Was it a good speech?" I ask anyway, insensitively. "No, it was a documentary." "Oh, I thought you were going to see him live." "See who live?" he asks. "Uh...oh...what documentary did you see?" I ask sheepishly, realizing that I'm only beginning to grasp what a true schmuck I am. "Fahrenheit 9/11," he answers. "You don't want to know how stupid I am," I say, before eventually admitting my ignorance. He forgave me right away, even gracefully indicating that he might go see Farrakhan if he was speaking -- although he also made it clear he's not a fan. Now you could argue, and you wouldn't be completely wrong, that I just misheard him. But there was some bias there, no doubt. It reminds you that race shapes what we see, what we hear, and what characteristics we ascribe to others. Again, I suck, and if you're reading, I apologize for my subconscious stereotyping. No matter what you think about the "Republican't" idea, I think we can all agree these hungover dickweeds aren't the guys you want on your sales team. Brady warned me about these dorks, and I didn't believe him at first. But it's official: there are now guys walking around in tennis shirts with the collars rolled up, as if this horrendous 70's-80's trend had never been mathematically proven unacceptable. Guys, it was lame once, it's even lamer on the rebound. Just because you're dressing in some kind of a (theoretically) sarcastic tribute to a look that's drastically uncool doesn't make you cool. You still look like a dick. Went to the Yankees-Sawx game tonight (Thanks Dinny!), and saw future Prez John Kerry at the game. Nah, not really. Yanks rallied predictably, Mariano saved like Jesus. Same old story. Every time I am tempted to renounce my devotion for this team, I think of Rivera and I just can't do it. I love that guy. And I love drinking down the coldies at the game; truly a freedom worth fighting for. Pete B. sends in this fun little flash game. It includes a built-in IQ test, which is: how long does it take your non-German-speaking ass to figure out how to play? Well, how long? And what's your longest stumble? Good NY Post headline today: Keystone Capos. They keep up the good work. Going to Montreal for my annual July 4th Getdafuggouttahere escape from rampant patriotism. Bringing the laptop, so there may be some postings, assuming I don't make too much poutine in the bed. |
But the way
they are handling this whole illness seems highly suspicious to me. 
It
was a comedy of errors and you simply could not change the channel.
And also interesting to see how many
copycats there are (not that he's the first person to do such a thing).
when
I publish it at home. Then I get to work and view it on my 13" monitor, with my
computer running Windows '83, and the pages are all messed up. Text is covered
by pictures, the paragraphs run off the screen into oblivion, and it makes the
whole thing unreadable. I don't blame you if you go visit
guy went downstairs to make himself a Red Bull and Vodka,
and I went with him to grab another beer. Dillahunt
said he had never tasted Red Bull and asked if we could bring him one. There was
only one left, so the other guy made his drink with it, and then we filled the
Red Bull can with blue Gatorade for Mike and told him it was Red Bull. He
liked it.
him as a real coach and not
a ball-roller-outer like K.C. Jones. At the center of it all, the
flawed, frustrating big man, Ewing. Someone once told me there was a
"win" at the heart of "E-win-g." I believed it, and I wrote it with my
finger in the frost on the big glass window of the Red Shed in Madison on
a blustery night after a big Knicks victory. There's a win at the
heart of Ewing. Turned out it wasn't true, but it sounded good at the
time.
Often I
disagree with him (such as when he cited the years 1991-1994 as the nadir for
pop culture, and awkwardly tried to illustrate this point with a discussion of
the music of this period), but sometimes he wins me over. Last night he
finally explained something that's been perplexing me for almost 20 years. Many
people don't remember this, but there was at one point in the late 80's a trend
in which guys playing ball would wear their jockstraps on the
Eventually I learned that vaulting
parking meters is no big deal.*** The biggest obstacle is getting
over your initial understandable fear of ball crushage. There's
really no margin for error; if you don't make it, you may well smash up
your sac but good. But the feat itself is pretty easy: just a
small leap, a gentle push with your hand(s)**** at the peak, and a clean
landing, and you're golden.***** I think I vault meters maybe once
every year or so******, just to make sure I can still do it.
lungs and shaking his head so violently that it looks like it might detach
from his shoulders, that is not bragging. That's acting like an
idiot. But when Larry Bird scores on Dr. J, and then mutters to him
as they run back downcourt, "What's that, Doc? 42-6?" I get a charge out
of it. Good-ass job on the bragging.
without leaving a trail of admiring fans behind him. It's
almost an achievement in itself: he's managed to dominate in a sport for
20 years without forging any kind of bond with anybody, except all his
K-named kids. Fox was pushing "Clemens as Legend" so hard tonight. They had the nerve to
play Journey's "Faithfully" during their in-game retrospective on his
career -- expecting tears, I'll bet. This was not just an error in
taste, but of judgment. Has Clemens ever shown "faith" to the fans who
would love him if he did? Has he rewarded them? No, he's a Hessian
bastard, and the fans can smell it a mile away. Smelly Hessian
Bastard. Now Baseball now wants us to believe he's "Houston's
favorite son." Anybody out there from Houston who can confirm or
deny this? Aren't people in Houston more attached to athletes who
have achieved success in Houston, for Houston? People like Nolan Ryan,
Earl Campbell, and Hakeem Olajuwon? Sure, Clemens has had a great
three months there, but rumor is he's already hinting that he'd like to move
on. Does anyone like him? Give me and the good people of
Houston Dickie Thon any day.
