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.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
How I Learned to Stop Caring and Delete My MySpace Account (Hopefully)
Usually I hold a considerable amount of contempt for individuals who like to apply a scorched-earth policy to their personal histories, regarding everything even the most recent past as a blunder or mistake or ill-conceived trend of the times. And why not? Without the trial and error of life, everything would have this fantastical, cinematic quality about it that would smack of implausibility, recalling little else than an episode of Grey's Anatomy. You know, the one where they play that Snow Patrol song at the end. Wait, that's every episode of Grey's Anatomy.
Every.
last.
episode.
But you know, there are those occasions, those minor swatches in the tapestry of time that sometimes don't warrant forgiveness on our parts, allowing us to scream "THIS IS SPAAAARRMYYYYEARRRFFGGGHHHHH!!!1111!1111ONEONONE!!111!11" as we kick them down a greenscreen pit.
MySpace.
"But it's so great!"
"It really helps me stay connected with my friends."
"I never update my account. I just keep it to stalk people about once a month."
I've heard it all, and two weeks ago, I decided to put the old profile to rest. Why? MySpace is really like the mall in your hometown. It's full of people you don't want to see and pray to every last deity on the books that you can avoid for the rest of your natural life. However, old habits are hard to kick, and you still log on to MySpace just like you make that trip to the mall, warts and all. But couldn't you pick up that hoodie somewhere else? Did you really need to slog through all that rabble to get a fresh pair of steps? Shopping shouldn't eviscerate your soul, and neither should using the Internet or specifically a social networking site. I never want to see some of these people again. It's really nothing personal. But somehow it completely personal. I respect your privacy though. I sought to delete my account to stop stalking you and your boyfriend/husband/mom/pet/favorite post pop punk hardcore electro duo band from your high school. Only because you stopped stalking my favorite post-hardcore acoustic dub sextet from my high school.
I had grown tired of the nauseating format of MySpace, with the endless permutations of colors and fonts and Panic! at the Cartel American Rejects Like Girls songs that invaded your audio space with every hesitant click of the mouse. As if MySpace had become Russian Roulette for mall punk bands. Do I want to read this person's profile that bad? Do I really want to be forced to listen to what they're listening to, even for a few fleeting moments? Does the site lag on purpose so I have to listen to this garbage? Should using a social networking site really feel like hiding from the monsters under your bed?
What's worse is that the monsters kept multiplying. Constantly, my inbox would be flooded with a deluge of friend requests, comments, and other such wasteful bits and bytes, littering the Internet like styrofoam coffee cups and weathered Doritos bags from back when Doritos had one flavor. Perhaps you recall. In any case, it got a little bit too much. You know how you can only stuff so many marshmallows in your mouth before you turn into an oral Gatling gun. KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW.
I thought of these things and decided to delete my account.
That was two weeks ago.
And then, I stopped getting emails. Suddenly, my computer ran smoothly. Attractive women started smiling at me at work and on the street. I was informed I no longer owed any money for student loans, and Publisher's Clearing House gave my mom ten million dollars though she never did any of those sweepstakes things to begin with, so I was now able to get that rhinoplasty I'd always wanted. Last week, life was great.
Until I started getting more emails.
Friend invite. Message. Group invite. Friend invite. Message. Group invite.
I thought I had deleted my account.
No, I will not accept your friend request, amateur porn stars and former childhood neighbors. I deleted my account. MySpace is worthless. Follow my lead.
Yet they kept coming. So today, I decided to revisit MySpace and see what the trouble was, and it turns out, I didn't delete my account after all.
I blame myself for a lack of good judgment and follow-through. I trolled down to my profile, like the police did looking for Bruce Willis in the Fifth Element and discovered my profile page to be riddled with adds and chain messages and all the trash of pre-Giuliani New York City. Just not that cool. So this time, I meant business, and went through the motion to delete my account. I received this message:
Account Cancellation Scheduled
The account registered to the following email address has been scheduled for cancellation:
roliver@rmc.edu
NOTE: Please allow 48 hours for cancellation to take effect. Thank you.
You'll never let this end, will you, Tom?
Every.
last.
episode.
But you know, there are those occasions, those minor swatches in the tapestry of time that sometimes don't warrant forgiveness on our parts, allowing us to scream "THIS IS SPAAAARRMYYYYEARRRFFGGGHHHHH!!!1111!1111ONEONONE!!111!11" as we kick them down a greenscreen pit.
MySpace.
"But it's so great!"
"It really helps me stay connected with my friends."
"I never update my account. I just keep it to stalk people about once a month."
I've heard it all, and two weeks ago, I decided to put the old profile to rest. Why? MySpace is really like the mall in your hometown. It's full of people you don't want to see and pray to every last deity on the books that you can avoid for the rest of your natural life. However, old habits are hard to kick, and you still log on to MySpace just like you make that trip to the mall, warts and all. But couldn't you pick up that hoodie somewhere else? Did you really need to slog through all that rabble to get a fresh pair of steps? Shopping shouldn't eviscerate your soul, and neither should using the Internet or specifically a social networking site. I never want to see some of these people again. It's really nothing personal. But somehow it completely personal. I respect your privacy though. I sought to delete my account to stop stalking you and your boyfriend/husband/mom/pet/favorite post pop punk hardcore electro duo band from your high school. Only because you stopped stalking my favorite post-hardcore acoustic dub sextet from my high school.
I had grown tired of the nauseating format of MySpace, with the endless permutations of colors and fonts and Panic! at the Cartel American Rejects Like Girls songs that invaded your audio space with every hesitant click of the mouse. As if MySpace had become Russian Roulette for mall punk bands. Do I want to read this person's profile that bad? Do I really want to be forced to listen to what they're listening to, even for a few fleeting moments? Does the site lag on purpose so I have to listen to this garbage? Should using a social networking site really feel like hiding from the monsters under your bed?
What's worse is that the monsters kept multiplying. Constantly, my inbox would be flooded with a deluge of friend requests, comments, and other such wasteful bits and bytes, littering the Internet like styrofoam coffee cups and weathered Doritos bags from back when Doritos had one flavor. Perhaps you recall. In any case, it got a little bit too much. You know how you can only stuff so many marshmallows in your mouth before you turn into an oral Gatling gun. KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW.
I thought of these things and decided to delete my account.
