Maybe shut the fuck up about politics around your kids

 

Kids. They’ll parrot any old shit they hear. You know why? Because compared to most normal grown ass adults, kids are dumb. Kids don’t know shit.

For a quick second, think about what you were like in college. After the fall semester of your sophomore year, you thought you fucking knew everything. Shit, you were a goddamn college student now, after all – you got yer learnin’ on! Now think about how much you actually properly knew back then. That’s right, you knew fuck all. You barely understood anything about all the shit that really matters in this world.

Now think about a little kid – maybe one of yours if you have one. Maybe an eight year-old runt who’s trying to perfect his delivery of two dozen fart jokes, but also thinks mac and cheese for breakfast is totally OK (sure, why not). And for some reason you might think your kid is brilliant. Except he’s not. Because he’s a fucking kid. For fuck’s sake, even your teenager walks to school in shorts when there’s three feet of snow on the ground and you know it – how smart can they be risking frostbite?

As functioning members of the human collective, kids are dumb. Are we clear on that now? This means kids shouldn’t can’t be trusted with certain things. Grown up things. Things like Kitchen shears. Your car keys. A martini.

And most definitely: your bullshit political tendencies.

Seriously, shut the fuck up about politics and the election around your kids. I’m being serious here. Shut. The hell. Up. There is no reason on God’s green earth for you to be talking about politics and the election with or around anyone who’s still bringing PB&Js to school in a lunch box.

I don’t talk politics with my kids. Not one bit. They’re way too busy getting up to speed on everything else being a kid that the last thing I want to do is boggle them further with comical election bullshit.

So when my elementary schooler comes home and starts mouthing off about Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, all the blood rushes from my head while I do everything I can to not completely lose my shit.

“Donald Trump hates Chinese people!” “Hillary lies a lot.” What the fuck. That’s not coming from me, that’s for sure.

Upon some further incredibly restrained enquiry, said elementary schooler confesses that he heard all these Trump and Cruz and Hillary tales from his classmates.

“But what does it mean, buddy?”

“I dunno, I just heard it from them.”

His response is exactly the sort of response I’d expect from a kid his age. Kids his age just repeat shit, even if they don’t know what it means – they all do it. Maybe it all just sounds funny to them. Maybe it’s because they just want to fit in. Maybe they wanna talk and act all grown up. I’m not clear why, I just know they do it.

Which stands to reason that his friends are likely also just parroting this political rhetoric they got off someone else. They sure as hell aren’t coming up with this shit all by themselves. Unless little Pablo is secretly DVRing Bill Maher and Meet The Press? So where or whom are these kids getting this political shit from? Perhaps an older sibling? Sure, it’s possible. Equally possible – and more than likely – is perhaps from an overzealous parent or two who’s getting all too wrapped up in the election dramz. That’s what my money’s on.

You know what, go bananas with your political rantings all you want – it’s your goddamn right as a grown ass person to give a shit about whatever you want to give a shit about. But leave the kid alone. Your kid is not your ally in your deranged political leanings.

Here’s the thing, on their own volition, your kids don’t care about any of this political shit. It’s petty, it’s tedious, it’s confusing, and it’s packed with premium grade bullshit. No, kids care about Minecraft and milkshakes and farts and Vines and Hotline Bling. They couldn’t possibly give two shits about Hillary’s email servers, they couldn’t possibly understand the viability of Trump building walls, they definitely don’t give a fuck about China or Mexico. Unless it affects where Friday night’s takeout is coming from.

Do you think you’re somehow raising some wunderkind by shoving all your political wisdom down their throats? That they’re somehow going to be really fucking intelligent because they now repeat what your ideology? They have no firm grasp of what you’re yammering on about, I assure you.

And if they tell you they’re backing one candidate over another, it’s not because they love that particular candidate – it’s because they love you, and they want to say things to make you happy. They can’t tell one asswipe politician from another asswipe politician. Reasonably informed grown ass adults can barely do that.

So, please for the love for God, knock it off and leave your kids outta this election bullshit. Just let ‘em be kids. Let ‘em watch cartoons. Make ‘em watch Full House reruns so get what the hell is going on with Kimmy Gibbler. Let them pee outdoors. Let them eat Nutella right from the jar.

Anything’s better than some eight year old mouthing off about Ted Cruz’s supremely punchable face.

It’s time to STFU about the Patriots’ soft balls

 

A lot of people hate the New England Patriots. Big fucking deal. Every sports team is going to have a grand army of haters. More so when the team’s successful. The Patriots will give haters no shortage of material: Bill Belichick’s philandering, Tom Brady’s Uggs, Brady’s waterslide, Brady being a little bitch on the sidelines, pretty much just everything Tom Brady-related.

Which is what makes this latest hogpile on the Patriots for deflating their footballs in the AFC Championship game such an exercise in complete and utter bullshit.

So apparently, the Patriots deflated their footballs by about 2lbs of air pressure. Deflated balls equal softer balls, which in turn equal grippier balls. Easier to throw, easier to catch. That’s what I read anyway, I have no idea, I’ve never played football at any level.

And of course this is against the rules of the sport.

Cue the angry mouthbreathing public mob decrying the Patriots for CHEATING. “ZOMG, cheating iz soo bad, you guys. So not fair, so cheeky, so awful, such an egregious violation of all that is sacred in football, everything is horrible!!!”

You know what, shut the fuck up.

Because guess what: everybody cheats, stupid. Get the fuck over it.

No sooner did the Patriots get busted for their soft balls, Aaron Rodgers the almighty got called out for having his balls overinflated. (I’ll give you a minute to get over chuckling at that one.) Then Brad Johnson bragged about how he bribed someone to scuff up his footballs in the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl!!! That’s bigger than a conference championship game! Where’s the fucking outrage for Brad Johnson? I mean, there was even a fucking bribe involved! Brad fucking doubled down on that one.

Then you get shitbag Matt Leinart coming out and practically carpetbombing the entire quarterback squad in the NFL, claiming all of them – with the exception of holier-than-thou blockhead Kurt Warner, apparently – fucked with their footballs. I’m not sure why I give a shit about anything Matt Leinart has to say about anything because Matt Leinart is useless, but in this case, his assertion supports the point I’m trying to make.

Here’s the thing: if you’re gonna lose your shit about a team or player playing outside the rules, don’t get mad because they’re doing it, wag your finger because they’re stupid enough to get caught doing it. This is professional sports, for fuck’s sake. This is about money. This is about the business of winning by any means possible. Winning = revenue = the whole fucking point, last time I looked.  Goody gum drops if you think you wanna try and win without using any unfair advantage whatsoever.  That’s not how the rest of the world runs, noob.

