I am Just a Hot Mess

After last week’s softball game, and the July 4th kickball game, I was ridiculously sore. Because I am old.

At today’s game, I realized that my lack of arm strength from last week has somehow turned into me wondering where my right rotator cuff has gone. Basically, I have no arm left. I’m like Chet “Rocket” Stedman at the end of Rookie of the Year.

It left me wondering if I had injured it the last time I played softball (in Dayton in 2006) and just didn’t remember it (we tended to drink heavily after games. And non-gamedays). Or if it was something else (hockey-related perhaps?) or maybe stems from my previous back problem from last winter.

Needless to say, I can barely lift my right arm.

After a post-game shower, which included cleaning off the rug burn on my right leg from sliding on astroturf, I noticed I have cuts on three fingers on my right hand. Neither of which was all that painful, so I assumed my arm/shoulder and general stiffness was all the injury I had on the day.

Then I made dinner (bacon, egg, cheese on an everything bagel with tobasco). I pulled our grease cup from the freezer and set it in the sink.

I forgot that bacon grease is like five times hotter than grease from browning ground beef. The grease hit the frozen beef grease, crackled and hissed. I picked up the cup to put it back in the freezer…

… and the hot grease melted the side of the plastic cup, poured out the side down the fingers of my left hand. So now all my finger tips are scalded.

How could bacon do this to me? It knows how much I love it!

All the veggies from my freezer are now ruined, as I thawed all of them on my throbbing hot fingers.

But I’m a hockey player. So I manned up, and pecked away at this update fot you, my faithful readers. On the plus side, I don’t feel any of the normal leg stiffness from softball. At least til I try and get out of bed tomorrow.

Things That Have Always Bothered Me

In the Thriller video there’s credits for MJ and the chick, all the directors, producers, choreographers, makeup artists and Vincent Price… but the zombie dancers never get any props.

Nuke LaLoosh’s delivery in Bull Durham. My God, couldn’t someone have taught him how to throw a baseball? Henry Rowengartner’s mechanics in Rookie of the Year were better.

That Jack Bauer has never used the bathroom or eaten anything ever. Like scatter some empty chinese food cartons or pizza boxes around the HQ set every few hours.

Why Lance Armstrong is a hero. For starters, we all know he cheated like a fiend. Ok, so he battled cancer… then immediately after finding out his remaining testicle still worked, dumped the wife who stayed at his side through that adversity so he could nail Sheryl Crow.

That someone always has to be in the doghouse among fans of the Mets and other teams. If seven guys in the lineup are all-stars, the eighth hitter “Sucks” and “should be released or killed immediately.”

In Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” the lyrics go “I wish you joy and happiness, but over all this, I wish you… Love.” Love? Why not SUCCESS? Which rhymes with Happiness?

A tribute to Subtle Tributes

Ken Griffey, Jr. entered the game to the song Billie Jean and stepped into the batter’s box like this:

Hee-Hee!

Normally, he wears two blue batting gloves. He rocked the one white glove on his left hand as his own, personal MJ tribute.

I’m not sure why, but I love stuff like that.  I love things like Nomar’s 90-second standing ovation in Fenway, Bo Kimble’s tribute to Hank Gathers, and USC’s missing kicker tribute.

Stream of Consciousness Vol. IX

After watching a week and a half of coverage on Michael Jackson and all the retrospectives of his career, I see a direct comparison to MJ and the rest of the Jackson Five and David Wright and the rest of the NY Mets offense.

Driving home from the baseball game on the Fourth of July, I saw the ballpark fireworks in my rear-view mirror, the Mid-City fireworks in the distance to the left, the downtown fireworks straight ahead beyond the skyline, and some West Bank fireworks in the distance in between Mid-City and downtown. Pretty awesome.

Second annual Fourth of July Kickball Game went as planned, and I’ve now been on the winning team each year. The MVP was Fatty Boo with a two-run triple, and Meghan rolled a complete game shutout as we won 9-0.

Last night, suffering serious insomnia, I decided to right a chick flick. I had a great idea for a plot, but promptly fell asleep and can’t remember the plot now. So, mission accomplished: I don’t have to suffer through some weak chick flick that will suck (even though I made it) because it’s a chick flick, and I beat insomnia!

I wish I had had an older sister growing up, someone like Zooey Deschanel in Almost Famous, that I could have asked ridiculous questions about girls to. I’m 31 years old, and I still don’t know the appropriate amount of eye contact to make. I know there IS a line between “I’m making eye-contact with you and not checking out your rack, I’m not a pervert honest” and “I’m a creep staring you down and making you uncomfortable.” I just don’t know where that line is.