That was two weeks ago.
And then, I stopped getting emails. Suddenly, my computer ran smoothly. Attractive women started smiling at me at work and on the street. I was informed I no longer owed any money for student loans, and Publisher's Clearing House gave my mom ten million dollars though she never did any of those sweepstakes things to begin with, so I was now able to get that rhinoplasty I'd always wanted. Last week, life was great.
Until I started getting more emails.
Friend invite. Message. Group invite. Friend invite. Message. Group invite.
I thought I had deleted my account.
No, I will not accept your friend request, amateur porn stars and former childhood neighbors. I deleted my account. MySpace is worthless. Follow my lead.
Yet they kept coming. So today, I decided to revisit MySpace and see what the trouble was, and it turns out, I didn't delete my account after all.
I blame myself for a lack of good judgment and follow-through. I trolled down to my profile, like the police did looking for Bruce Willis in the Fifth Element and discovered my profile page to be riddled with adds and chain messages and all the trash of pre-Giuliani New York City. Just not that cool. So this time, I meant business, and went through the motion to delete my account. I received this message:
Account Cancellation Scheduled
The account registered to the following email address has been scheduled for cancellation:
roliver@rmc.edu
NOTE: Please allow 48 hours for cancellation to take effect. Thank you.
You'll never let this end, will you, Tom?
Monday, October 15, 2007
Thanks for the Toll Quarters, Toni Collette
An advantage to having an elephantine memory is that it enables one to exploit those who pay little heed to the meaningless minutiae of popular culture. So, to be candid, when I see the opportunity, I pounce on it.
Some weeks ago I was challenged that the female character in the Amityville Horror remake alongside Ryan Reynolds was the same woman as the lead female character in the Sixth Sense. I knew this not to be true, but eventually escalated the bet from $5 to a cool $50 before iMDB settled the score as it does with most 21st century bets. I won. I settled for $3.50 in quarters. Thanks for the toll quarters, Toni Collette.
This eventually has something to do with the meat of this entry.
SPOILERS: I AM TOTALLY GOING TO RUIN THE SIXTH SENSE FOR YOU. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN IT, IT CAME OUT IN 1999 AND IT IS NOW 2007, SO THERE IS NO REASON FOR YOU NOT TO HAVE SEEN IT. ANYWAY, I WILL KEEP GOING.
Recently, I jumped head first into another empty pool of maturity: paying for my own cell phone bill. Now, most of the readership might assert that they have been doing so for a while, and blah blah I suck at life. Well, that could be true, and maybe the big boy pants have been put on a little late for me when it comes to this one, but don't go on and tell me you're 22, completely self-sufficient, and not miserable. So, I bought my own cell phone and I subsequently died in the process.
The plot now merits that I provide a brief overview of my personal history with cellular telephones:
1999: Received a Motorola Talkabout.
2003: Received unknown Motorola flip phone.
2004: Lost phone in freak accident involving a sewer drain and torrential rainfall. Replaced with Nokia 3530. Cracked screen of Nokia 3530 the next day. Replaced with same brand/model the next week (the story behind this is not fit for this blog).
2005: Received unknown Motorola flip phone, switched from Alltel to nSUCKOs.
2006: The Fountain Incident of 2006. Replaced Motorola flip phone with Motorola V710.
2007: Replaced Motorola v710 with LG enV. Switched from nSUCKOs to Verizon.
The point to all of this is that throughout this checkered cell phone past, I have retained the same number. In eight years, that has not changed. I attempted to stay the course and keep my number as I changed to my third provider.
And then I died.
How did I die?
In the interim while waiting for my number to be ported from my old phone to my new phone, I received no phone calls or text messages. No messages I sent were granted responses, and all of my phone calls went straight to voicemail.
M. Night Shyamalan? Is that you?
Wow, it's suddenly Philadelphia, 1999.
Whoa, is that you, Donnie Wahlberg? Why are you wet and in your underwear? OH MY GOD THAT'S A GUN OH MY GOD OKAY REALLY DUDE CHRISTIAN BALE HAD NOTHING ON YOU WHEN HE LOST ALL THAT WEIGHT FOR THE MACHINIST REALLY PLEASE JUST DON *KABLAM*
Man, I thought I was gone for sure. But you know what, still no one responded to my communiques. I asked several parties about my texts and calls and none were received. They would be lost in the ether forever. And yet, my phone still made calls and sent texts. But to where?
I'm fairly certain Haley Joel Osment isn't part of the Verizon network headed by that mysterious bespectacled gentleman. Yet, driving on Sunday night, I felt his presence. And again Monday afternoon after work. Finally, he showed his face. When he did, he said:
"I see you're roaming."
So I tried to make a call.
"Your call cannot be completed as dialed."
OKAY, THIS IS A REALLY GOD AWFUL VISION. REALLY, HALEY JOEL OSMENT? THAT'S IT? I'VE REALLY HIT ROCK BOTTOM HERE.
At least that's what I thought.
In the end, it turns out that I have two phones. Neither work. What a life.
PS: Bruce Willis was killed by Donnie Wahlberg.
Some weeks ago I was challenged that the female character in the Amityville Horror remake alongside Ryan Reynolds was the same woman as the lead female character in the Sixth Sense. I knew this not to be true, but eventually escalated the bet from $5 to a cool $50 before iMDB settled the score as it does with most 21st century bets. I won. I settled for $3.50 in quarters. Thanks for the toll quarters, Toni Collette.
This eventually has something to do with the meat of this entry.
SPOILERS: I AM TOTALLY GOING TO RUIN THE SIXTH SENSE FOR YOU. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN IT, IT CAME OUT IN 1999 AND IT IS NOW 2007, SO THERE IS NO REASON FOR YOU NOT TO HAVE SEEN IT. ANYWAY, I WILL KEEP GOING.
Recently, I jumped head first into another empty pool of maturity: paying for my own cell phone bill. Now, most of the readership might assert that they have been doing so for a while, and blah blah I suck at life. Well, that could be true, and maybe the big boy pants have been put on a little late for me when it comes to this one, but don't go on and tell me you're 22, completely self-sufficient, and not miserable. So, I bought my own cell phone and I subsequently died in the process.
The plot now merits that I provide a brief overview of my personal history with cellular telephones:
1999: Received a Motorola Talkabout.
