Why do people think that pirates are suddenly funny again? It's honestly nothing short of retarded (excuse me retarded people or friends/family of retarded persons if you happen to be reading this, especially retarded people, because it's sort of impressive to know you're on the Internet), this influx of pirate humor, insipid jokes in the same vein of ninja banter, which are also, coincidentally, unfunny. AMERICA. PIRATES. NINJAS. NOT FUNNY. STOP QUOTING WILL FERRELL MOVIES.
This really isn't meant to be an anti-pirate joke manifesto; I wouldn't stoop to such pedestrian fare. Oh no, I'd crawl much, much lower. You know me by now. After all, I recently used "retarded" in a pejorative manner. Give me some credit for sinking to the bottom, time after time!
While I did recently use the word "retarded" in a pejorative manner, I also recently rediscovered the magic of illegal downloading. Magic. Remember the childlike wonder we all shared downloading tracks by our favorite artists *gasp* sometimes before they were even released! Recall the frustration we felt when someone took forever to leech a song off us, especially when we saw he was using dialup! What a rube! What contempt we felt for such a backwater hick, scamming some crappy pop punk track off our hard drive! Shame and disgrace.
That was almost ten years ago, and anyone who reads this know how the story ends. Heavy metal stalwarts Metallica bitched and moaned some JNCO-clad, wallet-chain rocking thug was spreading a half-assed demo of their ass-awful track "I Disappear," before the authorities shut down Napster and denied the world community our right to pirate music as we please. That was in 2001.
Since then, the music downloading waters have been murky. We join whatever ship will take us into its crew. Kazaa and Morpheus seemed like particularly strong corsairs until they befell the same fates, and sail the seas with skeleton crews, wracked by litigation-induced scurvy. Some say the Flying Dutchmanesque Limewire silently roams the waters, but I have seen it with my own Internet browser spyglass, and it too is manned by a skeleton crew, a shell of its former self. Anyone will believe tall tales of the high seas, if there's promise of an underwater city of illegal music downloading.
For the longest time I subsisted off of a fellow seaman (laugh, I wrote it), who was basically like Tina Majorino's character in Waterworld, with the means to download music illegally in his possession, but was unable to tell me how to do it. I accepted such a fate as a barnacle on his Internet piracy efforts, and enjoyed the booty (laugh, go ahead, it's a PIRATE JOKE ASSHOLE) he acquired from his swashbuckling. This lasted for years upon years.
Recently I found the "dryland" that Kevin Costner was searching for, which is odd because previously I made an Atlantis reference to illegal music downloading. So consistently inconsistent. I will not divulge my means, because that would be asinine, but also, any individual skilled in the ways of the Internet would be able to figure out such introductory Internetting procedures. Finally, I am able to provide for myself in this unreasonable expensive world. Only the disgustingly wealthy ever hope to purchase enough recordings to really get down to quality artists and move past the crap that is pushed at us day in and day out, unless we have these music pirating resourcing at our fingertips.
Past all the aggravating pirate imagery and history lessons about peer-to-peer downloading applications, this is a flare shot into the air for the continued existence of music piracy. Without it, we'd be a little more broke than we already are, we'd be introduced to fewer new artists, and we'd lose out on yet another unifying experience as citizens of the 21st century, along with picture messaging and trying to defriend Tom on MySpace. Does this sort of rhetoric make me a modern day pirate? Maybe. Do I like that association? Sure. Strike me down as a martyr if you will, or rebuke me for stealing from others. Keep those godawful terrible pirate jokes to yourself though, because they aren't the least bit funny. Retard.
Sorry again, retarded persons, and friends and family!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
A Brief History of Movie (Time) Frustration
Buying movie tickets these days is like smoking cigarettes. The longer you're alive and the more you buy them, the closer they are to ending your life. Do you remember when movie tickets were five dollars or even less than five dollars? I sure as hell do, and it wasn't exactly ten or fifteen years ago either. I don't recall the price of the first movie I saw in my first official trip to the movies (or at least the first one I thought I saw, I might have to Phone-A-Mom for that one), but it didn't cost NINE FUCKING DOLLARS AMERICA. NO BLOOD FOR HOLLYWOOD.
So no, I don't exactly recall the ticket price of 101 Dalmatians. I do, however, remember the admission price for Spider-Man, which was a cold Lincoln. That's it. Five dollars. Now, after some Wikipedia detective work...
Oh.
Oh my dear Lord.
Dear, sweet, forgiving Lord.
That was six years ago. Spider-Man premiered six years ago. I'm a fossil. Carbon dating aside, let's discuss the movies. It was either this or my 2008 Halloween costume ideas, to which I always receive the same reaction: "Well who the hell is that?"
I'll go ahead and throw it out into the arena, despite the hard truth that it will immediately date this post once the Georgia small font has been laid; the most recent film I've seen is J.J.Abrams' cocktease Cloverleaf, which I enjoyed. The only thing I didn't enjoy about it was the astronomical admission price of nine dollars. Nine dollars. Since when is a movie you can only view at a theater's pace, with complete and incredibly rude strangers, worth nine dollars? That is never worth nine dollars. It's worth four dollars at best.
These days, that's really the magic of the movies: the exponentially plummeting conditions of movie theaters and their clientèle. I added French as a language for Blogger just for that word, for those of you weaned on brie and Perrier and PBS rather than my hot dogs and Ghostbusters crowd. Not that I'm eating freedom fries or anything over here.
Who's with me?
Movies might be improving by way of technological advancement and a desire to stay fresh in spite of new ideas being harder and harder to come up with, but they sojourn forth into new creative realms, all the while theaters become dilapidated and their patrons devolve further and further into knuckle-dragging, text messaging, yelling-at-the-screen evolutionary throwbacks.
I never really noticed it until that pivotal showing of Spider-Man, the last movie I recall paying five dollars for, and the first movie experience I can truly remember astonishingly rude...no, wait...
Cast Away, which premiered almost ten years ago, had a more impolite audience that Spider-Man, and I believe it was the first movie where my experience caused me to associate the awful time I had with the quality of the film; to this day, I refuse to watch it because of the frequency of cell phones "blowin' up," in the theater, even in the days before ringtones, when all we had was "Snake" on our Nokias. People shuffling in and out like a doctor's office waiting room, yelling back and forth like the New York Stock Exchange's traders floor, as if they were reenacting Tim Allen bomb Jungle 2 Jungle, which was actually the highest-grossing PG movie of 1997. Are PG movies even made anymore? That was the singularity that ignited my contempt for the movie-going populace, and now countless conversations I've had over my lifetime with people who "just don't go to the movies anymore" seem more illuminated than they previously did, now that I've had time to reflect on them.
Spider-Man was in fact the first movie I recall attending where a theater manager requested that ticket holders "shift to the far left," because the showing had been sold out. This was actually the only time I had attended a movie with President George W. Bush, who, enjoying such high approval ratings in 2002, refused to shift to the far left. In disgust, he walked out, though later he praised director Sam Raimi's post-9/11 New York imagery when Spider-Man clings to a robust Old Glory at the top of some nondescript skyscraper. Presidential observations aside, this was the first film I experienced where my excitement for it had been so bottled up that I spent the entire film seething in contempt for those around me, who dared defile my precious childhood hero, who I had followed with moderate regularity since Amazing Spider-Man #350. All things considered, the crowd for Spider-Man had nothing on the rabble at Spider-Man 2, who left me so angry with their primate antics and inconsiderate cell phone usage that I saw a matinée showing of the movie the next day with my stepdad.
Let's rewind a couple of weeks though in 2004, to the film which I easily consider to the high watermark of complete retardation in the movie theater. If you'll indulge me, it really made the case for sterilization of certain members of the human race. That statement alone probably caused my readership to drop from 9 to 3. Anyway. The film was Van Helsing. It alone kept me from attending the closest movie theater to my college campus for two years. I drove 15 more minutes and paid more money only to avoid that trash heap of a multiplex.
Van Helsing is truthfully a black mark on Hugh Jackman's career, the lowest of the lows, a desolate article of trash that should have been left on the cutting room floor, but some idiot thought people would see it, and shame on me for doing so; however, I am not here to critique the film but those who were in attendance. First off, two gentlemen beside me, were, during the movie, discussing "man laws" and when it was acceptable to take the urinal beside another man. Another shining example of humanity was wearing what can only be describing as plastic body armor. Amongst the theater patrons, there was also this universal acceptance that it was okay to make and take phone calls, with complete ignorance toward everyone else in the theater! I considered that be much worse than the screaming at the screen that was taking place, though others might define that to be humanity's lowest point. Have we really become apes?
I left the theater in a nuclear rage, never having felt so incensed at humanity, not even after "Four more years!" or the return of American Gladiators or the refusal to release the third season of The Adventures of Pete and Pete or even, even, even the time that old man almost hit me when I was making a left hand turn on a green arrow trying to escape a tropical storm in Nags Head in 2004. It took every last cell in my body not to cause a massive accident on U.S. 1 by flipping my car and attempting to take as many lives as possible. Eyewitnesses would be inclined to validate such hyperbolic rhetoric.
It really hasn't gotten any worse since Van Helsing, but then again, it hasn't improved either. Those infamous missteps by humanity followed me throughout the years, with people texting and making and taking calls, yelling at the screen, yelling at one another, and so forth. Let's take a quick glance at some of the more stupefying instances of human behavior at the movie theaters that I have experienced:
Sunshine, 2007: This dusty nugget is taken from a trip to a Virginia Beach mall with my sister, the only theater in the area code that was playing the film. As if the rapture had taken place, the lobby and box office were empty, saved for an over-pierced blond at the front far more interested in failing an easy level Sudoku than selling me a couple of tickets. After an aggravating and deafening silence, I tried to get her attention by fitting as much of my face as possible into the cutout of the plexigrass window until she slowly reacted to me, as if she were to die if she gave me her undivided attention.
Superman Returns, 2006: Ridiculously bizarre "oohs" and "ahhs" from the audience deep-sixed this one for me, especially when the audience was astonished that Superman was weakened by Kryptonite.
Jurassic Park, 1993: Never before or since has my movie visit been interrupted by so many bathroom breaks by strangers. My seven-year-old mind was hoping that the dilophosaurus attacking a portly Wayne Knight on the screen would reverse and shoot its venomous gelatin on the "gotta go gotta go gotta go right now" crowd.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 2001: This one actually has nothing to do with strangers. When I was in high school, a girl I was interested in told me to meet her here to see this movie, but I never found her in the theater since it was packed. I ended up sitting in the top row and had to go to the bathroom the entire time. I will always have a full bladder when I think of Harry Potter. It also, in retrospect, makes me realize how low will stoop to get a girl's attention.
