Exit The Warrior, Today's Tom Sawyeee

I'm usually good for about one concert a year, depending on how often Robert Randolph & the Family Band are in the area, and my concert for 2010 so far was Rush last night.

The concerts I attend usually fall into one of three categories:

Current bands that I would actually enjoy seeing live: basically consists of Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Vampire Weekend, and the Avett Brothers. However, EVERY single time the Avett Bros. come within a five-hour radius, I have some random event going on.....an out-of-town-wedding; 2nd-round games of March Madness; an erotic evening of eating cookie dough logs and watching DVR'd episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place. Vampire Weekend apparently hates Midwesterners; so they're out. Soooo basically I see Robert Randolph like once a year. Booyeah.

70's and 80's arena rock bands that I enjoy, but half the fun at this point is the getting bombed portion of the evening, not necessarily the music: I've seen Styx a bunch of times (if you were in my car with me from August 2000-June 2002, there was a 42% chance we were listening to Styx. If we were road-tripping to Fargo, that number skyrocketed to 93%. Their greatest hits CD lasted exactly from Grand Forks to Paul's parents' place in Fargo, almost down to the second. But I digress.) I saw Journey once and it mostly made me sad; it was shortly after Steve Perry left the band, and seeing Journey without Steve Perry is like going to Sonic and ordering a chili cheese wrap and NOT ordering a mayo cheeseburger with no tomatoes to go with it...along with a second chili cheese wrap. I saw REO Speedwagon once, and it was so terrible that honest to God, the greatest moment of the concert was when the warmup houseband, probably called Mikey J & the Fargodomers or something like that, played 'Green Onions' and the whole joint was bouncing in their seats and nodding along. (However, Paul pretty much made out with Jake's mom that night, leading to thousands of jokes and Jake calling Paul 'Dad' for the next four years....so it was basically a wash.)

Snoop Dogg: gets his own category, because I have never, and probably will never, experience a show like that again.

So last night's Rush show in Kansas City obviously falls into category #2. Scattered thoughts:

- It's amazing what the movie I Love You, Man has done for Rush. I don't want to sound snooty- I'm probably only in the 65th-70th percentile of Rush fans, there were plenty of songs last night that I was unfamiliar with- but there were hordes upon hordes of college kids who clearly only recognized like three songs, held up signs saying 'Slappa deh bess mon' and then stood around for the rest of the show. Again, I'm not trying to judge; it's the same thing that Big Daddy did for Styx, and Saving Silverman did for Neil Diamond, and Anchorman did for 'Afternoon Delight', and the 'More Cowbell' sketch did for 'Don't Fear the Reaper.' I just thought it was interesting. If I'm Foreigner or Boston right now, I'm getting Judd Apatow on the phone and begging him to have one of his characters in his next movie have a quirky obsession with my band. (Also, after the last song, and we were filing out of the outdoor arena, they played a 5-minute sketch featuring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel's characters from I Love You, Man backstage with Rush, and it was hysterical. As funny as anything in the actual movie. So there's that.)

- I frequently love to brag about my gambling prowess (just an FYI, I got $100 on LeBron going to Chicago, back when the odds were +125....last time I looked, Vegas had them at -400. I feel good about it) so it's only fair that I mention my huge embarrassing failures. We all threw $20 in the pot, and whoever's song got played first took it all. I picked 'Working Man', feeling so confident about it that I added a side bet of $5 with everyone that it would be the opener......three and a half hours later, during their third encore and final song of the night, they finally played 'Working Man.' Whoops.

- If I'm in the 65th-70th percentile of Rush fans, the guy who was sitting to my left is in the 100th. He was absolutely rocking out to every song, singing lead, singing backup, air guitar, drums, smoking copious amounts of drugs, etc. etc. Just a thrill to watch. And then the opening notes of 'Closer to the Heart' came on. And this guy had a breakdown. We're talking head in his hands, buddy consoling and hugging him, BAWLING his eyes out for the entire song. As soon as it was done, so was he. Back to rocking out again. Amazing transformation. I guess I'm telling this story because I've always joked about how certain songs can make me cry no matter where I am (the opening to 'Baba O'Riley', Vanessa Carlton's '1000 Miles', the theme song to Debbie Does Dallas) but I never meant it literally. This guy lost his shit, big time.

- Geddy Lee is without a doubt the nerdiest lead singer in rock history. Whereas someone like Robert Plant could've been an IRS auditor and he still would've had girls throwing their panties at him, Geddy talks and acts like an 8th grade social studies teacher, one of the pushovers who lets the popular girls manipulate him into canceling the pop quiz because they had a tough volleyball game the night before. His exact quote leading into intermission last night, in a grandfather-talking-to-his-six-year-old-grandson tone of voice: "OK guys, hope you're having fun! We're going to take a tiny break....well, scratch that, maybe slightly longer than tiny, because, you know, we're ancient....but we'll be back soon, so keep on having a good time!" It's a good thing he's awesome at music. Friggin' Canadians.

- Say what you will about the song 'Tom Sawyer' (Lane I'm looking in your direction) but goddamn, don't try and tell me it's not amazing live. Absolutely surreal. Possibly the greatest song I've heard live. I mean, there was the time I heard 'Gin & Juice' while smoking two joints at once and rapping every word along with some random MC Jazzy Fubu Jersey in Fargo, North Dakota.....or the time I heard 'Whole Lotta Rosie' at AC/DC and saw more boobies on the jumbotron then I had in my entire life up to that point.....but shit, 'Tom Sawyer' was ridiculously cool live.

- Five best songs from last night:

1. Tom Sawyer
2. YYZ
3. Spirit of the Radio
4. Limelight
5. Closer to the Heart

******************

Everybody have a good 4th. As Steg used to say in high school (usually just before we drank a bunch of beers and convinced his little brother to jump a Dyno off of a 75-degree ramp into Maple Lake):

"Let's keep it real while keepin' it safe."

You Go, Glen Coco!

I've seen Mean Girls a ridiculous number of times. (And I won't apologize for that, either. It's a legitimately funny movie with a ton of eye candy in it. So the sooner you accept that, the sooner we can move forward and really get into this topic. Cool?)

Around the 8th or 9th time I watched it, and I started paying attention to things other than the Lohan-McAdams-Chabert-Seyfried Murderer's Row, I started feeling a little something down in my swimsuit area for Janis (Lizzy Caplan.) She was strangely attractive, even though she was supposed to be the chunky, goth, psuedo-lesbian character (characteristics that have never really been in my typical hot girl wheelhouse.) Once I started really focusing on her, I was smitten- convinced that, similar to the bicycle-stealing lady who lived under the bridge off of the 7th hole of the old frisbee golf course in Grand Forks- there was more to her than meets the eye.

So I did a little googling and discovered that yes, Lizzy was indeed hot, and just heavily doctored up for her role in Mean Girls. I started working on my theory that she was the hottest girl in the cast (a theory that, while mostly ridiculed, picked up at least a little steam when Lindsay Lohan's Hot Bandwagon hit a moose on the interstate, rolled seven times, and exploded into a million pieces, killing dozens of bystanders in the process.)

So now, for the last couple of years, I've monitored Lizzy's career (I mean that exactly as creepy as it sounds) and occasionally will watch something she's in, just to keep re-affirming to myself that yes, she is totally hot. She was on Jimmy Kimmel a couple weeks ago, and was a totally sarcastic smart-ass the whole time, which of course melted my heart even more. Few things are hotter to me than girls being laid-back and flippant. Which is why, as amazing as Kelly Kapowski is/was, I almost like Tiffani Thiesen more as Valerie Malone in 90210.....but that's a whole 'nother post.

I dunno, I guess it's just ironic to me that, six years after I first watched that movie, the girl that I think about when I'm smearing SmashBurger sauce all over my body and trolling Craigslist for exotic animal owners in the area isn't Lindsay Lohan, or Rachel McAdams, or Lacey Chabert, or Amanda Seyfriend. Life is funny sometimes.

