People are strange

I really don’t have anything interesting to talk about. NO fun Vegas stories. No back shaving. No Beatles songs. My life is getting back to boring. Which means this blog is gonna suck. Sometimes though, sometimes the little things can be twisted and made into stories. I’m going to try to take some little things and twist them, like a titty.

This thing wasn’t so little. My d. No, actually I was riding the train yesterday and trying to study for the Series 4. I’m chillin, really trying to focus which was difficult. The train lurched. We were moving. Cool. Solo. I left my satchmo where it was by my feet, like usual. The seat was wide open. To my surprise, some dude sits down. Bummer. I should’ve blocked off the opportunity. I’m not a hermit. I don’t care if people sit next to me, in fact I keep the seat open on the off chance a hottie plops down next to me and we hit it off. That has never happened. Random dude sits down. He looks pretty normal. Casual dress, upscale, not unkempt. I think he had a north face jacket on. He looked like a potential Hindalean, I think he did get off in Hinsdale (thank God). The reason I thank God that this guy got off at the first stop, he had horrendous BO. Off the charts. As soon as he sat down I got a whiff, and almost barfed. Every time he shifted in his seat a cloud of crud smell wafted over to me and I couldn’t focus. I had to put the Series 4 stuff in my backpack, and pull out the newspaper. I sat there absolutely livid. Does this guy not have access to a shower? Deodorant? Proper hygiene? How could this seemingly upscale looking dude smell this bad? Tough day in the trading pit? Did he sprint 20 blocks? Forget the deode this morning? It was awful. Any person with a half a nut in their bag would’ve said, “Excuse me.” And politely moved to another section of the train, or jumped off while the train was going 40. I just sat there. I guess I’m a puss.

Speaking of oddness, I was waiting in line at Wendy’s two days ago and I think an insane asylum was on a field trip or something. There were two women in front of me, both seemed mentally challenged and both were morbidly obese. I couldn’t figure out what their deal was, but they ordered like 49 dollars worth of food. It took for-flipping-ever for their order to be taken. Which was tough for me…because I had an insane man behind me. No question he was insane, he was fidgeting, looked unkempt, had weird glasses on that were way dirty, and had greasy matted down hair. Textbook weirdo. This dude says to me, “Ex..Excuse me, do you hap happen to know what time it is?” I pulled out my iphone and said, “It’s 6:34.” He says, “Th Thank you. I g g guess there are still good people in the world.” Does that classify as good? Telling someone what time it is? I dunno? I just said, “I guess so.” I was gonna say something really kind like, “You’re a good person too.” I didn’t though. Sin of omission. So dude starts talking to me, as crazy people are often wont to do. He says, “I’m r really worried about my friend… She’s going to have surgery on her eyes.” I said, “I see.” I really didn’t. By the way, the guy didn’t stutter, it just makes for better theatre. I said, “Yeah. That’s scary.” He’s like, “Yeah. I’m very scared about it. I’m also very depressed right now.” It’s like, “Well you should probably keep that to yourself.” I think I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” I wanted to say, “Waiting 15 minutes in line will do that to you, especially when there are only two people in front of you.” I get up there and I’m hungry but not crazy hungry. I ended up with a pretty solid order. I don’t like to waste a lot of money on food when I eat for free at work, so I got a jr bacon double cheeseburger and a small frosty. I also got a water. My total 2.15. Not too shabby. I took my winnings and went to an area that was fairly bright and highly populated. I did this because I figured that crazy guy would be least likely to follow me there. I was right. I ate in peace and I guess the people at Wendys know crazy guy cuz they were all nice to him and saying goodbye when he left. How nice.

Since I’m on the subject of crazy street people. I saw an awesome street person the other morning. I was walking up Wabash to work. It was chilly. Probably like 40 degrees. I spot this dude asleep on the sidewalk sorta half in the sidewalk, half jammed into an alcove type area. This guy has completely wrapped in a comfortable looking quilt. He was all nestled in. I was half tempted to crawl in there with him. Just kidding. I was kinda jealous though cuz I wished I was still in bed, even if bed was a sidewalk in Chicago. As I got closer I saw a McDonald’s cup perched next to him. It was a large (old large, now probably a small, you know the tall one.) It was filled to the brim. With amber colored acrid urine. Hrm. Hi there. I guess that works. Dude had it all right there. Some people have huge mansions, sleep in king size beds, walk a half mile to take a piss. Some people curl up with their comforter on the sidewalk and piss in a cup one foot away. Who is the crazy person?

Tomorrow is Friday. TGIF. Not much going on for me. No kiddies, I’ll probably practice my drums and study for the 4. I’m planning on taking the 4 next weds, that should be enough time. I should be able to pass it right now, but I have a suspicion that it would be close, and I don’t want to fail, so I’m going to study. I’m going to see the Methadones on Saturday night. It’s their last show. I’m pretty geeked. I hope they play all my favorite tunes. Although it would be awesome if they did something weird and only played Ramones Covers or something. We’ll see. Ciao.

Welcome to the hotel california

Warning, this is a long one. It's about my trip to Las Vegas.

I’m definitely thinking about getting my back waxed. I just can’t decide how to do it. Not how to get it waxed, I’ve read up on it, and you just go to a salon and have it done. What I’m talking about is how to style it. Seriously, this is a difficult dilemma. I’d like to get all the hair taken off my shoulders, upper back and then when it gets down to above my butt, I’m a little stuck. It’s a slippery slope. If you go down below the waist, then you might as well just shave your legs too. If you stop above the waist, then you’ve got hair pants. Well sort of, cuz I don’t plan on waxing my front. If a woman doesn’t like chest and tummy hair, then I gotta move on. I mean what do women want now? Do they want like a pre-pubescent dude with no hair? I’m not going there. The leg hair is staying. The arm hair is staying. So when it comes to the lower back, I’m thinking that maybe I’ll leave a little hair there and let it sorta fade into my legs. I have no idea actually. I guess it’s trial and error. Or trial and Hair-er.

I really wanted to talk some about Vegas, but the memories are starting to fade. One thing that happened last week is I got divorced. I have been in the process of getting divorced for about 18 months. Long time. Well it all sort of blew up and we got it settled and hammered out without going to trial. That’s about all I can say. It’s done. It all got wrapped up around 330 last Wednesday and as luck would have it, I boarded a flight for Vegas at 540 that afternoon. It was really luck. Kind of an odd juxtaposition, but as I had just closed the casket on my marriage, I was cruising out to Vegas to help my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Not much interesting on the way out. I had the book The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo with me. I read for basically the whole flight. At one point, I was falling asleep, only I was in the middle seat. So I basically had to try to fall asleep sitting up. That doesn’t work. I would fall asleep and then my head would dip down and I’d wake back up. Did that for about a half hour and then gave up. Got to Vegas, made the fatal error of taking a shuttle out. So an hour later I get to my hotel. We were staying at the Wynn Encore. It was pretty darn posh. Very nice rooms. As soon as I got there I took a bath. They had a TV in the bathroom to watch when you take a bath. That’s kind of a pain in the ass. I don’t know I feel funny about touching the remote when I’m all wet, and I can’t leave the TV on any station for more than a few minutes. It ended up on ESPN, but I wasn’t really watching it. When I got out of the tub, I prolly should’ve just gone to bed, but instead, I went down to gamble. I didn’t have much money, so I was a little nervous. I sat down and played some blackjack.

I do know the basic strategy for blackjack, and if you don’t know the basic strategy, or parts of it, then you are what they call a sucker. And people will probably be pissed at you at the blackjack table if you screw things up. I personally think that it’s all pretty random as far as other players go. If a guy hits hard 14 against a 6, maybe he takes a bust card that would’ve busted the dealer, maybe he take a card that would’ve helped the dealer. Who knows. It is annoying though, because you don’t want to bust when the dealer is showing a bust card. So it’s a stupid move. When I play blackjack, I use a modified basic strategy. There are a bunch of tables that you have to memorize when it comes to doubling and splitting. I don’t remember them all. I know soft doubling is pretty key. You have a soft hand when you have an ace. When you have an ace, you can’t bust on one hit. So you can always hit or double down when you have an ace (depending on house rules). When the dealer is showing a bust card, 5 or 6, maybe 4 sometimes, you should double a soft 18 or lower. Soft doubling is probably the best advantage a player has against the house. High probability that the dealer will bust, you have a chance to double your bet, the odds are in your favor. So I’m pretty aggressive with soft doubling. Some people don’t know this, but you can always ask the dealer what the right play is. They usually know the right strategy. Do you split 2s vs a 4? Ask the dealer. So I played some blackjack. I just wanted to hang around for a while and break even. They did bring me free drinks, which I wasn’t sure if they were still doing. That’s one bonus to gambling, the free beer. Basically I sat there for about an hour, drank a beer, and made 100 bucks. Once I got up, I took off. I just can’t afford to give it back.

That was Wednesday. I cruised back to my room and slept. I got up the next day at like 6 cuz you can’t sleep in Vegas. I texted my Dad and we went to breakfast. We went somewhere in the Wynn and it was so dam good. I had this concoction pulled pork eggs benedict. It was eggs benedict over cornbread with pulled pork, bbq sauce, cheese, potatoes. It was so good. Great way to start the day. Then I went back to my room and got in bed. Got up and went to the health club. Got pumped up like hans and franz, then went to lunch. We all went to the Venetian for lunch. It was pretty cool. They had the gondolas outside, inside it was like Venice I guess. They had street performers doing acrobatic shit and juggling on stilts, singing, and making merry. It was pretty cool. They had a guy that was pretending to be a statue. I wasn’t sure if those guys were mimes or what. We were sitting at the table and we had a basket full of rolls. It’s Vegas, so I asked the group if they thought someone had ever thrown a roll at the statue guy. I said it has to have happened. The thoughts were mixed and people were trying to encourage me to do it. I wasn’t going to embarrass my ps the day before their anniversary, so I declined, I was tempted though. After we ate we got gelato, I went up and took a picture with the statue. I asked him if anyone had ever thrown something at him, he shook his head no. Dam mime. Thursday night as mentioned in a previous blog, I saw Love. It was really good. Then I came back and my whole fam was hanging out in the bar area so I had a beer with them. I got a fat tire and it was pretty good. I thought I didn’t like FT, I guess it’s ok. Next I made a fatal error. I sat down for blackjack. When in Vegas, you gotta do. The problem was that the table limit was raised to 25. The night before it was 15. At 25, I had to cash in 200 just to be able to hang (8 hands). Well I never really got up much, it was mostly a fight to get back to even. Until the dealer went on a run and cleaned me out. Back to the room dejected. I was really pissed. No question losing at Blackjack is a lower low than winning is a high. It doesn’t even out.