Search For an EPL Team

Since I semi-enjoy soccer, and really like the concept of promotion/relegation, I decided I need an English Premier League football team to root for.

I wanted to avoid the front-running four big spenders (Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool).

I also needed a team that was relatively safe from relegation, since dropping the second division (which the teams finished 18, 19, and 20 do each year) would cut my interest dramatically after one season. That left me with eight options:

The Bolton Wanderers have ugly jerseys with a “188 Bet” ad on the front. Aston Villa wears a hideous powder blue & burgundy combo. The Blackburn Rovers can’t decide on colors, switching from white & red to white and blue, and the concept is awful. Imagine cutting a human in two down the middle and coloring one side red or blue and the other white.  Portsmouth has relegation potential, their jerseys remind me of the University of Tulsa’s color scheme, changing from their traditional blue and yellow colored “gold” to a copper colored “gold.” And their website was awful to navigate and learn more about.  So they were all out.

That narrowed the field to four:

Fulham has Clint Dempsey, but their fans sing average songs and are owned by some foreign oil baron who’s the Saudi Jerry Jones.

Everton has Tim Howard, the American goal keeper. Good colors, and they are the “other team” in their city (Liverpool). As a Mets fan, I can relate to that. However, their songs are really long to sing and learn.

Tottenham Hotspur are located in the Jewish district of town (London, I believe), so they were referred to as Jews in a derogatory fashion. So they turned the tables on their tormentors and embraced the “Jew” label, calling themselves the “Yid Army.” They are kind of like the Brooklyn Dodgers in a way, which I like.

However, Manchester City is the EPL version of the Mets.

Manchester United is the evil, big money team who buys everyone in sight and always wins. Man City is across town, has a nice new stadium, but always disrespected. Their songs are awesome. Especially the one about Manchester United going to see the Pope.

I have a really tough decision to make.

Bolton Wanderers	188 Bet jerseys
Aston Villa	powder blue & burgundy
Blackburn Rovers	pick a f’ing color already
Portsmouth	Three things

Hooter in Mourning

The First One That Hurts

In the five years of running the death pool, Michael Jackson is the first celebrity to die in which I’ve actually felt bad.

In general don’t like faking reverence for someone I’ve never met, when thousands of people I never met die every day and death is a natural part of life (plus the whole humor as a defense mechanism thing, I guess).

But MJ was THE MAN in the 1980s. I had the Michael trading cards. I played Thriller non-stop. I pretended he and Kurt Cobain died the same day because the Michael of the last 15 years is NOT the Michael I grew up listening to.  He was THE STAR in the world. We watched MTV 24/7 hoping Thriller would come on. And like every kid my age, I danced in my socks on the kitchen floor trying to moonwalk wearing one of my mom’s white winter gloves.

Funny story, as I was talking to my mom, and she was reminiscing on the sensation of Michael in the 80s (which coincided with many happy memories of her kids at the time), she mentioned how my neighbor Lisa, who is my age and was 5-7 at the time of Michael’s immense popularity, wanted to marry Michael Jackson.

We laughed at how Lisa probably had a better shot back then at age six than she did at age 18-24.

And that kind of made us both sad. Michael Jackson was a ridiculously gifted and talented dance, a musical genius and world-wide superstar. The 1995-2009 MJ was a tabloid freak who obviously didn’t even physically resemble 80s MJ.

I wish everyone in the world could remember him as just that musical genius and not as the plastic surgery warning poster, probable child molester, and psychologically messed up freak he was later in life.

Kate Returns to the Internet (Kind of)

Previously, I mentioned that my friend Kate got fired because of her blog (which was entertaining), but I hadn’t gotten the full story. Until now. Take it away, Kate:

The Athletic Director and I never got along. Basically, she is a crazy micro-manager.

With full-sized cardboard midget cutouts and other shenanigans, Kate's blog was a must-visit.

I took over the position when the previous girl quit. She did all the stuff I did as well as was the top assistant women’s basketball coach. Our Athletic Director was the head coach, but quit to do more fundraising for the department. When the Assistant Coach asked to be considered for the head coach job, she was told that she wouldn’t be considered and not to apply. So instead of applying, she quit.

Well, when people in the department started talking about why didn’t they give the job to the assistant, the AD told people it was because she didn’t apply.

Then I get hired. I find out all sorts of things about the assistant coach that was there before me – like she was sleeping with one of her players, drank with her players all the time, etc.

I had a blog that I had started when I was an intern at the Atlantic 10 Conference. It was fun,  joking and I always gave people access to it. It was NOTHING that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face, and in fact had said to people’s faces. (Note: N.O. readers, Kate is the female Richie)

Basically, one day I was at work and the next second I was called into our AD’s office and told that I was being fired. A student had shown her the blog (which I’m still confused as to how they got access to it unless they saw it on my computer or something). My AD had the entire thing printed out (what a waste of trees) and had items flagged in it. The one thing she mentioned over and over again was that someone had posted “Leave Lame Forest and come back to Philadelphia” in the comments.  Which is something I hadn’t even said!  I wasn’t given the opportunity to take it down, talk to the student, or anything.

I packed up my stuff, took my blog off-line just because I figured she would start telling people about it and I didn’t want people that were not my friends to read it.

I later found out that the student who I think turned in my blog was someone who was “out to get me” because myself and another person didn’t hire her to work for us for the summer and she was pissed.

I also found out that BEFORE I was fired they had called the Assistant Coach girl who I took over the job from and re-hired her.

In my meeting, they asked me what I had done that day and any loose ends that they would need to finish up. I mentioned about 10 different contracts that I had sent out and a number of different people that I had contacted. The AD couldn’t believe I had done so many things that day. She never liked me, and would constantly call me into her office and tell me that I should CC her on every email I sent out. Which is a total crock of shit – because how do you do that?

So, now I’m living in the city of Chicago and looking for a job. In the meantime, I’m catching up on my reading and all that stuff!

Did you ever talk to an HR person about the whole thing? Or just say screw it, I should probably just move on with my life?

HR was in the room with us… I didn’t have to sign anything though and she was just there to take my keys. The AD is a total pushover so the HR lady didn’t even speak

When you first made the blog, you named it with your full name. Did you consider the fact that people you might not want to see it would easily find it? Did you worry about the work factor when setting it up? I went the anonymous route. While anyone could easily “figure out” who I am, just a quick google search of my name doesn’t bring you here. Although, I did that when I realized “holy shit, my mom could find this on Google!”

I put up a Google block on my blog , so you couldn’t find it through searching my name. I even checked and it worked.

I probably didn’t help you by linking to it on this site. Someone Googling you might have found it via my link. Will you create a new blog under some form of anonymity?

I’m thinking about it

Awesome. So there’s guest-blogger Kate.

The Anti-Fan

The Roommate and I were watching Texas and LSU in the College World Series last night. LSU, with a win, would be national champions.

So naturally, we were rooting for LSU to fail and have their hopes and dreams crushed. Not out of a love for Texas (I wish they both could lose), but because they are up river by an hour and everyone in Louisiana is an LSU fan despite the fact that 90% of them went to another college, or no college at all.

Spite, really. We rooted against them for spite. We were joined by another friend, who was also rooting hard against LSU and we went out in public, to a local dive.

The roommate expressed that he hates being “the anti-fan” but I pointed out that the joy he felt when Texas beat LSU, 5-1, was genuine, and he couldn’t turn it off. You can’t lie to yourself about it. And it’s probably a normal thing for people.

You prefer indifference to your enemies, because it means their success doesn’t affect you. But, you just can’t help rooting against them.

Besides, they’ll probably never find out. And if they win… well, as Sidney Crosby shows here, the winners have no problem sleeping at night:

Winners sleep with the Stanley Cup

Adventures in Social Networking

Interesting scene from Thursday night.  I’m in Atlanta with JO, and I had to write a press release sometime that evening, so I brought the laptop with me to a bar. We eat, I write the release, put the laptop away and have a Guiness… and then JO discovers that comedian Greg Proops is in the bar. JO tweets this fact, but misspells Proops, and then the people sitting next to us ask him for a picture.

JO takes the picture so they can all get in, and then looks up how to spell Proops on my laptop by pulling up HIS Twitter page with him standing right there.

At this point, the kid who took the picture has already uploaded it to his Twitter and says “hey, wanna see it?” JO re-tweets it, becomes a follower of this dude, and then the picture is forwarded on to Proops’ Twitter.

At which time, I believe he used the Twitter tweet to his phone to get away from other people who are infatuated with D-List celebrities.

This is way more intense (and stupid) than my Twitter habits. I just use it to provide one-liners on the top right of this page, and to tell people in a city that I’m there, and they should offer me places to stay if my flight is cancelled.

Using Twitter to say “look! I met some relatively insignificant person!” is dumb. Unlike, say, using facebook to send my mom pitures of my (brother-like) friend’s wife’s ultrasound.