You check into professional sports and you come looking for some moral high ground? Do you also believe in the tooth fairy and leprechauns?

These shitheads got caught, that’s the only thing that’s out of norm here. Just like when Michael Pineda of the Yankees got caught with pine tar on his neck when he was on the mound. Sure, pine tar’s banned and all, but shit, EVERYBODY uses pine tar in Major League Baseball, for fuck’s sake. Bats and helmets are dripping with the stuff. But Pineda was an asshole for being so brazen about his pine tar use, and for that, he deserved to get busted.

Also like when Bill Belichick and the Patriots were busted for secretly filming the Jets (the motherfucking Jets, of all teams!). YOU DON’T NEED TO CHEAT TO BEAT THE JETS!!! They’re the Jets, they’re going to work very, very hard to easily lose to you spectacularly, so what the fuck are you doing trying to film them? All you’re gonna end up with is hours of footage of how NOT to play football. And that’s what the $750,000 combined fine should’ve been for – not for secretly filming your opponent, but for the fact that they did it against the goddamn Jets. A fine for stupidity, not for cheating.

Yet, $750,000 is such a paltry amount when you consider the bar set the McLaren team in Formula One. Also, when it comes to cheating scandals, this one took the motherfucking cake. You’re talking about a multi-billion dollar global sport here in which one team – McLaren – were actively stealing engineering secrets from another team, Ferrari. This isn’t like listening in to another team’s radio transmission during a race to predict when their race car was going to pit. And it’s certainly a different caliber to the Patriots filming the Jets. This was proper industrial espionage. Way more impressive than letting the air out of some balls. And the penalty? A $100 million fine and the exclusion from the 2007 world championship, which resulted in further loss many, many millions of dollars in race result revenue. $100 million.  You wanna kick a cheating team in the balls, that’s how you kick a cheating team in the balls.

Which brings us to our current sitch. If you must punish the Patriots for their soft balls – and you probably should, not because they actually deflated the balls, but because they were stupid enough to get caught – what’s the right penalty? A fine? Unless it’s $100 million, who gives a shit. Loss of draft picks? Warmer, but again, who gives a shit because the free agency market can help backfill that. Pull them from the Super Bowl and sub in the Colts? That would be hilarious.

However the NFL act – or don’t act, as is typical with the NFL – on this, it doesn’t matter that the Patriots played AFC championship game, or any other game leading up to that one, with their soft balls. Stop crying about it.

Because you’re missing the whole fucking point.

 

 

The New York Jets: A Love Story

The New York Jets are my second favorite football team. That’s the goddamn truth. Right after the Pittsburgh Steelers, I HEART the Jets. I heart them so much.

As I sit here to watch the final game the Jets will play in 2014, I’m experiencing this weird blend of joy and longing.

My love for the Pittsburgh Steelers is quite one-dimensional. The Steelers are the team that I root for, and I bank on them to win. But also, despite my not being from Pittsburgh, long ago I pinned my fandom on the Steelers when I was in college while trying to impress my then-girlfriend-now-wife, who is properly from Pittsburgh.  So there’s that.  (In case you’re wondering, she couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about the Steelers – worst Yinzer ever.)

On the other hand, the joy I get from the New York Jets is so wonderful and complex, I’m frankly I quite astonished that I can process such thought and emotion.

Quite simply, the Jets are by far the absolute most hilarious professional sports team in the world, and I’m a sucker for top-shelf comedy.

In my entire life of watching sports on TV, I have never seen another team more hilariously horrible as the Jets. There are so many persistently awful teams in American sports, but none of them are horrible the way the Jets are. The Chicago Cubs? Frankly, I find them quite lovable in their aww-shucks brand of loserdom. The Cleveland Browns? As much as they lose, as corrupt as their owner might be, they’ll forever get a pass in my book because the Baltimore Ravens are the most despicable relocation team of all time. Of. All. Fucking. Time. (I’d like to take a brief moment here to digress: fuck the Baltimore Ravens forever.)

There are so many ways to love the Jets.

Let’s start with the fans. The best thing about actual Jets fans? That insane, delusional hope each year that their team are going to turn things around. That somehow, a new coach or a new draft pick is going to be their ticket to back to a winning season. “This is the year is going to be different.” “This is year is when we turn things around.” It’s like a very real pathological case of mass amnesia through allegiance – somehow Jets fans completely forget that they’re backing the New York fucking Jets, a team created for the sole purpose of masterfully fucking things up 24/7, 365 day a year, every year.

That’s why I’m happy for Jets fans when the Jets actually win a game once in a while. This year, when they were working so hard to lose, they beat the Steelers, but even I couldn’t be bummed by that. I hate seeing the Steelers lose, but to see that glimmer of delusional hope in the eyes of Jets fans – “OMG, we beat the Steelers, we’re practically in the Super Bowl now!” – knowing that there’s only crushing defeat and a return to tears and gnashing of teeth for these Jets fans is so, so sweet.  There is no nectar on this earth sweeter than a bowl of Jets fans’ tears.  Try it, it’s delicious.

On the subject of fans, there’s the Jets’ number-one-cheerleader-best-fan-forever, that Fireman Ed asshole. Look at his stupid face.  Seriously, fuck this guy. This is their number one fan. The embodiment of their fan base in one fat, bald sack of shit. This asshole’s only life accomplishment is that he can scream four letters of the alphabet repeatedly for three hours on a given autumn Sunday in New Jersey. He is supposedly their number one fan, and he fucking gave up on going to their games ever again. He cited that his fellow Jets fans were all assholes (shocker) at the game, so he ditched his season tickets. Waahhhh! So even though he might be the single-most irritating fuckwit in the part of the hemisphere, he might also be the smartest Jets fan in decades. Which, by definition, no longer makes him an actual Jets fan.

Can anyone think of anything the team management have done that ISN’T a complete fuckwit move? That Fireman Ed shithead cried all the way home, and the Jets actually tried to get this guy to come back to the games by taking him out to lunch. They tried to woo a fan, for fuck’s sake. Who does that.

I’ll tell you who – a group of fuckwits led by Woody Johnson, that’s who. Was there a better Woody moment than when he told the press that he didn’t want to sign Tim Tebow, but his team went ahead and fucking did so anyway?   Imagine megalomaniacs like Jerry Jones or Bob Kraft admitting to such a thing, that your team probably thinks that you’re just some senile old man so they ignore the living shit out of you and get up to their own bullshit anyway. You’re the one signing all the checks, yet no one gives a shit what you think. Even the Wilpons weren’t blown off, but instead held a firm hand in driving the New York Mets right into the fucking ground. I’ll bet Woody Johnson still snacks on paint chips he peels off in his office.