Play It As It Lies Or Get Off The Beach!

Mini-stories from last weekend's College World Series trip, my first successful one in three attempts:

>> You can't go to the CWS and not cheer for somebody, so in the past, we've picked a random team and half-ass supported them. But this year we upped the ante, actually purchasing TCU gear to wear all day long. We quickly learned the Horned Frog hand symbol and we were all set. Besides the fun that goes along with fanatically cheering for a team without being able to name a single player, there was the added benefit of getting free food from a TCU tailgate simply because I was decked out in their colors (and I may have told the guy that my parents were TCU grads, but I'm pretty sure he was gonna give me the sausage & peppers hoagie anyway.)


MyShawn, me, Gangel, and Addy. We were all solid competitors this weekend, but the MVP has to go to MyShawn. Worked until 11 pm Friday night, drove 6.5 hours from Grand Forks to Omaha, pulled up to Gangel's place five minutes before we left for tailgating, boozed all day on 0 hours of sleep, caught an hour long nap at the end of the afternoon, then boozed all night. (While also still being coherent enough to drop the prototypical MyShawn lines, such as "Play it as it lies or get off the beach" in reference to an Omaha girl pulling some shenanigans. I would do a top 5 list of the most random/hilarious/what the fuck does that mean? MyShawn quotes of all time, but there would be like 20 honorable mentions.)


>> We went to McDonald's for dinner after tailgating (class class class) and it was the weirdest Mickey D's I've ever seen. I don't like to drop the r-bomb, but seriously, every person in that place was retarded. One guy saw our TCU gear, looked over at his companion (wife? mom? She was too busy staring into space/not being sane to register anything anyway) and confidently stated: "Baseball." So this collection of people- you couldn't tell if they were together or not; they were all sitting at separate tables, but I'd be shocked if they weren't all at the same party somehow- are hitting us with questions about the TCU game all through our dinner. However, since we were too busy bombarding the girl who tagged along with us with questions about how she banged (Sportscenter anchorman) Steve Levy in Vegas, we didn't realize until the end of the conversation that all these 'special' people thought we were actually on the team. Which totally makes sense.

>> I'm assuming by now, everyone knows what vuvuzelas are (although I still haven't heard the same pronounciation twice, and lord knows I don't know how to say it.)

Anyway, Addy has an app for his phone that allows him to play a sampling of vuvuzelas, which led to some laughs initially. THEN, we figured out we could plug it into my car speakers and jack the volume up, and hilarity ensued. We were in separate cars in the Taco Bell drive-thru Friday night, and right as Gangel, in the car in front of us, was about to give his order, we blasted him with some full volume vuvuzelas, and he had to get out of his car and walk around because he was laughing so hard. I was still crying laughing when it was our turn to order two minutes later (which is why I panicked and got two crunchwrap supremes, instead of getting just one and then mixing in some cheesy gordita crunches. Two crunchwrap supremes back-to-back are just gross. Don't do it.) We incorporated the vuvuzelas every hour or so during tailgating the next day, always bringing the same reaction from every tailgater in a 200 yard radius: two or three seconds of confused staring at us, realization and raucous laughter for about 20 seconds, then a batch of annoyed "wrap it up, douchebags, it's not funny anymore" glares in our direction.

>> Remember last year, when I complained that buying cigars for an underaged kid should've given us good karma, and it wasn't fair that Gangel and I got thrown out so fast? Well, the Karma Gods waited an entire calendar year to pay us back....but they paid us back in a HUGE way. I won't get into a lot of detail because of the sensitive nature of the internet, but let's just say it rhymes with "schmiraculously schmavoided schmaDUI."

OK, just a little bit of detail: as we're pulled over after 17 hours of drinking, and the cops are walking up to the car, this classic exchange takes place:

Emily: "Are we gonna be OK?"
MyShawn: "We will be.....(driver's name redacted) is pretty fucked."

And just when our collective sphincters couldn't get any tighter, the cops pulled a 180, jumped back in their car, idled up next to us and told us to have a good night, and took off at 80mph with cherries flying, followed by about six or seven other cop cars within the next couple minutes. So to whomever got stabbed/shot/murdered in that exact 15-second window before the cops got to our car....I mean, that sucks, I feel bad for you.....but DAMN you saved our asses.

So similar to Lloyd Christmas trading in the Shaggin' Wagon for a moped, Omaha TOTALLY redeems itself!!! The karma has been repaid.


(Also, Erin Andrews was there. Just knowing I'm within three states of her gives me a parsh, so you can imagine what it's like when we're in the same city. Love you, boo.)

Fever Pitch

Here's the extent of my soccer knowledge:

- When a defensive player attempts to knock the ball away from the player in possession of the ball, it's called a challenge. If he's successful, you should definitely say to the TV in some sort of accent "Guuud chaaaaallaange."

- In order to beat the Nazi soccer team, your squad must only consist of Pele, Sylvester Stallone in net, Austin Powers' faaaasha, and a bunch of roster-filling random dudes. Damn I love the movie Victory.

- In FIFA '95 for Sega, if you wait for the goalie to free kick, take one of your forwards and time your jump perfectly in front of him, you can knock the ball directly into the net every time and score like 20 goals per game.

- Pele was good. Zidane was good until he head-butted someone. Beckham can "bend it." Alexei Lalas had a crazy hair/beard combo. Freddy Adu was awesome when he was 14, now he kinda sucks. I'm very sure there was an Italian in the 90's named Roberto Baggio, I'm mildly sure that he missed the net during a huge penalty kick in the '94 World Cup, and I'm 100% sure that for most of my life, I have called the garbage can 'Roberto Garbaggio' because of him.

Annnnnd that's about it.


But if you think I'm not jumping on the U.S. World Cup bandwagon and waving my flag and cheering and drinking like a regular soccer hooligan, then you be illin', son. That's what American sports are all about. If, during the Olympics, I can read 47 Facebook status updates from girls whose only idea of competition is being first in line for the new Twilight movie, then I can absolutely be a die-hard U.S. soccer fan. Starting......now.

Um, Hi.

I'm sorry that my 'presence' on the internet has been brutal lately ("Why did you put 'presence' in quotes? Are you implying that we're not here?") I could give you a list of reasons why- but rule #76, No excuses, play like a champion. If you want to see the Hottest Girl on the Planet talk about how busy she is, however, I can provide you with that.

Hey, enjoy some bullets, all of them involving me and my life in some way, because I was reminded recently that's what a blog is (I love it when friends are supportive in a passive aggressive way):

>> The move is finally all the way done (sorry, no more excuses for not posting more, I promised.) It is certainly nice to have space to move around after living in a shoebox for the last two years- although that was my goal, and it saved plenty of money for my gambling habit. My new and improved Fortress of Solitude is baller as shit; partly because the cheap furniture store here in town that I loved so much closed down, and instead of 'old, crappy, possibly piss-stained video game chair', I was forced to splurge on 'new, leather, with cupholders video game couch.' To all future visitors, we will now be playing NBA Jam and Super MarioKart in style. There has been a clamoring for pictures of the new place, so maybe someday I will throw some up.

>> Bergman and Ashley visited last weekend, our third weekend in a row of visitors (I PROMISE! No more excuses!) We, um, drank a lot. For me personally, the highlight was being locked out of our house at 2 a.m. on Friday, so the girls took a cab back downtown to get keys out of Alex's car, while us dudes ate Pizza Shuttle, sitting cross-legged in the driveway and having some dude talk. That was neat.

>> We finally received our championship shirts for Curtis J. Phillips Basketball. I already have like five of the exact same shirts (except this one says 'basketball' instead of 'softball'......our co-ed softball team is like back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back champs, dating back before I even lived in Kansas- Tom Emansky and his band of AAU teams got nothing on us) but this shirt feels different. Better, you could say. Well-deserved. The opposite of how the Yankees feel when they get their World Series rings.