Juno, 2008: A gaggle of teenagers behind me claimed every single second of this movie was "gay" or "stupid." Naturally I hoped that their parents' cars, which I'm sure they drove, exploded on the highway.
Anger Management, 2003: This movie also has nothing to do with strangers. It sucked and I wanted to see Confidence instead.
The Matrix Reloaded, 2003: I skipped school to see this movie. I've almost forgotten about heckling fanboys yelling "IT'S NOT EVEN WORTH IT!" in regards to the 30-second preview of the third movie at the end of the decade-long credits.
The sad thing is they were right.
They were so right.
I still wanted the acne on their faces to explode like C4 charges.
No Country for Old Men, 2007: Probably could've done without the "WHAT IS HE SAYING?" "whispers" made by everyone around me when anyone was talking during the whole goddamn movie.
American Gangster, 2007: Teenage girls in front of me start comparing on-screen characters to their friends. "Naw, he ain't like that!"
Finally, we can never, ever forget...
Wild Wild West, 1999: 1999 was the same year I saw The Sixth Sense and got innumerable fake butter stains on my shirt from the popcorn, and the same year I decided not to part my hair to the side, where it now sits in its current nondescript male hairstyle. Haley Joel Osment and my high school yearbook pictures would never be the same. A couple of years later, 9/11 happened, and it just so happened to be Picture Day at Western Branch High School. In a bizarre twist of fate, or at least this is how I've conditioned myself to remember it, it was announced right after the "R" last names had their pictures taken, so everyone between S-Z wasn't looking as chipper in the 2002 yearbook as they did in 2001.
ANYWAY.
This movie sucked. People totally had sex beside me when I was trying to watch it, and I was in a theater that didn't have the now-ubiquitous and fat/fornication-friendly movable armrests on the seats.
I can completely see why people don't go to the movies anymore. The allure of the cinema is completely extinguished by drooling troglodytes yammering away on cell phones, and engaging in other outright brazen displays of unacceptable behavior. Maybe Netflix is the answer. Nine dollar tickets sure aren't, especially in what is now a (SUPER TOPICAL THIS WILL BE DATED NEXT WEEK) post-Heath Ledger world. Yet I keep going back, probably because you just can't get new movies from Netflix. I don't even have Netflix, not like it really matters. So I'll keep smoking those "cigarettes," if you will. You keep reading this cigarette carton of a blog; it's just as cancer-causing as anything else.
I lied about people having sex during Wild Wild West.
I don't even think I saw it in theaters.
But I mean, it probably would've been more interesting than a paraplegic Kenneth Branagh in a locomotive wheelchair.
Should probably cut it off here.
BAILAMOS, LET THE RHYTHM TAKE YOU OVERRRRRRR BAILAMOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSS
So no, I don't exactly recall the ticket price of 101 Dalmatians. I do, however, remember the admission price for Spider-Man, which was a cold Lincoln. That's it. Five dollars. Now, after some Wikipedia detective work...
Oh.
Oh my dear Lord.
Dear, sweet, forgiving Lord.
That was six years ago. Spider-Man premiered six years ago. I'm a fossil. Carbon dating aside, let's discuss the movies. It was either this or my 2008 Halloween costume ideas, to which I always receive the same reaction: "Well who the hell is that?"
I'll go ahead and throw it out into the arena, despite the hard truth that it will immediately date this post once the Georgia small font has been laid; the most recent film I've seen is J.J.Abrams' cocktease Cloverleaf, which I enjoyed. The only thing I didn't enjoy about it was the astronomical admission price of nine dollars. Nine dollars. Since when is a movie you can only view at a theater's pace, with complete and incredibly rude strangers, worth nine dollars? That is never worth nine dollars. It's worth four dollars at best.
These days, that's really the magic of the movies: the exponentially plummeting conditions of movie theaters and their clientèle. I added French as a language for Blogger just for that word, for those of you weaned on brie and Perrier and PBS rather than my hot dogs and Ghostbusters crowd. Not that I'm eating freedom fries or anything over here.
Who's with me?
Movies might be improving by way of technological advancement and a desire to stay fresh in spite of new ideas being harder and harder to come up with, but they sojourn forth into new creative realms, all the while theaters become dilapidated and their patrons devolve further and further into knuckle-dragging, text messaging, yelling-at-the-screen evolutionary throwbacks.
I never really noticed it until that pivotal showing of Spider-Man, the last movie I recall paying five dollars for, and the first movie experience I can truly remember astonishingly rude...no, wait...
Cast Away, which premiered almost ten years ago, had a more impolite audience that Spider-Man, and I believe it was the first movie where my experience caused me to associate the awful time I had with the quality of the film; to this day, I refuse to watch it because of the frequency of cell phones "blowin' up," in the theater, even in the days before ringtones, when all we had was "Snake" on our Nokias. People shuffling in and out like a doctor's office waiting room, yelling back and forth like the New York Stock Exchange's traders floor, as if they were reenacting Tim Allen bomb Jungle 2 Jungle, which was actually the highest-grossing PG movie of 1997. Are PG movies even made anymore? That was the singularity that ignited my contempt for the movie-going populace, and now countless conversations I've had over my lifetime with people who "just don't go to the movies anymore" seem more illuminated than they previously did, now that I've had time to reflect on them.
Spider-Man was in fact the first movie I recall attending where a theater manager requested that ticket holders "shift to the far left," because the showing had been sold out. This was actually the only time I had attended a movie with President George W. Bush, who, enjoying such high approval ratings in 2002, refused to shift to the far left. In disgust, he walked out, though later he praised director Sam Raimi's post-9/11 New York imagery when Spider-Man clings to a robust Old Glory at the top of some nondescript skyscraper. Presidential observations aside, this was the first film I experienced where my excitement for it had been so bottled up that I spent the entire film seething in contempt for those around me, who dared defile my precious childhood hero, who I had followed with moderate regularity since Amazing Spider-Man #350. All things considered, the crowd for Spider-Man had nothing on the rabble at Spider-Man 2, who left me so angry with their primate antics and inconsiderate cell phone usage that I saw a matinée showing of the movie the next day with my stepdad.
Let's rewind a couple of weeks though in 2004, to the film which I easily consider to the high watermark of complete retardation in the movie theater. If you'll indulge me, it really made the case for sterilization of certain members of the human race. That statement alone probably caused my readership to drop from 9 to 3. Anyway. The film was Van Helsing. It alone kept me from attending the closest movie theater to my college campus for two years. I drove 15 more minutes and paid more money only to avoid that trash heap of a multiplex.
Van Helsing is truthfully a black mark on Hugh Jackman's career, the lowest of the lows, a desolate article of trash that should have been left on the cutting room floor, but some idiot thought people would see it, and shame on me for doing so; however, I am not here to critique the film but those who were in attendance. First off, two gentlemen beside me, were, during the movie, discussing "man laws" and when it was acceptable to take the urinal beside another man. Another shining example of humanity was wearing what can only be describing as plastic body armor. Amongst the theater patrons, there was also this universal acceptance that it was okay to make and take phone calls, with complete ignorance toward everyone else in the theater! I considered that be much worse than the screaming at the screen that was taking place, though others might define that to be humanity's lowest point. Have we really become apes?
I left the theater in a nuclear rage, never having felt so incensed at humanity, not even after "Four more years!" or the return of American Gladiators or the refusal to release the third season of The Adventures of Pete and Pete or even, even, even the time that old man almost hit me when I was making a left hand turn on a green arrow trying to escape a tropical storm in Nags Head in 2004. It took every last cell in my body not to cause a massive accident on U.S. 1 by flipping my car and attempting to take as many lives as possible. Eyewitnesses would be inclined to validate such hyperbolic rhetoric.
It really hasn't gotten any worse since Van Helsing, but then again, it hasn't improved either. Those infamous missteps by humanity followed me throughout the years, with people texting and making and taking calls, yelling at the screen, yelling at one another, and so forth. Let's take a quick glance at some of the more stupefying instances of human behavior at the movie theaters that I have experienced:
Sunshine, 2007: This dusty nugget is taken from a trip to a Virginia Beach mall with my sister, the only theater in the area code that was playing the film. As if the rapture had taken place, the lobby and box office were empty, saved for an over-pierced blond at the front far more interested in failing an easy level Sudoku than selling me a couple of tickets. After an aggravating and deafening silence, I tried to get her attention by fitting as much of my face as possible into the cutout of the plexigrass window until she slowly reacted to me, as if she were to die if she gave me her undivided attention.
Superman Returns, 2006: Ridiculously bizarre "oohs" and "ahhs" from the audience deep-sixed this one for me, especially when the audience was astonished that Superman was weakened by Kryptonite.
Jurassic Park, 1993: Never before or since has my movie visit been interrupted by so many bathroom breaks by strangers. My seven-year-old mind was hoping that the dilophosaurus attacking a portly Wayne Knight on the screen would reverse and shoot its venomous gelatin on the "gotta go gotta go gotta go right now" crowd.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 2001: This one actually has nothing to do with strangers. When I was in high school, a girl I was interested in told me to meet her here to see this movie, but I never found her in the theater since it was packed. I ended up sitting in the top row and had to go to the bathroom the entire time. I will always have a full bladder when I think of Harry Potter. It also, in retrospect, makes me realize how low will stoop to get a girl's attention.
Juno, 2008: A gaggle of teenagers behind me claimed every single second of this movie was "gay" or "stupid." Naturally I hoped that their parents' cars, which I'm sure they drove, exploded on the highway.
Anger Management, 2003: This movie also has nothing to do with strangers. It sucked and I wanted to see Confidence instead.
The Matrix Reloaded, 2003: I skipped school to see this movie. I've almost forgotten about heckling fanboys yelling "IT'S NOT EVEN WORTH IT!" in regards to the 30-second preview of the third movie at the end of the decade-long credits.
The sad thing is they were right.
They were so right.
I still wanted the acne on their faces to explode like C4 charges.
No Country for Old Men, 2007: Probably could've done without the "WHAT IS HE SAYING?" "whispers" made by everyone around me when anyone was talking during the whole goddamn movie.
American Gangster, 2007: Teenage girls in front of me start comparing on-screen characters to their friends. "Naw, he ain't like that!"
Finally, we can never, ever forget...