The next morning I got up and went back to the Blackjack table to get my money. My fam was going to breakfast. While we were waiting for everyone to get their stuff together, I played some blackjack. The limit was down to 10, so it was good for me. 100 is 10 hands. That’s better for basic strategy cuz BS evens out in the long run. Hence why table limits get raised. I sit down and some sad sap is getting beaten up. It’s just me and him. He was cool, he was in town for his 10th anniversary or something. Once I sat down, he started just killing em. Then he upped his bets and we both started winning. I walked away with 100 and I think he made like 1000. Rockin. So I got my money back. I’m back to scratch. We went to Dennys. Ate. I came back and worked out. I think I sat down and played some more blackjack. There’s a blackjack session that I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure I made another 100 somewhere. The big plan for the day Friday was to go to the pool. They have a pool at the Wynn that allows for European sunbathing. Topless action. I was supposed to go hang out there with my brothers. They ended up bailing, and I went down there with my Ps. Kind of odd. Not bad though. Cuz they had a nice bar there, and my ps got me a fat tire, and we all sat around and chatted. Very nice. They got Pina coladas, and they were the worst PCs I have ever had, and I’m a fan (also like getting caught in the rain FYI). Friday was the warmest day, the day I figured peeps would be out. There were some hotties there, no boobies, I ended up cruising to another pool. I cruised and was pretty lit cuz I hadn’t eaten since Dennys and my ps didn’t do much damage on their PCs, they left them for me.

So I’m sitting there listening to my ipod and some dude starts talking to me. I have no idea what his name is, but he’s from New Jersey. He grew up in New York. The guys must’ve been 73 or so. This guy had a lot of stories. I guess he owned a liquor store and made a lot of money from it. Now he’s retired and traveling around the world. Cool. He definitely had some tall tales. He told me some story about the guy who came to date his daughter. The guy was a black belt (right). So the guy comes to the door and Jersey Guy says, “If you ever harm my daughter in any way I’m going to kick your ass.” Or something like that. Guy says, “I’ll drop you in 40 seconds.” Jersey says, “I’ll drop you in 30.” I guess the thing came to blows and Jersey says he dropped the guy in 10 seconds. Tall Tales. He also played semi pro baseball, and somebody offended him so he hit the guy with three pitches when he came to bat and put him in the hospital or something. Tall tales. Finally the guy left. He was ok. I got in the hot tub. It was full of weird dudes. They were from Australia or something. The problem with the hot tub is that it wasn’t hot. At this point it’s like 3 and starting to cool off. There was a cool breeze. Hot tub should be hot. Then all the aussies light up cigarettes. The hot tub became a smoke cloud. I bailed. I cruised back to the hotel room and got ready for dinner.

We had dinner at the clubhouse to the golf course which is basically a very nice restaurant. It was fun. We drank some wine. My sis in law had sent around a questionnaire for everyone to fill out to tell stories about my parents. Some really funny stuff came out and everyone had a good laugh. I got a tasting menu and I have to say the food was decidedly ok. Not as awesome as I had planned. I really wanted the gumbo, and that ended up being a disappointment. Then they had this sirloin that was tasty but a little rare for me. For dessert they had beignets or some French donut that’s basically a funnel cake. That was ok. The wine was good. I was feeling groovy. After dinner we all went to our rooms and I think everyone wanted to go to bed. Not happening in Vegas though. It was our last night. So we all went to see Kevin James and Ray Romano do stand up at the Mirage. It was pretty good. I thought their bits were funny. Some of their stuff was just ok, and had been beaten down. Ray Romano did a funny bit about ordering porn on the TV at his hotel. Another bit kind of related was about how legalized prostitution makes Vegas so great. Kevin James did a funny bit about people with walkers that have hand breaks and they’re all suped up. They both came out at the end and answered questions. That was kind of pointless. Kevin did one of Ray R’s bits, and he was doing a pretty funny impersonation of RR, and RR got all bent out of shape about it. They decided to do the bit together which was amazing that they both knew it well enough to do it remotely synchronized, although it was hard to follow and rather pointless. As is always the case, the opener was the best part of the show, he was some dude off of RR’s show and he was funny. If you asked the guy behind me, the dead air between jokes was funny. I had a hard time following some of the bits because the guy behind me thought that as soon as a comedian opened their mouth, it was time to laugh. He must’ve been doing whippits or something.

After the show it was like midnight which is 2pm in Chicago. It was time for everyone to go to bed. So we all went back to the hotel. Only I kept going. It’s Vegas Baby! Just down the strip from us was Circus Circus and The Riviera. If you don’t know the Riviera, it’s where they used to tape The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling show back in the day. A classic. I think I played some blackjack there with Nonotchka. So yeah, I head to the Riv. It was pretty dirty and filled with losers. They had some kind of serious cover band playing in this room in front of basically no one. Then there’s a bar outside of there which looks like it caters to ex convicts. The one thing they had which spoke to my proclivities was dancing girls by the blackjack tables. They had two girls pole dancing, scantily clad, while you sat down and played Blackjack. Good idea. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play though, so I checked the ladies and then cruised to CC. Circus Circus was a total dive. I figured what the heck, so I sat down and played some blackjack. The chips were so old, that they were dirty, they had grime caked onto them and I grimaced every time I had to touch one. Def needed to wash hands after that. I sat down with some people who were like 19 and just engaged or just married. They had like 20 dollars to gamble with and I think they might have been mentally challenged. The girl hit a hard 17 or something against a dealer 6, I wanted to tackle her. At the Encore, when you hit hard 17, they need the pit bosses approval, which should tell you that it’s a bad idea. Some guys sat down that seriously looked shady, they were speaking another language and probably had ridden camels to school at some point in their lives. I got down and battled back to scratch, so I left. I was gonna go back to the Encore, but something about the Riv spoke to me. I stopped there and sat at the tables w/ female entertainment. That worked out pretty well. The people were pretty cool. They didn’t know what they were doing, so they thought I was Amarillo Slim or something. I kept getting blackjacks like I owned the place. I was tipping out pretty generously to the dancers, and to the dealer who was female and stacked. I still walked out of there with over a hundred. I think that put me up around 200 on the trip. I don’t think I’ve ever left Vegas with more money than I came with, so it was time to head home. On my way home I grabbed some of the complimentary literature on the street. Vegas has a nice system for sharing information, the research proved enlightening.

The next day I got up. Ate breakfast with the group. We went to this place the Pepper Mill. It looked like a good place to hang. They had like a speakeasy in back with fireplaces and plush seating. I think a lot of “deals” go down in there. Probably good people watching at night. We had flights to catch, so it was off to the airport and back to chitown. I can’t wait to head back to Vegas though, it’s always a good time.

Ello, I'm the Beatles.

Geez dudes there’s so much to talk about. I could write like 10 pages. And I will. The problem is, although I have a ton to write about in my personal life, I’m going to write about The beatles. I don’t know what the beatles have to do with anything. How the fuck could beatles be a misspelled word? They are like the most famous band in the history of the world, can we please put them in the fucking dictionary so there’s no red line under Beatles in Microsoft word? Oh, I get it now, The Beatles are so fucking unbelievably transcendent, that they have to have the first letter capitalized or it would be misspelled. “Listen dipshit, we are talking about the biggest band ever, they changed the way people thought, the way people felt, the way people felt each other, fucking capitalize that shit, or you know what, it’s wrong.” That’s what Microsoft is telling me. Let’s see something, Microsoft, fucking Microsoft. If you try to type Microsoft with a lower case m, it automatically changes to capital, those smarmy bastards.

The Beatles. I was in Vegas last weekend. Completely different story. I saw one awesome show whilst I was there. Love. Cirque du Soleil. It was pretty awesome. Probably would’ve been better on mushrooms or something, but I was stone sober and it was still good. The thing about CDS is that it tells a story. The problem is that it tells a story in such an abstract way that unless you are a cryptographer, you really don’t know what’s going on. So basically trying to sit there and pick the story out of all the tricks and spectacular stunts etc; it’s a waste of time and energy. Like mushrooms (so I’ve heard) you’ve kinda just gotta sit back and let CDS happen to you. The visuals are unbelievable, the stunts are pretty awesome, and there are also some hot chicks thrown in there for a change of pace. I really don’t want to spoil it, but the stunts are the best part. There are some people in this world with some really tripped-out talents. People who do trapeze like stuff but with things other than trapezes. It’s really hard to explain. The whole thing was set to Beatles music and the choices were pretty solid. It was also cool that they used obscure versions of most of the tunes, so it wasn’t the version that was beaten to death, it was the one-off they did in John’s studio when they were on acid or something. So anyway, they played my favorite Beatles song. I have to come forward and openly admit that I’m not a Beatles fan. I appreciate their music. I hear their influence, especially in the indie stuff out today. I do have a favorite Beatles song. Amazingly, this song got voted as the best Beatles song recently. I think this was a new poll, because Hey Jude was always up there and I forget what else is usually on top. But in this new poll, and to me, the best Beatles song is…A Day in The Life.

So on Sunday, I’m back from Vegas. I’m driving over to pick up my daughter to take her to rehearsal. I turn on WXRT, and they are doing Beatles breakfast or whatever with Terry Hemmert. And what do you know, they play A Day in The Life. I start thinking about the first time I heard the song. I totally remember where I was when I first heard that song. The song ends and Terry comes on and she says, “Can you remember where you were when you first heard that song?” I was like, “TERRY! I CAN TOTALLY REMEMBER!” I didn’t shout though. When I was in 4th grade, or between third and fourth grade, I went to camp. This was no ordinary camp. It was weight watchers camp. Kind of a funny story about how I ended up at weight watchers camp, other than that I was fat, cuz I was. Although this may sound odd, my dad used to take a lot of baths. That’s not odd. When I would come home, I would talk to him while he was in the bath tub. Kinda weird. One day, I’m feeling a little bummed about being fat, and I didn’t want to take responsibility for my situation, cuz I’m a kid, so I wanted to blame somebody else. So I said to my dad, “Dad…Why did you let me get fat?” I think as a dad, this is the equivalent of a kick to the nuts. I think he was bummed, he knew I was in a situation that I didn’t want to be in, and I blamed him and my mom. So that Summer, I went to fat camp. It was a weight watchers camp, and it was located in Wisconsin near Sheboygan at Lakeland College. Pretty cool campus. I remember “Old Main.” I think that was where we lived, it was supposedly haunted.