>> I am literally counting down the days until I can get rid of my Doucheberry. I'm treating this two-year plan like I'm in phone prison, and I've got half my sentence left. And my only chance for parole is getting my salad tossed by el leader de los banditos (aka throwing a ton of money around for a new one without getting a new plan.) It's cool having email and internet on my phone, I guess, but a lot of things about the Berry annoy me, and this trackball can lick my balltrack.

>> Yet ANOTHER reason why college football sucks: now with all the TV money getting thrown around by the Big 10 and Pac-10, there is a very real chance that the Big 12 is folding, and KU will get stuck in the Mountain West or something shitty. Even though they are a top 5 basketball program, their football program (for the most part) sucks, which makes all the difference in this football-crazed country we call home. "Hey, we've been playing these teams in football every single year since the fucking Civil War, but who gives a shit, if we leave, we can earn an extra nine million dollars per year, that we can use to hopefully make our campus stop smelling like a goat ranch! Where do we sign!" Just one more punch in the dick to remind you that the only thing that matters in sports these days is money. Sometimes I wish it was 1989 again- and not just to hear N.W.A. in their prime.

Pictured: N.W.A. Timeframe: ummmm, slightly before their prime.



>> I will try not to go another 10 days without posting. I'm pretty sure that's my longest hiatus since I started, and this.......this felt awkward. Like a deadbeat dad showing up for high school graduation after not talking to his kid for 18 months, and hoping that the keys to his piece of shit '87 Honda Accord is going to be enough to forgive him.

(Just so we're clear, this post represents the crappy Accord. Enjoy the car, son!)

Damn You, Rack 'Em Willie!

The latest youtube video that makes me giggle in an uncontrollable fashion: Rack 'Em Willie.

The first couple times we watched this video at the golf course, not a whole lot happened besides some laughing. Slowly but surely, however, this video kept seeping into our brains, and now the entire pro shop constantly speaks in Rack 'Em Willie's language. And of course, if you know me at all, you know it didn't stop there; it soon carried into my home life.

So now, in an ironic-yet-completely-predictable twist, I spend most of my day muttering "Rack 'em, rack, rack 'em, rack, rack, rackball"......but instead of being able to file that under 'quoting a hilarious youtube video'.....I just sound like the very crackhead that the video is making fun of. It has very quickly and very seriously become a debilitating problem for me.

It's a tough life when you're so easily influenced by youtube. RACKBALL!

Pretend I'm The Pizza Delivery Guy And Watch Me Wack Off

Pocket dialing. It happens to all of us. Sometimes you're the victim, and sometimes you're the perpetrator.

Sometimes you pocket dial a good buddy who will understand the situation, maybe bust your balls a little bit about it the next day.......and sometimes you pocket dial an ex-girlfriend at 3 a.m. while at an after-party shotgunning PBR's and smoking three cigarettes at once, and she takes it as a sign that you want to get back together.

Sometimes you get pocket dialed and all you hear is static or rustling, maybe a snippet of conversation.....and sometimes you get pocket dialed and hear the unmistakable sounds of baby-making coming from the other end (this happened to me once, and all I can say is that porn must suck for blind guys. Just having the audio portion leaves a little something to be desired.)

Sometimes you pocket dial someone while you're in the car, singing at the top of your lungs. While mildly embarrassing (especially if it's the Spice Girls, or the Aladdin soundtrack, or you're belting out the robot voice in 'Mr. Roboto' or something) it's still OK. It's acceptable in our society.

But sometimes....SOMETIMES, my friends......you pocket dial someone, while singing at the top of your lungs, to this song. And it becomes slightly less than OK.

I guess I should be thankful that in this instance yesterday, the victim of my pocket dial was NOT an ex-girlfriend. That....might have sent some mixed messages.

My 'Dad', The Governor?

Former NBA basketball player Chris Dudley and I have a long and storied history. It all started back in 1999, when I was still a true New York Knicks fan, and Patrick Ewing got hurt during the Knicks' wonderful run to the Finals as an 8 seed. All of a sudden Dudley was getting major minutes, and we were loving every second of it (Dudley is one of the top 5 nerdiest players to ever play in the NBA, as well as the worst free throw shooter in NBA history, by percentage.)

Also, in one of my favorite clips of all time (go to the 1:10 mark) after getting posterized and shoved to the ground by Shaq, Dudley gets up and guns the ball at his back and attempts to look tough, while everyone else tries not to laugh. Nobody, but NOBODY, dunks on Chris Dudley and gets away with it.

My first step in the Dudley-lovefest was DVJS and I making t-shirts with just his face on it. My friends and I have had a long-running joke that since my dad is such a badass, and I'm such a pussy, that I was clearly adopted. So the next step, once we saw the Dudley and I share the same crooked nose, was to start claiming that he was my 'real' dad.

Then, during our senior year in high school, the relationship went to the next level. The Phoenix Suns (of which Dudley was now a member) came to Fargo to play the T'Wolves in an exhibition game.

(If this next section sounds like me bragging, it's because I am. At 17 years old, it was one of the coolest nights of my life up to that point.)

During pregame warmups, we were all bantering with the Suns. Cliff Robinson was shooting corner three-pointers and missing the majority, so I told him to stay out of there tonight, it wasn't his spot. He gave me a 'what the fuck, white boy?' look, and then during the game, hit about four or five corner threes, pointing and winking at me in the crowd after every one (he knew where we were sitting due to later events.) We were busting balls with everyone on the Suns (except Jason Kidd, part of the reason I still hate him today, what a prick.) Then the kicker came from Lane (who else) when Dudley, the last player on the court before tipoff, threw down a monster dunk before trotting to the bench. Lane stands up and screams in his typical video game voice "Noooooooooobody brings the thunder like Chris Dudley!!!!!!!!!!!" So now not only does the entire Fargodome know who we are and what we're about, the entire Suns bench is dying in laughter. Soon after tipoff, we busted out our signs "Dudley For President" and "Chris Dudley Is My Real Father" and the team was practically rolling in laughter. So that's how the game went.

Afterwards, we were hanging in the parking lot waiting to get more autographs, when a few of the players approached us on their way to the bus and started bs'ing with us. Corie Blount, seeing a Taco Bell across the street, gives Lane 20 bucks and sends him on a taco run (literally, as Lane tore off at a dead sprint across the parking lot.) As soon as Dudley came out, the whole team erupted and called him over to us, and a picture taking and autograph session ensued. Dudley looked embarrassed, as it was probably the first time in his career he was the most popular guy on the team, and all the black guys were practically falling down laughing.

After awhile, things die down, and the Suns bid us adieu and get on the bus. It's at this point that Lane shows back up again, and without breaking stride, sprints right onto the bus, tacos in hand. Shortly after, security guards are dragging him off as he fights them, waving the bag and yelling "I've got Corie's tacos! I've got Corie's tacos!"

I'd like to think that Dudley kept the picture of us hanging in his locker for at least the rest of the season, but at least we know that the rest of the team made fun of him for months about that night (except Jason Kidd, that dick.) A couple years later, in 2003, we were at a game in Minneapolis, and though we missed the team boarding the bus, we got Dudley to come to the front of the bus and give us a what-up. And that was the last time I saw my real dad.

But he's been doing big things. Besides being a leading advocate for diabetes awareness (he suffers from type 1) he officially won the Republican nomination in the race for Governor of Oregon earlier this week.


Chris Dudley: a beacon of truth, justice, and missed free throws.



I've been keeping an eye on his political aspirations for a couple years now, and have been eagerly anticipating this day for awhile- really, the only thing that can get me excited for politics. I'm debating a move to Oregon (I've always loved Portland) just so I can vote for my 'dad' in this fall's election. If that falls through, I'll just have to rely on ADawg or Bobbi to cast my vote for me. I don't ask them for much.

Chris Dudley in 2010! Yes We Can!

Internet!

Things are a liiiittle b-u-s-y these days. Between working 50ish hours a week, golfing, moving, and watching Jonathan Papelbon give up multiple 9th-inning home runs to the Yankees (the new sports den came real close to getting a hole kicked in the wall last night) I currently don't have the time to post any original thoughts at this juncture. In the words of the immortal Harrison Ford: "I already work around the clock!!!"

However, I do have three videos from the world wide web to help you kill some time; that's what we're here for anyway.

1. I found this while I was on my fantastic voyage of Saved by the Bell clips last week. The video isn't the best quality; we've been making homoerotic jokes about Zack and Slater since we were old enough to know what 'homoerotic' meant; and Brokeback Mountain jokes were completely beaten into the ground by mid-2007 (I think there was even a Senate Committee hearing that officially delcared Brokeback jokes old news)....and yet, I still giggled quite a bit at this clip. I'm simple like that.

2. I'm bringing this one to you on behalf of Gangel, who was kind enough to share this with me on Facebook. I was able to hold it together until the Godfather one-liners, then continually laughed harder and harder until it was finished. Hank Azaria, comedy genius. (Also, it's a superb four-way battle between Gangel, Schne, DVJS, and Kos to see who can put the funniest videos on my Facebook page. Frankly, we're all winners for them trying. What was the world like before youtube? I'm glad I don't remember.)

3. Do you like Where's Waldo? Do you like tongue-in-cheek documentaries? Do you like Hermoine from the Harry Potter movies stripteasing to songs from the old Jock Jams CDs? You'll find two of those three things in this clip.

Maturity

Someday, there will come an age in my life when, upon receiving a two-game suspension in City League basketball for technical fouls, we won't turn it into a joke, and I won't show up for our game to sit on the bench in a suit, and we won't ask our lawyer friend to draft a letter to the league President appealing the second game of the suspension. However, that age is not 27.

(Also, there will be an age in my life where I stop getting technical fouls, but that's beside the point. I thought I was done at age 24....in the last year I've had an itsy bitsy little relapse.)

Suspension or no, the Curtis J. Phillips organization finally broke through and won their first outright league title this season. Our rivalry with The Dawgs has been compared to the Suns/Spurs rivalry of the last five years (by me) in the sense that both us and the Suns have seemingly gone out of our way to invent creative ways to lose games. (Seriously, if you doctored the video to make the overall quality of basketball better, you could do a 30 for 30 documentary on our shenanigans with The Dawgs**, and it would be enjoyed by basketball fans. I promise you.) So it was only fitting that in the same year that the Suns finally knocked the Spurs out of the playoffs, we also got over the hump and defeated The Dawgs to clinch the championship.


**Shenanigans with The Dawgs, 2008-2010:

- One game we were up 9 with about 1:30 left to play. A bunch of missed free throws, a couple turnovers, and a thrown away inbounds pass at halfcourt leading to a breakaway layup with 3 seconds left later, and we lost by a point.

- One season we adopted the Suns' old '7 seconds or less' offense, and beat The Dawgs by 25 (although they had already clinched the title that year.) The next season, they had at least two players scouting every one of our games all season, then for the championship game, brought in a couple of ringers (technically legal due to a league loophole) who led them to a narrow victory. Needless to say, we had a little "chat" with them after this game. This is definitely our version of the 2007 Suns/Spurs series, when bullshit suspensions following Robert Horry's cheap shot on Steve Nash derailed the Suns.

- One game, during a particularly atrocious performance by the referees, one of the refs responded to our bench's chirping by threatening to fight two of our players in the parking lot. Needless to say, we were not the beneficiaries of an abundance of good calls down the stretch of this game.

- One game, we battled back from a late deficit, and down by three, I was fouled on a three pointer with five seconds left. I made the first two, back-rimmed the third, and we lost by a point.

- One game, we were down six with a minute left when I got T'd up and ejected. But The Dawgs missed both technical free throws, and the boys rallied around the ejection and tied it up with under ten seconds left, then won in overtime. However, we lost a different game to an inferior opponent earlier in the year, costing ourselves a share of the title.


Happy Friday.

"It Wasn't Supposed To Be This Way....Not For Us"

On my Doucheberry, I keep an ongoing memo where I list all the songs I need to download the next chance I get (the memo is appropriately titled 'Downloading.') So anytime I hear a song I like on a jukebox, or in someone's car, or anywhere in public that this scenario may play itself out, I can punch it in quick and not have to remember the title and artist myself.

ANYWAY, I got a liiiiittle bit shitfaced on Saturday night, and when I woke up Sunday morning there was an entry in the Downloading memo entitled 'laura branigan saved by the bell fuck you jeff.' Um, what?

So I did a little googling and apparently sometime during the night- my guess is when we after-barred at Jud and Wing's place, and we had the 80's music TV channel going in the background- I heard the Laura Branigan song 'How Am I Supposed To Live Without You'. This song, as I hope the hamster running on the wheel in your brain is starting to figure out, is the song that is playing at Homecoming while Kelly is breaking up with Zack (although I think it's the Michael Bolton version of the song, in an award-winning performance by Slater and Jessie.) I had no idea who Laura Branigan was....turns out she also sang 'Gloria', which as anyone who attended school in Grand Forks, North Dakota can tell you, is an absolute staple of middle school gym class line dancing (along with Rick James' 'Superfreak.')

The 'fuck you Jeff' part of my memo? Also should be fairly obvious by now:

This fuckin' guy.



So all this Saved by the Bell googling led to finding some pretty fantastic videos sprinkled around the interwebs. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the official Zack & Kelly break-up video, since NBC scours youtube for videos belonging to them like Arizona police officers looking for illegal immigrants (political humor alert!) Not that it really matters for me personally, I've got that whole scene pretty much memorized by now. ("Do you like him?"....."No....yes....I don't know!" And so on.)

I feel sorry for everyone not from my generation, who missed out on the awesomeness that is Saved by the Bell. At least you had Hannah Montana to look forward to after school?


(Side note: when I initially read the memo in my phone, my first thought was that I was talking about the girl who was in Saved by the Bell: The New Class, and is now looking frighteningly saucy in that new Miller Lite commercial, and maybe I wanted to remind myself that yes, she is indeed hot? But alas, I discovered that her name is actually Lindsey McKeon, not Laura Branigan, so it was back to the drawing board. Good to see ol' Lindsey gettin' work, though. Keep on doing what you're doing.)

Just because: my all-time top 5 Saved by the Bell episodes, from way back in February 2008. Or as I like to call it, 2 months B.C. (Before Chalmers.) Can it really be that long ago?

Gettin' My Hills On

Embarrassing confession: back in 2005, I was a fan of the show Laguna Beach. Not just a casual fan, either; more like "holy shit it's 9:00 I've got to get to a TV right now ahhhh I can't miss the opening!" It's tough to pinpoint exactly what sucked me in (underage girls?) I had already given up on 'The Real World' and 'Road Rules' and 'Real World/Road Rules Challenge' and whateverthefuckelse MTV rolls out with that franchise. But something about Laguna cut right to the core of me (let's be honest; it was the underage girls.)

A couple years later, we watched 'The Hills' pretty regularly at Culligan Manor, but I'm blaming that one on Horp and Noles (Horp was also the sole reason I even know that the show 'Sweet Sixteen' exists.) Without them, I doubt I would've tuned in once- I was never a big Lauren Conrad fan. I couldn't take much of that show, however. The I-can't-even-believe-these-are-real-humans douchebaggery of Brody and Spencer made the show untolerable for me. I turned it off and never looked back.

So the other day, I'm enjoying a peaceful hungover Sunday on the couch. I seriously couldn't even remember the last time I just set up shop on the couch and watched shitty TV all day long- it's the one major downfall to the excitement of March Madness, as well as having this weekend job at the golf course. I started out watching NBA playoff basketball and flicking around on commercials. Then I saw that an episode of 'The Hills' was on, and Kristin Cavallari was heavily involved (probably the captain of the All-Bitch Team- where knowing that she's a raging B somehow only makes her hotter.)