You know who’s not snacking as much? Dear Rex Ryan. Oh shit, I am going to miss that guy. Seriously, I am. When I think of colossal Jets coaching failures, first my head spins with so many names and faces that I fucking black out, but when I come to, there’s only Rex Ryan’s stupid jowly mug. You think your Jets were scary bad under Bruce Coslet or Rich Kottite? Holy shit, at least those guys had the decency to shut the fuck up while they were shitting the bed. Not so with Rex. In fact, no spawn of Buddy Ryan ever shuts the fuck up about anything (oh hey, Rob, how’s it going!). The hollow promises, the toe-sucking adventures, the Mark Sanchez jersey tattoo… I mean, holy shit, the most coked-up Hollywood writer couldn’t come up with a character this who’s this much of a shitshow. I’m gonna fucking miss Rex Ryan.

Rex Ryan was a big part of what made the Jets of recent years the best Jets ever. With him, the Jets have been in peak Jets form for a while now. Rex Ryan. Sanchize. The Buttfumble. Tim Tebow and the time they had like 10 quarterbacks on the team. Joe Namath and Suzy Kolber (OK, I’m cheating a little on this one, but that shit was awesome). I mean, they’re just Jetsing so fucking hard right now. And I never want it to end.

If it were up to me, Rex Ryan would be head coach for life. Tim Tebow would return as quarterback for life. That fireman dickhead would return to the stadium each home game, scream his balls off, then have to be carried outta there in the crushing shambles of defeat. Each year, they’d single-handedly earn the top draft pick, and they’d blow their first three rounds on shitty quarterbacks.  And each year, my Jets friends will regale me with high hopes and dreams that they’ve “definitely got a chance this year.”

If it were up to me, the New York Jets would never, ever fucking change.

 

 

 

Top 10 garbage music of 2014

 

If we go through every year with a deluge of horrible shitty music, why should this year be any different? Not that Taylor Swift pop shit. That other shit. That other shit that people listen to and wank to the idea that they’re listening to cool alternative or indie music, but really it’s just more drivel.

This is my list of that other shit. Shit that music know-it-alls – the college radio stations, the indie music rags, the self-proclaimed underground pundits – tout as big and clever, but really, it’s all just derivative bollocks.

It takes almost nothing to impress someone these days. The music industry isn’t fucked because of piracy. It’s fucked because the music itself is shit.

Before I go on, I must qualify that while this list seems overly skewed towards females, it wasn’t designed to be so. Gender didn’t factor into the equation. It just so happened that this year, we seem to be lauding a lot of shitty music being pumped out by bands that just so happen to have a woman take centerstage.

So, here we go.

 

1. Angel Olsen. I was fucking duped by Angel Olsen. Or is that with Angel Olsen? A friend of mine at work pulled me into his office excitedly one day to play me Angel Olsen. He played the slightly crunchy track, “Forgiven/Forgotten.” Hmm, not bad, I thought. Not terribly original, but it was a familiar grind that I was fond of. So I picked up the album. Talk about fucking bait-and-switch. Maybe with the exception of “Hi-Five” which like one of the best efforts to channel Roy Orbison in recent years, the rest of album was boring, moaning shit that’s been done a million times better by the likes of Beth Orton, Laura Marling, and about a hundred others before her.

 

2. Sylvan Esso. Why the fuck are we even listening to this band? Admittedly, I only just found out that this was a band was more than one person. I thought Sylvan Esso was just some woman’s really unfortunate name. But no, this duo actually chose a name that sounds like a gas station handing out GEDs. But never mind the name. Is there anything new or interesting we’re hearing when we’re listening to Sylvan Esso? Seriously, they sound like a mopier version of a shitty band that are shitty at making any money off their music despite being tapped for a Hyundai’s Christmas TV campaign. Fuck those guys and fuck these guys.

 

3. Future Islands. For fuck’s sake, just watch this and try not to want to fucking die. At least David Brent had the decency to be goddamn satire.

 

4. The Black Keys. I’m glad I chose the right side in the Black Keys-versus-Jack White let’s-see-who’s-better-at-ripping-off-the-blues feud. “Lazaretto” was fucking superb, even if most of the appeal was the cool-as-hell Ultra LP vinyl issue. Because, let’s face it, it didn’t take Jack White’s album to make you realize that the when The Black Keys aren’t recycling the blues through a fuzz pedal, they’re pretty shit. Stop trying to “grow” or whatever shit musicians feel they need to go through to try and reinvent themselves. We all bought your first records because we liked the way they sounded. Keep making the shit that we used to like from you. There’s a reason AC/DC’s lasted all these years – they’ve spent 40 years singing strictly about their cock and balls; granted, they suck, but at least they had the brains to figure out what’s working for them.

 

5. tUnE-yArDs. First off, you’re a grown-ass woman.   Stop spelling your name like an Adderall-fueled 6th grader who posts selfies on Instagram at least 75 times a day. Second, forced quirkiness is the worst kind of quirkiness. Covering up a sheer lack of talent with the fog of deliberate eccentric noises doesn’t make you an artiste, it makes you a charlatan. Or Jonny Greenwood. Which is sorta worse.

 

6. Real Estate. If you can find a more boring band to make it big in 2014, you’re either lying or… you know what, let’s just leave it as you’re a goddamn liar. I have no idea how such boring music can make me feel so fucking pissed off, but hey, Real Estate, you got it done. Also, I fucking hate that they’re named Real Estate. Sunny Day Real Estate should sue them for sullying half their equity.

 

7. FKA Twigs. You, too, can be FKA Twigs. Pull 8 to 10 random records out of your music collection, and play all of them AT THE SAME TIME. Then grab a mic and just sing some shit into it in your most wispy, twee voice. Voila! You just made an FKA Twigs record. I wish she’s fucking tell me what her name is now, not just what it used to me.

 

8. Courtney Barnett. Take what you like about Dylan’s signature monotonous vocal style, rip any heart out of it, give it to some shithead from Australia who nags herself through every song like she’s trying to push a heavy bicycle uphill and you get Courtney Barnett. Sorry for even drawing you into this comparison, Bob Dylan (even though you kinda suck these days).

