Planet Dre: The World According To Me

A Little Valentine's Advice

2012-02-14T15:40:00.003-06:00

I wanted to check in on Valentine's Day because I was struck by a thought that I wanted to share. I've been keeping busy when I'm not working by blogging on my football blog, which in case you forgot or wasn't aware, is inmuchlessdetail.blogspot.com. Now that football season's over, I'll try to make my way back here to my original blog much more often. Married life is definitely not perfect, but the only thing I'll say about that at the moment is, I still love my wife, she still loves me, we still got married for the right reasons, and we're going to work out our problems together as a team. That's not what I wanted to speak about. I just wanted to share my wife's reactions when her Valentine's presents were delivered to her job. First, she got a delivery from Shari's Berries, which are humongoid strawberries dipped in chocolate designs. She was happy about them, as I figured she would because she likes chocolate and she likes strawberries. Then her dozen roses came a couple of hours later, and she texted me, "You really outdid yourself this time!" She didn't expect the roses and the berries, so I'm glad they got delivered separately, though I didn't plan that. (She actually just texted while I was typing that the berries were a hit with the office.) I'm about to groom myself in preparation for an Italian dinner she's taking me to when she gets home. I have to address the issue of Valentine's Hate, which is not a man-woman thing, as both genders seem to be afflicted with it. Rather, it's an issue where someone is either single and trying to downplay their feelings of inadequacy, which is completely understandable, or in a relationship and trying to shove off the commercialism of it all, as if they're just so above that. You know who I'm talking about. "My significant other and I don't need to celebrate our love on a specified day. We let each other know every day of the week. No corporate holiday can tell us how and when we should be good to each other." Here's my response: I have now sent flowers and candy and berries to my wife on several different Valentine's, and her reaction is always to tell me how sweet I am and how great it makes her feel to be appreciated like that. Why in the blue hell would you go out of your way to NOT make your honey feel special on the one day where it's an unofficial holiday set aside to make your honey feel special? Some folks work so hard to be "above it all" that they lose sight of things. I don't care how many times your woman tells you that Valentine's isn't a big deal to her, it's a big deal to her. While you're busy being too cool to show her any kind of token of your feelings, she's gotta go through the day with red hearts everywhere she turns, and friends gabbing to her about the sweet thing their man did for them, and eventually, it makes her, if not sad and melancholy, reflective on your union, and that's not good. The only thing not doing anything for Valentine's does is give your woman cause to pause and think about how special you make her feel at other times, and unless you're giving her a unicorn every day, you're probably going to come up short in her eyes. "Oh yeah? Well, fuck her then! She don't deserve me anyway!" Keep going, tough guy, see how much good that attitude does you when you find her secret website and discover that she's been getting what she wants elsewhere. My point is, why single your girl out and make her feel lonely and unappreciated on this day just to prove that you're no slave to fake holidays? If it hurts that much to show her love on Valentine's, then either you're probably not ready for a relationship with her or your flame is out so it doesn't matter. Either way, sucks to be her. Drop your pride and get her something or take her out. Your ego ain't more important than your relationship, and if it is, then you need help.

36 Years Of Contentment

2011-12-22T22:46:00.002-06:00

So I am officially a suburban husband.

The inarguable signals are all around. My wife and I had to borrow her uncle's pickup truck because the Corolla was in the shop for a few days and neither of us can commute to work without a car. Memphis doesn't have a public transportation system as comprehensive as Chicago, not by a long shot. So getting to work from home is impossible without our own wheels. We dream of getting a second car someday soon so that we don't have to pick each other up from work when one of us has the car. The other smaller signs include the block being totally empty of cars and people when I step outside on a weekday to retrieve the mail, the monthly bills for garbage pickup and lawn care, and the fact that none of the houses on the block look different from each other. It can be described as a mundane, humdrum, dull existence. I call it The American Dream.

Hey, where I come from, a house this nice in a neighborhood this nice is something you have to work very hard to earn. And my wife has worked her ass off for over twenty years, and she bought this house not long before she met me, so it wasn't for my benefit or anyone else, it was her reward for herself. I'm just here glomming on. And I'm really soaking up all of the relaxation that comes with living in an area where you don't have to duck bullets on the way home or worry about the neighbors playing loud music or having rowdy children. Hell, we had a next-door neighbor that seemed dangerous, and that family disappeared. Yeah, just vanished. I'm not shitting you. It was an interracial couple, black dude and white chick, and they had at least one mixed toddler running around with (hopefully fake) tattoos and a diaper and nothing else. We wouldn't care less normally, but they loved to fight. I mean, late nights, loud, and consistent. The wife wanted to call the police, they got so loud. One of them ran over our cables with the lawn mower and knocked our internet and cable out for a week. Fucked up, right? Then they upped the crazy by bringing a couple of dogs into the family, and not just puppies, but pit bulls! And if that's not bad enough, one morning I was about to take out the trash through the back door, but the wife called my attention to a bedroom window, which showed our back patio being inhabited by the dogs thanks to a broken gate. They were sniffing around our grill and snooping like they owned the joint. Oh, hell to the naw, we said, and we started investigating which phone numbers we had to call to inform the city of this problem. We had to start driving the garbage around the corner to the cans because I didn't want to risk walking out there and getting consumed. I was even considering going next door and having a conversation with these people, because maybe they would be reasonable and keep those things behind their own walls. But I must admit, I wasn't sure if they would be reasonable because nothing about them suggested that they could spell reasonable, much less understand it.

Well, maybe a week, week and a half after the dogs made their first appearance, one day, we noticed that the usual buzz wasn't coming from next door. No dogs barking, no TV blaring, no loud arguing. Sure seemed like the house was empty. And we took note every day, and so far, no one has seemed to be living next door, and this empty house thing started about a week before our wedding. So that's two months now. Just vanished. Poof! Now, the wife says that these people that were living there were not the homeowners, that the actual owners lived somewhere else and were renting out the house. Her theory is that someone let the real owners know what was going down in their crib, and they cleaned it out. Whatever happened, it was kinda awesome and scary how quickly that whole family was, from our vantage point, eradicated from the face of the earth. But it fits with the vibe of this community, which is, nothing too out of the ordinary will be tolerated. The wife has received notes about her garbage can being in the driveway when it should be behind our gate, and she says that years ago, an unapproved flower pot also simply vanished, and she's convinced that someone in the homeowners association was behind the theft. That's a little much, I admit, but I'm also thrilled at the thought of aberrant behavior being policed so vigilantly. Again, I'm from the hood in the Chi, and this is all the stuff of dreams to me.

So on this, my 36th birthday and first as a married man, I'm very content with the non-professional part of my life. Make no mistake, I'm still ambitious about getting into sports media as a new career. But at the moment, it's all about working at my (hopefully) secure position with Symcor, which was purchased by Xerox, and making plans along with my spouse to save enough money to go back to school. This personal side of my life was up in the air at this time last year because I didn't know when I would be able to make my move down here to start life with my wife. But I made the move, and I'm settling in to a comfortable existence in the suburbs of Memphis. I really am a very lucky man.

And for those times when I want to rebel a little and break out of my humdrum shell, hey, the bass on the Corolla can crank up pretty high. Had to pump out some Heavy D. a few weeks ago in honor of the late rapper. Shed a tear at the beauty of the moment. Driving through a froufrou suburb, doing 40 MPH in a 30 zone, making my little Toyota vibrate with the sounds of the streets. Suburban hubby...still a nigga to the core.

Black coffee, no sugar, no cream...

Tying The Knot, Part 8: The Big Day & The Day After

2011-11-23T08:50:00.002-06:00

No matter how long I took to make this post, the details of The Big Day will always be with me. It was such a special day, and I will never forget it.

Sat. Oct. 15

The day started early, as I knew it would. My fiancee had already informed me that she had to be up early, about 5:30A or 6, in order to start working on her hair and get ready to go out to her friend's house to get the full makeup treatment. I had already made arrangements with "Drew" to pick up my uncle at his hotel and then come to get me at about 9:30. I was a little groggy at this early stage of the morning watching my fiancee run around, but I wasn't as wiped out as I feared I might be getting back from the casino as late as I did. I spoke to my dad at about 7A. He called from the airport to let me know that he was on his way to Memphis. Oh, not one of the airports in Chicago. No, he was calling from Atlanta! I didn't even ask. My guess, though, is that he wasn't able to find a decent airfare from Chicago to Memphis non-stop, so he jumped on one of the flights that go from Chicago to Atlanta and lay over before going to Memphis. He once again asked if someone would be available to pick him up from the airport and take him to his hotel to drop off his belongings before taking him to the church. I once again told him that we had no one ready to do that and that he'd have to rely on a taxi. He expressed concern about making it to the church on time, but resolved himself to taking a taxi when he got here. Truth be told, Drew was such a good guy this whole weekend, he probably would have dropped my uncle and me at the church and ran to the airport to get my dad, but I refused to put that burden on him or anyone else. After all, I didn't actually invite my dad. He was going to tag along with my aunt, who has a soft spot for him unlike my uncle and me, but there wasn't enough space in my aunt's truck after loading up her husband, their oldest son, and my playcousin and her mother. At that point, I just took the position that he was going to have to find his way here himself, and if he made it, fine, and if not, great.

There was another mystery hanging out there on the morning of the wedding. As I mentioned in the last post, my friend Cassandra was already listed on the program as one of our speakers during the ceremony. But I had not heard a word from her since I was in Chicago a couple of weeks before the wedding, when she expressed to me on the phone that she was going to do everything it took to make it to the wedding even though she didn't have travel or hotel arranged yet. I had called and texted and e-mailed, but heard nothing. I was already resigned to having to ask someone in my family to make the reading once I got to the church, but I was also kinda hoping that Cassandra would swoop in and show up in Memphis as a bit of a surprise. So I was cool and calm that morning, but still a bit anxious as to how this issue was going to work itself out.

My fiancee left the house at a little before 9A. That gave me the bathroom for a half-hour before Drew was scheduled to come get me. I decided to go for a full bath because I felt it was symbolic of washing all of the other grime and crap that I picked up in my past relationships off of me. Why shouldn't I be fully bathed before I get married? I may not have attained virgin status, as my fiancee had by never dating casually or otherwise before meeting me, but I could at least soak some of the whore impurities from lying down with pigs such as "Karen" and "Sarah" and "Torrie." I said a prayer out loud to my mother and grandmother, who I knew were going to be with me on my big day, then I scraped as much dirt off of my body as I had time to. Getting dressed in sweats and my "I'm Rick James Bitch" t-shirt wouldn't take any time after I got out of the tub; I was worried about gathering all of the last-minute items that I needed without forgetting something. I had to remember my aunt's husband's present, which I re-wrapped that morning; I had to remember toiletries, because I wasn't going to lotion up and cologne myself before getting to the church and putting on the suit; I had to remember my keys and my phone and my wallet and...

Speaking of the phone, Drew and my uncle were already sitting in the house waiting for me to run around gathering my shit, and it was past 9:30, when my phone rang. It was Cassandra. My uncle had already started to talk about how rude it was for her to not even let me know she wouldn't be there for me, and perhaps because her ears were burning, she called at that moment. The news wasn't good. She claimed to be ready to catch the nighttime Megabus Friday and make the 10-hour bus ride here, but she missed the bus. She offered lots of apologies and well wishes and promised to get down to Memphis sometime in the future and treat my wife and me to dinner. I was a little patient with her long explanation of why she didn't return my calls, but once she started in on all the things she would do to make it up to us, I had to gently tell her that I was actually on my way to the church right this moment, so I gotta go. My uncle wouldn't have been so gentle. He had some choice words for her once I hung up. I don't blame him at all, but I wasn't all that upset because Cassandra had displayed a penchant for getting wrapped up in all of the things in her life and being unavailable at times. She's not a bad person at all, just the opposite, but her big heart leads her to being occupied with her mother or her sister or her sister's kids or her boyfriend or a friend who needs her help, and she's very good at letting herself get stretched too thin. I totally believe that she intended to be here for me. I hold no grudge against her. I did feel disappointed, but moreso, I felt a little scared because I now had two and a half hours to find a new speaker, and I was going to have to do it by cold-calling the people in town for my wedding and hoping that they wouldn't say no.

After I slapped some baby oil on my head, Drew, my uncle and I finally stepped out of the house about 9:45 and loaded up in Drew's rented pickup. Drew and my uncle really like each other, having met at a sickle cell charity bowling event and then again for my bachelor party weekend, and they had some fun when they called me before coming to pick me up. My uncle joked that he and Drew had decided to drive down to Tunica and play some more blackjack, and they would have to miss the wedding. In no way did I believe him, but my incredulous "What?" provided a big laugh. Then, when they got to the door, I pranked them back by opening it, seeing that it was them, then shrieking "I can't do this!" and locking the door.

So we were definitely a loose bunch heading out on the road. It was the most perfect fucking day ever. Bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, and it was probably about 65 or 70° that morning. I was trying to enjoy the whole atmosphere, but I was still worried about finding someone to speak at the ceremony. My uncle then let me know that he actually rode down with a couple of older cousins, Charlene and Claude, and maybe Charlene would like to speak. This was actually the first time I had known that Charlene and Claude were here. They're important in my past as well. After my mom died when I was ten, I was sulking around the house very inactive, and my fam decided that maybe if I joined a bowling league on the weekends, that would be good for me. It was Charlene who made the drive from her North Side home all the way to my West Side house to pick me up every Saturday morning for a 10A youth bowling league back out near her house at the old Marigold Bowl, which no longer exists. I became friends with her daughter Chonda, who was my age. (I sent an invite to Chonda as well, but she couldn't make it.) And I socialized with the other kids in the bowling league, and it was a big part of my life. Not only that, but one Saturday in mid-December, Charlene kept me at her house for like four or five hours after bowling just hanging out with her and her daughter, and I didn't quite know why, but then they drove me home and let me go upstairs to my house first as they followed behind, and when I opened the door...SURPRISE! My family was there with gifts and food and a cake and candles, and that little get-together when I was eleven years old remains the last time someone threw me a surprise birthday party.

My uncle got Charlene on the phone and then handed it to me, and I explained to her the situation and asked would she like to perform this speech, and she said absolutely. Whew! Problem solved. From there, Drew drove to a gas station, not for gas but because my throat was dry and I needed something to drink, and that was where I grabbed the vitamin water that I mentioned in the previous post. The cashier, a cute black girl, chuckled as I paid for the water, and I wondered what the joke was, and she said, "I'm just laughing at your shirt." I had totally forgotten that I was rocking the "I'm Rick James Bitch" shirt. Guess it's a good thing that I didn't go with the "I Have The Dick So I Make The Rules" shirt. But I decided that I couldn't really wear that to a church. The Rick James shirt was bad enough. I threw out a Chappelle-like "I'm rich, beeyotch!" as I left and cracked up the cashier some more.

From there, it was on to the church, and a bit of drama that had nothing to do with the wedding. A large white guy was standing in the basement stairwell as we entered the church, and he asked if we knew who had keys to the meeting room down there. We did not. But this wasn't good enough for our pal, and he explained that usually, the basement meeting room is open on Saturdays for the weekly Overeaters Anonymous meeting, but the door was locked, and he couldn't find anyone with a key. He wasn't exactly searching hard because this would require him to, you know, walk. He actually asked us if we could go look around for someone with a key. Stunned at this request, I believe that I told him sure, and then headed to my dressing room with no intention of looking for someone with a key. I mean, even if it wasn't my wedding day, that's not my responsibility. You wanna find someone that bad, go look for someone, bubba. Drew and my uncle and I burst out in laughter once we were safely inside the locked dressing room.

(Bubba wound up representing one more woman whom I dated in the past. I've never told this story on the blog before. But before Karen and after the one-nighter with my high school girlfriend, there was a year and a half drought where I had lots of internet prospects and no success at all. During this drought, in the summer of 2002, I started going to Overeaters Anonymous meetings. This was suggested to me by a therapist I had when I was 19 as a way to be around others like me so that I wouldn't feel like I was on my own planet. And finally, at age 26, I saw that there were meetings at a hospital a block and a half from my house on Saturday mornings and decided to check it out. It was an interesting mix of old and young, black and white, thin, medium, and obese, quiet and verbose, almost all women but a couple of guys every now and then. I never felt like I quite fit in there either, but I kept going because at least it was one hour out of my week where I was surrounded by people who I felt understood me a little. I even spoke up a few times to talk about my week of coping with food and people.

Well, one Saturday around November or so, this stunningly beautiful white girl with a U. of Michigan windbreaker sat in a meeting, saying nothing, and I definitely took notice, but I didn't want to approach her because this was not a singles bar and I didn't want to be the creepy guy trying to pick up chicks. But I did wonder why she was there. She wasn't fat at all, nor was she anorexic, which a couple of women were--OA wasn't just for fat people, it was for people with food issues one way or the other. She was a perfectly healthy looking woman, about 5'9", 150 lbs. Then she finally spoke at a meeting with a slight accent and explained that in her native Germany, she had two sisters who were much thinner than her, and they always called her fat, and that's why she thinks she needs to attend OA. Her problem wasn't so much food, it was her perception from back home that she was the fat one and didn't fit the mold. I guess if the sisters saw the others in the OA meeting, they'd faint at the sight of how big we were. I felt compelled to approach her after the meeting, as others did, and my words of encouragement were along the lines of, "Whatever your sisters think doesn't matter because you are very beautiful regardless." I will never, ever forget her response. She smiled brightly at me and said, "Aw! That warms my heart!" I could have melted right there in front of her. We exchanged phone numbers, and I bounded home with that same new-love feeling you get when you meet a hottie at a club.

She wasn't at the meeting the next Saturday, and I called her to see what was up, and she said something about having to wash her car and run some errands, and I asked if she was busy that night, and she said no, and I asked her out, and she said sure. I don't remember why she didn't pick me up, but she gave me the address of I think her cousin and told me to meet her there that night. I was so nervous because she was so out of my league, but she must have liked me a little just to say yes. I was on the phone with Drew and "Ronnie" for like three hours that afternoon trying to figure out what I should wear, how I should act, etc. I ventured out into the December snow and met her at the address she gave me. Four women were sitting around hanging out when I walked in with a rose that I bought her on the way there. "Aww!!" they all cooed. I took my date and headed out the door, not knowing where we were going or what we were going to do.

She wound up taking me a couple of blocks away to a laid-back jazzy club. The date went about as well as I could have hoped. We spent two hours sharing everything about ourselves. She turned out to be a Mormon who didn't drink or smoke, which only made her more angelic in my eyes, and she didn't get very deep into details, but I got the impression that she was either a virgin or had not dated very much. She was in college trying to get into theatre. We sipped on our bottled waters and talked about many things. Then I walked her back home. She wore my gloves because it was cold. It was a clear, crisp night, the stars were shining, and I took her to her doorstep wondering if I should go for a kiss because the date went so well. This is where things went south. She was going to turn and go into the house without giving me a kiss or anything else. Then I reached out for a hug and she actually said the words, "Oh, hug," like it was the most surprising development she'd ever seen. Then she gave me the quickest little hug and smiled and bounded into her apartment. And that was the last time I saw her!

She never picked up her phone when I called, she never answered any e-mails, and she never returned to another OA meeting. Trust me, I showed up for the next six weeks straight. I would have seen her. I have no idea why she dropped off the planet like that, but I really don't think it was anything I did because every interaction between us seemed perfect up until that awkward hug. But I found myself not caring about anything happening at the OA meetings, just showing up, waiting until the end, asking the regulars if they had seen her, and then leaving dejected. And once I realized that I wasn't caring at all about OA, I decided that indeed, I had turned into the creepy guy at the OA meetings trying to get laid, and I stopped going.)

Back to the wedding day. I had a vision of all the guys hanging out back in my dressing room before the wedding helping me stay loose by playing cards or just shooting the shit. Drew did stay back there with my uncle and me for the most part. He left for about twenty minutes and came back with donut holes from Dunkin Donuts. I may have been the only one to have some, but that was because I don't think I had breakfast. Drew also presented me with a congratulatory cigar while back in the dressing room, and I still have it, and I still haven't decided if I'm ever going to attempt to smoke it. It's not like I know how to enjoy it if I did decide to smoke it, and it's not like I know exactly how to take off the tip and light it up properly. But the point is, Drew was a mensch. He provided the transportation, he provided the necessary snacks before the ceremony because I may have passed out if I didn't have some food in my stomach, and he even had a cigar ready to light up, not to mention providing a ride out to the casino the night before, allowing me to make some honeymoon cash. And of course, he provided the cash for the bachelor party present featuring "Ambrosia" and Lavinia.

I'm not supposed to see my fiancee the morning of our wedding according to some folklore, but not only did I wake up next to her, but I saw her for a split second in her makeup about an hour before the ceremony. Her cousin, working as the wedding day assistant, came to our dressing room to drop off the boutonnieres for me and my uncle, as well as bring over an iron for us to touch up our dress shirts. I answered the door, not expecting my fiancee to be standing right there next to her cousin. I quickly accepted the boutonnieres and the iron and sent them on their way. In that haste, I forgot to have the assistant pin the boutonnieres onto our lapels because we're clumsy men and we were not going to be successful trying to perform that task. So my uncle got the idea to call my aunt and have her make her way back to the dressing room area to pin the flowers on us. But my fam wasn't yet at the church, so we were going to have to be patient. While we waited, unc imparted some stories about married life and words of wisdom, which I knew he would have for me before the wedding. His most important message? Don't let anyone else into your marriage, meaning whatever disagreements we may have, don't run to third or fourth parties trying to rally support behind us. This marriage is between us two people, and no one else.

We started putting on our suits just after 11A. I was trying to put it off as long as possible so that I wouldn't be sitting around uncomfortable in a suit forever and ever. My uncle chuckled as I struggled to bend in my suit to tie my shoes, then he bent over and tied them for me. He didn't have this problem he because he's worn suits every day for years, and he has learned to put the shoes on before putting the suit on. At about 11:15A, the officiant, the fabulous Sonia Walker, made her first appearance to check in on us. Drew took this as a sign that the shit was about to start getting serious, and he wished me luck and went to the sanctuary to take a seat. My playcousin's mother arrived not long after that, because my aunt had appointed her to go back and see what this boutonniere situation was all about. She was able to apply the boutonnieres after a few efforts. We didn't have safety pins to keep the sharp part covered, so I made her put the pin in several times until I was sure that the point wouldn't stick me accidentally. We could faintly hear the music that my fiancee chose for the pre-wedding seating. I knew that it was about a half-hour of music, so right at noon, we should hear the song that would be the cue for the family to be seated by the ushers. So I wasn't planning to be in the side hall waiting for that music until about 11:50 or 11:55. Sonia had a different plan. Literally seconds after my uncle suggested that we take off the sportcoats because we were starting to perspire, Sonia came back to the dressing room and said, "It's time." My uncle and I looked at each other wide-eyed, then shrugged and put our coats back on. One last check that everything fit right, and a last deep breath, and we went to stand in the side hall behind a door that led out to the sanctuary.

I did not see who was in the sanctuary, so I wasn't worried about who was there, who wasn't there, did my dad make it, etc. I had one thing worrying me over everything else as I stood in that side hall, and it wasn't pre-wedding jitters. It was the fact that I absolutely could not stop sweating. The side hall was warm, the outside weather was warm, the monkey suit was warm, and besides, I was about to get married, so all of those things explain why I was sweating. There was another factor--that baby oil that Sarah gave me that I felt the need to apply to my dome in order to avoid having a dry scalp. All of these things added together resulted in me just drowning in perspiration. Several paper towels were retrieved from the bathrooms by me and Sonia. They helped a little. I tried to stuff some dry ones in my pocket in case this issue followed me out to the ceremony. Sonia thought that standing back there waiting for our music cue wasn't helping, and besides, my uncle is limping, so she opened the door and calmly grabbed a couple of chairs from the sanctuary and set them up behind the door for my uncle and me. This was greatly appreciated. I did seem to control my sweating a little better as I sat there chuckling with my uncle. Sonia declined to take a chair for herself.