In Ron Burgundy voice: We are through. Through! Because of your actions, you SCORPION woman!!!


So I watched for a couple minutes.....then I started watching the new episode when it came on, and the basketball game got relegated to commercials....before I knew it, I was balls-deep in a Hills marathon, and couldn't even remember what NBA game I had previously been watching.

And I gotta tell ya, it was fantastic. Just being hungover, eating shitty food, watching horrible TV, going on ebay to buy my ticket to climb back on the MTV bandwagon....glorious. Everything I remembered it to be. The one difference: I kinda like Brody and Spencer now. Don't get me wrong, they're still gigantic toolsheds....but at least they're kinda funny. Either that, or I'm a bigger asshole than I used to be. Spencer talks to The Plastic Robot Formerly Known As Heidi Montag like she's six years old, and it kills me every time. And Brody taking back Crazy Eyes Jayde when she's completely and totally insane.....classic case of crazy in head equals crazy in bed.

Then the other shoe dropped when the new season started on Tuesday night. The entire episode was probably 17 minutes, with 13 minutes of commercials. And absolutely NOTHING happened. Not one thing. And I was quickly reminded of one of the reasons I stopped watching in the first place. In half-hour segments, these shows are terrible. Nothing effing happens from minute to minute. But in marathon form, one after another after another, suddenly these episodes become action packed.

So new game plan: I'm just DVRing the whole season, then waiting for another Sunday afternoon when I have nothing to do besides crush an entire season of shitty TV.

Today is where my book begins.....the rest is still unwritten.

Derby #136, Or: One Of These Years I'm Destined To Lose Money

Random stories from the weekend to follow, but first: some one-liners that only the select few people who attended will understand. They aren't worth telling the whole backstory since they are a little inside in nature:

- "Girls on film......girls on film"
- JV and highway bounce passes
- Andy/Christian and the case of the missing $300 (that could TOTALLY be an Encyclopedia Brown story)
- The shitfaced ramblings of Slough: "Let's derive ourselves on Schne's jacket"......"My answer is twofold"......"Do you guys remember that Schneweis guy? I heard he likes dudes now. BIG dudes"......"How much money did I lose? Let's just say that I am sans twenty dollars."

Now, stories the rest of the interwebs might possibly care about:

- While bar-hopping Thursday night, I was one of the first people out of our current bar en route to the next one, and here was the scene I walked into: Dave (one of Schne's Louisville friends I had just met a couple hours earlier) standing against the front bumper of a car that was halfway in the parking lot and attempting to pull into the street, holding his cell phone out and screaming "I'm calling the cops! Do you hear me? I am calling the FUCKING cops!" Until a black girl handed him a fistful of cash, he moved, and they drove off. Apparently these girls came up to him while he was on the phone and molested him while asking if he wanted a parking lot BJ (the very best kind, in my opinion.) He said no, then realized as they walked off that they had just picked his pocket. And things escalated from there. At least he got his money back- and on the bright side, in honor of Dave, I bet on a longshot horse named 'Pickapocket' later that weekend that, naturally, came out of nowhere and won the race. So at least I was able to profit from the situation. Which is all that matters, really.

- I'm convinced Louisville has the best cabbies in the lower 48 states. Every year, dating back to our spring break trip in 2005 (when our two cabs raced each other home at 70mph on busy roads while blasting Ludacris loud enough to permanently damage my eardrums) we always get interesting rides. On Thursday night, our cabbie announced that our 5 block ride was going to cost $20. Amy and I pulled the patented Stenjo move and just got out and started running. Schne and JV started a good cop/bad cop routine where JV calmly says "Come on man, just come on. 20 bucks? There's no way it's that much. Come on." While Schne yells from the backseat "You are a LIAR! You are a lying man! There is NO EFFING WAY we're paying this!" I think they only ended up paying like $14.

On Friday night, we got a large black man who spent the entire ride lecturing us on how to bring girls home from the bar: "You just gotta ask for it....you JUST. GOTTA. ASK. Just go up to them and say it: Hey, girl. What do you say we get outta here and go do something nasty? Girls love it when you're direct with them." He also had Entourage playing on a little portable DVD player on his dashboard that he clearly rigged up himself, and had no problems with hollering at girls with big boobs walking down the sidewalk. Although that effort required him to drop to a speed that was below 60mph, which wasn't exactly his cup of tea.

- On Saturday night at the bar, I was walking across the patio from the bathrooms to our crew, and a group of people spotted the Adam Banks j-shirt I was wearing and started a rousing "Quack! Quack! Quack!" Mighty Ducks chant. Just as it was reaching its crescendo, and I felt like the coolest guy in Louisville, some other dude walked by and shouted, in perfect video game-voice, "You fucking cake eater!" It was tremendous work by that guy. The best boom roasted by a stranger since we were posing for a picture in front of Cheers in Boston and some guy gave us a drive-by "They don't know your name!"

- During the Oaks races on Friday, we found ourselves in a box across the aisle from the one and only Joey Fatone, of NSYNC fame and fortune (it is NSYNC, right? I was calling him a Backstreet Boy for half the day before being corrected.) Remember that website that was big a few years ago, the one where you'd upload a picture of yourself, and it would spit out a list of the celebrities you resemble the most, in order of percentage? Somehow, my #1 celebrity match was Joey Fatone. Go figure that one out.

79%? This fuckin' guy?

- Due to the onslaught of rain that hit Louisville on Friday night and Saturday, our plans for Derby day shifted. In yet another sign that we have aged another year since 2009, we were all in agreement that the infield was out of the question. If I was 21 or 22, then sure, sign me up for the infield, I'll just throw on a garbage bag suit, tennis shoes that I can throw away later that night, and let's go check out the mud-wrestling pit, dude. But I'm 27 now. I would like to wear my clothes home; drink my mint julep without worrying about flying mudballs splashing into it; and be able to access the betting window without making a journey that makes Frodo's voyage to Mordor look like child's play. So we shelled out the extra money and sat in the grandstands. It's not a box next to Joey Fatone or Avery Johnson or anything, but it's much better than the infield when it's been raining for 18 straight hours. We'll re-evaluate next year if the weather is nice; I have to say there is still no better feeling than duct-taping a bottle of Early Times to your crotch and sneaking through security, unfolding your lawn chair, and plopping down to watch horse races for eight hours. I missed that feeling this year. (Especially since if you're not going to the infield, security apparently doesn't care at all. We knew from last year that they were a lot more lax at the main gates, so we all had Early Times tucked into our dress socks. However, we didn't even get a pat-down this year. Shit, I was openly drinking from a Qdoba cup full of whiskey and Coke, and still breezed right through. Next year I'm bringing a case of beer, fuck it.)

- Once again, I'm one of the luckiest bastards at the Derby. My Super Saver pick paid off nicely (although Mission Impazible ended up sucking, he was in great shape before clipping heels with another horse on Turn 2.) My system of picking names that relate to inside jokes; particular odds that I like on a race; paying attention to which jockeys and numbers have won or lost for me throughout the weekend; and just relying on my gambling hunches continues to pay off. Meanwhile, regular track-goers are poring over statistics and insider tips for the full 40 minutes between races, and I'm having more success than lots of them. I'm not trying to brag; I actually feel guilty about it for the most part. I'm just saying, I'm about two more successful years away from writing a self-help book on how to win money at the Kentucky Derby. I'll call it "I Like Those Odds: How My Buddy Getting Pickpocketed By A Couple Of Skank-Ass Ho's Won Me $95." It can go on the shelf next to "All Night Super MarioKart Time Trial Benders And Me: How To Succeed On The SAT's."

- The age-old question, one we delved into quite a bit this weekend: if you owned a race horse, what would you name it? I think I'd go with either:

1. 'Game Jeans' because of a certain referee who ejected Noles from a Devils Lake tourney basketball game like eight years ago

2. 'What Up With That?' because it would be tons of fun to yell during the race. Also, because these SNL sketches are superb (the best thing Keenan Thompson has done since Russ Tyler and the knucklepuck- though I'd listen to arguments that his kids-themed news show was pretty good.)