 

9. Perfect Pussy. What made Minor Threat, Big Black, or Black Flag so much fun to listen wasn’t just the angst; they had songs that had form, some trajectory. Growing out your armpit hair and screeching into a mic for 3 minutes does not make you a formidable punk act. There’s no fucking way these guys actually write or rehearse anything. It’s all just “play really fast and loud, and Meredith, just act like you’re really pissed off that someone fucked up your kombucha order.”

 

10. Tweedy. What better way to produce an album of dad rock for the pleated khaki masses than for a dull dad to record with his even less interesting son. Tweedy are the Dockers of pop, the sort of band that English teachers put on when they’re feeling “alternative.” I never liked Wilco or Son Volt or any of that shit, so to see that this is now being passed on generationally is really disappointing.

 

Honorable mention:  Foo Fighters.  Sonic Highways wasn’t their shittiest album to date.  But it’s right up there.  The only reason they get a pass is because of their HBO series.  As rock docs go, it’s pretty lousy and pedestrian.  But I’m glad that someone mainstream’s taking the time to try and bring Nashville, Steve Albini, the whole Positive Force scene, and desert rock to the masses.  But Sonic Highways is still a shitty, shitty record.

 

Boy, did this year fucking suck when it came to music.

 

 

 

A Year of Reinvention

Shit, has it really been a year? A year since I last posted something to this good-for-nothing blog? Almost to the day. Good thing no one reads this shit, or someone might’ve actually thought they were missing something.

So why start writing again? I don’t even know if I want to commit to that. “Writing again.” There was some self-induced pressure to post something every few week or so. I have no idea if this is going to be a one-off, or if I’m actually gonna get back to this.

Right now, I’m on a plane. With about 13 hours to kill. I started watching the first two episodes of Dave Grohl’s televised love letter to American music, “Sonic Highways.” I’d originally written off the effort as  yet another shitty way to shill the Foo Fighters’ new record. Yeah, I wasn’t completely wrong but I’m not completely right, either. While not an original endeavor, Grohl’s gone all Ken Burns on us by taking a deep dive into some pivotal points in American music history: Chicago blues, the DC punk scene, Nashville, and so on.

The second episode – the one about the ‘80s punk scene of DC – dealt a lot with the idea of DIY music. The DC punks had no one to make, press, and sell their music. So they did it themselves and that’s how Dischord Records came about. Invention being the mother of necessity and all that.

Well, it has been a year of reinvention for me. A year ago, I was at a job that was incredibly challenging – I needed to do more, but there wasn’t more to be done. So I walked across the street – quite literally – and started working at another shop, but it was ad shop to which I wasn’t accustomed. I’d cut my teeth at big Mad Men, Galactic Empire-type agencies: all TV all the time, hundreds of people with fancy titles and excruciating egos to match, and none of the creativity to back it up. Now I’d joined a shop that started life a few years ago as a modest digital ad agency that had grown up almost too quickly. At best, the median age is probably 28 (I have no idea, I guessing here) and most folks hadn’t done anything other than digital marketing. They weren’t familiar with the only world I’d even known: TV, print, radio – you know, all the shit that people used to consume before they all married their smartphones.

And that’s how I ended up on this airplane, on my way to produce the agency’s very first TV commercial. Shit, for some reason I feel like I’m taking this agency backwards.

And speaking of going backwards, what better way to embrace a midlife crisis than to start your own fucking band? For years, I’d jammed on a song or two with friends who’d play gigs around town. These friends are all crazy talented people, but they almost never played the stuff that I wanted to play. I mean, who many fucking times can you play a Marshall Tucker Band tune to a disinterested bar?

So in January, I hatched a half-baked idea to grab three of my buddies to start a band. Like a bunch of high school kids. Except we’re all old as fuck now, we all have families and responsibilities and shit, and we all have white collar jobs that we trudge to each day… but fuck it, you play the bass, you play keyboards, you play the drums, I play guitar, fuck it, let’s start a motherfucking band. DIY, motherfucker. Let’s play the shit that WE wanna play. With thundering drums. Distortion turned to 11. Yeah, my Peter Pan complex knows no bounds.

And when we got together to play for the first time in our drummer’s dad’s basement (yeah, you read that right), we were fucking awesome. Wait, did I say awesome? No, actually, I didn’t mean that. I meant to say we were fucking awful. Yeah, we were so beyond shitty.

Half of us had played in real fucking bands back in the ‘80s. One of us played around New York in a hardcore band that once opened for GWAR, so you know he’s got his shit together. Another one of us actually went on the road with his band and a chestful of original songs. The remaining two of us had never played in an actual band setting. So, you know, what could go wrong.

The first time we played in front of a crowd, we fucking bombed.   We strutted to the stage like we were fucking rock stars and by the second verse, our whole show fell apart. We forgot entire passages to the song, my fingers knotted up on the guitar, sound levels were all over the place, and it was just a big fucking mess. Crashed and burned right away.  In front of a few hundred people.

Yet for some unexplained reason, we actually got asked to play a second time. People are either highly charitable and forgiving, or they’re all fucking deaf. Still, we were grateful for a second chance, so we took it – a two-song appearance at a commemorative screening of “Purple Rain.” We threw down two Prince covers – “Darling Nikki” and “Let’s Go Crazy” – and the crowd didn’t walk out! So, you know, SUCCESS!!

Summer came and we booked ourselves into two summer block parties. By “book,” I mean, we offered to drag our shit out to the middle of the street and play a set of covers during a large outdoor picnic, and get paid with free beers. No one’s dropping bills for our shitshow. These things were a humbling experience, so say the least. Now, outdoor sound quality is shit, no matter how good your gear is (and being a garage band and all, we have shitty gear), and no one’s really there to listen to you play. You’re auditory wallpaper, a lot of distortion and cymbals that are getting in the way of drunken conversations. But, after a couple of hours, when everyone’s a bit more tanked, it means you start to sound a bit more tolerable, and folks actually start to get into the tunes you’re playing. But you never actually stop realizing that at all times, you’re still a bit shit at this whole thing. Especially for a band that’s only been together for about 6 months.

Which is probably why we didn’t think too deep into it when our bass player got us a paying gig – an actual paying gig! – at a local dive bar. We had about 3 weeks to prep for this, and for 3 weeks, we were in our drummer’s dad’s basement rehearsing our balls off. We knew we were never going to be great, we just tried to be good enough so that people didn’t fucking walk out.

We worked the show from all angles. We told EVERYONE. We had to. This band was going to have a short shelf life if we had a paying gig and NO ONE showed up. We told everyone. We sent out dozens of emails. We abused Facebook and Twitter and every imaginable social channel. We told our friends, we told strangers. We needed to fill that tiny bar.

In the end, we’re told about 200 people packed into that little bar in our little town. Holy shit. The whole place was just a flurry of people and abuzz with friends from all over who came to see these four idiots play some cover tunes for 3 hours. I have no idea if we were any good that night, but that was the best we’d ever played. I have no idea if anyone had a good time, but we had the best fucking time ever.

That night, it didn’t matter if anyone else bought into the idea of us as a band, but we fucking believed we were finally a proper band. The training wheels had come off. We played the music we wanted to play, and we pulled our little shitshow together and we formed a fucking band.

DIY, motherfuckers. And that’s how I reinvented myself right into a(nother) fucking midlife crisis cliche.  Godamnit.

Last show at Terminal 5

I don’t go to a lot of concerts (relatively speaking), but I probably go to more than my fair share.  Thankfully, majority of bands out there are absolutely deplorable, so that certainly helps me set an artificial limit to my concert-going.

One thing I’d still like to do some time is go to a random concert every single night of one week.  Just randomly pick five different venues, then go check out whatever bands playing there that night.  Probably better if I don’t recognize the band so I’m not prejudging the show.  If I’m lucky, at the end of the week, I’ll have found a few new bands I want to listen to.  At worst, I’ll have uncovered a bunch of unlistenable bands to completely avoid like the plague.  Either way, it’s five night out, and there are worse ways to spend five nights out.

One venue I’m excluding from the list of venues is Terminal 5.  Fuck Terminal 5.

For as long as it’s been around, I’ve been going to Terminal 5.  After all, what choice do you have if a band you like decides to play there – you suck it up and go.  You go despite it being the worst fucking concert venue on the planet.

Last weekend, I went to what is probably my last time at Terminal 5.  The show’s line-up was absolutely brilliant, on paper at least.  The Beach Fossils, followed by Lee Ranaldo, followed by headliner Kurt Vile.  That’s a lot of talent packed into one night.  No throwaway bands here.  For the first time in the long time, we headed to the show right when the doors opened, unwilling to miss even a minute of the opening bands.

Getting there to Terminal 5 is both easy and hard.  “Easy” because being about as far west as possible in Hell’s Kitchen, it is surrounded by absolute shit.  There are no decent bars or restaurants within a 3-block radius to keep you from getting to the joint on time.  Most other concert venues have probably dozens of better than average watering holes where you can get a few brews and a decent meal before the show.  Not Terminal 5.  Terminal 5 is in the middle of Manhattan’s black hole.  There is jack shit around Terminal 5.  If you wanna grab a brew before a show, you’d have to walk a half-dozen blocks away to find anything.  It is also for that same reason that it’s hard to get to – it’s nowhere near any subways, and it’s in the anus of Manhattan.

Since it’s in such a shithole part of the city, the least you’d expect is for the joint to make up for it by being extra awesome.  After all, why would people keep schlepping all the way out there, right?  Well, the concert hall itself is fucking terrible.

Shaped largely like a cube, the main floor is peppered with large obstructive pillars.  The second floor balcony protrudes so far out that if you’re in far corner of the hall – any corner – you’re not seeing shit.

And that’s before you’re assaulted with what is indisputably the worst sound system in the universe.  It doesn’t matter if you put Jimmy Page or Jimmy Buffett on that stage – both will sound equally shitty.  Everything out of those speakers sounds like muffled farts through a bullhorn.  There is absolutely no articulation whatsoever (which is really important when you’re trying to listen to farts).  Honestly, I’ve had more pleasant afternoons listening to my neighbor’s dog bark incessantly at squirrels.

But that’s not all you have to listen to when you’re at Terminal 5.

You see, when you combine the fact that Terminal 5 is middle of the downtown Baghdad of New York and the fact that the sound is fucking dreadful, it becomes clear that Terminal 5 is being kept afloat by people who don’t really like music at all.

You go to any show there and you will invariable – and this entirely without exception – be surrounded by chatty assholes who don’t shut the fuck up.  People talk throughout entire gigs.  Whomever and whatever the fuck is playing on stage matters not one iota to these assholes.  Somehow, these assholes have rationalized the idea that the middle of a crowded thousand-decibel concert is the best place to carry on a meaningful conversation for two hours.  It’s always the same sort of person, too – it’s always either some tall bearded douchebag in a flannel shirt, or some overenthusiastic chick who looks like Marnie from Girls.  In other words, everyone in that place.  I can’t remember the last time I was at Terminal 5 when I’ve had to turn around to tell people to shut the fuck up.

Not one thing about Terminal 5 makes it appealing to see a band. I’ve been suckered into going to that concert sphincter for years, but I can’t bear going to Terminal 5 anymore.  I’ve seen my last show there.  I like Kurt Vile.  But Terminal 5 made me hate Kurt Vile.

And that’s what it comes down to: I’m not going to let Terminal 5 ruin the bands I like.

Fuck Terminal 5.

 

 

 

Just buy a Porsche or fake boobs, your workouts are really irritating

 

It’s a crisis!  I wish everyone I know would just buy a goddamn Porsche and be done with it.  Instead, everyone around me – everyone who is every bit as middle-aged as I am – is not doing that.

Midlife crises used to be so easy work through.  So predictable, so easy; practically transactional.  You ran out and bought a Porsche.  Or you got some bouncy new boobs.  Swipe your credit card, you’re done.

Suddenly a 911 and pectoral saline vessels aren’t good enough anymore.   No, now everyone’s got to get fit.  Gotta work out, gotta pump up!  When you realize that you’re closer to death than you are from your birth, no one wants to go out in a blaze of glory anymore.  Instead, everyone wants to amp up the health factor, make up for years of indulgence and intoxication, desperate to try and reverse the aging process.

So yeah, let’s all work out and kick ass.

Remember when everyone on the planet wanted to take up kickboxing?  Ooooh, so tough.  But kickboxing is just so ‘90s, you guys.  Now, if you really want everyone know you’re middle-aged, kicking ass, and taking names, you gotta run a dozen miles, AND go to a spin class, AND take a crossfit session.  All before lunchtime, bitches.

Marathons?  Fuck that shit, you pussy – ULTRAMARATONS FTW, motherfucker!  Wait, scratch that – running’s not enough, I better tack on some swimming and some cycling to it!  Fuck yeah!

“Hey, how’s your marathon training coming along?” “Hey, are you signed up for next month’s tri?”  “We totally need to sign up for that obstacle race where they swing glass-encrusted sledgehammers at you and send 50,000 volts of electricity right to your nipples.”

