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3/31/04: Rich in Retrospect I bet you had a guy like Rich in your high school. Everybody does. Rich was a charming cad, one of the more likable, gregarious dudes in my graduating class. A guy who got laid enough in high school, or at least said he did, to have an opinion on the lovemaking abilities of several of our most-fantasized-about female classmates. Sort of a Cuban-Stoner-Hipster guy with great storytelling skills and loads of charisma. One of those guys who you just wanted to be around. I got to know him briefly during my senior year, and I found him to be a funny bastard and very good company, even if he would often steal jokes you told him privately and bust 'em out moments later in front of a crowd for big laughs. You couldn't really get mad at him. What truly gets me is the message he wrote in my yearbook (at the top of the first page!) on the last day of school. It was one of those heartbreakingly naive "of-the-moment" sentiments that can only be expressed by High School Seniors. Here it is: Dear Steve, Although we haven't been friends for that long I do believe we have a cosmic bond. Remember that nite at Jon's house when you, me and Jimmy paid exactly $5.50 for Chinese food and Rolling Rocks? How about those days in Lippe's class? It was great. Man this summer's gonna be a blast. You better be around. -Rich After that day -- after that moment -- I never saw him or spoke to him again. I bet he had a good summer, though. I'm leaving for Italy on Thursday, and I am a little freaked out about work. We're at our busiest right now and I'm gonna be real busy when I get back as well. Busy = Sucky. There may or not be any verbungle while I'm gone. If there is, it'll be brief. If there isn't, the verbungle will miss all (six) of you. If anybody wants to be guest editor for a couple of weeks, I'm open to it. Try to answer the challenge by tomorrow if you can so I can post the answers before I go...answers are good. And please check out our newest snippet (below), HOTD's (below), and prediction. For the second time in as many days, I have been anonymously accused (through the use of the form at right) of fronting. Now, I've been known to front on occasion, so I won't flat-out deny the allegation, but I need some more details -- go ahead and send in some specifics, anonymous person. Why is Deion so captivating to the human eye? 3/30/04: Post-restoration restoration First off, an apology. I am going to have to delay the deadline for the Creative Writing Contest until I return from Italy in mid-April (yes, I was gloating there). I'm delaying it for a couple of reasons. First, I got very few responses. Very few. So few, in fact, that I can only assume there must be an oversight somewhere. I did get a couple of very good ones, and then my computer crashed, taking the responses with it. So I ask those of you who sent in submissions to do so again. It's pretty bush league, I know, but you might get a free book (shipping included). So send in some stuff. Please. You now have two weeks plus. Also, remember that you don't have to come up with something original or even good. Any thing will do, even if it's something that's been sitting in a notebook for 19 years. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the lack of responses. If you wanted an audience for your brilliant prose, you'd be starting websites and stuff. Websites that would be bigger and better than this one. It's starting to get nice in New York. And I guess it does feel somehow more satisfying when you've been through a tough winter, like you've earned something. Everybody rushes outside to soak up each last precious drop of kindness Mother Nature doles out. It feels good. But I can't help thinking we're the proverbial guy who keeps banging his head on the wall "because it feels so good when I stop." People in San Diego must be giggling when they see how excited we get about a 56 degree Sunday afternoon. Fuck them. And fuck you too. New challenge has finally arrived -- please participate at right. And the superdeluxe responses to the previous challenge are posted as well. I think I may get up at around 7 and watch the last hour of the Yankee game, for the hell of it. Or sleep right on through like a champ. By popular demand, I will stop bitching about 12-hour workdays. And start bitching about 10-hour workdays. They suck, yo. 3/29/04: Clean Slate I am always amazed at which pieces of information my brain chooses to latch onto and keep forever, and which pieces get lost within minutes of their arrival. For instance, I can still vividly remember a room-clearing fart my friend Dale launched at a house party back in like 1988, but I can't remember my first day in high school. It's too bad this human filing system is so disorganized and random. If we could control it, we'd be some efficient little fuckers. I'd be telling you all about the Visigoths, instead of being able to name every man to ever hit 500 homers. I'd fondly remember kisses and compliments, instead of crushing insults and intense personal failures. I'd probably be a bit of a pain in the ass, actually. Whatever, I'm sure the government will have this sorted out a few weeks after it's too late to do us any good. But even the brain of a computer has its shortcomings. Mine choked on its own vomit last night -- not sure what happened, but all my Microsoft programs stopped working. I could get online with Netscape, but the whole system was trembling as if it preferred death to the unspeakable pain it was experiencing. Knowing next to nothing about computers, I started putting in the dreaded support calls. It was hopeless. Nobody was really home on Sunday, and the people I did get in contact with at Microsoft tried as hard as they could do hook me up, but couldn't get it done. So I decided to do the dreaded "System Restore" -- I lack the patience to wait until tomorrow night to make more fruitless calls to more kind but unhelpful support staff. When you do a "System Restore," you are really rolling the dice. When you choose to return your computer to the condition it was in when you got it, you inevitably forget all about the irreplaceable stuff you've added since that first day. Only as weeks go by do you realize what exactly you've done, what exactly is gone forever. In my case, I couldn't access a lot of that stuff anyway, so I backed up what I could and got the hell out of there as the walls collapsed around me. Gone: every email I've sent or received in the last five months. Gone: all the songs I downloaded from my own CD's or from dubious online sources that shall remain nameless. Intact: a few word documents and all the pictures I've taken with my camera. Intact: the Verbungle archives. I still don't know what was wrong with the fucking thing in the first place. My sleep is all messed up. Last night I stayed up as late as I could so I could call the wife upon her arrival into Nice. That was around 4am, so I figured why not hang on for a couple more hours and watch the Yanks exhibition game in Japan, against Mastui's former team. I forgot Gordon's lesson about how the U.S. overhypes Japan's interest in their players who have gone to the US: "Do people in Japan really give a shit about Hideki Matsui and the other Japanese players over here? Sometimes I wonder how much the US media blows it out of proportion - they would have you believe that half of the country will get up at 4AM or skip work to see what Hideki and Ichiro are doing. it is the same way w/ the NBA - if you listen to the sports-casters you would think that Argentine stock market goes up or down in concert w/ Manu Ginobli's scoring average. something tells me it is a case of the US wanting to feel self-important..." And instead I bought into all the YES Network bullshit about how huge the game was to the fans there. There were probably 50 references to "The Japanese People" as if they were a single robotic entity. "The Japanese people are very loyal." "The Japanese people are very reserved." The normally understated Ken Singleton said that if there are 140 million people in Japan, he can "guarantee that there are 280 million eyes watching this game." Please. Yankeecentricity is nauseating. And Kay is back to torture us for another year. Woke up feeling like I'd been on a bender. Verbungle is supporting OK State, btw. Good squad. Make sure you do visit Mikereno.com. I posted a bad link before but you need to check it out. Because of all the computer problems, the fine, fine answers to the latest challenge will be posted tomorrow. 3/26/04: Hot Girls in Love Another 12 hour day today. Tired as hell. I am just looking forward to sleeping in Saturday morning. I wonder if this is what Mike Reno meant when he sang of working for the weekend so many years ago (please check that link in detail). Speaking of the Reno-vator, a few years ago I went online pretending to be him and had an amusing IM chat with some dude. To this day, I'm not sure if the guy really believed I was MR, or if he was just fucking with me. (He did type the following line, that much I remember: "Shit, you really are Reno.") I saved the transcript somewhere, and then lost it in the wreckage of one of my exploding computers. Does anyone still have it (I forwarded it to a bunch of people)? I feel bad about taking on such an easy target as Loverboy, but sometimes you just gotta take what the defense gives you. Adios, Freije. Try to cry in private. I was going to BCC the greater Verbungle community on a letter I planned to write to Canon. (My digital camera is one of those sickeningly cute and toylike Canon Elphs.) I chose it because I didn't know any better and it seemed like a safe bet, even though I read a lot of user reviews online who either didn't love the camera or had horror stories about dealing with Canon repair service. So after my camera's LCD died on my last night on the town, I was dreading the process. My wife and I are going to Italy at the end of this month, and I needed that camera up and running by the time we left. I sent Canon a heartfelt letter along with the camera, giving them all the details about my trip, etc. The basic rep about Canon is that they will do anything they can to blame you for whatever's wrong with your camera so they don't have to fix it for free. Well, I found this to be completely untrue. They had the camera repaired and back in my possession within about five days, well ahead of their estimated ten to fifteen business days. And the camera definitely works. I was so appreciative that I considered writing them another letter. But...there is a spring or something missing or loose inside the body of the camera, so it keeps making this maddening clicking sound every time you push a button or shake the camera. And some of the buttons seem too loose as well, like they aren't making solid contact with whatever it is they're supposed to be making contact with. I'm going bonkers. Of course I could be just a paranoid ungrateful bastard. But I don't think so. It's messed up, and now I don't have time to get it re-fixed before my trip. I don't know what the Hillel Slovak to do about it. I guess I'll take it on the trip and see what happens. So Canon, thank you for the prompt repair and return of my camera. Next time spend a couple more hours putting that shit back together correctly. Chris S. sends the following link. By posting it here, I am in no way endorsing laughing at people with disabilities, nor is Chris. Rather, we are celebrating how far we've come since those days. Or some other equally righteous thing. My pop told me a rather disturbing story today. He said that we went on a family vacation that included a stop in Monte Carlo back in like 1972, when I would have been 3 and my sister 6. The casinos did not allow children, and mom and pop really wanted to gamble. So they decided to LEAVE US OUTSIDE THE CASINO SOMEPLACE, WITH INSTRUCTIONS NOT TO GO ANYWHERE. Of course, when they returned we had wandered off to someplace, only to turn up eventually. The world was crazy in 1972. I hate to harp, but I gotta harp. Turn in your submissions to the Creative Writing Contest. If I don't get five responses, I will extend the deadline indefinitely, and then one of our deserving entrants won't be able to collect his prize (the AL Franken book). The rules once more: send me any piece of writing you've done, even an interoffice memo or a 7th grade term paper, and then we can have a proper contest. If I get some more entries, I am planning on naming a winner on 3/30/04. Somehow I was unable to care about the NCAA games by the time I got home from work. I just had no ability to concentrate on the screen anymore. Too bad, the NCAA deserves my attention. Congrats to St. Joe's for winning in front of Billy Packer's stupid face. Even though Martelli was in the wrong for getting all worked up about Packer's comments last week, I will be incredibly glad if St. Joe's goes all the way and proves Packer to be a moron. 3/23/04: Cocaine's a helluva drug... Today was a big nasty hairy bear shit of a day at work. Put in 12 hours, and it was a legit 12 hours, not the "no. of total hours x .40" formula they usually get out of me. I was so busy, and it was such hell, that I barely had time to email with friends and it wasn't until I got home that I was able to check my usual websites. Enough of this work stuff. Not good at all. But the great thing about today was seeing all the truly spectacular answers I received to the latest challenge (at right). I guess my whining paid off. I will leave the challenge up for a couple more days, and then post the answers. The entries into the first annual Verbungle.com Creative Writing Contest (for details, see yesterday's news) have started to roll in as well, and the early submissions look very promising. Knowing that I had to be at work early, and that a hellish day lay in store, I of course had trouble sleeping last night. I watched Sunday's Sopranos on In Demand, and then I watched half an episode of Sanford and Son on TVLand. This episode made me laugh out loud several times, and I've never been a Sanford and Son guy. It was now between 3 and 4 in the morning, and I still felt all nervous and fidgety. I flipped on Classic Sports Network. This is a channel that should hold great appeal for me, but generally doesn't. I don't know if it's bad programming on their part, or unlucky channel placement (#84), or the fact that ultimately sports were meant to be watched live, but I just rarely tune in to Classic Sports. Anyway, at 3:30 or so last night, they had a half hour show recapping the '82 World Series, and it was just the dose of comfort I needed. Beautiful unironic moustaches adorned the beautiful unironic mugs of the wimpy tight-pantsed baseball heroes of the day. Hernandez. Cooper. Oberkfell. Thomas. Hendrick. Caldwell. Oglivie (middle name: Ambrosio). Yount. Not a steroid among them. Just nice early 80's ballplayers. Who were really late 70's players refusing to make the transition. It was a happy scene, and it was also sorta sad. It was truly another century. The saddest part was watching the St. Louis fans holding up signs for Darrell Porter. "Darrell Porter: Mr. Clutch," "Darrell for MVP," etc. It was sobering to see how you can go from All-American Matinee Idol Baseball God to dead bum found sitting in a park in 20 years' time. I always felt sorry for him as he struggled with the bottle and the spoon. Seemed like a nice guy. RIP, MVP.
"He partied as if the world would end. One night, on a car
ride from Denver, he did seven grams of cocaine. On another, he brutally
beat up a man and, even minutes later, could not remember why. One entire
winter, he mostly sat in his house, clutching a shotgun, convinced that
baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn was going to burst in to get him." 3/22/04: Building a Better Bungle Updated "Touching" below. Today a co-worker told me she had a dream last night in which Tony Soprano killed me. Well, if she thinks her little dream is going to soften verbungle.com's stance on organized crime (against) or weaken the nerve of our staff reporters who have been doing Pulitzer-worthy investigative work on the mob since Day 1...well, she's dreaming again. I received the following response to the most recent reader challenge. I think it illustrates the struggle of trying to keep a site fresh and competitive in today's web-world: "put up some new shit." Be assured that I as much as anyone realize that putting up new shit is my first responsibility as master of this here site. But coming up with new shit is hard. And when I think I've stumbled onto some good new shit, it's usually only good for a week or so before it needs to be replaced by newer shit. The Reader Challenges are a good example. By challenge #7 or 8, I was getting ten good responses to each challenge, and it was a delight for me to read them and post them every couple of days. And then maybe the quality of my questions started to drop off, or people just got tired of having to write in answers to stupid questions, but for whatever reason the responses started to lag. And I got the feeling that people were posting multiple submissions out of pity -- just to give me something to put up. The thing is, I don't mind the pity. And I still enjoy the witty responses -- I'll try a couple more challenges to see if there's any life left in the concept (a brand new one is posted at right, please partake) or if it's time to retire it (new responses are also posted). But what I really want is...submissions. I want you to send in any damn thing you've got. Old dry cleaning receipts. 10th grade fiction. Drunken photos. Homosexual love letters. Box scores from office softball games. Diatribes about NAFTA. Your worst report card. Your dad's draft notice. Your public urination ticket. Any old fucking thing. Because together we can create a world full of new shit. In fact, let me make an official offer. I hereby announce verbungle.com's First Annual Creative Writing Contest. The first prize winner will get to feel immense personal pride and will also receive a copy of Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" (hardcover, used). This is the book that everybody's been talking about. And it's pretty good (although Franken bugs me immensely for some reason). Out of respect to all contributors, there will be no second or third place prizes -- I don't want people who don't get a prize to feel inferior (even if they are). All submissions will be published, giving you instant literary notoriety and upping the new shit quotient of this site in a big way. If you want to remain anonymous, just post your tale in the space at right, or use a stupid email address, or just tell me to withhold your name. The rules are simple: Send in some written shit. It doesn't matter what, and it doesn't have to be new. The deadline will be next Tuesday, 3/30/04 (unless I have not received a single response by then, in which case I will extend the deadline indefinitely). Like Curtis Sharp used to say, you gotta be in it to win it. Or you can just keep reading this old shit. It'll be here. The Murray-Bunim team has finally faltered with this latest Real World-Road Rules challenge. Maybe it is because of Mary-Ellis Bunim's recent passing, but whatever the explanation they have grossly miscalculated the formula for this new series. Each two episodes could be easily condensed into one. And there is far too much attention paid to the challenges themselves -- we watch this show for the backbiting and the making out and the shocking displays of pettiness, not to see people climbing ropes and eating bugs. I am disappointed. Today at work I had my my shirt tucked in. That's a bit of a departure for me, and someone came up to me and told me I was "overdressed." As I looked around the room, I realized he was right. Not another person had their shirt tucked in. What a bunch of slobs. 3/21/04: It just keeps gettin' worse First came the death of my pools, one after the other
in a matter of about two hours. Then, a day later, came the death of my
alma mater. Whatever. They deserved to lose. Playing at home
and all that. But you still need to root for somebody, even if it's only with 5% of your stupid sports fan heart. I have given a quick scan of the remaining teams, and there are plenty of low-seed (high seed?) underdog types to choose from. In fact, there still remains a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and a 10 seed. I wonder how often that happens. 10 seed Nevada might be a good choice, as the lowest (highest?) seed left standing, but there's one thing #9 UAB has that Nevada doesn't, and that is a player by the name of Squeaky Johnson. Go Blazers. Dispatch from the excuse department: I also regret not watching any college hoops this year and not doing a lick of research before turning in my pools. Had I looked a little deeper, I would have seen how good Xavier is. Real good. I know that guy Chalmers had the game of his life, but he's got to be damn good to have a game like that, period. I respect that he's taking graduate level classes and he's got a 3.5 gpa, and I also like that guy Sato. He's pretty fucking lingual. Xavier is my second favorite remaining team. Go Xaves. 3/20/04: Hoops, there it was Splat. That was Gonzaga feeling the pressure of being a high seed and plummeting to earth like Skylab. Whoosh. That was Stanford speeding out of the tourney and failing to live up to their potential, like always. Phht. Phht. That was me tearing up my two pools, one of which had Stanford winning it all and the other of which had Gonzaga in the final. So now I will root for Wisconsin with the ferocity of a wounded Badger defending its cubs. That should get me through most of tomorrow, until Pitt knocks us out. Then I guess I have to take out the garbage and move on with my life. And the Knicks suck. I need to face that. I think one thing that makes a song great is if you really can't tell when it was recorded. "Hopefully" by My Morning Jacket is such a song. Happy birthday, wifey. 3/19/04: Hoops, there it is To be perfectly honest, there's no "bad" in the NCAA tournament. At its very worst, it's still full of passion and drama and mystery and thrills and everything else we don't get enough of in our regular schmo lives. The worst thing you can say about it is sometimes it could be even better. And when compared to the high points of the tournament, the less high ones look like lows. Or something like that. So here is my two day review. The Good: The Bad: Canon is fixing my camera under warranty. I am ecstatic and truly surprised. I heard they were bastards to deal with in terms of getting them to do repairs under warranty -- they always blame your negligence for whatever's wrong with the camera. But so far, they have been spot-on with me. Now the question is, will I get the camera back in time for my Italy trip? I don't think the camera phone will cut it. Stuff like this makes my blood boil. Let's review once again for religious zealots all over the world. You are perfectly entitled to believe in whatever God you want. You can pursue whatever kind of life you want based on your religion. But the moment you start fucking up other people's lives in the name of something you can only speculate about and hope for, you gotta go. You gotta get your ass whupped. As today's Hero of the Day illustrates, it's really not that much of a stretch to compare these Islamic madmen with our own fundamentalist Christian madmen here in the states. In a sense, our people are more dangerous because they are in the highest offices of government and they can actually change the way we are allowed to live. Like Dipak says, vote. Company of the day: FedEx. How the hell do they do it? 3/18/04:Let's go to the videotape When I was a little kid, I loved Warner Wolf. He cracked me up with his five jokes -- kids can laugh at the same five jokes for quite a while -- and he knew enough about sports to satisfy my ten year-old mind. As I got older, I realized he was a hack, and possibly a cokehead. But a pretty benign one. He was content to trot out his trademark lines ("Fair pole," "Let's go the videotape," "Give Me a Break," etc.) and deliver highlights in his vaguely Cossellian inflection. Maybe that's all people really want out of their local sports personalities: Consistency. Familiarity. Comfort. Still, I was pretty sick of his crusty ass by the time he bolted NYC to return to DC in the early 90's, and I was pretty unexcited when he returned to New York in the late 90's. And he's still here. Better yet, he's still using the same material. Tonight, he got a chance to bust out one of his favorite goofs. "If you took Alabama State and 34 points, YOU LOST!" He could barely get through it, he was cracking up so hard. Apparently, Warner Wolf a) is still shocked when one team beats another by a significant number of points (in any sport), regardless of the fact that this team was indeed favored by approximately the number of points they ended up winning by, and b) still thinks it's damn funny to point out that even if you bet on the underdog and received all these many points that they were expected by experts to lose by, you would not win your bet. Indeed you would lose. That is the punchline. And it will always be so. But it's still hard to hate the guy. He's just a couple of notches below competence. In other words, if you took Warner Wolf and one notch below competence, YOU LOST! And sharing the same desk with Warner is the ageless, timeless, clueless Ernie Anastos. Between when news occurs and when it comes out of his mouth, I don't think it wastes a lot of time inside his head. What a crew. 3/17/04:McVomit It's actually been snowing for about 36 straight hours, and the forecast calls for two more full days of this shit. Unfortunately, it's not sticking, or the city might have turned into an appetizing St. Pat's day freezie of half-puke/half-snow. I got a call from some ex-co-workers at around 11:30 am, all hammered in the bar. They wanted me to join them. That was sure not happening at all. Verbungle.com correspondent B. New has been closely following the Frampton/Seger controversy, and he has found some amazing links. In a second, a couple quotes from places that actually exist on the web. I'll include some links out of respect, but use them wisely -- these folks might consider a bunch of new visitors an endorsement of their twisted agendas. To me, the most interesting thing about F/S is that they both became successful on the shoulders of hugely popular live albums. There are more coincidences, but let's not dig too deep. On with the quotes: From http://www.segerfile.com/bullet.html: "John Sinclair as Seger Promo
Man From http://tbaldwin.home.mindspring.com/frampton/hof.html: Peter's willingness to support
other artists in their work has won the respect of his peers. In addition,
his contribution of charity work only adds to his character. Peter
Frampton's unconditional love of being a dedicated guitarist and
songwriter who withstands the test of time is testimony to the artist he
has become and always will be. There is no doubt that he should be
applauded and therefore recognized into the Hall of Fame." From someplace else: "You can help get Meat into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame OK, I can't take much more of
these cats, especially when the fans get feisty." And I'm sure you heard about this, but have you seen it? Answer the challenge. Or there will be a slight beating tossed your way. 3/16/04:Bold Type Today was a day of headlines. I liked this one: Bloomberg Wins on School Tests After
Firing Foes "In the olden days, we had a board that was answerable to nobody. And the Legislature said it was just not working, and they gave the mayor control. Mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much. They are my representatives, and they are going to vote for things that I believe in." Um, why have a panel at all? P.S. This was the Post's typically fair and subdued take on the story. There was also some firing involved in this one: Courtney Love Two Hours Late for Hearing But the brief proceeding was marked by interjections
from Love, who claimed to have prescriptions for the drugs and at another
point seemed to fire and immediately rehire her lawyer. Can't we build a special jail for people like Courtney and Robert Downey Jr.? Maybe she can come in and do like 20 hours a week in the jail and we can pay admission to come gawk at her. Is it really news when she shows up two hours late to court? One more: Spain Will Loosen Its Alliance With U.S., Premier-Elect SaysWhile the Spanish election results seem to be overwhelmingly a good thing, and with 90% of its citizens against the Iraq war, they have every right and reason to pull their troops, it's a little bit sad that it all happens in the wake of the terrorist attack. It seems to me to be one of the rare examples of terrorism working, or at least appearing to work. That's how it will be sold in the terrorist world, anyway. "We fucked up Spain, and they stopped messing with us." Ah, what the fuck do I know? I'm a drunk. Some of you may not know this, but Verbungle Inc. is a publicly-traded, mid-sized international corporation with offices in 23 countries. And you also might not know that I am not only responsible for the editorial content of verbungle.com, our home on the world wide web, but I also sit on the board of directors and as such I am constantly flying all over the globe to schmooze clients. In addition to all this, I'm working on some non-verbungle-related multimedia projects. It might seem like a bit much, especially with me holding a nine to five office job as well, but I likes to stay busy. It's who I am. It's what I am. But sometimes shit falls through the cracks. If I was answering to someone other than me, I'd probably catch some hell. But I am the Jefe de Todos Jefes, so I get away with it. Anyway, I bring this up as an apology for how I have neglected the predictions page. There have been some major developments and only now have I made the appropriate notations. Have a look, please (particularly at #'s 18, 24, 30 & 31). And go ahead and predict some new shit. After I groused about Bob Seger's election to the R & R Hall of Fame/R & R Hall of Record Sales, my friend Benge sent me a link to this curious site. That got us started on a brief discussion along the lines of Magic or Bird? You're experiencing a desperate need for rock and roll and nothing else will do. You only have time to make one call. Seger or Frampton? 3/15/04: I received the following impassioned plea from verbungle.com reader Dipak P.:
"We must as a nation do everything to make sure Bush is not reelected. I
usually tend to favor more of the republican candidates but I cannot sit
idly by and see this country be led by a brat who is taking away freedoms
that make this country the greatest nation in the world. Its funny how as a
nation we are slowly becoming more like the strict moslem countries in the
middle east. We cannot and never should pander to the religious right, this
country was built on separation of state and religion. Just because you
don't want prayer in class or do not oppose abortion it does not make
you anti-american. We are at a crossroads as a nation, and if we continue to
go that right wing path I feel that we will slowly become like Germany of
the 30/s. With each passing day, I get further away from my hangover and my guilt. There is something to be said for being a clean-living, upright motherfucker. I think I'll try it for awhile. Showing up for work early, busting my ass at the job, treating the wife with kindness and respect, eating right. Perhaps singing with a choir. Bob Seger: Hall of Famer. That just doesn't sound right -- it's like saying Roddy Piper: Microbiologist or Vin Diesel: Chief Justice. I know the R & R Hall of Fame is a pointless joke, but Bob Seger? He would have been a perfect candidate for the inaugural class in the Rock and Roll Hall of Mediocrity, where he could have been joined by Huey Lewis and Phil Collins. Cooperstown is beckoning for Luis Sojo.
3/14/04: "6. Wake up with a mind-wrenching hangover and overpowering sense of embarrassment and guilt at least twice and no more than three times. I don't miss the "call all your friends to make sure they're still your friends" days. But it's important to feel the solid wood of the bar beneath your elbows every now and then." As of 3/12/04, I can cross this one of the list. On Thursday night/Friday morning, I racked up enough guilt and embarrassment for the next five years. And I think I still have the imprint of the bar on the side of my nose. And now if I may refer to my post from Wednesday night, 3/10/04: "There will be drinking tonight. And there will be working tomorrow. At some point, the piper will get his fucking money." Indeed, the piper cleaned up. He got me coming and he got me going. He took all I had, then he rang my doorbell, brushed right past me without saying a word and helped himself to some more. He's been dropping by every hour or so for the whole weekend, and he just asked me for his own set of keys. It's so sad. I paid him in every way I possibly could. One night of drinking severely damaged my reputation at work, my home life, my ability to face my friends, and my sense of self-worth. There was a point on Friday afternoon when I almost took a running leap from my 11th floor window. I just can't believe that I can get so irreparably wrecked on beer alone. Other people who were out with me were knocking back the hard liquor like it was Gatorade, and yet to my glazed eyes they all appeared to behave in a reasonable manner, while I alone was the incorrigable chimp. It was a night that featured public arm-wrestling, and that was WAY before the true stupidity began. In brief, we had: fake fighting, fake dancing, mugging for photos, fake pouting, unnecessary insults, unnecessary compliments and general diarrhea mouth. Real fighting. Or not. Slamming of beers. Blasting of music in the middle of the night. It was one of those nights where I told the wife I'd be home soon at around 2 and came crashing in like an hour-long thundercrack at 5. I got in a fight with a cab driver. I broke my fancy digital camera (although this happened before the drinking and I don't think I did anything in particular to it). And this is just what I remember (that's OK, I don't need to be reminded of the rest). I take these kind of nights to heart. I go into a tailspin. I am depressed for days. I make dozens of unkeepable promises to myself. I curse at the top of my lungs when nobody's around. And I just feel so very, very sorry. Infinitely sorry. Maybe I'm just being a drama queen. But probably not. If I crossed your path the other night, I hereby apologize with all of my heart for whatever I said or did. I didn't mean any of it, unless it was nice. If I didn't cross your path, I'm sorry nonetheless. I apologize to all of humanity. Even poor little Ralphie Nader. Hopefully that covers it. Oh, and Pat, if you are reading this, you get extra sorrys. I think I pretended you really hurt me when you kicked me in the knee in self-defense, and I want you to know I'm fine but I was lost in some bizarre realm of cryptic performance art and felt an insatiable urge to act like a wounded dove (How's that for a sentence that a 34 year-old man should never have to type?). I'm fine physically, anyway. Sorry for everything else, too. Sorry. Sorry. OK, that should do it. On to the ceremonial picking up of the pieces. The mythic rebirth. The NCAA seeds were released, and I must say I am pissed that Wisconsin got a #6 seed. I know that their first two games will be in their home state, which is real nice, and I know that the brackets were made prior to their rout of #13 Illinois in the Big Ten Tournament Final (why even play it if it doesn't factor into the seedings?), but still: they were #10 in the country as of the season's final poll. They haven't lost since that poll, finishing at 24-6, including wins in the first two rounds of their conference tournament. How in the name of Rashard Griffith do they get a #6 seed out of that? Even with a home crowd, I fear they can't keep up with Pittsburgh in the second round. To quote verbungle once more: 3/22/03: "If this site is still up next year, I hope to remember not to run the NCAA pool." I am gonna go ahead and listen to myself for once, but fear not, somebody else at the FN is running a pool, and you're all invited to join. He is even considering using my random point values (1,3,6,10,15,25) to give it that classic random feeling. And it is good to see somebody else getting on Billy Packer. The guy has been a tyrannical presence in college hoops for way too long now. He needs to go, hopefully in humiliation. He made a moron of himself once again yesterday at the end of the Badger game, going all nutso about the Badgers needing to foul at the end of the game when actually they didn't need to at all. And to quote mine own self one more time (it's all part of the recovery process), from my list of "Fleeting Moments in Time that I Miss Dearly": "8. Baseball hats without perceived gang affiliations" Today, as a reward to myself for behaving like an unbearable prick, I went to the mall with the wife and bought some nice crap. I realized I don't own a baseball hat, and while the baseball hat has become part of the uniform of the serial date-rapist, it's still something a man should have for days when he's doing laundry or playing baseball. So I bought what I thought was a nice Minnesota Twins hat, and then I got several dirty looks as I wore it around town. I started wondering if indeed I was inadvertently throwing somebody's colors. Anybody know? It's red, does that mean people might think I'm a Blood? I ain't. Unless I joined the other night. Alright, enough of my crap. The old challenge is over. The new challenge is underway above right. Don't be the last kid on your block to participate. Last thought on Thursday: it was good to see everybody. And sorry.
