|
|
Hockey tradition dictates thou must’n shave thy beard until thy team is eliminated from the playoffs. I’m not much of a fan of hockey, but I certainly like the tradition (one of many hockey traditions I enjoy including hitting guys with sticks and dating women way too hot for you). Since I am a proponent of tradition, I adopted that philosophy towards a sport I actually care about: baseball.
I don’t talk about it much, but I’m a huge Yankee fan. It’s one of the traits I inherited from my father. I grew hearing stories about Mickey Mantle and how much my father wanted to change my first name to Bucky Dent. When I was five and started playing t-ball, I was thrilled to be on the Yankees (although, three of the four teams in the league were named Yankees). Interests come and go. People drift in and out of your life. Seasons change. People get older. Life goes on. The one thing that remains my consistent is my Yankee fan love (and an unhealthy Derek Jeter obsession).
That’s why every October I wear a playoff beard. Some years, the Yanks go deep and I go a month without shaving. . . . . .
What I’m about to say might be the most controversial thing I’ve ever written. I expect to get more hate mail than I did that time when I wrote an article for my college newspaper that proclaimed we should round up the homeless and have them all sent to Mexico (I offended Mexicans, homeless sympathizers, and [somehow] PETA all in one article). This time, my words will result in more than a meeting with the dean and an apology in the next issue. I expect my controversial words to alienate two or three readers–which is significant when your audience is in the single digits (I’m just glad I have a big family). But enough with my rambling: just get to it.
I hate Dr. Seuss.
Duck. Dodge. Shield face from tomatoes and cinder blocks.
Yes, it’s true–I hate Dr. Seuss. I’m not sure if that makes me un-American (although, I’m pretty sure he was a Nazi–a name like that has to be German). I know Dr. Seuss has a big following. I understand he is beloved by children and adults alike…and I just don’t get it.
I don’t mean to insult anyone who does like the famous wordsmith, but he . . . . .
At what point do collectibles and mementos turn into useless junk taking up space? This is the question I’ve been asking myself the past couple days. I’m cleaning out my closet because I feel like I have too much useless junk. Some choices are easy (old hard drives, clothes from the 90s, locks of hair from old girlfriends). But for others…it’s hard to pull the trigger.
The two items that are causing me the most agony are my Super Nintendo and my Game Boy. I last used my SNES before I was married (hooked it up in my bachelor pad one night because I wanted to play “Mario 3”). As for the Game Boy…last time I used that might have been in the previous millennium–literally. Given that I hardly use these items (at best), it’s fairly obvious their absence wouldn’t be noticed (other than the open space in my closet). And yet…
I can’t seem to do it. Seems to me I’d be better off selling them on eBay or giving ’em to Goodwill than keeping them here and never using them. I should let my video game systems find good homes with someone who will love them and play . . . . .
As a child of the 80s, I grew up worshiping Star Wars. Obsessions with lightsabers, Wookies, and the ability to choke someone with your mind were quite common for boys of my age (for some reason, girls didn’t like Star Wars: maybe My Little Pony was really good back then). I’m probably the perfect Star Wars age. My brothers don’t share the same obsession I do, so it’s definitely a generational thing. After all, when we were talking about a getting a cat I was the only one who wanted to name him Chewbacca.
When I was a kid, Star Wars was everywhere. Besides the obvious action figures, I had lunchboxes, coloring books, audio books (in record form), Shrink-A-Doodles, Underoos, Lite-Brite–you name it, George Lucas found a way to market it with a Star Wars twist. I grew up wishing to be a Jedi and to strike my father down with a lightsaber. I played Star Wars. I slept in Star Wars sheets. I dreamt Star Wars. I even liked Princess Leia.
One year for Christmas someone gave us the Star Wars movies (in VHS form). From that point forward, I watched the trilogy at least once a month. The . . . . .
There was a dark period of my life about five years ago when I was fresh out of college and couldn’t get a job–but that’s not really central to this story other than I had massive amounts of free time on my hands. One of the things I did to occupy my time was to drive down to San Diego and spend my days at the Indian casino. Now I know what you’re thinking (an unemployed fellow shouldn’t be spending his time at the Blackjack tables) but it sorta worked out for me. In retrospect, I might have been precariously close to having a gambling problem. Perhaps the only thing that prevented it from being a “problem” was that I always won.
Sometime around the height of my Blackjack days a dealer handed me a brochure that outlined the signs of a gambling problem. I’m not sure why he gave it to me (maybe it’s because I was still sitting at the same spot when he went home the night before). I never thought I had a gambling problem because I never showed any of the signs.