OMG, SHUTTHEFUCKUP, SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP, SHUTTHEFUCKUP!!!

A buddy of mine once shared this joke with me, “When you’re at a party, how can you tell which ones are triathletes?  Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”  Except it’s not a fucking joke.  The only thing more irritating than a triathlon are all the assholes running them.

All these fucking guys can’t wait to tell you about all their training, how their last event went, what races they’re signed up for, how many miles they ran this week, what shoes they ended up with after they got sized up by some supercomputer or some fucking shit like that.

Stop being so psyched, for fuck’s sake.  It’s fucking irritating.  Fucking nerd dorks with 2% body fat.  No one’s impressed.  You’re annoying as fuck and you look gross.

The most irritating of all are all these obstacle races that are all the fucking rage.  Crawling through mud, climbing walls, running under barbed wire, and fuck know what.  And these fuckers get so fucking carried away with all of it.

Admittedly, I signed up for one of these fucking things.  A year ago, happened upon one of these races and saw a bunch of people climbing ropes and running through mud, and thought, “Hey, playing in that mud looks fun.”  I have the maturity of a 5 year-old.  So I signed up for this year’s Merrell Down And Dirty Mud Run.  As a goof.  Because I hate running with every fiber of my being, and I am the least competitive (in physical activity) person I know.  I chose this particular event because it was the most creampuff event, and it took place 5 miles from my house.  That’s how lazy I am.

No fire pits, no swimming through pools of urine, no electric fences, none of that bullshit.  This was no more treacherous than playing flag football a bunch of pissed-off midgets.  Seriously.

Yet, I showed up the day of the event, and the entire scene instantly laughable.  Girls with team shirts saying “Beast” or “Tough Bitch” or something touting grrrrrl power.  Beefcake dudes with bandanas wearing eye black.  Everyone was constantly growling or grunting and pumping their roided fists in the air.

I had entered the WWE of running.

Are you fucking kidding me.  This was little pussy 3-mile run with a bunch of shitty obstacles thrown in, and you guys are losing your shit over this?  Calm the fuck down, you Adderalled assholes.  Maybe cut your Red Bull intake in half, let’s start there.

And for all the posturing and bullshit tough guy theatrics, I ran this race and came in 8th in my class.  8th.  This fat fuck.  All without any growling or making my pecs dance.  Puh-fucking-leeze.

You fuckers need to save all the grunting and shouting and the eye black and the compression sleeves for something that’s worth going ape shit over.  At the rate these types of events are taking off, it won’t take long.  Assholes aren’t going to happy until there’s an event in which race organizers are firing live rounds at the runners, making them run through actual minefields, and playing dodgeball with a balloon filled with the Ebola virus.

This is how “The Running Man” will come about.  And when it does, I hope it comes with all the shiny spandex we can stand.  Until then, would the rest of you please, PLEASE, PLEASE shut the fuck up about your workouts.

 

 

 

If you’re gonna make me run, there had better be pizza

So one week after I partook in a bike race by mistake, I found myself in another race this weekend.  This time, my entry was entirely on purpose.  And completely impulsive.

Because I’m surrounded by avid runners who take their sport very (too?) seriously, I’d been swept up with all sorts of talk about running.  I fucking loathe running.  I find it the dullest, most tedious athletic activity on the planet.  After all, per “the rules,” one should only run if being pursued; and one should only run fast enough to evade capture.  Everything else – fuck that noise.

So what the fuck was I thinking on Thursday when I opened my email and read an article about a foot race around Tompkins Square Park on Saturday?

This race was called the New York Pizza Run.  Apparently, this was the fourth year it’s been run, but this was the first I’d ever heard of it.  But unlike other races, this had a splendid twist to it.

The race comprised 4 laps around the perimeter of Tompkins Square Park in the East Village.  At the completion of each lap, you had to devour one slice of pizza before you could commence to the next lap.  At the end of the fourth lap, you cross the finish line and you’d have 2.25 miles in the books.

Two-and-a-quarter miles, four laps around a small park, three slices of pizza.  That sounded so goddamn ridiculous, there was no way I couldn’t not do it.  And so I signed up.

But I also invited my runner friends.  The ones who run multiple marathons a year.  The ones who are constantly training for some triathlon or other.  The ones whose every conversation at every party is about running.  It was as if to say, “Hey, you guys, I’m doing a foot race, I’m one of you guys now!”

Except, I wasn’t, of course.  This was just running around stuffing our faces with pizza.  TOTALLY NOT SERIOUS ENOUGH.  Not within a million miles of being in the same league.  If they were the NFL, I was tossing around a Nerf ball trying to be cool.  “I’ve got not time for jokes, bro.”

Hardly anyone even acknowledged getting my email asking them to join me in this ludicrous run.  Not that I gave a shit because I was going to do this run with or without them.

So Saturday came, and I took the train down to Astor Place and walked the four blocks to Tompkins Square Park.  I might’ve even sprinted a couple of blocks.  Gotta warm up, get loose.  This is a race, after all.  (barf)

I checked in to the race, and got a race number.  Ooooh, a number, this is serious shit.  Then I looked to my left and saw the professionally-crafted start line on the sidewalk of in the middle of 7th Street.  SO OFFICIAL, you guys.

And of course this was exactly the sort of race that draws participants who dress up, run goofy, and take the piss out of the whole running thing.  There was a girl dressed in a banana suit, another dressed in a pizza costume, another in a Superman outfit.  Shit, even I ran with baggy knickers but that’s because that’s all I had.

Shortly before the start, a friend from work actually took me up on my offer and joined me for this race.  Yay, somebody to run with!  Except he ran a fucking marathon this past spring, so, you know… I figured he was going to just lap me at some point.  He’s fit as a fiddle, I’m fat and slow, it’s inevitable.

So we lined up along the chalked line, and without much fanfare, the race was on.  This was not a closed course.  We were simply running on the cobbled sidewalk around Tompkins Square Park.  That meant we had to swerve around the homeless.  We had to take evasive action from oncoming hyperaggressive city moms with their massive strollers that were not.moving.out.of.the.way.because.fuck.you.runners.  We had to run around tourists (those fucking, wandering guys).

Oh yeah, and at the end of each lap, we had to wolf down some pizza.  And it seemed a real goddamn shame to have to go all Joey Chestnut on these incredible slices.  Sure, by the time we got to them, they weren’t warm any longer, but holy shit, they were delicious.  They were supplied by Cer Te, and they were quintessential New York margherita pizzas.  Ultra thin crust, sweet fragrant tomato sauce, large discs of melted mozzarella, and slivers of basil on top.

The rule was that you couldn’t run with the slice of pizza.  Before you were allowed to start your next lap, you had to eat the whole slice.  You were permitted to run-and-chew, which is what I tried on lap 2, and that turned out to be another in a string of poor decisions.  Trying to run with a bolus of half-chewed pizza in my fat gob meant that I choking on bits of pizza that would go down the wrong tube.  When your mother taught you to not run around with a mouthful of food, she was right.

When I got to the end of the third lap, I paused before I took that slice of pizza.  Three slices of pizza on any day would be more than I would typically eat.  Three slices while trying to run – that was bullshit.  But I had one lap to go and my friend had started to take off for his final lap.  I grabbed the final slice, stuffed it in my mouth, slugged some water, and staggered on to the final lap.

When I reached the finish line – yes, it was also drawn out in chalk – there wasn’t any over-the-top fanfare.  There wasn’t any big noise or confetti or anything grandiose.  (It’s a fucking pizza run, what do you want, jeez)  Just a lot of laughter, a lot of high fives, a lot of beaming smiles.  And for me, a slight sense of “huh.”  Somewhere between “well, that didn’t suck” and “that was pretty awesome.”

And that was it.  Four laps and three slices later, we were done.  It was hilarious, it was ridiculous, it was oddly satisfying, it was brief, and no one threw up.  We got a bit of a workout, and we were well fed.

My first ever foot race, only my second time ever running outdoors.  I was never going to come in first, but if I didn’t come in last, that was my greatest achievement of the day.  You know what, scratch that – the fact that I even ran this thing was my greatest achievement of the day.  And if it wasn’t so ridiculous, there’s no way I’d have done it.

Count me in next year.  Because when there needs to be a futile and stupid gesture done on somebody’s part, I’m just the guy to do it.

 

 

I accidentally entered a bike race

“Withnail & I.”  Classic film by any measure.  Yet almost entirely ignored Stateside.  Everybody’s loss, I suppose.  Because the “we’ve gone on holiday by mistake” line is only one of what seems like a billion killer lines from the movie.  Quotable films extend beyond Will Ferrell’s fare, you guys.

And that’s the scene that conjured up in my head this morning.  This morning that came far too quickly after a night celebrating a friend’s birthday the night before.  The night before wasn’t conducted with a great deal of consideration of what this Sunday morning was going to bring.  It was, after all, a friend’s milestone birthday and we were going to celebrate it properly.  A catered dinner, wine that gushed from many bottles, coolers filled to brim with PBR, and a firepit out back that welcomed everyone outside on a frosty late-summer night.  And of course, there were cigars.  Of course.

So I got to bed at around 1am only to have to wake up around 5:30am.  Why?  Because weeks earlier, I had signed up for the Tour de Greenwich 20-mile ride.  What the fuck.

So, groggy, tired, and carrying a mild hangover, I hitched a ride with some friends up to Greenwich for this ride.  I didn’t mind too much because it’s only a 20-mile ride, and it’ll be a casual morning ride.  I was forewarned of a “nasty climb” at one point of the ride, but I shrugged it off as no big deal.  I mean, it’s not Alpe d’Huez, it’s fucking Greenwich – what’s the big deal.

When we got to the event, I looked around and saw the obligatory collection of rabid cyclists.  You know the sort.  The sort who shave their legs, who wear fully synchronized bologna suits; they ride carbon bikes that cost more than my car, and they nerd over their wattage, VO2 max, and electrolyte intake.

If somebody needs to nerd over shit that like, better them than me.  ‘Cause I fail to follow any of those cycling rules that govern such discipline in the sport.  I ride on the road with baggy shorts, I use mountain bike shoes and pedals, I rarely shift gears, and my bike has a flask holder.

So, when I rolled up to the registration table, I was given a number to pin on with the instruction, “You’re in the second heat.”

Wait, what?  What second heat?  What “heat”?!  Turns out, the Tour de Greenwich wasn’t a casual ride through Greenwich at all.  Not at all like the NYC 5 Boro ride, or any of the other individual borough tours.  This was a fucking race!

I had accidentally entered a bike race.

I looked around and started to take stock of all the people around me.  Guys were on their bikes doing short sprints in the parking lot.  Other guys had shot off to do a recce of the start of the course.  Some guys had hauled out their rollers and trainers and were spinning in place next to their cars.  I was in a sea of spandex.

Holy shit.

Realizing there was little I could do about this, I decided to that I was going to ride this the way I had planned to ride it all along – cruising around the 20 miles or so around Greenwich to admire the mansions, the huge tracts of land, and take in the morning scenery.  Fuck the race, I wasn’t prepared for a race, I wasn’t going to even try to “race” this thing.  The last bike race I did, it was a mountain bike race, and I came in about 20 minutes after everyone else.  I’m not cut out for this racing bollocks.

Around 7:45am, the second heat were called up to the start line. Thick silence all around me.  Everyone was taking this serious as shit.  I started to giggle at how out of place I was.  I took a swig of scotch from the flask on my bike.  After about 3 minutes, they sounded the start, and the rapid clack-clack-clack of everyone’s clipless pedals accompanied the forward motion.  The road went straight, then a 90-degree turn to the left, and it immediately started to climb uphill.  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I would later learn that the entire course was effectively 10 miles uphill, then 10 miles downhill to the finish.  Since I wasn’t going to race, I slinked to the right and let everyone fly past me.  Then I cruised along the course around lovely Greenwich and took in the sights.  And worked off the hangover.  And it was magnificent.  These enormous mansions all around me.  Some mansions had adjacent cottages.  Some of those cottages had their own cottages.  There were horses, there were farms, there were houses that looked like Hogwarts.

And the whole time, I kept thinking, what’s the fucking rush, you guys?  If I had ridden faster (I couldn’t ‘cause I’m fat and slow, and was still coughing up my cigar from the night before), I’d have missed all these sights.

I took the time to slow down, wave, and say hi to all the course marshalls and cops.  No one appreciates the thankless job they do.  Instead of tucking in, I would use my brakes on the downhills because I wanted to check out the ‘hood.  The only time I put the hammer down was when I got to this so-called “nasty hill”.  And holy shit was it completely ridiculous.  I checked the map and it says that it’s a 10.6% gradient.  I don’t know what the fuck that means, but it was every bit like climbing a wall on your bike.  Straight up.  Thankfully it wasn’t a long climb, and I just pounded my legs to crank up that sumbitch.  When I got to the top, I felt like my heart and lungs were going to explode out of my chest while I simultaneously shit my pants (I didn’t).

After about an hour and quarter, I reached the finish line.  Naturally, my other friends had all finished much earlier and had posted massively respectable times.  They’d docked their bikes on top of the cars, and they were already breaking out the coffee, the donuts, and they had the music was cranking from their cars.  A genius amongst us had the foresight to bring beer.  Now, since this was 9am, the beer was flavored with maple bacon.  Breakfast beer, perfect!

So, in the end, the ride finished exactly how I had treated the whole thing.  To earn an excuse to stuff my face with donuts, drink beer at sun-up, and treat the whole thing as a goof.  Because I fucking goofed up by not realizing that I’d signed up for a goddamn race.

The next time, I ought to do a better job reading the descriptions to these things.

 

 

You know what, fuck these guys

 

“Head of Ideas.”  Check out that link.  Not a terribly long post, but so much to work with here.  It might’ve been a slightly more dignified post if it was all butthurt.  But it’s not.  It’s a fucking pathetic.  First of all, this guy actually acknowledges the job title that he’s been given: Head of Ideas.  In a supposedly creative industry, this fucking guy actually embraces the notion that he’s the grand arbiter of ideas in his shop.  “Hey, fuck the rest of you, I’m the boss of all the ideas.  The rest of you can suck it as far as ideas are concerned.”  Head of Ideas – what a colossally douchetastic title.

Second, this fuckwit is actually trying to validate the advertising industry against the motherfucking Onion.  “We don’t deserve to be called talentless.”  What a jerkoff.  Every industry on the earth is overrun with talentless fucks – why the hell should advertising be exempt of that?  If anything, advertising is probably leading the brigade.  We’re surrounded by fucking hacks.

And then he tries to formulate his argument by creating pathetic movie parodies that are neither interesting nor witty.  I don’t even know what point he’s trying to make with those examples.  I swear, whomever’s hiring his agency, fire that agency immediately.  Then fire him immediately after that.  Then fire the people who fired him because they were the probably the ones who hired him in the first place.  (Sometimes Monty Python have the right ideas for everything.)

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

The Ramen Burger.  Hey asshole, this is not your cronut.  And before I go any further, I just need to acknowledge this cronut bullshit.  Upon advisement from Serious Eats, I ventured to Yonkers to get what was supposed to be a pretty good knock-off of Dominique Ansel’s cronuts.  The knock-off cronut was a far more modest affair.  No cream filling, not cream ring on top.  Just a sugar coating.  And it was such a fucking letdown.  A letdown not because it was missing all that creamy goodness.  But because it tastes exactly as a cronut had been described – a buttery croissant shaped like a donut.  And because it was all buttery and fried, the thought of one of Ansel’s originals gushing with cream just fucking grossed me out.  It’s probably like 1,000 calories per cronut.  Fuck that guy and his ridiculous pastries.

But wait, back to the ramen burger.  Just look at that fucking thing.  It’s such a forced concoction of stupidity.  Ramen should not be molded into hockey pucks, asshole.  That’s not how you eat it.  You don’t see me taking a burrito and putting it in a blender to make burrito soup, do you?  Then why the fuck are you molding ramen noodles into hockey pucks?

People like ramen.  People like burgers.  I get it.  That doesn’t mean that people need to have the two together.  This is the just the most insufferable Brooklyn version of asshole food that chains like Chili’s puts out there – “Hey, people like ribs, people like cheese… let’s smother our baby back ribs with cheese!”  No, asshole, no.  There is no redeeming reason to put ramen noodles and burgers together.

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

AUTI5M.  That was on the Maryland license plate of a car I passed when I drove back from Baltimore this past weekend.  Before I go on, let me get this out of the way – third only to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Maryland drivers are colossal assholes.  You’ve got some work to do if want that podium spot, Connecticut.

Anyway, I was gunning the pedal trying to get the fuck out of the shithole that is Maryland when I passed some white 4×4 with “AUTI5M” on the license plate.  This wasn’t some state-issued special edition license plate like those celebrating your stupid fandom for the Yankees or something like that.  No, this was a vanity plate in which some jerkoff paid a premium so that his license plate would read a goddamn medical condition.

What the fuck does it even mean?  Presumably, this fuckwit’s trying to raise awareness of autism.  Fine, I get it, the intent is noble and warranted.  But the means?  Is that really the way to go about it?  Does the rule apply to other disease states also?  I mean, next we ought to have a car driving around with a license plate that reads C4NC3R, right?  How about HERP3S?  It doesn’t work, asshole.

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

Ten grand for a hubby.  So some account broad in some dopey agency in San Francisco can’t find a man and is putting up reward money?  How fucking original.  Read the self-satisfying tone in that letter.  How proud she is to have written something so “witty” and “interesting”.  Ugh, puke.  Everything about that letter screams “bullshit” and “go fuck yourself”, and not necessarily in that order.  If you claim to resemble Charlize Theron, and you live in a major metropolitan market (granted, it’s San Francisco, which means your typical choices in companionship are either “dipshit” or “smug douche”), you wanna tell me you can’t find a single asshole who’ll hook up with you?  How much of a nightmare must you be for no guy – NOT ONE! – to want to put up with your bullshit?  I tell you what, if Charlize Theron was a total bitch on toast and she wanted to go out with me (shut up, it could happen), I’d put in the effort.  You fucking bet I would.  You fucking bet YOU would.  Charlize fucking Theron, you guys!

So this dumb shit can’t meet anyone decent and she puts the burden – sorry, reward – on her idiot friends to hook her up?

You know what, go fuck yourself.

 

 

Me.  Short of blowing a shit load of cash I don’t have on a new 911, I can’t think of a more pathetic attempt at a midlife crisis than what I’m going through right now.  I bought myself a road bike (a two-wheeled equivalent to the hot convertible).  Next thing I know, I’m riding all over like I’ve got something to prove.  I’m trying to beat other riders up hills and shit.  Now all these obstacle course mud runs are all the rage, and I signed up for one.  At my fucking age, I could fucking die in one of these things – even if I did sign up for the most creampuff version of such races.  Which means I’ve now started running, too.  I fucking hate running.  I tried it once right after Hurricane Sandy and it was as stupid as it was painful.   Yet, despite my eternal loathing for running, I signed up for a creampuff running event and I’m now running on a almost a daily basis.  Because I can’t bear to show up to this event like a waddling schmuck.

The lengths I will go through to try and preserve some little youth I have left.  Like I’ve got shit to prove or something.  That’s a lot of horseshit, and I fucking hate myself for being this way.

You know what, fuck me.