Felix
Unger, deep down I knew she was right.
Juarez, and it's Easter time, too..." Unfortunately I was
sleeping off my own bender and missed the call. (Answer: "...and
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through.") I'm
married now, and even my most slish-sloshy friends realize that the wife
doesn't need to be hearing these calls. Still, I kind of miss 'em.
Even if I didn't pick up, just hearing that phone ring meant somebody out
there was having a good time. If the phone doesn't ring, it means that a
part of my life has died. And it was a part that I wanted to keep
alive as long as possible. Anyway, drunken warriors (Jon F., Brady
P.), if you're out
there, and you're tempted to give me a ring, send in a comment to the
website instead. It's the way your grandpa would have done it.
It really kinda sucked, when you think back on it honestly.
But there was an undeniable spirit of camaraderie, if only in the sense
that we all knew we were part of something really bad. 
Strongly
enough to give them our full-ass endorsement. The verbungle stamp of
approval. Some of them will be websites, but I won't be just posting links to
random sites to try to increase my flow. That's not how we run things. First
item will be the Maudite beer. Good shit.
Then, when we were in the lobby about to head back out to
the movie, we ran into a work colleague (Gordon J.) who happened to be
staying at the same hotel as we are (The Sofitel). Weird as hell.
He's an interesting character, one of those guys who's done a lot of stuff
in his life, lived in a lot of places, and doesn't feel the need to push
his stories on you. But he shared one from the six years that he
lived in Québec. He was working in a restaurant up here, and a waitress was preparing
to scam some money off an American customer. She of course looked to Gordon to help
pull it off. He spoke French, so she somehow assumed he'd be onboard
with her little scheme. He refused to help her out, and she got pissed.
Apparently the anti-Americanism up here is pretty rampant -- and that was
maybe twenty years ago, before the arrogance of George W. Bush & Co. 
He'd
have maybe six uninvited buddies with him, and they'd start knocking back
your expensive liquor. Then they'd commandeer the stereo. People
would be avoiding America at all costs. Eventually he might win a few
people over and initiate a rousing singalong, but just when you were
warming up to his brash attitude, one of his pals would boot on your
carpet. Then somebody would break a picture frame, and you'd look
over to see America unapologetically (and maybe successfully) hitting on
your girlfriend. You'd swear you'd never talk to him again, but he'd
just show up at the next party anyway. He'd always be around.
On the days when it was just the two of you hanging out, he could be
totally cool and make you feel like his best friend. But then there
were those nights, when he had a couple too many... 
This
is our 3rd trip up to Canada in the last two years, and we had no real border
problems on the previous two. But yesterday was just awful -- cars were
backed up and grumpy for two solid hours. It definitely tried everyone's
patience. When we finally got to the border, the friendly border lady
asked us the usual questions (Why are you in Canada? Who do you know? Do you
promise you'll try not to kill anyone while you're here?) and then presented us
with a couple of Canada pins and magnets in honor of Canada Day. I bet
they had run out at some point, and somebody had to go to the shed for more, and
that's what caused the delay. Whatever the reason, we had pins in hand and
it felt good to get moving again.
everywhere,
and it's pretty soothing. Last time I was in Montreal, I thought it
reminded me of Chicago. Then when I went to Boston last weekend, I
thought Boston reminded me of Montreal. Now that I'm in back in
Montreal, I think maybe it reminds me of Chicago again. But it's
also got a real European flavor going -- perhaps because so many people
insist on speaking French. Potential tourism slogan: Come
to Canada -- it's Europe without the gypsies!
Here
is an embarrassing racial episode that happened to me yesterday/today, one
that a smaller man would certainly not share with others. I have a
friend (let's call him X) at work, a guy much younger than me, who I think
the world of. He's about 24, an occasional reader of this page, and
we go to lunch together nearly every day. We amuse each other with
our stupidity -- often I will walk by his desk just to inform him that I
fully intend to kick his ass at the end of the day. Similarly, he
will stroll by my desk, clear his throat to get my attention, and when I
look up, his middle finger will be extended towards me with substantial
malice. I consider him my good friend, although he is a somewhat
private person, and we rarely socialize outside work.
Number of brave souls who made it to the bottom: