Your Beard is Good

Rainman + Yao Ming = Harmony

2012-02-21T11:12:00.003-08:00

I'm not white.

For the few of you that read this that don't know that fact you are in for a rude awakening. Sure my constant references to Gossip Girl, Whole Foods, and Kanye West may have fooled you, but the truth is that I'm as brown as Charlie. Or rice. Or whatever is brown, but don't say turds because that will accelerate the deflation of my self worth. Being brown does have its advantages such as getting entry into the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University based solely on the color of my skin and not the content of my GPA.

Sorry white people with better grades. Blame MLK.

Being a minority in suburbia in 1997 wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Not that it was cracked up to be anything. So maybe it WAS what it was cracked up to be? I'm not sure what's happening right now. I always felt slightly out of place in most situations. It always felt like people were watching me a little closer and keeping an eye out on what I would do.

Mainly because my fly was down. I blame the Arizona Jean company.

It may have been paranoia, but I did feel it at times. Playing sports as an extreme minority brings out a lot racial situations. There were plenty of times jokes would be made by opposing teams referring to "dot heads" or "turbans" to try and make fun of me. Which when you think about it is ridiculous. How can you wear a helmet on top of your turban? Come on people, simple logistics. Take physics class.

The wisecracks weren't limited to other teams though. There were jokes made by kids in our own locker room about smelling weird and horrific puns off of my dad's name. It never really stopped in high school and to be honest I never said anything about it because my dad had told me it was going to happen. I just gritted my teeth, nodded, and went home thinking life would have been a lot easier if I was white.

America is still a land where everyone is stereotyped. As we've progressively gotten more diverse those stereotypes have been broken down time and again. An Indian person isn’t always a doctor, works in IT, or owns a gas station. They can be a rap star. A Jewish person isn't always your agent, a lawyer, or a materialistic teenage girl. They can be a rap star. An Italian isn't always on Jersey Shore, in the mafia, or running a pizza place. They can be...well you get it. Wow, there are a lot of rappers. You would think they would make their living in a less crowded field. Stereotypes affect perception of people and whether they can do certain things. This brings me to one person in particular.

Jeremy Lin.

If you've noticed in the past few weeks there has been much said of one Jeremy Lin and for good reason. He's an anomaly. He is now an NBA star, but he is only one of 4 NBA players to have gone to Harvard. As little as 3 weeks ago he was sleeping on his brother's couch which I guess made him homeless. He received no scholarship offers coming out of high school.

Oh, and he's Asian.

To be fair there have been a few Asian players in the NBA led by the Jay-Z lyrical pal Yao Ming. (Aside: My favorite part of that song is not the fact that Jay-Z felt the need to drop Yao Ming in there for another reason than showing off the fact he could put Yao Ming in a song, but it is all the other name dropping his does in that song. Oprah, JFK, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Steve Madden, Beanie Sigel, Memph Bleek, Chris Rock, Stephon Marbury, Louis Vuitton, and, of course, Rainman. Any time I listen to that song I imagine those people to be in homeroom and Jay-Z rapping their name and they have to raise their hand and say, "present." How has no rich uppity school hired him to do it one day? "Can I get a what what for Adam Johnson in the front row, followed by Tanya Monson in the back? Uh, what I mean is that Janet Adams is all whack, but Tommy Sanders ain't all that... JOHN CROW WHERE YOU AT?!?!") What makes Lin different is that he's not a 7'6" giant. In NBA terms he is an "average" 6'3 200 pounder with mad hops and skills like someone that has skills.

Keepin' it real.

Lin has been tearing up the NBA and setting records for most points in his first 7 career starts and leading the Knicks back to respectability. He’s turned the team around and given life to a city dying for a basketball winner. This is what columnists around the country tell me. They also don’t understand how Lin could have been overlooked for so long. He’s obviously very good, how could not ONE school in the country offer him a scholarship. As I’ve been reading these articles many writers pussyfoot around the topic of race. They say Lin went to a small school. He fell through the cracks. Some say his jump shot wasn’t good enough. Many of these articles are written by people who have never been given a sideways glance due to the color of their skin. But they don’t say what they really mean. Jeremy Lin didn’t get a scholarship to play basketball because of one big reason.

He’s Asian.

Asians aren’t supposed to be able to dunk, or run fast, or be quick off the dribble. They are supposed to be maddeningly unathletic and love Hello Kitty. When coaches looked at Jeremy Lin they saw a good ASIAN basketball player. How could he match up against more athletic guys? They couldn’t separate his race from his ability. Some coaches have come out and said “Lin was the best player on the floor,” in his championship game, but just a “nice player.” Does that make any sense?

I feel confident in saying that Lin was stereotyped because I’ve been stereotyped my whole life. When people look at me they don’t think “he’s athletic.” They think he can probably keep the right score. I’ve been picked last many times. When I moved to LA I would play pickup basketball, ask someone if I could play next with them, then watch as I got kicked off the team when someone else who “looked” better showed up. I’ve had to prove myself over and over again. People don’t know that I shot thousands of shots at my basketball hoop in my driveway growing up. Or played thousands of hours of baseball. One of my friend’s boyfriends once said “You’re the best Indian basketball player I’ve played with.” Not one of the best players, but an Indian qualifier.

Minority Report.

I’ll be honest. I don’t really watch the NBA. It bores me with its constant timeouts and infinite “tallness.” Last week was the first NBA regular season game I’ve watched in 5 years because Jeremy Lin was playing. I was intrigued. I wanted to see the hype. I wanted to vicariously live through him that moment seeing as he’s tearing down stereotypes. I wanted to envision an NBA with a guy running around with a turban. Jeremy Lin may not carve a path for future Asian players, or Indian players, or Alien players from Mars that won’t be overlooked due to skin color. He’s not Jackie Robinson. Hell, he’s not even Barack Obama. But he’s making people realize then when someone is damn good at something maybe they’re just really good and that’s what we should judge them on.

Or maybe we’ll judge them on their rapping.

Just Breathe. And Other Tips On How Live.

2012-02-01T10:40:00.001-08:00

I read Slate Magazine. Contrary to popular belief this does not make me smarter, more well rounded, or give me a larger vocabulary than the general population. I was already all of those things. Hey-Oh! Ego burn. Anyways, I enjoy Slate due to their vast array of topics and writers who seem to pick at things that most of us don't even think about. I also enjoy them because of their cheeky rotating scroll, which in typical newspaper esque headline writing, is called, "The Slatest."

"Guys, we put an 'S' in front of 'latest' and it spells out our name plus what just happened. Can I get a What What from Web Development?!?!"

You can get smart writing on topics that integral to America on Slate on a daily basis. The Republican Primaries. The Debt Crisis. How to live longer. If hibernating animals get up to go to the bathroom. Yes, that's correct; on the front page of Slate today is a very important article on if a bear does, in fact, take a dump in the woods. A question many generations have been sarcastically saying in retort to obvious questions asked by other people. Hard hitting journalism at work.

When are they going to break down the sound of one hand clapping?

But none of those topics really even matter. (Aside: If you're still intrigued by if hibernating animals do in fact get up to go pee, the answer is yes. The answer is given in the second paragraph of the story which then goes on unnecessarily for 3 more paragraphs. It was basically the Phish of Slate articles.) There's really only one section of the online magazine that I read on a regular basis. Sure, I read about Gingrich's Literal Moon Bounce House and the fact that scientists have been messing with Avian Flu that can eventually help create dangerous bio weapons, but that really doesn't tickle my fancy every day. There's only one place that does that on Slate.

Dear Prudence.

I'll admit I'm a sucker for any kind of letter. If it starts with "Dear," "To Whom It May Concern," or "My brother you have a windfall of $1000000 GBP," I'll always read it. But people writing letters for advice are massively entertaining for me. Growing up I would get the Sunday paper and immediately flip to the Life section where I could read the hilarious trials and tribulations of Beetle Bailey and Garfield, while doing only half of the Junior Jumble due to its ridiculous secret phrases. Right there on the page across from those was the Dear Abby part of the paper. Or was it Dear Ann? I don't know, but I'm more enamored with the fact that two sisters (And neither of their names were Abby or Ann) could both have advice columns. Can you imagine those Thanksgivings?

"So kids, I have this 'friend' who got pregnant, but doesn't want the dad to be involved because his family is very intense."
"I got this sis."
"Wait, why do you always get this?"
"I just had some woman ask me the same thing in my..."
"I have a column too! MAAAAAAA! Which one of us should answer this?"
"Well, Ann. You can go first."
"ANN ALWAYS GOES FIRST. I HATE YOU."
"Suck it Abby."

I'm not sure if it's a secret love of drama that I have, but I immensely enjoy Dear Prudence. It's fascinating that people would take advice from some woman that they don't even know. Who is Prudence? There is no way that's a qualified person that's giving advice. Prudence. I wouldn’t trust anyone with that name mainly because it sounds too hoity toity for my taste. Why not just call it Dear Grey Poupon? Or Dear Mummy the Limo is Late? It could be any Joe or Joan off the street yet people still write to "her" like she's Dr. Mother F'in Drew. I would love to see a Prudence Prudencensky PHD in something. Can someone provide that? The other day I noticed I was actually getting fired up at some of the questions people were asking. Here are some examples of questions being asked. (Abridged versions)

“I farted in the middle of the night with my boyfriend in bed. What should I do?”

“I have fallen in love with a man, but he’s allergic to cats. I’m thinking about giving up my 8 year old cat and my friends are incredulous! What should I do?”

“My girlfriend and I are going to a wedding. She told me she made out with 3 groomsmen, but before we ever met. I’m horrified and don’t want to go to the wedding. What should I do?”

“My husband has grown a beard. I find it unattractive and told him to shave it. He won’t! Now we’re barely speaking. What should I do?”

“I dropped a piece of fruitcake on the ground. It’s only been 3 seconds. What should I do?”

“I have to pee. What should I do?”

All of those are real questions to Prudence*. Are we this helpless in America that we’re asking strangers for help? You farted? Your friends want you to keep your cat over someone you’re in love with? YOU HATE BEARDS?!?! YOU HEATHEN. Ahem. And even though these questions are so ridiculous in nature and don’t require any “advice” at all I still read what Prudence has to say. While I’m reading these I’m usually trying to imagine what’s going through her head at that instance. I’ve narrowed it down to one thought.

I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this.

To be fair Prudence does give the obvious advice with a bit of snark on the side. As for the farting one her advice started with “It’s obvious that upon waking yourself up with your trumpet blast, what you should have done was gotten dressed, gathered your things, moved to another town, and changed your name” All that was needed was right after that sentence a pop up showing up with sound saying, “No she Did UNT!” and two snaps. I, for one, don’t begrudged Prudence, whoever you are. People in this country love getting advice about anything. It’s entertaining and unnecessary all at the same time. I hope one day I have a very solvable problem to ask her too.

Or I’ll see what she says about one hand clapping.

*unconfirmed

PIPA, but not Middleton

2012-01-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Ms. Boxer and Ms Feinstein,

It troubles me that I have come to find out that you are a supporter of the PIPA bill that will be up for a vote in the Senate on January 24th 2012. As a California resident and voter of yours I have put my faith in you to continue to do the proper thing when it comes to our state and country.

While I do agree that online piracy is an issue in this country and people with original thoughts should not have their work stolen, the PIPA bill as currently written will not promote more creativity, but stifle it for many years to come. Our country was built on the creative outlet of many people who were told no and had no avenue for their ideas. In today's age the Internet has given EVERYONE an avenue to show off their talents to a mass audience. Voting in favor of this bill will not only bring a halt to that creativity it will bring undue consequences to people trying to start their own business or continue their dreams.

As currently written PIPA will give government the right to seek court orders against any site even linking to one with pirated content. Sites that are just starting may not have the man power to check every website they link to yet they will be shut down. This piece of the bill is especially troubling.

"Directs the AG to identify and provide advance notice to operators of nonauthoritative domain name system servers (NDNSSs), financial transaction providers (FTPs), Internet advertising services (IASs), and providers of information location tools (ILTs), including search engines, online directories, and other indexes with hypertext links or referrals to online locations, whose action may be required to prevent such NDN-related ISDIA activity"

Not only will search engines be forced to remove sites with even a hint of online piracy, many search engines will be shells of themselves. The education of young people in this country has been greatly enhanced by the Internet (including my 11 and 7 year old cousins who are immensely smarter than I was growing up due to the usage of Google) and that will slowly erode. If not done in time they will have legislation brought against them, but it is unrealistic to expect websites run by Americans who are trying to run their business to be able to eliminate it all in one fell swoop. The Internet is a home for free speech which will now be curbed due to legislation at every turn.

And Yes I agree 100 percent about stopping pirated content. But there are measures in place right now that can be expanded on. If an artist sees something on You Tube and wants it pulled they can tell them to pull it and they will. We need to make those measures more prominent with overseas sites. But there are better ways to do that than this bill. In fact, today two of your fellow senators backtracked on their support of this bill for that very fact. The slogan on the front of Ms Boxer's website says, "Your Voice Counts." Today, we'll find out if that is a truth or more spin from another politician. I please hope you do the correct thing.

Sincerely,

Rahul Subramanian

Harry Uranus Was Never Going To Work

2012-01-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

I didn't have a date in high school.

If I was sitting in the audience of a movie and someone said this line on the screen while I was attempting to put 10 sour patch kids in my mouth at once, I would most definitely finish chewing said "kids" and let out a huge groan. It's become such a cliché in Hollywood that one of the main characters of any entertainment medium was seen as undesirable growing up and then turned into Rachel Leigh Cook. We get it. She wasn't all that then she met Freddy Prinze and blah blah blah now she's...Wait, what happened to Rachel Leigh Cook?

Coming next summer. She's Still All That 2: Hold the Chips.

Unfortunately, my not having a date story in high school doesn't end with making out with Freddie Prinze Jr. Maybe I meant fortunately. In either case my high school days were not as one would say, "fun." To be fair, if you categorize fun as writing down the statistics of your favorite baseball players so you can figure out their batting average WHILE THE GAME WAS GOING ON (No Internet, a TI-82 calculator, and some Hi-C. Where the ladies at? No?) fun, then I was living in a Bounce Castle filled with Mentos. The Freshmaker was so cool in the 90s.

Look it up. Not only did I not go on any dates I also never went a high school party surrounded by people named Jeff Podruski, which is what movies told me were the names of people that went to high school parties. There were two reasons for this. One, I was never invited to one. And two, I didn't know anyone named Jeff Podruski. This was a shame because I'm sure if I had friended anyone named Jeff Podruski I would have been doing keg stands and giving wedgies to undesirables.

Damn you Jeff. (Wherever you are)

I really don't care if anyone believes me because I have the audio cassette tapes of Z-100’s morning zoo to prove it. I'm not saying I recorded the show in the morning and then listened to it when I got home at 3pm while doing homework, but I’m not saying I didn’t. I always thought when I was in middle school that my high school experience would be the same as TV. Saved by the Bell, Beverly Hills 90210, Head of the Class, Welcome Back Kotter sans the weird leather jackets, but with the cool catchphrases. I knew once I got to high school I would shout out “Hey Mr. Kott-aire!" to some unsuspecting teacher and my classmates would laugh and laugh at my quick wit. Little did I know Welcome Back Kotter came out in the 70s, all the jokes had run their cycle, and no one found them funny anymore.

Thanks for being old, dad.

Even though my high school experience didn't turn out like those shows or even Boy Meets World, I still do love myself a good high school show or movie. This is why in the last month I started watching Veronica Mars. Sure, I know what you're saying. What's a Veronica Mars? Veronica Mars was a show that ran for 3 seasons on the WB/CW/ whatever and incorporated everything I like about life. Mysteries, cute girls, and high school settings. In the list of things that are perfect for me it falls somewhere between a Kool Aid making robot and red starburst.

When I was a kid I loved Encyclopedia Brown. He was solving all those mysteries in less than 10 pages and running down Bugs Meany for measly 10 cents a case. Now if you take those detective skills, put them in a cute, sassy blonde girl (Kristen Bell), and then have her be a social pariah in a high school all the while dealing with normal high school dilemmas (underage drinking, boyfriend cheating, murder of your best friend), there's only one word for that.

Narnia.

The last week or so I’ve been telling people how infatuated I’ve become with the show. The reaction ranges from, “Ugh” to “Are you a 14 year old girl” to “That’s the worst pickup line ever.” One of my friends asked me what my deal with high school TV shows is. I don’t really have an answer for that. It may have to do with never getting a high school experience that incorporated parties and girls. It may have to do with wondering it would be like to do high school-y things. It may be my gravitational pull to lockers with built in locks. I’m not really sure. I know I enjoy them, especially Veronica Mars. She always knew where the party was at even if she wasn’t invited.

She must have known Jeff Podruski.

Do the Resolution

2012-01-05T12:21:00.001-08:00

(I wrote something for my friend Zoe Blue and am now reposting it here for a myriad of reasons which include not coming up with anything original and being too lazy to insert my cacophony of vocabulary on the western world. As you can tell I received a thesaurus for Christmas. You can stop cachinnating now! As previously seen on *Wink *Wink *Wink)

I'm not a fan of making New Year's Resolutions. To me making a resolution for the when the calendar turns is lazy. Why don't we make Flag Day resolutions? It's in the middle of the year and then you have the whole year to turn around that crippling tic tac addiction you've tried so hard to quit. I can't quit you orange tic tac! The realization is, though, that we live in a world where the quote "Why do today what can be done tomorrow" is a life motto. A quote that was uttered by the incorrigible Aaron Burr. A man who was so great at procrastination that he killed Alexander Hamilton during a duel. Why didn't he follow his own advice and wait until the next day to shoot him?

Do as I say not as I blah blah.
This is not to say that I don't make resolutions. I do. Sometimes. I tend to make resolutions throughout the year so my New Year's resolution doesn't really carry any extra weight than the others. Also, I lose track of what is a "resolution" and what is a "wish." When people ask me what my New Year's resolution is I usually say, "I want to own a casino." As has been pointed out to me many a time that is not a resolution if you're not willing to work towards it. It's a dream. I usually scoff and tell them I'm still holding out hope for that genie in a lamp. Let's all resolute for more wishes!

Rules are for losers.

When my friend asked me last week what my New Year's resolutions were I faked a coma. I don't really make any so falling on the floor was the only way to get myself out of the conversation. After she told me to stop being dramatic she rattled off 4 or 5 resolutions she had while i kept saying, "Why wait until the New Year when you can just start today?" If I didn't drive her to the restaurant I'm pretty sure she would have lit me on fire. She always has plenty of resolutions every year which always conclude with, "Get tennis lessons." When I told her I don't have any she said that I had to have one. After an interrogation session of 3 and a half hours (see: 8 minutes) she noticed that I need to have one resolution.

Be more selfish.

Normally, this would be seen as a bad thing. When you're 8 and you're selfish your mom sends you to your room and takes away your Game Boy. When you're 18 and selfish your girlfriend takes away your Playstation. When you're 34 and selfish your wife takes away half of your money. But she meant selfish in a good way. I always care how other people feel without taking my own feelings into account. As long as they feel better my mood doesn't matter. But it should. My heart has been broken before, but I always care to make sure the other person doesn't think I hate them. Even at the expense of my own feelings. In 2012 it's time to be emotionally selfish. If someone makes me feel bad I shouldn't care about them before me. It should be the opposite. So that's my resolution for the New Year. Care about me.

Or I could take tennis lessons.

No One Shops In The "Old Adults" Book Section

2011-12-29T11:38:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I was convinced by the year 2012 we would have a drug that makes you immortal. How hard could it possibly be to make a pill where your body turns to armor and you don't age? What are we paying scientists for? To cure cancer? DNA Testing? Vaccines for unforeseen diseases? Bollocks, I say! I don't really say "bollocks," but it's a nice thing to write in print and makes me seem more "couth" or as the British say, "Pip Pip!" The fact that the calendar will turn to 2012 and we will be no closer to a cure for mortality aches the soul of an 11 year old me.

Also soul crushing for an 11 year old me? Being out of fruit roll ups.

Every year around this time I'm reminded that I won't live forever. No matter how many times I let a spider bite me or run into a lightning patch (is that a thing?) or try to book a 5 day/4 night stay at the Downtown Krypton Regal it never works. (The previous sentence brought to you by the Nerd Association of America. Come on down and check out our literature on more things that won't get you laid.) As I get older in age, hanging out with my family becomes a 20 Questions game where every question is "When are you getting married?"

We never specified if it was a person, place, or thing.

The perpetual barrage of marriage questions does get cumbersome at times, but it's not without merit. When you get into your 30s the questions start because your parents are worried about their impending morality. Sure, that may be macabre (word of the year 2011), but if scientists actually did something (see: above) we wouldn't be discussing it. The past couple of Christmases I've noticed the questions ramping up from once a vacation to now the standard once a day during vacation. It's even gotten to the point that my grandmother who tends to not speak English is telling me on the way to the airport, "Next year I'll be waiting for you to bring something. (Wink, Wink)." It's either a wink or her cataract eye drops. I'm pretty sure that if I bring a pound cake and a button that says, "World's Best Grandma," it won't be the surprise she's looking for.

Maybe I'll make it Universe's Best Grandma. "Grandma, you're the best in the Universe! That includes Neptune! No one even cares about that one!"

The marriage questions aren't necessarily what make me feel older even though they should. What makes me realize that I'm now supposed to be a responsible adult is hanging out with kids and shopping with my mom. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily together, but necessarily necessary for this story of necessities. I apologize for everything that just happened. I've become what I always feared when I hang out with kids.

Out of touch.

The other day while I was driving in the car my 11 year old cousin turned to her favorite radio station. A song was playing and I had no idea who it was. It was a sort of catchy tune and my cousin knew it so I asked her what it was. That right there should have forced me to do a tuck and roll out of the moving vehicle. I'm asking an 11 year old what music is playing? ME?!? I read TMZ. I have a subscription to Spin Magazine. I've seen Taylor Swift YouTube videos and quite possibly left a comment on one of them which cannot be confirmed. I shouldn't be asking her what it was. Of course, it was Selena Gomez which led into an epic pre-teen rant which included Justin Bieber's Christmas CD, Wizards of Waverly Place, something to do with a promise ring, and another mention of Justin Bieber.

Then she told me to shut up.

It was at this point in the week that I was starting to realize that I'm becoming my dad. No idea what is "hip" or "in” and reading street signs out loud to no one in particular. (Aside: When I tell people he does this everyone looks at me like I’m embellishing for the sake of a laugh. No. This is what he does as evidenced by when I was dropped off at the Airport and he starting to read the Terminal signs. “Terminal, A, B, D. Long term parking. Departures. Arrivals.” He is a walking Rosetta Stone. I don’t know if he does this because he likes reading or to prove to everyone that he is a literate person. Because if he told me could read I would believe him, even though he’s an immigrant.) As I confronted this reality, the next day I went shopping with my mom. We were walking around the mall and stopped in Bed, Bath, and Beyond. My mom was perusing the flatware or some such kitchen item and said she was done looking around. I turned to her and said something I never thought I would say.

“Let’s keep browsing. Bed, Bath, and Beyond has some stuff I want to see.”

WHAT.

It is at that very moment that I understood what being a grown up was all about. I wanted to stay in triple B longer than my mother. The same mother that spends 8 hours in a mall. The same mother that I would be begging, when I was a teenager, to be finished so I could go home and listen to the AM radio. All that I needed to complete the adult outfit were a pair of ill fitting Dockers and the ability to yell at a child for wanting more candy. My morality was in front of me. It’s in front of us all.

Why Are Those Sleigh Bells So Loud and Other Yuletide Inquiries

2011-12-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas
I gave you my heart
But the very next day
You gave it away

-Wham!

In 2011 if you asked 100 people who sings the song "Last Christmas" you would get 4 different answers. Taylor Swift, The cast of Glee, Ashley Tisdale, and an egg nog filled Uncle Bob at Christmas dinner when he found out Aunt Claire was cheating on him with the YMCA lifeguard. "I GAVE YOU MY HAAARRRT CLAIRE." I always imagine that being done in a Boston accent, but that's neither here nor there. The reality is that few people remember that the song was originally sang by a broken hearted George Michael and other guy in Wham in 1984 before the whole George Michael liking men thing all kind of snowballed into an avalanche of naughty.

See what I did there?

Don't answer that.

The song and subsequent video is a perfect take on losing a love around the holidays. Not only does George Michael attempt to rub it in this woman's face for breaking his heart (take that you whore!), he is somehow at a Christmas gathering of people where everyone has long flowing hair and when they return from outside always have a perfect patch of snow on their head that has not yet melted. After watching the video I had so many more questions. Why is George Michael at a party with someone that gave away his heart on December 26th of last year? Why does his new girlfriend wear sunglasses inside when meeting everyone else? Why do they not wear hats when they go outside in the snow? Do they not want to mess up their Vidal Sassoon haircuts? And the most important question I have is why at the end of the video does it say "Merry Christmas and Thank You?"

Thank you for relating to this song and having your heart stomped on during the holidays when everyone should be surrounded by people they love, but this year you won't be because SHE TOOK EVERYTHING.

Merry Christmas!!

To be fair I do understand why this song is popular and has been covered over 100 times by such music luminaries as Jimmy Eat World, Hilary Duff, and my new favorite band The Parenthetical girls who were once known as The Swastika Girls. (Aside: At what point in the band naming process do you even come up with the idea to name your group Swastika Girls? "Jill, so I don't think The My Little Ponies is a good enough name for us." “What about The Rainbow Brights?" "No, not hardcore enough. I have this sweet name for our band. Swastika Girls. It's so inappropriate it's appropriate." "Yeah, girlfriend, we're going to get all Third Reich in this mother." "Third, what now? I don't know what that is. “Whatever, just make sure you put 'the’ in the name because that's all the rage now." I'm sure the day they went up to their management and told them that it was just a lot of people lighting themselves on fire.) Last Christmas is a very relatable song to love lost. Everyone has been heartbroken at one time or another unless you are a robot or Bruce Jenner's face. The tune is catchy and everyone loves Christmas songs so what’s not to like about it?

How about everything?

In the spirit of Christmas this is not really a “Christmas” song. This is no dashing through the snow and guffawing in a way no human would possibly guffaw. This is no 12 days of presents that increase in absurdity from one day to the next. This is no continually looking up what a “bough of holly” is every single year. Those songs are all happy songs. There is no merriment in “Last Christmas” unless you sell Zoloft. Most Christmas songs are happy and filled with joy and talk about upbeat things. Last Christmas just shows you how cold some people can be by dumping someone on December 26th. How rude. So you took the present and then got rid of him. I feel your pain George in the heterosexual sense. Not that anyone has done that to me, but you probably put a lot of thought into that snow globe of you two holding hands. What’s your reward for that?

Dumpsville. Pop: You

The past couple weeks I’ve heard this song a lot more than previous years and every time someone says “Merry Christmas.” Merry Christmas? This is the antithesis of being merry and probably the antithesis of Christmas. Not that I know what the antithesis of Christmas would be, but I’m guess it would be getting “Last Christmas” on a mix tape or Satan’s Bar Mitzvah. Either way it’s pretty close.

“Fire and Rain” would be a great first dance song for Satan. I see you James Taylor.

I love Christmas. I love giving out presents. I love the decorations. I love the singing. I love people putting trees INSIDE of their homes for no obvious reason other than it’s the only time of year where a full size Douglas Fir by your fireplace doesn’t make you look like a tree loving hippie. I love that my dad will steal my cousin’s toy helicopter that I got him (Oh, spoiler alert) and will refuse to give it to him for at least 10 minutes because he’s having fun flying it himself which will subsequently lead to crying. I love the joy of people at this time of year. I say we keep it that way. Last Christmas is not merry. Or bright. Or even white. Look at the dinner table in the video. Let’s leave that song on the shelf for future Christmases.

We’ll bring it back for New Year’s.

Getting Older is Much Better When You're Getting Younger

2011-12-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Last week I saw The Muppet Movie. Since this isn't a movie review blog I won't break down the plot points and various set design questions, but I will give it 4 "Waka Wakas." I'm not sure if 4 "Waka Wakas" is any good since Fozzie only says that after a bad joke, but it's better than 4 Waka Flocka Flames which will probably just get you arrested outside a Chick-fil-A at 1:30 AM.

The whole last paragraph was brought to you by "I Love Pop Culture"... a Rahul joint.

This is the part where I tell you that I grew up on the Muppets and Kermit was my favorite frog of all time. Unfortunately, that would be untrue. The only thing I really remembered about the Muppets before seeing the movie was that Miss Piggy was a straight up she-wolf in a pig outfit, Kermit was the ringleader, someone named Animal loved head banging, Fozzie told the aforementioned horrendous jokes, and that chef guy really needed to take a linguistics class. The clues I got about their characters were all from that show "Muppet Babies" which really provides no details about them because what information do babies know? Nothing. If babies gave us any information maybe they wouldn't be crying all the time.

Crybabies.

While we were in the theater I noticed that my friend and I were the only two people in the place without kids attached to our arms, legs, and left clavicles. All that was missing from the theater were finger-paints on the walls and the inability of some poor kid to stick a french fry in the proper hole. It then dawned on me that my friend and I had also seen Madagascar together in the same type of situation. Either we love watching 2 hour features with children or we're doing the "relaxing day out" bit all wrong. I'm pretty sure at this point we should just be watching SpongeBob at the Octomom's house on weekends to complete all of our life goals.

When we were there I realized these kids had no reference for the Muppets. They didn't know the back-story of the piano playing dog or why they were referencing "Benson." Oh sorry. Spoiler alert. Retroactive to the previous sentence. (Aside - It doesn't really matter that I spoiled that line since many of you will have zero clue who or what Benson is and the only reason I know is that my dad loves that show. For those of you who don't know Benson was a comedy where a butler at the governor's mansion, unironically named Benson, works his way up, through various hilarious shenanigans, to run for Governor against the man who once hired him. This started the golden age of butlers on TV which included Mr. Belvedere, Geoffrey from Fresh Prince and, uh, Benson. Well, I guess it wasn't that golden of an age. It was more of a tin age of butlering. According to science journals, however, butlers increased by .0002 percent during this time in America. Take that chauffeurs!) The kids in the theater were experiencing the Muppets for the first time and it made me think of how the Muppets are sort of ingrained in one of my childhood memories.

YOU SAID I COULD STAY UP UNTIL 9. I MUST HAVE BEEN ADOPTED.

Oh. Whoops. Wrong one.

When I was 12 or maybe 14 or it might have been yesterday, my parents took my brother and me to Disneyworld. There were three highlights of the trip for me. One, we got to stay in a hotel and the hotel had free fruit punch. I don't know why fruit punch excited me so much back then, but it probably had to do with discovering a concoction where fruits come together in one delicious liquid. Thanks for inventing that Kool Aid Man. (I'm assuming he's the one who did it with his Oh Yeahs and all around generosity) Two, my mom refused to go on Space Mountain with us due to her crippling fear of rollercoasters, space, and mountains. That was a highlight mainly because when we asked her why she wasn’t coming with us she said…

“I don’t want to go to space.”

Space, eh, is it a frontier we really need to see? – My mom.

But looking back on it the real highlight was when I was in a store either at Disneyworld or somewhere in the Orlando area. I don’t remember the specifics since I was high off of fruit punch and/or the burning Florida sun, but I know we were in a store. It was in this store I saw a doll of a Muppet that was blue. And had a really large nose. And was wearing a suit. As a kid of the 90s I can attest to a few things. Zubaz was great. Slush Puppies were (and still are) great. And any doll with a suit on and a large nose is something I needed to have. It’s really just simple mathematics. I begged and pleaded with my anti-space race mom to buy it for me. As soon as she bought it I clutched Gonzo so hard since I loved him so much. Why? Because I like when people buy stuff for me.

This is America.

I still have that Gonzo doll somewhere in my parent’s house. When I was watching the Muppet movie I thought of how that doll was part of a childhood memory I hadn’t thought of until sitting in that theater. People always say that when we were kids were “simpler times.” It’s really true. There was nothing to think about back then. We begged for a Gonzo doll, we ate ice cream, and our parents paid the bills. Now we have to worry about the rent, having clean underwear, and why our girlfriend’s are crying watching “Don’t Forget the Lyrics.” “I sang that same song at karaoke the day after Captain Jellybelly died!” “Who’s that?” “It was my fish, YOU JERK.” Awkward. While sitting at the theater I thought about all the kids that don’t have to worry about getting the parking validated. They were going to laugh at the Muppets and then in 20 years remember something that brought a smile to their face. It’s a moment that made me smile thinking about it. It was bear-y great.

Waka Waka.

Kids Uncooperated

2011-11-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

There are approximately 75 million children in the United States. Out of those 75 million I'm positive 74,999,996 of them can get away with anything. The De Leon family in Houston, Texas is very strict. To be fair, we won't be seeing any of the previous sentences in an ad with Sally Struthers anytime soon, but I'm confident in those statistics. I was about to substitute Sarah McLachlan for Sally Struthers, but then I realized Sarah McLachlan doesn't care about humans that much.

For $1 a day you can stop hearing "Angel." Might have heard that wrong.

I never understood why kids don't have to abide by the rules of government. There are plenty of signs in front of stores that say "no soliciting" yet up again marches Troop 452 of the Girl Scouts from Pleasantville, CA trying to sell me a thin mint for the 8th consecutive day. Is it weird that I go to the same place of business 8 straight days? Sure. But this isn't about me. This is about the laws governing this country and how children, just because they are selling a delicious treat that I may have purchased somewhere between 10 and 40 times, do not have to follow the rules set forth by larger humans. Not to mention the fact that if I threw an eraser at someone as a 31 year old adult, I would be booked for assault, but Patrick Jeffrey did it in 4th grade and he went to detention and they had lemonade.

The only solution is to commit crimes in an educational setting with a refreshing drink option.

The reason I bring this up is not because I don't like children. I do. Some of them are cute and you want to put them in your shopping cart and take them home so you can pick up women at the park. Unfortunately, the entire world has a problem with abducting children to use for romantic gain. It has really put a crimp in my rolodex. (1990s term) The way kids act, obviously, comes down to how their parents raise them. Parents are responsible for raising their kids the proper way. You can't coddle your kids and have them fly Lufthansa all the time. Sometimes they need a little talking to when the younger sibling hits the older one in the head with a souvenir baseball bat. Or you can handle it the way my parents did.

Why was your face so close to the bat?

I'm at the age where a lot of my friends talk about having kids or have little mini-humans running around their homes pooping everywhere. It amazes me why no one has created a house made solely out of diaper material. This seems to be the obvious solution to having a pet or a kid. The past month or so I've been involved in a few conversations about how people would and are raising their real or imaginary children. Most people have the same theories on raising children. Give them their vitamins, cut back on the amount of TV they watch, and keep them away from Justin Bieber's fertile sperm attack. But the one issue that keeps cropping up in all these conversations is what sports kids are allowed to play.

As parents (I'm not a parent, but in the future if I'm lucky enough to trick a women to get pregnant I will be put in this category so stop word parsing. No one likes a parser.) we want our kids to grown up to be cool, popular, good looking, and most importantly rich because when we get old, Social Security will cease to exist and we'll be living on the moon which will be difficult to hide our money in our pillowcases with the whole no gravity thing getting in the way. But biggest of all we want our kids to be safe. Playing sports is where the coolness converges with the safety. If I could draw one of those graphs on this blog to illustrate I still wouldn't do it since I'm not good at drawing. The other day the topic of sports we would let our kids play came up and both of my friends said they wouldn't let their kids play football.

I wish my mom wouldn't have let me play. Pigskin burn.

It seems to be a prevailing thought among most of my friends (men and women) that their kids won't be allowed to play football. It does make perfect sense. There have been studies that show football shortens your lifespan and gives you more permanent injuries than you would sustain playing another sport. I, usually, don't say anything around these conversations because I’m not sure where I stand on the topic and as I've said repeatedly I want to be the cool parent. If my kid wants to jump off buildings for fun then go buy some bungee cords kid! But first ask mom because I do not want to get yelled at later like the time I bought a butter substitute. I didn’t see the “not” on the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” ok?!? It would be a weird marketing tool to say “I Can’t Believe It’s Butter,” though. Point taken.

Advantage? Literacy.

My mom was terrified when I started playing football. I’m sure my parents had many arguments (see: 1) over whether I was going to be allowed to play. At the end of the day they let me play and luckily for my mom I was so good that I only played roughly 30 plays my entire high school career. Less is more? No? The point is that raising children is never as cut and dry as they can or can’t do certain things. One of my friends is set on her kid becoming a tennis star. She’s been looking for private teachers that can teach the kid the right way to play right at a young age. She doesn’t have a kid. Another one of my friends is trying to get his son to throw left handed so he has a better chance to play professional baseball. He’s 2. We have this view that we know exactly what we want for our kids, but it won’t work out that way. One day they’ll come up to us and say “I want to play football” or "I want to go sky diving," or "I stole $432 of North Face gear from the mall and now they're banning me for life, but my shift at Hot Topic is in 20 minutes," and we’ll be faced with a decision we had made long before that point. If that ever happens to me I’ll only tell my kid one thing.

Ask your mother.

Turn It Up. Actually Don't. We Don't Need a Noise Violation.

2011-11-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

When I was in college I was a radio DJ. For a kid that always did homework while listening to the sultry sounds of AM radio it was quite the dream. For those kids out there that might have stumbled upon this blog by complete accident because, let's be honest, you must have made a pretty big mistake to end up here, let me give you some advice. There's nothing more comforting than doing your calculus homework and hearing a rousing debate on the future of this country by two people with thick New York accents and traffic on the 8's. "Dawwwn, I'm tellin' ya. This is gonna be hee-yooge." Ok, that's a lie. Everything is more comforting than that, but in order to feel better about my upbringing I needed to bring everyone down. It takes me back to my number one question when someone tells me something.

What about me?

All throughout high school I wanted to be a broadcaster. So when I went to college one of the first things I did was sign up at the campus radio station to be a DJ for the top 40 hits station. This was going to be my big break. I was going to be like Kasey Kasem, Rick Dees, or anyone else no one under the age of 55 has ever heard of. My first shift at the station was the obligatory 2am-4am shift Friday mornings that they gave to freshman. Before my first shift I decided that I had to have a hip made up radio DJ name though like that Kasem fellow and Cousin Brucie. Let's be serious for a second. No one named Bruce would ever refer to themselves as Brucie if it wasn't as a radio DJ. I see you Cousin Brucie. That's ludicrous and a slam on the intelligence of an entire nation. My real name, obviously, was not going to get me recognized by any of the higher ups so I changed it to something much cooler.

Duncan Spires.

Looking back on it, that probably wasn't the best choice for a radio name. Duncan Sheik was really popular back then. LEAVE ME ALONE. When I told one of my friends I changed my name for the radio he asked me if it was, "Roland Joint." I knew I should have consulted professional name changers! If I had to do it over again I would have incorporated my real name into this made up fantasy land of entertainment names. Ra-Cool. Who-ool. R-Fresh. Actually it would be none of those. It would be Ra-School, cause I'm giving you an education on some phat beats. Boiiii.

Let's pretend that didn't happen.

Working at the radio station was pretty great. Aside from the fact that I was praying that the next person showed up for their shift so I didn't have to listen to "Livin' La Vida Loca" (We get it Ricky Martin. Your life is great. Braggart.) another 4 times, I was in the station by myself for most of it. In the station we had a promotional CD bin. The CDs were all labeled with a huge PROMO on the front and were not allowed to be resold. I wish someone would have told Ebay that, and then maybe, they would have some human decency and not let people resell it to unsuspecting patrons who would just like to purchase an original Keith Sweat CD for his girlfriend's birthday.

Keith Perspiration was already taken.

The bin was always filled with CDs that our station wouldn't play. Since we played top 40 hits we only played Destiny's Child, Ricky Martin, and Britney Spears on a terror loop of insanity. Did you know Destiny's Child had a lot of bills in the 90s? What happened to their direct deposit? I was really upset there was never a 60 minutes piece done into the finances of Kelly Rowland. Hire an accountant, boo. (People in the 90s loved saying boo. Look it up.) One night I decided to go snooping through the old promo bin. We weren't technically supposed to rifle through the bin, but since everyone else took their favorite jams I was going to do it to. My mom always asked "If Tommy jumped from a cliff, would you too?" Usually, it was no, but if Tommy had a fistful of free CDs in his hand, you bet your life I was jumping off that cliff too.

Give us the whole scenario, Mom.

During another glorious playback of Mambo #5 I decided I was going to take at least one of the CDs. Since the statute of limitations is up on such shenanigans (it is up right? I didn’t have time to look at the law enforcement rules on compact disc larceny. I’ll just say this. You don’t own me Columbia House. I mean you do own me since I still haven’t paid off the bill where you blatantly lied and said I could get 10 CDs for a penny, but you don’t own me in the moral sense of owning things.) I have decided to tell everyone what I took. I picked two cd singles out of that bin. One was this by some band named Swirl 360. I don’t know why I liked that song, but it probably has something to do with the late 90s and liking ice cream. The other one I took was this.

I had never heard of that song until I took it out of the bin. Please see: listening to AM radio in high school. To this day I have no idea who Mack is and why he’s returning. I’m guessing Mack is the nickname of Mark Morrison, but who knows? I feel like this is one huge game Mark Morrison is playing and the only people involved in his labyrinth are us. I like games. I listened to this song easily 10,000 (approximate) times over the next 4 years. I even casually would drop it in conversations. “You lieeeeddd to me.” Then I would go home bawling because people were lying to me. Mark Morrison owes me a lot of depression medication.

I worked at that radio station for exactly one calendar year. I learned a lot of things at that radio station. I learned the 7 things you can’t say on the radio. I learned how to run down the hall, pee, and get back to the studio in less than 3 and a half minutes. I learned that Mark Morrison is really distraught. But there’s one lesson I learned there that I still use in my day to day life.

I really wish I didn't choose Duncan Spires.

Tell Me All That Voodoo That You Do That Curses Blues Clues

2011-11-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

I don't curse. When I tell people this fact they tend to look at me like I'm from a different planet or at least this planet, but from a weird place like "Albuquerque." Let's be honest. How many people have you ever met from Albuquerque? Probably none. And if you run into someone from that city (I'm tired of spelling it out) you would have a lot of questions for them that run the gamut from, "Where's that?" to "Al Who? to "How about those adobe structures! I read it in a book! I'm literate!" With exception of the strange person telling me their literacy level, this is pretty much the same line of questioning I get when I tell someone I don't curse.

When asked for comment Beetle Bailey responded with a $*&!^@*!#
(Aside: When did cartoons decide that characters cursing would be portrayed by all those symbols? It really makes no sense at all. "So Henry, this cartoon guy is really angry and he curses because that's what people do when they get angry." "What's he angry about?" "He tripped and fell over some bubble wrap." "Was it that stupid Dagwood again?" "Shut up Henry and listen. We need to show that he curses, but he can't use curse words so what do we use?" "I don't know. Why not use an ampersand? No one uses those." "That's it Henry! You delightful dope! I shall use all the symbols no one cares to use since they are foolish! In the future no one will use an 'at' symbol or a 'pound' sign. They will become obsolete and such symbols will only be associated with this new way of writing out curse words. Oh Henry we shall be rich beyond belief!" Twitter is just one huge middle finger.)

The reason I don't curse has nothing to do with religious beliefs. Most people that don't curse fall back on the whole religion thing. What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus that ran out of change so he had to beg the bus driver to take him to the next stop? Would he curse? That's the remixed version. I don't know what God would do since he's never talked to me, but if he was having a bad day since Mrs. God got mad at him for leaving the toilet seat up that morning, his Honda Accord (God is frugal) broke down, and he tripped over one of the Apostles beard trimmers in the bathroom, he might have let out an invective. He's only human.

Is he human? God is pretty complicated. I'll Ask Jeeves later.

The reason I don't curse is because I really don't like the way it sounds coming out of my mouth. The only time I ever said F--- (double aside: I think anytime anyone curses in print it should be written just like that. F---, S--T, M----r---k-r. None of the dollar sign and exclamation point nonsense. It could be a fun game to play while you're reading along. It's like Hangman for cursing. I call it Curseman.* You don't even need to start with the first letter. --c-s---e-. Brilliance. What could that word possibly be? A curse word? Something else? You can even feel better about yourself by inserting different letters. "Oh that lovely man called me a 'nice styler.' He was raised by angels.") was in 4th grade. I thought Louis Quaglia cut me in line after lunch to go back into the building so I screamed out "--C- You LOU!" I know what you're thinking and, yes, even at that young of an age I was destined to be a rap lyricist. He, of course, said "F--- You Rahul!" and I realized my lyricism was one upped by his using my two syllable name to also rhyme with "you."

I'm always the zero upper.

Since that fateful rap off on the playground, I've never said the hardcore curse words. Once in a while I'll drop a "damnnnnnnn girl you lookin' fly in this mother," or "Hell to the NAWL," but I don't really count those because I'm just trying to keep up my street cred. Not cursing does bring up some dilemmas though. One of the problems is that people tend to start acting differently around me. They'll try to not curse as much or tone it down and that's the main reason I don't like telling people I don't curse. One of my pet peeves is when people try to change how they would normally act. 92 percent of the world’s population curses. True, that is a made up statistic, but almost everyone I know does it including my parents. There's no reason to change and the fact of the matter is that I love hearing people curse. My favorite comedian is Chris Rock. One of my favorite TV shows is the Wire. I like Eminem. This brings me to the second issue.

I can't really quote any of them.

Listen, it's really awkward when you’re listening to a Kanye song with someone else in the car and you know all of the words so you want to sing along as poorly as possible and you have to say this.

That I would even show up to this fake shhhh….”
So go ahead go nuts go ape shhhh
Especially in my pastel on my bape shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

I’M BEING QUIET OK. To go along with that point it’s impossible for me to explain a Chris Rock bit to anyone. “Yeah, so he does this thing where he says a bad word, but compares it to this other bad word, but then says bleep, bleep, bleep.” No one wants to hear that. Just like no one wants to heard “sugar,” “Fudge,” or “Cheesecake.” Cheesecake may not be a stand in for an obscenity, but sugar and fudge made me hungry. Instead of saying those words I attempt to avoid cursing all together. One of my friends has offered me $100 every year for the last 5 years to say one curse word. So far I haven’t cashed in. Is it integrity? Foolishness? No. It’s that I know he doesn’t have $100 to give me. If I said a curse word I wouldn’t get paid and that would be the travesty.

That would be a $&*!&^(#@ horrible thing.

*copyright circa right now

The Kings Kourt. And Other Things That Really Start With "C"

2011-10-27T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for a lot of things. No, not that. Whether it be a kid getting hit in the head with any type of sporting tool, a well done marriage proposal video, or an old person dancing anywhere, it's these little things that make me smile. I'll watch or stare at any of those things day after day, week after week and month after month. Not year after year, though, because that would be a pretty long time to be watching outdated You Tube videos. I don't have time for your Internet nostalgia. We all have quirks and other such weirdocities (not a word) that most people can't understand. For instance, my brother loves hardcore rap music and Eric Clapton. His iPod is filled with "poppin' shorties on the 2-4 grind holla at yo' boys" (possibly not a real lyric) and "Layla." I'm not sure how those two get together, but when I found out those were his two interests let's just say I became deathly afraid of Eric Clapton cappin' me upside the brain piece.

Eric Clapton don't play. Or do play. I don't own an urban dictionary.

A lot of people don't find about these oddities of your personality because you're not with them 24/7. Most people don't know that you need to have every light turned off in your apartment before you go to bed. Or that your closet must be arranged from pants to shirts going right to left. Or that until you were 23 you always ate the side order then main course then took a sip of the drink. That guy should probably have had some Prozac for breakfast. Since those tendencies don't get magnified until you're in a relationship they are never pounced upon by people. This is why I would finally like to come clean about something that’s bothering me.

I like anything to do with court.

Now I'm not saying I like court room dramas like Law and Order, Law and Order: SVU, Boston Legal, Boston Illegal, and Legally Boston Illegal. Well, I guess I am saying that because I do like those shows. There's something about the sassy attractive mid 30s DA and the curmudgeonly sidekick who got passed over for Miss Sassafras that makes me want to watch. I assume every court room is like that. Then I turn on the Casey Anthony case and there's no sass or frass to be seen anywhere. Where's the no nonsense judge? Where's the outburst from the crowd? Where's Christopher Meloni doing things that defy all laws of this country?

I don't know when I became infatuated with court rooms, but it was probably at the time of the Orenthal James Simpson case of aught 95. It was a rough time. Actually it wasn't. I was 15 and a sophomore in high school. The previous year the New York Rangers had won the Stanley Cup and in a fit of jubilation I bought as much commemorative merchandise as I could. Total present value of said merchandise? $2.71. I remember thinking how cool it would have been to be on the jury. Hear all that stuff about the stuff being said. Make a decision! Making decisions is totally what adults do and I wanted to be an adult. What better way to be an adult than to be on a jury with 11 of your peers to decide whether a man is innocent or guilty of varying degrees of crime? A mortgage would probably be more adult.

(Aside: In all of these cases the judge or someone says you're entitled to a trial in front of a jury of your peers. In what world is a 68 year old retiree from Arkansas that made his money in aardvark embryos my peer? I don't want this guy deciding my fate. Listen, I may hang out with some eclectic people but Mr. Embryo isn't one of them. When people say "peer pressure" I don't think they're imagining a baby convincing a teenager to smoke. "Here try this Marlboro." "You're a baby." "You're the baby if you don't try this, baby!" "Ok." I think we should just say "you're entitled to a trial in front of some random people who really would rather not be here at all.")

Once I turned 18 I knew that I had the chance to be picked for jury duty. It was going to be my one shining moment to show off all of those analytical skills I picked up from playing Risk during Gifted and Talented class. I had honed my craft of wading through all the nonsense to make sure a proper verdict was going to be placed on someone through years of delicate television watching while trying not to eat spaghetti while watching said TV. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate on something while eating spaghetti? You want to make sure you get all the spaghetti in your mouth so your attention is kind of divided from whatever else is going on. I dare you to try to have a conversation while eating spaghetti and remembering what the conversation was.

More like Spaghetti –Oh NO! Am I right?

Never mind.

It took me almost 12 years, but in April I was finally called in for jury duty. I told my mom that I had been called in and she said, “I feel bad for you.” When I said that I was really excited she rebutted with, “you should see a doctor.” No time for doctors Marental Unit, I have decisions to make. After waiting for hours we were all brought into the court room and some of us were seated in the jury box. It was the first time I was in a court room where someone didn’t say “RAY-Hool Sub… Sub... Sub-aray-name...whatever, you’re next on the docket.” Which would then be followed by the judge giving me a lecture on something obvious. “Speeding is dangerous. Fix your headlight. Wear Sunscreen. Liquor before beer blah blah blah.”

When I was sitting in the jury box I was dreaming of what it would be like to be put on this attempted murder case. I would be intensely scribbling down notes. Giving the lawyers my best raised eyebrow. Yelling out “UNHAND THAT MAN!” Ok, maybe not the last one, but I would be prepared. They let us go and told us they would announce who would be on the jury that afternoon. How could I not be picked? College educated. Minority. Critical thinker. Wore a tie.

This summer, Aziz Ansari is… THE JUROR.

After an hour the booming voice from the PA system said a plea deal had been reached and there would be no trial. We would be given a slip saying we had served on the jury and couldn’t be picked for the next year. Everyone hooted and hollered. I slunk in my chair. I had to wait another year to put some fools away? What if I never get picked again? It was devastating. A man patted me on the back and said, “Isn’t this great!” I said, “Sure.” Then he skipped away on a unicorn made of rainbows. It was weird. One day I may get to be on a jury with some peers and I’ll have to be ready.

I just hope it’s not Eric Clapton’s trial.

A Pocket Rocket Isn't Really a Rocket. Spoiler Alert.

2011-10-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a PC. Those are words I usually say to get a chuckle when someone brings up their problems with their Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, iMacbook, and the popular selling Big Macbook Mcbook. Only 97 trillion served. The problem is that no one laughs at the "I'm a PC" line anymore. When I say "I'm a PC" people usually look at me like I have some kind of brain issue where my brain isn't "working." "What is up with your medulla oblongata?" Mac people are always using medical terms. The problem with being a PC user is that we all look like this.

That's right. We're all nerds that wear suits all the time while cool looking Justin Long is so relaxed in his slim straight jeans, hoodie, and hair that's messy enough that it looks "hip." Is it our fault that we like looking professional at all times? If that's what being a PC entails then I'll be a PC, collecting my fat paychecks from Fortune 500 companies, while all you Mac users do cool things like skateboard and paint in your mothers' basements. Never mind the fact that this ad is a complete farce because the guy they use as the "nerd" is John Hodgman, who is a correspondent on the Daily Show, does voiceover work for the Emmys, and has been on Battlestar Galactica. There is nothing nerdy about any of those things. Well, Battlestar Galactica is super Nerdville 3000, but I prefer to overlook "facts."

Thanks for submarining my point Poindexter Hodgman.

For a long time I was against buying any Apple product because people would throw in my face how awesome they were. At some point I realized it was pointless to not have an iPod so I bought one and it changed my life. I could actually listen to music now with ear buds while at the gym, walking to work, or whenever anyone I was dating would yell at me. When I was shopping for a new computer my mom told me to get a Mac because they're "so cool."

Me- "I'm more of a PC person. It's easier for me and I don't want to learn a new system."
Mom- "Don't you want to be cool?"
Me- "You can't be cool with a PC?"
Mom- "Macs are cooler."
Me- "I'm going to get a PC."
Mom- "You're boring."

THANK YOU APPLE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN.

The iPod was as far as I was willing to go with my Apple purchasing. I wasn't going to go out and slut it up with Apple. I have standards and the walk of shame would be awkward. When I first bought a smart phone I decided against the iPhone and purchased a Blackberry. A Blackberry was the “it” phone when smart phones came out since it had email. "Email on a mobile device? STOP YOUR FOOLISHNESS." Since then the Blackberry has sunk further than Mel Gibson's sanity level. Too soon? So when I had the ability to get an upgrade I knew I had to get a new phone. I went to my computer, threw my Blackberry in the trash, and then went back to grab the Blackberry out of the trash because it was the only phone I had. Then I did it.

I got the iPhone.

Of course, I ordered it after everyone else did so it may take me 3.5 Jupiter years to get it, but I will have it. I was scared of changing, but now I will be able to do the same thing other iPhone users do which is yell at anyone else that doesn’t have an iPhone for not having an iPhone. “Oh, I thought you had an iPhone. Sucks to be you! I can play Words with Friends and you can’t! AHAHAHAHAHA!! Are you broke or something?!?! You stink. No, literally, you’re emitting an odor which is unpleasant to my nasal passages. Try Irish Spring soap.” I’ve always wanted to make fun of other people for their mobile device choices so this is a big step in the right direction. I want to be an iPhone user and be part of the clan. All iPhone users are interesting in their own way, but one group of iPhone users fascinates me.

Women.

Women are pretty fascinating to me always, but especially with their iPhones. I’ve noticed over the course of a lifetime (i.e. 8 months) many women put their iPhone in their back pocket when they’re wearing jeans. This probably paints me as some kind of pervert looking at women’s butts as they’re in front of me, but I won’t apologize. What else am I supposed to look at when someone is in front of me? The ceiling? My feet? That’s being really unaware of your surroundings and if someone were to jump out and throw ninja stars at me while I was walking down the hallway I would be caught pretty off guard if I was staring at my own feet.

Just sayin’.

I’ve never noticed women putting any other phone in their back pocket other than the iPhone. Never have I seen a Blackberry, Sidekick, or Motorola Razr in the back pocket. I don’t know if two of those three phones even exist anymore, but I haven’t seen them doing the ass lambada with any women. Why would women put a $200 or more phone in their back pocket? It doesn’t seem to make sense to me. Some reasons I’ve gotten include “it won’t fit in my front pocket,” “I don’t like the way the bulge makes my thighs look in the front of the jeans,” and “if there’s an earthquake the iPhone will actually lift up out of the back and helicopter me to safety.” That last one may have been a misquote, but it seems pretty reasonable to me.

Men have their wallets in their back pocket, but most of our wallets were Christmas presents from our Aunt Matilda. There is no significant worth there. Whoa, hold on. We could totally lose those business cards to the Mobile DJ service that we got from that wedding that one time. How will we ever find “Groovin’ 2 B Movin’ Music” if we lose our wallets?!!? Also, I’m pretty sure if you sit on your phone it’s going to break, but I’m not a scientist. The back pocket seems like the last place you want to put your phone if you’re a woman. Don’t women have to take their pants off to go to the bathroom? I’ve never been in a woman’s bathroom, but I’ve heard things. What if the phone falls out and hits the gross floor?

This seems like a very risky proposition for something that is the best thing this world has ever seen since that one guy who sliced the bread first. I don’t know what the answer is, but I think putting it in the front pocket would be fine. “Does this iPhone make my thigh look big?” could be the new question no one wants to answer honestly. Or you could be fashionable and buy a fanny pack. Women, I’m just looking out for your investments.

It's what a PC would do.

All Your Questions Answered. Except the Unanswered Ones.

2011-10-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a pretty curious person. When it comes to things I don't understand I like to find out the answer by asking someone. Actually, that's a lie. I prefer looking it up on the truth machine also known as Google. This is mainly because I would prefer not to get a 45 minute dissertation on Occupy Wall Street when all I asked was, "Who put that wall up on Q Street?" Google doesn't talk back. When I was a kid I would do what all children did and ask my dad all sorts of questions when he was in the middle of a Good Times marathon on Nick at Nite. "DAD. Why do some people have initials and not others? DAD. How do planes fly? DAD. Why are you called a dad and also a father? DAD. If two dimensional objects have no mass attached to them then how do we assign a volume to them to make them 3 dimensional in such spaces that may not exist in the present world?"

I was in Gifted and Talented.

My dad did answer many of these questions in an appropriate way. "Go ask your mom." Needless to say mom didn't know many of the answers, but she looked up a lot of them in "Home Remedies: Volume 2." Too bad I never asked how to remove raccoon urine smell from your hair. That book nailed it.

The one question I do remember my dad answering was the one about how planes fly. He makes parts for airplanes so he has a good working knowledge about how a forceful machine can fly through the air. If he was making parts for airplanes and didn't know how planes fly I think it's safe to say our whole airline industry would be in grave danger of getting replacement parts made out of Marlboros and Coors Lights. Delicious. When my dad answers a question in depth he likes to make a drawing. The accompaniement of a drawing to the words will always enhance any explanation. When he started explaining how planes get lift and stay off the ground, even with all that weight, he drew something that brought everything into focus. He drew this.

I probably should have mentioned that my dad only draws straight lines. How this picture could ever help anyone understand how a plane flies I will never know, but in his aerospace engineer head it all makes sense. Apparently, straight lines are all you need to make a plane get in the air. That and a spare tic tac toe board for the owner's manual.

"Jerry, Jerry. We need to make a new dual flux simulator 97814 for the Boeing 747. I'm thinking something like this."
"That's just the roman numeral IV."
"Jerry, Have some decency! Look here's where it slides into the engine. Here's how it revs up. I don't have time for mindless jokes."
"Now, it looks a box around the roman numeral IV."
"A GREAT box.”

As the years have passed I realize I don't have to ask my dad many questions at all. Everything is there for me with the click of a mouse. The Internet even has these things with curved lines called circles which add much more depth to any drawing or illiterate cat websites. That doesn't mean I have run out of questions. Everyday new questions infiltrate my brain that I can't handle. They usually have to do with women, candy, or a woman made of candy, but today was different. Today, I had questions about this.

Phillip Winikoff, 81, was accused of posing as a doctor and offering free door-to-door breast exams at a Lauderdale Lakes apartment in 2006, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

On the surface that looks like a pretty self explanatory opening lede. Some old pervert got busted for trying to give your free mammo-grabs to nice neighbors. However, nothing is at is seems in Florida and this leaves a lot of open ended questions. First, it took 5 years to find this creep? What took so long? I’m pretty sure good ole’ Phil wasn’t on the run since he’s 81 and the last 81 year old I saw running down the street was ,well, no one. All 81 year olds usually do is (insert Matlock/warm milk joke).Secondly, how did Phil get into these women’s houses? It seems very shady that he could walk in for the “exam” without any credentials. Luckily, the story gives us those answers.

Winikoff even carried a little black doc bag.

“Judy, there’s a guy at the door that says he’s a doctor giving out free breast exams.”
“Does he have a stethoscope?”
“No.”
“Is he wearing scrubs?”
“No.”
“Does he have a medical degree?”
“No, but he is carrying this pretty official black doctors bag. I’m sure there’s some prescription pads and Ritalin in there.”
“Let him in girlfriend! Why didn’t you say that at first! He’s definitely a doctor.”

I understand if the woman that got fooled was around 70 or so since she probably doesn’t know better and the social security system in this country has made her numb to the numerous amount of scams out there. That I would get. But this is a 36 year old woman being fooled by an 81 year old man carrying a bag. If he was wearing a football jersey would they have assumed he was an NFL player? Eating a sandwich assumed he owned Subway? Carrying a calculator thought he was Indian? That’s ridiculous Indians do math in their head!

After I read this article I wanted to call my dad and ask him if he’s ever been fooled by someone pretending to be someone else. But then again I didn’t want him to tell me to ask my mom because asking my mom about breast exams would be pretty weird and I’m not sure it’s in Home Remedies: Vol. 2. So now I have these unanswered questions. Maybe I’ll send my dad an e-mail.

He can put a drawing in there.

Apples to Apples: A Tale of Redundant Comparisons

2011-10-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

(Every Thursday I will also be writing for an awesome new blog called Twenties Hacker. You should check it out. Mainly because I'm not in my 20s and I've hacked them into letting me post. Irony. Sweet dripping irony. Maybe? I don't understand grammar.)

Steve Jobs died yesterday. This post is not about him. This post is about my grandfather, but I thought saying that Steve Jobs line first would increase page views to my blog. I'm all about the hits (internet slang). I think Steve Jobs would be proud of me for using the Internet's propensity for making things trendy to my benefit. iHipster. My grandfather and Steve Jobs could not be more different. My grandfather hated wearing sneakers. He had no idea what a computer was or how it worked. His full name is 54 syllables longer than Steve Jobs'*. He was short. He never wore jeans. He never won any awards. Oh, I forgot one other thing. He, also, wasn't one of the founders of the most innovative technology company the world has ever seen.

THANKS GRANDPA.

*unconfirmed

I lied. Steve Jobs and my grandfather have one thing in common. Both of them died too soon. I don't know why Steve Jobs' death made me think of my grandpa, but it did. Of course, I feel awful that my grandpa didn't get to see me make it to my 18th birthday, but I feel worse because he never got any Facebook messages saying R.I.P. I feel that makes your death much more official. If you don't get an R.I.P. (insert name) in a Facebook status update, it probably didn't really happen. Look at Tupac and Elvis. Those guys never got an R.I.P. on anyone's Facebook wall and no one even believes they're dead. They're just chillin' on some private island in the Caribbean eating pizza with a fork and drinking bottomless Bartyles and James.

Look at what you've done Zuckerberg.

My grandfather was a nice guy by all accounts. By all accounts I mean my account. I wasn't really sure if he had any friends in the US of A. I asked my mom once if grandpa had any friends and she said, "Yeah he does. Grandma." I was only 10 at the time so I didn't question it, but, obviously, if she had said that to me now I would know she was lying. You can't be friends with someone you're married to. That's outlandish. Your spouse is someone you yell at because your pot roast is overcooked and/or you need a ride to the airport. There's nothing friendly about those things.

He was also one of those people that loved pen and paper. That may be more of an old person thing, but my grandpa was an excellent note taker. He took notes on everything. I'm not exactly sure what he did with those notes, but he loved himself some note. I always imagined that he would re-read his notes from the day while lying in bed and say to himself, "I totally did eat those Cheerios this morning. They were delicious! Go myself! Aw Man, stepped in dog poop at 3:30pm on my walk. Forgot about that. Let me smell my foot. No poop smell. Will wear shoes next time on walks."

No socks. No shoes. No Footlocker discount.

When he noticed my brother and I were getting serious about sports he wanted to get himself involved. Since he knew nothing about any American sports he would watch games on TV and write down everything the announcers were saying in his notepad. I didn't realize he had been doing that for 7 years until one day during a freshman year baseball game he showed up with my mom wearing the floppiest hat I had ever seen. He didn't have the greatest hearing so when my mom said "baseball game" he might have heard "Elmer Fudd's house.(see below)" After the game I walked up to them and my mom congratulated me on getting 4 hits. I didn't get any hits. My mom thought every time I hit the ball it was a hit. Being the bratty kid in high school I said, "Duh MA. I didn't get a HIT. I was out every time. UGH. Are we having pizza tonight?" At that point my grandpa chimed in with, "Why did the coach do a steal with your best player up? You’re not supposed to steal when he will probably drive him in."

WAIT. WHAT?

Pictured: Grandpa's hat. Not Grandpa's head.

That made me happy that he was paying attention and knew some strategy. I wanted to spend more time with him so we would watch games or his other favorite program, Jeopardy. One night while watching Jeopardy I asked him who he wanted to win. I was rooting for the cute blonde girl because maybe the TV was two way and she could see me from inside the box and want to have relations. Anything is possible. It was the 90s. He said he was rooting for "the blackie." Now, this wouldn't have been a problem if there was someone on the show named "Blackie." "Veronica Blackie, previously, you said, 'Who is Jumanji?' I'm sorry it is, 'WHAT is Jumanji.'" The issue was that Veronica Blackie is not a real person. The "blackie" in this case was the lone African-American male on the show. I really didn't know how to respond so I said, "Uh, grandpa, I don't think you should call him a 'blackie' it's not really nice." He said that he always said that and it shouldn't be a big deal.

Not really sure when my grandfather became Archie Bunker.

I was torn. Was my grandfather racist? I mean he was ROOTING for the guy. It's not that he hated him. Surely this meant he couldn't be racist since if he was racist he would have said that he wished that the guy would lose. The KKK wouldn't be rooting for any person of color on Press Your Luck. On the other hand what he said was offensive and even though he was old, it was no excuse. So I told him again that he shouldn't say that and he patted me on the head and said he wouldn't. I never heard him say it again so maybe my talk worked, but I don't think he was racist. Just Indian.

All of those memories came back yesterday when I saw the words R.I.P next to Steve Jobs’ name. In really doesn’t make sense since my grandfather died 13 years ago, but he would have liked some of Steve Jobs’ inventions the past decade. He would have liked it more if Steve Jobs made a phone that needed to use pen and paper and called it the iPad. I’m being told that’s taken. Ok fine then. iNotebook. That too?!?! Forget it. He would have liked it all.

They might have been friends.

When I Tip, You Tip, We Tip

2011-09-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

The first time I remember going to a restaurant without my parents was when I was 13. It was a Friday night football game at the high school and my friends and I left the stadium to walk across the street to the newest, hippest, most delicious eating establishment in town. Taco Bell. There was something magical about this Taco Bell. I can't exactly recall what it was. Maybe it was the unbelievable ratio of Fire sauce to Mild Sauce. Maybe it was the fact that bean burrito was $.89. Maybe it was the fact that a developed 17 year old girl with flowing blonde hair out of her Taco Bell issued hat was taking our order. Nope, it was none of those things. The reason it was magical was one reason.

It existed.

Now calling Taco Bell a "restaurant" is probably a little bit of a stretch, but it does have a nice group of tables that are a horrendous color scheme. If Taco Bell was a person it would have been on a makeover show on Bravo 11 years ago. Then someone like Tim Gunn would have given it a new dress with a matching hairdo from place in Beverly Hills while McDonald's looked at and said, "Man, Taco Bell is working it tonight!" Taco Bell’s mismatching wardrobe aside, it was the first place I was allowed to pay for a meal myself without my parents looking over my shoulder. On the list of greatest achievements of my life it is somewhere between getting straight As from the 1st through 8th grade and finding out I can touch my nose with my tongue.

Please don't attempt if you have a runny nose. Or do. Dirtbags.

Once I became of age to drive a vehicle I could now go to fancier restaurants with waitresses on my own like IHOP or Denny’s or really any place that served all day breakfast so I could order French toast at some ungodly hour. "French Toast at 10:43pm? Is this real life?" When you're a kid you never understand the intricacies of going out to eat. Your parents always pay and you sit there and complain that you have to be seen in public with them. When I first went to a restaurant with a waiter I noticed that people would leave money on the table for a "tip." I, of course, knew what a tip was since I was a straight A student and had been reading many Dear Abby columns in the Sunday Star Ledger.

Lonely in Lincoln, you should have left him.

I had heard horror stories from some of the kids in High School (not friends. Kids in High School. Friends would signify that I would talk to them, but really I was eavesdropping with my locker door open through the little vent type thing they had at the top. The magnifying glass I had was a little much, however) about how they were basically working for tips and made less than minimum wage. I vowed that I would make a waiter or waitresses day better by tipping well.

As I was tipping up a storm through various restaurants across America something was bothering me. I never knew how much my parents tipped on anything. When we go out to eat my mom insists on paying and grabs the bill. Every time. I never know how much the bill is or what kind of tip she leaves on it. A few years ago I became all stealth with my monocle and fedora and grabbed her receipt from a place we were eating. I figured we had good service, nothing came out black, and my Arnold Palmer was roughly 50 percent lemonade and 50 percent Iced Tea just like old Arnie ordered it back in the day. I grabbed the receipt and looked directly at the gratuity line.
15 percent

15 percent! I couldn’t believe it. My mother who prides herself on wasting money on things like the scariest doll set (see below) in New Jersey couldn’t be bothered to tip a nice waiter 20 percent.

After finding out this info I vowed to check out more bills to make sure this was a onetime occurrence. Maybe my mom didn’t do the math correctly. Obviously, that’s an invalid excuse since she’s Indian and we’re great at math (stereotype burn), but there had to be a reason. After we would eat I would let my parents walk in front and sneak a peek at the bill. I looked at a majority of them. 17%, 14%, 15%, 18%, 15%, 15%, 25%. “Ooh they left a 25 percent tip at a restaurant. See? They’re not awful people,” I said to myself. Then I realized they left the 25 percent tip at an Indian restaurant. WHAT. Were my parents only tipping Indians well?

I’ll scrub your brown back if your brown back brings me another Gulab Jamun. CAN I GET SOME?!!? No, seriously, can I get some? I’m hungry.

It all came to a head two Christmases ago. We stopped at a Pizza Hut. I’ll let that sink in for a moment. No, we did not invent a time machine and fly back to 1988. We were in a real life sit down Pizza Hut in the year 2009. In our defense my cousins were with us and they are 10 and 6 and only consist of pizza, chicken fingers, and boogers so we didn’t have much of a choice seeing how Kentucky Fried Booger was a little out of the way. The service at Pizza Hut was in a word. Atrocious. I don’t know when the last time you’ve been to Pizza Hut is, but the ages of the people working there haven’t changed. They must own some kind of anti-aging device. Everyone working there is still 16 and under. How do they keep creating these 16 year olds and I keep getting older? Impressive. I’m being told they are not the same person and actually different 16 year olds.

Point Taken.

After what seemed like an hour we ate the greasiest pan pizza ever and the bill came. My mom grabbed it and paid it with her credit card. She signed for it and in the space marked gratuity decided to put a line through it. A line is an odd number to write in the tip line. Oh, that’s right. Because it means you’re not tipping. I waited a second and thought maybe she would just leave cash on the table so as we were walking out I waited. Nothing. Everyone left. My mom must have read the sign wrong because she assumed we were at Katsuya and not PIZZA HUT. What did she expect? A warm towel? A glass of champagne? These kids were doing their best. I made up an excuse, walked back in and left the tip on the table out my own pocket.

I’m not a hero. But you can call me that.

I asked my mom why should wouldn’t tip. She said the service was really bad and they didn’t deserve a tip. I tried to rationalize with her all the reasons she should still tip, but she called me a “dumb people.” I realized my mom is never going to be a good tipper. She comes from a different country and likes to spend her money on dolls. I can’t change her.

Luckily, we never have to tip at Taco Bell.

Money For Everything and The Chicks Ain't Free. It's a Remix.

2011-09-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I was watching TV. I'm sure all of the people that read this blog can relate to watching TV. Unless you're Amish. Then again if you're Amish you're also not reading this blog so I'm not sure why I am addressing the Amish community in any way other than to say "Shalom." I'm being told Shalom is not an Amish word so the first part of this post became weirdly anti-Semitic. I blame Christmas. The point is not the Amish, but that while I was watching the "Idiot Box" I found myself watching a dating show. The fact the show was on MTV has no real added value to this conversation, but should be mentioned to point out my intense high brow television watching. The show was called "Disaster Date" and since it's not at all obvious by the title of the program it was about people going out on dates where some sort of disaster occurs. I watched 3 consecutive episodes and not one natural disaster was featured on any said dates.

Typhoons get no respect.

(Aside - We can say what we want about MTV and believe me "we" say a lot of things, but one thing is undeniable. Their show titles are rarely misleading. "16 and Pregnant," Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory," "When I was 17," "Teen Mom," Date My Mom," "Teen Mom 2," and the always popular "Teen Mom Moms: The Last of the Mom-icans" are all encompassing titles. You know what you're getting if you turn on these shows. A lot of mothers. I doubt someone in Olympia, Washington is turning on MTV and saying, "Ah Man! I thought 16 and Pregnant was going to be about 16 pregnant chicks. I'M OUTRAGED. CALL KURT LODER." The reason they won't be saying that is that they are stoned and eating Fritos covered in mustard.)

On "Not a Natural" Disaster Date people have to put up with a horrible blind date for 60 minutes and for every minute they last they get a dollar. The moral of the show is that sometimes you get set up on a blind date and it's so offensively bad you end up with $60 in your pocket at the end. Capitalism. Never change. While I was watching this it got me to thinking about all the bad dates I had been on. That got me thinking to all the good dates I had been on. That then got me thinking to ALL of the dates I had ever been on which got me to thinking why I had wasted all of this time thinking when I really really had to go to the bathroom.

Don't drink when you think.

In my mid 20s I used to think dating was the bee's skis. (Seriously, knees? When have knees ever been cool? The depression and bee's knees? The 1920s had the stench of 4 week old garbage.) You would take a pretty young thing, (or old thing. I'm no ageist) out and attempt to have relations with them. Sometimes if you really liked them you would wait until the second date to make the process more adult. Maybe both of your stuffs got to meet up in a backroom rendezvous for 2, but maybe not. Then you would try it over again with another lovely young (or old) lady and the process began anew. Such is life in the dating world. You go out and then you go out again with someone new because that first someone threw up in your friend’s car. Time is spent with new people and it’s trial and error. Unless you met in high school, which in that case, I have something for you guys.

A big F-U.

You see, as the man, we are supposed to pay for the dates. Sure there are some extenuating circumstances, but every date I’ve ever been on I have paid for. I’m not looking for some kind of pat on the back, but more of some kind of trophy. Probably a trophy of a guy patting me on the back. I understand it is the man’s responsibility (98 percent of the time. DON’T COME AT ME FEMINISTS) to pay for a date and I have no problem with that. I have never let a woman pay on the first few dates and never will. It is the price to pay for not having to carry a baby, never getting menstrual cramps, not having to sit on the toilet, and not having to be outraged at smut like Playboy, Playboy TV, The Playboy Club, and rabbits.

I went on my first date when I was 16. I went on my second date at age 20. Some people would call that a drought. I would call it the Sahara Desert of dating. There was not a dating canteen to be found in the late 90s, but there were some awesome dream mirages. I totally hooked up with Pam Anderson. 37 times. I went on my last date a month ago. So that would be 15 years of dating minus 4 years of drought minus another 2 years of women ignoring me minus another year of women being repulsed by my advances to bring us to roughly 4 days of dating. A long weekend of dating is intense.

After watching Disaster Date I wanted to know how much money I had actually spent dating. I don’t think dating is necessarily a wasteful thing (even the horrible ones) because you’re getting experience and meeting people that will change your life, but at some point the dough (street slang) starts adding up. Dating isn’t cheap especially when you’re a man so I wondered what else I could have bought if I didn’t date and never had the sexual healing. Let’s be honest. I’m still single so all this dating so far hasn’t exactly gotten me where I want to be.

I know Visa will be there.

If I went on more than 5 dates with any one girl I didn’t count it because I think date 6 and on is where most human beings would think it’s ok to start chopping bills. And we all are humans. I’m no dating machine so I’m sure my number of dates in the last 15 years will be less than the majority of people so if you want to also do this exercise I suggest you don’t. You will be depressed and ordering Zoloft. Not the recreationally kind either. In 15 years I have been on 84 dates. 84 real dates where I paid the bill and was getting to know the person outside and, hopefully, inside.

Inside the pants. I’ve gone too far. Sorry Mom.

On some dates it was only one or two drinks, while other dates it was extravagant meals and tickets to happy town so there is no set average. On those 84 dates I have spent (insert drum roll or any other musical sounding interlude. I suggest the oboe) $13,100. That is a pretty accurate guestimate considering I went through my entire bank account and silently wept as I added it all up. $13,100. I’m neither sad nor angry at that amount. But in the interest of full disclosure here is what I could have purchased had I never gone on one date.

43 iPhones

Something from the Heidi Fleiss Menu

13,000 bean burritos from Taco Bell

A 2012 Honda Civic

This house

2 sets of breast implants

Mr. Belding to show up at my private party

One Marty McFly shoe. Not the pair

There is some part of me that wishes Mr. Belding could come to my birthday party, but I can deal with it. Dating can get pretty expensive and maybe that money would be great if it was invested. But what if I never went on those dates? I would be even more boring. I wouldn’t have lived. I wouldn’t have met great people. I wouldn’t have any stories for this blog that no one wants to read about. There have been some disaster dates, but that’s how it goes.

I wish the bad ones paid me back though.

Back To The Future. Is That Taken?

2011-09-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

We live a new world. That is obviously a metaphorical statement since Earth is exactly the same shape it was when we were born, but stop parsing words. I know you want to. When I was growing up we had these things called pay phones where you would make a collect call to your parents to pick you up at Woodbridge Mall because you and your friends had spent your last dollar on 20 Bazooka Joe bubblegum for the comics. At some point during the process you became smart though and put your whole location in the space where the operator said, "Say your name after the beep" so that your parents didn't have to incur the charge of a collect call.

"MOM, pickmeupin5minutesoutsidethejcpenneyonthesecondfloorthanksbye."

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss those days. Ok, well, that's I lie. I don't miss those days at all. Sitting on the side of the road and waiting for your parents to pick you up is one of the most emasculating things that can happen to a human. Not only are you depending on someone to do something for you, it's your parents. And if it's not YOUR parents, it's my parents like my goofy dad in his Jets game day attire which included a Jets hat, sweatshirt, and sweatpants. On a Wednesday. Football is not played on a Wednesday. If at some point the Jets needed a 50 year old 5'6 Indian man with a potbelly to run onto the sidelines and call plays he could find the appropriate dressed individual at my house every weekday after 6pm and every weekend all day.

Consistency. The mark of a champion.

I can't even imagine not having a phone nowadays. When I was 15 and at the mall we would have rendezvous points if we got separated and 98 percent of the time it worked out. One time there was that unfortunate incident with the German Sheppard at Pets USA, but we prefer to not bring that up for fear of 'Nam style flashbacks. Don't feed a dog Cinnabon.

For an inordinate amount of time I had a flip phone. It served its purpose. The purpose being that it would send inappropriate text messages at 2:30AM to other people. You really think the cell phone companies would figure out a way to fix these ghost texts since I don't recall sending any of them. 3 years ago I decided to get into the land of the living and upgrade my social standing to a smart phone. In today's world no one can take you seriously if you have a flip phone or a phone without internet capabilities. The only way you can get away with it at this point is if you are over 55 years old or Marty McFly.

When I first got my Blackberry 97 trillion my mom warned me not to be checking my phone every 30 seconds for a new e-mail because I would get addicted. "Who gets addicted to stuff? That's dumb!" I said. Then my mom said my uncle became addicted to gambling in 1981 and had to see specialists. Awkward. After I opened the package and plopped all my info into the cell phone machine I was ready for my new life. No more being the last to know which celebrity was at Whole Foods at 2pm. No more having to run to a computer to check if I got an update in that unimportant e-mail chain that I was mistakenly put on. No more not seeing a status update from that person I stalked that one time that read "Doing laundry and mixed a color in with my whites. MLK approves! L.O.L"

We can all dream.

The first couple weeks were great. I was getting e-mail, being informed on social media, and I even wrote some hilarious tweets from my mobile device. Tweeting on the go?!!? Is there anything machines can't do? Everything was coming up Rahul. After a while I noticed that I was checking my phone more and more often. The red light would flash and I would immediately check it. "It must be important," I thought. I had to know who it was. I was becoming addicted. My mom was right. (Aside: For some reason I am astounded when my mom is correct. She is a wonderful woman, but I never expect her to be right about anything. This is a woman that thinks Texas is west of California. She pluralizes feet as "foots." She e-mailed me last week to complain that I wasn't answering her phone calls and when I asked her if she was calling the wrong number she was incredulous and upset at the insinuation she was "stupid." When I called her right back she said she had been calling my office phone number. From 4 years ago. With all those things not in her favor she somehow came through on this one. I would put my mom being right about cell phone addiction somewhere between Truman defeating Dewey and Hammer pants not being a viable clothing option in 2011 as one of the bigger upsets of all time.)

You see that red light is one of the worst things to happen in our history. Whenever it flashes you think it’s something really important, but it never is. It’s usually a Groupon. “Light is flashing, someone loves me! $10 for $50 worth of pet grooming! What? I’m depressed.” That red message light has caused more depression than any single thing in our nation’s history.* I would wake up in the middle of night, see the light, and realize Men’s Health was sending me a health tip at 3:30AM. It was ruining me yet I kept my e-mail on my phone and persevered. With no sleep.

*unconfirmed

In May my phone was stolen by some street toughs at Bally’s Total Fitness. I’m assuming they’re street toughs because when you go to a place with “total fitness” in its name it would be bad marketing if it was a scrawny dude. Bally’s Ok Sometimes Fitness wouldn’t work out. This was the perfect time to get rid of the e-mail off my phone when I got a new one. I told a few friends that I didn’t have e-mail on my phone anymore and they looked at me like I was Mr. T. The old crazy Mr. T, not the cool Mr. T that did (insert cool things) back in the 80s. I tried to explain to them why I don’t and most of them nodded their heads in agreement while checking their phone for important e-mail. It’s a sick cycle. In some ways I’ve reverted back to the days of the flip phone. I still have Facebook and Twitter because removing those would be crazy talk, but no more spam e-mails giving me the false hope that I’m popular. Only my mom gives me that hope now.

I’m going to start calling her collect more often.

An Open Letter to Women

2011-09-02T17:32:00.001-07:00

Dear Women,

We have a problem. It has come to my attention that there a group of women or aliens posing as women out there that are answering magazine surveys on the female behalf. In these surveys that are run by reputable publications such as Maxim, Playboy, and Cat Fancy, these women portend that they would rather date a funny guy more than anything else. In all these many numerous statistics "sense of humor" was either the top quality or in the top 3 things that women wanted in a potential mate.

We must stop them.

You see this notion that women want a funny guy may be true, but it's not that important to women that their man be funny when they first meet him. The reason I know this is because I happen to hang out with more women than I really should. At some point in junior high I became the funny guy. The guy that could make everyone laugh, but not the guy that was taking girls out on dates. This could have been my refusal to zip up fly or the fact I got Hi-C thrown in my face at lunch time, but I would like to think it was because I was way too funny for the student population.

Sad brag.

In the past 10 years I've somehow accrued a lot of female friends due to my begging and pleading with them that they talk to me. This is an effective and useful tool in having people hang out with you. I suggest you try it if you have zero self respect and your moral compass is somewhere between Idi Amin and the cast of the Brady Bunch. I somehow have found myself in many a situation where it's me and "the girls." In one aspect this is fantastic. This makes you look like the best ladies man on the planet outside of Leon Phelps. "Yeth." On the other hand you are fodder for the monthly complaints about cramps and "why Blair would go back to Chuck" rantings. I don't mind these things as it's abundantly clear that these girls are my friends and the reason Blair crawls back to Chuck are their joint issues of dependency. Suck it, Freud.

This past week I was around two different groups of women when twice the topic of "Should I go out with him?" came up about some random man. In both cases the first question about the guy out of the other girls' mouths weren't about his sense of humor. I know! I'm shocked! (See: not shocked). The first question was "Is he cute?" While this is a very valid question this doesn't jive with whoever is answering these "love surveys" with these magazines. I was told that being funny is WAY more important than physical features, but here I am in two totally separate groups of women and both first ask about the guy's looks.

This doesn't seem to be an uncommon thing among women. In all my years of hanging out with the fairer sex I've not once heard a woman question another woman on whether her date or potential date was funny. In fact, I've never heard anything other than asking about his looks. Well, ok, I lied. One time I heard someone ask if the guy "liked to eat babies." I don't know if she was going for a quick zing or has this really weird fetish for devouring children under the age of 1, but it seemed odd that is the line of questioning she chose. If I had to ask a weird dining question about someone I didn't know I would probably go with, "Are they vegetarian?" That would seem to encompass a lot of things including that whole baby eating momma drama.

We could have stopped Jeffrey Dahmer.

The thing is that I don't begrudge women for picking a potential date by his looks. As a man how could you get upset about that? In my 97 things (added one more. Recency effect) I look for in a woman, my number 1 thing is "Attractive to me." I would be a hypocrite if I said that it's unacceptable that women think this way. 99 percent of men choose women based solely on their looks. We're awful human beings, but on the bright side we're honest? Please? The problem exists that these women that give survey answers or advice try to act as if humor trumps good looks when you first are trying to date someone. Let's not kid ourselves. Women want guys that are good looking first and foremost. If that guy happens to be funny that's just a way to describe them in the future. Someone is going to point out David Spade or some other comedian, but those people have the ultimate trump card. Money. Find me an average funny guy that drives a Toyota Corolla dating a model and I’ll take it back. Humor is a secondary trait that people find attractive. I'm sure George Clooney is the funniest mother f'er on the planet right now.

George - "So I was at Starbucks and the latte they gave me was lukewarm!"
Date- "GEORGE YOU ARE SO HILARIOUS!"
George - "then the barista said, I APOLOGIZE!"
Date- "AHAHAHAAHHA!!! O.M.G.L.O.L. How do you not have a stand up act?!?!"

As a man that tries to be funny nothing is more frustrating than one of my female friends saying they like funny guys, meeting their dates, and realizing that not only couldn't they make a tickled hyena laugh, the guy they're dating is 100 percent of the time better looking than me. I realize she’s not going out with him because she likes funny guys. She’s going out with him because he’s good looking, wears clothes that fit nicely, and possibly made a short film about “art” that he’s really serious about. If you’re reading this in any place other than NYC or LA substitute “drawings” for “short film.” Some may say this is all sour grapes and that I'm bitter. To those people I say "You're correct." To my parents I say, "Your DNA stinks."

All the average looking funny men of this world have are our colorful personalities and timely jokes that we end with "Sick burn" or "SIKE." We're the guys in your office that make you laugh after you lose that big account or make a throwaway joke about kids that eat grass. You probably have never thought of us as being attractive. We’re not the guys that you’ll see from across the bar and have to immediately talk to, but you should because we’ll make you snort. To the majority of us we know that’s the hand we’re dealt. Until plastic surgery makes enough strides that they can make every human look like 1952 James Dean or 2011 James Franco (We’re sure that’s not the same person right?) we’ll make do with our sense of humor.

All these magazines and Internet sites tell us we have a chance to get the hot girl on a date because we’re funny. Yet it doesn’t work out that way when we end up seeing that girl with someone unfunny. That’s why I demand as a female species you start telling the truth on surveys or find these liars amongst your mist. Just say that you’re looking for a good looking guy that could turn out funny. Our feelings won’t be hurt because we understand the struggle.

We'll make a joke out of it.

Sincerely,

Rahul Subramanian

Funny Average Man Society Member

Growing Up Grown Ups Still Growing. A Message To Our Future

2011-08-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

When I was 17 I wanted to be John Olerud. To 98 percent of people reading this blog the name John Olerud is not going to mean anything to you. John Olerud was a professional baseball player who played the majority of his career for the Toronto Blue Jays, New York Mets, and Seattle Mariners. I was first made aware of him by my younger brother who, in a big F-U to the Subramanian clan, decided that at age 8 his favorite team was going to be the Toronto Blue Jays and not any of the New York based teams that we grew up with. That preceded the time he hit me upside the head with a replica New York Yankees mini bat at home. He was really taking this anti-America thing to new heights. My brother collected every John Olerud baseball card from 1989-1993 and put them together in a collage d'Olerud. If Dexter was real life, not a fictional TV show, and around in 1993 my brother would have been murdered. His crime? Weirdness.

On the bright side those cards are now worth a collective $1.61.

In December of 1996 John Olerud was traded to the New York Mets which also happened to be my favorite team. In a fit of rage my brother demanded that I trade him my "Dookie" Green Day cassette tape for his John Olerud love chest of baseball cards. I declined. This was based on the fact that I knew that a cassette tape version of Green Day's most wonderful album would be worth a boatload in the future. And I was right. A copy of "Dookie" on Ebay goes for a robust $4.99. And you can buy it right now. Suck on it, futures market.

There were many reasons I started liking John Olerud. He took some ridicule because he wore a helmet in the field (due to a brain aneurysm and not because he was mentally disabled or ate too many dandelions as a kid), but he never got mad. He had a sweet swing, fielded his position (1st base) impeccably, and rode the 7 train to Mets' games instead of driving which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Public transportation even when you make millions?!? IS THIS REAL LIFE?! But the biggest reason is that he was really nice. He never argued with umpires even when they were blatantly wrong and always respected everyone. Not to mention he was pretty good at baseball and when I was 17 I was convinced that I would one day be in the Major Leagues and have all the baseball groupies one man could handle. As of today I cannot tell you the amount of baseball groupies I've slept with because it would be inappropriate to make that public.

Rhymes with Robert DeNiro.

The other day someone brought up role models in a conversation and asked me if I had one. After making the requisite Paul Rudd/ Seann William Scott pop culture reference, I was stuck. Mainly because that kid McLovin was in another movie where he played a huge nerd. How many times can that happen to someone? Michael Cera tells you to get lost kind sir. I guess you could say John Olerud was my role model. In reality, there was no way I was going to be John Olerud since he was white, left handed, 6'3", and really good at baseball. I had only one of those four things going for me. The white thing. Wait, I’m being told I'm not white. Thanks DAD! I did look up to him, though, and tried to do all the same things he did. Instead of a spoiled brat playing baseball I became more respectful. I became more John Olerud.

Spoiler alert. Still not white.

But it made me wonder if you even know who your role models are when you’re younger. Charles Barkley once famously said, "I am not a role model" and people yelled at him because he could dunk a basketball and they could not. I'm sure other people yelled at him for other things, but that's what I was yelling about. When you're 5'8 and half and dreaming of dunking a basketball seeing someone else do it is very traumatic. It makes you resort to things like lowering your family's basketball hoop to 8 feet so you can throw down a sick reverse two hand jam while your friends rate you. Not that anyone I know did that. More than 5 times.

Role models should be people you want to be when you get older. Most people say your parents should be your role models, but my dad smoked cigarettes and once said, "There is a time for laughing. Now is not the time to have the time to laugh." I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. I didn't want to grow up smoking cigarettes and ruining the English language so I looked elsewhere. I did take a lot of traits from my dad, but I never considered him a role model. In 2008 there was a survey done by British schoolteachers about role models. Most of the kids wanted to be two people.

David and Victoria Beckham.

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with that? I’m sure they are two lovely people, but what do we really know about them? David Beckham can kick a soccer ball around and Victoria Beckham can, uh, get pregnant? Why are kids looking up to them? We don’t really even know them or if they’re good parents or if they are two people you should be aspiring to be. I’m sure being as rich as them would be great, but I would like to be as rich as OJ circa 1992 too and that didn’t work out too well for anyone except for Court TV.

If and when I have kids I would hope they would pick me as their role model. I hope they would look at me and say, “I want to be like my dad because he is awesome and one time he let me get sprinkles on my ice cream cone and mom doesn’t let me do that because mom never wants us to have any fun since she took away my hovercraft!” Take that future wife! In your face! If my hypothetical kids pick David Beckham in a survey I’ll be distraught because David Beckham will be in his 50s and still relevant.

I picked John Olerud as my role model when I was 17 because he could hit a baseball pretty far and was nice on TV, but what did I know about him? We should only pick our role models in hindsight. Looking back on it my role model was a combination of people. John Olerud plus my dad plus Chris Rock’s standup act. I think my dad would be happy to know he shares being my role model with Chris Rock’s humor and John Olerud’s athleticism.

I’ll trade my brother for that collage now.

Two is Better Than One Unless You Have Twins and Only Bought One Crib

2011-08-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

(Editors Note: I couldn’t figure out how to tie these two topics together so I gave up. My mom always said, it’s not giving up if you can’t do it. Thanks Mom! So instead of one big nonsensical blog post there are two mini nonsensical ones here that make one really long post. In conclusion, reading is fun. With an emphasis on, uh, I guess fun.)

1.Ryan Gosling seems like an ok person. Yesterday the women of the Internet were all flushed with dengue fever or some sort of malady where they had to be hosed down because Mr. Gosling broke up a fight on the mean streets of Manhattan. The cries of "Oh, could he get any sexier?!?!" by women that will never get within 47 miles of him were heard throughout the land as he stopped two guys from fighting over art. Of course, they were fighting over art. An actor stopping a fight over art. How meta. Could it be any more perfect that Ryan Gosling is breaking up a fight between two guys scuffling over something they'll hang over their NYC fireplace and only point out to visitors and their parents? I'm sure after the fight subsided Gosling and the two guys sat on a Brooklyn stoop, debated the merits of the hand painted diagram in front of them while drinking Bartles and Jaymes and compared it to a New Yorker article they all read in the June 2007 edition. An all time classic edition!

Well played old chaps.

Let's be real for a second. Ryan Gosling is an attractive individual. If I didn't say that I would be considered a "hater" or drinking "haterade" or eating "Hatertots" or really replacing any word or phrase that ended in -ater and putting an "h" at the beginning. Bunch of A.C. Haters in here. I'm sure there are some women that don't find him attractive, but they are in the small minority. I know something about minorities so I feel ok saying this. We look awkward at Blink 182 shows. I'm not jealous of Ryan Gosling because he is considered good looking by 90 percent of the world's population. That whole previous last sentence was a lie. I am very jealous, but I wanted to seem humble and that I've come to grips I will never look like him. I haven't. Spoiler alert.

This one incident yesterday has somehow catapulted Ryan Gosling into a sexy stratosphere that, from where I'm sitting, only consists of George Clooney, John F. Kennedy, and Benjamin Franklin immediately after he invented bifocals. Bifocal groupies are crazy in the sack. Literally. They had sex in potato sacks back then. Not only does Ryan Gosling have the looks, is a good actor (he was excellent in an independent movie called Half Nelson. This just proves the theory if you play a teacher with a drug problem in an independent movie with the same name as an amateur wrestling move you will be a good actor. A formula we should all live by), and is now slowly accumulating secondary traits that make all women swoon. He is becoming a tour de force unseen since the last tour de force.

Hey Ryan, how about leaving some for us? No? Ok, carry on then.

Cyberspace blew up with that video. Women were throwing their panties at their computers which made work really uncomfortable yesterday. Look at that video again. It’s not like Ryan Gosling is the only one helping. Sure there’s a guy with an umbrella that may or may not be wearing heels attempting to help and failing, but at least he tried. Does he get no respect? But here comes Ryan Gosling to save the day. He was in The Notebook and now breaks up fights! HE IS SO PERFECT. Oh all of you other people helping, you can all suck it. What movies have you been in? Huh? That’s what I thought. Get off the tracks when the popularity train is coming through.

Ryan, I hope you enjoy your trip through all the women of the web. I only have one question. Need a wingman?

2. I don’t get laughing. I mean I get it in the sense I love to do it and if you can make me laugh I love being around you, but I don’t get the whole act of laughing. Why do we laugh at some of the things we do? When did laughing first start? Was there a caveman that let out a guffaw and was immediately decapitated by the talon of an eagle? I think the first person to laugh probably had it bad. He would sound like an alien, but since they didn’t know what aliens or even Steve Jobs was they probably thought the person was dying.

We all have different senses of humor. I laugh at Die Hard jokes. I laugh at videos where kids get hit in the head with basketballs. I laughed when my brother brought home a C from art class in high school and my parents thought that grade was so good they bought him new baseball equipment. Ok, I cried on that last one. But whatever. The point is we laugh at different stuff, but there’s one thing we all laugh at.

Other people laughing.

Why?!? Why do we laugh when other people laugh? It really makes no sense to do the same act another person is doing. Kids cry when other kids cry, but I mean, really? Kids are pretty dumb. We’re fully functioning adults. We shouldn’t be copying the emotions of other adults, but we still do. Take for example this video of my man crush Anderson Cooper. (Aside: Can you have a man crush on someone who potentially could have a crush on you back? Not saying Anderson Cooper would ever be into me, but he does like men so it’s a possibility. Is this just a regular crush then? What’s the difference between this and my crush on Michelle Trachtenberg? I guess because I wouldn’t ever hook up with Anderson Cooper so maybe I should just change it to “My best friend” Anderson Cooper. Facebook me Anderson!)

I watched that video and didn’t laugh at any of his puns until he started cracking up on air. I was only laughing because he was also laughing. I cannot think of anything that makes less sense except Flava Flav’s entire life. His laugh sounded like dreams and paper unicorns so that probably had something to do with it. I thought about why I was laughing and vowed to never laugh because someone laughed first. It was a great vow

Yesterday I was walking down the hallway and the mailman for our building stopped me and said, “I’m not used to seeing you walk down the hallway without a big pizza in your hand! (Insert loud laughing).” I laughed at his joke, but then I realized a few things. One, I’ve never walked down the hallway at work with a pizza. Two, Was he confusing me with an Indian pizza delivery guy? He saw me not more than one minute ago in my office. He knows I work in a non pizza delivery capacity. Three, It wasn’t funny. Nothing he said he was funny. Intrinsically, it was the least funny thing I’ve heard all year. Yet I still laughed since he laughed. It makes me wonder if all stand up comedians should laugh at all their own jokes. How could it fail?

Right Anderson Cooper?

Party People Are Just The Same As Regular People. Spoiler Alert.

2011-08-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

I like parties. On the surface that is probably the least outlandish thing to say. I've found in my vast polling of the universe that most people do, in fact, like parties. The only people that don't like parties are the same people for some unconscionable reason also do not like cake. I can see not liking to go to parties since there can be too many people there invading your personal space, but not liking cake? Are you a person? I have yet to hear one valid reason for not liking cake in my entire life. Allergies, impending weight gain, cavities are not reasons for disliking spongy goodness all up in your mouth region. Someone once told me they didn't like cake "just because." JUST BECAUSE. "Just because" is something an 8 year old says when they are drawing pictures of horses on their brother's face and eating grass. If that's the only reason humanity can come up with not liking cake then I, for one, am disappointed with those Adam and Eve people for creating us.

Let them eat...and so on.

But back to the parties. The reason I like going to parties is based partly that I like socializing with people in a place where you can talk to them face to face and partly on the word "party." Anytime I see the word "party" anywhere I immediately assume it will be the greatest gathering of people since the 1987 backstage meeting between Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, 432 groupies with big hair, and a vat of hepatitis. Memories. There's a reason that the word "party" has been made into a bunch of songs with upbeat melodies and awesome drum solos. Starting with Sam Cooke's "We're Having a Party," and going all the way to this year's release by LMFAO "Party Rock Anthem", parties constitute having a good time and most likely "getting down with our bad selves." Sure there are a couple songs that bring down the whole party notion like "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to", but I never hear anyone singing that song at karaoke because that song is a bad time and is like saying something derogatory about Anderson Cooper.

All lies.

All vernacular and non cake eating people aside, the fact that you get to converse with an actual person in the flesh is the A1A Beachfront Avenue reason to go to a party. The mingling. The socializing. The awkward moment when someone brings up a pop culture reference you don't totally understand, but heard that one time so you play it off and say "Ha! I know how about that time (insert character of 80s comedy program you didn't see) breathed. That's right. He totally breathed on everyone! Glorious."

Since most of our conversations in the 2000s are done through a computer we're not getting the total person experience. Online we can wait a few seconds, search on wiki for something clever to say, translate it into Portuguese and, voila we're a charming person from across the pond. That's not real life. Real life is talking to an attractive woman and blurting out "Who gets elbow cancer?!?!" and having said woman say "I survived 3 bouts of elbow cancer you heartless heathen!" and then asking her where she got her alliteration skills.

So while I do like the gathering of people in one centralized place to celebrate an occasion of birth, joy, or parole, I don't like the part that leads up to it. Going to a party shouldn't be stressful. You RSVP on one of those Facebook events (R.I.P Evite. I loved your multitude of background options and themed invites. *sob) and you go. Badabing. Badaboom. Sometimes it's difficult to go to a party alone. You only know the host and you totally hooked up with a person on the invite when you were drunk off of $4 pear ciders. It happens, how were you to know that person would have any friends? At this point you might invite a friend to come along. Someone to talk to when the host is busy and/or you're hiding in a bush. This is perfectly fine. So you call your friend to ask them if they want to go. Then they say.

Who else is going to be there?

When did it become an acceptable practice to ask someone who else is going to be at a place you got invited to? Maybe it's an LA "thing", but I've heard this question way too many times count (see: over 6). Not only do you come off a high end jerk for asking about the other people there, you've totally denigrated the friend you've asked. Is the person that invited you not enough to talk to? Most of the time I become depressed when someone answers that way because it shows that I'm not good enough for them. If you ever meet a person with that response 97 percent of the time they throw in a "Are there going to be girls there" question for free.

It's the buy one get one free of douchebaggery. Worst purse manufacturer ever.

We live in a society where you would rather talk to the people that aren’t at the place you are than the people right in front of your face. Thank you text machines. Look how popular I am, people are trying to get into contact with me while at another establishment. Garcon, call TMZ and bring around the chopper. That’s why these people NEED to know who else will be there to see if it’s worth their time. That’s also why I’ve resorted to answering that question with a simple “Your Mom” rebuttal. Quick and painless. (Aside: At what point did “your mom” become an insult? You have to think in the early days if someone asked who else was invited to a function saying “your mom” would actually bring out a positive reaction. “Hey Ezekiel, who’s going to be at the penultimate supper tomorrow?” “Your mom.” “My mom? For real? That is wonderful! She makes a lovely banana bread and will probably clean all the dishes after. If any of us get dysentery she is a nurse and can keep us alive for all of eternity. Thanks for inviting her Ezekiel! You are a true mensch and a scholar!” The tide probably turned in 1951 when James Mcbee was invited to the National Comb makers Ball and didn’t know anyone. He was told his mom would be there. She never showed. And that’s how it all began.*)

We should all like going out and meeting new and old people. It doesn’t matter who else is there because you are free as something that is free. Don’t be that person that needs to know the other people there. Just go. Your friends will like you more. Or maybe less. I don’t know how good a friend you are.

But at least eat the cake.

*unconfirmed

Real Men of Genius. Or At Least Moderate Intellect

2011-08-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

My dad is a man's man. I really don't know what that phrase means, but I think it describes my dad pretty well. (Aside: Why is no one a woman's woman? If I had to guess a woman's woman would probably be Susan B. Anthony dealing with all that woman's rights tomfoolery. But what about her fashion sense? I don't think a true champion of women would be wearing bloomers all over the place. Someone get that lady a ride to Nordstrom and a gift card to the MAC store. Let's get with the times grandma! I'm being told she's not alive. Now I see why we don't use that phrase. Women's women are always dead.)

My dad does a lot of things that "men" are stereotyped to do in society. He used to smoke Marlboro Reds. He then collected the miles on the Marlboro packets and traded them in for the finest Marlboro bounties in all the land. Marlboro traveling bag, Marlboro hat, Marlboro shower caddy. My mom is a big fan (see: not a big fan) of her Marlboro tea cup set. Then he had a heart attack. He drinks Coors Light. He refuses to pay anyone to fix anything so he can fix it himself. He plays golf every Saturday. He bought a pickup truck. He always wears sweatshirts after January 1st. After reading all of these things I'm not sure if my dad is a man's man or Larry the Cable guy.

The flannel cut offs make it really close.

He's also a big proponent of never showing anyone weakness. I've only seen my dad cry once and that was at my grandma's funeral. When I saw him crying I didn't know what to do. It was like seeing Bigfoot or Bigfoot's brother if we knew what his brother looked like. I patted him on the shoulder and told him it would be ok. I'm no authority on crying since one time a tear fell from my eye when I realized I had misplaced the other half of my cupcake that I had saved for later. It was very emotional. IT WAS SO GOOD, YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND. I was 28.

When my brother and I were growing up playing baseball if we got hit with a pitch he would shake his head if we would rub it. "Run to first!", He would yell since he didn't want his kids being weak. All those times I wanted to yell back, "I want to see you get hit with a 65 mph pitch, which if you take into account reaction times feels like 91mph, in the patella tendon old man!" Then I realized that would not help me get any Little League groupies so I ran to first. When I was 13 I was playing basketball and faked an injury so I didn't have to play. My dad went on to give a speech about strength of character and adversity which would have been the greatest speech of his life had he not got so animated that he rear ended the car in front of us.

Vince Lombardi drove at 10 and 2.

Like any well adjusted American teen I didn't like my parents growing up, but as I got older I realized I had osmostisized (unconfirmed word) a lot of their values in me. I've been lucky in the sense that I've been playing sports for almost 25 years and never had a serious injury. This is where someone would say "knock on wood" or my mom would shout, "Why would you say that? You'll probably get hit with a rock today." I hate when you're playing basketball and some drops a rock on your face. Note: Never play with Wile E. Coyote again. I've had small injuries here and there such as someone stepping on my hand or bent back fingers playing baseball, but never have I "let them see me sweat."

Except if it's humid out.

This past week while playing basketball I jumped and inadvertently stepped on someone’s foot. My ankle rolled and immediately it was that burning feeling that I’ve been told you get when ligaments are stretched. Instead of taking a break and calling it a day, I laced up the sneakers tighter and played for another hour. When I got home and took my shoe off my ankle ballooned up. On Monday I couldn’t even put my shoes on so I’m sitting at work in a business casual outfit wearing my high top sneakers for support. Even Jerry Seinfeld is embarrassed.

What’s the deal with business casual?!?!

My dad was never a big proponent of sympathy. After he got knee surgery he didn’t want anyone to help him get around. When he was sitting in a hospital bed after a heart attack his first question was, “when can I play golf again?” He’s a stubborn man. I’ve inherited some of that same stubbornness. The last couple days I’ve been limping around the office and you can feel the looks people give you. They look at you different. When walking the hallways I can see other people try to decipher if I’m hurt or actually physically disabled. More people have held the door open for me in the last two days here than the previous 6 months.

I never understood why people in wheelchairs or on crutches would get offended when you try to help them. I’m just trying to be a human being! But the reality is that they don’t want to seem different than anyone else. We shouldn’t treat people different based on their shortcomings or things they can’t do which is easy to say, but hard to actually put into effect. We WANT to help out those we think can’t help themselves. I love that some of my friends are even willing to ask if I want them to do stuff for me. It shows they care, but I would never take them up on it. I guess this is part of being a man’s man.

If for some reason Webster’s dictionary had an entry for man’s man that included a picture (which is ridiculous, how many dictionaries have pictures in them? What is this? An Archie comic?) you will probably see Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford. BUT if you look up Indian man’s man under 5’7” you would most likely see Gandhi, then other famous people, but my dad would be somewhere in there around 12,575th.

He’ll be the one in the sweatshirt.

I Looked Into The Past And All I Got Was a Shirt That Said "Future"

2011-08-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

"When I turn 27 I want to be married and have AT LEAST 2 kids." Those were words I wrote down senior year of high school on my first day of Economics class. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I actually wrote down, "In 10 years I want to be married and have at least 2 kids," but I wasn't sure how good everyone was with math so I decided to do the addition for the audience. I'm friendly. My economics teacher had won the lottery (or so went the rumor) so he was really freewheeling it during those first few classes until he eventually left us for early retirement. Why are we writing life goals for our future down in economics class? It made no sense. Shouldn't he have been teaching us about stock portfolios, high yield bonds, and the best currency in the world, the American Dollar? USA! USA! (It was 1997 when we ruled everything). I'm guessing he was imagining himself in Costa Rica eating dolphins and hanging out with lady singers.

We all know someone like that.

When I was home about a month ago I was rifling through some old things and noticed that notebook where I had written down about where I wanted to be in 10 years. It was right next to my 8 little league participation trophies and one horse's ass trophy I received for finishing last in my bowling league when I was 16. What if some people like horses' asses? Joke's on you my friend. That's how I comfort myself. Some of the other things I wrote down seem outlandish in retrospect. I wanted to start a division 1 baseball team at Syracuse, buy my dream house and have enough money to buy my parents one too, have a butler (Mr. Belevedere was still very popular to me), and own my very own arcade with various pop a shot games, skee-ball, and that one where you hammer the squirrels that pop through the hole to relieve my daily stress from being awesome. Teenage ambition is great when it involves bashing fake animals right in the medulla oblongata.

Suck on it PETA!

I chuckled at all of those things, but when I came up on the "married with kids" portion I stopped. Is that really what I wanted at 17? I'm guessing a lot of it stemmed from my parents being young when they got married and my thinking that the American value system being such that you're not really anything until you fall in love and procreate. They say that every path leads a different way, but looking back at the ten years between 17 and 27 I can't think of any way I could have changed to reach that goal I wrote down in economics class. I retraced most of my steps in that time frame and they all lead me to the same place. Getting drunk, run off the beach by cops for attempting to skinny dip in the Pacific, and eating copious amounts of pita in 2006.

All roads lead to hummus.

At 27 I wasn't even close to being ready for marriage. Yet when I was 17 being married must have seemed awesome since I wrote it down and had to read it out loud to a class of high school kids. If you don't bring your A game to a class of 25 high school kids you may as well throw a tomato in your own face.

Even as I turned 30 last fall and will turn 31 this fall (gulp) I still don’t know how close I am to marriage. I think I’m a little closer since I’m not funneling beer bongs at Dockweiler Beach anymore. Or maybe that makes me farther away. I was never good at distances. I wear contacts. I’m pretty sure life isn’t a Romantic Comedy where I’m going to run into a revolving door, a woman will giggle at me then we’ll go to coffee and fall in madly in love with The Middle East playing in the background. So the only way to know for sure is to go on dates and the fun part about turning 30 as a man is that some odd way you seem more desirable even if you have a little less hair and lot more grays in your beard. The older I get the less I seem to get violently rejected by women and more easily put down. Like Old Yeller.

Ah, spoiler alert.

Therein lies the rub. The more dates I seem to be going on the more I vacillate (big word alert, buy a big word translator) between wanting to just have fun and wanting to find the “one.” Some people say that when you meet someone you know instantly you want to be with them. I’m not so sure I prescribe in that theory because I believe chemistry can be developed. Are there some instances when forces are so strong that chemistry is apparent? Of course, but there are plenty of other instances of great couples that didn’t even like each other the first time they met. Please don’t ask me to name one, my Internet Machine is broken (see: lazy).

Sometimes after a date I think about how great it would be to wake up with that person and in the next 12 hours I think how great it is to have the bed to myself. Then I think about how great it would be to have someone to watch TV with and then I think man I’m glad I don’t have to share my pizza for one. A few weeks ago I wrote down, “Next person I sleep with will be the last person I sleep with.” Not that I was going asexual, but more that she would be the “one”. No more dates. Sure that’s entirely possible, but I don’t know if I want it to be probable. Every day is a different thought; every day is a different future. When I was 17 I wanted to know what I had at 27. Now that I’m 30 I still don’t know.

Except I really want to meet some lady singers.

A Walk To Attempt To Recreate Certain Events

2011-08-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

"I don't remember." Ever since I was a little boy with coke bottle glasses I haven't liked those 3 words in succession. It's not that I don't like those words individually in other phrases though. "I like ice cream." "Don't eat the yellow snow." "I will remember you, do remember me? doo,doo,doo,doo,do." DAMN YOU ADIA. Growing up I always assumed the act of remembering certain things wasn't a "can't", it was more of a "won't." To me memory was something everyone should be able to do. I knew that some people have memory loss or diseases relating to memory and that's forgivable, but if you were a healthy person and didn't remember something I assumed you were an awful person.

The reason I grew up thinking that is because I remember most everything. I may not remember the exact date something happened, but I can relate it to other things to get myself in the ballpark (cliche alert.) I'm no idiot savant, but if someone tells me something there's a 99 percent chance I will recall the conversation. I'm not talking about important things like life and death matters or true tales of woe, I'm talking about mundane throw away lines that no one should remember. I can easily remember names as long as they've been told to me once in a sober state. At the risk of making this a 1000 word #humblebrag I'll say this.

Having a good memory is terrible.

I know there will be people rolling their eyes at that and that's fine mainly because I can't see you and am picturing you naked laughing with snork juice coming out of your nose. Delicious. You rarely meet people that say "I have a good memory." Most people are more humble and say, "Sorry my memory is really bad, what was your name again?" No one really challenges that because the majority of people can't remember things that happened once. OR even twice. The weirdness begins when I say, "Oh, yeah I remember you. Hey Janet. You wore that yellow sundress and your brother bought you a present on your 7th birthday that you hated so you cried until your mom returned it then your brother stole your diary the next day." It's usually at this point I get kicked in the groin and called a creep.

Now I always wear a cup.

Because I tended to remember the majority of what people told me growing up, I assumed everyone was like that. I soon realized throughout high school and college that not only was no one like me, but I was the weirdo. My mom would always forget things I told her. My dad called me and still calls me by my brother's name on the phone. I'm glad I didn't have a sister. The few friends I did have would forget when I told them I liked a girl or, in the sadly frequent scenario, just forget to pick me up to go places all together.

As I got older it only got worse for me. I would tell someone something, I'd see them or talk to them the next week, and they would say, "I don't remember." I instantly became offended when people didn't recall certain things. How could you forget my birthday? That I was wearing a Woodbridge High School t shirt? The middle name of my 7th cousin removed on my mom's side? ARE YOU NOT HUMAN?!?! I had become what I always feared.

A woman.

Women are given this wrap of being the sex that badgers constantly about certain dates, occassions, and first times, but that was me. Not only would I be offended, I would get angry and not talk to people for days, weeks, or even months. It strained my relationship with my parents, my friends, and everyone I dated. I ended a long term relationship because she forgot my Halloween costume when we first met. (True story). To me not remembering became synonymous with not caring. I was at the point where I thought I was so much smarter than everyone else that I was on the top of Mount Olympus and everyone else was at the bottom of Mt. Olympus, whatever that area was called. Probably Bottompus.

Since I felt that way, I did what I thought I should do. I shut everybody out. Starting at around 24 until I was 28 I didn't tell anybody anything about me. I would go out make some jokes, have some friends, but no one would know any details of who I really was. You can't get offended when you really don't say anything. A couple years ago I realized that acting like that was getting me nowhere. I ended up meeting people that were open and honest. They let people in so they could be let into their lives. It was refreshing and strangely comforting. Being offended when people said 3 little words was ridiculous.

Unless it is "cake is gross." No YOU'RE GROSS.

Breathe.

In the past couple years I've admitted things that I never thought I would. I haven't jumped down anyone's throat if they don't remember something or forget to return a phone call. It's taken a lot of learning and a lot of patience, but as of this day I feel better. I rarely, if ever, get offended by anything that anyone does. The other day my friend in an e-mail wrote, "Don't be offended if..." I just chuckled. If she knew 23 year old me she would have reason to be worried. But 30 year old me scoffs at 23 year old me.

But I won't forget.