2003: Received unknown Motorola flip phone.
2004: Lost phone in freak accident involving a sewer drain and torrential rainfall. Replaced with Nokia 3530. Cracked screen of Nokia 3530 the next day. Replaced with same brand/model the next week (the story behind this is not fit for this blog).
2005: Received unknown Motorola flip phone, switched from Alltel to nSUCKOs.
2006: The Fountain Incident of 2006. Replaced Motorola flip phone with Motorola V710.
2007: Replaced Motorola v710 with LG enV. Switched from nSUCKOs to Verizon.
The point to all of this is that throughout this checkered cell phone past, I have retained the same number. In eight years, that has not changed. I attempted to stay the course and keep my number as I changed to my third provider.
And then I died.
How did I die?
In the interim while waiting for my number to be ported from my old phone to my new phone, I received no phone calls or text messages. No messages I sent were granted responses, and all of my phone calls went straight to voicemail.
M. Night Shyamalan? Is that you?
Wow, it's suddenly Philadelphia, 1999.
Whoa, is that you, Donnie Wahlberg? Why are you wet and in your underwear? OH MY GOD THAT'S A GUN OH MY GOD OKAY REALLY DUDE CHRISTIAN BALE HAD NOTHING ON YOU WHEN HE LOST ALL THAT WEIGHT FOR THE MACHINIST REALLY PLEASE JUST DON *KABLAM*
Man, I thought I was gone for sure. But you know what, still no one responded to my communiques. I asked several parties about my texts and calls and none were received. They would be lost in the ether forever. And yet, my phone still made calls and sent texts. But to where?
I'm fairly certain Haley Joel Osment isn't part of the Verizon network headed by that mysterious bespectacled gentleman. Yet, driving on Sunday night, I felt his presence. And again Monday afternoon after work. Finally, he showed his face. When he did, he said:
"I see you're roaming."
So I tried to make a call.
"Your call cannot be completed as dialed."
OKAY, THIS IS A REALLY GOD AWFUL VISION. REALLY, HALEY JOEL OSMENT? THAT'S IT? I'VE REALLY HIT ROCK BOTTOM HERE.
At least that's what I thought.
In the end, it turns out that I have two phones. Neither work. What a life.
PS: Bruce Willis was killed by Donnie Wahlberg.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
An Inner Monologue/Buying Socks (Whatever I'm Back)
A great man once asked me, "What happened to your blog, assh0le?" He was right. He never said that, but he was right anyway.
I am no expert on what people in the majority call "the real world." I am new to what is basically Chutes and Ladders "for keeps," as we used to say when the bloodsport of Pogs was the event of the day. BUT I will say that I have picked up on something in a rather expedient manner, and that is the disproportionate amount of time one spends alone. This is not about loneliness, although the two can be connected. This is about forced alone time, and what one man must do to get some socks.
Since falling face first onto the concrete slab that is life, I have spent a lot of time by myself, and if you pardon me for a moment to be lachrymose, it has quite simply blown. Why? Well, it's not like you can do much alone.
That's not entirely true, is it?
Is this pathetic?
In all honest, it's quite difficult to think of things you can't do alone, but at the same time, when you start listing things like vacuuming and eating, you get sad, so you stop. You compose yourself, and you start again. Mike Myers, while in a fat suit, once said...
This all stems from a Sunday afternoon where I set out to buy some socks. I have found that my Sundays are sort of an amorphous series of hours, a diamond in the rough I have not quite found yet from that big scary tiger's mouth that Jafar walked through that one time. Remember? So anyway, these Sundays are jumbles of both weekend regret and weekday guilt...basically what I did do and what I should've done in the first place, you know? Enter the socks.
So I go into a department store whose name is irrelevant in search of some dark socks.
From hereon out, the asterisk (*) will indicate when I am seeing it fit to conduct an inner monologue. It will also be used for when Roger Maris hits 61 home runs to break Babe Ruth's single-season record for home runs. Curiously enough, it was ignored when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998 and even not really brought into conversation when Barry Bonds took 73 deep in 2001, yet Marc Ecko decided to bring Ford "SexyBack" Frick into the limelight again with Bonds' 756th home run ball escapades. The asterisk also looks like a booby tassel.
*socks socks socks socks socks socks socks gotta find socks dark socks muh muh muh MYYYY SHARONA where are these damn socks?*
*hmmm this inner monologue thing might be a sweet blog idea. damn but i haven't written in that thing in weeks. it is sunday i've got plenty of time i guess. oh cool socks, dark ones even*
Shopping is a lot like going for the two-spot in a public restroom, there is a sense that an audience is present and you must either perform or wait until they exit the venue. I'm speaking completely from personal experience and have no empirical evidence whatsoever to validate such a slipshod statement, but I waste my semiprecious time writing this and you don't have to read it. ONWARD.
There was a dude there, perusing the aisles for some undergarments. In my periphery in caught a glance of his prospective items and thankfully he had decided to avoid such novelty accessories as Tabasco or Corona boxers. I wouldn't have stopped him from buying them though, we all have to learn from our mistakes.
*wow good thing that dude didn't buy those Family Guy boxers that could've been a doomsday scenario with a lady. if i had those on, i would kill myself first. good thing, good thing. can't really get songs from My
Aim Is True out of my head. sneaky feelings, sneaky feelings ooooh can't let those feelings shoowwww...*
*okay so we've got some socks here, got em right here, like prying them off the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East had she not been hit by a house but merely left them in a drawer, clean, unworn, and also been a dude, so that is legit*
*shit*
*gotta decide because people are starting to circle around me like hungry buzzards for carrion*
*these. no, these. i could get both. or i could get these. or these. maybe those instead. two pairs? three pairs? two pairs. TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE, WON'T YOU PACK YOUR BAGS WITH ME TONIGHT*
*two sets. seems like a decent deal. watch that dude over there. he's looking at socks. don't look over here at me. i'm in the socks zone. the quadrant. the area. keep to yourself. i'm in this place. i came for the socks. it is sunday and this is what i'm doing. socks and i right here, in this place*
*okay i guess i am good to go*
*dum da da dum dum dum da da da dum dum dum dummmm shoes shoes shoes walking past the shoes that people wear sometimes where is the damn checkout? oh over there. cash or card cash or card what's the total strange looking cashier girl. wipe those eyes off your face. well crap. one more dollar and i could've paid cash for these socks. probably should've tipped that waitress less last night. enjoy my halfhearted pleasantries, cashier girl*
*where is my car, i can't hit anyone with my car, that'd be terrible*
*okay there it is. puttputtputtputtputtputt ZZZZZZZOOOOOOOMMMMMM lord I hate driving*
*man, traffic is so terrible. in hell, all you must do is wait in traffic. with red lights and rubbernecking and big cars you can't see around. i guess i could blog about all this. but people hated James Joyce so there's no way any of this drivel could get off the ground. great.*
I am no expert on what people in the majority call "the real world." I am new to what is basically Chutes and Ladders "for keeps," as we used to say when the bloodsport of Pogs was the event of the day. BUT I will say that I have picked up on something in a rather expedient manner, and that is the disproportionate amount of time one spends alone. This is not about loneliness, although the two can be connected. This is about forced alone time, and what one man must do to get some socks.