Wild Wild West, 1999: 1999 was the same year I saw The Sixth Sense and got innumerable fake butter stains on my shirt from the popcorn, and the same year I decided not to part my hair to the side, where it now sits in its current nondescript male hairstyle. Haley Joel Osment and my high school yearbook pictures would never be the same. A couple of years later, 9/11 happened, and it just so happened to be Picture Day at Western Branch High School. In a bizarre twist of fate, or at least this is how I've conditioned myself to remember it, it was announced right after the "R" last names had their pictures taken, so everyone between S-Z wasn't looking as chipper in the 2002 yearbook as they did in 2001.
ANYWAY.
This movie sucked. People totally had sex beside me when I was trying to watch it, and I was in a theater that didn't have the now-ubiquitous and fat/fornication-friendly movable armrests on the seats.
I can completely see why people don't go to the movies anymore. The allure of the cinema is completely extinguished by drooling troglodytes yammering away on cell phones, and engaging in other outright brazen displays of unacceptable behavior. Maybe Netflix is the answer. Nine dollar tickets sure aren't, especially in what is now a (SUPER TOPICAL THIS WILL BE DATED NEXT WEEK) post-Heath Ledger world. Yet I keep going back, probably because you just can't get new movies from Netflix. I don't even have Netflix, not like it really matters. So I'll keep smoking those "cigarettes," if you will. You keep reading this cigarette carton of a blog; it's just as cancer-causing as anything else.
I lied about people having sex during Wild Wild West.
I don't even think I saw it in theaters.
But I mean, it probably would've been more interesting than a paraplegic Kenneth Branagh in a locomotive wheelchair.
Should probably cut it off here.
BAILAMOS, LET THE RHYTHM TAKE YOU OVERRRRRRR BAILAMOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSS
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Seven Deadly...Coupons?
Some dread going to the dentist. Others the doctor, or the mall. Maybe you're not too keen on the DMV, perhaps the mechanic, maybe the cemetery, or possibly church, if you're feeling dreadfully honest. Within all of these destinations, our failures, fears, and insecurities are illuminated as we stumble around, cringing in terror, stricken with grief, or exasperated in unquenchable frustration.
They've got nothing on the grocery store.
It always seems to rain on my way to the grocery store. It isn't as though my journey is so abnormally long that I have to drive several country miles and the hydrologic cycle has time to kick in and bring down ice knives of rain droplets down on my face. Maybe, in a sad cosmic way, the interlocking of the key of my car into the ignition signals a downpour from the heavens. I suppose it's coincidental, and I could care less about what you think about coincidences, if they exist, if they don't, what-have-you. It's the grocery store and the rain makes ominous and filled with hate and saturated plastic bags that cling to the oil-speckled asphalt, defiantly refusing to decompose.
As I search the browbeaten parking lot for a spot, other cars fight each other like carnivorous animals on the African plains over a malnourished conquest that is the closest spot to the front door. I wonder if there is a correlation between cars parked closest to the front door and most unhealthy food purchased at the grocery store, because I always see the skinny people walking from the back of the lot. Anyway, I also tend to avoid choosing spots near the cart return, since the lovely clientèle always seem to enjoy rocketing the carts as fast as possible into the others, caring not if the errant projectile even makes it close to the rusted metal confines with the other herded metal sheep. The carts careen off one another, causes scratches, dents, scrapes, and all out-destruction on nearby car bodies. It's really a wonder that the adjacent parking spots near the cart return haven't formed some bastardized auto paint palette on the asphalt, an orphaned version of the popular application on manufacturer websites where one can design one's own vehicle for purchase. Somewhere in the chaos, I park my car and take the shuttle to the front door, since it's really more practical than the hour walk I have ahead of me.
Once inside the arctic walls of the grocer, I am forced to select a model of grocery cart, since I have no manservant to carry my goods. This leaves me in a paralyzing moment of mental stasis, as I am left to decide between the aircraft carrier cart, constructed for families of twelve or more; the modified double-decker wheeled hand truck, used almost exclusively by sexually ambiguous middle-aged men with salt-and-pepper hair and earrings; and finally, the I'm-only-buying-two-things hand basket, which has the sturdiness of a booze-laced promised made shortly after last call.
I always choose the aircraft carrier because it's always the only model available, and so it goes. My trip surreptitiously begins; and the wonders and horrors of the outdoors are soon forgotten, as those within the fluorescent-lit aisles trump them and eventually slay them, one by one by one.
It begins with a bang in the produce section. Well, it might begin with a bang, but my whimper abbreviates it quickly. The produce section is the biggest can-you-top-this section of the grocery store, where patrons attempt to be healthier than thou. I never thought dudes would try to out-dude one another by the volume of vegetables they violently sling into their carts, but the world is an unpredictable place. Men don virtual suits of armor, ready to battle one another to the last link of chain mail to determine who is mightiest in the produce joust. I'm only trying to grab some grapes and perhaps some baby carrots, but apparently that's bush league around these parts. Blood is shed as I have difficulty opening the provided plastic bags and end up ripping off a couple hundred before I can hurriedly toss some apples inside. This isn't the worst part though, as I feel the steely looks of those around me, judging my simpleton tastes and unwillingness to be more experimental in my perishable shopping.
The produce section is where judgment inside the grocery store begins. Patrons evaluate one another based on what's in the shopping cart, and since the produce section takes a considerable period of time , it enables those twist-tying eggplant to give those of us looks for oranges the once-over, and immediately we are deemed non-threats and also inferior shoppers, given the lack of exotic goods within our vessels. It's like committing a capital offense in your dreams and being exiled to death row in real life. I haven't budged yet though...I endure the dagger-like eyes of the patriarchal persons in produce and snatch up my plebeian perishables, rocketing past the bakery, since by the time I make it that far, all baked goods have since endured the evening fire sale, as they sit in washed-out plastic cases, stained from human contact, collecting dust as relative antiquities.
Around the next couple aisles are an arsenal of pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils rarely visited by the store's shoppers. They seem to be barely hanging on to the series of racks that dot the aisles, in sort of childlike stance of readiness, as if they had been swinging as high as possible and were just ready to fling themselves off the swingset to get a rush of sand into their eyes. They are ignored. They stand idle and forlorn, waiting to find the warmth of a home. Envious of the nearby wine racks so lovingly caressed by the scores of people flowing in and out with the ebb and flow of time, they demand attention without saying a word. Attention they will not receive but so often.
Things become less salient after the utensils; the aisles dissolve into one another, lacking definition and identity. Shoppers also seem to have lost the vitriol they so violently possessed upon their initial passage through those sliding doors. Was that Gwyneth Paltrow that just streaked by!?!!!? Anyway, the life seems to be sapped out of everyone by the amorphous rows of foodstuffs. Canned corn here. Hamburger Helper there. Nothing sticks out, calls one to buy it, bellows for the inclusion into the cold shopping basket with the itinerant cans of soup or the corpulent brownie mix. People shuffle in and out of the aisles like zombified shells of themselves, cadaverous entities channeling the ghost of Ponce de Leon, continuing a never ending search for a soul-replenishing substance that will never end, not even with coupons clipped from the Sunday paper. This is where the endless sea of pabulum becomes crippling. Once spry, lively individuals become statuesque in front of sections of the store, debating over cereal or spice or tortilla choices for hours; the "hot girl" you saw by the bakery is now a hideous gargoyle betwixt Progresso and Campbell's soups.
Swimming through all of the madness, I understand that I am a survivor of the most treacherous and bone-chilling parts of the store, at least for now, and have been blessed with some miraculous ability to swim against the halted chronal flow that the others have so willingly succumbed to; I am the only one granted this sacred boon. I alone must make it to...the frozen foods.
Ironically, the chilly precipice of the frozen food section reawakens the shuffling undead populace into a bloodthirsty state, characterized most notably by wrath and utter contempt for both humanity and the ever-shrinking ozone layer. They stand sentry at the cryogenic sarcophagi, debating which stack of technologically-enhanced vittles to rifle though before snarling rabidly at any foolish passers-by who interrupt their fabricated and impolite state of serenity. By now I feel like Tenzig Norgay, having scaled the face of Everest in my own right but lacking all the publicity for my efforts. Surrounded by ravenous frozen food vampires, I meagerly await my turn before picking through the leftover carrion. My attempts are expedited by the gnashing of teeth from approaching shoppers, eager to sink their fangs into Lean Cuisine Swedish Meatballs.
All of the ghosts and ghouls have dissipated by the hour I reach the dairy section; in fact, all signs of life have disappeared as if the rapture had taken place, without even giving me a heads-up text message. There are those shattered individuals huddled around the milk in a Sisyphean effort to discover the gallon of milk that will not go bad for seven months. There are those caught in the eternal struggle to obtain the store's five packages of cheese slices for ten dollars, but we all know such a deal is hopeless, as those who try go mad from doing so, their maniacal laughter echoing throughout the hollow expanse of the store. Other than that, nothing remains. Smatterings of cosmetics and toiletries crowd the remaining space, like piles of bones inside the dungeon at the bottom of an unoccupied castle.
I would go into further detail regarding the animatronic actions of the cashier and bag...people...folks...lackeys maybe? However, their hollow eyes and listless robotic motions do not merit further consideration; they alone acknowledge the pain and suffering of my horrific and depressing experience, since they have witnessed the same countless journey of others before, a seemingly unending flow of customers in and out, those welcoming doors sliding in and out. It is as if they are crying out for help with each swipe of a can or box, wishing they could rescue a particularly tortured soul here and there, but realize they are doomed to do nothing else but watch the carnage day in and day out. The only reprieve they earn is the sight of one customer going quietly into the night, having survived the powerfully visceral experience and lived to tell the tale on Blogger.
"Thank you for shopping at Kroger."
They've got nothing on the grocery store.
It always seems to rain on my way to the grocery store. It isn't as though my journey is so abnormally long that I have to drive several country miles and the hydrologic cycle has time to kick in and bring down ice knives of rain droplets down on my face. Maybe, in a sad cosmic way, the interlocking of the key of my car into the ignition signals a downpour from the heavens. I suppose it's coincidental, and I could care less about what you think about coincidences, if they exist, if they don't, what-have-you. It's the grocery store and the rain makes ominous and filled with hate and saturated plastic bags that cling to the oil-speckled asphalt, defiantly refusing to decompose.
As I search the browbeaten parking lot for a spot, other cars fight each other like carnivorous animals on the African plains over a malnourished conquest that is the closest spot to the front door. I wonder if there is a correlation between cars parked closest to the front door and most unhealthy food purchased at the grocery store, because I always see the skinny people walking from the back of the lot. Anyway, I also tend to avoid choosing spots near the cart return, since the lovely clientèle always seem to enjoy rocketing the carts as fast as possible into the others, caring not if the errant projectile even makes it close to the rusted metal confines with the other herded metal sheep. The carts careen off one another, causes scratches, dents, scrapes, and all out-destruction on nearby car bodies. It's really a wonder that the adjacent parking spots near the cart return haven't formed some bastardized auto paint palette on the asphalt, an orphaned version of the popular application on manufacturer websites where one can design one's own vehicle for purchase. Somewhere in the chaos, I park my car and take the shuttle to the front door, since it's really more practical than the hour walk I have ahead of me.