At about 11:55, we heard a voice. It was a male voice, and it was coming from around the corner where one of the building entrances was located. It was the entrance near our dressing room, so my first thought was, is this Bubba still looking for someone to open the basement meeting area? I heard the voice bellow a short, "Hello?" I know the voice. It's the voice of someone sorta close to me, if you count coming from his loins as close to me. It was the unmistakeable voice of my father. But when I told this to my uncle--who, remember, can't stand him almost as much as I can't--my uncle's response was, "No it isn't," and he just shook his head quickly and turned back to the sanctuary door, almost as if he was hoping to hear our song cue right then and there so that we'd have to hustle out there. He answered so definitively that I guess I believed him and started to ignore the situation. Sonia was on alert because whoever this was had some bad timing and was a threat to disrupt the ceremony if he kept poking around. Then he said a little louder, "Anybody back here?" Absolutely no doubt, it was my dad. I turned to my uncle and said, "I would have lost a lot of money betting that he wouldn't get here in time!" Sonia scurried around the corner to meet whomever this was and make sure that he didn't wander any further. I got up to see if this really was my dad. I had some emotion at this point. The timing was incredible, right when I was about ready to go out there and get hitched, and I was a combo of pissed at the timing, shocked at the fact that my dad made something on time, and sorta happy to see him, since he really should be here on my wedding day after all.

I get to the corner and look dead into the eyes of my father. It's really him. I was astonished. When I tell you that the man has never made anything on time except to beat me when I was a child, I'm not even fucking kidding. I was told that he was late for my birth! Yet here he was. Then I noticed some fashion choices that he made for the occasion. What little hair he has was slicked back like a '50s greaser, and I have never seen him try to do that. His "suit" was okay, just a sportcoat and pants and tie, nothing outlandish. His shoes...well, they were a different story. They were some kind of light brown crocodile lace fabrication. Never seen those either. Hey, no accounting for taste. He spoke for less than a minute, explaining that he wanted to see his son before he went out to get married. He wished me luck, and I told him that I was glad he was here, and he said he'd never miss his son getting married, as if he was just a mortal lock to make it here on time even though he's never been on time and several hours ago his ass was in Atlanta, GA. I'd like to think my mom facilitated him making it, because he'd have almost no chance otherwise.

He circled back around to the normal sanctuary entrance to take his seat while I sat back down next to my uncle, who was as shocked as I was that my dad was here on time. Then Sonia heard one of the songs that we're on alert to hear as cues that it's about to start. There was a jazzy-sounding song with piano that cued the seating of the family, and that was when Sonia, my uncle and I were to walk out. But with the drama of my dad playing out, Sonia got a little flustered, and she heard another jazzy song playing, which was "In A Sentimental Mood." And she rushed my uncle and me out the door and into the sanctuary as my uncle and I looked at each other a little confused. My uncle followed behind me as I slowly walked out. I was so nervous about making this first appearance that I didn't look up at the people until I got all the way to my standing spot. I adjusted my suit all the way to my spot. Only then did I feel comfortable enough to look up at the people. My fiancee had way more people on her side of the aisle, but the wedding's in her hometown, so that's to be expected. I looked at my side and tried to make eye contact with all of my peeps one at a time. My playcousin snapped pictures. I saw Jacob and Alice and waved, and said a little inside joke to Jacob, the same one he said to me at his wedding. I saw Monica, a lovely woman I used to bowl with, and her boyfriend. Monica was witness to a lot of my craziness from seven and eight years ago. She was there the weekend that I found Karen's website and was consoled by Sarah. I brought Sarah to the bowling alley with me that Sunday to bowl my regular league games, and I did that because otherwise, I would have stayed home and skipped my league. I couldn't have done that alone. I also talked to Monica about all of my drama, so she's another one that's been supportive throughout the years. I saw my older cousin and her husband, the cousin who agreed to speak during the ceremony. I saw my playcousin's mother, who's always been a little insulated and introverted, and I was surprised that she decided to come down from Chicago. But she helped raise me, and I was very happy to see her.

The ushers (who were my aunt's husband and their oldest son) started to bring the family members down the aisle to their seats because the groom was already out there, even though this wasn't the song they were supposed to go on. I became a little worried because at rehearsal, the song that the fam and maid of honor used ran a little long, and we wound up standing there waiting for the bride's song to cue up. The guy running the computer where the music was stored was a young adult interning at the church, so I wondered if he would be able to adjust and get right to the bride's song after the maid of honor came down. I reminded myself a couple of times that this was the bride's day and that after everything else is done, I needed to take in the moment when she comes down the aisle and block out anything else. The sweat started running down my face again, and I ignored it as best as I could. The family came down and smiled at me and my uncle, including my aunt and my fiancee's mother lighting candles with an electric lighter. It took them each a while to get the thing to work, so that provided brief moments of levity. Then Judy came down with her black pantsuit, looking very...unique. Then Sonia gave a hand cue to the intern, and he got right to the bride's song, which was "Pachelbel's Canon in D Major."

She walked down the aisle calmly, and everyone rose to greet her. I knew that she was going to have a flower in her hair. I had been sitting in this computer room for weeks with the dress sitting on the bed, although she put tissue paper over the front so that I couldn't see it. I had gotten a brief glimpse of the makeup job. Mentally, I thought I was ready to see my fiancee come down the aisle.

Emotionally, I wasn't anywhere near ready.

I started choking up a little just hearing her song begin, knowing the moment was finally here. Then I actually looked at her. The dress was very slightly off white, as close as you can get without it being totally white. It was cut midway and showing the girls, but in a tasteful manner. The sleeves were all light and elegant. The white flower was the perfect size for her head, not tiny but not too big. The red bouquet was a perfect accent to her entire presentation. She was stunning. She was my blushing bride. And I was her blubbering hubby. I put my hand to my mouth and started crying almost uncontrollably. My uncle didn't help, saying in my ear, "That's your woman." That just made me cry even more. I couldn't even tell if she was crying when she made it to me because my eyes were so filled with tears that I couldn't see much of anything. So the first three minutes of the ceremony were filled with me sniffling and wiping tears and trying to be discreet and pull out some Kleenex to blow my nose during the prayer.

The ceremony rolled along, and it came time for my fiancee's friends to read their reading. It was a Bible verse, 1 Corinthians 13, but it was hard to understand. Lots of thous and forsooths and whatnot. My fiancee later told me that they chose a different version of the reading than she was intending. The version they chose was a very literal translation, so it didn't come out sounding like anything resembling today's English. Plus, the readers had soft voices. The ceremony continued, and it came time for my cousin to do the reading that Cassandra was supposed to do. And she got up there and put on her glasses and belted out "Union" by Robert Fulghum, and she killed it. Think of the black police captain on Law & Order. It sounded that good. I was very proud. No pinch-hitter in history has hit a home run that far.

Then we walked to the middle of the aisle and took the candles that our families had lit and we both lit one candle in unity as a symbol of both of our families and us committing to this marriage. I was happy to do this because it gave me a chance to walk and stretch my legs. The sweat kept pouring throughout the ceremony, but I just played through it. My uncle handled the ring exchange flawlessly. I don't know how my fiancee felt, but that was a powerful moment to be able to have that wedding band put on. Sonia presided over everything wonderfully. She wrapped things up with, "You may greet your bride," and the kiss is now my Facebook profile pic. Then Sonia announced us as Mr. and Mrs., and we took each other by the hand and strutted down the aisle as "I Can See Clearly Now" played, and everyone stood and smiled and applauded. We were finally, after five and a half years of sizing each other up and imagining a life together and wondering if we were right for each other, a legally married couple.

Looking into my wife's eyes after it was all over, I got the sense that she was feeling what I was feeling--glad that it's finally all over. There's such a build-up to that big day that no matter how much you love your spouse, there's a big sigh of relief when it's done. The work of being a married couple immediately takes precedent, and the wedding planning and worrying is now an afterthought. As we stood in the corridor in the receiving line, I didn't even pay attention to our songs playing. I just wanted to get through and take some pics and go eat with my wife. My hurting mouth wasn't even in my mind all day. It didn't matter that I had two teeth removed only three days prior. The receiving line was memorable because some of my wife's family members, specifically her uncle's daughter, decided to make it a picture-taking occasion and held up the line for quite a while. It got a little uncomfortable. But eventually that was over, and despite both me and my wife being ready to have a seat and get off our feet for a moment, it was now time to make our way back into the sanctuary for pics. The camera girl was my wife's uncle's stepson's daughter, if you can keep all that straight. She did an awesome job, but she's a college student, so she had the energy to stand up there and make us pose for several minutes at a time while she found the right angle. It was torture for us, as well as my uncle on his bad knee. It took about an hour, and it felt like a day. The most interesting part of the picture session was how many other people stood behind the camera girl taking pics with their own cameras and camera phones for their personal pleasure. I felt like Tom Cruise posing for the paparazzi. Just a sea of folks with cameras snapping away and yelling, "Hold that pose!" And the whole time, I'm dripping all over the fucking place. They couldn't provide me with enough paper towels for all the sweating I was doing. And it had nothing to do with being married! It was all the standing, the humidity of the sanctuary, and the monkey suit. But everyone had a joke for me after the ceremony--"Sweating bullets there, eh?"

My dad veered off course a little during the pictures. One pose was my wife leaning over the end of a piano while I sat at the keys and pretended to play misty for her as I looked into her eyes. It's a very sweet pic. It's also misleading because I can't play piano for shit. So my dad decided that this would be a good time to play a musical piece for us as a tribute, I guess. I wasn't in the mood for his showboating, so I told him no, and he was relentless. He must have asked me around a dozen times! And he was taking it personal, too. "You don't think I can play, is that it, son?" No, dad, that's not it, it's that it's my fucking wedding day, not your gig at Kingston Mines. By the time the pics were over, he and I were the last few stragglers out of the sanctuary, and he was still asking me. I kept saying no. However, I've since seen a pic someone took of him at the piano by himself, so he must have skipped coming straight to the reception in order to tickle the keys. Like a moth to light, my dad saw a musical instrument and couldn't resist the urge to make the day partially about him. SMH.

From there, it was upstairs and on to the reception. I enlisted Jacob to be our announcer and introduce the wedding party. There was a little commotion as we nervously looked around trying to find Judy, who had disappeared. But someone located her, and Jacob handled the introductions with a personal flair, saying our last names twice as if he were auditioning for the Yankees P.A. gig. "Now getting married, the shortstop, #2, Derek Jeter. Jeter. #2." I'm sure I was the only one in the room who understood the gag. The wife and I entered the room to a standing O with big smiles on our faces, and our ironic joke song cued up on the computer--"The Thrill Is Gone." As most of the room raised eyebrows in confusion, we headed straight to our tables and got ready to eat. But first, my wife's uncle was going to bless the meal. No problem, except his daughter insisted that Jacob formally announce him by name. A little unusual, but okay.

I thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful food provided by Chef Erik Waldkirch of Maximilian's Catering, even with the mouth issues. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it, too. Not long after finishing, my uncle started to act weird. He said out loud as he sat next to me, "Oh, um, okay, guess it's about that time for the speech," as if he was all of a sudden very nervous about giving the best man speech. I was surprised by this because my uncle is very smooth and polished and has had a management position for many years, so giving a speech is nothing new for him. I would be informed later that this was also the doing of my wife's uncle's daughter, as well as the "wedding day organizer." They directed my uncle to get up and do the speech, as if we were on a strict time schedule. I never saw them do this. But his speech was great, very heartfelt and touching. He briefly addressed the number of frogs I had to kiss before finding my princess, and he let my wife know how proud he was to welcome such a classy woman into the family. I said, "My man!" and gave him a big hug. I knew he wouldn't let me down. Judy spoke next about the times she and my wife talked about finding that right guy, and how happy she was that it finally happened. My new mother-in-law said some very nice words, and so did my dad, though I must say that I held my breath when he stood up in anticipation of him saying something totally inappropriate.

The music didn't go exactly the way we planned. My wife had three playlists for the reception--dinner, cake-cutting, and dancing--but no one bothered to change playlists when we cut the cake, so at some point we heard "The Thrill Is Gone" playing for a second time, and my aunt asked if I could do something about the music because it seemed to be repeating, and I got up and changed the playlist to dance. I was kinda shaking my head as I did this because I had fended off the urge to say that I would handle the music at my own reception. I felt that was a little too controlling and I needed to let go and let someone else worry about it. But the intern who did the music at the wedding wasn't at the reception, so in the end, my wife and I wound up being in charge of the music. Not long after I changed the music, the "wedding day organizer" struck again and said that we needed to say a speech to our guests, and it had to be right now. Fine. I took the mic and had my wife stand next to me as I thanked everyone for coming out, especially my out-of-town people. I said that they helped make this the greatest day of our lives. I didn't know that my wife would break her shyness and say anything, but she took the mic and thanked everyone who helped set up the big day. I then turned the dance playlist back on.

I battled with my wife in the weeks leading up to the wedding about having a first dance. I was all up for it even though I can't dance, and she was totally against it because she "hates to be the center of attention." Um, it's your wedding day. We even practiced a slow dance once, but we were so clumsy and tired afterwards that we never got around to practicing again. So our one dance at the reception was the following: I spontaneously shook my tailfeather when Heatwave's "Groove Line" came on, and I raised the roof a little, and everyone laughed and hooted and hollered, and I grabbed my wife and held her hand while she did one twirl. And that was that. I was sweating too much to keep going, and she wasn't interested. Not long after that, I went to the restroom and had a couple of minutes of alone time to take in the day's activities, then I went to drop the marriage license back in the dressing room, and when I made it back to the reception, my wife was missing, tables were being cleaned off, and people were getting ready to leave. "Come Go With Me" by Teddy Pendergrass was playing when the computer was turned off, so at least my mother's favorite singer made an appearance, but most of the other songs that we fought and argued over never wound up being played. My wife returned dressed in regular clothes, so she was anxious to get out of that dress and those shoes, but not in the honeymoon suite to get busy with me. She just wanted to be comfortable. Can't blame her. I kept the suit on the whole day despite losing weight in perspiration and having to towel off before every single picture. One last bit of drama came when I went back to the dressing room and found it locked up and the lights turned off, meaning whoever shut it down was in there with my wallet and other valuable items. But nothing came up missing.

From there, it was off to our room at the Doubletree Hotel mere minutes away, where we already knew no action would be happening thanks to our weariness as well as Aunt Flo. But I still treasure those minutes lying in the king-size bed with my wife, looking into her eyes and reliving our wonderful day before nodding off for an early evening nap. Then we woke up and got some drive-thru Chick-Fil-A.

Sun. Oct. 16

I remember this day as being so perfect because our families met at my wife's uncle's house and we had a big brunch together. And it was just awesome to see my people together with her people hanging out and having a great time. My dad became our responsibility on this day. He was able to hitch a ride back to the Doubletree after the wedding with I believe my aunt and her family. But they claimed to not have the space for him to go out to the brunch, so my wife and I put him in our back seat. And afterwards, we took him downtown to the Amtrak station, where he caught a train back to Chicago instead of flying back to Atlanta or something. At the brunch, my uncle gave me another big hug and just looked at me with a huge smile on his face. I think he was seeing me through the prism of being there when I was first born and watching me through all of life's phases, and seeing how I've become the man I am today. And I made sure to tell him all weekend that he's the reason I am the man that I am. I needed a strong male figure because my mother made an unfortunate choice to father her baby, and my uncle has always stepped in to be that man and show me how things are done by real men. I didn't always apply those lessons, but eventually, I got it together. I hugged everyone in my family individually and thanked them for making the long trip, and they all hit the road directly from the brunch. My wife and I hung around until after 3P because as we were pulling out to leave at 1P, the couple who spoke at the ceremony pulled in, and the wife stopped the car to give them some conversation time. I watched football while they chatted. In the evening, we had a very nice dinner at Carrabba's and enjoyed the Bears whooping the Vikings on Sunday Night Football.

The honeymoon consisted of us visiting Graceland and getting the big bus tour of Elvis's estate; eating breakfast at Memphis's most revered breakfast restaurants, Bryant's and Brother Juniper's (both awesome!); dinner at Rendezvous and Gus's Fried Chicken (Rendezvous ribs were great to me and average to the wife, Gus's chicken was great for both of us, but be warned, it's spicy); and a night at Roadhouse Casino & Hotel back in Tunica, MS (room was tremendous, complete with in-room whirlpool, but I lost back the money I won the night before the wedding). The wife believes she got food poisoning somewhere in the middle of all this, but she wasn't vomiting or in the bathroom nonstop, so it was mild. Maybe it was just realizing that she was married to me.

And one more funny story of drama: We knew we had received many cards from our wedding guests, but when Judy and my mother-in-law took the gifts back to our house, we had a hell of a time locating the cards. And we were quite panicked about this because, of course, those cards didn't contain just cards, they contained money. I even called my aunt while they were driving back to Chicago to ask if she left a gift, as tacky as that sounded. She wasn't happy about that, and then she was almost furious when I told her that we seem to have misplaced all of the cards. She confirmed that the $250 she was going to chip in for the rehearsal dinner was inside her card, so between Sunday and Monday, it became a scramble inside our home to find these cards or else drive back to the church and hope that someone there found them. Monday morning, we were at our wit's end searching through bags and boxes two, three, four times, and my wife was submitting to the possibility of someone walking through the unsecured reception area and taking the cards, which I refused to believe. Finally, finally, we opened the guest book and found the cards shoved inside. Crisis averted, cash saved, mass murder of innocent churchgoers thwarted.

Tying The Knot, Part 7: The Day Before

2011-11-21T10:11:00.005-06:00

I'm determined to remember the important parts of this wonderful wedding weekend even though it happened over five weeks ago. So without further adieu, let's start with the day before the wedding.

Fri. Oct. 14

On this beautiful morning, I found myself in my fiancee's car trying to find a jeweler whose coupon I have in hand. It's a coupon to take two bucks off a watch battery replacement procedure, and this was important to me because in my warped way, I felt the need to have the women that I previously dated or screwed represented as part of my wedding day, and the watch that "Shelley" bought for my 30th birthday with the money from the student loan for which I co-signed had a dead battery.

(Quickly, the other women represented were as follows: "Giselle," my high school sweetheart, and "Karen," as well as a co-worker I dated, had songs in our reception playlist that reminded me of them. Tammi, my 8th-grade crush, who I thought for years that I would end up marrying one day, also was repped by a song or two, although we never dated. "Sarah" gave me baby oil for my shiny bald head while we were dating, and I still have that very same bottle, and I splashed some on my head before I left the house Saturday morning. Also, I still carry in my wallet the ticket stub from the comedy improv show Sarah and I attended the day after I found Karen's swingers website and Sarah drove three hours just to console me. The stub is totally blank because the ink has rubbed off after seven years, but I carry it anyway. The Co-Worker Who Shall Not Be Named made a big deal of wanting cheap costume jewelry for her birthday, and I bought something for her thinking she would reciprocate for my birthday, and she did nothing. So the cheap wedding band I bought for myself was sort of a tribute to her. "Torrie" was represented by the fact that I wore one of the dirty T-shirts that I bought while shopping with her in Minnesota to the church the morning of the wedding, the "I'm Rick James Bitch" shirt. And it's very weak, but I tried to rep "Grace" by buying some vitamin water before the wedding that was branded XXX, which made me think of the nature of our one-night stand. No romance, no holds barred, just straight fuck. There was even a tenuous connection to "Adrienne," a woman I dated a couple of times but never got to first base. She was a smoker, and "Drew" gave me a congratulatory cigar before the wedding, although I didn't smoke it. And the most important women in my life, my late mother and grandmother, got a shout-out in the privacy of my home before the wedding, just a holler to let them know that I knew they were proud of me on such an important day.)

Anyway, my mouth was still very sore from the teeth removal, but I needed to eat. I was planning on picking up something soft while I was out after I got the watch fixed. So I'm driving towards Germantown Parkway, which is where most of the restaurants and businesses are here in the sleepy suburb where I now live. My mind is relaxed and enjoying the sunny weather and taking in all the feelings of anticipation that I'm having. I'm just feeling really good and blessed that I'm in this position at this point in my life. I go to Walgreens and grab a bottle of sparkling cider for the toast, since I'm not supposed to be boozing it so soon after the teeth surgery. Then I arrive at the jeweler, and dampening my pride at getting out and doing this early and arriving at about quarter past nine is the sign saying that the jeweler doesn't open until ten.

Not a big deal, I figure, because this gives me time to find something to eat and relax while eating, not just scarf it down. The first thought when I contemplated soft food was mashed potatoes, and that leads me to the KFC, which also is not open until ten. What the hell? Are we in Amish country and nothing gets opened before noon? I eventually settle on Sonic, and the softest thing I could find on that menu was the French toast sticks, which were delightful. I was thrilled to get a text while eating that said one of my guests from Chicago, my mom's best friend Barbara, wouldn't make it but was sending cash to my Paypal account. Sweet. But that knocked out a potential speaker at the wedding. My fiancee has two speeches for the ceremony, one read by friends of hers, and the other by someone I wanted to stand up for me. My first choice is Cassandra, who worked with me at CBOE during those Karen and Sarah years when I ran around chasing ass and wondering why the world hated me, and she was always supportive and helpful with advice while gently reminding me that I had no shot with her because I wasn't man enough. The woman trusted me enough to sleep with me when we attended the Kentucky Derby, and by sleep I do mean sleep, because we were never intimate. No first base with her, either. But she means a lot to me because she was telling me truths about myself that I didn't hear at the time but remembered and realized that she was right later in life. The problem with having her speak is, Cassandra had not been available for a couple of weeks. No matter how much I call or text, she wasn't responding, and I had no idea if she would be able to make it, and her name's already on the program, and I was starting to feel a little panicky. If Cass won't make it and Barb is already out, who the hell am I going to have speak?

I put that drama on the back burner and hoped that it would work itself out, and I made it back to the jeweler who took notice of my shirt that said something about Chicago and prompted him to ramble on about a hellacious flight to Chicago he once took, and yada yada yada, and finally the watch was fixed and I was back home. My fiancee's maid of honor, Judy, was now at home, and they took off to pick up some last-minute items, and I chilled by myself for thirty minutes or so after showering until my fiancee's mother showed up. Once my fiancee and Judy got back, it was time to load up the cars and head out to the church and get ready for the rehearsal. Everything's going smoothly thus far, but at this point a glitch would occur that we wouldn't realize until later.

My dad (he's not the glitch) called during all of this scrambling, trying to convince me to pick him up at the airport two hours before the wedding or find someone who will. No can do, I told him. No matter what, he was not going to mess up my wedding morning. I'm not trying to take time out to do that, and my fiancee certainly wasn't, and we didn't have time to call around to find someone to drive him like he's a foreign dignitary. He was going to have to cab it like a normal person, and if he didn't make the wedding before noon, too bad. I was willing to take bets that between finding his bags after the flight and his general state of mental and physical dishevelment, there wasn't a chance in hell that he would make it in time.