Since falling face first onto the concrete slab that is life, I have spent a lot of time by myself, and if you pardon me for a moment to be lachrymose, it has quite simply blown. Why? Well, it's not like you can do much alone.
That's not entirely true, is it?
Is this pathetic?
In all honest, it's quite difficult to think of things you can't do alone, but at the same time, when you start listing things like vacuuming and eating, you get sad, so you stop. You compose yourself, and you start again. Mike Myers, while in a fat suit, once said...
This all stems from a Sunday afternoon where I set out to buy some socks. I have found that my Sundays are sort of an amorphous series of hours, a diamond in the rough I have not quite found yet from that big scary tiger's mouth that Jafar walked through that one time. Remember? So anyway, these Sundays are jumbles of both weekend regret and weekday guilt...basically what I did do and what I should've done in the first place, you know? Enter the socks.
So I go into a department store whose name is irrelevant in search of some dark socks.
From hereon out, the asterisk (*) will indicate when I am seeing it fit to conduct an inner monologue. It will also be used for when Roger Maris hits 61 home runs to break Babe Ruth's single-season record for home runs. Curiously enough, it was ignored when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998 and even not really brought into conversation when Barry Bonds took 73 deep in 2001, yet Marc Ecko decided to bring Ford "SexyBack" Frick into the limelight again with Bonds' 756th home run ball escapades. The asterisk also looks like a booby tassel.
*socks socks socks socks socks socks socks gotta find socks dark socks muh muh muh MYYYY SHARONA where are these damn socks?*
*hmmm this inner monologue thing might be a sweet blog idea. damn but i haven't written in that thing in weeks. it is sunday i've got plenty of time i guess. oh cool socks, dark ones even*
Shopping is a lot like going for the two-spot in a public restroom, there is a sense that an audience is present and you must either perform or wait until they exit the venue. I'm speaking completely from personal experience and have no empirical evidence whatsoever to validate such a slipshod statement, but I waste my semiprecious time writing this and you don't have to read it. ONWARD.
There was a dude there, perusing the aisles for some undergarments. In my periphery in caught a glance of his prospective items and thankfully he had decided to avoid such novelty accessories as Tabasco or Corona boxers. I wouldn't have stopped him from buying them though, we all have to learn from our mistakes.
*wow good thing that dude didn't buy those Family Guy boxers that could've been a doomsday scenario with a lady. if i had those on, i would kill myself first. good thing, good thing. can't really get songs from My
Aim Is True out of my head. sneaky feelings, sneaky feelings ooooh can't let those feelings shoowwww...*
*okay so we've got some socks here, got em right here, like prying them off the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East had she not been hit by a house but merely left them in a drawer, clean, unworn, and also been a dude, so that is legit*
*shit*
*gotta decide because people are starting to circle around me like hungry buzzards for carrion*
*these. no, these. i could get both. or i could get these. or these. maybe those instead. two pairs? three pairs? two pairs. TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE, WON'T YOU PACK YOUR BAGS WITH ME TONIGHT*
*two sets. seems like a decent deal. watch that dude over there. he's looking at socks. don't look over here at me. i'm in the socks zone. the quadrant. the area. keep to yourself. i'm in this place. i came for the socks. it is sunday and this is what i'm doing. socks and i right here, in this place*
*okay i guess i am good to go*
*dum da da dum dum dum da da da dum dum dum dummmm shoes shoes shoes walking past the shoes that people wear sometimes where is the damn checkout? oh over there. cash or card cash or card what's the total strange looking cashier girl. wipe those eyes off your face. well crap. one more dollar and i could've paid cash for these socks. probably should've tipped that waitress less last night. enjoy my halfhearted pleasantries, cashier girl*
*where is my car, i can't hit anyone with my car, that'd be terrible*
*okay there it is. puttputtputtputtputtputt ZZZZZZZOOOOOOOMMMMMM lord I hate driving*
*man, traffic is so terrible. in hell, all you must do is wait in traffic. with red lights and rubbernecking and big cars you can't see around. i guess i could blog about all this. but people hated James Joyce so there's no way any of this drivel could get off the ground. great.*
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Man's Last Great Sanctuary
I figured it out the other morning in the shower.
Someone somewhere once asserted that the last safe haven for the modern male was the toilet. If it was Jeff Foxworthy, and I think it might have been Jeff Foxworthy, you can stop reading now, because I apologize. I don't remember. Perhaps it was another stand-up "comic," though Foxworthy is more of a walking, game-show-hosting Shakesperean tragedy than a great comedian in the vein of Bill Engvall or Ron White or America's greatest stand-up comic, Larry the Cable Guy. Look, okay, I don't fucking know who said that, so find out for yourself. I am onto something here.
Having been party to several experiences of being interrupted while...heh...reading in the bathroom, I decree that the toilet is no longer safe, and that man's last, best hope, as some dude with Marfan Syndrome once said...is the shower. And honestly, I learned this from my mother. Maybe it has to do with being fully clothed more often than not when you're in the bathroom that people sense the fleeting possibility that their pressing business might be enough to interrupt an intimate and solitary moment. Should we strip down to nothing every time it's required so that we aren't defecating, interrupted? Oh Angelina, don't adopt any more babies from East Timor.