Once inside the arctic walls of the grocer, I am forced to select a model of grocery cart, since I have no manservant to carry my goods. This leaves me in a paralyzing moment of mental stasis, as I am left to decide between the aircraft carrier cart, constructed for families of twelve or more; the modified double-decker wheeled hand truck, used almost exclusively by sexually ambiguous middle-aged men with salt-and-pepper hair and earrings; and finally, the I'm-only-buying-two-things hand basket, which has the sturdiness of a booze-laced promised made shortly after last call.
I always choose the aircraft carrier because it's always the only model available, and so it goes. My trip surreptitiously begins; and the wonders and horrors of the outdoors are soon forgotten, as those within the fluorescent-lit aisles trump them and eventually slay them, one by one by one.
It begins with a bang in the produce section. Well, it might begin with a bang, but my whimper abbreviates it quickly. The produce section is the biggest can-you-top-this section of the grocery store, where patrons attempt to be healthier than thou. I never thought dudes would try to out-dude one another by the volume of vegetables they violently sling into their carts, but the world is an unpredictable place. Men don virtual suits of armor, ready to battle one another to the last link of chain mail to determine who is mightiest in the produce joust. I'm only trying to grab some grapes and perhaps some baby carrots, but apparently that's bush league around these parts. Blood is shed as I have difficulty opening the provided plastic bags and end up ripping off a couple hundred before I can hurriedly toss some apples inside. This isn't the worst part though, as I feel the steely looks of those around me, judging my simpleton tastes and unwillingness to be more experimental in my perishable shopping.
The produce section is where judgment inside the grocery store begins. Patrons evaluate one another based on what's in the shopping cart, and since the produce section takes a considerable period of time , it enables those twist-tying eggplant to give those of us looks for oranges the once-over, and immediately we are deemed non-threats and also inferior shoppers, given the lack of exotic goods within our vessels. It's like committing a capital offense in your dreams and being exiled to death row in real life. I haven't budged yet though...I endure the dagger-like eyes of the patriarchal persons in produce and snatch up my plebeian perishables, rocketing past the bakery, since by the time I make it that far, all baked goods have since endured the evening fire sale, as they sit in washed-out plastic cases, stained from human contact, collecting dust as relative antiquities.
Around the next couple aisles are an arsenal of pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils rarely visited by the store's shoppers. They seem to be barely hanging on to the series of racks that dot the aisles, in sort of childlike stance of readiness, as if they had been swinging as high as possible and were just ready to fling themselves off the swingset to get a rush of sand into their eyes. They are ignored. They stand idle and forlorn, waiting to find the warmth of a home. Envious of the nearby wine racks so lovingly caressed by the scores of people flowing in and out with the ebb and flow of time, they demand attention without saying a word. Attention they will not receive but so often.
Things become less salient after the utensils; the aisles dissolve into one another, lacking definition and identity. Shoppers also seem to have lost the vitriol they so violently possessed upon their initial passage through those sliding doors. Was that Gwyneth Paltrow that just streaked by!?!!!? Anyway, the life seems to be sapped out of everyone by the amorphous rows of foodstuffs. Canned corn here. Hamburger Helper there. Nothing sticks out, calls one to buy it, bellows for the inclusion into the cold shopping basket with the itinerant cans of soup or the corpulent brownie mix. People shuffle in and out of the aisles like zombified shells of themselves, cadaverous entities channeling the ghost of Ponce de Leon, continuing a never ending search for a soul-replenishing substance that will never end, not even with coupons clipped from the Sunday paper. This is where the endless sea of pabulum becomes crippling. Once spry, lively individuals become statuesque in front of sections of the store, debating over cereal or spice or tortilla choices for hours; the "hot girl" you saw by the bakery is now a hideous gargoyle betwixt Progresso and Campbell's soups.
Swimming through all of the madness, I understand that I am a survivor of the most treacherous and bone-chilling parts of the store, at least for now, and have been blessed with some miraculous ability to swim against the halted chronal flow that the others have so willingly succumbed to; I am the only one granted this sacred boon. I alone must make it to...the frozen foods.
Ironically, the chilly precipice of the frozen food section reawakens the shuffling undead populace into a bloodthirsty state, characterized most notably by wrath and utter contempt for both humanity and the ever-shrinking ozone layer. They stand sentry at the cryogenic sarcophagi, debating which stack of technologically-enhanced vittles to rifle though before snarling rabidly at any foolish passers-by who interrupt their fabricated and impolite state of serenity. By now I feel like Tenzig Norgay, having scaled the face of Everest in my own right but lacking all the publicity for my efforts. Surrounded by ravenous frozen food vampires, I meagerly await my turn before picking through the leftover carrion. My attempts are expedited by the gnashing of teeth from approaching shoppers, eager to sink their fangs into Lean Cuisine Swedish Meatballs.
All of the ghosts and ghouls have dissipated by the hour I reach the dairy section; in fact, all signs of life have disappeared as if the rapture had taken place, without even giving me a heads-up text message. There are those shattered individuals huddled around the milk in a Sisyphean effort to discover the gallon of milk that will not go bad for seven months. There are those caught in the eternal struggle to obtain the store's five packages of cheese slices for ten dollars, but we all know such a deal is hopeless, as those who try go mad from doing so, their maniacal laughter echoing throughout the hollow expanse of the store. Other than that, nothing remains. Smatterings of cosmetics and toiletries crowd the remaining space, like piles of bones inside the dungeon at the bottom of an unoccupied castle.
I would go into further detail regarding the animatronic actions of the cashier and bag...people...folks...lackeys maybe? However, their hollow eyes and listless robotic motions do not merit further consideration; they alone acknowledge the pain and suffering of my horrific and depressing experience, since they have witnessed the same countless journey of others before, a seemingly unending flow of customers in and out, those welcoming doors sliding in and out. It is as if they are crying out for help with each swipe of a can or box, wishing they could rescue a particularly tortured soul here and there, but realize they are doomed to do nothing else but watch the carnage day in and day out. The only reprieve they earn is the sight of one customer going quietly into the night, having survived the powerfully visceral experience and lived to tell the tale on Blogger.
"Thank you for shopping at Kroger."
Monday, January 7, 2008
Table for One
Note: I started writing this entry several weeks ago and was never able to finish it, and I think I figured out why that's the case. I realized the magnitude of the self-fulfilling prophecy of the blog and how this is honestly another grain of sand on Internet Beach, destined to be passed over by Internet metal detectors and no doubt end up clinging to the testicles inside of some web browser's unfortunate Internet boardshorts. In fact, the prophecy continues to be fulfilled by the mere typing of these words, though not by you reading them. Your reading them provides this blog ultimately with some sort of worth, because at the very least, you expended the calories to click the mouse to this page. Thanks for using up the energy you got from that 33rd Goldfish cracker you ate. I appreciate it, as I realize I am no better than the other persons, places, things, or blogs I herald or criticize here, because they have just as much worth or are just as worthless as my secondhand smug. With this epiphany of self awareness, here is "Table for One," written from December 16th, 2007 to January 7th, 2008.
"I make the heartiest attempts to not air any of my dirty laundry over the Internet. A friend of mine once told me that the blog is the watermark of a psychopath, and his words still resonate with me several years after he said this in the dining hall of our school, no doubt over recycled chili and half-digested dessert that had seen far too many tours of duty beneath fingerprint-glazed sneeze guards and fluorescent lighting. He was no doubt discussing the character of a questionable young woman who will naturally remain anonymous as the next patron at Ann Taylor Loft or what have you. However, my remembrance of his notorious quote is twofold, for this dumpster of decomposed thought, rotten stories, and other base intellectual refuse and worthless ruminations is my own little trash heap, and in it I have uncovered an appropriate topic that I have chosen to broadcast as we lurch closer and closer to the holidays: dating.
It's around this time that one can feel truly alone, even though spending an exorbitant amount of money on someone who might dump you before MLK Day is not a tableau I wish to see arranged. If you have been cryogenically single as I have since the Bronze Age, you might be numb to all of the holiday goings-on that shine a light on your failures, shortcomings, faults, and character defects. You have no significant other to buy presents for, so you end up either 1) blowing it all on obscure family members 2) buying yourself several gifts to fill that gaping void in your life or 3) opting to double up on gifts for your immediate family, in some halfhearted way of repaying them for years of tolerating your unreasonable requests and overall ungrateful attitude for your comfortable life. Furthermore, you take no dates to Christmas or New Year's Eve parties. I would know; last week I stood under a sparse mistletoe, watching it wilt from the laughter of others as my forlorn gaze cut across the party crowd. On New Year's, I won't be locking lips with any fetching bird as the ball drops, but instead craning my neck skyward so that my face will be as far away from both the happy and the spur-of-the-moment-booze-fueled couples as well. Will I be bitter as the calendar rolls over and I come closer to crossing the bar? Certainly not in that particular ticker-tape covered instance, but I do not let my awkward digits prowl this keyboard in some serene sentimental manner, not in the slightest.
Once January 2nd rolls around, a much larger problem, in my opinion of my life, will be illuminated. Admittedly, it's an incidental issue. Should I be more concerned with my 401(k) and paying students loans off and paying my rent and getting my life straight with the Flying Spaghetti Monster? There is no doubt in my mind; however, why not pontificate on matters of the heart while I sit collecting dust, getting older and more worthless as the sun sets and the moon rises.
What is there to say? One might accuse me of copping out when I blame the environment, but really, hear my take on this one. Once you're out of college, it's virtually impossible to meet members of the opposite sex your own age who are either too healthy, too religious, or too drunk for you.
Maybe the grocery store?
No thank you, I am not trying to be judged by some femme fatale whilst I choose between the discounted Lean Cuisines.
Perhaps work.
Are you kidding? Having an age and a tax bracket handicap does not help me out too much. Neither does driving my mother's old car to work. I'm not exactly the cock of the walk around the workplace, if you will. Maybe if I stopped carrying my lunch in a plastic grocery bag, that might cause a meteoric rise in the pecking order.
Fine. Let's isolate the gym, ecclesiastical establishments, bars, the grocery store, and the workplace from view. What about house parties?
When's the last time you found an acceptable member of the opposite sex to pick up at a house party? Everyone there is linked by such easily soluble social networks that by the end of the evening, everything looks like a bleached watercolor painting and you still don't know anyone's name. Not exactly.