3. 'Broseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' because we were playing the 'Bro Namath, Bro Pesci, Brosie and the Pussycat Dolls, etc.' game, and I came up with the Dreamcoat one and wanted to pat myself on the back a little bit. Indulge me.

Just so you know, your answer may be good, but it's never beating Lane's answer from a couple years ago: 'My Face.' Can you imagine if that horse was the Derby favorite, and you had 100,000 people yelling "Come on My Face!" as he made his move on the homestretch? Classic.

Run For The Roses

I am only a couple short hours away from embarking on what has become my favorite weekend of the year (which is probably about 83% due to the Derby being a truly amazing experience, and 17% because I haven't been to Vegas in...shudder, hand starts uncontrollably shaking....almost two years.)

One thing I like about the timing of the Derby is that with March Madness, The Masters, the weather being beautiful, the nationally-recognized 'Break Out Your Boobs In Public After A Long Winter' holiday, etc. etc., I don't drive myself completely insane by counting down the days for too long. Having said that, these last two or three weeks have been excruciating.

The horses I like, based entirely off of reading about 5 or 6 horse racing articles in the last couple days (which of course makes me an expert in my mind) are Jackson Bend and Super Saver. I should probably do more research and find out which horses are good mudders, because it's supposed to pour all day long on Saturday. But I probably won't, because "actual research" is not the strategy that has won money for me the last two years. (Also, if you happen to be taking bets on which horse has the best chance of collapsing and getting euthanized right there on the track, the smart money is on Devil May Care.)

As my longshot, I like Mission Impazible. I'm definitely putting money on that horse, if for no other reason than it gives me ample opportunities to drunkenly scream the Mission: Impossible theme song, and maybe even yell out Tom Cruise-related things during the race. Which, of course, is half the battle when gambling on horse racing. If I've taught you nothing else, at least remember that.

I don't have much else to say, really. My excitement clouds over everything, and I already used up my 'Red being released from Shawshank and getting ready to visit Andy Dufresne in Zihuatanejo' monologue before last year's trip. If you're bored on the interwebs today and need more cowbell, here are my stories from Derby weekend in 2008 and 2009.

Lazy Dog-Dangling Afternoon

Four random thoughts while I'm courageously battling a crippling hanger on an otherwise beautiful Sunday afternoon:

>> The Midnight Streak is officially over. I knew I wouldn't be able to do it without assistance because I'd just lie awake and think "Do I REALLY want to end this right now?" So a couple nights ago I took some allergy medicine and knocked myself out. The last time I remember looking at the clock was 11:07. I woke up refreshed. Bergman had the best quote: "You took the greatest streak of our childhood and ruined it with drugs. Allow me to be the disappointed parent for a while."


>> A couple days ago Noles 'Rickrolled' me (which is sooooo 2007, get with it Fatcat....) with an email subject line of "Red Sox trade David Ortiz to Cubs." Now I don't want to pile on Big Papi or anything; for everything he's done over the last six years, he'll always get free pancakes at my house...but I have to admit, my knee-jerk reaction to the email was pure excitement, followed by a "Damn, the Cubs are suckers!" It's always sad to watch superstars get old....especially when they stop juicing.


>> A while back I wrote about the Billy Enforcee situation, and how hard it rocked my world because I had no idea I had been wrong for the last 16 years (SIXTEEN YEARS!!! That's how long ago Dumb & Dumber came out. Holy shit we're getting old.) Well, now it happened again, albeit on a lesser scale:

This is how you spell 'Dwyane Wade.'

DWYAne Wade. Not DWAYne Wade.

I read a lot. I also read a lot about sports. I also read A LOT about the NBA. Since I'm not a true fan of the NBA anymore, and I can't ever sit through an entire regular season game, I just watch highlights, and read about it a ton during the regular season, then jump on various bandwagons during the playoffs (Cleveland and OKC in 2010, if you're interested.)


There are a lot of reasons why James Harden is my boy: he's a lefty (like me) sports a headband (like me) and has a great old school, crafty, get-to-the-basket-without-being-quick game (also like me, I would like to think.) Pictures like this certainly don't hurt anything, either.


The point is, I have probably seen Dwyane Wade's name in print at least 1,000 times in my life. On top of that, I pride myself on being a phenomenal speller. Spell check is for pussies. And it pains me that I have been spelling 'Dwyane Wade' wrong for years now, like some oblivious asshole. Apparently this was common knowledge, too. How had I never heard about this?


>> Question of the day: You have the option to go back in time for one purpose: to change a historical event, presumably in a positive way. The key word being presumably. Part of the deal is that you have no idea how the world will turn out afterwards.

For example, you could go back and assassinate Hitler in, say, 1933, with no personal risk to yourself (you will return, unscathed, back to present time immediately after your task is complete.) So you think you just nipped the Nazi regime in the bud, prevented World War II, and saved millions and millions of lives. However, there is no guarantee on what happens next. Maybe a different German revolutionary emerges, and is even worse then Hitler, only this time the Russians side with him, and maybe we get a couple A-bombs dropped on us, and America is now a Communist country. Or, going the other way, maybe the assassination of Hitler leads to a peace agreement that ends all wars forever, a peace that is still enjoyed to this day, creating an almost eutopian world. Anything and everything is in play here. So basically, would you willingly alter what the present is like in order to positively affect the past?

Now, back to my regularly scheduled hangover.

11:59

13 years. 156 months. 676 weeks. 4,745 days (give or take a couple, I still don't really know how leap year works.)

That is how long it has been since I fell asleep before midnight (April 19, 1997.) What started out as a result of the Flood of '97 and the 11:05 pm episodes of The Simpsons, turned into my regular sleeping habit, briefly became one of my lifestyle choices (freshman year of college, I started getting all Aristotle-like and philosophizing along the lines of "going to sleep before midnight is like quitting on a day before it's over"- really, it was just an excuse to justify to Paul my refusal to turn down the music and turn the lights off in our dorm room until midnight.....and before you hop on your 'Jump to Conclusions' mat and decide that I was a bad roommate, read this.) Then somewhere along the way, maybe around five or six years ago, it turned into a stupid prideful streak that only I cared about. And if there's one thing I love, it's a good meaningless streak.

A couple years ago, basically once I started my big kids' job and couldn't sleep in until 11 on a random Wednesday anymore, was when the Streak began to get slightly uncomfortable from time to time. Until then, I really didn't ever have the urge to go to sleep early, besides the random Springfest/tubing/March Madness/day where we started aggressively drinking before 10 in the morning and were hammersmithed by 7 pm. Since them there have been a few close calls, especially during the exhausting tax seasons. Days like the Kentucky Derby became an exercise in mental toughness. I remember I had my first Danny Glover-in-Lethal Weapon-"I'm too old for this shit" moment at last year's Derby, when after two days and three nights of heavy drinking, everyone was crashing out on Saturday night, it was about 11:15 pm, and I was sitting awake on Schne's blow-up air mattress in the dark, literally counting down the minutes until I could let myself pass out. And all for what? Long, long ago, I passed the point where anyone cares about this streak besides me.

Here were my main concerns about breaking the Streak and going to bed early:

1. The Streak itself.
2. Not having as much time "to do me", i.e. fulfilling my multiple hobbies, almost all of which involve a Sega Genesis, listening to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack with the lights off, and Google images of Selena Gomez.
3. Hopping off the chair lift and starting down the slippery slope of going to bed early, which if nearly all my friends are accurate barometers, quickly leads to going to bed earlier and earlier as time goes on. The Streak was my way of delaying the beginning of that slide.

But I've reached the point where those concerns have been mitigated somewhat:

1. Nobody cares but me. It's not like I'm Cal Ripken Jr., and I'm gonna be getting a ceremony for my accomplishment. And even he sat out a game, eventually.