So I’m at Fat Camp, and I have the lamest roommates ever. I couldn’t wait to get out of that room. I think my roomie had to sleep with the door open and the light on. I had to get out of there. There were a couple of guys down the hall, one of them was really fat, I think he had like candy bars and stuff stashed like a junkie in prison. I moved in with him, he was funny and the other guy was funny, but I think I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, which sucked. The coolest guys were across the hall, everyone respected them for some reason. They were cool, nice guys, Josh and Sol. After a while, they invited me to room with them, I guess cuz I’m a cool guy. Or maybe it was because I was into D and D at the time and liked to paint the little metal figures and people thought that was cool. I don’t know, that was a sidebar. Josh was cool, laid back, Sol, he was hot and cold. Josh really liked the Beatles, a lot. I can’t remember if I was even into music in 3rd grade, if I was, it was The who, Dire Straits, Blondie, BTO, and roller skating music (J Geils Band?). Josh had the Beatles pumping 24/7 and at an early age, the Beatles didn’t really do it for me. There was one song that came on and I was like, “Heyyyy…What is this?” It was A Day in the Life. That’s a fricking song. That song speaks to me. I feel like the guy in the song. That song is so kick ass, you would think it was recorded at Apple Studios on $10,000 equipment (in 1965). It was recorded on a 4 track. That’s what Terry Hemmert said, and I’m kind of skeptical now because there are some elaborate string parts in it. Maybe the backbone and vocals were recorded on a 4 track. The song is a little quirky too, like it almost sounds like they took 2 different songs and mashed them together. It’s still my favorite Beatles tune. A close second and also first heard at Lakeland college in Old Main courtesy of Mr. Josh Saffren, Maxwell’s silver hammer.

That’s it. I’ll be back with tales of debauchery from Las Vegas.

Old Canes

I feel really sorry for the 400 people who could have come to see Old Canes at the Mayne Stage but chose to do something else. That is my guess, that about 400 more people could have fit in there. After the show I approached the lead singer, Chris Crisci, and said, “Thanks man.” He said, “You’re welcome.” I went on, “I saw Neutral Milk Hotel open for Superchunk at the Lounge Ax over on Lincoln. That was a life-changing experience. I would put this show in that category. I really like the Appleseed stuff, and I love the old canes stuff. Keep it coming.” He replied, “I will.” He raised his glass to click with mine and that was it. I don’t know how to describe Old Canes stuff. It’s kind of rollicking. It’s kind of folky. It reminds me of Neutral Milk Hotel a little bit, but it’s more upbeat. It’s all acoustic, but it does rock at times. It’s like going on a hayride. Well a good hayride. I’ve been on the lame hayrides with my kids. You ride out into the pumpkin patch and it’s all dusty, you look at some pumpkins and they don’t look as nice as the ones all the way back at the Pumpkin Fest, and you also don’t have to lug them all the way back to where the other pumpkins are, so you just walk around and watch other idiots trying to lug pumpkins back onto the cart.

A good hayride would happen on a Friday night. Late fall, crisp weather, maybe a jacket required or a thick flannel shirt. You wouldn’t be with your kids, you’d be with your friends, and the girl you were digging on would be there. You’d split a sixer with your friends before the ride and when you got there you’d have a nice buzz going… Everyone is milling about, laughing. Some guy yells, “Hot cider! Get your hot cider.” Johnny comes back with 4 ciders and Fred pulls out a flask of whiskey. The amber liquid nicely tops off each cider and the four of you toast as the moon peeks out from behind some clouds. Jenny walks up, “Whatcha drinkin?” “Cider, you want some.” She takes the cup from your hands and puts it to her lips as her eyes gaze into yours. Everyone is a little tipsy as they load into the haycart. The moon is the only source of light as the cart careens through the forest. Jenny is giving you the eye from across the cart as she makes small talk with her friends. You sit there sipping your cider and getting warm from the inside. A glow appears in the distance. It grows as the cart comes through the forest to a clearing. There’s a bonfire and bales of hay are strewn about for everyone to sit on. There’s a shed out there and people are coming and going from it. The cart stops. Everyone unloads and takes a seat around the fire. Fred taps you in the gut with his flask. You take it, pop the cap and take a healthy gulp. Two men emerge from the shed. One has a guitar, the other a fiddle. They bust into some raucous foot stompin folk and every toe commences to a-tappin. People start to dance. You seize the opportunity to make your move on Jenny. “Would you like to dance?” “You bet sailor.” It’s not graceful, and you’re tipsy, but the two of you are touching and moving and the music is intoxicating. You both take a rest, and time stops as Jenny lays on your shoulder looking up at the sky. You hold her there and just exist. All good things must come to an end. You all pile back on the cart and head home. The only difference is that this time Jenny is sitting next to you and you’re holding hands.

So I hope that gave you a good impression of what Old Canes is all about. They’re basically a rollicking good time. The Mayne Stage is damn fine venue as well. Number one key element? An awesome beer list. If you’ve been to Lincoln hall, the setup is similar. You walk in, make your way to the back, they’ve got the bar there. Then you go through the doors to get into the space. It’s a wide open two story space that is sort of long like the shape of the key on a basketball court. It’s pretty dark, not the best for photography. Everything is brand new and totally posh. Bench style booth seating lines each side of the hall and then there are steps down to the main floor where cocktail tables are set up. There’s a little space in front of the stage for dancing. During the first act The Thin Man, I totally wished I had somebody there to dance with. I would’ve danced with my buddy Pizza, but I’m sure he would’ve wanted to lead. The Thin Man were really good. They had a pretty charismatic singer, a tall guy that looked like Kramer from Seinfeld. He played guitar and accordion. The music was honky tonkish. I liked it. Next to Old Canes, I liked them the best. Back to the venue. So the back of the main floor has a sort of VIP area. These are booths that are raised in tiers so you can sit back there, drink Courvoisier and watch the music. There was nobody back there. Tix for this thing were $10. Three solid bands. A really jamming new venue. There were maybe 100 people there. Has the whole world become somnambulant? Whatever. I can’t hassle it, I don’t like big crowds anyway. Although it would be nice for Old Canes to get some notoriety and make some money. I think I read somewhere that Chris had to sell a guitar cuz he was low on funds, that’s bull.

I was quite happy for the entire show in my booth spot along the side wall. I really liked the sound from there and wasn’t sure if it would improve anywhere else. When Old Canes came out. They started with Taxi on Fremont, which is my favorite song from them. I moved to the main floor assuming it would be better. It wasn’t. The sound was harsher and just plain not as good. So I moved back. After the show I was talking with Rusty, a multi-instrumentalist in Old Canes, kid looked like he was maybe 25, full head of crazy hair, played the upright bass with bow and plucking, played a few other instruments, now he’s on tour. Lucky bastard. I was explaining the sound phenomenon to Rusty and he replied, “That’s weird.” Good talk rus. I never made it up into the balcony. I did get a good sampling of the beer menu. I started with a Cane and Ebel, it was so darn good. Best brew of the night. Next I really wanted a Metropolitan Copper, but they didn’t have it. I went with a Metro Lager and it was a regular beer. Not bad though. Next I went off the map with an Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. That was nice. Something different. Sippable. My final brew was a Founders Dirty Bastard. It was a Scottish Ale and they pack quite a whallop. Tasty. Although I only had 4 beers, I woke up the next day and felt like crap, that’s the joy of micro brew mixing, sometimes you end up with the perfect concoction for a hangover. It wasn’t bad though. I managed to shake it off by lying in front of the tv watching the bears suck.

Call it what you will

You know what I love about missing the 1040pm train by 10 seconds? You only have to wait an hour for the next one. Last night, that happened to me for the 2nd time in two weeks. Seriously, Metra should give you like a 1 minute grace period to make the train. No official announcement, no hoopla, just they leave a minute late for every train after 8pm. For you naysayers out there, this is not a “But this one goes to 11 scenario.” “It’s a my cabbie sucked,” “I got held up by foot traffic,” “I had to do that last shot” type of thing. I almost said this is a utilitarian change, but it’s more of a common sense change. From a utilitarian perspective, the train should leave on time, because that is the right thing for the largest group of people (those already on the train). I would disagree though, I think the hardship caused to those who barely miss the train is much greater than the collective loss of 1 minute to the whole group. It was me and another dude sprinting for the train. We got there. The train was there. The doors were closed, and it pulled out of the station. J This morning I sent the following e-mail to Metra:

Missing a train by 10 seconds at 1040 at night forces you to wait an hour for the next train. It's brutal and it has happened to me twice in the last week. Can you please keep the trains open until 1041? I don't think the people on the train will feel inconvenienced for the extra minute, and the people who would now just make the train will be overjoyed. You don't need to announce it, just make it an unwritten rule that there is a 1 minute grace period for trains leaving after 8 pm. Thanks.

You might say, “What about the people that get there at 10:41:10 and just miss the train?” I would answer, “It’s not a 1041 train, it’s a 1040 train,” Therefore people who get there at 1041 already know they missed it. If you pop into the station at 1040:30, you know you’re hosed, you might as well grab a beer. But when you are sprinting through the station at 10:39:41, they should cut you some slack.

I was talking with my bro today on the way to work and I hit him with an analogy that went something like this. Remember when you were a kid and you saw a toy on TV and you just wanted it so bad? For me it was Shogun Warriors. Shogun Warriors were these 2 foot tall robots that you could make fight. The commercial made it look like they could shoot things 20 feet and make the other Warrior fall apart; the typical hyped-up visuals that totally misrepresented what the toy did. I don’t think that’s legal anymore. When I was a kid, I really wanted all the Shogun Warriors. I’d go to Toys R Us and look at them in the awesome packaging, all the weapons inside the clear plastic, stuff that looked like hours of fun. I begged my parents for the Shogun Warriors. Finally Christmas came and all I asked for was all 4 Shogun Warriors. On Christmas day I ran down and opened my presents, and sure enough, all 4 Shogun Warriors were there. I ripped open the beautiful packaging knowing that the contents would far exceed the promises made on the box. I put the stickers on and got them all ready. Then I went to roll one (it had wheels on its feet), it didn’t roll. One of them wouldn’t stand up. The other one that was supposed to shoot stars 20 feet only shot them like 2. The hand on one shot off and got lost under the couch. The whole thing was a big let down, it just didn’t measure up to the expectations that I had created in my own mind. The toys looked awesome on TV, the packaging was beautiful and exciting, but the contents were worthless.

I was reading today about Inez Sainz being in Playboy. She got offered a photo spread and turned it down. When I was a kid, I wanted everyone to be in Playboy. It’s like Farrah Fawcett, “When’s she gonna be in Playboy?” Anyone with a modicum of celebrity, and an awesome face/body, it was like “When is she gonna be in Playboy?” Not much changes. Tiger’s Mistress, the woman who brought down Spitzer, some woman in the military, you name it, people want to see them nude. Same with this woman who had the locker room issue. She’s hot, and I’d love to see her naked, but it’s just a weird concept. Oh, you got messed with in a locker room? You’re hot? Let’s see you nude. “Oh well, I’m nationally recognized now, and basically all people want is to see me naked, Playboy offered me a lot of money, I guess I’ll do it.” I know it makes sense to cash in and I would never begrudge a person the opportunity to take their fleeting celebrity to the bank, but I guess there is a self respect issue and a general idiocy of the whole idea issue. The only reason anyone cares about the whole debacle is because Inez is hot. The only payoff anyone really wants is to see her naked. I don’t think I’m doing a good job expressing the oddness inherent in this thing. I gotta ruminate on it, while I glance through a playboy.