Inability to stop gambling. Why would I want to stop? I was winning.Betting bigger . . . . .
I’m not sure what to think of this, but my wife Photoshopped our wedding photos. She didn’t like the color of her dress so she changed it. You can’t rewrite history. I just hope her next alteration does involve replacing me with someone better looking.
When I was a kid, I used to twist around in circles just because I liked to see the world spin when I stopped. I grew out of it eventually–but the point is I didn’t use to get sick. First time I went on “Star Tours” I was ten years old and I didn’t get sick. Merry-go-rounds, carousel, or roundabouts, it didn’t matter: I could ride any amusement park attraction without getting sick (except the Teacups–that’s way too much spinning for any human to endure).
As I get older, I realize my stomach ain’t what it use to be. They say taste buds evolve as you get older; allergies can develop after adolescence. I think susceptibility to motion sickness is another change you body makes when you get older. My parents couldn’t tolerate even the mildest roller coaster…and I fear I might be joining them.
Over the past couple years, I find myself about to . . . . .
I graduated from college in 2003 and my last two or three years were pretty easy. Once I decided to major in English, the only homework I ever had to do was read. The only questions I had to answer were in essay form. This might sound like a nightmare to some people but not me. I love to read and saw nothing wrong with spending my evening perusing the greatest works of American literature (even though the majority of it sucked). As for essays, I loved essays. I’m a bullshitter–I could easily squeeze four or five hundred words out of nothing (which any of my readers could testify to). Hell, I’m much rather answer one question in essay form than take a 100-question, multiple-choice test. With a multiple-choice test, I have a one-in-four chance of getting it right–that’s a 75 percent failure rate. Multiply that by a hundred questions and it’s a no-brainer: I’ll take my chances on conning someone into believe I knew what I was talking about with an essay question.
That being said, I haven’t had to answer many fill-in-the-blank homework assignments since probably around the year 2000. Like I said–English majors only dealt with essay . . . . .
I recently had to renew my car insurance–that means it’s time for my semi-annual insurance complaint (just because I stopped complaining doesn’t mean it’s no longer true). My dues went up (again). I spent $400 on car insurance in 2007 with nothing to show for it. I spent another $220 for the first six months of ’08. Now it’s up to something like $250. What a total waste of money: the day I get a dime out of car insurance is that a teen starlet does not flash her privates on the internet. At least one of the two gives me pleasure.
George Carlin died last week and I can’t help but feel a little sad. I’m not sure why–I’m not the type to get caught up in celebrities’ deaths. I guess there was just something to George Carlin: besides being a funny comic, he just seemed like a real likeable guy.
There is a tremendous amount of media coverage of his death–many other celebrities are saddened by his death. I’ve read Carlin tributes from Matthew Berry and Kevin Smith–just a wide spectrum of different folks in different strokes of the entertainment business. There’s one common thread I’ve notice amongst . . . . .
True story: I learned how to tell time on an analog clock. I remember they taught us that in kindergarten or preschool or something like that. I was quite proud of myself. I understood all the numbers; I knew terms like “half-past” and “quarter till.” I knew that you had to look at the hands and multiple by five. Math was always easy for me and even at five years old, I had no problem looking at a clock and knowing exactly what time it was. I remember being quite proud of my accomplishment. It was the 80s and pretty much everyone told time by looking at a clock with a face. But the day I was really thrown off was when my mother asked me to find out what time it was and the only source I had was a digital clock. There I was, staring at a set of numbers that meant nothing to me. No little hand. No big hand. Not ever that pesky second hand that raced around the clock with alarming speed. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t read it. The numbers made no sense. I return to my mother and told her . . . . .
I got old fast. I don’t know when it happened, but at one point I turned into an old fuddy-duddy. This weekend, I tried to watch “Knocked Up.” I say tried because I turned the DVD off about 40 minutes into the movie. I found the dialogue to be incredibly crude and offensive. Pubic hair this. Pubic hair that. Smoke some weed. Talking about smoking weed. More pubic hair references. It was beyond lowbrow. It was crude and offensive.
I don’t think necessarily the subject matters bothered me–I just didn’t like how things were presented. There can be plenty of funny, obscene jokes. There real talent is in how you deliver them. In “Knocked Up,” the script made no attempt to be creative. The mere mention of the word ‘bush’ was supposed to be funny. To me, that’s not funny–is vulgar.
Maybe I’m just too out of touch with things. I know this Judd Apatow is supposed to be the greatest thing in cinema comedy today. Maybe the film was smarter than I give it credit for–it wanted to show how the main character and his friends are all a bunch of lowlife losers. But as far as interesting dialogue, . . . . .
|
|