Although my biggest regret through all of this is that I didn't start some huge wall banner like the Orioles did for Ripken's consecutive games streak. How great would this have looked on the side of Culligan? That is, until some boozehound came stumbling out of Charlie Brown's at 4 pm after 26 Busch Light drafts (a steal at 85 cents/glass during their eight-hour-long Happy Hour!) and tore it off the building.



2. Admittedly still a little bit of a concern. Maybe I'll have to start multi-tasking, like playing NBA Live '95 while listening to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, and just googling pictures of Selena Gomez while I'm driving or something.

3. Simply put, I'm not going to let this happen. I think if I'm mentally tough enough to not go to sleep before midnight for half of my life so far, I think I can keep myself from going to bed at 10 pm every night. I'll still spend the majority of my nights staying up late; I'll just be able to have some other nights where I can catch up on sleep now.


An important clarification (or really, really unimportant, depending on your point of view) here: I'm not saying I'm gonna break the Streak tonight. I'm just saying I'm finally ready to. The next time it's 10:30 pm and I feel a little bit tired, I'm going to bed. It may happen tonight, after pickup basketball tires me out. A prime opportunity may be next weekend at the Derby, when a weekend of mint juleps, beer, multiple tins of chew, a cigar or two, and a bunch of Mexican food leaves me feeling a little Eight Belles. However it happens is unimportant. The point is, it's happening soon.

Good night and God bless.

Jim Nantz And Me

I've always been a huge fan of Jim Nantz. I love how he starts every telecast with "Hello friends....." I love how he turns every event he covers into the sappiest event in the world. He just blankets The Masters with a batch of sweet sugary announcing syrup, to the point that even Alex once called it "kind of gay." I prefer to look at it as "a tradition unlike any other."

And I especially love his cheesy one-liners as the final seconds are ticking off the clock, or as the putt drops in the 18th hole on Sunday. Did anyone hear Nantz on the Simmons podcast last week, when he claimed that he rarely, if ever, comes up with those one-liners in advance? That was a lie on par with Bill Clinton claiming he never had relations with Monica Lewinsky. Take a look at some of these little gems and tell me they were spur of the moment cliches:

"You gotta believe, folks, because just when everyone says you can't, you can, and UCONN has won the national championship!"

"It started in March, ended in April, and belonged to May!"

"Y.E. Yes!!! Y.E. Yang has won the PGA Championship!"

Unbelievable. I mean, Nantz is the one who inspired the perpetually cranky Billy Packer to deliver the "Simon says: Championship" line in 1997, maybe the best one of all. Don't disrespect us like that, Jimmy.

All blatant lies aside, Jim Nantz is my boy. But things took an interesting turn last night, when I bolted upright in bed at about 4 am, being awoken by a dream where I was the nanny for Jim Nantz and his family. That's right, the nanny. I think I've been spending too much time peeping elementary school playgrounds again. And the dream was getting intense, to the point where after I woke up, I was depressed for like 10 minutes once I realized it wasn't real. In the dream, I had been thoroughly enjoying the daily in-depth sports conversations Jimbo and I had been having, as well as the free tickets to the Masters, Final Four, and Super Bowl.

So now I'm back to living my life as a regular person. I can only hope that one day I meet Nantz, and he greets me with a "The dream is still alive......how would you like to be our nanny?" Or maybe drops a "A house with two Jim's, a win for the family!" What about "You may not have any experience, but I'm gonna go out on a Jim here, and hire you to be our nanny!"

Those all sucked, but you get the idea.

Also, why do all my weirdest dreams happen on Sunday night? Most of them end up like this, and then I struggle to sleep the rest the night. Monday mornings are bad enough as it is without being depressed about not being the caretaker of the Nantz family.

The Search For A Superstar

Question of the day (it's been too long since we've had one of these):

If you had to go on American Idol and do as good a job as you could, what song would you sing?

The reason I specified American Idol is because I want to be specific on your performance here. This isn't just 'what song you would sing in front of a large group of people?' This isn't gonna be a karaoke night where you get up there with all your girlfriends after doing a combined 32 kamikaze shots and you all crowd around the microphone and screech out 'I Will Survive' while giggling and twirling around in your neon-colored feather boas that you just bought at the thrift store before you climbed on the party bus. You're up there by yourself, and you're sober.

Nor are you going for the William Hung factor, where you just climb onstage and make an ass out of yourself, and then instantly become famous because our country is fucked up sometimes. This is expected to be a decent performance.

So, what song would you sing if you were on American Idol, being watched by millions, and trying to do as good of a job as you could? Say, a million dollar bonus for advancing to the next round?

Some of my honorable mentions:

- 'Fire and Desire' by Rick James. Really, just for the opportunity to yell out "You as cold as ice!" on national TV- and also, any song with spoken-word narratives interspersed with actual verses and choruses is awesome in my book. Had to be eliminated because duets aren't allowed, and because I couldn't hit 70% of the notes that The Baddest Motherfucker Of All Time hits during this song. Hold my drink, bitch. It's a celebration. (Note: the 'not being able to hit even half of the notes' factor eliminated a LOT of Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder songs that otherwise would've been in consideration here.)

- 'Mmmmmm' by The Crash Test Dummies. Because this song is amazingly fun to sing along to, almost too much fun. It's like a mix of early-morning-and-I-drank-about-six-too-many-White Russians-last-night voice, combined with Weisser's award-winning Creed impersonation, combined with a slight touch of Kevin Costner's brutal accent when he tries to play somebody from Boston. Eliminated because like I mentioned above, no gimmicks. Even if you nailed the shit out of this song, you're not getting a good score from the judges because of what this song is. (Not that I agree with the bad rep- the instruments in this song are wonderful, and if the chorus wasn't such an abortion, maybe this band wouldn't have become such a joke and would've had some staying power and I could be singing this song in my theoretical episode of American Idol. Also, I can't hear this song without hearing Lloyd Christmas yelling "Well pardon me, Mr. PERFECT!!! I guess I forgot you never make a mistake!" But alas.)

- 'Whoomp! There It Is' by Tag Team . Because I can rap along to this song in my sleep. I may not be better than Steve Roll'n, but I'm at least on his level. Eliminated because like I said, this isn't karaoke, I'm not gonna be 17 beers deep, and because I know the words a little too well, if there is such a thing. During one spring break, Paul and I performed this song in downtown Indianapolis, and I got a little caught up in the lyrics and dropped the n-bomb. I was aware of my slip-up, but like any great entertainer, soldiered on with my performance. After we were coming off the 'stage', a group of thuggish looking black guys were waiting to greet us, and before I had a chance to run my ass off in the other direction, they enveloped Paul and I in a giant group hug and told us it was one of the greatest things they'd ever seen. It was heart-stoppingly lucky, especially a couple hours later, when we heard from some locals that this particular establishment had just re-opened after having been closed following a shooting.

(Side note: the video for that song is absolutely fantastic. It captures 1993 perfectly. Throw this video in one of those time capsules, along with some episodes of Saved by the Bell, and maybe Mortal Kombat or something, and you'd be all set. For most of my life, black people have always provided me with my own personal standards for what is cool....and even I have to say that 1991-1994 wasn't exactly a high-water mark for black-person-coolness. OK the pilot just turned on the 'no rambling' sign. Moving on.)

- 'Fool in the Rain' by Led Zeppelin. Because it's my favorite song of all time; so as a result, I could remember all the words no matter how nervous I was. Also, I feel like I'm hitting most of these notes as well as I can, considering I have a shitty singing voice. However, that may just be because I have the song playing so loud I can never hear myself clearly. It's anyone's guess, really. The only reason I had to eliminate it is because of the looong instrumental break in the middle. I have no idea what I'd do onstage during that time, besides play the air drums and try to hit on Kara DioGuardi. Poses a problem.

- So my winner became 'Train in Vain' by The Clash. It's quick, it's easy, it's awesome, and it's my #1 most-played song on itunes, so remembering the words won't be a problem.