Riot Fizzle

Geez life is a roller coaster sometimes. Either that, or my brain just makes it into one. I’m feeling an unbelievable amount better, which is nice. It was really weird yesterday. For those that don’t know. OG dumped me a second time. On Friday. Before Riot Fest. Sorta dampened the mood at Riot fest and for the rest of the weekend. I started coming out of the funk yesterday. After work, on my walk to the train I felt pretty energized and amped. Then on the train I had a feeling of euphoria that maybe I’ve never experienced. It was really, really, weird. I wasn’t going to hassle it. I think my body was just saying, you’re all out of the negative stuff, we gotta burn some positive. I felt like a trillion suns. I don’t know how to describe it. I had also just submitted a giant project at work that has been sorta meandering along for 10 months. That probably helped a bit. I didn’t feel like going out like a punk bitch, so I asked OG if I could talk to her. We scheduled it for last night. A lot of people told me that I didn’t have anything to gain by talking to her, but like I said, I ain’t going out like that. I called her and eventually we got to talking. She had to go for work, but said she’d call me back. She did call me back and I just basically wanted to say my piece and move on. I said what I had to say. Then we both just started blabbing and 2 hours later I dunno what is going on. So that’s that.

This morning I was still feeling pretty good. I got off the train and was geeked for my walk into work. I like the cooler weather and the decrease in foot traffic. As I exited the train station, I saw my man that gives out the red eye newspaper. He’s a funny dude. He jaws at everybody and sometimes I say hey or something extra which he seems to dig. So when he gave me my red eye I said, “Good Morning, thanks.” And he shouts out, “Morning Hometeam, are you still playin?!” I said, “Yep!” Pretty sweet. The girl walking next to me looked at me like I was nuts tho.

Well this year’s Riot Fest and Last Year’s are really a study in contrasts. The big problem with this year is that there weren’t as many great bands. Much to my good fortune, all the bands I wanted to see were playing Congress on Friday. Bad Religion being the big one. I hope you guys read the Bad Sandwich Chronicles yesterday about Greg Graffin from BR, a punk diva, that’s hilarious. “No Boots, No show.” I love that stuff. Who would’ve known. I don’t want to go into the whole sordid story of what happened before the show, but I got dumped, that’s all you need to know. I turned to my stalwart, someone I knew would come through. Someone affectionately known as Nomis. I called nomer and asked if he could come to the show, that I had an extra tick. Well his wife was out, he had the kids, etc., but he pulled it off. So Nomer was in, I wouldn’t be alone, but Off with their heads was coming on at 630, so I had to get there. I cruised straight to the Congress. Parked on the street and went in. The place was only like .3 full when I got there, a sparse crowd. I wasn’t sure if it was gonna be an off year or what. I did not see anyone that I recognized from the previous year. There were a lot of sweet punks though, liberty spikes, Mohawks, mullets, the whole nine yards. Lotta kids too. Lotta parents with kids. The typical mishmash of people. I go over and check out the merch and there is only one thing that I want to buy. I don’t have any money, but there was an off with their heads hoodie that was beyond words. Try as I might, I can’t find a pic of it. I go in and check out this band the X is for Eyes. They weren’t bad. Typical Chicago type punk.

I have to mention that during X is, my buddy called me up and that was way cool. I sent out word that I got dumped and he rang me up. I’m at a punk show, alone, post dumpage, that really lifted me up. I grabbed a piece of pizza for dinner. It was nasty. Then I went back in for OWTH. At this point I’m like screw it, I’m getting a beer. Which I did. Then I went right up front for OWTH. They are awesome, not quite as amazing as when my buddy and I heard them at Liar’s club last year, but I’ll def check them anytime they are in town. The bouncing souls were next. I figured might as well hang in the balcony for that one. They played, they were good. Typical Socal type of stuff. You can tell when they play their classics, and they were good. I’ll def check them out on emusic and maybe DL some of their stuff. After TBS, I noticed that they were selling high life cans upstairs. Score (they weren’t selling them downstairs and I had to drink a stella). HL cans were 5 bucks I think a 16 oz stella was 8, by my math the Stella is a hosejob. Next was The Circle Jerks. Keith Morris, the lead singer of the Circle Jerks, was the original singer of Black Flag. I’m guessing he wrote wasted cuz TCJ played it and put it on an album. They played all their favorites: Wild in the streets, Wasted, World up my ass, Deny Everything, some other stuff. I have to say, for like a 50 year old dude KM could still bring it. He could sing the songs just as snarly, just as fast, it was awesome. I’d def catch TCJ if they come back to town.

Two bands left. Local Heroes The Lawrence Arms were up next. It seemed like there were a lot of people really amped to catch TLA. The kids were up. TLA came out and Brendan (author of BSC) really has an everyman approach which I think fans find accessible, it’s endearing and it really makes you root for them. It’s really hard for me to be up on their whole catalog, but most of the kids around me knew the words to every song. They didn’t play abracadaver, which is one of my faves, but they played Turnstiles, 100 Resolutions (awesome song), and Ramblin boys of Pleasure where the whole crowd was shouting along “Things have changed, things have changed forever…we’re the rambling boys of pleasure.” Sometime in there nomis showed up. I got him his tick, he came in, we embraced, grabbed beers. He brought earplugs, which were a welcome addition, then we cruised down and caught the end of TLA.

I forget what we talked about between TLA and Bad Religion, but the sets turned over quick and I guess they found Greg Graffin’s boots cuz Bad Religion came right out. GG looked awesome, just like it was described in BSC, he had some kind of Fred Perry golf shirt on, black pants, a beer gut, bald head, he looked like he would be at home in a dingy old golf clubhouse as much as in front of the world’s best punk rock band. I guess BR are celebrating their 30th anniversary. Pretty huge. They played for probably an hour and brought it with such hits as: I want to conquer the world, no control, 20th century digital boy, infected, We’re only gonna die, Atomic Garden, Generator, and many more. It kicked ass. Nomis seemed to enjoy himself. After the dust settled I noted that Off With Their Heads were going to be playing at Exit at midnight. He said, “Didn’t you just see them?” To which I replied, “yes.” He had to go to a dentist appointment at 8am, and as a little gift to the hygienist, we decided to grab some burritos right by the Congress. Surprisingly, there were only like 10 people in the place, everyone else probably went to the next spot. We grabbed some grub, talked about the old times, it was way cool. Then we parted ways.

Appletown

It’s weird how things work out. Last night I was way jonesin to send Old Girl a text. I was just gonna check in and say hey. I am curious if she is going to see the National or not. I’m kinda thinking it was wasteful to trash the connection, even if it only turned out to be friends or whatever. It was good to think about it and put it into perspective for the future. It’s just tough to work new friends into the picture. I’m sure if we decided to be friends the outcome would be the same, I’d never hear from her again. On the Nat tix tip, I sold the tix for $200. I feel a smidge guilty about it, cuz I’ve seen people trying to sell them for $45/each since then. Cha-ching. Nothing like a good scalp to get your blood pumping. I also need to give some money to the theater, so I’m hoping to have some of the 200 left over for that. Yeah, I don’t have the tix anymore, so I felt like there was less riding on the text. I dunno, at the end of the day, she’s not interested and I shouldn’t be. I think I’m slowly coming to that conclusion. Very slowly, I know. So last night I’m dead tired from the weekend, I wasn’t thinking about contacting old girl, I just went online to check my e-mail. I check e-mail and I get a message from this new girl I’m digging. That was cool. So I got on OKC to read the message and I get an instant message from some other girl. I’m just like WTF. While I’m IMing with this girl, I’m also responding to new girl. Then I get an IM on Yahoo and it’s the punk girl. I think someone was trying to send me a message, “why fret over what is gone, when there is so much here.” Seriously too, I’m not even trying. I send, at most, 5 e-mails a week, I’m sure there are guys that send 50 a week. It was cool though. Old girl and I did not have a lot in common. The new girl I’m e-mailing with is really into music. She is a photographer for Spin magazine. From what I can tell from her pictures, she is absolutely gorgeous too. Always good. I dunno what’s up with the other girls, the new IM girl didn’t have a picture on her profile, def a red flag.

I just want to make a quick comparison between Punk Girl and Old Girl, Punk Girl has tracked me down a few times and asked what’s up (kinda like what I did to OG). She’s shown that she’s interested. I’m not asking for the world, I just did not get the vibe from OG, in fact the vibe I did get was “I won’t mind if you just go away.”

In my quest to blow all the money I made on the National tix and not give it to the Theater, I am going to see Roger Waters tonight. I’m containing my expectations, although part of me def thinks it’s gonna be off the heezle. There should be a nutty light show and they should build a wall and break it down. I dunno, mass hysteria. If the show was unhooked back in 1980, it should be a mindblowing event in 2010. We can do so much more with less now than we could then. We have lasers, phasers, snuggies, robots, flowbees, and cgi. I’m expecting Jar Jar Binks to appear on the stage 20 feet high and walk off into the crowd. Or something like that. Getting the tix was no mean feat. I had to deal with Leroy from Dekalb. Dude seemed like an ok guy. Then he called me at midnight last night. “You gave me a bum address.” “No I didn’t, that’s what my buddy told me and he’s been living there for 11 years. Are you on Ohio?” “No.” “The place is on Ohio.” Whateves. I am working on minimal sleep though, which sucks. I guess tomorrow night I’ll get 7 hours. That would be wonderful. The tix were a bargain though. Well below face. I think face w/ fees was like $70, we got our tix for $45/each. Good times. Not a bad swap, Roger Waters performing the Wall, for The National. I’d do that any day, I might not feel the same way tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure I will.

That was a bummer that the guy on the Broncos killed himself. It’s crazy. I don’t know if people just have mental problems, or what, but suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Life is tough though. It’s more than some people can handle. I don’t know what was going on in this guy’s life, but he must’ve felt pretty hopeless. I think I’ve gone off on this topic before so I don’t feel like rehashing stuff I already said. Life is tough though. It’s more than some people can handle.

In Through the Out Door

Good weekend. Good times. Well Friday was pretty chill. I had plans to go out on Saturday and watch the ND game with my bud, so I didn’t mind staying in on Friday. I went to the Sox game on Thurs, so I was pretty beat as I got like 4 hours of sleep on Thurs night. Just chilling on Friday also set me up to hit the Y on Saturday and get a proper work out in. I was pretty amped for my workout, maybe a little too amped. I did some bench, which was fun. The Y has a ton of different machines and I was really looking forward to hitting the arm curl machine. I get on there and I start pumping out reps. I feel pretty good and this machine really isolates your biceps, so you totally feel the burn. I get to my third set and I’m grinding out the reps (jeez do I sound like a meathead) and I sorta bob my head forward for momentum and I jacked myself in the head with the metal bar. I have to admit I kinda knocked myself silly. That was not fun. I shook it off and the adrenaline from working out made me not notice it, but that night I sorta had a weird headache. The headache went away after a few beers, then on Sunday it really hurt and felt weird and felt like it was radiating to the back of my head. I figured it was just a blood vessel that popped in my head and the blood was just pooling up in the back of my skull, no big deal. Still I was kind of out of it.