We arrived at the church a little after noon, giving us three hours to set tables in the reception area and get ready for my family, who were driving up from Chicago and would arrive sometime around the 4P rehearsal start time. Judy, my fiancee, and her mother worked on the tablecloth arrangement for a few of the tables just to see what worked and what didn't, and I took orders and drove out to Lenny's, a sub shop. I was so scatterbrained wondering what should I order for me and my bleeding mouth that I drove past the place, but I found it eventually and got everyone's order and a huge tuna salad for myself. After I got back with the food, "Jacob" and "Alice" started calling and letting us know that they were coming to the church, and once they showed up, we let them in. Jacob and I started moving tables around while the ladies continued setting tables. Somewhere in this hubbub, we started talking about all the things that my fiancee and I brought to the church in advance so that we wouldn't be bothered the day of the wedding. She brought her dress, and an iron, and other items she would need, and I brought my suit and hung it up in my dressing room already, along with my shoes, and I grabbed the presents that I would give to my family, and she has her gift for her mom, and of course we remembered the computer with all the songs because we're going to need that for this rehearsal...and my fiancee exclaims that in all of her haste that morning, she forgot the computer! So this is after two o'clock, and we've eaten, and I'm stuffed, and I'm hanging out with Jacob shooting the shit, and my fiancee lets me know that because she forgot the computer, I would now have to get in the car, drive back home, and grab the computer, and be back before four, which is when the rehearsal begins. Really? Me? Oh, and I'm still a relatively new driver, and I've never made this twenty-minute drive from the church to home, so she has to hastily scribble out some instructions for me to do this. I'm still not sure why she felt that I had to make this trip to cover for her mistake, but out I head, getting in much more driving experience on this day than I could have possibly anticipated.

This gave me an opportunity to pump some more bad '90s music on the cassette player because I'm toting a couple of my homemade tapes in the car, so that part was fun, but the trip back to the church once I retrieved the laptop was torture. It was about 3:15P when I left the house, so I was going to be cutting it close anyway, but I got on the expressway for about thirty seconds before traffic came to a complete stop. I mean, complete stop. No pumping brakes, no gas a little and then stop, I mean we were standing totally still. And it was for quite a while. Then we'd move like a foot and stop again for another three minutes. And it went like this for about a half-hour. Seriously, I had been on that expressway for about thirty minutes and wasn't even a half-mile away from my initial entrance ramp. I was so mad, but I was about to get madder. My aunt, who has always been my harshest critic (and if you read this blog from the beginning, you know that my criticism of myself is scathing and hurtful, and she's always been worse), called me on my cell, and she explained that they all had arrived at the church and were at a back entrance and were waiting for me to come out and let them in. I had to tell her that I wasn't at the church, that I was stuck in horrible traffic, and she should call my fiancee and have her let them in. Now, in no way is any of this my fault. I'm getting the laptop that my fiancee forgot, and I'm totally, helplessly stuck in a major traffic jam, but I was hoping that everyone would understand. Well, as my aunt hangs up the phone, I hear her say in a distant voice to someone right before the click, "The groom ain't even here!" I fumed for the next ten minutes. It just took me back mentally to every other time that I did something wrong and my aunt leveled every criticism she could conjure at me. I have never, ever been good enough in her eyes, and by extension, neither has anyone close to me. She responded to my long phone calls with Jacob when we were kids with the accusation that I must have been afraid of him and that's why I wouldn't get off the phone. Not that he would find me interesting enough to talk to, but I must have been a bully victim. What? And she rarely called my girlfriends by their names, always something derivative like "Chickie" or "Sweetie." They couldn't have her respect because they were with me, you see. My fiancee was no different; she was known as "Chickie" most of the time we dated before I moved down here to Memphis. Honestly, I was this close to ruining the weekend by the time I finally made it to the church, because I was ready to explode on my aunt for that little "Groom ain't even here!" comment. I took it so personal because I knew that she was chalking it up to me being irresponsible and not good enough before she knew any fucking details.

Fortunately, I had cooled off by the time I drove past the two accident scenes on the expressway and made it to the church at about a quarter past four. As I rushed into the sanctuary, sweating and stressed, I was greeted by my family and my future mother-in-law and Jacob and Alice sitting there together taking up three rows of seats, and my fiancee and the officiant standing in the aisle, and they all exploded in applause at the sight of me. How could I be mad after that? I smiled wide and greeted my family members with hugs and handshakes, and I remember how good it felt to see all of those familiar faces, people I grew up with and shared so many life experiences, and here they all were sitting in a church in Memphis, TN, all in support of me. The officiant, the great Sonia Walker, explained that they could have done the rehearsal without me or the music if I would have been even more delayed, so I was lucky to get there when I did. We did the walk-through, and I kept trying to crack jokes and dance and keep things light. I remembered that about Jacob and Alice's rehearsal. They were in such a great mood and laughing and having a good time, and I wanted to recreate that. Sonia showed my best man--who is my uncle--and me where we would be standing before the ceremony, and she would lead us out during a song cue right before the fam would be ushered to their seats. My uncle had me worried because he was having a hard time standing up just during the rehearsal. He recently had knee surgery, and it hasn't healed up well for him, so he's gimping around these days despite remaining on his bowling team. I was concerned about all the standing we would do the day of the wedding, because it's not just the ceremony, it's also the standing around taking pictures afterwards. But he said he'd gut it out. The gift-giving after the rehearsal was memorable because I ordered blackjack cufflinks for my uncle (he loves his gambling, and blackjack is his game) and steering wheel cufflinks for my aunt's husband, but I ordered them both gift-wrapped, so I couldn't tell which was which. (He drives a bus for a living, plus he's the one who took me out to practice driving, leading to me getting my license right before I left Chicago.) My aunt's husband wasn't even at the church, choosing to head to the hotel after the long drive to Memphis, so I figured I would open one of the cufflink sets and if it was the set for my uncle, I could give them to him right there a little beat-up on the wrapping but not destroyed, and that would keep my aunt's husband's gift pristine. But I picked the wrong one to open. So I gave my uncle his pristine gift while I took the other gift back home in an attempt to re-wrap it. He hung his suit in our dressing room and put our rings and his shoes in there as well.

This brought us to the moment I had been worrying about--the post-rehearsal. We canceled the dinner because both my uncle and my aunt, who were splitting the cost, were not totally on board at the concept. We're clearly not rich, we're doing so much of this wedding on the cheap, we're barely having a honeymoon, and they're being asked to cough up $500 between them for this rehearsal dinner. So we canceled that, hoping they would gift that cash to us for the wedding. But this now left the rest of the evening for me to either hang out with family, hang out with friends, or go home and spend the night before my wedding watching TV or surfing the net or something. And for some reason, I really didn't want to do that. I guess I would have felt like a big loser if I wound up sitting on my ass watching Friday Night Smackdown or something the night before I got married. So I was up for any suggestions from anyone. My fiancee jumped in Judy's car, and they headed to FedEx Forum to watch Memphis Madness, the name for the first official practice session for the U. of Memphis basketball team. This didn't really interest me, so I kept my fiancee's car and was ready to follow anyone who wanted to hang with me. Before I could ask my family what interested them, Jacob and Alice raved about those incredible ribs from Corky's that my fiancee gave Jacob the night he helped me move. He said he couldn't move a muscle in the hotel room because he was so sore, and the ribs were cold from being in the fridge, but he ate them anyway and loved them. So he and Alice were headed straight to Corky's, and then down to Tunica, MS, where their casino hotel was located. They asked if any of this interested me. Hmmm, ribs and gambling? Yeah. Hell yeah. I invited anyone from my family to come along for the ribs, but they were so wiped from the travel that they all headed back to the hotel. So it was me in my fiancee's Toyota following Jacob and Alice to a place in my city, but I had to follow them because I didn't know where it was. But Jacob did. He's the Human Atlas.

I called Drew while I drove because I knew he was in town and I figured a night at the casino would interest him. He got the address of the restaurant and exclaimed, "That's five minutes from my hotel!" So he eventually met us at the restaurant, although it took him a while because he needed a shower after getting to his hotel and immediately hitting the sack. I was still full from the tuna salad, plus the thought of a bone from the ribs hitting that part of my mouth where the teeth were pulled scared me, so I wound up eating a BBQ sandwich with a fork. Jacob and Alice ordered a banana pudding for dessert, and they let me have a forkful, and it was so good that I made an "O" face without intending to. I ordered a pudding to go intending to take it home to the fiancee but knowing deep down that it would never make it back to her. Jacob and Alice had to check in to the hotel, so they went ahead and made the half-hour drive to Tunica while Drew and I stayed a little longer in Memphis. He had to gas up the rental and then get me to a SunTrust ATM so I could get some cash. And oh, what a rental! The agency didn't have the economy car that Drew reserved, so they told him, either wait a half-hour for an economy to come back to the lot, or take this other ride at no extra cost to you. That replacement ride? A big-ass white pickup truck! I couldn't stop laughing when we went outside the restaurant and I saw this monstrosity. Drew needed a stepladder to get in the damn thing. And the interior was so roomy that I literally couldn't touch the seat behind me by reaching back. It was a nice bit of good fortune to make up for the horrible trip Drew had from Chicago to Memphis on Megabus. The woman he sat next to was very ill, and at one point she hurled into a paper bag. And it was a packed trip, so he couldn't switch seats. "I'm never taking Megabus again!" he said. That's a shame. My fiancee had a trip interrupted because the driver got arrested, and this happened to Drew, but I still maintain that I've had nothing but pleasant experiences with Megabus. I still couldn't recommend Megabus higher. They should pay me for the great advertisement.

Anyway, Drew got me to an ATM and then I parked the Toyota at his hotel and he made the drive to Tunica, where he got gas on the outskirts of the large casino grounds. I would describe it as like a tiny city in and of itself. Drew, having been to Vegas unlike me, said it reminded him of Vegas. Just street after street with casino names waiting for you to turn down that street and drive another couple of miles to the casino of your choice. Nothing out there but casinos once you drive past the businesses on the outskirts. Lots of free land waiting for more casinos and hotels to be built. The smell of money all around you. It was quite the scene. Drew and I stood out front of Horseshoe Casino waiting for Jacob and Alice. They told us to go to Horseshoe because the best slots were there. I just wanted to go somewhere I could play poker. I haven't played live poker at a casino in years, and I made money when I did because I wasn't the biggest fish at those tables. I was very interested in hitting the poker tables again, and Horseshoe does have poker tables. So after standing out front for a long time, Jacob called and said they were here, and sure enough, there they were inside the casino looking for us. Guess there was more than one entrance.

Alice hit the slots while the fellas wandered around. Jacob's not a poker player at all, so I don't know if he would have sat down at a table, but Drew and I headed right to the poker room, where we fully intended to play if the blinds were low enough. They weren't. There was a $1/$3 table that was no limit, and there was a $6/$12 limit table, and we weren't interested in either because one can lose his shirt easily in a $6/$12 game or in any no-limit game. I only took $60 out of the ATM, and I could play a while at a blackjack table if the minimum bet was something like $5 or $10. But not a high-limit poker game nor a no-limit poker game. We staggered out of the poker room and headed for the blackjack tables. Most of the tables had minimums of $15 or $25. One table in this very crowded place had a $10 minimum and no one playing. This was very odd. I've never seen a casino where the higher minimum blackjack tables had folks playing, but a lower minimum table had no one. The dealer, a middle-aged black woman, was standing there with a blank expression and the cards in one hand, in position to deal if someone, anyone would come sit down. And we three guys must have stood around that table waiting for one of us to make a decision for a good three or four minutes. Other people actually came up to the table and looked at it for a few seconds, wondering why no one was playing, and then they would walk away. It's probably one of those gambler superstitions--never start a blackjack table fresh, always come in when others are playing so you can make sure the table's on the up and up. Well, I'm not a smart gambler, so finally I told the guys "Let's sit down and play," and we took out our cash and got chipped up and started playing, and sure enough, someone else then decided to come sit down between Drew and Jacob and start playing with us. And he lost his money within two minutes, and cussed, and walked away. Unbelievable. I hope that old man feels better now that he lost his money at a table where others were playing and possibly taking his cards. But at least he didn't play by himself!

We played for about 45 minutes, all three of us staying above water but barely. Other players came and went, and some stayed for a long time. Jacob stopped at one point after winning a lucky hand and finding himself up about $100. Drew and I kept going. Then I won a hand where the dealer was showing 10 and I hit to get to 16 and decided that I had to hit again and got a 5. I immediately stood up and said, "I think that's a sign!" I cashed out up $85 and tipped the dealer $5. Drew was up about $20 at this point, and he joined me and Jacob in leaving the table all smiles to search for Alice. She was hammering away at the Wheel Of Fortune slots. It was a little past 11 at this point, so, not wanting to spend my wedding day droopy-eyed and yawning, I made the call for Drew and me to head back to Memphis. We left Jacob and Alice at Horseshoe and laughed our way back into Tennessee. I then jumped in my Toyota and drove home.

Getting Hitched Went Off Without A Hitch!

2011-10-18T15:12:00.003-05:00

Of course I'll have a big post (or two) chronicling my wedding weekend, but it won't be soon. We're on our in-town honeymoon, and when that's over, it's right back to work. So I'll have all the details next week sometime at the soonest. Just wanted to check in and let those wondering know that everything came off great, the whole weekend was as awesome as it gets, and I am officially a married man. Kinda weird to say it, but feels good. I guess I'll always be in debt to Blogger for creating the forum that allowed two people with no other methods of meeting to meet each other and eventually marry each other. And of course, always a debt of gratitude to SunShyn, the blogger who worked the same job that I did for a few years. She told me of her blogging efforts, and that led to me starting a blog, and my wife saw it and left a comment, and the rest is history. Or her story, if the wife can find the time to sit down and blog about it as well. I'd love to read her thoughts. Anyway, off to Tunica, MS, for a little gambling action before returning home. Catch y'all in my next post!

Tying The Knot, Part 6: Pre-Wedding Jitters

2011-10-14T08:23:00.004-05:00

Selfishly, I have been blogging away the past three days, trying to calm the OCD in me by chronicling things that I feel must be chronicled before I say "I do," such as the debauchery that was my bachelor party weekend and the emotional roller coaster that was my first love in 8th grade. My fiancee has been cleaning house and getting ready for our big day tomorrow. And when she has some free time, she's requested that I come spend it with her in this, our wedding week. And I've said I can't, I have to finish blogging. And what happens when one keeps getting ignored? One starts wondering where she stands and why she doesn't feel excited about the big day approaching and where is our spark. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw her get out of bed last night and go into the living room with the lights off. I found her sitting on the couch crying. When I asked what was wrong, she said that it wasn't something she felt she could talk to me about. When I pressed, she admitted that she was worried that she wasn't getting excited about the wedding. I took the responsibility for that because I truly think that she would be more excited had I given her more time this week, not to mention the past five weeks that I've spent watching and writing about football. I've been a dick, plain and simple. I have done a horrible job of balancing my fiancee and my other interests. I don't have experience balancing these things because I've never lived with a woman before. But I've got to do a better job.

I left her on the couch with her emotions because I didn't want to smother her. She obviously left the bed because she needed to be alone. She returned to bed 20 minutes later and announced that she had actually been contemplating life without me. But fear not, she decided that she couldn't stand it if I weren't around. She'd miss everything about me, the football, the wrestling, the OCD...everything but the farting. I breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't come back to the bed declaring that she didn't think we should get married. Hey, I have a fear of rejection, and combine that with the way I've been neglecting her, and you can see why I'd be afraid of her calling the whole thing off. Can't say I wouldn't deserve it, either.

How are my jitters, you ask? I'm a little numb. Of course, numb in the mouth from getting my teeth pulled yesterday, but numb emotionally as well. I just want the whole thing to go off without a hitch, and I want to do my part to not fuck up anything by forgetting to pack something for the honeymoon or splitting my pants or something like that. I'm trying to stay calm in that respect. But I don't have any fears as far as the actual marriage. She's the right woman, we're doing it for the right reasons, and I'm very happy to make our union official. I was proud to sign the big book at the city office when we picked up our marriage license. And I'm just proud of my fiancee in general. She's been under so much stress, looking for work while planning a wedding, and now working while planning a wedding, which takes more time away from her. But she's been a trooper.

And now, it's almost here. Family and friends are on their way into town, we're cleaning up the house getting ready for visitors, and I'm about to groom myself in anticipation of the big day. I'm getting very excited. I'm going to wrap up my blogging here and devote my attention to my wife-to-be and the wedding. We may not be perfect, but we're perfect for each other. And most important, we're committed to working on our imperfections and making our union better and better all the time. We're gonna make it if we try, just the two of us. You and I.

I love you, Grizzbabe.

My History (9th In A Series)

2011-10-13T19:20:00.006-05:00

And my marathon blogging continues. I'm actually sitting here very uncomfortable after having two teeth pulled. The pain hasn't hit yet, but the swelling is there, and the local anesthetic is wearing off. I've already taken oxycodone and ibuprofen, so if I fall off to sleep during this typing and things look even weirder than usual, blame the drugs. And yes, I wanted to have this surgical procedure done sooner than two days before my fucking wedding, but this was the soonest I could do it. So while my fiancee eats pizza and I can only smell it, let's go back in time to another situation featuring something I could only wish for but never have. It's the story of my 7th and 8th grade crush, the most intense feeling I've had for any woman outside of the woman I'm marrying on Saturday. Her name is Tammi Todd.

I don't usually do real names on the blog, but I do it for people who I determine are as real as it gets. We all come across many phony people in our lives, but the ones who aren't phony tend to stand out. Tammi was too shy and lacking self-confidence to be phony. Really, no one should be phony at that adolescent age of 12 and 13, but peer pressure builds around junior high and makes some kids think they have to start being something they're not. No one knows this as well as me. I had built an entire phony sexual history by the time I was 12, and I parroted it to anyone who would listen as I attempted to gain some measure of popularity.

I didn't go to the storage unit and get my diaries from back then, so I have to do this from pure memory. It's 1988, my first day of 7th grade at a new grade school, Ogden Elementary in the Gold Coast area of Chicago. The Gold Coast is what it sounds like, a section of rich and affluent folks, so this school was full of rich and affluent kids. But because there was a gifted program called International Baccalaureate at this school, there were kids bused in from all over the city to attend this program. So the grades 6th through 8th were split into regular classrooms and I.B. classrooms. Basically, if you were just a rich kid and weren't deemed "gifted," you were in a regular class, and if you passed these stringent tests to get into the I.B. program, you were in that class. I would never have been in Ogden if not for the I.B. program because I didn't reside anywhere near there. But Tammi resided there because she and her sister Traci were daughters of Thomas N. Todd, a civil rights activist whose speeches have been sampled on Public Enemy tracks. I had never heard of Thomas Todd. I just knew what I liked. And on that first day at the new school, at the end of that day, I was sitting in the lunchroom awaiting our school bus when I happened to look up at the lunchroom entrance. This light-skinned black girl was standing there looking confused and helpless. It was instant puppy love for me. I had never had my world stop upon my first sighting of a girl. Not quite like that. Oh, I can still list all of my crushes from pre-school through 6th grade, but none of them struck me like she did. There was her raw beauty, plain and simple just like I preferred, no makeup, wide light brown eyes, straight light brown hair, tall and straight posture, a tasty little amount of baby fat. But all of that was combined with this helpless look as she searched for something, maybe her bus driver or teacher or friend, that melted my heart instantly. I wanted to help her with whatever she wanted, but I was totally frozen, plus I was just a new kid in a new place and wasn't in a position to help anyone with anything. But after staring at her for what seemed like hours, I had learned one thing on my first day of school--I wanted to get into that girl's world in the worst way.

The pieces slowly fell into place over the next month as I asked kids about her. I got her name, I got her grade which was 6th grade in the regular class and not I.B., I got a sense of her personality which was she didn't seem to have much of one, I got to observe how she got special treatment because she wasn't on a school bus with other kids. She had a yellow station wagon pull up for her after school, and it dropped her off in the morning. Was it an official school bus? Was it her personal driver with an agreement to pick her up in front of the school? I never found that out, but she sat in the auditorium with all of us waiting for her ride every day after school. But while we were grouped in the auditorium by school bus number, she sat all by herself in the front row, where you had to walk by her as you entered every single day. And if you had a crush on her, this could either be glorious if she had her head down in a book and didn't notice you staring, or terrifying if your eyes met. But this torture was starting to get to me. I was shy, she was shy, she certainly had been put on notice by her classmates that I had been asking about her because she made sure to see me every day when I entered the auditorium, and I could do nothing but quickly avert my eyes. I had to do something, but I didn't have the balls to say hi. Remember, I was completely unsuccessful with girls at this stage in my life. No fooling around, no lunch date, no nothing. So I came up with a way to introduce myself and let Tammi know how I felt without stepping to her face. I wrote several of the sappiest, most sickening love letters ever written.

And I signed them "Your Secret Admirer."

And I slipped them into her locker during class when no one else could see me.

What a huge, throbbing pussy I was.

I may still be slipping her notes to this day about how I just wanted to be her friend even though I couldn't bear to reveal myself if not for one of her classmates catching me slip one of these notes into her locker. So now that Tammi was going to be informed that I was her secret admirer, as if she didn't already know that the fat guy asking about her could be the secret admirer, the next move would be on Tammi to approach me and either shut my "game" down or reciprocate the interest. But she was as bashful as I was. So we went around and around each other for days, catching each other looking and quickly turning away. One day, while at recess, we finally spoke, but I think it was only because our respective classmates dragged us towards each other. They were sick of us beating around the bush, understandably. We didn't say much of anything, but we did say something, so at least we knew what each other's voice sounded like. I fell even harder for her because her voice was so soft, and she had some sort of slight speech impediment that only made her sound British to me. She occupied my every thought.

Fate would give me an opportunity at the annual school carnival to be there for Tammi in a time of need. As I walked upstairs to the 3rd floor, my eyes came upon Tammi playing some game that required hand-eye coordination, and she was playing it hard. I could see her frustration, so I asked what was the deal, and she said she was aiming to win this plush doll, like a green frog or something like that. I wasn't a great athlete at all, but I knew I could win this game, so I played it, won, selected the doll as a prize, and promptly gave it to Tammi. Those light brown eyes lit up like constellations. "Thank you," she said in that soft voice, and she hugged me and bounded away down the steps. I was absolutely floating the rest of the night. I'm telling you, I couldn't have been higher if I had Nate Newton's marijuana stash.

But as crazy as I was about Tammi, I just could not pull the trigger on making a definitive move. We kept walking around each other throughout that school year, making googly eyes at each other, but nothing real came of it. I did present her with a rose on Valentine's Day, and she thanked me, but I had no follow-up. I stared in her direction during that year's sock hop, but I never went over and asked for a dance. I had never felt like this about a girl. I was walking around the Gold Coast on my lunch breaks, playing "Can You Stand The Rain" by New Edition on my headphones, trying to figure out how to take my fantasies about Tammi and make them a reality. And by fantasies, I don't mean sexual. I mean white picket fence and white wedding dress and red rose petals on the bed. I actually couldn't think about her sexually. Yes, you read that right. As hot as she made me every single day that I saw her, I could not even fantasize about the girl. Everyone else was a dirty, nasty potential sex story, every other girl had a role in my fantasy world, but not Tammi. She was just too pure. I mean, I tried to force sexual thoughts about her, and I just could not do it. It was so damn weird. I actually got my first sexual contact with a girl that summer while I stayed at my uncle's house. But I even told that girl about Tammi, how I felt about her, how bad I wanted her. Yep. I had a girl there literally begging me to fuck her. And I would say yes, but then I couldn't make a move with her partially because I felt like I would be cheating on Tammi even though Tammi had not given me any indication that she was interested in me. We wound up not having sex, which is good because considering I got my next sexual contact pregnant twice four years later, I'm sure I would have knocked up this girl too.