However, let's say, for example, that by some stroke of genius, I channel some caveman instinct and with all deliberate force and speed, knock a young lady out and take her out. Have you ever seen an eight-year-old drive stick shift? I'd imagine it would be like that; there's so much rust to knock off of me the Tin Man would accuse me of being shiftless. I am so far removed from the dating world it's completely alien to me; I would serve myself better by learning a foreign language (lol Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus references LOL LOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLLLL) or taking up that craft of putting ships into bottles. A dying art, really.
We can joke all we want about a sad scene or my lack of game, but I think what's the most depressing thing out of all of this(here is where I am a huge, hyperbolic prick!) rock-bottom diatribe are the dudes that young ladies actually accept as legitimate boyfriends. They're out there, ladies of America. They can't speak English well. They can't dress themselves; hair gel is the only steady product they purchase. They will ignore your interests, they will bro out instead. They will pick fights and get tossed from establishments. They will forget your birthday. They will. forget. your. birthday.
Honestly, the only thing that I am proud of from this one is the boon of self-actualization I received from trudging through this lackadaisically lugubrious lament. It was shameless. It was low. Am I sorry for it? No. Will I do something along these lines again? Chances are pretty slim. Will you be a loyal reader after this entry? I can already sense you clicking the right hand corner."
"I make the heartiest attempts to not air any of my dirty laundry over the Internet. A friend of mine once told me that the blog is the watermark of a psychopath, and his words still resonate with me several years after he said this in the dining hall of our school, no doubt over recycled chili and half-digested dessert that had seen far too many tours of duty beneath fingerprint-glazed sneeze guards and fluorescent lighting. He was no doubt discussing the character of a questionable young woman who will naturally remain anonymous as the next patron at Ann Taylor Loft or what have you. However, my remembrance of his notorious quote is twofold, for this dumpster of decomposed thought, rotten stories, and other base intellectual refuse and worthless ruminations is my own little trash heap, and in it I have uncovered an appropriate topic that I have chosen to broadcast as we lurch closer and closer to the holidays: dating.
It's around this time that one can feel truly alone, even though spending an exorbitant amount of money on someone who might dump you before MLK Day is not a tableau I wish to see arranged. If you have been cryogenically single as I have since the Bronze Age, you might be numb to all of the holiday goings-on that shine a light on your failures, shortcomings, faults, and character defects. You have no significant other to buy presents for, so you end up either 1) blowing it all on obscure family members 2) buying yourself several gifts to fill that gaping void in your life or 3) opting to double up on gifts for your immediate family, in some halfhearted way of repaying them for years of tolerating your unreasonable requests and overall ungrateful attitude for your comfortable life. Furthermore, you take no dates to Christmas or New Year's Eve parties. I would know; last week I stood under a sparse mistletoe, watching it wilt from the laughter of others as my forlorn gaze cut across the party crowd. On New Year's, I won't be locking lips with any fetching bird as the ball drops, but instead craning my neck skyward so that my face will be as far away from both the happy and the spur-of-the-moment-booze-fueled couples as well. Will I be bitter as the calendar rolls over and I come closer to crossing the bar? Certainly not in that particular ticker-tape covered instance, but I do not let my awkward digits prowl this keyboard in some serene sentimental manner, not in the slightest.
Once January 2nd rolls around, a much larger problem, in my opinion of my life, will be illuminated. Admittedly, it's an incidental issue. Should I be more concerned with my 401(k) and paying students loans off and paying my rent and getting my life straight with the Flying Spaghetti Monster? There is no doubt in my mind; however, why not pontificate on matters of the heart while I sit collecting dust, getting older and more worthless as the sun sets and the moon rises.
What is there to say? One might accuse me of copping out when I blame the environment, but really, hear my take on this one. Once you're out of college, it's virtually impossible to meet members of the opposite sex your own age who are either too healthy, too religious, or too drunk for you.
Maybe the grocery store?
No thank you, I am not trying to be judged by some femme fatale whilst I choose between the discounted Lean Cuisines.
Perhaps work.
Are you kidding? Having an age and a tax bracket handicap does not help me out too much. Neither does driving my mother's old car to work. I'm not exactly the cock of the walk around the workplace, if you will. Maybe if I stopped carrying my lunch in a plastic grocery bag, that might cause a meteoric rise in the pecking order.
Fine. Let's isolate the gym, ecclesiastical establishments, bars, the grocery store, and the workplace from view. What about house parties?
When's the last time you found an acceptable member of the opposite sex to pick up at a house party? Everyone there is linked by such easily soluble social networks that by the end of the evening, everything looks like a bleached watercolor painting and you still don't know anyone's name. Not exactly.
However, let's say, for example, that by some stroke of genius, I channel some caveman instinct and with all deliberate force and speed, knock a young lady out and take her out. Have you ever seen an eight-year-old drive stick shift? I'd imagine it would be like that; there's so much rust to knock off of me the Tin Man would accuse me of being shiftless. I am so far removed from the dating world it's completely alien to me; I would serve myself better by learning a foreign language (lol Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus references LOL LOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLLLL) or taking up that craft of putting ships into bottles. A dying art, really.
We can joke all we want about a sad scene or my lack of game, but I think what's the most depressing thing out of all of this(here is where I am a huge, hyperbolic prick!) rock-bottom diatribe are the dudes that young ladies actually accept as legitimate boyfriends. They're out there, ladies of America. They can't speak English well. They can't dress themselves; hair gel is the only steady product they purchase. They will ignore your interests, they will bro out instead. They will pick fights and get tossed from establishments. They will forget your birthday. They will. forget. your. birthday.
Honestly, the only thing that I am proud of from this one is the boon of self-actualization I received from trudging through this lackadaisically lugubrious lament. It was shameless. It was low. Am I sorry for it? No. Will I do something along these lines again? Chances are pretty slim. Will you be a loyal reader after this entry? I can already sense you clicking the right hand corner."
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Dead Horses Should Stay Dead
Update: MySpace still hasn't deleted my account. Tom must really want to keep his 535,987th friend around forever, in spite of my profile space resembling an abandoned storefront.
In an effort to break a mental sweat and fill the void of the missing Tuesday night Guitar Hero tournaments, I have taken up going to trivia nights at a bar downtown in order to nerd out and keep myself from becoming a sheep and taking Domino's up on their Two Times Tuesday offer. If I ever order pizza alone, I will eat all of it so that my heart will stop, and I will die. That is how it will go down.
Trivia is a strange beast indeed. Is it trivial to know trivia? Or is it trivial to be trivial about trivia? Who am I to judge? Trivia might be more important than a casual observation of it might suggest. Consider Jeopardy! Ken Jennings didn't exactly stack paper as an offensive lineman Seahawks; he was on the show seventy-five times. At sporting events, there is always some sort of trivia challenge and handsome reward that accompanies the nerd who knows the answer. Since alien technology brought us the television, there has been a bevy of game shows that involve knowledge that most of us wouldn't exactly consider "common." Yet, retaining such information can, on occasion, make you look like the world's best person. That's right, the best person in the entire world.
What happens, however, when you corral a sizable number of individuals into an establishment who have a history of self-aggrandizement and massive egos with faulty foundations? Which is to say, what happens when you have a trivia competition?
Each Tuesday night downtown, Blackfinn Restaurant and Quasi-Overrated Nightlife Hotspot holds a trivia event where smug Richmonders fake the funk and act like the cock of the walk when it comes to identifying celebrity mugshots and recognizing 50s pop hits. Now, I run hot and cold when it comes to competition. If I know I can emerge victorious, I transform into a mean-spirited, venomous creature who does not acknowledge failure as an option. However, if I know I haven't shit for a chance, I acquiesce to those competing who will surely smite me down with righteous indignation. Trivia night is one of those potentially victorious occasions.
I'm not the smartest person I know by any means, and have no way of quantifying intellectual capacity in any sort of scientifically sound manner. But if I'm in a trivia contest, I trust myself first and foremost, and pretty much no one else. Is this conceited? Yes. Am I being a dick about it? Yes. Will I change? Never. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that there are tons of people exactly like me, in the same room as me, on these trivia nights.
Easily the best and worst part of the evening involves me criticizing the competition to my teammates to the most petty of details. It is as if a fog washes over me and I morph into a beast who considered those on other teams to be the bane of my existence. But seriously, why not? It's a competition, and these people, one and all, are giant assholes. Giant, gaping, assholes. They name themselves such clever things as "No Pictures Please" and "The Artist Formerly Known As..." and "Soviet Masturbation" and "We Are Dominatrices" and on and on and on and kill me. Some groups are less smug and pretentious than others, but let's face it, folks: if I'm calling them smug and pretentious, they've got to be exactly those things.
We all sit crouched around answer sheets with ice in our veins and an unquenchable hatred in our eyes, as pens furiously scribble across paper to determine the proper Soviet premier for this or that multiple choice question. We ponder quizzically as the DJ plays song snippets in the identification portion, as if our thoughts might levitate towards the ceiling and form invisible air forces, battling it out above the din of the crowd and the haze of cigarette smoke. Through it all, I remain transfixed on the opposition, waiting for them to err and allowing my team to gallop forward.
Much to my chagrin, we never really do such things. Certain teams pack considerable heat and leave us in the dust week in and week out. Perhaps this only fuels my relentless desire to eviscerate the competition and claim myself to be the top nerd. Is this trivia or American Gladiators (thank you, networks, for allowing the writers' strike to result in the defibrillator working on this dead horse of a physical game show and bringing it back to air in place of legitimate television)? Maybe my dislike of the competition is actually the way I manifest self-loathing, and this has become too psychoanalytical for my tastes, so let's recede a bit and use words like poop to lighten the mood.
Hope, as they say, springs eternal, and pending the rapture, there's always next week. At least I know what Nick Nolte looks like in his mug shot.
In an effort to break a mental sweat and fill the void of the missing Tuesday night Guitar Hero tournaments, I have taken up going to trivia nights at a bar downtown in order to nerd out and keep myself from becoming a sheep and taking Domino's up on their Two Times Tuesday offer. If I ever order pizza alone, I will eat all of it so that my heart will stop, and I will die. That is how it will go down.
Trivia is a strange beast indeed. Is it trivial to know trivia? Or is it trivial to be trivial about trivia? Who am I to judge? Trivia might be more important than a casual observation of it might suggest. Consider Jeopardy! Ken Jennings didn't exactly stack paper as an offensive lineman Seahawks; he was on the show seventy-five times. At sporting events, there is always some sort of trivia challenge and handsome reward that accompanies the nerd who knows the answer. Since alien technology brought us the television, there has been a bevy of game shows that involve knowledge that most of us wouldn't exactly consider "common." Yet, retaining such information can, on occasion, make you look like the world's best person. That's right, the best person in the entire world.