3/12/04:
3/10/04: Jesus H. Stern And if the nation's fleeting glance at Janet Jackson's tee-tay is really responsible for this mess, I say, harrumph. I hate to brag, but the Food Network aired 15 seconds of HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY back in NINETEEN NINETY SEVEN! Come and get us, FCC. Give us something to cry about. Of course, our sin was one of incompetence rather than one of audacity, but still, we were broadcasting full-on boner penetration while Justin Timberlake was walking around in Mouseketeer regalia, trying to get to first base with the chick from "Curly Sue." Brady P. sends in the following link for those of you who hold deep convictions on the issues but still can't quite decide who to vote for in November. Strangely, I took the test three times and it kept coming up "Dukakis." There will be drinking tonight. And there will be working tomorrow. At some point, the piper will get his fucking money.
3/9/04: I actually really like U.S. Steel Which is a shame, in a way. Part of me thinks that a team as talented as these Yankees might not be seen again for a long, long time. Some day we'll tell our kids that Giambi, A-Rod, Sheffield, Jeter, Posada, Bernie, and Matsui all played together, and they will have trouble comprehending this information. It's sort of like that season of "21 Jump Street" when Johnny Depp and Richard Grieco shared the screen. It's just hard to fathom that a single show could feature two charismatic stars that burned so dangerously hot. But it happened. Almost without fail, though, when somebody loads up on all-stars, shit goes wrong. On "21 Jump Street," it was Depp. He had lost interest in the show, they wouldn't let him out of his contract, so he just punched in every day like most of us do, delivering minimum effort. Despite Grieco's career season, the show began to tank. For a recent example in sports, look at this year's Lakers. Who knows, maybe they'll pull it all together, but so far it's been a huge disaster. I don't recall a team that assembled a monster squad like this ever winning the whole thing. And the collapse has already started happening with the Yankees: first the steroids, then Bernie's appendectomy, and now Sheffield's thumb. There seems to be some karmic retribution for stacking the deck. Somewhere, Richard Grieco smirks knowingly. The softball permit is in. Let the Mighty Mantis swing. Let's check out the Cyclones or the Staten Island Yankees this season. Minor league baseball rocks. I know that because I have been to one game in my life, the Madison Muskies in around 1992. Your chances of getting a foul ball multiply. The beer prices are barely ridiculous. The local girls look so hopeful in their ill-advised tube tops. And last time I went, I triumphed in the fast pitch contest between my three or so friends who were at the game, with a disturbingly low winning speed of like 63 mph. That was before my arm turned into a soggy strand of leftover lo mein.
3/8/04: Dog Daze It's weird, over the past couple of weeks I've been feeling like somebody bricked me upside the head. When people ask me questions, it takes me a minute or three to respond, and my response is usually, "I don't know." My boss has been looking for some clever little puns for a new show we're working on, and I'm usually good for a few contributions when it comes to corny shit like this. But all I can do is stare straight ahead and mumble to myself. There's just nothing going on in my head. Shit is dead. And the same goes for Verbungle. I try, but the magic just isn't there. I don't know what's causing the lull, perhaps some kind of glitch in the Space-Time Continuum. Perhaps I'm not getting enough sleep. Perhaps it's time to step aside and let some hot new webslinger take over the reins of the world's 153,805,764th most visited website. I feel like Chuck Knoblauch. Or this sad but proud little pooch.
3/7/04: Feliz Cumpleaños al Verbungle Faced with the fairly undeniable reality that I will still be working for this company in June, I actually started getting excited about the move. Chelsea Market has some great food, it's near the Village and all the things I love in life, and it's got goddamn train tracks running right into the side of the building. Of course, the whole place is still under heavy construction, and walking around in our future space just reminded me that I will still be working the same job, dealing with the same stuff, and there's no reason to get excited. In fact, seeing that the walls weren't made of Nestle Crunch and there wasn't a regulation basketball court inside the office made me kind of sad. The only encouraging thing was finding out that they do plan on reserving some space somewhere in the office for people to put their bikes. I fucked up. Verbungle turned 1 this week, and I missed its birthday completely. I feel like such a chump. I think I will call its official birthday the day when I went "public" -- which from a quick glance at old posts seems to be April 15th, 2003. We launched on Tax Day. Whatever. We will have some kind of celebration on April 15th. If we make it that far. I think I've hit the one year wall. In the introduction to former Hero of the Day Tony Herbert's "Soldier's Handbook," he goes on one of his inspirational bullshit rants about courage and death and war, etc. It's the kind of shit that I eat up. Here's a little sample: "Take the time, now, and actually convince yourself of that one most important fact of your life -- You Are Going To Die. The only questions remaining are: When" and "How". When? No one knows. It could occur at any time. How? It can be with courage or in fear. You can not control the "When". But you can the "How". Just make sure you're not caught unaware. Don't get caught dying a coward when you can go with even less difficulty as a hero. So don't put off being brave. Teach yourself now. Begin to be courageous now, and continue to be, each time as if it is the last chance you're ever going to get to go out in a blaze of glory. Try it. It doesn't take long. And, before long, it'll become habit. If you're going to die, and you are, then why the hell not take advantage of the situation and play out the "How" as your choice instead of as if it were someone else's. Make up your mind to die when the time comes like a man and you'll begin to live like a man, right then." OK, that may be a bunch of crap, but I love guys who talk like that. Anyway, it got me thinking about death a little bit. I guess his message is to be brave every minute of every day, and of course be forever prepared to defend yourself against threats of any kind. But it also made me think, you can literally control the "How" -- and to some degree the "When" -- by avoiding certain situations, in essence by living a particularly uncourageous life. So here is my cowardly personal list of "How Nots" -- Ways I Am Not Going To Die (to be amended at any time): 1. Shot by prison guard during escape attempt. Lots of good answers to the Challenge (above right). New challenge tomorrow. 