Tammi even affected how I viewed other potential conquests. I was sitting at the March 1989 science fair with my project, bored out of my mind, when someone a year older, in 8th grade, told me that there was someone who claimed to know more about pro wrestling than me. I was angry that some mere mortal would challenge my rasslin' knowledge, so I demanded to be introduced. And over to my table sauntered damn near the hottest girl I had ever seen in my life, Margaret Brown. She had short brown hair and hazel eyes that would rival Jennifer Aniston if I knew who Jennifer Aniston was back then. And her body was just killer. We chatted for the next couple of days, but it was always short chats because we were in the science fair and we had to stay very close to our respective projects, lest a judge decide to drop in. So we wound up sending wrestling quizzes back and forth to each other by messenger. And she was right there with me in wrestling knowledge, although her area of expertise clearly was Sting. Boy, Margaret had the hots for Sting something fierce. But anyway, one of our messengers was a buddy of mine, and he asked me what was going on between me and Margaret because he couldn't believe that my fat ugly ass could have anything to say to such a smoking hot babe. I told him that we were just having wrestling quizzes, nothing more. He said that was the point, why wasn't I trying to talk about something more? Why wasn't I going after this hottie? Simple, I said. I don't like her in that way. I like Tammi. He rolled his eyes and grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to look at Margaret and then look at Tammi and tell him why the hell would I pursue Tammi and not Margaret? I couldn't tell him anything that would convince him that my choice was the better one. And from the outside, the choice would have been Margaret by a mile. But my decision was based on what my gut was feeling on the inside, and Tammi was the girl that I couldn't stop daydreaming about. Tammi had my heart. It was just that simple.

So 1989 into 1990 was a stressful year because it was my last year at Ogden before I had to move on to high school. Tammi, being a year younger, would be there after I left, so even if I tried to get into a high school near the Gold Coast, I'd have to hope she enrolled there as well, and I'd have to wait a year to find out. So in that context, in a world where this girl was on a pedestal and seemed unattainable, no e-mail to keep track with her, no cell phones to have a chance privately to let her know how I felt, I thought this year would be the most important evah. I had to let this girl know how much I wanted her, shyness be damned, fear of rejection be damned. So the events that happened could probably fill up a few seasons of a TV pilot about grade-school love unrequited. We played out our version of Winnie and Kevin on The Wonder Years. And looking back, it may have put me through a shitload of moods on a daily basis, the ups and downs of a daily skirt chase, but boy, was it a hell of a lot of fun.

I'm sure I'll forget a lot of occurrences, but here's what I remember: There was a day where I was spreading lies about getting some pussy the night before, and I told some kids on the school bus that I bet the chick I was with would be a much better fuck than Tammi, and Tammi upon being told this hunted me down in the playground and confronted me about the quote. She was actually upset that I was with another woman, even though she had not given me a clue that my interest in her was something she wanted. There was another day where she decided to knock me down a notch by making fun of my boobs, and that was a rather painful day. I took it as a signal that she would never be interested in me just from a physical standpoint. Never mind that no other boys seemed to be interested in her. She just wouldn't give me the satisfaction of pretending that she was interested in me. Sometime during the winter, I decided to become a playleader, which was a fancy name for class monitor for the little kids. Tammi was a playleader too, but I wasn't doing it just to be near her. I was doing it because my grades were shitty and I thought I had a better chance to be accepted to the high school of my choice if I had some community service on my record. During this time, I saw Tammi running after kids from her class and towards kids from my class, and she slipped and crashed right in front of me. She had to be taken to the nurse's office crying and bruised up, and I was the one who grabbed her glasses off the ground and took them to her. So I got to hear another "Thank you," but it was a sobbing one, and sad to hear. There was another time where the kids from her class dragged her over to me and dared her to hug me, and she gave me a quick little hug and ran away while the kids oohed and aahed. Another time, again encouraged by the kids she was monitoring, she walked over and started kicking snow at my feet as if it were just a normal thing to do, and I kicked snow back at her, and for thirty seconds we kicked snow at each other's feet, smiling and carefree and communicating in that socially awkward way that boys and girls at that age sometimes communicate. I actually recall that as a very sweet moment. I promise you she doesn't even remember that.

There was Valentine's Day 1990, where I went out in the rain to get a couple of roses for her before class began. We were all in the auditorium because we couldn't have morning recess, so this was going to have to be done in front of the whole school. I didn't just have flowers, though. I had a small white teddy bear that I played $10 worth of Skee-Ball at Great America to win for her a few months ago. Problem was, while working up the nerve to give her this bear, it sat in my locker along with my smelly gym shorts and shoes, and when I finally gave it to her with the roses, she replied, "You're giving me the bear that's been in your smelly locker?" I guess everyone knew that it was sitting there for many weeks, and she knew it too. But she still thanked me for the flowers and the bear. There was the time where I finally worked up the nerve to ask Tammi out to lunch, which was all I could possibly ask as far as a date. It's not like my folks were going to allow me to get on public transportation and come all the way to a part of the city that I didn't know that well and take her out on a weekend, and it's not like I had the money to take her anywhere really fancy, and it's not like her parents were going to let her go somewhere with me, not when she's only 12 and hadn't been allowed to date at all. And sure enough, I convinced her to ask her parents if I could have an innocent lunch date, only for her to come back the next day and tell me that the parents considered that a date and she wasn't allowed to date yet. So much for that. There was the time Tammi convinced her nerdy friend, Shani, to ask me out on a date, as a test of my commitment to her even though we weren't together. I rejected Shani's advances for three reasons--not just because I liked Tammi, but because I didn't think Shani was attractive and I thought Shani was clearly making a move on me on behalf of Tammi. Shani thought I was a pig thanks to my rep as Dr. Pervert, and out of nowhere, she wants to see a movie with me? Come on. I was young and dumb, but I wasn't that stupid. A guidance counselor actually advised me to invite Tammi down to Tribune Tower to watch me in the Chicagoland Spelling Bee, which I thought was an incredibly geeky move, but I was desperate, so I asked. Of course, she said no.

There was the play "Annie Get Your Gun" that we produced that year, the tryouts for which I referenced in this post. That tryout wasn't the most unusual thing about the play that involved Tammi and me. During a practice, Shani pulled out a piece of Play-Doh and pressed it against my arm without warning, then announced to me that my skin and Tammi's skin can now become one while she put the Play-Doh together with a different piece. I glanced over in Tammi's direction, and she was actually watching this happen before she quickly turned away. Shani would explain to me later that she did that at Tammi's request, so Tammi may not have been attracted to me, but she did appreciate the attention from me. I was a part of her world, a small part to be sure, but as probably the first guy to express a serious desire for her, she did consider me as a part of her. As flattered as I was by the Play-Doh incident, I must say that I was also a bit weirded out. Then there was the Big Penis incident. My role in "Annie Get Your Gun" was a bit part as a train conductor, and I was using my aunt's husband's bus driver jacket as part of my uniform. But I was using old light blue pants of my own that were a couple of sizes too small. So during a dress rehearsal, I'm sitting in the gym, which doubled as sort of a lounge for the cast members, and Tammi and her friends walked by, and I was totally unaware that the position I was in pulled my already small pants closer to my body and really accentuated the boner that I was sporting for no other reason than I was 14 and popped boners at odd times. The girls pointed at me and laughed, and when I shrugged and wondered what was so funny, Tammi pointed between my legs and giggled, "Big penis!" Now, understand, this was when she and her friends were like 12. Big penises were something to laugh at, not to be in awe of. I was embarrassed. I mean, I couldn't even fantasize about the girl, so my dick was not something I was proud to show her under these circumstances. And the event actually mortified me for a few days, until I explained what happened to my dad, who gave me some perspective by telling me, "You should be very proud that she's calling you Big Penis. Better than being called Little Penis!" Ah, dad. Always choosing the high-minded side.

The main event of this whole "courtship," if you'd like to call it that, occurred at the 1990 carnival. My friends and I were planning all these major moves on girls that we liked considering it was our last shot at some kind of score. Graduation was approaching very fast. So my friend Dan and I were sitting on the stairs about an hour before the carnival would begin, just shooting the shit, plotting moves on girls, when someone said "Excuse me" and bounded down the steps and split Dan and me. It was someone in a gray skirt that came up just above the knee. She had milky skin and smooth, shiny legs that made my heart stop, not to mention a perfect little ass. Yes, Tammi had stopped the show, and I didn't even see her face. And I saw her earlier in the day, so she changed for this. Dan and I looked at each other with eyes wide and mouths agape. "This may be a big, big night!" I said with a huge smile.

And yet, I was still being a chickenshit and didn't speak to her all evening. Songs played in the gym, couples awkwardly slow-danced, and I stayed glued to a bench chatting with my uncle, who was there just to be my driver once I was ready to leave. I bounced in and out of the gym, playing games, trying to psych myself up to ask Tammi for one dance. Just one dance. But fear paralyzed me every time I even thought about it. Other classmates were even trying to pump me up to do it. But I just couldn't. The night was winding down, and my opportunity was being wasted.

So some slow song is coming to an end, and the way the DJ has spun, another slow song is coming next because he was playing the slow ones two at a time. And I'm sitting there on the bench still trying to work up the nerve...and I look up, and there's this lovely light brown girl in a gray mini skirt standing over me, and she grabs my hand and says, "Come on, you big chicken," and she leads me to the dance floor as "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" by Milli Vanilli starts to play, and no shit, the entire gym erupts in applause at the sight of us two finally getting together after two full years of me lusting after her. I mean, even little kids who I monitored who knew how I felt about Tammi were running up and slapping me on the butt and congratulating me. My mind was spinning in my head. We smiled at each other and had a very tentative slow dance, not very close to each other, lots of distance between us, yet hand in hand, my right hand around her waist, our eyes locked together. I was in heaven. Tammi had one thing to say to me in the middle of this dance, and it was very telling of her mental state: "I still don't know why you like me." I tried to babble some stuff about her beauty and poise and whatnot, but I figured I was ruining the moment and shut it down and just kept dancing. The song ended, I thanked her, and I ran out of the gym and off of that level down to the basement lunchroom, sweating profusely and in need of a soda. My uncle and I left not long after that. Why stay? I just had my moment of glory.

The school year wound down, and I got up the nerve to ask Tammi to pose for a picture for me, and I'd still treasure that pic if I hadn't lost the camera before I could get the film developed. I asked Tammi to sign the first page of my autograph book, and she wrote: "Have a nice summer, and I think I'm going to miss you." Hey, I'll take it! Of course, I had to write another long letter telling her how I felt, except I didn't have to sign this one Secret Admirer. And I ended this letter with the words "I love you" and my phone number. Yeah, "I love you" was over the top for a girl who I never went on a date with or kissed, but it's how I felt at the time. New Edition had another song out at the time that said, "If it isn't love/Why do I feel this way/Why does she stay on my mind?" And when you hear that a few dozen times over and over, you can convince yourself that this is love that you're feeling. What the hell else could it be? Can't sleep, can't think, can't enjoy the things I usually enjoy without the thought of her popping into my head. I felt that I was justified putting "I love you" into that goodbye letter. Besides, it was my last hurrah. What were the odds that I'd ever see or hear from her again? I had left my phone number on previous notes, so it's not like she would ever call me...

So I'm chatting with "Jacob" the day after my graduation, and the phone I was using beeped indicating that I had another call, and I click over, and this soft trembling voice said "May I please speak to Andre?" And I almost fainted once I realized who that voice belonged to. It was Tammi! I told her to hold on, then I clicked back over and stammered out the sentence, "I have to call you back, Tammi is on the other line." Neither Jacob or I could believe what I just said. But when I got back to Tammi, she had to get off the phone but said she'd call back. And she did a little while later, accompanied on another line by her older sister Traci. They basically interrogated me on why I thought I loved Tammi. I got to run down the list of how I felt live over the phone, although I laid everything out in my letter, I'm sure. Traci played the role of hardcore skeptic while Tammi played the background. But I was rather cool and calm during this line of questioning. I knew how I felt, I said what I said, and I had no regrets. They let me go after maybe a half hour. Tammi then called me back by herself later that day, and that last conversation will always have to be a mystery because one of her parents caught her using the phone almost immediately and made her hang up. She never called me again.

How long was I hung up on Tammi? Well, fast forward to 1995. Now I'm a man, baby, a 19-year-old coming off a 3-year relationship with my high school sweetheart "Giselle," much more experienced with women, dating a co-worker, confident, relatively secure in myself, a whole world in front of me. It took a long time, but I was finally at a point where I didn't wonder about Tammi every day, ponder where she was or if she was dating or how she was developing as a woman. So "Ronnie" and "Drew" have mutual friends they went to high school with, and those friends have a girl crashing at their house that they knew from somewhere, and the girl is named Heidi. Now, Heidi is a unique name. I knew of only one Heidi in my life, and she was a thin blonde chick who was in the same class as Tammi at Ogden. I asked Ronnie and Dave to ask their friends if this Heidi girl's last name was Vienup, and they got back to me that why yes, it sure is! How did I know? Well, my emotions launched like a rocket. If I can meet up with Heidi, maybe she still knows Tammi, and maybe she can give me Tammi's number, and maybe I can reconnect with Tammi, and maybe now, out of that elementary school atmosphere, we can build an actual relationship and really get to know each other, and who knows, from there, she may fall for me as hard as I fell for her...my brain couldn't calculate all the possibilities fast enough. Ronnie and Drew and I went to their friends' house on a Friday night, and I was so excited that I dressed up for the occasion, as if I was going to go see Tammi herself. Alas, things didn't work out because Heidi had lost contact with Tammi, and as an aside, Heidi informed me that I wouldn't want to be around Tammi now because she'd become stuck-up and full of herself. Of course, I would have loved to meet Tammi and judge that for myself. But it wasn't meant to be.

On the eve of my first and last marriage, I felt the need to reflect back and remember how I felt about Tammi. This represents some closure. Not that I was hoping Tammi and I would meet and fall in love someday like a fairy tale, but...okay, maybe a part of me has always wished that would happen. It's an unreasonable thought because Tammi and I are certainly vastly different people than we were twenty years ago. So many things have happened to us that have shaped who we are and how we view others. But I think all of us hold on to someone from years past that represent that pure, unbridled passion that occurs when it's love at first sight. I know Jacob has his from that same time period, because we would sit on the phone for hours with the lights off talking about our respective obsessions. I bet you, dear reader, have yours as well. As much as my stomach grumbled and my heart raced and my emotions got put through the ringer on a daily basis, I wouldn't change anything about my two years with Tammi. I use her as a guiding post on how to treat my fiancee. Because of Tammi, I know that when I put my fiancee on a pedestal and worship her like Athena, I need to savor every moment. I never know when my love or obsession could go unreturned and leave me alone with nothing but hopes and dreams.

Tom Hanks Ain't Got Shit On Me!

2011-10-13T07:14:00.006-05:00

Okay, I gotta tell the tale from a couple of weekends ago about my "bachelor party." My time is obviously limited with the wedding a couple of days away, so if I don't get back to the computer to blog before then, I need to talk about the bachelor party before I get married. The shit that happened there cannot be referred to by me after I'm married; hell, I'm not sure if it's legal in Tennessee to even think about what happened after I enter holy matrimony.

Like a lot of guys, I grew up watching the movie Bachelor Party and thinking, man, my bachelor party is gonna be wild like that! Strippers, a huge hotel, a school bus filled with my buddies, hot girls from my past showing up and offering themselves to me, maybe some drugs and a donkey OD'ing on coke...hey, what can I say, it's one of my favorite movies. Tom Hanks and the rest of that cast must have had an absolute blast filming that debauchery, and I always thought that any successful bachelor party had many of those elements, if not all. What happened last weekend did not happen in the movie, and if it did, the movie would have been rated X.

My uncle, who is my best man, said that he'd throw me a bash in Chicago if I could come up for a weekend. However, when he found out that I'm a loser and only had one or two friends that would be able to make it, he scrapped his original plans to go all-out and hire a roomful of talent and go somewhere private. Instead, we went to a gentlemen's club. Now, he claimed that he wasn't familiar with the area strip clubs, even going so far as to say that the last time he went was when he took "Ronnie" and me back in 1995. Really? Well, he may have been telling the truth, because the place he chose wasn't very good. It was called Atlantis, and no one I asked had ever heard of it. My buddy "Drew" was coming out for this, and he and his friends and brother are strip club connoisseurs, but they never heard of it. But my uncle said that it looked classy on the website, so he was sold.

The issue with that is that in Chicago, contact is not allowed between strippers and clientele. So the classier it looks, usually, it just means the more expensive the air dance will be. Drew and I have been fans of a strip club in Hammond, IN, called Industrial Strip, because contact is allowed in the form of what they call "friction dances." And Hammond is very close to Chicago, about 15 minutes depending on where in Chicago you are. So he and I had already decided that after this official bachelor party Saturday night, Oct. 1, we would go to Industrial the next night for an unofficial soiree. The wild card would be the person Drew was inviting to take part in Saturday and Sunday's festivities. His brother and friends were unable to come out, but someone was willing to. That someone was "Ambrosia."

Ambrosia is a woman with whom Ronnie became close because we all worked at CBOE back in the late '90s. She's about our age, which would now be mid-30s, white, heavy, but very pretty in the face, and she knows it. She's a little arrogant, smart-mouthed asides hidden inside a sweet voice, and a little racist, so it's a sign of how funny and friendly she is that I'm still friends with her. The racist in her came out one night way back when she was feeling down about herself because she was recently divorced with a child. We were in someone's basement on a Saturday night waiting for Drew to get off work so we could go out. It was the guy whose house we were in, me, Ronnie, and Ambrosia. At one point she asked rhetorically who'd want to go out with her, and all three of us slowly raised our hands. It was pretty comical. But later that night, Ronnie decided to make his move, sensing a desperate woman, and within earshot of me, her response right to his face was a quote I would never forget: "I don't want to catch jungle fever. I might get malaria." Classy. So with that barrier built, Ronnie never got with her, and I never tried. But over the years, she's e-mailed and called me asking for advice dealing with men. And hey, that always made me feel good, because she was admitting to me that she didn't have all the answers and she respected me enough that she thought I may have some insight.

Her son, who's a teen now, has severe health issues which put him in and out of the hospital, so I wasn't shocked when Drew said that Ambrosia would be coming out to the strip club and hanging with us. She gives the vibe on Facebook that, as much as she loves her son, she really likes going out and getting away from everything. She has to have a billion pics of herself at various parties and outings. The mild surprise was that she would come to a strip club, because I wasn't aware of her being into girls, although Drew has seen her get drunk enough to start making out with women and immediately regret it the next morning. So I was looking forward to the evening because I'd get to see my good friend Drew, I'd get to see Ambrosia, and my uncle and Drew were going to buy my lap dances. And hey, if things got really wild, maybe I could get Ambrosia to accept a lap dance or two and fulfill the fantasy of every man, which is watching two girls rubbing on each other.

So my uncle drove me to Atlantis, and it was a little after 9P, which is kinda early for a strip club, and sure enough, there weren't many guys there yet, and we were descended on by everyone soon after sitting down. The club manager came over and wanted to give us a tour of the whole place. The strippers couldn't stop coming over and saying hi or sitting on our laps. One after another, they wouldn't let us breathe. One girl asked if I wanted to buy her a drink. (That's another Chicago strip club indicator--alcohol served means no total nudity, which sucks because what's the point of a strip club if the girls can't strip everything off??) Another girl was right in my face with big-time cigarette breath. My uncle theorized that we were dressed nicely so they thought we had money. I think it was that there just weren't many men there. Drew had to go pick up Ambrosia, so they were on their way while all this was happening, and I kept thinking, I don't really like this place and when they arrive I think I'm gonna have us all go to Industrial Strip.

I held off all the strippers from talking me into a private dance...except one. She looked Latina and had a thick accent, which she said was Peruvian. But I clearly understood the third sentence she said to me: "So, you wanna stick your dick in my pussy?" Yeah, she was really aggressive. I like really aggressive. And she was really hot, nice rack and everything. So about the same time some black girl named Sunshine talked my uncle into a private dance, the Peruvian took me into a private room as well. The dance was way more contact than I expected at a Chicago club. She grabbed my hands and put them on her tits, which would never happen at Admiral Theatre. At one point she put her hand on my jeans and felt around for my cock, and when she found it, she exclaimed, "OH! There it is!" and started grinding on it, although again, it's Chicago and there's alcohol on premises, so her G-string was still on the whole time. "It's so thick!" she purred as she had herself a grand time at the rate of $30 per song. Two songs later, I had to leave before she stuck her hand down my pants or something.

A great private dance, for sure, but I was still uncomfortable with all the attention at this place. The manager was waiting at the table when we returned to ask if we were ready for that tour. So I went into the lobby and called Drew and told him not to pay for parking or the entrance fee when he got here because we would be going straight to Industrial Strip. My uncle and I left, almost feeling like we were sneaking out because we had told so many women that we may give them a dance later once we settled in and my friends arrived. We met Drew and Ambrosia outside, we drove to a nearby cash station because my uncle was already running low, and I got my first look at what Ambrosia chose to wear on this evening, which was a halter top accentuating her ample bosom. Nice. Like I said, she knows she's hot despite being a large woman. If you're wondering, she's about 5'6", 240, I'd guess. Oh, and she's got the "beauty mark" mole above her lip, and she's claimed from the day we met that Cindy Crawford, the original beauty mark, is a distant cousin. I've always been skeptical, but whatever.

So on to IS, and a totally different atmosphere. It's later at this point, about 11P, so the place is packed, the smoke is thick because Indiana hasn't banned cigarettes in all public places yet, the talent is aplenty and many are heavily tattooed. Ambrosia was allowed in for free because she was a girl, so at least we didn't have to cover her cover. Drew paid $60 extra for three VIP seats, which were just leather seats right behind the main stage seating. It's a ripoff for sure, but Drew offered. So all four of us kept rotating between sitting at the stage and sitting in the VIP seats. We probably seemed like a rowdy bunch to those sitting behind us, constantly getting up and blocking their line of vision. We got Ambrosia to sit at the stage for a while, and every time a dancer got on the main stage, despite all the guys circling the stage, she headed straight for Ambrosia and immediately buried her head in Ambrosia's cleavage, tickling me to no end. Some of them slowly gave it to her, rubbing their breasts in her face or dragging their lips across her neck, and she really seemed to be enjoying it, making me and my dick very happy. Look, I've lived a bit of a sheltered life, so I don't often get to see women rubbing on each other and making each other hot, and of course there's a little something extra when one of the women is a friend you've known for a long time and she's attractive. Every time I offered a dollar to a stripper for a little stage action and then directed her to give it to my female friend, not only was it hot to watch, but I felt a little like a director of my own porn fantasy. "Yeah, sweetie, give it to her. Make it steamy. Motorboat her tits. Oh, yes. That's very nice."