What happens, however, when you corral a sizable number of individuals into an establishment who have a history of self-aggrandizement and massive egos with faulty foundations? Which is to say, what happens when you have a trivia competition?
Each Tuesday night downtown, Blackfinn Restaurant and Quasi-Overrated Nightlife Hotspot holds a trivia event where smug Richmonders fake the funk and act like the cock of the walk when it comes to identifying celebrity mugshots and recognizing 50s pop hits. Now, I run hot and cold when it comes to competition. If I know I can emerge victorious, I transform into a mean-spirited, venomous creature who does not acknowledge failure as an option. However, if I know I haven't shit for a chance, I acquiesce to those competing who will surely smite me down with righteous indignation. Trivia night is one of those potentially victorious occasions.
I'm not the smartest person I know by any means, and have no way of quantifying intellectual capacity in any sort of scientifically sound manner. But if I'm in a trivia contest, I trust myself first and foremost, and pretty much no one else. Is this conceited? Yes. Am I being a dick about it? Yes. Will I change? Never. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that there are tons of people exactly like me, in the same room as me, on these trivia nights.
Easily the best and worst part of the evening involves me criticizing the competition to my teammates to the most petty of details. It is as if a fog washes over me and I morph into a beast who considered those on other teams to be the bane of my existence. But seriously, why not? It's a competition, and these people, one and all, are giant assholes. Giant, gaping, assholes. They name themselves such clever things as "No Pictures Please" and "The Artist Formerly Known As..." and "Soviet Masturbation" and "We Are Dominatrices" and on and on and on and kill me. Some groups are less smug and pretentious than others, but let's face it, folks: if I'm calling them smug and pretentious, they've got to be exactly those things.
We all sit crouched around answer sheets with ice in our veins and an unquenchable hatred in our eyes, as pens furiously scribble across paper to determine the proper Soviet premier for this or that multiple choice question. We ponder quizzically as the DJ plays song snippets in the identification portion, as if our thoughts might levitate towards the ceiling and form invisible air forces, battling it out above the din of the crowd and the haze of cigarette smoke. Through it all, I remain transfixed on the opposition, waiting for them to err and allowing my team to gallop forward.
Much to my chagrin, we never really do such things. Certain teams pack considerable heat and leave us in the dust week in and week out. Perhaps this only fuels my relentless desire to eviscerate the competition and claim myself to be the top nerd. Is this trivia or American Gladiators (thank you, networks, for allowing the writers' strike to result in the defibrillator working on this dead horse of a physical game show and bringing it back to air in place of legitimate television)? Maybe my dislike of the competition is actually the way I manifest self-loathing, and this has become too psychoanalytical for my tastes, so let's recede a bit and use words like poop to lighten the mood.
Hope, as they say, springs eternal, and pending the rapture, there's always next week. At least I know what Nick Nolte looks like in his mug shot.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Identity Theft or Identity Crisis?
Checking my bank account is not something I particularly enjoy; personal grooming is often a preferred pastime over a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. It's as if I half-expect to see all $.79 of my account drained like a Larry Bird three, shorts, 'stache, and everything else. Yet, such a fear is there, as irrational as the avoidance of aluminum foil or pickled beets. The end result is that I don't monitor my checking account as close as I should monitor it.
Until today.
Going through a bank statement is sometimes like reading over an old paper you wrote and received back with a grade. You tend to skim it over, expecting the usual comments and nit picking, but tend not to pay much attention to it as you'd like to put the whole process behind you and have no interest in reading something you wrote some time ago. However, you still have to peruse it thoroughly because you never know when WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!!?1?!/?!!ONEwhoaONE!!!!1!??/1/!?1
But wait.
Take that.
Rewind it back.
Secondhand Smug's got the beat to
That's too many syllables.
Why didn't I preface the preface with this preface? Last week I received the Gap card in the mail that I applied for two weeks previously. However, the next day in the mail I received a notice from the bank that the Gap uses (with the curious moniker "GE Money," as if the organization were secretly a member of Master P's old No Limit Records label) informing me that my application for a Gap card had been unceremoniously denied, based on the existence of a previous card in my possession.
Jigga what?
What would have caused me to forget about applying for a card? I remember far too many tarradiddles to let a credit card application slip through a fissure in my brain. Then, my extremely boorish inner monologue said: "Hey asshole! Maybe it wasn't you!" For once I thanked my extremely boorish inner monologue and debated the possibility that someone was trying to steal my identity, in a very methodical and ultimately stupid fashion.
I decided to make the pilgrimage, or hajj (I'm huge in the Middle East apparently) to a local Gap establishment to determine the root of this evil. It turns out that paranoia and delusions of grandeur really do cloud one's judgment and make things transform into something more nefarious than reality has them appear. It turns out that a system error caused my information to be reentered into Gap's database two days later, making it seem as though I were either quite stupid or I had decided I liked the Gap so much I would prefer to have two of its credit cards in my possession just for the hell of it.
Thus, with some excellent sleuthing, I put my fears to rest like a baby with colic.
Because like a baby with colic, my fears would soon wake again.
*flash forward whoaaaaaa on tachyons*
I decided to do something remotely mature and investigate the balance on my checking account. It seemed, at first glance, to be at a reasonable amount, so I paid no further heed to it and prepared to let my brain rot reading baseball trade rumors or the allmusic.com blog or something equally as trivial. Yet for the hell of it (and because I wanted to see how much I really spent on certain nights that will remain unmentionable), I chose to revisit my online statement and comb through it...with an imaginary...fine-toothed...comb.
That's when I discovered that I spent, or some identity thief spent...seventy-nine American dollars on Amazon.com. Frantically, I checked Amazon for my most recent purchases, in the event that one early Sunday morning I decided to buy a bunch of motion-sensing LED lights for my bathroom or somesuch nonsense. However, no purchases had been made on my account since October, when my grandmother made her quarterly charge of me to purchase several out-of-print novels by expatriate Frank Yerby; I doubt my grandmother knows he was an expatriate.
Scanning further up the statement, I then discovered that someone, myself not a party of the first part, or at least in my opinion at the moment of truth, had made a six dollar purchase at a place indicated as "201 HAPPY OWL AKA." Thus, after several scrolls of the touchpad, I tallied up the oddities on my statement, and only the two previously mentioned were the aberrations. The game was still most certainly afoot.
The bank was actually helpful when I called its toll free number and I reached someone no more than several states away rather than on the Indian subcontinent. However, they could either cancel my card or let me take care of the transaction myself. Back to sending some carrier pigeons Amazon.com's way. After faking mental retardation, I was connected to a delightful young woman from...guess where?
The Indian subcontinent! Oh boy!
After several minutes of miscommunication and both parties being completely baffled as to what the other person was saying at the other end of the tin can telephone line. While checking several network news websites, I noticed that Congress had passed several bills on immigration reform, Iran promised to put a stop to its nuclear program, and Alex Rodriguez hit his 800th home run to an empty crowd in New York as the Yankees dropped to a season-low 20 games below .500. Mind you that I am talking about the far future. That was a brief illustration, because I am clearly such a self-enamored, cocksure clairvoyant that I can predict the future in the most asinine way possible.
It turns out that on Monday December 3rd, 2oo7, Amazon.com woke up and decided to make me a member of its Prime Club, to the tune of seventy-nine American dollars. Did I want my account to be sapped of precious resources so Jeff Bezos could put a couple gallons of premium in his tricked-out Hummer? Hardly. In a boon of good luck, the young lady half a world away informed me that she could remove me from Prime Club membership and give me a full refund because I hadn't used its benefits yet. What damn benefits? Faster shipping? It already gets to your doorstep in two days! If you're that impatient, go out and get it yourself! If you're that impatient and also an agoraphobic, you should consider suicide, since you live your life in a contradictory manner.
With seventy-nice greenbacks corralled into my little ranch of an account, I sojourned forth to determine what this Happy Owl place could be, so I phoned a friend WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS. Not that anyone cares. We walked through the previous couple of days to analyze how some $6.19 might have fallen through the cracks, and then, like a crappy episode of Lost, the proper flashback came to me.
The previous Friday I had attended Richmond Renegades hockey game, which was sort of like a roller derby on ice with the amount of white trash that populated the backwater Richmond Coliseum. My quarry that night was granted with the possibility of ten free bones covered in hot wing sauce from the fifth-rate "restaurant" known as Hooter's, if only it could even be called such. Really, it just collects overweight, pasty white men in sleeveless shirts, so it's kind of a clearinghouse for that precious...commodity. In any case, if the Renegades happened to score five goals that night, we'd get free wings. Miraculously, they did, and somehow it was Christmas day in the morning. My party collected its due and I forgot all about it a few days later. How could I forget our charming Eastern European waitress and her insinuations that we split the check three ways, despite ordering completely different items off the menu? It was pleasant, all around.
So, at the end of the day, I realized I was not the target of identity theft, but rather a victim of identity crisis, having not remembered what happened the day before or having the rug pulled out from under me by Amazon.com. In some way, I feel like my parents' generation, with their constant fears of being wiped clean by some faceless, devious entity in a way that might resemble some mid-90s movie about the Internet. I suppose I should understand that no one has your information, they can't steal your identity. I have enough trouble being myself anyway, so who would possibly want take the reins instead?
Until today.
Going through a bank statement is sometimes like reading over an old paper you wrote and received back with a grade. You tend to skim it over, expecting the usual comments and nit picking, but tend not to pay much attention to it as you'd like to put the whole process behind you and have no interest in reading something you wrote some time ago. However, you still have to peruse it thoroughly because you never know when WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!!!?1?!/?!!ONEwhoaONE!!!!1!??/1/!?1
But wait.
Take that.
Rewind it back.
Secondhand Smug's got the beat to
That's too many syllables.
Why didn't I preface the preface with this preface? Last week I received the Gap card in the mail that I applied for two weeks previously. However, the next day in the mail I received a notice from the bank that the Gap uses (with the curious moniker "GE Money," as if the organization were secretly a member of Master P's old No Limit Records label) informing me that my application for a Gap card had been unceremoniously denied, based on the existence of a previous card in my possession.
Jigga what?
What would have caused me to forget about applying for a card? I remember far too many tarradiddles to let a credit card application slip through a fissure in my brain. Then, my extremely boorish inner monologue said: "Hey asshole! Maybe it wasn't you!" For once I thanked my extremely boorish inner monologue and debated the possibility that someone was trying to steal my identity, in a very methodical and ultimately stupid fashion.