3/3/4:Laundry Room Smackdown There was mild beef in the laundry room tonight. The dryers were full when I went down to transfer my stuff from washer to dryer. Two of these dryers had finished their cycle, but the owners had not come down to claim their shit. If you have visited this website before, you know that nothing makes me tremble with righteous fury like etiquette breaches in the laundry room. In short, it's not especially cool to leave your shit in the machine after it's done, but it's not a big deal. The people who incur my anger are those self-centered creeps who a) leave their shit in and then b) make bitchy faces when they stroll into the laundry room to discover their clothing has been removed and thoughtfully placed in one of the little rolly hamper things. To be super-polite and wait for someone's eventual return is laundry suicide. They could come down two minutes later, or an hour later. Assuming all our time is equally valuable, I can only infer that anybody who isn't there waiting when their cycle ends is perfectly OK with you dumping their shit into a hamper. So tonight, I emptied one (dry) load from a dryer, because I needed the machine. A few minutes later, this kinda attractive young couple came down, and made a double bitchy face when they saw that their shit had been removed. Plainly within my earshot, the woman goes, "I HATE it when people do that." I was all set to jump her shit, but I had to be sure they were talking about the removal, so I listened a little more to their whining. Once I confirmed it, I asked, to double-confirm it, "You hate it when people remove your stuff?" The woman could clearly see I had a little bit of the crazy in the corner of my eye, so she said, "Oh, I know it's my FAULT, I just didn't time it right." I said that it had been me who removed their stuff, and the guy said, "Oh, it's definitely our fault, but you know, we don't really like people touching our underwear..." "...and my bras," finished the woman. I said, "Well you know, I like taking people's laundry out of the machines because, to be honest, I REALLY like touching other people's bras and underwear." They sort of smiled, then packed up quickly and left. Violators will be prosecuted. There is a guy at work with a chronic and serious neurological condition. Today I paid him a compliment for some work he did, and he goes, "Not bad for someone with a chronic neurological condition, huh?" Later, he was talking about some major dental/gum work he needs, work that'll probably cost like 5 grand and involve maybe ten excruciating visits to the gum doctor, and after he finishes, he says, "If I'm walking around, it's a good day. I'm luckier than a lot of people." That guy's got the right attitude. Forget about pursuing happiness. As long as you can escape true physical and emotional misery, you're a superstar. More good weather. More good challenge answers. And a freshly bloomed new challenge on the right. Indeed we are luckier than a lot of people. 3/2/4: Everybody know it's Spring again It actually hit 67 degrees today, according to ace weather honcho Sam Champion. I am desperate for winter to be over, with softball season only a few weeks away (beginning April 11th). Shittily, I will be in Italy for the first game, in search of the perfect vermicelli. As for softball, last year we had some meager turnouts, especially if it looked like rain. My proposal this year is to hold open tryouts, if for no other reason than to humiliate people. I suggest the tryouts consist of some fielding drills, batting drills, endurance drills, fence-climbing drills, and a personality test to see how annoying people are. Maybe make them run some errands like walking to Junior's for cheesecake, just to see if they've got the right attitude. This steroid thing is now starting to bother me. I am going to have even more than my usual share of difficulty pulling for the Yankees if Giambi and Sheffield get officially busted. I've been able to live in a state of denial about whether Giambi was juiced, even though his entire being was swollen and freakish looking. But being officially taken down in public is a whole new thing. At least the Yanks never won any WS with Giambi, so nothing is too tainted. And that skinny motherfucker looks like he's learned his lesson. If he's stopped taking the 'roids, and Sheffield's stopped, can we expect less dramatic numbers from them? I bet we can. If they both hit .255 with 13 home runs apiece, because they've stopped juicing, can the Yankees void their contracts on the basis that they falsely advertised their abilities by being on steroids? I bet George would try that. I propose a more reasonable approach to this whole mess. Each team can have three players who are admittedly on steroids. They can bulk up to Ferrigno-like proportions, and there won't be any whispering behind their backs. In fact, these warriors will be seen as what they really are: the ultimate team players. Willing to risk innumerable health problems throughout their (likely to be) short lives, all in the name of winning. Role models, I say. Good answers to the challenge have come in. It will stay up through tomorrow evening and then the results will be posted. Thanks. 3/1/4: Watching the Dogs I think I mentioned the other day that I watch the clock at work. Sometimes I also watch the dogs. We have a dog run across the street from our shabby little office in our shabby little corner of town. The dogrun itself is pretty shabby, just a little concrete slab at the edge of a shabby little park. But at any point in the day you might see any given employee standing at the second floor window silently, wistfully watching the dogs. To us the dogrun represents freedom. It represents innocence. Sure, the dogs have no control over when and if they get taken to the dogrun -- that's up to the owners. But once they get in there, the dogs unleash their unashamed desire for play, for recklessness, for living. It's a side that most of us keep buried under a whole mess of human bullshit. Bullshit like mortgages, bosses, daughters smoking pot, regret, lower back pain, guilt, ex-almost girlfriends and the need to make a living. That's what we think about, even as we watch the dogs. The dogs don't worry about any of that shit. Ball, fuck, tussle, run, poop. Whenever they get the chance. Sleep it off later.
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