I think this blog is gonna jump around a bit. I’ll keep you guessing. I did want to talk about the idea of macking on women at all opportunities. I read something about it, and the guy laid out a pretty solid plan for getting to the point where you can pick up women everywhere. The problem with the plan is that it’s a long process and involves doing things that I don’t like to do. Namely, talking to strangers. Mom always said, “Don’t talk to strangers.” Well this guy has a plan and step one is to start talking to strangers, get good at gabbing with people. Talk to the old lady on the street, the guy at the supermarket, any random person you meet. I hate doing this. I hate small talk almost with a passion. I think the next step, once you get pretty comfortable talking to people, to start talking to women. I think he said to choose women that you’re not really attracted to so you aren’t nervous, just get used to talking to women. I dunno, eventually you work your way up to being crazy social and talking to hot women without a hint of fear. The plan just won’t work for me. Case and point. My buddy and I were out yesterday at Timothy O’tooles watching the bears game. We got sat down with these old biddies from Dallas. They were rooting for the Cowboys while we were rooting for the Bears. As soon as I saw these people I was thinking, “I’m not going to say a word to them.” Well my buddy must’ve taken his gregarious pills, cuz before he even sits down he says, “I bet you’re all wondering why I called this meeting.” Great line, it cracked me up. Then for the rest of the time he was putting the serious charm on these ladies. They were eating out of his hand. It was a classic example of something that I could do, but choose not to. I am actually rather adverse to that kind of kibitzing. I tried to throw some lines in there and at one point a woman said, “I like you guys, you’re funny.” To which I replied, “we also have giant penises.” Actually I didn’t. But I wish I would have. My head was hurting though and I was thinking that I might have a head injury.

Stepping in to the wayback machine, we go to Saturday night. Well Saturday night turned out to be rather strange. My aforementioned bud and I went out to Victory liquors to watch the ND game. We got there after the game had started and it was pretty packed. We decided to head to the back of the bar, which was even more packed. After standing there for a moment, my buddy says, “hey, is that Sheila (his old girlfriend).” I look up and she is looking at us. I know her, so I wave. She comes over. Hugs us. All that. A little awkward. She went back to her friends, and we basically just stood in the same spot and watched the game. It was fun, although the game took way too long, and ND ended up losing in heart-wrenching fashion. After the game, we said goodbye to Sheila, and hit the road. I really wanted to go to Metro to see Titus Andronicus. My bud was sorta shellshocked, so we made our way up to metro. Well we hit some stupid traffic and I’m like, “Is there a Cubs game tonight?” There were people everywhere on Clark Street; it was like fucking Mardi Gras. It def was not normal for a Saturday night with no Cubs game. We get up to Wrigley after like a half hour and it dawns on me. Dave Matthews band is playing. What a pain in the ass. As if I need another reason to hate DMB, they fucking cockblocked me when I was trying to see TA. Total bullshit. By the time we got up to Metro it was 1130. TA had to be on, I hadn’t parked, we didn’t have tickets. There was nowhere to park because the DMB idiots were all over the place. What to do… What to do.

I wanted to hear some good music. Two places came to mind. Delilah’s or Exit. We headed to Delilah’s. D’s plays good music and have a good beer selection. We drove by and it seemed a little crowded. I think it seemed crowded cuz there were tons of people milling about out front. Those people were probably smoking. It might not have been bad there. We cruised to exit anyway. Exit was pretty empty when we got there. A couple of seats at the bar were calling out to us. We sat down, grabbed a couple of beers and chilled. They were playing Aliens on the TVs, great movie. Alien is one of my favorite movies of all time, Aliens is pretty solid too. I get around to listening for the tunes, I’m noticing a trend. All female singers. I’m just like what is up? I like female singers, in fact a band I’m really digging right now, Camera Obscura has a female singer, but it gets old. Especially when it’s punk women screaming. I did hear a song that I love that I hadn’t heard in a while, Pretend we’re dead by L7. Classic. Other than that though, it was getting old. I asked the bartender what was up and she said, “It’s all angry lesbian music because we have an angry lesbian DJ.” So I went to talk to the DJ. I said, do you have Iggy and the Stooges? She was like no. That was that. Safe to say the music kinda sucked and it contributed to us bailing early.

One cool thing, well Exit always has weird stuff, and sometimes there’s something new or stupid or just tripped out. This time they had an Arcade-Style punching machine. The way the thing worked was, you put your quarter in and the punching bag drops down. It’s basically a large speedbag attached to a pole. You punch it as hard as you can and it flies back into the machine and it measures your power. The high score on the machine was 942. I have to say it was rather entertaining sitting there, drinking beer, and watching people play this game. There was one dude, who was kind of a punching machine hustler. He talked some old fat dude into taking him on. Well the young guy pops the thing and he got like an 800. Then old dude gets up there, he barely made square contact with the bag, he got like 400. Then old guy hands young guy a $5. Hustled. You would think fool me once shame on you, but this old man came back for more. Young guy blasted out like an 850, then old dude put up a pitiful 300, I think I could’ve sneezed on the thing and gotten better. I shouldn’t talk though. I didn’t play it cuz I def think it would mess up my already messed-up wrist. No use tempting fate with that one, discretion is the better part of valor. At one point, a really big dude comes in and he steps up to the machine. This guy looks like he knows what he’s doing. The dude squares up, rears back, and just hammers the machine, I said to my buddy, “That’s a new record, no question.” The whole machine was shaking as the meter counted up the power, 600, 700, 800, 900…918. Dude got robbed. That would’ve been over 1000, some of the power was lost because the machine was swaying all over the place. They need to put some spacers in back to keep it from rocking around. Oh well, you can’t beat fun at the old exit.

How to pick up water

I think I might be a water weirdo. I like my water to be very very cold. I hate drinking warm or especially lukewarm water. At work, I was forced to get resourceful to make sure I have a solid supply of very cold water. I used to just take my chances and head to the kitchen and take what I got. Sometimes the water would be like 38 degrees, other times it was in various stages of coolness approaching 38 degrees (which is the temperature the fridge is set to.) Then I took a class in one of the conference rooms that is like 15 feet away from where I sit. The kitchen is like 100 feet. Don’t get me started about the auxiliary kitchen, the water there is never cold and half the time some idiot leaves the fridge open so nothing in there is cold. Back to the conference rooms, there are refrigerators in them, with water. They are all set to 37 degrees, one might be set to 34. The water in there is always cold cuz it just sits there til someone in a meeting gets thirsty. The conference rooms have become my personal water stash. It’s awesome. The water in there is always perfect. Well lately the rooms have been occupied. The class that I spoke at yesterday is taking one, and that forces everyone else to use the other. It’s a major buzz kill and I basically go to the aux kitchen, which is a waste of time, the water is always warm, and then I bail to the other kitchen and do the best I can. Well today, I had a water from yesterday on my desk, unopened. So I went to return it for a cold one. The conference rooms were taken, so I had to go to the aux kitchen. I swapped out my water for one that was really only moderately colder. This water sat around for a few minutes and I noticed that the students went on a field trip, so I went and swapped my water out for one in the conference room. A double water swap. That’s why I’m water weird.

I was reading today that the woman who said she got acid dumped on her was lying. It was a hoax. All this crazy stuff all over the place, it really jades you out. When I read that it was a hoax, I was like “oh yeah, the acid lady.” But honestly when I saw the headline originally that the woman got acid dumped on her face, I didn’t read the article. I really didn’t give a shit. I looked at the picture of her before the acid and I thought, “kinda cute, bummer that she’s acid-scarred now.” That was about it.

I saw a woman today with a really awesome giant ass. It totally got me singin big bottom to myself. This woman was the textbook definition of curvy. She had ok boobs, should’ve been bigger to complete the hourglass, but she did not have a big waist. Just a really round ass, and decent boobs. To me, this is curvy. I saw some other women who were curvy. Curvy can also mean really big boobs and a little fat. Curvy does not mean obese. I think it’s a way for an obese woman to try to hide the fact that she’s really a house. An obese woman should put a few extra pounds, or another one that I saw recently, overweight. It’s like you put overweight and you are pretty much just letting it out there that you’re huge. Which is good. Nothing worse than the bait and switch. I’m kinda bumming that I didn’t approach the curvy girl. I think more than online dating, or church, school, coffee houses, bars, I think the place to get a girl is everywhere. You see a girl, you should just approach her and try to say hi. If she’s taken or not interested, she’ll shut you down pretty quick, but if she’s interested, she’ll probably talk with you and be receptive when you ask for her number or e-mail or whatever. I really need to get up on the whole communication thing, cuz I’m thinking women are more cautious today than they used to be. You used to get their number, but now I don’t think it’s wise to give out your number. They probably use something else, like IM probably. They prolly say, IM me on yahoo, I really have no idea, but I should find out.

Back to the idea of picking up women everywhere, I just had a mini revelation. I’ve written in the past about roses born to bloom unseen. I think this basically means women who aren’t really out there, they probably want to meet a guy, but they’re not online, they don’t go to bars, they might get macked on at work, but that’s it. These women don’t have a lot of competition for them. It’s like online, the competition must be pretty fierce. I dunno. Online, people are looking for the perfect match for them, they aren’t interested in settling, so women who are not attractive will reach out to attractive guys and vice versa, it’s an exercise in futility. I think an attractive woman, who is not outgoing, who just goes to work and does her thing, might be more receptive than someone at a bar, or online, etc. It’s probably very fertile ground for the right guy. They also say women like confidence, it takes shit tons of confidence (probably more than I have) to just approach a woman on the street and put the moves on her. This is old school stuff. You hear the story about some average dude who is always mackin. He hits on everyone he sees. Dudes like this claim to get laid by someone different every day. Is it a tall tale? Definitely. Is it possible? Probably. I think if you have solid moves, look good, are in shape, and get yourself out there to 14 women a day, you could get laid at least twice a week by different women. I think that’s possible. Getting laid by tons of different women is not really my goal, but it’s just a thought.