When I was a kid, I often had questions for my mom that coincided with when she was in the shower. This is where it all came together for me, a few days go, after twentysomething years. Whenever I asked my mom something and she was in the shower, I would yell through the door. Now, our house didn't have any showers inside bank vaults or panic rooms, so Forrest Whitaker never had trouble robbing us every leap year. What I'm getting at is that the door and shower curtain separating myself and my mother weren't that thick. Yet it seemed like every time I came to my mom with a matter of Threat Level: Midnight importance, she acted like she was inside of a roaring jet engine. Maybe she couldn't hear me, I don't know, but slick move on her part: enforcing the shower as the last great sanctuary. Where else would I have been able to figure this out?
Figure what out?
I thought this was about pooping and Jodie Foster avoiding burglars?
Huh?
Bear with me as a I change gears. Again, when I was a kid, I never understood why adults loved to sit around and talk all day and all night. Shouldn't they have been running around until they passed out, or playing videogames, or watching hours and hours of TV? That's what I thought, at least. But then again children are stupid.
The primary purpose of adulthood is to tell old stories, and correct me if I'm wrong. When I'm sitting in a bar, or talking on the phone, or eating lunch at work, or anything else practically, I find myself spinning yarns about past occurences to people who weren't around to hear about them firsthand. It's because the world is getting older and people who were once together have grown apart, so the majority of social interaction is bringing everyone up to speed. This is not to say that I find this bothersome, although I do when hearing rehashed stories or information I've already been given from another source. That's wasteful.
That's what I figured out in the shower.
Someone somewhere once asserted that the last safe haven for the modern male was the toilet. If it was Jeff Foxworthy, and I think it might have been Jeff Foxworthy, you can stop reading now, because I apologize. I don't remember. Perhaps it was another stand-up "comic," though Foxworthy is more of a walking, game-show-hosting Shakesperean tragedy than a great comedian in the vein of Bill Engvall or Ron White or America's greatest stand-up comic, Larry the Cable Guy. Look, okay, I don't fucking know who said that, so find out for yourself. I am onto something here.
Having been party to several experiences of being interrupted while...heh...reading in the bathroom, I decree that the toilet is no longer safe, and that man's last, best hope, as some dude with Marfan Syndrome once said...is the shower. And honestly, I learned this from my mother. Maybe it has to do with being fully clothed more often than not when you're in the bathroom that people sense the fleeting possibility that their pressing business might be enough to interrupt an intimate and solitary moment. Should we strip down to nothing every time it's required so that we aren't defecating, interrupted? Oh Angelina, don't adopt any more babies from East Timor.
When I was a kid, I often had questions for my mom that coincided with when she was in the shower. This is where it all came together for me, a few days go, after twentysomething years. Whenever I asked my mom something and she was in the shower, I would yell through the door. Now, our house didn't have any showers inside bank vaults or panic rooms, so Forrest Whitaker never had trouble robbing us every leap year. What I'm getting at is that the door and shower curtain separating myself and my mother weren't that thick. Yet it seemed like every time I came to my mom with a matter of Threat Level: Midnight importance, she acted like she was inside of a roaring jet engine. Maybe she couldn't hear me, I don't know, but slick move on her part: enforcing the shower as the last great sanctuary. Where else would I have been able to figure this out?
Figure what out?
I thought this was about pooping and Jodie Foster avoiding burglars?
Huh?
Bear with me as a I change gears. Again, when I was a kid, I never understood why adults loved to sit around and talk all day and all night. Shouldn't they have been running around until they passed out, or playing videogames, or watching hours and hours of TV? That's what I thought, at least. But then again children are stupid.
The primary purpose of adulthood is to tell old stories, and correct me if I'm wrong. When I'm sitting in a bar, or talking on the phone, or eating lunch at work, or anything else practically, I find myself spinning yarns about past occurences to people who weren't around to hear about them firsthand. It's because the world is getting older and people who were once together have grown apart, so the majority of social interaction is bringing everyone up to speed. This is not to say that I find this bothersome, although I do when hearing rehashed stories or information I've already been given from another source. That's wasteful.
That's what I figured out in the shower.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
The Phone Book is Never Down
Stop me, oh oh oh stop me, stop me if you think I'm making a giant ass of myself by plagiarizing someone else's work and I have no ideaaaa...
After a most arresting two-part narrative, I have decided to return with something a bit more abstract. This spawned out of a discussion I had with my uncle a few nights back. Mostly it was me hypothesizing wildly and making erroneous assumptions but that's neither here nor the proverbial there. The center of the Tootsie pop is this...is it possible that a new generation gap exists? A generation gap unlike the previous one driven by a counterculture of polarized values, but one spurred by technological advances and new gadgets and thingamajigs that roll off Asian assembly lines every six months? iPhone, KRAZR, DS, WiFi, Zune, PS3, etc.
I wonder. Baby boomers seem to have slight difficulty adapting to text messaging, Instant Messenger, iPods, and so forth, and those older than them believe that they face a learning curve so steep they do not even want to bother, rejecting the personal computer as if it would bring one in direct commune with Lucifer himself. Of course this is typical hyperbole you might expect from me, so take it for what you will, which is roughly four cents. In any case, I only speak from experience and without any sources or citations. Disregarging all legitimacy (which I never purported to have), I believe that increasing advances in technology have left a gap between today's children and their parents.
Most kids today are able to live two lives: one that their parents see, and one that their peers see. Of course this has always been the case, but now the Internet and social network websites have enabled children to be "themselves" towards their peers without their parents finding out. Twenty years ago, this was unheard of; you might be the ultimate badass on the phone in front of your girlfriend, but when mom and dad pressed down on the receiver on the phone in the kitchen, you were done for, dude. Pulling the ethernet plug out to keep you from upload "ur pix 2 ur MySpace lol" might be a little more like an act of Congress for some parents, if they even know that the cable looks like. Kids can now call and text their friends with phones their parents will never use or even see, a godsend of privacy that Anthony Michael Hall might've killed for when he was fawning over Molly Ringwald. He should really encounter her in The Dead Zone. Is she dead? I don't know. OH WAIT she was in that movie...shit what was it called...whatever it'll come to me later. Anyway I just looked her up on Wikipedia and she is alive and was in Not Another Teen Movie in 2001, which, ah, sucked.