I got a private dance that night, and it was memorable for many reasons. One is that she gave me a first and last name and told me that she's got a website. Her name is Raquel Sieb, or at least that's her stage name. She sat on my lap and for the next 30 minutes proceeded to tell me all about her life, as if I asked. It's a strip club and therefore very dark, so I wasn't able to tell just how old she was when she sat on me. But within a few minutes she volunteered that she was 49. 49!! And stripping!! Really?!? Oh, that wasn't all. She was also a porn actress. Wow. I was kinda speechless. Her body was excellent for a 49-year-old, curvy in the right places, including a great rack. I couldn't tell she had tape covering the nipples, but then she took the white halter top down and peeled off the tape, and out popped one of the longer nipples I've been around, and she basically had my attention for the rest of our time together. She seemed intelligent despite telling me all these things about herself that would make me run the other way if I were trying to pick her up on the street. But she was compelling in her own way. I volunteered some things about myself as well, the most shocking to her being that I had been dating my fiancee for 5½ years and we hadn't had sex and I had been faithful the whole time. I think her head may have exploded. Finally, because it was getting late and my uncle was getting tired, he shoved $40 in my hand and told me to go ahead and take her to the private area. She gave a nice friction dance, but under the light in the private room, her age became rather obvious, and it was a bit of a turnoff. When a woman bends over in front of you and sticks two fingers deep in her coochie, that should be awesome, but her pussy was so weathered that it was a little gross. Nonetheless, I would Tweet her after I came back to Memphis a few days later, and she Tweeted back, "I remember you!" I would hope so. You only sat on my lap for a half-hour.

I had been on a mission to find a woman willing to give a private dance to Ambrosia while I watched, because since she was enjoying things so much, I thought she'd be up for this fantasy. She was, and Raquel said that it wouldn't be a problem, but Ambrosia didn't want a dance from her. And another dancer Ambrosia propositioned said that she couldn't do that. So it seemed that, depending on which stripper you asked, this would be something that could be done. But my uncle was ready to go as soon as I emerged from my private dance with Raquel, and once you get a round of applause from all three members of your party, I guess that's a sign that you have reached the end of the evening. So I got a promise from Ambrosia that we would come back the next night and find someone else willing to fulfill my fantasy.

The next day, I went bowling with my uncle, and we wound up staying longer than I expected, so I kept texting Drew throughout the day, letting him know when I'd be back home at my uncle's so he could come pick me up. It wasn't until about 10P that I was ready, but thankfully Drew and Ambrosia were ready as well. Ambrosia's top this time was exactly the same as Saturday night, black and heavy on the boob support, except this one had one shoulder strap. Drew had an internet coupon for 2-for-1 admission, and of course Ambrosia walked in for free again. But the scene was very different. Sunday nights are very, very slow for a strip club. There were no more than seven strippers in the whole place by my count. There were a lot less patrons as well. But I was fine because I didn't feel like it was too crowded. I had some space. Plus, there were a couple of dancers that I liked. It would have sucked if all of the dancers were undesirable to me, but a couple of them were yummy. This one Amazon woman was there Saturday night and also Sunday. She was white, about 6' in heels, and not skinny. There was serious cottage cheese on her ass and thighs. And yet, she was hot because she worked it like she was Paris Hilton, and she didn't care that she was the biggest girl there. Plus, when she got on the stripper pole, she actually spun around using just her legs. Baby girl had some gymnastics training before she put on the pounds. I was strangely proud of her for putting herself out there like that, and Ambrosia reacted the same way. She said if someone was willing to give her a private dance while I watched, she preferred it to be the big girl. Well, it took almost all night because the big girl was giving private dances, but I finally got a hold of her and asked if she'd be willing to dance for Ambrosia while I watched, and she said yes. Then she said to give her some time for another customer, and she'd be over to give us that dance. She seemed smart and eager. So it was all set.

Well, things don't always go as planned. In this strip club with about ten men in it, one of them kept the big girl engrossed in a conversation for a good 45 minutes while the night drew close to its conclusion. I mean, there weren't any other strippers around for a while. There was a 15-minute period where every stripper working was off the floor, presumably giving private dances. Music was thumping, customers were sitting around, and no one was stripping. Ambrosia actually got up on an auxiliary pole at one point and did a couple of spins, and we howled and applauded as a female patron yelled, "Amateur night!" A bouncer told Ambrosia to go sit down after about 20 seconds. Drew and I tipped her a buck, and she considered updating her Facebook to talk about her new experience on the stripper pole until she realized that her boyfriend, who doesn't live with her, thought she was home asleep right now. It was after this adventure that a couple of strippers finally made their way onto the main stage, and the big girl emerged but got caught up in that long conversation on the other side of the building.

So the place is getting ready to close and we haven't gotten any private dances, and at this point I don't even want a dance for myself, I just want to get one for Ambrosia and watch because that's a scenario that I don't have a chance to see often. A dancer who looked Indian or Mediterranean came up on the main stage and gave a vibe like she actually wanted to be there, and she told me that she would do a private dance for my friend while I watched, so I asked Ambrosia if she'd like to get a dance from this girl if I couldn't get a hold of the big girl, and she said sure. Then I finally saw the big girl walking in our direction, and I asked if she was ready for us yet, and she said "Give me five minutes," and I said okay. At this moment, the DJ announced last call. I made the decision to grab the Indian-looking girl and ask her for the private dance because I didn't want to risk the big girl getting caught up in another long convo on her way to us. The Indian girl said let's go right now, and we were on our way. We all walked past the big girl on our way to the private room, and I didn't know what the big girl was going to do or say. I was kinda sorry that we couldn't have her because that's really who Ambrosia wanted, but she took too fucking long. The big girl's eyes got wide as she recognized us as her potential customers, then she shot two thumbs up and forced a big smile and said loudly, "You guys have a great time!" I will never know if she really meant that or if she was incredibly pissed that we didn't wait for her.

Ambrosia would tell me later that while I was grabbing a chair for myself, the Indian girl asked if I would be jealous during this dance, indicating that she thought Ambrosia and I were a couple. Considering her "jungle fever" comment years ago, this really amused me. We were assumed as a couple by almost every dancer on the main stage, probably because of how I drooled and stared every time one of them cuddled up with her. But also, I'm a big black guy, and she's a big white woman, and this is not an unusual sighting anymore. Big people tend to gravitate towards each other, and black men tend to gravitate towards white women, so I totally understood how we could be assumed as a couple. Hell, Ambrosia doesn't look all that different from "Karen" or "Sarah" in body type. She's much prettier in the face, but otherwise, she looks like the kind of fat white girl that gets shunned by white guys because they want Barbie dolls, and then the niggas get their hands on her because she's thick and we're attracted to thickness, and they get a taste of a big black dick, and they never date a white guy again. I'm guessing that's what would happen to Ambrosia if she went black, especially considering she has an ex-lover that she calls "Chapstick" because his penis was about the size of a tube of lip balm.

Anyway, the lap dance happened, and it was much hotter than I expected it to be. The first three-song set saw the Indian girl, who called herself Lavinia, stick her hand between Ambrosia's legs and rub her off through her jeans while gyrating her pussy in Ambrosia's face. Ambrosia seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the attention and the rubbing, occasionally opening her eyes and glancing at me with a wry smile. I sat still in the corner doing what I do best, watching and taking mental pictures. Ambrosia seemed to be tentative about what she wanted to do with Lavinia. She rubbed her hands all along Lavinia's body but seemed to avoid touching her breasts, which were on the small side but were still pretty. Lavinia kept ramping up the heat, touching herself, letting out small moans, rubbing her pussy and Ambrosia's at the same time, then flipping over and kissing Ambrosia's neck and cleavage. That first set lasted about 12 minutes, and I would have been very happy with that display. Lavinia asked Ambrosia, "Do you want me to continue?" She answered, "That's up to him." I thought about how little money I had on me and whether I really wanted to spend more than the $60 this set cost, but it was just so damn sexy that I didn't want to end it, so I said, "I guess we can do one more song." Now, a song is $35, and a three-song set is another $60, so that's why I said one more song. I wasn't trying to buy two full sets. But Lavinia kept going after the first song ended, and it was so hot that I couldn't make her stop. And thank goodness I didn't stop her. It was during this 2nd set that Lavinia put her head between Ambrosia's breasts and covered what was going on with her long black hair. I had to stand up to see what was happening. I was very excited at the thought of Ambrosia's tits being sucked, because that just takes the fantasy to a whole new level. A thought went through my head as I stood up--maybe this is too far for Ambrosia. Maybe she won't want me to see her topless. After all, we're longtime friends, and not lovers, and she has a boyfriend, and maybe this is the edge of her limits...and before that thought could be completed, Lavinia raised her head to show Ambrosia's beautiful tits, and Ambrosia opened her eyes and smiled at me. I wasn't expecting that. She said later that the look on my face when I saw her tits was absolutely priceless. I can imagine. They kept rubbing each other, including Ambrosia finally rubbing Lavinia's tits, and at one point when Lavinia's hand was between Ambrosia's legs I heard a rather loud moan. I couldn't tell who was moaning or why, but the whole scene was just so awesome that I didn't care. Lavinia pulled Ambrosia's top down a couple more times and sucked her nipples before the set was over, then when it ended, she told Ambrosia, "Wow, I wish I could keep going and finish." Ambrosia, red-faced and smiling, replied, "Me too!" I paid the $120 plus tip and led Ambrosia to Drew's car, where he was waiting for us.

The moment we got into the car and closed the doors, Ambrosia exclaimed, "So, I actually orgasmed!" "WHAT?!?" Drew and I said, looking back at her like she was lying. But her flushed face and trembling voice told the story. Lavinia had found the combination that released Ambrosia's waters--rubbing her clit through her jeans and sucking her very sensitive nipples. "I can cum just from having my nipples sucked," she explained to us as we asked her to repeat the story slowly. So if I hadn't agreed to a 2nd set, her nipples wouldn't have come out, and that would have made the night not as great for all of us. She wouldn't have cum, Lavinia wouldn't have had the knowledge that she made a girl cum that night, and I wouldn't have had the experience of watching a girl make another girl cum. And not fake cum like on a porno, real life orgasm ripped from my friend's body while I watched. How fucking awesome is that? I thanked Ambrosia for giving me a wedding present 100,000 times better than all the gifts we're gonna get combined. We all had a late dinner/early breakfast, and Drew dropped me back off at my uncle's house at about 4:30A.

A funny aside to this adventure is, I could have had my oldest cousin a part of everything had he been able to access his woman's cash in time. Huh? Well, my 22-year-old cousin, my uncle's oldest son, was in town, and he was at the house when I was getting ready to leave Sunday night to go to IS. I invited him along, and he thought for a second and decided that he would come along. I then told him that the admission is $15, and he recoiled, which told me that he probably shouldn't be coming along because getting a dance is much more expensive than $15. He then actually said out loud that his baby momma gets paid at midnight on some kind of direct deposit deal, and it was going on 11 now, so maybe I could wait about an hour to go? I told him no, although he has his own ride, so if he really wanted to go, he could have showed up later. But I felt guilty about him potentially taking his baby momma's money so he can go see some titties, so I gave him the vibe that maybe this is bad timing and we can go some other time. The killer is when I saw him after I got back home, and he asked how things went, and me still stunned at having saw what I saw, I described it to him as the greatest night of my life, and he growled, "Ugh! Why'd you have to tell me that??" Too funny.

So that's the story of my bachelor party. It's fitting. It involved me not having enough friends to fill a small room, me having to pay to see what good-looking guys can see for free, me having to accept money from my friend Drew and my uncle to see it because I could never have financed that weekend by myself, and me going crazy over seeing a fat white woman's tits. Not only that, but a woman who normally wouldn't have given me a shot to see her tits or anything else, but because I was paying for her to get off, she had no problem. It all made sense. But in the end, I got to watch a version of Bachelor Party that I actually would not have imagined in my wildest dreams. And I didn't cheat on my fiancee, so I got to watch it guilt-free. Winners all around, if you ask me.

Some Things Never Change

2011-10-10T15:58:00.002-05:00

I decided to start this wedding week by looking up Linda's Big Connections, the website where I met "Karen," to see if she was still making herself a part of the social scene amongst fat people in Wisconsin. And sure enough, she's still on the message boards, still has pics of herself taken at the Milwaukee dances, still has a drink in her hand at all times...the only different things about her are that she's bigger and she wasn't surrounded by ugly black men like most of the pics of her at various social outings. Kinda sad to think that she's still stuck in her little world as she approaches 40. But also kinda funny.

In other news, the programs are printed, our officiant has given us a notarized form detailing our pre-marital counseling which gives us a deep discount on the marriage license, and I can't get my sore tooth removed surgically before next Monday, which obviously is after the wedding. I was hoping to not have to eat and drink on one side of my mouth on my big day, but that's what it looks like I'm going to be doing. My trip to the sleep clinic last night went well. They put me under the oxygen mask all night, which meant that I had to sleep on my back, and I was wired up again. But I think I could get used to the mask. Having air forced into my nose is very weird at first, and I couldn't open my mouth to speak because speaking and having air forced through your nose just doesn't work well together, but so long as I relaxed and didn't try to speak, it was all good. One hiccup earlier today: I guess it's my first car accident, although no one else was involved. I blasted the car's left tire off a curb because I never saw it, and the hubcap is hanging off. Don't know how much to fix that, but it may have to wait until I get my bonus in a few weeks.

Where Oh Where Does The Time Go?

2011-10-05T16:42:00.002-05:00

Here we are, a week and a half from the biggest celebrity wedding in the history of Planet Dre, and I haven't been updating all of you faithful readers out there! Things have been unbelievably hectic in my world. Weddings are a bitch to plan, of course, but throw in my fiancee and I still getting to know each other and having a major blow-up a few weeks ago, and no wonder I haven't found the time to write. Oh, I've been writing somewhere else, though. The football blog that "Jacob" and I started last year, In Much Less Detail, is chugging along, displaying our terrible football analysis and picks for the world to see. So that takes up a lot of the time I could be using to blog here at the place where my fiancee discovered me, Planet Dre. But time is so precious now that I'm not living alone. My fiancee and I actually spend less time together when we're at home than a lot of couples who just moved in together, but we're both accustomed to our own space, so I hang out here in her spare bedroom on the computer for an hour or two after a long work day and dinner. But we do have to carve out time for each other as well.

So here's what I wanted to do on this blog before the wedding: I had always envisioned myself hunched over the computer banging out a post describing in great detail the story of the lady that I loved the most before I met my fiancee; Tammi Todd from junior high. I briefly referenced how I felt about her in this post, but I intended to sit down with my diaries from that time period as a guide and go over every little piece of that story because it was such a big part of me at the time. I didn't think I would ever go a day without thinking about Tammi, and for a couple of years after the last time I talked to her, I didn't. Well, I'd have to make a special trip to a storage facility to dig out my diaries, and with all the wedding planning and errands, that seems like a selfish thing to do. But I may do it anyway because I'm going to have the car next week, the week before our wedding. And I really want to read the diaries and capture what I was going through because to try to recall my feelings about this girl right now wouldn't do justice to how I felt. (Hell, I'm still intimidated by her--I found her profile on Facebook, but I didn't try to friend her because I assumed that she would just reject me again, like she did in 1990.) I also wanted to update the blog regularly with all the little minutiae about planning a wedding, the ups and downs, but it's a little late for that considering the wedding is ten days away. I also need to write a post about this past weekend. My uncle invited me back to Chicago for a bachelor party, but because I'm a loser and have like 2 friends, he decided not to hire adult entertainment for a room full of 3 or 4 men, so we went out to a strip club. The weekend turned out to be totally fucking awesome, and the event that happened Sunday evening was fitting for a bachelor party because it's nothing I've ever experienced, nor am I likely to ever again. But that should be a post for later, because some serious shit has been happening with me and the fiancee which needs to be chronicled now.

So instead, I'll talk about the "worse" part about "For better or for worse," which describes the hell my fiancee and I have been unintentionally putting each other through. The problem is sleep, or lack thereof, or what one thinks is happening during sleep while the other is convinced that it couldn't be happening, and the resulting shitstorm.

It started around the end of July, when she complained one Saturday morning about the bad night of sleep she had next to me. I expressed empathy for her, and then after we got in the car and she started driving me to work, she said that we should talk about the reason she wasn't getting good sleep lately. I had no clue what she was going to say next.

"We have to talk about you masturbating while I'm trying to sleep." Wait, what?

Here's the deal: I have undiagnosed sleep apnea. The handful of women that have slept with me have always told me that I stop breathing when I sleep, and it's worrisome. I'm aware that it can be curtains for me one night, only because I'm a big sports fan and I'm well aware of an all-time NFL defensive player named Reggie White, who died I think before he turned 40 because he stopped breathing in his sleep and never woke up. So I'm not totally ignorant of its severity, I just hate doctors so much that I've never had it checked out. But I have never gotten a really good night's sleep, because I'm always thrashing around in my sleep, presumably gasping for air. I've awaken on the floor sometimes, I've awaken with my head at the foot of the bed, and almost every morning of my life, my sheets aren't where they were when I went to sleep. My fiancee has slept with me before, so she knows all of this. But for some reason, she took my movements and grunting as me jacking it right next to her while she was trying to sleep, which I would never ever do.

So when she threw this accusation at me, I laughed it off because I was genuinely stunned and didn't know how else to react. This led to a couple of weeks where we were not exactly communicating well with each other. She thought I was lying to her face, and I thought she was crazy, and we weren't getting along too well. Then one night, I woke up to hear her sniffling and walking out into the living room. I asked if she was alright, and she let out a wail. I got up and followed her, scared that something was terribly wrong, and when she finally spoke to me through her tears, she said, "You were masturbating again." I didn't react very well to this, because I thought the issue was past us the moment I said that I wasn't masturbating. I told her firmly that I loved her and wasn't trying to minimize her feelings, but she was dead wrong about me jacking off and it didn't feel good to be called a liar. I then went back to bed, only to have her tell me that she thought maybe I should sleep in the guest bedroom. That's what I did, although I was steamed. She was contrite the next day as she explained to me that no matter what I told her, she had to listen to her gut, and her gut told her that I was masturbating. It made for a terrible feeling on my part. After all the lying I did to past girlfriends, here I was actually telling the truth and not being believed. It really hurt.

Her solution was to "put it behind us" and move forward, because after all, me getting off in bed with her was kinda hot to her, and she said that she'd join in next time. The problem is, I was never jacking off. There was nothing in which to join. I even begged her to turn on the light next time I made these noises and movements so she could see that I wasn't doing that, but she didn't want to play "Gotcha!" with me. We tried to move on, but there was another evening when she left the bedroom and I got up and tried to convince her that I was asleep and had no idea if I was moving or making sounds. She tried to play "Gotcha!" this time and asked me to pull my pants down to show whether I had came in my shorts or not. I immediately did it to show her that not only had I not came, but I wasn't even aroused. She asked me if that was humiliating, and I told her that it didn't matter. All I wanted to do was convince her that I was telling the truth. She sobbed that she was sorry for ruining the relationship, and I told her that she wasn't doing that. And the reason I didn't think she was ruining the relationship was because I was 100% sure that once I proved to her that I was right and she was wrong, all of this bullshit would go away and we'd go back to normal. But this woman was not letting go. She refused to believe that I was telling the truth. She wouldn't even refer to it as a possible truth, just "what you claim to be true" or "your version of things." We even went to the reverend who will officiate the wedding for an emergency counseling session. But we were at an impasse.

She said at one point that it was up to me do something about this problem if it really was being caused by my sleep apnea. I put a Band-Aid on my nose one night in an attempt to keep oxygen flowing through my nose. It didn't work. I thought that maybe I needed a product specifically meant for this problem, so I sent out for free samples of nasal strips, which also didn't work. It finally got to the point where I made an appointment with a sleep clinic to get an overnight test done so I can get my sleep apnea diagnosed and solved, because I kept moving during my sleep and she kept assuming I was doing it on purpose. But the sleep clinic was very unorganized and kept putting off my night to come in and do the test. Meanwhile, the fiancee and I kept getting on each other's nerves. I kept insisting that we don't have an issue because the moment she accepts that I've been honest this whole time, everything goes away. She kept insisting that even on the slight chance that I've been telling the truth, I need to get over how she basically called me a liar for a couple of months and just put the whole thing past us. But I was having trouble connecting with her emotionally, physically, in any way, because she hurt me so much by insisting that I was being dishonest. I didn't even want to go to sleep at night because I was losing trust in her mental stability. I was wondering if I was going to wake up one night with her standing over me holding a knife or something. She did turn on the light one night to try to catch me in the act, but I was not totally asleep, so I woke up fully when she hit the lamp. She assumed that I once again stopped jacking it for fear of being caught. But I didn't even remember moving much before she hit the light. I may have turned over, but that was about it. She went back to our reverend for another counseling session, this time alone, and she came out of it resigned to not bringing it up anymore because--again, even if I'm lying--the issue isn't worth fucking up the relationship. Basically, she refused to give me the satisfaction of her saying she was wrong, and she became the hero, saving our marriage by being the bigger person and letting the issue go. I'm still not totally over the whole fiasco, but we haven't argued about it in weeks. Plus, the sleep clinic did indeed diagnose me with moderate-to-severe sleep apnea, though they didn't capture those sounds and movements that my fiancee accused me of making. I go back this Sunday night to figure out how much pressure I need for a new mask which will force oxygen into my nose during sleep, ending my breathing problems and (we pray) ending my need to flail around.

Throughout this ordeal, she has been fond of telling me that this is how marriage works, that it's not always flowers and sunshine. Look, I'm well aware that there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. But I absolutely have no idea how I'm supposed to react when I tell the 100% whole truth and get totally shot down. I called my uncle for advice, and he just said that I have to be willing to not get the win in this battle because it may cost me the war; in other words, stop pressing her to say that I wasn't really masturbating because I may do irreparable damage to our union trying to force her to admit she was wrong. To an extent, this is also about my competitive streak and how much I despise losing. It really could be easy to let go and move past this thing if she's willing to do so, but part of me hates just throwing my hands up and moving past it because I never willingly disrupted her sleep and I'm willing to do absolutely anything to prove it. Videotape me sleeping. Audiotape me sleeping. Hit the lights every single fucking time I start moaning and shaking the bed. Whatever it takes, just give me the win and admit you were wrong. But it looks like that's not gonna happen, not unless I totally stop moving once I get this oxygen mask. And even then, I can't press the issue and throw it back in her face if I stop moving during sleep, because she could take it the wrong way and have another mental meltdown. The whole situation has left me feeling rather helpless, and if anything similar happens in the future--where I tell the Goddamn truth and get figuratively spat upon in response--I don't know what the hell is gonna happen.

Tennessee's Newest NASCAR Racer

2011-08-02T15:52:00.002-05:00

That would be me, after I endured the seventh ring of hell that is the Tennessee DMV. This adventure stretched over three different months and two nightmare trips to the DMV. I ventured out on June 29 to the nearest facility with my pay stub and bank statement in hand as proof of address. I stood in a line that went out the door and around the corner in stifling heat, and it was another long, winding line once I made it indoors to the air conditioning. And after three hours of waiting, I got to the woman at the front desk only for her to tell me that I needed my original birth certificate if I wanted to change my Illinois driver's license into a Tennessee one. Why? I have no fucking clue. But I knew that my birth certificate was somewhere in storage, so I drove to the storage unit and sweated off about 50 pounds searching around before finding it. I then decided to get my ass back to the DMV because I had a slip of paper stating that I could jump to the front of the line if I returned with my needed documents that same day. And after another long wait sitting around waiting for the desk clerk to call my deli number, I sauntered up to the desk and...proceeded to fail the vision test. It was getting harder and harder for me to pass that vision exam in Chicago, and I finally couldn't make out those blurry little letters here in Memphis. I turned with my tail tucked between my legs and went home to find an eye doctor and get tested.