I decided to make the pilgrimage, or hajj (I'm huge in the Middle East apparently) to a local Gap establishment to determine the root of this evil. It turns out that paranoia and delusions of grandeur really do cloud one's judgment and make things transform into something more nefarious than reality has them appear. It turns out that a system error caused my information to be reentered into Gap's database two days later, making it seem as though I were either quite stupid or I had decided I liked the Gap so much I would prefer to have two of its credit cards in my possession just for the hell of it.
Thus, with some excellent sleuthing, I put my fears to rest like a baby with colic.
Because like a baby with colic, my fears would soon wake again.
*flash forward whoaaaaaa on tachyons*
I decided to do something remotely mature and investigate the balance on my checking account. It seemed, at first glance, to be at a reasonable amount, so I paid no further heed to it and prepared to let my brain rot reading baseball trade rumors or the allmusic.com blog or something equally as trivial. Yet for the hell of it (and because I wanted to see how much I really spent on certain nights that will remain unmentionable), I chose to revisit my online statement and comb through it...with an imaginary...fine-toothed...comb.
That's when I discovered that I spent, or some identity thief spent...seventy-nine American dollars on Amazon.com. Frantically, I checked Amazon for my most recent purchases, in the event that one early Sunday morning I decided to buy a bunch of motion-sensing LED lights for my bathroom or somesuch nonsense. However, no purchases had been made on my account since October, when my grandmother made her quarterly charge of me to purchase several out-of-print novels by expatriate Frank Yerby; I doubt my grandmother knows he was an expatriate.
Scanning further up the statement, I then discovered that someone, myself not a party of the first part, or at least in my opinion at the moment of truth, had made a six dollar purchase at a place indicated as "201 HAPPY OWL AKA." Thus, after several scrolls of the touchpad, I tallied up the oddities on my statement, and only the two previously mentioned were the aberrations. The game was still most certainly afoot.
The bank was actually helpful when I called its toll free number and I reached someone no more than several states away rather than on the Indian subcontinent. However, they could either cancel my card or let me take care of the transaction myself. Back to sending some carrier pigeons Amazon.com's way. After faking mental retardation, I was connected to a delightful young woman from...guess where?
The Indian subcontinent! Oh boy!
After several minutes of miscommunication and both parties being completely baffled as to what the other person was saying at the other end of the tin can telephone line. While checking several network news websites, I noticed that Congress had passed several bills on immigration reform, Iran promised to put a stop to its nuclear program, and Alex Rodriguez hit his 800th home run to an empty crowd in New York as the Yankees dropped to a season-low 20 games below .500. Mind you that I am talking about the far future. That was a brief illustration, because I am clearly such a self-enamored, cocksure clairvoyant that I can predict the future in the most asinine way possible.
It turns out that on Monday December 3rd, 2oo7, Amazon.com woke up and decided to make me a member of its Prime Club, to the tune of seventy-nine American dollars. Did I want my account to be sapped of precious resources so Jeff Bezos could put a couple gallons of premium in his tricked-out Hummer? Hardly. In a boon of good luck, the young lady half a world away informed me that she could remove me from Prime Club membership and give me a full refund because I hadn't used its benefits yet. What damn benefits? Faster shipping? It already gets to your doorstep in two days! If you're that impatient, go out and get it yourself! If you're that impatient and also an agoraphobic, you should consider suicide, since you live your life in a contradictory manner.
With seventy-nice greenbacks corralled into my little ranch of an account, I sojourned forth to determine what this Happy Owl place could be, so I phoned a friend WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS. Not that anyone cares. We walked through the previous couple of days to analyze how some $6.19 might have fallen through the cracks, and then, like a crappy episode of Lost, the proper flashback came to me.
The previous Friday I had attended Richmond Renegades hockey game, which was sort of like a roller derby on ice with the amount of white trash that populated the backwater Richmond Coliseum. My quarry that night was granted with the possibility of ten free bones covered in hot wing sauce from the fifth-rate "restaurant" known as Hooter's, if only it could even be called such. Really, it just collects overweight, pasty white men in sleeveless shirts, so it's kind of a clearinghouse for that precious...commodity. In any case, if the Renegades happened to score five goals that night, we'd get free wings. Miraculously, they did, and somehow it was Christmas day in the morning. My party collected its due and I forgot all about it a few days later. How could I forget our charming Eastern European waitress and her insinuations that we split the check three ways, despite ordering completely different items off the menu? It was pleasant, all around.
So, at the end of the day, I realized I was not the target of identity theft, but rather a victim of identity crisis, having not remembered what happened the day before or having the rug pulled out from under me by Amazon.com. In some way, I feel like my parents' generation, with their constant fears of being wiped clean by some faceless, devious entity in a way that might resemble some mid-90s movie about the Internet. I suppose I should understand that no one has your information, they can't steal your identity. I have enough trouble being myself anyway, so who would possibly want take the reins instead?
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Hatred in Retrospect
More often than not, I fail to execute on some of my ideas for this little piece of Internet. Is this a source of pride for me? Certainly not. However, it is better to put ideas in the dumpster or on a back burner than it is to keep releasing albums, Duran Duran.
In any case, this entry is about sports. Sport? I do not know. I guess I'm not a sports fan in that particular sense. I am first, foremost, and only, a baseball fan. Why resort to such antiquated fandom in the days of Peyton Manning commercials and FIFA 2259? No telling. Why write a dreadfully inane blog three or so times a month? ***THIS ENTRY IS LONG AND YOU WILL MOST LIKELY GET BORED WITH IT, JUST SO YOU KNOW. I'M FLOODING THE INTERNET WITH USELESS DRIVEL***
Legitimate sports fans are made through suffering. Supporting your team through the bad times is what really bonds you to a franchise and helps you savor victory when it finally comes. By this logic, Chicago Cubs fans blah blah blah blah blah. We know the story all too well. Admittedly, I know very little about championship or even .500-plus seasons when it comes to other sports franchises. Do Atlanta Hawks fans exist? Anyone reading support the St. Louis Blues? Wikipedia tells me the Detroit Lions are still around, which was pretty shocking to me. "lol" as it goes. The point here is that somewhere in the bowels of these American cities, there are still never-say-die season ticket holders who come out year after year to yell themselves blue in the face for the hometown squad. This is loyalty. This is an unbreakable and unexplainable bond between man and team, and naturally woman and team as well. I wrote that to avoid getting heat. You see what I'm getting at here, and if not, watch a game with one of these teams in it. Someone is still out there wearing the team colors and supporting the franchise until his dying breath. Or her dying breath. Whatever. THEY'RE OUT THERE ALL RIGHT.
Consider this though: what if there were a sports team who didn't seem to have those fans? What if they seemed to sprout up like those God-forsaken magnetic yellow ribbons currently causing the paint to fade on a car on your street as you read this? You know the ones. Support our ribbons. It seems wasteful to pass judgment on individuals in a pissing contest regarding all things loyalty and history and whatnot, but let's say I've been holding it for a while. And now I can no longer hold back.
Flash back to 2003. A year like any other, right? Sure. Some of the few people who weren't chomping at the bit waiting for Peyton Manning commercials to saturate the TV airwaves were transfixed to the American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. A grand rivalrly that spanned decades of acrimonious, polarizing competition was once again competing on a magnificent stage to prove who would take home the American League pennant and play either the beloved Chicago Cubs or those fire-sale prone Florida Marlins. The Yankees, with their limitless payroll, boisterous fans, superstar roster, and twenty-six World Series titles were more than ever living up to the "Evil Empire" appellation as they put the choke hold on the scrappy, underdog Boston Red Sox. The Yankees would eventually prevail and thankfully fall to the upstart Marlins in the World Series, who after winning lit Pro Player Stadium on fire and shot all of their players in order to slash payroll. Such as 2003, another season of heartbreak for a baseball fan and supporter of parity like myself. I sat in my dorm room, crushed after the Red Sox fell from grace, seething with contempt for Yankees fans as they again through their weight and dollars around to win a pennant. I sat out the World Series in protest. Boston's wait for a World Series would now be 86, rather than 85 years.
2004 would bring about the nearly the identical scenario, with the Yankees on the verge of achieving a FATALITY against Boston. I watched nervously again in my dorm room preparing to have my dreams cracked and crushed, trampled underfoot by a rampage from the Bronx. Yet, something happened. A Dave Roberts (nerd reference) stolen base improbably ignited a Boston comeback and in Game 4, the Red Sox turned it around and stampeded through the powerful New York squad and left the St. Louis Cardinals in the dust in four laughable games. After eighty-six years, the Boston Red Sox were on top again, and I was overjoyed. Finally, the Yankee rivals had taken over and toppled the Evil Empire. It was a good day.
What the fuck was I thinking?
Since October 2004, baseball has been stricken ill with an incurable cancer that is spreading through the sport at an incalculable rate and nothing can be done to stop it.
The Boston Red Sox and their fans are destroying the sport from the inside out, and no one even seems to be batting (super pun intended) an eyelash. Consider this: seven, eight, nine years ago, how many Red Sox fans did you know? A few maybe? One or two? None? Yeah, that's what I thought. Maybe your uncle in Rhode Island. Sure. Fine.
While this is a trivial matter for most, it is of threat level midnight importance to me. I hardly have the stamina to proselytize enough on my exponentially expanding hatred for Red Sox Nation. What a stupid name, to start of with; the notion that Red Sox fans are peppered all over the American landscape and can invade American League cities at the drop of a hat, ruining the atmosphere for the hometeam crowd. When your bandwagon has the space, let 'em on, right? Where were these people when the Red Sox were in the thick of playoff competition in the 1990s? Asleep? Setting up sleeper cells inside other NFL teams to establish a cheating network for the Patriots? I sure didn't know about them, and I keep tabs on this sort of thing. Now they're everywhere. People who don't even watch baseball are goddamn Red Sox fans. It makes me want to vomit up my stomach.
As I said before, I don't have the stamina for this sort of thing. It throws me into fits of blind rage. I am unable to establish any sort of outline at which to dispatch reasons why the Red Sox and their cobbled nation, unfit to even deserve capitalization, are polluting Major League Baseball. I would chalk it off as arrogance, but that is perfunctory at best. Is it that Red Sox fans believe the players on their team are better than anyone else's? That might be it.
Ask a Red Sox fan who the best pitcher in baseball is right now.
"JOSH BECKETT WITH HIS WICKED CURVE!" Wha? Johan Santana much?
What about the best first baseman?