Case in point amongst the chaos here: my mother asked me not too long ago what Facebook was, and I explained it to her, including Facebook's functions and applications, including but not limited to pictures, friend invites, wall postings, groups, poking, Total Sports Fan, The Sorting Hat, Happy Hour, My Heritage, Top Friends, Flixster, Compare People, iLike, Superlatives, Horoscopes, Honesty Box, Where I've Been, Gifts, Free Gifts, X Me, Grafitti, Super Wall, Scrubs Quotes, Awareness Ribbons, HotLists, My Questions, Fortune Cookie, Chuck Norris, Greek Pride, The Compass, The Social Feed, Texas HoldEm Poker, Big Photo, Dane Cook, Moods, Tattoos, Art, Arrested Development, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, The Outer Limits Flight of Fear, Six Flags over Georgia, "Deez Nuts," The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and those Applebee's commercials with Chef Tyler Florence in which he refers to portions of lettuce as "bibs."
My mom understood all of this, but still did not see much of the point of Facebook, and I think here lies the so-called rub. What my age group sees as necessities in text messages, The Baconator, Facebook, and the XBox 360, those who came of age before Fourthmeal view as frivolous, egregious, and extraneous. To them, we don't need these things, because they got along just fine without them. My uncle had a point when he said that the phone book was never down. It's not...but can you ask a teenager to look up the number to the local pizza place? You could probably drive there, make the pizza yourself, fart, and drive back and eat a slice before he could find it in the phone book. Unless he's really bright and you might not be able to fart. Anyway, young people these days treat the phone book like a car that required winding up. It's an antiquity, an anachronism, a holdover from a dark and dreary age ruled by Led Zeppelin and General Motors.
WHOA DUDE DID YOU SAY ZEPPELIN!??! DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADA HUUUUUHHHHHHH WAAAAHHHHHHH UNH HUUUUHHHHHH WAHHHHHH UHN WE COME TO THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW AND BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA ANNNDDD YUDDA DUDDA DUDDA YOW HAMMER OF THE GODDSSSSS YEAHHHHH ROCKKKKK
This all boils down to one thing, I suppose. Technology today has extinguished the presence of a vitriolic generation gap, spearheaded by differences in values and beliefs. In this modern age, generations are divided by MySpace prowess and feats of dexterity aboard a smart phone keypad. We can be ourselves, whoever that might be, depending on the dynamics of the situation. Sure, it's duplicitous and dishonest, but are we really and truly the same person around everyone we meet, know, and love?
It is most curious that the things we take for granted are the ones that will never leave us when catastrophe arrives. The Internet may go down but you can still listen to the radio or read print media for information. Your cell phone might go out of service but a land line is still reliable and available. In the end, the phone book is never down.
After a most arresting two-part narrative, I have decided to return with something a bit more abstract. This spawned out of a discussion I had with my uncle a few nights back. Mostly it was me hypothesizing wildly and making erroneous assumptions but that's neither here nor the proverbial there. The center of the Tootsie pop is this...is it possible that a new generation gap exists? A generation gap unlike the previous one driven by a counterculture of polarized values, but one spurred by technological advances and new gadgets and thingamajigs that roll off Asian assembly lines every six months? iPhone, KRAZR, DS, WiFi, Zune, PS3, etc.
I wonder. Baby boomers seem to have slight difficulty adapting to text messaging, Instant Messenger, iPods, and so forth, and those older than them believe that they face a learning curve so steep they do not even want to bother, rejecting the personal computer as if it would bring one in direct commune with Lucifer himself. Of course this is typical hyperbole you might expect from me, so take it for what you will, which is roughly four cents. In any case, I only speak from experience and without any sources or citations. Disregarging all legitimacy (which I never purported to have), I believe that increasing advances in technology have left a gap between today's children and their parents.
Most kids today are able to live two lives: one that their parents see, and one that their peers see. Of course this has always been the case, but now the Internet and social network websites have enabled children to be "themselves" towards their peers without their parents finding out. Twenty years ago, this was unheard of; you might be the ultimate badass on the phone in front of your girlfriend, but when mom and dad pressed down on the receiver on the phone in the kitchen, you were done for, dude. Pulling the ethernet plug out to keep you from upload "ur pix 2 ur MySpace lol" might be a little more like an act of Congress for some parents, if they even know that the cable looks like. Kids can now call and text their friends with phones their parents will never use or even see, a godsend of privacy that Anthony Michael Hall might've killed for when he was fawning over Molly Ringwald. He should really encounter her in The Dead Zone. Is she dead? I don't know. OH WAIT she was in that movie...shit what was it called...whatever it'll come to me later. Anyway I just looked her up on Wikipedia and she is alive and was in Not Another Teen Movie in 2001, which, ah, sucked.
Case in point amongst the chaos here: my mother asked me not too long ago what Facebook was, and I explained it to her, including Facebook's functions and applications, including but not limited to pictures, friend invites, wall postings, groups, poking, Total Sports Fan, The Sorting Hat, Happy Hour, My Heritage, Top Friends, Flixster, Compare People, iLike, Superlatives, Horoscopes, Honesty Box, Where I've Been, Gifts, Free Gifts, X Me, Grafitti, Super Wall, Scrubs Quotes, Awareness Ribbons, HotLists, My Questions, Fortune Cookie, Chuck Norris, Greek Pride, The Compass, The Social Feed, Texas HoldEm Poker, Big Photo, Dane Cook, Moods, Tattoos, Art, Arrested Development, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, The Outer Limits Flight of Fear, Six Flags over Georgia, "Deez Nuts," The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and those Applebee's commercials with Chef Tyler Florence in which he refers to portions of lettuce as "bibs."
My mom understood all of this, but still did not see much of the point of Facebook, and I think here lies the so-called rub. What my age group sees as necessities in text messages, The Baconator, Facebook, and the XBox 360, those who came of age before Fourthmeal view as frivolous, egregious, and extraneous. To them, we don't need these things, because they got along just fine without them. My uncle had a point when he said that the phone book was never down. It's not...but can you ask a teenager to look up the number to the local pizza place? You could probably drive there, make the pizza yourself, fart, and drive back and eat a slice before he could find it in the phone book. Unless he's really bright and you might not be able to fart. Anyway, young people these days treat the phone book like a car that required winding up. It's an antiquity, an anachronism, a holdover from a dark and dreary age ruled by Led Zeppelin and General Motors.