The doctor was recommended by my fiancee, and all went well. He gave me a thorough exam last Monday, and determined that I was nearsighted and needed glasses. Yesterday the call came that they had arrived, and I went to the office and picked up my first pair of real glasses. (I had a fake cosmetic pair in high school that didn't magnify anything, but they turned out to be very important. My high school girlfriend told me that if I hadn't been wearing the glasses when she saw me for the first time, she probably wouldn't have been attracted to me. I may still be a virgin if not for some fake specs.) My fiancee warned me that the world would open up and the angels would play harps when I put the glasses on for the first time, but I thought she was exaggerating a little. Nope. It really did seem like a whole new world when I put those babies on. Fuck, was I blind before! Now I'm seeing far away, things are sharper and darker and brighter and any other superlative you can throw in. I freaked out at the fact that I thought my DVD player was turned on when I came home and I pushed the power button to turn it off and it turned out that it was already off. Daaaaaaaaamn!! How freaky is that? I feel like I have Spiderman laser see-through vision. It's even scarier when I take the glasses off because it magnifies how fucking blind as a bat I am right now. And the fiancee is blind while already wearing glasses, so it's time for bifocals for her.

So today was the big trip back to the DMV to tackle that pesky vision test and finally officially claim a Tennessee license. The wait was forever again, but at least the state put tents above the entrance to shield the sun from us suffering fools. They also had a cooler with water bottles, but the ice was melted away early. But I survived the wait (we all should get t-shirts), passed the vision test easily, barely smiled for my picture, and got my license. That's really my last tie to Chicago that got severed. My only ID was Illinois before today. I was afraid that I was going to get pulled over for something and have to present the Illinois license and wind up getting paperwork delivered up to Chicago. My old apartment has been rented out, so clearly, I don't need anything being sent back up there. Now, I am a full-fledged resident of Tennessee. I believe a toothpick will soon start to grow out the corner of my mouth as a result of being an official Tennesseean.

Next on the docket: Wedding plans. They're starting to get put in motion for real real, with the big day being only two and a half months away. My new dilemma: Wedding pics--shall I be bespectacled or sans glasses? Stay tuned...

So, Just What The Fuck Was That?

2011-07-20T15:17:00.001-05:00

Stolen from "Jacob" and my sports blog, In Much Less Detail.

It's about time for NFL training camps to start, we football fans are supposed to be getting geared up for another season of what has become America's passion...and we're waiting for Sal Palantonio and Adam Schefter to tell us what their sources are telling them about the labor negotiations. To say this whole thing sucks would be nowhere near accurate. This is abominable. The thought of NFL owners opting out of a labor deal for no other reason than to suck more money their way should piss of every real football fan. It leaves me wondering just what the hell we watched this summer, because I still don't know.

The players side appears to have caved in to almost every demand, if the "sources" are to be believed. So why hold out at all? Why de-certify the union if DeMaurice Smith was going to drop to his knees and open his mouth in the end anyway? Why string all of this crap out so long and make fans even think that there was the slightest chance that the players were going to stand their ground? I'm not any kind of labor expert, so I ask this in all sincerity: Is this how negotiations usually go? One side waits until the last second and just submits like a bad MMA fighter? We know it's coming up on the time where players were going to start risking missing game checks. We heard for a couple of years how the players and the union officials had been communicating and gearing up for this, and they won't be caught off guard and they will be financially prepared for the long haul and blah blah blah...but we're not talking about intelligent people for the most part. We're talking about NFL athletes. The chances that they were going to stay unified for the long haul were slim and none. So why even fucking pretend?

I don't know what we witnessed this offseason, but I will tell you what's been most entertaining: The players loading up and unleashing with all their might and fury upon the all-powerful commish, Roger Goodell. The three words Roger Goodell unfair results in a mere 448,000 Google results. Baltimore WR Derrick Mason called Goodell "a joke" in a radio interview, then to make sure he wasn't misunderstood, appeared on TV wearing a T-shirt that said "A JOKE." Seattle OL Chester Pitts called the commish "a fraud." Steelers LB James Harrison let loose in a Men's Journal interview, calling Goodell "faggot," "devil," "crook," wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire, etc. Would any of this be happening if the players weren't locked out? Of course not, because the dictator Goodell would fine them to kingdom come and maybe suspend them for saying something critical. This is exactly why the players are so critical of Goodell. The level of respect for Goodell is so low that I can't recall any players coming out in his defense on the other side. As much as some NBA players don't like the arrogant commish David Stern, and as much as some MLB players can't stand Bud Selig, I don't imagine venom on this level ever coming their way. And the NBA lockout has begun, so said venom should be flying toward Stern right now. But because he's not a complete penis when it comes to disciplining players, the pure hate isn't there. I've quite enjoyed that part of this otherwise execrable offseason. Hearing Goodell getting it from all directions has been funny and historical, as today's zillions of media outlets allow players to voice their opinions like never before. And it allowed dumb motherfuckers to show their asses and shine a bright light on their massive mental retardation. The leader of dumb was, of course, Colin Cowherd, who said on his radio show something to the effect of black NFL players have such hatred toward Goodell because he's the only father figure most of them ever had. There's video of the exact diatribe. I refuse to watch it and quote him directly because, well, I don't need to watch a KKK video either to know that what's being said is a product of willful ignorance. I do have some colorful names to call Cowherd in response, though. You'll have to find James Harrison and ask him what they are.

In Good Times And Bad

2011-07-13T22:17:00.003-05:00

Real quick update on things here at Casa de Planet Dre. A couple of weeks back, I was chilling on my off day from work, listening to music and surfing the net and relaxing worry-free. Then the fiancee texted that she just got laid off. The sound I heard was the proverbial needle scratching across the record and ending the party, and if you're so young that you don't know what that sounds like, then I pity you. So it's been a bit depressing lately as compared to the euphoria of starting our lives together. Real life has hit hard, as she searches for work in a crappy job market while we try not to think too hard about the wedding we have to produce in three months. And I've already dealt with anger that I may have felt upon realizing that I moved my life down here to Memphis because she really loved her job, only to have her lose said job within two months of my arrival. I will not hold that over her head, although it would be easy to do so. But this is what becoming a team is all about. We talked real tough about becoming a unit and being there for each other no matter what. Now we have to actually work at it. She has held up a brave front thus far, with the heartbreaking exception of the day she came home after sending me that text. I could tell she had been crying because her eyes were red and puffy and she was toting a box of Kleenex, and when I grabbed her and hugged her, she softly sobbed into my chest. That was hard. But she's been Ms. Busybody since, cooking and refining the resume and signing up for a baking class. She's interviewing with a temp agency next week. Her uncle was a godsend, agreeing to pay her mortgage while she gets back on her feet. She expressed doubt if we were going to get through this rough patch financially, but I think we're going to be fine if we figure out ways to trim down the wedding budget even slimmer than it is now. Ghetto Weddings.com, here we come. Oh, and a bit of joyous news--"Jacob" and "Alice" didn't waste any time. Despite both being ill during their San Francisco honeymoon, Alice is now preggers. Perhaps they didn't conceive until they got back from SF, but the way they were talking about it during that week before the wedding, I wouldn't be surprised if they made each other feel better in between trips to the free clinic out in the Bay Area. No matter, I'm thrilled for the both of them. I told them that she would be four months along when they came down for my wedding, and I was dead on. If only my gambling skills were that sharp.

We're All Eternally Saved Because LeBron Lost The Finals, Or Something

2011-06-14T15:02:00.002-05:00

I'm chilling here at home, enjoying my three days off in a row that I get thanks to my new job. It gets boring, just like it would any time I had a three-day weekend where I didn't go anywhere. But I have to admit, the adjustment to squeezing a 40-hour work week into four days instead of five has been quite enjoyable. When Sunday evening comes and I know I'm off work for the next three days, it's a tremendous feeling. Those four work days seem to fly by. I couldn't do it without my iPod and the sports talk shows that I listen to every day. If not for that, I would lose my shit counting checks ten hours a day.

And what have I been hearing on those talk shows all week? How can LeBron James choke so bad? What's wrong with him? Why can't he perform in the 4th quarter of games? Was he shrinking under the pressure? It's really starting to piss me off.

For you non-sports fans, LeBron and the Miami Heat made it to the NBA Finals a couple of weeks ago, but thanks to their poor play in close games, they just lost the Finals to Dallas this past Sunday. They did not look like the same team that made it to the Finals. James, Dwyane Wade, and the rest of the Heat used smothering defense and seemingly unstoppable offense to dispose of their three prior playoff opponents in five games for each series. They played tight with the Mavericks in Game 1 of the Finals before disposing of them, then they wiped the floor for all of Game 2 except the last five minutes, when Dallas mounted a big comeback and stole the game late. Miami went to Dallas and promptly took Game 3, but the Mavs were able to win a very tight contest in Game 4 before opening up the tempo and getting as hot shooting the ball as I've ever seen a team in the Finals and beating the Heat in Games 5 and 6. If I were assessing blame for losing the Finals, and by the way, I actually watched each game, I'd put LeBron's share at about 8-10%. He certainly could have forced his way into the lane more using his size, and he could have stayed a little tighter with his man on D, usually Jason Terry, who just lit it up from 3-point land. But by no means was it mostly his fault that Miami didn't win. It was mostly Dallas was hotter than the sun shooting the ball, and no team maybe in the history of the game would have beaten them.

The criticism that LeBron has received in this series, and all season in fact, is unfair. I have to say that it's incredible how much hate and venom he's gotten for making his Decision to leave Cleveland last year and go to Miami via free agency. Let's assess what LeBron did in the simplest terms possible: He played seven years for the Cavaliers, attained free agency, and left to go to a team in a better position, in his opinion, to win the NBA title. He left via free agency, an act done by dozens of guys every single fucking year. He went to a better team! That's it! This became a crime of the highest order when, exactly? Oh, sure, his hour-long ESPN special covering his Decision live was tasteless. His term of "taking my talents to South Beach" was very arrogant. His public persona has been that of a man who seems to think that he owns the world. But he has. He has been The King in his own world since he was in his mid-teens. It would be shangri-la if someone who was a prodigy at an early age was humble and self-effacing so that we could feel a little less small when we see him. But that's not reality. The fact is, almost every single athlete at the top of his profession feels and acts more than a little entitled on a daily basis. I don't have a problem with LeBron's behavior or attitude at all. His ego and arrogance has been covered and dissected in public nonstop only because he's the best of the best. Most of his peers in the NBA are just as much a prick. But we don't know that because we don't cover them as closely because they're not as good as this guy is. In fact, think of the ballers in the modern era of "sports journalism" who have been covered as much as LeBron. Shaq. Kobe. Michael. Magic. Bird. Dr. J. Barkley. Maybe Rodman, who wasn't the player those other guys were but got an enormous amount of press because he's certifiably batshit. Tell me what they have in common. That's right, we can go through each and every one of their personal lives and find public shaming and shortcomings and instances of ego and extreme arrogance. All of them. This applies to the other sports and their "heroes" too, but I don't feel like going through the list. LeBron's no different. He doesn't even seem (admittedly from this very far distance) any more arrogant than anyone else, especially the guy he's constantly compared to, Michael Jordan, possibly the biggest dick in the history of team sports. He is just being covered as the best baller in the game today, which he is, and the expectations of the best baller in the game is that he should take out his cock and whip everyone with it anytime he wants and win games by himself. But that's just not his style. So, to recap--he's hated because people perceive him as selfish and uncaring about anyone else, then his game is hated because he's not selfish enough. Makes my head spin.

Oh, and the criticism of his actual game is weak. Again, he's not dominating the way his physical dimensions and basketball skills suggest he should. But everyone invokes the name of Michael Jordan when they criticize LeBron. "He's not mentally tough. Jordan woulda taken over those games. Jordan wouldn't let his teams lose without taking a bunch of shots." THAT'S NOT LEBRON'S GAME DUMBASSES!!! Sheesh. LeBron's obviously been learning a different way to play ball all his life. You know, passing, rebounding, doing things to help his team win other than trying to shoot every single time he touches the orange. In other words, he ain't Jordan. He's pretty fucking far away from being Jordan. And the media and other observers have no idea how to handle the concept of the best player in the NBA not being a guy who takes 30 or 40 shots in a game. The other wing players who have been as talented as him--Jordan, Kobe, and the others who aren't quite as talented but think they are--all loved to jack up shots whenever they could. He's a different player, period, more Magic or Scottie Pippen than Mike or Black Mamba. And that's not a bad thing. That's not a lack of killer instinct necessarily either. I get the feeling that LeBron wants to win just about as bad as the other greats, outside of Jordan, who in addition to being the biggest dick in the history of team sports was also the most determined winner in the history of team sports. LeBron just wants to win differently than people expect him to win. And because he shouldn't get to be the player he wants to be, people just throw it into the same "He's arrogant, he's selfish" pile as they throw his attitude, or perceived attitude. And one more observation from me about James's game, and again, I'm just an outside observer like everybody else--man, he needs to learn a post game fast. He seems to be hugely reluctant to play with his back to the basket and post up his defender. There was a point in Game 6 where the Dallas defense got caught switching, and Jose Juan Barea, a point guard who gives up almost a foot of height and 100 pounds of muscle to LeBron, wound up guarding him. I'm sure everyone thought the same thing I did, which was Oh shit, LeBron's about to take this midget right to the bucket! And what happened? LeBron couldn't figure out how to post him up without shoving him down, and he picked up an offensive foul. No excuse for that. I'm not pounding him and calling him weak and saying he's a fraud. I'm giving a legit critique of one aspect of his game. Can he win a title without developing his post game and his midrange game? Maybe, maybe not. But he's still the most gifted athlete I've ever seen, and I don't think he's going to be held without a title his whole career. Hell, they'll probably win the thing next year because Miami should be able to sign better players to surround James, Wade, and Chris Bosh.

I'm just baffled at all the hate and vitriol this guy and his team got all season long. How it became the worst thing in the world to band together with other great players and try to create a dynasty via free agency is a mystery to me. How it became acceptable for the entire city of Cleveland to act as immature as it did in the wake of LeBron's Decision is a mystery. How LeBron became the poster child for arrogance and entitlement, more so than the other professional athletes running around raping women and driving drunk and acting much more entitled than LeBron, is a mystery. There's something bigger at play. LeBron is filling a need for a national villain, a bad guy we can root against and feel good when he fails. Maybe this happens to the best player in a given league all the time. I lived in Chicago all my life when Jordan ruled the world, so I can't speak to how much others wanted to see him lose. We loved him to pieces in Chi-Town, but he was hated in some areas of the country, for sure. But I can't imagine it was like this. The only other "Best In His Sport" athlete I can think of that changed teams via free agency is Alex Rodriguez, and he got hated on as well, but not quite to this level. And for those who say that Mike wouldn't have left via free agency and try to take a "shortcut," I say: How the fuck do you know? Mike didn't choose to become a free agent before the Bulls were able to win their first title. If they had not put together the right combo to get Jordan a ring, who's to say that he wouldn't have bolted for greener pastures? I'd actually be willing to bet that he would have left because he's so damn competitive. He only stayed because the Bulls happened to get it right and surround him with the right pieces. Don't blame LeBron for trying to find an organization that knew how to put together a winner. Blame the Goddamn Cleveland Cavaliers.

I Added Some Color To Jacob's Wedding Weekend...Literally (The Big Day & Aftermath)

2011-05-18T12:32:00.004-05:00

Sat. May 14

A huge day in my life--it's my high school girlfriend's birthday! Oh, wait, it's also the nuptials of my best friend "Jacob" and his blushing bride "Alice." I would have to start the day behind the 8-ball. Pounce, the big black cat, was missing his mommy I guess, so he started meowing very, VERY loudly at sunrise, around 5 or 5:30A. It was so loud that I kept sitting up in bed looking around the bedroom for him. But no, he was outside the door, disturbing me and Joe, who was sleeping on the couch in the same room as Pounce. He told me later that he held down Pounce to knock off the noise for a while, but he drifted back to sleep, loosening his grip and allowing Pounce to slip out and resume the caterwauling. It was horrible. I was tired from the day before and I didn't have much sleep, but there I was, lying in bed wide awake, hoping that I wouldn't be so tired that I made a mistake and screwed up the day of my best friend. After all, I have the rings since they didn't have a ringbearer, and I also have the marriage license that they have to sign in front of me and Dana, Alice's sister and the matron of honor. If I'm not sharp, I may forget the bag with the rings and license when we go to the church, or I may forget to put the rings in my pocket when I put on the tux, or...needless to say, I was a bundle of nerves. I dare say that I was more nervous than the groom all day. Jacob seemed as smooth and unaffected as he always did, not uncaring but not overly excited about anything either. I always admired that. I can be so dramatic and sky-is-falling in my demeanor, and that gets exhausting after a while, not to mention annoying. It's who I am, so it won't be changing soon, but I acknowledge how insufferable it has to be.

So I got my tired ass up and let Jacob and Joe shower up. The plan was to get to the church straight from home between 1:30 and 2. The ceremony was at 3. We would change into our tuxes after we got to the church in order to avoid having cat hair shedding off of us all day. So after we went to a restaurant for a coffee-filled breakfast (I had to pick up the tab just as a gesture of how appreciative I was of Jacob's hospitality), they took me back home and headed to the formalwear shop so that Joe could try on his tux. 10 o'clock, then 11. The day dragged on. Then, a shot of adrenaline as there was a change in plans. We had to leave at 12:30 to walk two doors down to Mark and Dianne's house to put our tuxes in their car. Then we'd drive in Jacob's car to the hotel where he and Alice would go after the reception. This was so he could leave that car in the parking lot so they could drive home Sunday morning. Then we all piled into Mark's car, the three dudes in the back seat, me and Jacob squashing Joe in the middle, and rode to the wedding venue. The big day was starting for the groomsmen slightly earlier than we thought.

But the day would come together just perfectly. The first thing I noticed when we got out at Willow Springs was that the ass smell was gone. Either that, or I really did get used to it. I took a pic of the colorful, wonderful tent for the reception. It had been beautifully decorated. We were so out in the netherlands that I couldn't get a strong signal to send the pic back to my fiancee. But I called her several times throughout the day to let her feel a part of the festivities. Jacob took the upstairs bathroom to get into his tux first so that he wouldn't have any last-minute fumbling. I let Joe have the bathroom next because I just wanted to stay out in the auditorium and take in all of the happenings. Flowers were being systematically spread out on the floor. Chairs were being placed. I held the front door to the hall closed while Alice and her party took pics on the stairs. Then they told me that the men's room downstairs was free and that I could take my tux and put it on down there. It's a good thing, because I did a lot of fumbling putting on the penguin suit, and it took me a good half-hour. And that's before Jerry had to put on the clip-on tie for me. The last thing I did concerning the tux was to put the rings in my upper breast pocket of the coat and the license in an inside pocket. The outside pockets did not open; they were sewn closed, so not an option. The shirt had no pockets at all. That left my two inside pockets and pants pockets as my other options. And because I didn't want to fumble in my pants for the rings in front of everybody, I decided to go with the small hanky pocket and hope for the best. Then I said hi to Mark, who was still happy and exuberant despite being in a urinal, grabbed my lotion, and stepped out for approval.

Dana, Alice's sister who would be my partner as we walked down the aisle, pinned a flower on my lapel as we waited for 3 o'clock to strike. While we waited to have pictures taken, something happened that seemed to be meant specifically to make me and only me relax. I just happened to notice Jerry say something to his wife about Booker T. He's a wrestler. I mean, there's a lot of things with the Booker T. name on them that have nothing to do with the wrestler. Jerry could have been talking about the black inventor Booker T. Washington, or he could have been talking about Booker T. Washington School in Memphis, where President Obama was going to speak soon. But he said something else to her that sounded like it was from the world of wrestling as well. She walked away, then I said, "I overheard you talking about wrestling. Are you in the business?" And with that, for the next 30 minutes, all the way up until the wedding, Jerry and I shot the shit about rasslin' from the good old days all the way up to modern times. I understand that Jerry was in the wedding to stand up for his friend Alice, but Jesus, did I need him that day to help calm me down!

Then the photog led us outside to snap some pics. It was overcast and windy, and rain threatened from far away. But it held off long enough to get some good pics in. One of them had Jacob standing with one leg up on a step, Capt. Morgan style, and his groomsmen up on the step in line. Then the photog had Alice peek around a corner where none of us could see her, and that probably turned out to be a pretty cool pic. I haven't seen it yet. We went back into the building, and Jacob took his place at the altar as we went back downstairs. Alice had to come back downstairs several times, including a bathroom break that had to be excruciating for her and for those holding her train trying to keep it clean. Jacob was still at the altar onstage with the officiant patiently waiting for the show to start.

Finally, the clock struck 3, and almost on cue, the smallest of the four flower girls, an infant named Mya, started crying loudly, almost as loudly as Pounce this morning. This affected me not because of the crying itself but because Dana is the mother of all four girls, so she took Mya and tried to calm her down, leaving me wondering for a while where my partner is. I mean, Trish and Joe had taken off down the aisle, and Dana and I were next, and I didn't know where she was. But she wasn't that far away, and when it was our turn, she magically appeared out of nowhere, handed off Mya to one of the other girls, took my arm, and headed down the aisle, unflappable and cool as a cucumber. I don't remember the walk because I was so afraid of something going wrong at that moment. I do remember getting on stage and raising my eyebrows at Jacob, who quietly popped off a couple of our one-word inside jokes as a way of releasing tension. The flower girls followed us. The third oldest, Ava, flung the flowers with no regard for being delicate, which was cute in its own way, and the second oldest, Makenna, carried Mya close to her chest like a trophy. Mya, perhaps respecting the moment or frightened by all these people staring at her, turned stone cold silent. Everyone cooed at the cuteness of the moment.

Then the opening strains of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" started, and I swear to God, I had no idea that song was going to be the bride's entrance! I would have NEVER said anything out loud about how depressing the song is if I knew that's what she chose for her big day! A lot of emotions washed over me as I watched Alice and Mark stand at the doorway waiting for the right moment to enter. I was stunned by the moment, I was delighted by the beauty of the bride, and I was ashamed that I had said one bad word about her song. If you know the song, you know that the big, bombastic drums don't start until a second group of strings come in and overpower the piece, making it soar in a crescendo. This is when Alice and Mark started walking down the aisle, and everyone stood in silent reverence, and I was a second or two away from just bawling my eyes out. I'm sure Jacob was too, for different reasons. To make me feel more like a tool, she had picked an instrumental mix of the song, so those horrible lyrics I was so concerned about? Never happened. So not only was I a jackass for trying to make fun of Alice's wedding song, but I had no confidence that she or Jacob were bright enough to play a version of the song without the lyrics. And I was the best man. Sheesh. Oh, Alice was crying as well.

The ceremony was about 30 minutes. Jacob and Alice had readings in the middle of it, and Jacob pulled his off, nervous but steady. Alice couldn't get through hers and had to whip out tissue again. I lost track of the Alice Tissue-From-Between-Her-Breasts count after 4. My ring exchange with Jacob was...wait for it...flawless!! The officiant had turned to me after reading what she told me would be my cue and loudly said, as if she didn't trust me to not fuck up, "This is your cue!" So I slid my right hand into my left hanky pocket, pulled out both rings using the tip of my one massive index finger, and when it was time, I placed the rings into Jacob's palm with no issues whatsoever. I had one role to play in this big show, and I pulled it off. The biggest issue for me wound up being the standing time. My legs started getting really sore after the first 5 minutes or so, and I don't know how I lasted until the end. I thought I was going to teeter over somewhere along the way. I've never done well trying to stand still, so that was a real test. And I know, I have another test in five months. Anywho, they said I do, the bride was kissed, and they made their way down the aisle, followed by us, the wedding party. Now, I don't do weddings--my last one was when I was ringbearer for my aunt and her husband in 1987--so I didn't know anything about how the receiving line worked. But when we all got outside, Dana immediately ran over to Alice and Jacob and hugged them, then Trish and Joe quickly followed. Then I noticed all of the attendees lining up getting ready to bum rush the happy couple and I figured, you know, I think this is where the wedding party gets the first congrats in before everyone else, so maybe I should do that now.