"YOOOOOOOOOOUK." No, you retard. Albert Pujols? Justin Morneau? Mark Teixiera? Ever heard of them?
It slays me. Red Sox fans will think Dustin Pedroia is the next Roberto Alomar when players like Chase Utley take the field every day.
Red Sox fans are also the only fans I have encountered who will actually talk about how much they "hate" this player or that player on their team. What is that nonsense? If the guy's on your team, you support him! What kind of fan encourages dissension in a team sport? Unforgivable.
There are more than two teams out there, Red Sox Nation. You can't spend the whole season looking forward to the series games between your team and the Yankees. Other teams play too. What happens when you play the Mariners? The Orioles? The Tigers? Do you pretend they're the Yankees? What? You tell me.
What about the pink hats? Since when did this become a staple? It's perfectly fine for women to enjoy baseball. In fact, I wish more did and fewer gave me dirty looks when I get excited to watch the playoffs. Yet, Red Sox Nation has embraced these sickening articles of headgear in order to bait more women to pack in the Fenway Park dumpster/bandbox/"field" in order to watch David Ortiz walk from the dugout to the batter's box four times.
Amongst all of this wreckage that used to be a worthwhile sports franchise, I ask myself, and I ask you, if you're still reading: what has provoked the mutation of Red Sox nation and given them this abominable sense of entitlement? Each year their swagger goes greater as they demand more crappy Dropkick Murphys songs about Boston, more Jonathan Papelbon Riverdancing (fucking shoot me), more weight gain and hair growth by Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, more hating of the Yankees and cheering like they've won the lottery when the Yankees lose, no matter what team they're playing. What other group of fans so passionately roots against a team? Are you with me?
This disease of Red Sox bandwagon fandom has to be taken behind the shed and shot multiple times, until the last gasping "Yooooouk!" cheer is kicked clean out of its lungs. No longer are the Red Sox the underdogs. Their payroll has bloated to that of the Yankees, and they too will not hesitate to buy talent for their needs. Their gimmicks are, as expected, the opposite of New York's: haggard, dirty, and weathered compared to the Yankees' reserved, clean-cut, and opulent. These are trite, predictable, and transparent. Worthless smoke and mirrors to fashion a paper-thin facade for Boston's true goal: Yankee-level dominance of baseball. Admittedly, I can't say I blame them: who wouldn't want to have 26 World Series titles? It took the Yankees a long time to earn these, though. Red Sox "nation" wants them now.
I hope that doesn't happen. I hope you've been convinced. Join me in this scatterbrained crusade to stop the new Evil Empire.
Why? Because I am a bitter, jaded, immature, and selfish Cleveland Indians fan. The pieces have all fallen into place.
In any case, this entry is about sports. Sport? I do not know. I guess I'm not a sports fan in that particular sense. I am first, foremost, and only, a baseball fan. Why resort to such antiquated fandom in the days of Peyton Manning commercials and FIFA 2259? No telling. Why write a dreadfully inane blog three or so times a month? ***THIS ENTRY IS LONG AND YOU WILL MOST LIKELY GET BORED WITH IT, JUST SO YOU KNOW. I'M FLOODING THE INTERNET WITH USELESS DRIVEL***
Legitimate sports fans are made through suffering. Supporting your team through the bad times is what really bonds you to a franchise and helps you savor victory when it finally comes. By this logic, Chicago Cubs fans blah blah blah blah blah. We know the story all too well. Admittedly, I know very little about championship or even .500-plus seasons when it comes to other sports franchises. Do Atlanta Hawks fans exist? Anyone reading support the St. Louis Blues? Wikipedia tells me the Detroit Lions are still around, which was pretty shocking to me. "lol" as it goes. The point here is that somewhere in the bowels of these American cities, there are still never-say-die season ticket holders who come out year after year to yell themselves blue in the face for the hometown squad. This is loyalty. This is an unbreakable and unexplainable bond between man and team, and naturally woman and team as well. I wrote that to avoid getting heat. You see what I'm getting at here, and if not, watch a game with one of these teams in it. Someone is still out there wearing the team colors and supporting the franchise until his dying breath. Or her dying breath. Whatever. THEY'RE OUT THERE ALL RIGHT.
Consider this though: what if there were a sports team who didn't seem to have those fans? What if they seemed to sprout up like those God-forsaken magnetic yellow ribbons currently causing the paint to fade on a car on your street as you read this? You know the ones. Support our ribbons. It seems wasteful to pass judgment on individuals in a pissing contest regarding all things loyalty and history and whatnot, but let's say I've been holding it for a while. And now I can no longer hold back.
Flash back to 2003. A year like any other, right? Sure. Some of the few people who weren't chomping at the bit waiting for Peyton Manning commercials to saturate the TV airwaves were transfixed to the American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. A grand rivalrly that spanned decades of acrimonious, polarizing competition was once again competing on a magnificent stage to prove who would take home the American League pennant and play either the beloved Chicago Cubs or those fire-sale prone Florida Marlins. The Yankees, with their limitless payroll, boisterous fans, superstar roster, and twenty-six World Series titles were more than ever living up to the "Evil Empire" appellation as they put the choke hold on the scrappy, underdog Boston Red Sox. The Yankees would eventually prevail and thankfully fall to the upstart Marlins in the World Series, who after winning lit Pro Player Stadium on fire and shot all of their players in order to slash payroll. Such as 2003, another season of heartbreak for a baseball fan and supporter of parity like myself. I sat in my dorm room, crushed after the Red Sox fell from grace, seething with contempt for Yankees fans as they again through their weight and dollars around to win a pennant. I sat out the World Series in protest. Boston's wait for a World Series would now be 86, rather than 85 years.
2004 would bring about the nearly the identical scenario, with the Yankees on the verge of achieving a FATALITY against Boston. I watched nervously again in my dorm room preparing to have my dreams cracked and crushed, trampled underfoot by a rampage from the Bronx. Yet, something happened. A Dave Roberts (nerd reference) stolen base improbably ignited a Boston comeback and in Game 4, the Red Sox turned it around and stampeded through the powerful New York squad and left the St. Louis Cardinals in the dust in four laughable games. After eighty-six years, the Boston Red Sox were on top again, and I was overjoyed. Finally, the Yankee rivals had taken over and toppled the Evil Empire. It was a good day.
What the fuck was I thinking?
Since October 2004, baseball has been stricken ill with an incurable cancer that is spreading through the sport at an incalculable rate and nothing can be done to stop it.
The Boston Red Sox and their fans are destroying the sport from the inside out, and no one even seems to be batting (super pun intended) an eyelash. Consider this: seven, eight, nine years ago, how many Red Sox fans did you know? A few maybe? One or two? None? Yeah, that's what I thought. Maybe your uncle in Rhode Island. Sure. Fine.
While this is a trivial matter for most, it is of threat level midnight importance to me. I hardly have the stamina to proselytize enough on my exponentially expanding hatred for Red Sox Nation. What a stupid name, to start of with; the notion that Red Sox fans are peppered all over the American landscape and can invade American League cities at the drop of a hat, ruining the atmosphere for the hometeam crowd. When your bandwagon has the space, let 'em on, right? Where were these people when the Red Sox were in the thick of playoff competition in the 1990s? Asleep? Setting up sleeper cells inside other NFL teams to establish a cheating network for the Patriots? I sure didn't know about them, and I keep tabs on this sort of thing. Now they're everywhere. People who don't even watch baseball are goddamn Red Sox fans. It makes me want to vomit up my stomach.
As I said before, I don't have the stamina for this sort of thing. It throws me into fits of blind rage. I am unable to establish any sort of outline at which to dispatch reasons why the Red Sox and their cobbled nation, unfit to even deserve capitalization, are polluting Major League Baseball. I would chalk it off as arrogance, but that is perfunctory at best. Is it that Red Sox fans believe the players on their team are better than anyone else's? That might be it.
Ask a Red Sox fan who the best pitcher in baseball is right now.
"JOSH BECKETT WITH HIS WICKED CURVE!" Wha? Johan Santana much?
What about the best first baseman?
"YOOOOOOOOOOUK." No, you retard. Albert Pujols? Justin Morneau? Mark Teixiera? Ever heard of them?
It slays me. Red Sox fans will think Dustin Pedroia is the next Roberto Alomar when players like Chase Utley take the field every day.
Red Sox fans are also the only fans I have encountered who will actually talk about how much they "hate" this player or that player on their team. What is that nonsense? If the guy's on your team, you support him! What kind of fan encourages dissension in a team sport? Unforgivable.
There are more than two teams out there, Red Sox Nation. You can't spend the whole season looking forward to the series games between your team and the Yankees. Other teams play too. What happens when you play the Mariners? The Orioles? The Tigers? Do you pretend they're the Yankees? What? You tell me.
What about the pink hats? Since when did this become a staple? It's perfectly fine for women to enjoy baseball. In fact, I wish more did and fewer gave me dirty looks when I get excited to watch the playoffs. Yet, Red Sox Nation has embraced these sickening articles of headgear in order to bait more women to pack in the Fenway Park dumpster/bandbox/"field" in order to watch David Ortiz walk from the dugout to the batter's box four times.
Amongst all of this wreckage that used to be a worthwhile sports franchise, I ask myself, and I ask you, if you're still reading: what has provoked the mutation of Red Sox nation and given them this abominable sense of entitlement? Each year their swagger goes greater as they demand more crappy Dropkick Murphys songs about Boston, more Jonathan Papelbon Riverdancing (fucking shoot me), more weight gain and hair growth by Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, more hating of the Yankees and cheering like they've won the lottery when the Yankees lose, no matter what team they're playing. What other group of fans so passionately roots against a team? Are you with me?
This disease of Red Sox bandwagon fandom has to be taken behind the shed and shot multiple times, until the last gasping "Yooooouk!" cheer is kicked clean out of its lungs. No longer are the Red Sox the underdogs. Their payroll has bloated to that of the Yankees, and they too will not hesitate to buy talent for their needs. Their gimmicks are, as expected, the opposite of New York's: haggard, dirty, and weathered compared to the Yankees' reserved, clean-cut, and opulent. These are trite, predictable, and transparent. Worthless smoke and mirrors to fashion a paper-thin facade for Boston's true goal: Yankee-level dominance of baseball. Admittedly, I can't say I blame them: who wouldn't want to have 26 World Series titles? It took the Yankees a long time to earn these, though. Red Sox "nation" wants them now.
I hope that doesn't happen. I hope you've been convinced. Join me in this scatterbrained crusade to stop the new Evil Empire.
Why? Because I am a bitter, jaded, immature, and selfish Cleveland Indians fan. The pieces have all fallen into place.
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