Not much else to say. I’m a little beat today. I went to the Sox game last night and the game lasted forever. The Sox lost and are now totally out of the playoff picture. I went with a buddy from work, which was cool, always good to make new friends. We bailed the game early, but should’ve been about 10 minutes earlier. I thought the train was at 1050. I busted to make it by then. I got there at 1046, it left at 1040. Hosed. I had to wait for the next train 1140. So I got home at 1230 and got to bed around 1. I got up at 7, so now I’m dragging a bit. I’m totally gonna get a good night’s sleep tonight. I have a bunch of stuff to do. I should take some practice tests for the series 4. I also got some books from people at work. The French girl lent me the girl with the Dragon tattoo, and my Sox buddy lent me The Road. I’m way amped to read these books, but I think I have to focus on the 4 and knock that out before I start reading. I’m weird that way. I don’t want to be mixing reading for pleasure and reading for work. I’m sure my mind can handle it, but when I get focused on something like passing the 4. I just want to knock it out with no distractions.

Read these words

I am so amped right now. I just got done giving a compliance and ethics training thing to the new trainees. 9 guys, 10 including the instructor. It was cool. I was a little nervous, but not debilitatingly nervous. It went really well. They were so receptive and asked questions. They gave me the respect a man of my stature deserves. That feels good. I guess I had it set up in kind of a fun engaging way. The whole purpose of the thing was just to encourage them to seek help from compliance or their team lead if they ever get into a grey area with regard to their trading. I had 4 case studies and I laid them out, one by one, in as unbiased a manner as possible. Then I went around the room and asked if they thought the scenario was acceptable or unacceptable. It was funny. Some of the guys thought the acceptable stuff was unacceptable and vice versa. The first scenario was layering and I took it from a recent case against Trillium where they got dinged for 2.3 million. You can read about it online. They all got that one as being unacceptable. The last one was an Oil scenario where Conagra got fined for 12 million because a trader wanted to be the first one to trade oil at 100. He said in e-mails and other places: “If it gets near 100, I’m going to be a madman to get the first print up there.” He also said, “Some people collect art, we collect prints.” Pretty stupid. They just wanted to be the first ones to trade there. Well the premeditation made it manipulation. They were dinged for executing a trade at a non bona fide price, for non bona fide purposes. Expensive print, 12 million, they probably could’ve gotten a Picasso for that price if they just collected art. So I left and I got called back for an encore, they had more questions. Good times. They’re good kids.

I decided not to contact the girl. (And there was much rejoicing.) Thanks to everyone for their opinions on this thing. I seriously considered contacting her, and in so doing, it really helped me figure things out. My best case scenario was that I take her to see the National and get back on her “pay no mind” list. It sucked being there. It sucked wondering if she was interested, if she was ever going to get back to me, it sucked waiting. I’m basically through most of the hard part of moving on (I’m sure you would all disagree.) But I’ve come a long way in forgetting and I feel like I’m better off just moving on, rather than going back to being unhappy. I thought I had a bunch more to say about it. Well last night when I came to the realization that she wasn’t what I wanted, that I didn’t want to go back to that, and I don’t want to contact her, I felt such a relief. I felt so good, it had to be the right thing, because it felt right. I guess I’m just more naïve than most people on this stuff. I always think of things in the best possible way for my own purposes. It’s like most people would say, “she doesn’t get back to you, she’s not interested.” Well she said she was busy, she did get back to me eventually. I would spin the thing in my mind to make it work. I wanted it to work and I’m really not sure why.

Last night was the first Religion class. The way our ccd works is that you go as a family. Which means I take all the kids. It’s my day, the importance of religion is my thing, so I take them. My daughter had an audition last night, so I took the boys. The ccd is once a month for two hours. The first hour is everyone together, and the second hour is in classrooms separated. We got there a little late and they had some kind of revival thing going. A woman was playing guitar and singing about Jesus and people were dancing around. They’d say, “Jesus to the north” and turn north, south, east, and west. It was kinda weird. I didn’t learn the Jesus macarena, so I felt ok just hanging out. The thing is that everyeone was doing it. Including the adults. I was thinking, “what did they say to everyone to get them to do this? Did they threaten them?” It was weird how everyone was dancing, I felt a little self conscious about not dancing, which is also weird. My daughter arrived a little after that and eventually we went to our classrooms. My boys were on their own because they are in Jr. High, but my daughter is still in the family class, so I had to attend that with her. Don’t get me wrong, I like our teacher, she is very dedicated and religious, that’s to be commended. She is a bit quirky though. At one point she said to the kid sitting near us, “I see your name is Andrew, I like that name, do you know why? It’s the name of my guardian angel.” Immediately I’m thinking “When do they tell us the name of our guardian angel? Did I miss that? Was that at confirmation?” A second later I got my answer. She said, “Do you want to know how I found out the name of my guardian angel?” I nodded my head emphatically. “Well, I was at a retreat and the priest there said, ‘if you want to find out the name of your guardian angel, just ask.’” She continued, “so that night, I got in bed and cleared my mind of all the clutter and I asked my guardian angel, ‘what’s your name?’ and the first name that popped into my head was Andrew.” I was pretty skeptical at this point. I didn’t right away ask my guardian angel what his/her name was, but I started thinking about it. I tried to focus, but I was being bombarded with names. Finally it came to me. I’m pretty sure my guardian angel’s name is…Kent.

I talk crazy

So I was running all over the place last night and then I got home. I talked to my buddy on the phone, went up and got on the computer, and around 10pm I realized that I hadn’t busted my wig down. Dr. Choppy had taken 3 huge chunks of hair out of the back of my head and contrary to some of the reviews I got, it was definitely visible. Somebody told me that you couldn’t see it unless you were looking. You could see it. It really looked like a three clawed creature had scratched the hair out of my head in one quick swoop. I had to get out the clippers even though what I wanted to do was hit the satchmo. It was actually fun busting the wig cuz I did have like an inch of growth. The only problem is that I missed a spot. Well I didn’t miss it, but I couldn’t see it well and the clippers just didn’t want to go there. That means there’s a little patch of long hairs right on the top of my dome. I really don’t think it’s visible. If I had a pair of scissors I could bust it down no prob, I just gotta get around to it. And not forget. Maybe I’ll just grab some shears, run into the bathroom and handle it. Might not be a bad idea. I should’ve jumped in the shower after I busted and washed all the hair off. Instead I shook my head over the garbage can and went to bed. Checked the pillow case this morning, should’ve showered. Oh well, I just dusted the pillow case. No harm done.

On the dating tip. Not much new to report. My success at getting a response with one e-mail is reverting back to the mean. I did get a sort of response from this one woman, only it was an automated negation from Match. That was cool though, better that than nothing. I got an e-mail last night from somebody. I gave her the automatic neg. She was creepy looking. One reason why I was running late last night is that the weird woman from way back who tried to booty call me on a Thursday night, well she messaged me. Totally freaked me out. I thought she was gone. I felt obligated to chat with her for a few minutes and that set me back. I was trying to multi-task and talk on the phone, that didn’t work. I had to bail. It’s getting to the point where I’m going to have to do something with my National tix. I think I’m gonna sell em.

I’ve been tripping on this conversation that I had with somebody last night. We were talking about online dating and he said, “in the old days, you’d get 3 or 4 rejections in a year, this was normal. Now with the speed you can meet someone, you can get 3 or 4 rejections in a week. You have to mentally prepare for that.” That’s not really what I was tripping on, but it got us talking about how with online dating, you are pulling from a huge pool of people that you may have little in common with. Honestly, looks are everything. You can pretty much forego the fact that they are vegetarian, into triathlons, into traveling, cooking, watching TV, etc. and want them just based on looks. The people that are into what you are into that aren’t attractive don’t even merit a second glance. I should say that if a woman is moderately good looking and into things you are into, it’s a plus. It gets them in the door. It might get a date, or lunch, or something, then you can figure it out from there. The other thing we discussed was that traditionally, people met through mutual friends, school, work, church, etc. These connections usually involved a good bit of common ground to build from: mutual friends, similar job, similar scholastic predilections, etc. Online, who knows? You could be meeting someone who is from a completely different part of the country, totally different upbringing, different school, different job, different religion, the chances of a match are slimmer because you are working with less common ground. Thus the rejection rate should be even higher based upon the difficulty in finding someone you are compatible with. Don’t get me started, but there still may be a kind of stigma associated with online dating and you may be able to stereotype online daters as having either a variety of social flaws or a common flaw. It’s something I’ve been grappling with, it goes something like, “are all these people insane?” They might be. Or a good number of them might be.

This morning I was getting in my car and this latin American man yelled to me from across the street, “Check it out. In the circle. It’s a skunk.” I looked, saw the skunk and said, “yeah.” I was putting stuff in my trunk and the skunk was like 20 feet away. It was in the trees in the cul-de-sac and it seemed to be going about its business. The dude across the street was like, “There’s a skunk in the circle!” I was like, “Yeah, I see it, thanks.” I dunno why this guy was so hung up on the skunk, did he think it was going to attack me? I almost ran a skunk over on my bike one day and it didn’t spray me. I think you really have to come after a skunk to even get it to notice you. I don’t think they run after people to spray them, it’s a defense mechanism. As I pulled out of the driveway one of the neighbors was walking his dog. I stopped and rolled down my window and told him about the skunk. Now he could’ve (and might’ve) gotten sprayed if the dog went apeshit after the skunk. I don’t know the neighbor, but I figured it was the right thing to do. As I was driving away I thought, a lot of people probably wouldn’t have stopped to warn the guy. I figured it was the right thing to do.

Hair today gone tomorrow

I actually had something to write about and I can’t remember what it is. It’s kinda bumming me out. Not nearly as much as the fact that there is a big patch of hair missing from the back of my head. I had to take a hair test as part of the custody evaluation. I’ve been growing my hair out to do it, which looks stupid and it’s been a pain to schedule the thing. So the guy says he’ll meet me over there today at 7 am. That works for me. I get there and the guy is like, “You’ve got plenty of hair, no worries.” Cool. Then he takes a pair of kiddie scissors and cuts just huge clumps of hair out of the back of my head. I pay him 125 bucks for his troubles and cruise. I really didn’t have time to go home, shave my head, shave my neck, take a shower to get all the hair off, etc. I just had to go into work like my kids attacked me with scissors. I’m basically walking around at work like that, and I asked somebody if it was obvious and they said yes. Oh well. I just have to make it through the day and then I can shave all of this crazy stupid hair off.

I’m starting to bug about what I’m going to do with my National tickets. The show is sold out. I think I can get 200 for the pair. It is taking every bit of my will power to resist contacting that girl and asking if she is going. I don’t know if I’m stubborn or what the exact definition of my problem is, but I can boil it down. I was thinking about it yesterday and I just have a picture of how things are going to work out. When things don’t work out according to that picture, it irritates me. The reason I bought tickets to the National was to go with this girl. She likes the National. I think The National are ok. I don’t have much desire to go with anyone else, it’s either ask this girl, or sell the tickets. I just want to know if she is going. If she’s going, great, then I’ll sell the tickets. If not, then she should go. She wants to go. She loves the new album. I bought these tickets so she could go. It just bothers me that the tickets are not being used for their purpose, and that there will be utility lost from my plan not going how I envisioned. Not necessarily overall utility, but the utility that I have baked into this whole scenario with my mind.