Then the wedding party slipped back downstairs while the couple continued greeting folks. I was so happy to grab a chair and wait for that to finish knowing that I'd have to be back on my feet for the pics. Before the pics was the license signing, and the funny part there was that Dana was more than happy to take the license off my hands after it was signed, then she came back up to me 20 minutes later and pointed to her lack of pockets and told me to hold it for the rest of the night. Meanwhile, the weather had turned worse. It was very chilly and windy, and the lightest little sprinkle of rain had come in, and it stayed that way the rest of the afternoon. The pics seemed to have turned out great, the few that I've seen, but we definitely cut the session short. The bridesmaids' dresses were sleeveless, and they had these fuchsia-colored wraps that didn't help at all. So before they got pneumonia, we packed it in and headed to the tent.

The music had already started before we got over there, and of course people were already chowing down. The happy couple got a big round of applause as they entered. I was impressed that all of our salads were already waiting when we got to our big table. I was also very hungry, so credit goes to Joe for telling me that maybe we should wait to sit down and eat until the bride and groom actually sit down. Forks started clanging off of glasses almost as soon as we did all sit down, and this made me nervous because the web sites I read indicated that I would be the master of ceremonies and give the first toast at the reception, and I had zero idea when I should do this. I was frozen. But the pressure was taken away from me because Alice let me know that Dana would be giving the first speech, followed by me. That helped a lot, knowing that I wouldn't be batting leadoff. We barely finished the chicken and dry beef before Dana stood up and gave her speech. It was soft and a little shaky, but the sentiment was great. She said that Jacob was the stallion that Alice had dreamed of ever since she played dolls with Dana as kids. It was a very nice speech, even if it was hard to hear. I made sure that my speech wouldn't suffer from that problem. It may suffer from bad taste, but it wouldn't suffer from not being loud enough. "Alright!" I bellowed after being handed the mic, then I delivered my speech pretty much as I wrote it in this previous post. I had to toast with actual wine instead of the sparkling grape juice. I just felt like I had to make it real. And I have to say, that Michael Jackson joke? Big. Went over huge. I'm talking I-had-to-pause-for-the-laughter-to-stop huge. That room of lily white people thought that was the funniest thing they'd heard in forever. I felt like a stand-up act that got off a perfect line. It was fucking awesome. Jacob hugged me afterwards, then told the crowd that I'm getting married in October and he would have gotten his revenge if my speech was too off-color. He thanked me for not going into detail about the bad times in his prior relationships. I think he thought I was going to go there and tell everyone that his last long-term girlfriend had taken his dogs and his money and abandoned him in Montana and left him in bankruptcy court. Nah, I wasn't ever planning on telling his business like that. Except on this blog, I guess. Alice's speech lasted about five seconds. She thanked everyone for coming out on the best day of her life, then she shoved the mic into Jacob's chest. Jacob's speech was very poignant and detailed. He thanked as many people individually as he could remember. He acknowledged those in their families who were deceased and couldn't be there, but told us that he knew they were there anyway. He almost cracked at this point, but he held it together nicely.

From there, it was time to mingle and get ready to dance. I mostly tried to hang around the people I already knew, but at one point I had to take a piss, and that meant leaving the tent and going back to the ceremony building. On those steps, I ran into the woman who would become known that weekend as my stalker, or my groupie. (I should insert at this point that Alice warned me three days ago that someone at the wedding would hit on me because she loved black men, but she didn't tell me who.) This woman was overweight but not obese, wearing a blue jean jacket, with dirty blonde hair, somewhat tired looking eyes, a crooked smile and a cigarette between her fingers. For you wrestling fans, and Jerry would certainly get this, she looked like a female Ray "The Crippler" Stevens. That's not a compliment. She would engage me for ten minutes in talk that included the water situation in Memphis, her being a bridesmaid in other weddings but never a bride, my pending nuptials, and this ceremony. When it started getting a little uncomfortable, I made a move towards the building and said that I really gotta go, and she said, "Yeah, go ahead. Don't leak." ??? So back under the tent, right before the dancing would start at 7, I find myself talking with an older brunette woman, and The Stalker strides up besides me and sorta sticks her nose in the convo, although she wasn't saying anything. The brunette starts talking about Chicago, which she knows well, and she kept looking at The Stalker, who eventually says, "I'm from Iowa. I don't know about Chicago. Stop looking at me." Okay. The next question from the brunette to me is, Cubs or White Sox?, and I of course say Sox, and I had previously talked about living up north in Chicago near Wrigley Field. So the brunette seems perplexed by my answer, and I'm explaining that I only lived near Wrigley, I was never a Cubs fan, always White Sox...and The Stalker at this point grabs me around the neck, pulls me in, and kisses me on the cheek. Yeah. I don't know why either. She didn't seem drunk. She hadn't been overtly flirting with me before, just made me a little uncomfortable. The timing of the kiss made it seem like she was giving me support because I was a White Sox fan, but since she never said a word, I have no idea what her motivation was. Besides, don't look at her, she's from Iowa, right?? Just so weird.

Shortly after that, Jacob and Alice had their first dance, "The Best Is Yet To Come" by Sinatra. My focus now became whether there would be a mandatory dance for the wedding party, because I really didn't want to dance. I was happy for the couple and all, but I didn't need to be out there dancing in front of everybody. No one ever needs to see that. I actually read on a web site that there should be a best man-bride dance as well, and that terrified me. Alice is a sweet girl, but she's forward and somewhat aggressive, so I just imagined her trying to playfully knee me in the nuts or something as I took her by the hand. So I asked the DJ about any kind of dancing the wedding party would have to do, and he said to not worry, that won't happen for another hour. I told Joe this, and he seemed as pissed about having to dance as I was. So we stood aside waiting for this terrible burden to be placed upon us. I danced to the first uptempo song, Kool & the Gang's "Celebration," because the dance floor was full and I wouldn't stand out. Then I immediately sat down and watched all the wedding favs get pulled out--"Chicken Dance," "Beer Barrel Polka," "Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy"(??)...and while that was happening, I was alternately watching out for my stalker, who seemed to be always lurking nearby but wasn't coming towards me. The chair that I took was as close to the far end of the dance floor as possible, so she would have had to walk across the floor to get at me, and she didn't seem to be in a dancing mood.

Again, I'm not a wedding veteran, but like the dance clubs, I assume that every wedding reception features some people that make themselves famous, or infamous, based on what they did on the dance floor. We had three that stood out to me at the end of the night. One was a guy we called Justin Bieber because he didn't just look like him in the face, he chose to get his hair cut just like him. It could have been Bieber for all I know. He would have stood out just for looking like Bieb, but at one point a mini dance-off broke out during "Ice Ice Baby," and Bieb broke it down for us, doing handstands and shit, and even nailing a reverse Worm! (We watched a woman's cell phone recordings of the day's events Sunday after the gift opening, and she filmed Bieb drinking out of a plastic cup, and the liquid had a yellow-brown color to it. He's a high schooler. That footage should be destroyed immediately.) The second was Speed Girl. She couldn't have been older than like 15, and she was very thin, like future sprinter thin, and all she did all night long as a form of dancing was run sprints around the dance floor. Slow songs, fast songs, mid-tempo songs, it just didn't matter. Her form of dancing was running at almost top speed around the perimeter of the floor, occasionally grabbing someone's arm, me, Trish, Joe, whoever, and doing a three-second doe-si-doe before taking off running again. She seemed to me like she was on speed. Trish made a nose candy reference at one point. Later, she guessed crystal meth, but I said she wasn't missing teeth, so that couldn't be it. Trish said maybe she just started it. It was probably the nervous energy of the day combined with maybe some candy or caffeinated soft drinks. But man, was she a dizzying sight. I mean, she would grab little kids, like 4 and 5-year-olds, and swing them around while she sprinted! The girl seriously had no off button. "Come on! Let's go!!" she'd scream almost angrily if she came across someone who didn't want to run with her, like me. I had to lie and tell her, "Bad knees," although ironically, my left knee was swollen all day Sunday. The third and most infamous person was The Stripper. This was a brunette who came with a date, a nerdy guy who seemed genuinely embarrassed by the night's events, and they took the dance floor about three or four times within the first hour. And every time they took the dance floor, the girl danced with her date as if she was trying to freak him right there on the spot, like they were at the nastiest club in the town at 1 in the morning or something. She was grinding him, she was pumping her arms and shaking her tits, she was making that pussy pop...I actually took out my wallet at one point to check and see if I had enough singles. She performed like she was on the main stage at a strip joint. And there was a metal pole holding up the tent right there for her if she wanted to use it, but she didn't. This tale did not seem to have a happy ending; she and her date disappeared after that first hour, and Jacob reported later that he saw her in the ceremony building in tears telling her date, "I just wanna go home." Maybe word got to her from one of the more dignified guests that she was making a fool of herself, or maybe she figured it out for herself once everybody on the floor stopped dancing and started watching her. Whatever, some pre-teen girls learned some new dance moves this evening, and those moves will make them very popular with the fellas.

Then it was time for the wedding party's big entrance. For this, we had to step outside the tent and wait for the DJ to introduce us all to the crowd. The last song that came on before our intro was a Michael Jackson song from 1979, and I felt like I had missed my one song that I would be willing to dance to because I did, after all, reference MJ back when he was black. So I danced a little on the grounds for only the wedding party to see. Before Dana and I got introduced, she was huddling up with me because the wind had picked up outside, so that made me feel good. A damsel in distress (and in dis dress, lol) needed me to warm up and protect her from the cold. Her husband's a lucky man, I said to myself, ignoring the fact that, hello, they have four kids. Then we were called in, and I entered with one index finger in the air the whole time because, despite this not being my show, I felt like the king of the world with Dana on my arm. Then we did all have to dance to "Friends in Low Places," oddly enough, and we had to switch partners for like thirty seconds all throughout the song at the DJ's calling, and when I made it back to Dana, she kinda grabbed me by the neck and I kinda grabbed her by the waist, and it was all good for about three seconds until she looked over at her husband, who had not smiled all weekend and sure as fuck wasn't smiling now, and then she took her hands off and we went back to the normal way of dancing. I found that whole episode very amusing for some reason. It's like Dana started to enjoy herself a little bit and then remembered that she was tethered to the stern-looking man a few feet away and it startled her back to reality. Then we all did "YMCA," and later I danced to "Thriller" because, again, it was Michael Jackson when he was black, and that was it for my dancing adventures for the night.

Late in the evening they had a dollar dance where anyone could pay a dollar and run up and have a dance with the bride or the groom. At this point, The Stalker decided to be the very last person to pay a dollar and have a dance--with both the bride and the groom separately. And after this was over, she made a beeline towards me and said, "Are you going to be at the gift opening tomorrow?" I nervously said yes, then she said, "Great! I'll be there too. So I'll see ya tomorrow." She then leaned in face first, and maybe I'm being an arrogant prick, but I swear I think she was going to try to kiss me on the mouth. I turned to the side and she got all cheek as she gave me a big hug and left. I had never been so grateful for a white woman to not try to get with me. Trish and Joe were sitting nearby witnessing all of this, and they were quite entertained. I couldn't help but shake my head at where I was as a person now as opposed to several years ago. Before I met my fiancee, I probably would have tried to do something with that woman on this night. Trust me, I know that a lot of singles hook up at weddings just because watching two people pledge love to each other makes some feel like this is their time to find someone to make them feel loved too, even if it's for a night or a couple of hours. I would have had no problem being that guy, even though I've already acknowledged that this woman was not hot. I would not have cared. Thankfully, I don't have to be that guy anymore. Someone was waiting back home in Memphis for me, so I didn't have to chase love or tail this evening. (And as far as a woman hitting on me because she's into Mandingo, Alice told me the next day that The Stalker was not to whom she was referring. The one into black men was a different brunette who caught the bouquet. That woman hardly said two words to me. Alice guessed that maybe it was because Jacob told everyone that I was getting married after I delivered the best man speech, so she knew I was off limits. Didn't stop The Stalker.)

The night wound down and Jacob and Alice got me and Trish and Joe on the floor for their big one-two punch for a finale: "What A Wonderful World" followed by "Let's Get It On." I left the floor for "Let's Get It On" because I wasn't getting in on tonight. But that wasn't the last song. The DJ had some generic club song that he played as he broke down the equipment, then ten seconds of the Looney Tunes sign-off, "That's all folks!" I thought that sucked. Jacob and Alice had been talking about how cool they thought it would be to have the last song be "Let's Get It On," even though they may be too tired to get it on when they finally got to the hotel. But the DJ decided to play his own shit as the last song. I would have been mad at that. Plus, the version of "Let's Get It On" was sung by someone other than Marvin Gaye, and that's blasphemy. But I think Jacob and Alice were too tired to be mad. Besides, the day had been perfect up to that point. No need to let that ruin anything. Joe, Trish and I piled into Jacob and Trish's mom's car, and she dropped me back off at Jacob and Alice's house. Jacob had given me his key earlier in the day. I'm glad I had it in a handy place because I could have wrapped it up in my clothes thinking I was going to put my street clothes back on at the venue. But I was so tired, I wore the tux back to the house and stripped there. I chatted with Buddy, watched some TV, surfed the net, put my best man speech on Facebook, and fell asleep hoping that the cats would give me some peace on this fabulous night.

Sun. May 15

Not much to yak about on this day. My entire body was sore all day. The cats did indeed give me peace, but I was so tired that upon waking up around 6:30A, I couldn't go back to sleep. When your muscles are that sore, you can't even fall back asleep. So I hobbled around all day, telling Buddy that his parents were coming home soon because he was just looking at me like I had killed them or something. Jacob and Alice arrived home, and we made it over to Mark and Dianne's around 12:30P. The gift opening was fine. We chowed on Paul Bunyan's Donuts, which are such a big deal in that neck of the woods that Jacob presented them to Dianne as an offering before he proposed to Alice. I gave the marriage license to Dianne, but not before threatening to hold it ransom until Alice deleted those pictures of me getting a pedicure from her camera. I didn't have too many funny lines today. When Jacob opened his gift from me and my fiancee, a set of Green Bay Packers cups and pitchers, I yelled out, "That's the last Packers stuff you're ever getting from me!" But I was proud that all weekend, I placed the funny lines where they should be at the right times, and I didn't say inappropriate things in front of any kids. Most of my conversation was with Mark and some other adults talking about the socioeconomic breakdown of Chicago and Wisconsin and Memphis. Oh, The Stalker was there as she said she would be, but she left me alone. I lost a paper plate in the wind, and it was her foot that happened to stop it, so I was afraid of what would happen when I went to retrieve it. But all she did was say loudly and happily, "You're welcome Andre!" when I thanked her for the plate. Then, when I was moving gifts from Mark and Dianne's deck over to Jacob and Alice's house, The Stalker was standing outside the fence. "Take care, Andre," she said, "and good luck on your future nuptials!" Guess she didn't feel the spark from me, so she let it go. Whew. We had some of the wedding cake and watched the cell phone footage that a woman had of the wedding and reception, then we all dispersed to our respective homes, in my case Jacob and Alice's house. They went out to run some errands and brought back a heat-and-eat chicken and veggie pizza for supper. It was bordering on gooey how they were acting with each other, calling each other "husband" and "wife" instead of their given names. But they're allowed to be gooey the day after their wedding. Jacob and I watched the Bulls beat the fuck out of the Miami Heat, then we played some NBA on the PS3 and called it a night.

Mon. May 16

I had a couple of tasks after Jacob and Alice left in the morning for their honeymoon: Turn off the TV, shut down the computer, and make sure the door is locked when I leave. I accomplished all those tasks just as flawlessly as I accomplished my main task of handing off the rings to Jacob at his wedding. I'm still tickled that I got that right. Mark and Dianne picked me up at 10:30A and took me to the airport, both still happy and joyous. A little drama occurred getting out of Wisconsin, just like when I entered. First, that "Swiss Army" flashlight with the blades didn't make it past security. They said I could check my bag with Delta Airlines, or go to the gift shop and mail the thing to myself. I guessed that mailing it would be much cheaper than checking my bag, and I was right. I'm sure checking my bag would have been in the $15-$25 range, and mailing it to myself only cost $5.25. Then my keys became an issue. The first time at the Memphis airport, no problem. This first time trying to leave Wausau, no problem. But I had to get scanned a second time after the flashlight drama, and this time they noticed that my key chain had a Swiss Army-like connection of blades as well. I honestly didn't even think of that until they told me. So yes, a black man tried to go through an airport in the middle of Wisconsin with two sets of switchblades. It's a wonder I'm not in prison. I told them to take the key chain and trash it because it wasn't important to me. Finally, they let me on my way, and after all that, a generator fell off our plane as we sped down the runway for takeoff. That led to a one-hour delay. But don't worry, dear readers. I specifically scheduled both of my 2nd-leg flights for about three hours after the landing of my first flight because I wanted to have some time in case my 1st flight somehow got delayed. I almost fell asleep in Detroit waiting for my flight to Wausau, but it was all good. And this time, instead of having three hours in Minneapolis to fall asleep, I wound up having only an hour and a half, which didn't bother me in the least. The really interesting part is, Jacob and Alice just happened to decide to fly to Minneapolis as well as the 1st leg of their trip to San Francisco for their honeymoon, and if they would have booked the 2nd flight out of Wausau on Delta instead of the 1st, they would have been on that plane with me! And poor Jacob would have had to suffer through the thought of a generator falling off of a plane that he was about to get on. You see, Jacob's deathly afraid to fly. And I wasn't, not before this pair of flights in and out of Wausau that I took. But I found myself really fearful on both takeoffs from Wausau and from Minneapolis, and more grateful than ever for both landings. At least the rides were smooth. But I'm not flying again anytime soon, and I'm not sad about that. I met my bride-to-be at the airport, and we started sharing thoughts and visions about our fast-approaching special day.

Final thoughts? As I said in my best man speech, I'm just happy to see Jacob happy. He's been through a lot of shit with women, arguably more than me because his woman stole cash from him. And he doesn't deserve it because he's a really cool dude who doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He just lives his life his way and doesn't sweat the small stuff. I was thrilled to be a small part of his and Alice's special weekend. I'm grateful for their hospitality. I'm eager to start planning our wedding and see what elements I can steal from Jacob and Alice's nuptials. And I'm not sure when I'm coming back to Wausau, but I'm sure there will be little Jacobs and Alices running around. And I'll be happy and thrilled and emotional for them all over again.

I Added Some Color To Jacob's Wedding Weekend...Literally (The Prelude)

2011-05-17T12:48:00.006-05:00

This post will have to be split into two parts because so much happened that I don't want to cover it all in one mammoth post. I've got enough blog posts that are longer than novels. This post will cover the happenings from the time I arrived in Wisconsin to the night before the wedding. And I'll do it in actual diary form! Away we go...

Wed. May 11

The morning started hectic for me because I was up late the night before packing and was moving slowly now preparing to leave. But everything came together and my fiancee began driving me to the airport. I thought I had everything I needed...and then I realized that my cell phone charger was still plugged into our bedroom wall. A stroke of good luck came my way when my fiancee gave me her phone charger. Being on the same phone plan means (at least in our case) that we have the exact same phone. That would have been horrible to not have a charger all weekend. I flew from Memphis to Detroit first because I had to get a connecting flight from there to Wausau, WI. No problems with that flight. I did a good job of keeping my sodium down in advance of flying, a little cereal in the morning and a $5 fruit bowl at the Detroit airport. I kept walking past Chase ATMs as I made my way to my departure terminal, and finally I decided that this would be a good time to take the remaining $60 out of my Chase bank account instead of waiting to close my account and have them mail me the money. I couldn't get my cash in Memphis because, of course, there is no Chase Bank in Tennessee. Yet.

It was the 2nd flight of the day from Detroit to Wausau that provided excitement, and not in a good way. I noticed a much smaller plane as soon as I entered, and I hate small planes in general because I'm such a big guy and it just seems more likely that a plane would have trouble getting up in the air and staying there the smaller the plane is. We got up there fine, but entering Wisconsin, there was bad weather in the area that the pilot avoided by flying around it, but where he flew was filled with tons of turbulence. This was the worst turbulence I have ever flown through. The plane just kept wobbling and turning sideways and dipping suddenly, and I was sitting next to a hot blonde who was showing a little cleavage, and the only way I made myself feel better during all of this turbulence was to imagine if we got word that we were going down, she would turn to me and say, "Well, might as well go out with a bang!," and mount me right there. Well, apparently this blonde knew the people across the aisle from her because after one of the more severe dips, which make you feel as if the thing is falling instantly like a damn Six Flags ride, I notice her turn to the people across from her and give a quick little silent wave. What the fuck was that? Was it a wave of "I'm OK, don't worry" or was it "I may never see you again, so goodbye"? Whatever, it was rather unnerving, and from that point, all I could think of was how much I hate small planes and how I couldn't say goodbye to my fiancee or family. The pilot eventually came on and apologized for the bumpy ride and said we should be there shortly, but not before some more bumps were coming. But they would up not being nearly as harrowing as the ones we had already been through. The blonde never said a word to me during the turbulence or after.

"Alice," the fiancee of "Jacob," was waiting at the airport as she said she would, and from there we went grocery shopping, where she kept encouraging me to buy Pop Tarts because I guess my late-night snack of Pop Tarts and soda pop left an impression on Jacob and he told Alice all about it. So I'm the Pop Tart Guy, I guess. I finally relented and grabbed some S'mores Pop Tarts. I also got a couple of bottles of pop and some ruffled chips to have with the turkey burgers she was making, and some cereal for the breakfasts when she wouldn't be cooking. Driving home from the store, we passed some flower shop that had the same last name as "Karen," and that combined with just being in this godforsaken state of Wisconsin caused me to raise a spontaneous middle finger to the place. Alice had the correct reaction of complete shock and confusion. I had to explain that situation, at least some of it. I didn't tell the whole story because that may have caused the wedding to be called off. Hard to trust humans again after hearing the whole sordid tale of what that cunt Karen did to me.

We made it home and settled in for some TV. We had to wait to eat because Jacob was working and wouldn't be home until late, and besides, Alice had some items she needed him to bring home in order to make the turkey burgers. I noticed while she made these several calls to keep adding things to his shopping list that he was rather patient with these requests. Some guys would get legit pissed at multiple calls from the woman to bring this and that home, and some guys would crack jokes about getting pissed, but few would calmly accept the instructions and continue on. That told me that Jacob had a ton of respect for Alice, because it would have been irresistible for me to not at least make a joke if my fiancee kept calling me like that. I also noticed that Alice had him on speaker phone, and it turned out that she spoke to basically everyone on speaker phone for some reason. So maybe Jacob just didn't want to yell at her knowing that there was a houseguest. I gave Alice some shit about making turkey burgers instead of real burgers, but the truth is, I could use less red meat more than anyone. And they were quite tasty. She made a dessert of ice cream topped with real fruit, which was a unique way of getting some fruit into the meal. I had this meal despite the best efforts of their three cats. (I was told there were four, but one was so shy that I never saw him all weekend.) Jacob's cat Buddy is old and set in his ways, and I remembered him from the last time I visited Jacob five years ago. Buddy liked to walk right up to your food and stick his face in it as if it's meant for him. Now, a little older and slower, he just hopped on the couch and stared at me, occasionally meowing as if to communicate to me that I needed to pay him rent for being in his house. Then there were Alice's cats, Pounce and Frisky. Pounce was big and black and very affectionate. Despite me being a complete stranger, Pounce rubbed against my leg, my hand, my arm, whatever he could get at to indicate to me that he was looking for love and wanted it right now. Frisky lived up to her name by constantly sprinting up the couch, across the back of it, down the couch, up the stairs, down the stairs, across the floor, across my lap, and anywhere else she could run. I think they feed her cayenne or something. They had a dog there as well, but not anymore, but you could tell that they had a dog because the Cubs blanket on my guest bed and some of the furniture had huge brown hairs on it that didn't come from the cats. So yeah, I sneezed a lot during this stay.