So put yourself on that stage with Ryan Seacrest. What song are you singing?

...While Tiger Manages A 69 Through All Of This

>> Just so everybody is aware of it ahead of time, if writing about how excited I am to cheer for Tiger results in Phil winning the tournament in spectacular fashion....get ready for a Tiger post before every major tournament for the rest of Phil's career. Expect the next one in mid-June. What a great Masters this year- the only way that leaderboard could've been any sexier is if Selena Gomez would've put up a 67-65 on the weekend. I can't remember a Masters with so many great shots from so many great golfers. Plus, on a personal note, I needed this, after sitting through championships from North Carolina, the Lakers, Yankees, and Duke the last year-plus. Attaboy Phil.


>> This past weekend, the Red Sox were in Kansas City, and so I was wearing some Sox gear while out on the town on Friday night. I ended up running into not one, but TWO girls in their mid-twenties who were extremely knowledgable Sox fans; it was incredibly bizarre.

Girl 1 was probably the most knowledgable female baseball fan I've ever talked to in my life. There wasn't a single topic I threw at her that was over her head- we discussed everything from "Jonathan Papelbon's reluctance to throw his split-finger in big spots is ruining his effectiveness as a closer" to "Mike Lowell left more years and more money on the table when he re-signed with Boston in 2007, and the Sox have done nothing but try and get rid of him since." It was an eye-opening 20 minutes, I'll say that much. Unfortunately, I had to cut the convo short, since I was supposed to be playing wingman, and this girl looked like Charlyne Yi, only with a liiiiiittle bit of an acne problem. (Before the girls jump all over me for being a dick, please understand that as a wingman, you have to respect the wishes of your pilot, and my pilot wasn't interested in being introduced to the girl who played Martin Starr's stoner girlfriend in Knocked Up. Personally, I would've sat there all night chitchatting with the Asian female version of Peter Gammons, but Maverick was telling me we were going to another bar, and Goose had to listen.)

Girl 2 was born and raised in Connecticut, so she knew a lot about the history of the Sox, and could hold a pretty decent baseball conversation, though not nearly as well as Girl 1. Plus, every few minutes, she would remind me that she was, in fact, a 25-year-old girl, and not some grizzled 57-year-old with season tickets at Fenway. On one hand, she was smart enough that I was comfortable enough in telling her that "Marco Scutaro only signed a 2-year contract because he's just holding down the fort, and remember the name Jose Iglesias, he's gonna be the starting shortstop within the next few years" and I still had confidence that she would know what I was talking about. On the other hand, her response was to squeal "Oooooooh! That won't be hard, it's just like Enrique Iglesias!" So it was an interesting dichotomy. However you look at it, it was a weird night, meeting two diehard female Red Sox fans in Lawrence, Kansas within three hours of each other.


>> The latest song in my life that has crawled into my brain and won't leave until I listen to it on repeat for at least 20-30 minutes per day for a week: 'Warm Heart of Africa' by The Very Best, also featuring my boy Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend (and that is the first and probably last time you'll hear me use the words 'my boy' when describing someone who hasn't worn a pair of non-skinny jeans in his life.) Just a fantastic song. Since I indirectly discovered the song from the show Community (did you know that the black guy from that show, Donald Glover, takes indie pop songs and raps over them on the internet? Me neither) it immediately becomes the second-best thing from that show to positively influence my life.

Number one being Alison Brie, obviously. Holler.

Let's Go Tiger! (Huge, Quickly.)

Quick disclaimer: I am, always have been, and always will be a Phil Mickelson guy. Even in the years before I golfed, when I thought it was a boring sport and only watched it with my dad because it has always been tough for me to take naps, and a half hour of golf on TV when I was 11 years old was the equivalent of mainlining a bottle of Sudafed....I still enjoyed that Mickelson guy. Now, 18 years, a couple of majors, a decent pair of man-boobs, and WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR HAIR later, Phil is my third favorite sports 'figure', behind only the Jayhawks and the Red Sox. So everything I'm about to write about goes out the window if Tiger and Phil are in the final grouping on Sunday afternoon, tied for the Masters lead.

I am cheering for Tiger Woods this weekend. Also, for the first time ever, I've hitched my gambling wagon onto the Tiger train, and I feel good about it. I want Tiger to romp the field, 1997-style. And I want him to do it in the most badass way possible. I want him to bury a 15-footer on #18 on Sunday when he's already up eight strokes, and then instead of giving his trademark uppercut fist pump, I want him to just stroll right off the course, maybe even with a middle finger in the air. I can't remember who said this the other day; it might have been Schneweis, or maybe it was Schneweis quoting a radio show, or it might have been someone else altogether at dinner that night (alcohol's a hell of a drug.) But anyway, someone made the comment that Tiger should just pull a Hulk Hogan circa 1996, when he dropped the Hulkamania, kids-take-your-vitamins, All-American role model image, dyed his beard, joined the nWo, and became an all-out bad guy. Everyone already hates Tiger now, he should just embrace it and live it.

Now I'm not condoning what Tiger did, you shouldn't cheat on your wife and ruin your family, blah blah blah.....but don't make Tiger the biggest villain since Hitler here. He's only doing what the vast, vast majority of professional athletes do. He just got caught, and he got caught in a bad way. Yes, what he did is indefensible; but really, you could make the case that he's just a victim of 1) today's obsessive 24-hour-a-day media, and 2) having a wife who cared enough to get pissed and chase after him with a golf club. You don't think Michael Jordan was banging everything that moved during (and after) his playing career? His wife just let it slide, since she was on the way out anyway, and knew she'd get $150 million in the divorce settlement. Two tidbits about MJ that I'm going to drop to make myself feel cool, and disguise them as relevant to the topic at hand:

1. Back when Ol' Roy was still the coach at KU, he used to have golf tournaments at the course I work at now, and when Jordan came to play in it the first time (North Carolina connections and all) and after being told how much the round was going to cost him, he replied: "Fuck it. I'll just take a membership." So even though he hasn't been back in like nine years, he's still technically a member at my course.

2. As a result of these annual excursions to Lawrence, he met a girl, the sister of a buddy of mine down here, and they became fuck buddies. I find the fact that I'm only one person removed from somebody who's banged the greatest basketball player of all time (multiple times, no less!) intensely cool. It makes my torrid affair with Rebecca Lobo seem tiny in comparison.

So ANYWAY, a million professional athletes pull the same kind of shenanigans that Tiger did, so I don't think that Tiger should have been relentlessly crucified for the last four months (and counting.) But since that did happen, and now that he's the bad guy, I think I can finally like him. Tiger has always been kinda OK in my book; some of his commercials are kinda funny (the one where he does his Bill Murray in Caddyshack impression) or heartwarming (the one where they show a bunch of clips of Tiger with his late father, with the song 'This Will Be Our Year' playing in the background) and every once in a while, he lets us see how much of a badass he is (after Stephen Ames trash-talked him before a match, Tiger tore him apart on the course, then responded to virtually every question in the press conference with the final score "9 and 8.")

So even though he was making things tough for my boy Phil, I've never quite hated him like I've hated most of the other incredibly dominant athletes of our generation.....Jordan, Sampras, A-Rod, Kobe, Manning, and Henry Rowengartner all come to mind.

What a dick.

But that begrudging respect was more of an appreciation for the history I was watching, rather than a true enjoyment of Tiger Woods- kinda like the round of Golden Tee I had a couple weeks ago, where I was on my way to shooting a course record -18, but one of my playing partners, the co-worker of a buddy of mine, was busy shooting a -25 at the same time. -25!!! I'm not even mad, that's amazing.

Well now I'm actually cheering for Tiger. And after 18 holes of the experience, I've gotta say it's pretty awesome. Keep being the bad guy, Tiger.

P.S. this new Nike commercial is fucking phenomenal. The disembodied voice of (Tiger's late father) Earl Woods asking Tiger if he learned anything? Did somebody order extra goosebumps?