WHOA DUDE DID YOU SAY ZEPPELIN!??! DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADA HUUUUUHHHHHHH WAAAAHHHHHHH UNH HUUUUHHHHHH WAHHHHHH UHN WE COME TO THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW AND BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA ANNNDDD YUDDA DUDDA DUDDA YOW HAMMER OF THE GODDSSSSS YEAHHHHH ROCKKKKK
This all boils down to one thing, I suppose. Technology today has extinguished the presence of a vitriolic generation gap, spearheaded by differences in values and beliefs. In this modern age, generations are divided by MySpace prowess and feats of dexterity aboard a smart phone keypad. We can be ourselves, whoever that might be, depending on the dynamics of the situation. Sure, it's duplicitous and dishonest, but are we really and truly the same person around everyone we meet, know, and love?
It is most curious that the things we take for granted are the ones that will never leave us when catastrophe arrives. The Internet may go down but you can still listen to the radio or read print media for information. Your cell phone might go out of service but a land line is still reliable and available. In the end, the phone book is never down.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Picking Up Where John Lennon Left Off: Part Two
Flash-forward roughly twenty-four hours to 6PM the next evening. After making the same mistake twice and taking the wrong exit on the interstate, I found myself back at where it all started, and where it was about to start again. This time our course was set for downtown rather than around the corner, which meant that I got stuck with the bag and had to drive. I was all set to see my car keyed into a paint by number scheme the next morning.
(Actually, let me interject here. I couldn't think of a better place to put this since I was content with the flow of the opening paragraph. While slowing down to approach a toll booth, I was cut off by this small van that glided from three lanes over to get into the full service lane. How in the hell do you mistake an E-Z Pass for the full service lane? The Autobahn isn't where you ride a tricycle! Anyway, I got in the exact change lane and loaded up two quarters like dice and tossed them into the basket like a craps champion, and without missing a beat, sped through the toll before the light turned green to beat the van to the punch. Ultimately it was a stupid and childish move, as my conscience and probably the city of Richmond will later tell me.)
Though I've been there before and shouldn't be surprised, every trip to the Tobacco Company at Shockoe Bottom is like a time warp back to an earlier age. Girls walk around as vendors of tobacco products and kind gentlemen and ladies are always swooping down to pick up empty glasses and ask if you'd like another beverage, as if we are all high-rolling gangsters in the Prohibition era. Aside from the modern conveniences of a powerful soundsystem and dancefloor lighting, I expect flappers and tommygun-wielding wiseguys to regally enter the doorway and saunter up to the bar for some jazz chowder. Only there are two bars, and while one is more modern in appearance, the other seems to stretch on and on, with tiers and tiers of liquor bottles standing sentry between the bartender and the dirty and faded looking glass, as if it has witnessed the entirety of American history from its spot on the bar wall, from the birth of the nation, to the rise and fall of the Confederacy, to the Kennedy assassination, and finally to High School Musical 2.
The place also has a table set up for Blackjack, and the purpose of it is to donate to a charitable cause of which I did not get the name. In my humble, inexperienced, and ultimately worthless opinion, it is the best place to enjoy the establishment's Happy Hour as it gives you a prime view of the door and all of the denizens of the night that pass through the portal. In the middle of some good-natured ribbing I received from the dealer and some borderline harrassment from her sorority sisters demanding us to put more money in the tip jar, I was able to observe a hilarious phenomenon that I had not previously witnessed in college: the single man on the prowl. You see, while single men are on the prowl every waking moment of their lives, the quote-unquote real world single man is a new and most ferocious beast. With a pack of other single men, they travel, resplendent in exposed gold chains and well-styled with hair gel in animalistic fashion, strutting and fanning their feathers, hoping to attract young females with their elegant plumage. Since I lack the necessary feathers for the ladies to fawn over, I sat at the Blackjack table. Par for the course.
Of course, Tobacco's dollar drinks don't last all evening, so after as many as we could stomach, we asked not for whom the bell tolled because we jumped up before it did the tolling thing. Once again I found myself following the lead of dangerous rapscallions through seedy parts of town to another establishment I had yet to attend.
When we arrived at the place called Blackfinn, I thought I had stepped into a Gotham City haunt as high-end cars with halogen lights blazing pulled up to the front door, their owners passing keys off to the lead-footed valets who stormed off into the night. The bouncer at this establishment also suffered from the same brief spell of illiteracy as the gentleman from the Three Monkeys in part one of this blog entry, but thankfully their were no gutter-mouthed barflies hanging outside the door chastising patrons, so I made it inside without any threat of a developing brouhaha.
Unfortunately such a high-end establishment lacked the character and panache of the watering holes in the Fan, so I'm unable to relay much about this point in the evening. I'm also not sure about the presence of the overly active porter in the bathroom, discussing the possibilities of the newborn football season with inebriated customers. For one, he would squirt soap into my hand while brushing off my back, which I found astonishingly offensive, as if I had some sort of extreme dandruff problem that required medical attention. In one seamless motion he would wave his hands in front of the paper towel dispenser's motion sensor to appropriate towels for the damp digits of each man passing through, yet he would not rip off the towel. All of this occured while he discussed the finer points of LT or CBGB or VDOT. I quickly made haste without even letting the neurons in my brain begin to consider the possibility of a tip. It was not as though the man drove me somewhere or delivered me a pizza. His services were simultaneously superfluous and subpar, and didn't prevent me from being inconvenienced by the much more intoxicated gentlemen around me. We can all prevent muscle atrophy by pumping our own damn soap.
Quickly my comrades and I discovered that we would not be able to "ball" with those in attendance, plus we were getting bored of the Richmond skyline, which is to say some bank buildings. It was not an arduous task to locate a cab and promptly we were whisked uptown by a cabbie with a Redskins shirt and jorts that screamed to me, "I miss Doug Williams." He had the voice of a weedwhacker disregarded the cab company's emblazoned request to refrain from smoking with the cab's confines: hence the sound of plastic being whipped across blades of grass. We made it back to Quinn's and paid the man his due, only to slingshot back into the night and to more Fan hangouts.