I won my first fantasy fb match up. That rocks. Always good to start out with a win. Lots of season left though and I need to grab somebody off the waiver wire. I have the #1 waiver pick and there has to be a diamond out there to take. Tough to figure the line on ND vs. UMass. On USAtoday it says off for most of the betting houses, someone has Umass as a 21 pt dog, and another at 30. I think Michigan will be pretty good as long as Denard Robinson stays healthy, hopefully they will only need him for the first half against UMass. I can tell you one thing, the ticket prices have got to be going up. Before the season, nobody knew if M was going anywhere, now they have one of the most exciting players in the country on the field. I’m sure people want to come see him in person. It’s def worth seeing. He did things against ND that were pretty amazing. He looked like he was playing at a speed no one else on the field could come close to. At least on that 97 yard play. There’s still baseball going on and the Sox are not mathematically eliminated yet. They play 3 games against the twins starting today and they need to sweep to have a chance. I hope they do it. I’m going to the game on Thursday, I hope it’s for the sweep, that would be crazy exciting.

Crazy Car Talk

I had a good weekend. Spent a lot of quality time with the kids which is really fun. They say the funniest things and it’s really fun to get talking to them. We were in the car like 7 hours or something, so we did a lot of chatting. At one point we were talking about cars. I told them that if I could have any car it would be a Prius. I went into how it’s good for the environment and it’s quiet, all the reasons I think I would like it (other than the actual reason that I will get to). My one son says, “Why are you specifically looking at a Toyota?” I was like, “I don’t know.” He says, “It is because of the ‘Toyota Last chance Sales Event?’” I was like, “yeah, it’s definitely because of the Toyota last chance sales event.” It was so bizarre, he said it with the exact rhythm and intonation of the commercial. I wouldn’t have come up with that on my own, but I definitely recognized it from the commercial. It shows how powerful advertising is, how it permeates our lives without us even knowing it. It’s so insidious that even our children will be parroting the words back to us to get us to succumb to the urge to buy a Toyota. Or whatever. It wasn’t really scary though, it was funny. The kids say funny things, there were other things, I just can’t remember them.

This has been covered in another blog, but I didn’t even tell my kids the real reason I want a prius. It’s not because it’s good for the environment or because it’s quiet. Although those are good corollary reasons. The real reason is because I think it is elegant, economical, and not showy in any way. Well, I shouldn’t say not showy in any way because I think a lot of people drive them to make a statement and feel all high and mighty for the environment, “We sold our Bentley and bought a Prius, we felt it was the right thing to do.” I think there is some of that out there, but that sorta makes it edgy. It’s almost like driving a Prius says “Fuck You” to the dinguses in their Porsches, BMWs, Benzs, Maseratis, Chevy Novas, etc. People that live in my neighborhood seem to gather some of their identity by what they drive. I think they think it’s important to “make a statement” with their vehicle. I think the statement they are trying to make is one of the following: I’m better than you, I have more money than you, or my parents have more money than yours and they left it to me. I just have no desire to play that game, and I think a Prius makes the statement that: Maybe I could play that game but I don’t want to, maybe I’m a tree hugger, maybe I just like crappy little quiet cars.

Back to car conversations with the kids. Well, it’s been a while since the kids had me speechless, but it happened yesterday. We were driving to meet my family for dinner, when my oldest, in 7th grade, said something to the effect of “you should’ve been an abortion” or something to one of the other kids. I said, “don’t ever say that, and abortion is a very bad thing, you shouldn’t talk about it or say those things to other people.” I mean, my kids have been to the Robert Crown Center, I think they know how the male and female reproductive systems work. Now that I think of it, I should probably sit my oldest down and have a talk. Just to make sure that he doesn’t think babies come out of women’s bellybuttons or something way off kilter. I’ll make a mental note of that. Ok. So we are sitting in the car and the word abortion is just hanging around in the air. I think one of the kids asked what an abortion was. I told them something like, “it’s a very bad thing and you are too young to understand it, but you shouldn’t talk about it.” I didn’t know what else to say. I know the boys are in Junior high, I know they talk, they should know what’s going on just from their friends. Obviously my third grade daughter has no idea. She definitely is not ready to have that discussion, maybe when she’s 25. I don’t know what more to say. I just think it’s something that everyone should consider: if you had to explain abortion to an adolescent, how would you do it? I think it would help a person to develop an opinion about it.

Don't read this

I’m really bumming cuz it looks like rain this weekend. I hope the weatherman is wrong. It’s like I’m taking the kids to the Michigan vs. Notre Dame game. I’ve been looking forward to it forever, my bud got me some solid tix. I’m ready to rock. The kids are amped. Family fun that can’t be beat. Now it looks like rain. That sucks. On other sucky news, the guitarist/singer from the band decided “thanks but no thanks.” He’s the guy that said he broke up his last band cuz he was a dick. He could (and did) carry the whole band though, and I like those types of musicians. I don’t know if those types of musicians like to carry everybody though. I’m guessing no. Practice got called off for tonight, so that’s good. They are trying to line up a practice for next Weds, but I can’t make it til later. That might be ok though. They can work on some songs and then I can come in and mop up around 9. I’m good like that.

I sent the punk rock girl a message on Match and she sent me an e-mail. We are gonna try to get together. I wanted to grab a beer tonight, but I haven’t heard back from her. I guess I should just IM her, I know that will go straight to her phone. I don’t know why I abandoned that as a means of conversation. I guess I thought it was invasive. I wouldn’t be crazy about someone IMing me on my phone so I didn’t want to do it to someone else. Well it’s basically the only way to communicate with this woman, so I might as well use it. It’s so weird in this day and age that communication would be difficult. People are basically accessible 24 hours a day via cell/text, I just can’t buy that people don’t have time for it. I think the punk girl is about it though. There’s some other woman stalking me on Match. She is pretty cute. She’s the one who said she was into music and when I asked who she said “nickelback and creed.” No lie. I shouldn’t be such a music snob. Maybe I’ll send her an e-mail. I can’t even remember how our first e-mails got derailed. I’m pretty sure she stopped messaging me. I’m also trying to devise a way to hook back in with the burlesque girl. That’s a work in progress. Hold the phone. I just got a Match e-mail and one of the women is smoking and it says she’s an intellectual. I’m not sure if that’s a good combo or not. It sounds good though. I think I have a better chance with the smarter ladies. Either that, or I just don’t feel like hanging around with an idiot just to get laid. It doesn’t really matter; I’d rather hang with a smart chick.

I got into a fantasy football league. I was going to blow this year off, but it’s so hard. Fantasy football has to be more addictive than crack. It just makes pro football a million times more fun. I can’t even watch the pros unless my fantasy guys are going. I don’t think I have a good team. This league kinda blows goats. No live draft. That is a shitfest waiting to happen. You just don’t know what you need when. I didn’t even know the draft order. It’s like, if I had one of the first 3 picks, I would’ve ranked those guys. I had the swing pick 10. Not a bad pick, but the computer picked two running backs I’ve never heard of. Some guy from the jets who gets to compete with LT, and some guy from the Chargers. Brees was still available. No doubt I would’ve picked him. My next two picks were Tony Romo, who is ok, and Desean Jackson. DJ absolutely hosed me two years ago. He spiked the ball on the 1 during regular season. That cost McNabb a td, and cost me the game that week. Well losing that game cost me #1 seed in the playoffs that year, and that cost me 2k. I ended up in 3rd place, lost in the semis. No money. DJ better make it up to me this year. I forget who else I have. Giants D, they’re pretty good. Jermichael Finley, is he any good? I might have to hit the waiver wire. I def need LT, if he’s available, handcuffage. I’m glad I’m doing FFB, it’s a good time.

The White Sox are looking pretty crappy. They might be out of it before Minnesota even comes to town. As of right now, the White Sox have to sweep them just to be in the picture. I don’t see it happening. I don’t think the Sox can catch the Twins. Stranger things have happened, but the Twins just never lose. They’ll prolly sweep the Sox. They’re better. If the Sox would’ve held onto Jim Thome, they would be a lot better off. If Peavy hadn’t gotten hurt, the Sox would probably be in the driver’s seat. Oh well. Wait til next year.

Imagine

I have an overactive imagination and sometimes I think that’s not a good thing. I def think it’s an issue in this computer age. When I send out an e-mail or a text, I know that the other party gets it almost immediately. I know it’s out there, and I expect a response. Here’s an example. I have a friend who works in St. Louis, he’s my old boss. Well I’ve been reaching out to this guy on facebook, e-mail, and…that’s about it. But I’ve sent like 5 messages that didn’t get responses. My mind started to run. I seriously thought this guy was mad at me. Insert tragic story. So another guy that we worked with back in the day, his brother died. The guy who died was my age. I don’t know how he died, but it was crazy sad and I sent my condolences. Well I contacted this dude and said, “That was really tragic what happened to our friend.” No response. So then I start thinking, “ok, someone told this guy that I’m getting a divorce and he probably thinks I’m abandoning my kids, he probably thinks I’m a scuzzball and doesn’t want anything to do with me.” This is how my mind works. When something isn’t making sense, I will start to think of scenarios and then boil it down to the most likely one. I boiled it down to 2 scenarios, he’s really busy, or he’s angry at me. Finally I broke down and asked him if I offended him in some way. I did it in such a way that I didn’t come off looking like too much of a psycho. He got back to me right away, “Did I miss some e-mails, what happened, blah blah blah.” It was no biggie. He was just busy. Weird though.

Another weird thing happened to me yesterday. I was leaving work and some dude walks up to me and says, “Somebody’s gonna be pitched.” I’m like, “yeah?” This dude was one of those guys where you can’t pinpoint whether he’s homeless or what right away. My first thought (active imagination) was that someone was going to be pitched off of a roof or something for the Transformers movie that they’re filming. Although I thought they were done filming. Then he says again, “Somebody’s gonna be pitched. See that Cherokee back there? The windows busted out. Glass all over the place. Somebody’s gonna be pitched. I didn’t do it.” I was like, “Yeah. I didn’t do it either.” He’s like, “well somebody’s gonna be pitched.” Then as I approached the street to cross I noticed that he stepped back like the street was a river of molten lava. I said, “See you” as I crossed the lava to the safety of the other side. I think the guy wasn’t going to tempt fate by following me. Lucky.