Essentially this was more of the same. Running into alumni from years gone by or girls we had previously embarrassed ourselves in front of at one time or another. Those who had not seen me in some time clearly exhibited some form of excitement or contenment upon my arrival. I am free to make this assumption without any trace of modesty because there's honestly no way bottled domestic beer brings anyone any semblance of euphoria.
Luckily for us or not the places seemed to be less crowded that the previous evening, all of the scenester girls having grown weary of running into uneven sidewalks and the barflies not recovered from threatening unassuming people like myself the night before; a certain energy seemed to be sapped from us all. Perhaps it was the humidity, for it was very draining. In time we shuffled back home and fell into peaceful slumber, and so ended the lost weekend of a working class hero. 4 8 15 16 23 42.
Addendum: My thanks to you, if you soldiered through all of "Picking Up..." Expect the next post to be a bit less Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a little more...iPhone.
(Actually, let me interject here. I couldn't think of a better place to put this since I was content with the flow of the opening paragraph. While slowing down to approach a toll booth, I was cut off by this small van that glided from three lanes over to get into the full service lane. How in the hell do you mistake an E-Z Pass for the full service lane? The Autobahn isn't where you ride a tricycle! Anyway, I got in the exact change lane and loaded up two quarters like dice and tossed them into the basket like a craps champion, and without missing a beat, sped through the toll before the light turned green to beat the van to the punch. Ultimately it was a stupid and childish move, as my conscience and probably the city of Richmond will later tell me.)
Though I've been there before and shouldn't be surprised, every trip to the Tobacco Company at Shockoe Bottom is like a time warp back to an earlier age. Girls walk around as vendors of tobacco products and kind gentlemen and ladies are always swooping down to pick up empty glasses and ask if you'd like another beverage, as if we are all high-rolling gangsters in the Prohibition era. Aside from the modern conveniences of a powerful soundsystem and dancefloor lighting, I expect flappers and tommygun-wielding wiseguys to regally enter the doorway and saunter up to the bar for some jazz chowder. Only there are two bars, and while one is more modern in appearance, the other seems to stretch on and on, with tiers and tiers of liquor bottles standing sentry between the bartender and the dirty and faded looking glass, as if it has witnessed the entirety of American history from its spot on the bar wall, from the birth of the nation, to the rise and fall of the Confederacy, to the Kennedy assassination, and finally to High School Musical 2.
The place also has a table set up for Blackjack, and the purpose of it is to donate to a charitable cause of which I did not get the name. In my humble, inexperienced, and ultimately worthless opinion, it is the best place to enjoy the establishment's Happy Hour as it gives you a prime view of the door and all of the denizens of the night that pass through the portal. In the middle of some good-natured ribbing I received from the dealer and some borderline harrassment from her sorority sisters demanding us to put more money in the tip jar, I was able to observe a hilarious phenomenon that I had not previously witnessed in college: the single man on the prowl. You see, while single men are on the prowl every waking moment of their lives, the quote-unquote real world single man is a new and most ferocious beast. With a pack of other single men, they travel, resplendent in exposed gold chains and well-styled with hair gel in animalistic fashion, strutting and fanning their feathers, hoping to attract young females with their elegant plumage. Since I lack the necessary feathers for the ladies to fawn over, I sat at the Blackjack table. Par for the course.
Of course, Tobacco's dollar drinks don't last all evening, so after as many as we could stomach, we asked not for whom the bell tolled because we jumped up before it did the tolling thing. Once again I found myself following the lead of dangerous rapscallions through seedy parts of town to another establishment I had yet to attend.
When we arrived at the place called Blackfinn, I thought I had stepped into a Gotham City haunt as high-end cars with halogen lights blazing pulled up to the front door, their owners passing keys off to the lead-footed valets who stormed off into the night. The bouncer at this establishment also suffered from the same brief spell of illiteracy as the gentleman from the Three Monkeys in part one of this blog entry, but thankfully their were no gutter-mouthed barflies hanging outside the door chastising patrons, so I made it inside without any threat of a developing brouhaha.
Unfortunately such a high-end establishment lacked the character and panache of the watering holes in the Fan, so I'm unable to relay much about this point in the evening. I'm also not sure about the presence of the overly active porter in the bathroom, discussing the possibilities of the newborn football season with inebriated customers. For one, he would squirt soap into my hand while brushing off my back, which I found astonishingly offensive, as if I had some sort of extreme dandruff problem that required medical attention. In one seamless motion he would wave his hands in front of the paper towel dispenser's motion sensor to appropriate towels for the damp digits of each man passing through, yet he would not rip off the towel. All of this occured while he discussed the finer points of LT or CBGB or VDOT. I quickly made haste without even letting the neurons in my brain begin to consider the possibility of a tip. It was not as though the man drove me somewhere or delivered me a pizza. His services were simultaneously superfluous and subpar, and didn't prevent me from being inconvenienced by the much more intoxicated gentlemen around me. We can all prevent muscle atrophy by pumping our own damn soap.
Quickly my comrades and I discovered that we would not be able to "ball" with those in attendance, plus we were getting bored of the Richmond skyline, which is to say some bank buildings. It was not an arduous task to locate a cab and promptly we were whisked uptown by a cabbie with a Redskins shirt and jorts that screamed to me, "I miss Doug Williams." He had the voice of a weedwhacker disregarded the cab company's emblazoned request to refrain from smoking with the cab's confines: hence the sound of plastic being whipped across blades of grass. We made it back to Quinn's and paid the man his due, only to slingshot back into the night and to more Fan hangouts.
Essentially this was more of the same. Running into alumni from years gone by or girls we had previously embarrassed ourselves in front of at one time or another. Those who had not seen me in some time clearly exhibited some form of excitement or contenment upon my arrival. I am free to make this assumption without any trace of modesty because there's honestly no way bottled domestic beer brings anyone any semblance of euphoria.
Luckily for us or not the places seemed to be less crowded that the previous evening, all of the scenester girls having grown weary of running into uneven sidewalks and the barflies not recovered from threatening unassuming people like myself the night before; a certain energy seemed to be sapped from us all. Perhaps it was the humidity, for it was very draining. In time we shuffled back home and fell into peaceful slumber, and so ended the lost weekend of a working class hero. 4 8 15 16 23 42.
Addendum: My thanks to you, if you soldiered through all of "Picking Up..." Expect the next post to be a bit less Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a little more...iPhone.
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