It looks like rain for the Notre Dame vs. Michigan game. Bummer. I hope the weatherman is wrong. Either way I’m going to have to go out and buy some ponchos for me and the kids. It sucks standing in the rain, but you gotta do it sometimes. It’s just such a downer, cuz you just envision the day being nice, sunny, warm. You picture yourself throwing the football around, playing with the kids, having a cold one, eating a sandwich. You can’t do all that stuff in the rain. You can sit in the car. You can go inside. That’s about it. No need to get to the game early if you are just gonna sit in the car while it rains. It sucks. Weekend ahead. I’m sure I’ll have more stories next week. Hopefully I’ll have the story of a Michigan victory.

Mall and Match

The hardest thing is being just borderline pretty solid. It’s like, if you are not attractive, you know it, and you deal with it. Like I saw a dude the other day with a fucked up hairdo, he was like 100 pounds overweight and had a megadeth t-shirt on. He looked like a mess. This dude, he’s not thinking he can hook up with some hottie, he’s just scoutin out the next cheeseburger (or 10). That’s easy. You don’t have to fret about whether you have a chance or not, you just know you don’t. I’m in the unfortunate position of knowing that I have a chance, and thus feeling like I need to make it happen and that I fucked up if I don’t make it happen. I know it takes more than 2 to tango, or something like that (Billy Madison, I love that line). It’s just I think I’m pretty awesome, so it’s a bit of a shocker when things don’t work out for me. It’s all about how you slice it up. You could say, I’m cool, if I just hang out, things will work out. You could say, I’m awesome, I need to go out and make things happen. It’s crazy. I wrote this yesterday, and I know what I was trying to say then, but I don’t have the same inspiration right now. All I was trying to say is that things are easier when you have low expectations and harder when you have high expectations. I need to figure out how to lower my expectations on myself and everyone else. I need to be a bit more chill. I think. I’m definitely tempted to put the dating on hold…

The reason I prolly won’t put the dating on hold is that I got an extension from Match.com. They have some kind of loser guarantee where if you shockingly don’t meet someone in 6 months they’ll give you another six. Well my deal was set to expire around the 14th, so I started trying to contact match. I called like 4 times and I kept getting put on hold forever or one time I made it all the way through and I was waiting for an operator when the line went dead. Total hosing. So then I called and I just hit the button for new subscription. I got an operator in like 3 seconds. The dude was really nice and even though I didn’t qualify for the extension, he gave it to me anyway. It’s what you call taking pity on a loser who can’t get a woman on a website with like 50,000 women on it in a 25 mile radius (possibly more I dunno). I still have the match thing til March, and I have OKCupid forever it would seem, so I’ll stick with it. It’s just I don’t have any time. With the band, the board membership, football season, the kids, I just don’t have time to date.

On the dating tip. The date yesterday went really well, but there wasn’t really a spark. I sent the girl an e-mail and she was really cool about it. She wants to stay in touch and be friends. That’s fine with me. I started thinking about the punk girl from Match. She’s the only one left out of all the women that I was talking about like a week ago. Wow they come and go. I sent her an e-mail and I’d like to try to get together with her tomorrow. We’ll see. I was thinking about dropping the burlesque dancer a line. She sorta just let our e-mail conversation die, so I can try to rekindle that. Lots of crazy stuff going on. Tons of good shows coming up too, so I’d like to line up a girlie to take with. The other crazy thing about match, I did this test where they try to pinpoint a woman that will be love at first sight. Basically you pick out of a bunch of pictures and different types of women and then they match that data against people in your area. They must use face recognition software or something. I totally forgot I did the thing, and I go on my matches and there’s this woman who is like visually exactly what I’m looking for, my perfect match (looks wise). I go through her profile and it’s like Something about Mary, she likes sports, she golfs, she is totally smoking. Then I realize that she is one of my love at first sight matches. That shit worked like nobody’s business. That kinda freaked me out. I did not message the girl, she had seriously bitchy picky stipulations in her profile: NO KIDS, NO DIVORCEES, DON’T WASTE MY TIME!!! She seemed like kind of a bitch. I think she was looking for a younger dude too. I think she also might’ve been into Nickelback. It was crazy how beautiful she was though. And I’m guessing still is.

The other dating thing I should mention is that there is this girl from Wisconsin who is nutty hot, I sent her a message about how I love dairy products and she has checked out my profile a few times. I think she is on the fence. I can’t decide if I should send her another message and say, “hey let’s chat, I won’t bite, hard.” I don’t know how that would go over though.

I went to the outlet Mall on Monday. I went with my ps (I’m such a loser) and we got there like an hour after it opened. The outlet mall is kind of a scam. I think you can get better deals at TJ Maxx than at the outlet mall. I did manage to handle some business though. I needed some new jeans and shorts. My old jeans just don’t fit. I’ve lost like 15 lbs and now my jeans are like potato sacks. They’re all baggy and look like shit. So I got some new jeans at Levis. I think they are pretty alright. I just can’t bring myself to buy nice designer jeans. I think they look stupid and guys that wear them look like tools. I got two pairs of Levi 514s in size 34. They are not too tight, but they’re a little snug. They properly display my buttocks. I picked up a pair of shorts at Oakley. I actually tried on some 32s and got them on, but if I would’ve tried to pick something up off the ground, they would’ve shredded. I really dig the stuff at Oakley, they have cool clothes. Then I busted over to the gap. You get crazy deals at the gap. I got a pair of jean shorts for $8. I tried on 35s and they basically fell off. I went with 33s. They have a lot of room too, I dunno what is up with their sizing. When I was waiting in line at the Gap there were some Eastern Block women in front of me. I got to thinking about how they are probably used to fighting 5 people for a loaf of bread and now they get to go shopping and buy shit in America; what a dream. I bet they think it’s a dream.

Disposability

Oh boy, lunch date today. Should be interesting. Had a great chat with the girl last night and we really had a similar outlook on dating and everything. I told her about some of the near misses I’ve had, where you think there’s something there and if fizzles. She said she hasn’t felt like “there might be something there” in a long time. Bummer. We came to a few conclusions. Well one hard and fast rule. A connection should never end on a text. Wishful thinking for sure. I would probably have at least 2 connections still going if that were a cultural norm. Norm. So we got to chatting I said it’s frustrating with online dating because it seems accepted to treat other people as if they were disposable. There’s no question that for whatever reason, people look at online dating connections as disposable. Maybe the person just doesn’t have time for it and it’s a nuisance. “Oh well, it’s only an online dating thing, who cares.” Who knows what the motivations might be. I don’t live my life that way. I don’t treat people as if they were disposable. I at least give them the respect and courtesy that everyone deserves. I told that one girl from OKC that it just wasn’t a match. I told the punk girl from Match that I wasn’t interested. It’s hard to give someone the dis, but it’s the right thing to do. If you exchange an e-mail with someone, if there is a connection, you owe it to the other person to give them closure. That’s how I feel anyway. So we’re chatting last night and the girl says, “Well you are not disposable to me.” That was so cute. What a nice thing to say. I told her that she is not disposable to me either. I wonder if that is the first time that exchange has ever been made. It could become a cultural norm. Norm. Before you say you are “in like.” Before you say “I’m way into you.” Before you say “I lll*vv u.” You say, “You are not disposable to me.”

I had a good weekend. I had the kids on Friday. That was fun. Then on Saturday morning I cruised to South Bend for the Notre Dame/Purdue game. Good time. Hung with some Purdue faithful, and ND faithful. It was a nice crisp day. A little windy. A little chilly at times. Overall, good football weather. ND won the game and Brian Kelly got off to a good start as ND head coach. I’m trying to think of other eventful things. Good times meeting up with an old friend of a friend. At one point does a friend of a friend just become a friend? I guess I would call this guy and the others of his ilk that went to ND with my friend, friend. The game was fun. I guess Michigan looked really good in their game. I’m glad. Next week’s game should absolutely rock. Nothing better than two undefeated teams going head to head. I don’t know how many years Michigan and Notre Dame are going to play. Maybe 2. It sounds like M wants to move on. With the restructuring in the big 10, we might end up playing Ohio State twice in a season, we’ll also play Nebraska every year. I’m thinking that they will stagger Ohio State and Nebraska so that we don’t have them at home in the same year, that will help our season ticket sales. Prolly wouldn’t hurt to have Michigan State and ND in there too to sweeten the thing. Who knows. It was a fun day at ND though, it was good to hang with everybody. It’s a long day though. I got up at 6 am to get on the road, by 10 pm, I was kinda beat. We all went out though, which was good. Had some beers. Took it easy, that was the wise thing to do. I think we were tempted to keep it going at like 1230, but discretion was the better part of valor and we all went back and crashed. Good move.

I’m glad I crashed cuz my boys had their first football games on Sunday. We were really worried about our one son making weight. He had to lose like 9 ounces in 2 days. I don’t know how it all works, but he came in at 3 pounds under the weight limit. I know he worked hard and ate very little for like 2 days, still, that seems like a big shift in 2 days. We weren’t going to question it. He had a good game. It’s always nice when you are basically one of the biggest guys on the field. He seemed to be in the backfield on every play on defense. He stripped the ball on one play and stopped a guy in the backfield on another. It was fun to watch. They rolled their opponents too. I think they won like 33 to 7 or something. My other son’s team got rolled. It looked like he was mixing it up when he got in there. That was good. It was a fun time.

Ok. Phew. For a second there I had nothing to write about. I totally forgot about the e-mail I had sent myself with possible topics in it. I have a ton to talk about now. I went with my ps to Costco on Sunday. They wanted me to look at the computers. While we were there I grabbed some other necessary items like socks, t-shirts, and 6 lbs of protein shake mix. I’M GONNA GET HUGE!!!!!! On the way home, they mentioned to me about this woman who recently got divorced. She was our neighbor back in the day and now her whole family lives in one of the nicest subdivisions in town and they are all filthy rich. This woman is about 8 years older than me. Back in the day, she was really cute and no question an object of my pre-pubescent fantasies. Who knows what she looks like now. I’m definitely not a cougar guy, or I don’t even know if that classifies as cougar. I think I’m too old to be cougar prey, I could be wrong. I started thinking about it though, just because that’s what my mind tends to do. It would seriously be like winning the lottery, well sort of. I could never do it; I’m just getting out of an unhappy relationship, so I would not seek to enter a new relationship on questionable grounds. I guess it’s just something you have to consider. You have to think about what might be best for you and your kids. It’s like, I would be totally comfortable, my kids’ college would be paid for, no worries about money ever again. At what cost though? The cost of self-fulfillment. I’m sure I wouldn’t be motivated to do anything if I had no financial worries. I couldn’t cheat on her, I’m not like that, so if I was unhappy, I’d just have to live with it. I thought this would be a long solid philosophically fruitful discourse, it’s not working out that way. It all depends on what you are looking for. I’m looking for a solid meaningful relationship of equals, hopefully with someone who I find physically attractive. Some guys might be looking for a sugar momma. If they look hard enough, they’ll find one. They’re out there.

I guess that is enough. I gotta figure out what’s up with lunch. I will have more tomorrow.