Thu. May 12

The collection of pet dander continued this morning. I laid out my blue pajamas so that they could get a little air after I showered, and I returned to the guest room to find Buddy perched perfectly on them. He either liked my smell or the silk fabric, or he just needed to mark his territory. This was no temporary sitting, either. It became a five-hour nap. (I had to thank Buddy Saturday night in a private moment for not soiling my clothes because I expected them to be damp when he got up.) The cats and I got to witness a pretty cool thing after breakfast. Alice was running around doing bride stuff, and she throws the ribbons from her bridal shower at Jacob and says that he needs to make her fake bouquet for the rehearsal using a paper plate to hold it together. He resisted the concept at first, but she pressed, and he started working on how he would pull this off while I sat there stunned that she would drop this project on his head. I kept telling him, "Don't do it. This isn't part of your duties." But he worked at it, grabbing a stapler and fashioning a holder out of the plate, and after a good hour, he had created a fake bouquet. And it looked pretty damn good. Mine would have had duct tape and Scotch tape and would have looked like a pipe bomb. And it wouldn't have been done well at all because I would have had a lot of resentment at having to do it in the first place. I'm not an architect. I don't build shit. So I wouldn't have appreciated being asked to do so. But Jacob got it done. With love and staples.

Alice left us alone after we pulled up the dilapidated wooden fence that the winter winds had battered and let us watch baseball all afternoon. Then his father, in from Atlanta, came to the area and met up with us. He treated us to dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant. It was him and his new wife, Jacob, Alice, and me. Now, Jacob's dad is a big guy. I mean, almost as big as me. And his wife ain't small either. So I imagine that this restaurant saw us approaching the front door with widened eyes and rapid heartbeats. And Jacob's dad's wife didn't let us forget how big they are. She kept bringing up how they don't socialize and go to very many places because Jacob's dad doesn't go anywhere that doesn't have a motorized chair to accommodate him. It was a rather sad dinner, actually. She didn't seem happy at all, and he didn't seem to care very much. He was busy making Klan jokes. Yes, seriously. He welcomed Alice to the clan, and then looked at me as if I shouldn't have heard that. I played along and pretended to hide under the table at the thought of the Klan coming for me. But yeah, he was coming close to the embarrassment level that my dad sets every time I go somewhere with him, and just to approach that area is saying a lot. Then, once Jacob, Alice and I were back in the car going home, Jacob breaks out with: "By the way, Alice, don't ever let me get as big as my dad." To which Alice responded: "Don't ever let me get as big as his wife." Snap! Double snap! But seriously, they were a somewhat pathetic pair. The wife sounded like she was sick of Jacob's dad overall, even telling him repeatedly how funny her sisters think he is, but she's been with him for years now, so she doesn't think he's funny at all. A picture of wedded bliss, they were not.

From there, it was on to what Wausau considers a sprawling mall but really wasn't much to speak of. But there was a place for Alice to go get her eyebrows done while Jacob and I did light window shopping. There was a Spencer's t-shirt store there, where I talked about buying some really classy tees in this blog post from years back. But despite being in Wisconsin, not a state of very healthy people, I couldn't find any tees larger than 2X. That was strange. We went to Target to look for picture frames that Alice could give her family as gifts because she had bought some but they were broken. Then it was on to a dollar store that had many of the same products that I enjoyed at the dollar store a block from my former Chicago home. I had to indulge in some Starts & Stripes pop because you just can't beat a 3-liter bottle of pop for a buck, and I had to get the chocolate wafers that I ate in the moving truck during the move to Memphis. Sometimes, nothing gives you comfort like cheap eats from your past.

Fri. May 13

Big day ahead, with the tux fitting, manicure, and rehearsal followed by dinner. But first, a little emotion. Jacob and Alice had decided on a "wine and love letters" ceremony for the wedding, which meant that they would have a bottle of wine sitting in a box in front of the minister, and they would place handwritten love letters to each other in the box, take the box home, and open the box on the occasion of their one-year anniversary. Then they would repeat the process, writing new letters and setting up a new box for the next year. Well, Alice had been nagging Jacob about writing his letter, and of course when he finally did, she wondered why he finished so quickly. But on this morning, Alice was upstairs writing her letter for Jacob, and Jacob was worried about her missing her chiropractor's appointment in a few minutes, so he called out to see where she was, and she responded that she was writing her love letter to him. Her voice sounded a little shaky, so Jacob raised an eyebrow and yelled out, "Are you crying?" Alice softly responded, "Yes." I chimed in, "I hope those are tears of joy." She sobbed back, "Yes." So that became a running gag all weekend. Any time Jacob yelled out for Alice, and she told him where she was in the house, I threw out there with a laugh, "Are you crying?" She always responded back with a slightly annoyed "No," and that would be the end of that.

Alice took off early to do her thing, so Jacob and I took our time and rolled out of the house a little after 10A. He dropped off a jar of loose change that they save up and cash in occasionally, and this time it was good for about $95. Then we strolled into the formalwear shop to try on the tuxedos. Jacob picked the tuxes as far as the length of the coat and the accessories, and Alice picked the colors of black and fuchsia. Jacob did a great job with the coats. They were about thigh high and very sturdy. An outdoor wedding in middle Wisconsin...yeah, we needed the thick coats. Jacob had about 20 minutes ahead of me to try on his tux because I had to wait for a dressing room. I got to take in some of the atmosphere during that time. It was a busy little shop, with several customers coming in and out looking excited and nervous about their own upcoming big days. I don't plan to rent a tux for my wedding, but I still enjoyed the atmosphere. When I finally got a room, I took forever trying to figure out all the little clasps and hooks, and I took a quick pic to send to my honey, but eventually I got my suit on and came out to get checked by the women running the shop. I have no idea what one of the women was thinking, but she was there in a gown that looked like she should have been at her own wedding, and it was off both shoulders and low-cut at the breast. So Jacob and I both got quite a show as she adjusted our, ahem, gear. Turned out that our coats were a little long in the sleeve, so we hung around waiting for the alterations to be made, then we hung our tuxes in the car and headed to a sub shop for some lunch. Then it was on to a nail shop for Jacob's manicure. I had already decided to go ahead and get my first mani as well, even though I didn't need one for wedding pics, which is why Jacob was getting his. So it wasn't a surprise when I sat down and had my stereotypical Korean girl do my nails across the aisle from Jacob. The surprise of the day came when we noticed Alice and her wedding party sitting in massage chairs getting pedicures, and they loudly encouraged us guys to sit in and get our feet done as well. Jerry is Alice's good friend and he was standing up on the guys side in the wedding (along with Joe, Jacob's brother-in-law who wasn't there), and he wasn't thrilled about doing the mani but felt compelled since we were already committed to it. But he and Jacob were dead set against the pedi thing. Way too feminine for our tastes. Then I said the magic words to Jacob as a double-dog-dare-ya type of challenge: "I'll do it if you do." He turned to me with a twinkle in his eye and said: "Oh. OK!" I didn't expect him to say yes to that, but I guess he felt he would have really looked like a chump if I put it out there that I was up for it but he said no. Jerry held out for another 10 minutes after that, then he relented and took off his shoes and socks as well. There are pictures of us getting manis and pedis, and God, I hope they never fall into the wrong hands. But soon enough, it was over, and Alice was kind enough to pay for our spa day. How incredibly kind. (Yes, fuckers, I did tip.)

We slid out of the salon, feet still slick inside our socks from all the exfoliating and moisturizing, and we slid into Best Buy to get a PS3 game for the big bachelor party. Stuck between the latest Madden and MLB: The Show, Jacob cited his dissatisfaction with the newer Maddens and went with the baseball game. He already had the NBA game with Michael Jordan at the house, and he couldn't wait to show me that one. A quick trip back home to gather some things that needed to be taken to the rehearsal, then it was on to the wedding venue, Willow Springs Garden. It was a 20-minute drive to a field out in the open with mountain views all around, and a small white enclosed area where the ceremony would take place, weather permitting. The weather was of huge concern all week to Jacob and Alice. They both could be caught at random times checking their cell phones for the latest up-to-the-second forecasts for Saturday, but there wasn't much good news. At best, it would be breezy with a chance of rain, and at worst, it would be windy and rainy. The weather was not my first concern when we stepped out of the car. It was the unmistakable scent of ass that hit you immediately. Yes, the place was downwind of a farm. They tried to downplay that by claiming that I'd get used to it after a while. That didn't make me feel any better, but hey, it wasn't my wedding. We unloaded the cars of the bottled waters and bottles of wine that we brought to the place and put them on a folding table under the large white tent where the reception would be held. (This proved to be a mistake. The ground was still soft from all the snow and bad weather from the last few months, and Jacob would call me out to the tent a couple of hours later to help pick up the table and the fallen bottles of wine. The table sank into the turf about four inches on one side, then toppled over from being lopsided. One bottle of booze was lost in the tragedy, but all things considered, it could have been much worse.)

There was an actual small building about forty yards from the tent, but they had been told that the stage and mini-auditorium wouldn't work because it seated 150 people and they were planning for 180. However, Jacob and Alice realized that holding the ceremony outdoors or even in the heated tent would be a possible disaster, between the smells and the cold and the rain. So they fought a little with the proprietors, but finally got them to agree to have the ceremony indoors on stage. With that, we were able to hold the rehearsal in that building with the knowledge that this was the place where it would actually happen. I kept busy peeling stickers off the aluminum pans waiting for people to arrive. Soon enough, the place started filling with people. White people. All sizes and hair colors and age groups of kind, excited, happy, warm, welcoming white people. And almost all of them had the same reax when they approached me: "...And you MUST be Andre!" And I had the same tired one-liner response: "What gave it away, my shirt?" It didn't even make sense when you think about it, but I didn't have a better one-liner for the repeated offering of, basically, "Hi! You're, like, the only Negro here!" I guess they're lucky that I'm not thin-skinned, because I could understand that whole vibe getting tiresome to someone having to go through it all night long.

The rehearsal was very loose and goofy. Literally. Jacob and Alice were wearing Goofy ears that a friend of hers sent them. They were meant to be part of the rehearsal only, along with the bouquet Jacob made. There was lots of mugging and dancing and jokes during the serious moments. No one wanted to take the rehearsal too seriously and wind up getting emotional the day before the wedding. I met the other members of the wedding party, as well as the father and mother of the bride, Mark and Dianne, whom I had to make sure to meet and get their names because the web site where I got tips on writing the best man speech told me that I had to thank the hosts of the weddings, i.e. the folks who paid for this shit. And that would be Mark and Dianne in this case. I met the officiant, a cousin of Alice's who had to stand a legit 6'3" and was an attractive woman, which made me even goofier. I have always acted at the height of goofiness around tall, attractive women because that's my natural reaction to just being near my ideal woman physically. And I know I was being extra silly because she actually gave me several raised eyebrows during the rehearsal as if she wanted to slap me. (She would say to me as she left the gift opening Sunday, "It was, um...interesting getting to know you.") We were all so silly that we asked each other quietly as we were leaving the building, "Did you get all that? Did you follow? I don't know if we got it. Oh well."

One small thing that I noticed that hopefully wouldn't be a huge deal: There were a couple of typos on the program. I noticed the officiant's name and title on the bottom of the page of participants, and her name was on the right and title on the left, the opposite of all of the other names and titles. Jacob's mom noticed on the back page that a phrase referring to those deceased who couldn't be at the wedding typed as "is spirit" clearly should have read "in spirit." Both of those mistakes were so tiny that we all hoped they wouldn't be noticed. One other small thing I noticed during the rehearsal that would be a huge deal: I caught the opening strains of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by the Verve playing on the speakers as the sound guy tested the equipment. I said out loud but not loudly, "Who the hell's playing 'Bitter Sweet Symphony?'" And here's the reason I said that--the music is lush, the melody is soaring, the strings are exquisite, and the lyrics make you want to kill yourself. The first two lines of that song are as follows: "'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony this life/Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to the money then you die." Boy, that's some uplifting wedding music right there! And I honestly hoped that the sound guy was just playing that song as a way to test the system and not as part of the actual program. I didn't mention it again the whole night, but I was thinking to myself that it would be a really poor use of beautiful music in your wedding if you choose to use it despite the horrific lyrics. There are a million other options.

From there, it was on to Peking Chinese and American Restaurant in downtown Wausau for the rehearsal dinner. Jacob kept quoting 35 people as an estimate and shaking his head. It turned out to be 38. And all of us waited for some food. Any food. Waited, waited, waited. We arrived at about 8:15P. We didn't get so much as an egg roll until more than 40 minutes later! He had time to tell us all about the great food they had because we all had to wait for it so long. The food was very good when it arrived. Strawberry chicken, a little fish, pepper steak, fried rice...oh, they ran out of fried rice. But our waiter, a 20-year-old guy with an IQ of 4, told me that even though they ran out of fried rice, I could order one for a extra fee. Say what?? This is the same guy who took down Jacob's mom's order of hot tea and wrote her name down so he wouldn't get confused, then didn't deliver for over an hour until she asked him again. And when I asked what drinks they had, his response was to throw his hands out to the side and tell me, "Whatever you want!" Ignoring my urge to kick him in his nuts, I said, "No, what specific products do you have so I can choose from them?" He said that they had Pepsi products, as if I should have a list with me at all times of which soft drinks are made by Pepsi. I finally settled on the lemonade. The only slack I'll give him is that he seemed to be the only one serving all 38 of us, or maybe there was like one other guy. So I imagine he was feeling a little stressed, especially with everyone asking where the fuck was the food.

Jacob gave a nice speech at the rehearsal dinner, but the web site Alice referenced to give him tips on the speech said that he should remember to thank all of the out-of-town guests, and don't forget Uncle Sid, who gave him his first pair of roller skates. So that's exactly what Jacob did, even though he has no Uncle Sid and has never owned roller skates, to my knowledge. It was awesome. Like, three of us laughed because we knew what he was doing, but everyone else was silent and very confused. Then Alice gave the wedding party our gifts from the bride and groom, and Joe became slightly confused as he pulled out a shiny, long, black object from the cardboard box. "This thing looks dangerous. What is it, a vibrator?" he said as kids in the area probably started forming the sentence "Mom, what is a vibrator?" in their heads. It was a "Swiss Army" flashlight with switchblades in the handle. I got one, too. I couldn't guess what it was before Joe because I couldn't get it out of the box before he could. Then the bill arrived, and we all became confused, and Jacob's mom and dad became dumbfounded, and Jacob and Alice became angry. A 20% tip was included for that, ahem, wonderful service, pushing the bill for the groom's parents to $990 and change!! For 38 people? That's $26 per person with tip! We definitely did not get $26 worth of food each, not with only a couple of plates of the chicken and steak getting passed around family-style, and when you consider the shitty service and wait time, that made the experience even more devalued. Jacob told me later in the car that they were told that they were getting a break on the bill because of the wait. THAT was a break? Bullshit. Alice took off to spend the night with her sister, leaving the house to Jacob and Joe and me to have our wild bachelor party. The fiasco at the restaurant wouldn't ruin the night, no sir. And wild it was. After watching some live playoff basketball, Jacob and I played one baseball game on the PS3, then he and Joe started playing a combat-style game, during which I started dozing off on the couch. I woke up, told the guys I had to hit the sack, and went to bed. I think it was about 1:45A. They didn't play much longer after that. What can I say? It had been a long day.

2nd half of this historic weekend to follow.

My Best Man Speech

2011-05-14T08:15:00.004-05:00

WAUSAU, WI--Here is an approximation of the best man speech I will give tonight at my best friend "Jacob's" wedding:

May I have your attention please? It's time to present a toast to the wonderful bride and groom! My name is Planet Dre, and as the best man I'm honored to give the first toast this evening. I need to thank the hosts for putting all this together, and that would be the bride's parents Dianne and Mark. Give it up for them! What a great event they put together, huh? Thank you guys very much! Now, I'm here because I've known the groom since we started 1st grade together in 1982! Can you believe that? That was so long ago, Michael Jackson was black! That's a long, long time ago. And in that time, we've seen each other through a lot of good times and a lot of bad times, and we've been there through good relationships and bad relationships. And believe me, the bad relationships were horrible beyond words! Oh my goodness! Now, that isn't news to anyone here. We've all been through tough times in relationships, every adult in here has been through it. But what matters isn't going through it, it's how you rebound, how you come out of it. And that's why I'm so happy to see Jacob happy with his new bride. Every time I see him and his bride together, they're so happy, they're always making each other smile and laugh, and it's so awesome to see! They are truly made for each other. So I just wanna say, best wishes, best of luck, and a toast to Jacob and his bride. Enjoy the many, many years of your new life together!!

My Fiancee's Toyota Almost Cost Me 48 Bucks

2011-05-10T06:04:00.003-05:00

And it did cost me 3 hours of anguish. All because of soy sauce.

But first, a brief life update: All is well. I'm on my own computer now because the fiancee's roommate, "Jody," has moved out to pursue a truck-driving class that requires her to be in Texas for several weeks. I swiftly moved in to claim that spare bedroom as sort of a man cave, and I moved my computer in. There is a small TV that needs to be hooked up to cable, and I'll do that when I get back from Wisconsin, where I'm going this weekend to be best man at the wedding of "Jacob" and his bride. The new job is going well, although the perfectionist in me is pissed that I've made a couple of errors. They don't count because I'm in training, and the others training with me constantly have errors being brought back to them, but I'm still pissed. And domestic life is well. The biggest issue for us seems to be trying to find time and energy to get close to each other. It seemed like it would be easy since we sleep in the same bed, but we're soooo tired when we get into bed that we instantly fall asleep. The other issue is the driving issue, as in she wants me to drive more and get more practice, and I'm being a scaredy cat. But this past Saturday, she came across a situation: She was cooking stir fry and discovered that she had no soy sauce, so either she'd have to trust me to take the rice off the burner when it was ready while she drove to get soy sauce or she'd wait until I brought soy sauce back from the store. Sensing her angst at the thought of trusting me to watch over the rice, I took the keys.

This was to be my very first time driving with no one else in the car, so I was very nervous. As a result, I didn't drive to the Wal-Mart as she suggested because it was rather far away and I didn't have confidence that I'd know how to get there. Instead, I drove less than a mile to a Walgreens. That drive was two minutes of nerve-wracking, wheel-gripping fear that I would fuck up this short little trip. But I made it, and after turning into the parking spot, I jumped out (well, more like squeezed out, because this is a Toyota) and slammed the door and strolled into the Walgreens feeling like a pimp. In doing that, I forgot this one piece of advice the fiancee had told me about the car--don't slam the driver's door too hard because the handle may get stuck and you would have to call a locksmith to get back in, since the passenger's door lock was already broken. And after being told that there was no soy sauce at this Walgreens, I walked back to the car actually contemplating driving down a street I wasn't familiar with because the cashier told me there was a Kroger's grocery nearby. But first I would drive a couple of doors down to a dollar store to see if they could hook me up, and maybe they have sesame oil too, and...

Shit! Damn door is unlocked but I can't open it!! And my cell phone is at home charging up!! What the fuck do I do???

Well, I strolled right back into the Walgreens and used the store phone in the photo department to call the fiancee and break the news to her that, indeed, I had fucked up the very first time I tried to drive alone. She looked up a number for the locksmith that she needed when she did this to herself, and warned me that it cost her $25. I wasn't happy, but I knew that there was no other option. So I called, and they said a half-hour wait and a $48 charge was in my future. Pissed off, I stomped out of the Walgreens and walked to the dollar store, where sitting on a shelf looking lonely was the last bottle of generic dollar store soy sauce. I got back to the car in less than 15 minutes expecting help to arrive shortly. 30 minutes later, I went back in and called the locksmith trying to ascertain his whereabouts, and I was told that he showed up and left because I wasn't there. Well, if he did, it was during my trip to the dollar store, and that wasn't 30 minutes like the receptionist said, so they got their signals crossed. I set up another appointment and was told it would be another 30 minutes. I sat on the curb next to the car for another 45 minutes before calling the fiancee and explaining why I was still not home. She said that Jody was still there and thankfully had not left to go to the bus station and leave town as she would that night, so the fiancee was able to pick me up in Jody's truck.

I didn't have to spend $48 to open the car door because the fiancee noticed that in my two-minute trip, I had cracked the window instead of turning on the air, and she was able to take Jody's ice scraper and stick it inside the window and open the door handle from the inside. So all's well that ends well, I suppose. Except the soy sauce was crappy, and I missed a big comeback by the Grizzlies to win their NBA playoff game, and I felt lost and frustrated sitting outside for three hours next to a car that I couldn't enter. I can only pray that my subsequent experiences driving alone will be much more pleasant.

Little Blessings

2011-04-25T10:17:00.003-05:00

I'm pecking away on the fiancee's laptop as I write this because there's not enough space in this house to wheel in my clunky desktop. So right away, I'm sacrificing some things in order to fit into her lifestyle. Besides, the computer desk which held my desktop just fine for five years decided to disintegrate en route to the moving truck. I mean screws started falling out, keyboard shelf took a leap...the damn thing committed Hari Kari or whatever right in front of my eyes. So I moved it all the way down here and then threw it out.

And oh, that moving experience. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but wow. This was a whole new experience. I've moved several times before, of course, but never to another state. The pressures of packing up everything I own in two weeks were massive. There was stuff I'd had for years that I had to contemplate trashing, stuff that I never wanted to trash, stuff that I knew I should trash but had to take anyway (like those hundreds of cassette tapes)...the whole project was as daunting as anything I've ever done. What I honestly should have done is take the whole last week of work off because I had enough sick days to do so, and just sat at home and packed. But I would have felt guilty skipping out on everyone at Chase like that. So as a result, my last blog post had me staring down a shitload of work the Saturday before I had to move, and most of it didn't wind up being finished until Monday when "Jacob" arrived. Most of the problem was my general laziness. But part of it was inviting "Drew" to the crib to hang out one last Saturday night, a night that didn't conclude until about 4:30A. That gave me about 3 hours of sleep going into Sunday. I accomplished a lot on Sunday, including giving a bunch of stuff to my play cousin that otherwise would have gone out to the already stuffed garbage can. The crash came when my cousin and I stopped to chat and say our goodbyes for about an hour and a half. Once she left, I decided that since I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I should make some dinner. I put those forks full of macaroni and chili into my mouth and sat upon my couch at about 7:30P. Next thing I knew, my eyes had closed and I had taken a siesta sitting straight up. Not lying down on the job, just sitting on the couch. When I opened my eyes, it was 10, and my body had become stiff and sore, and packing was no longer going to take place on this day. So I could only go to bed and vow to pick it up again when I woke up the next morning.

And that's what I did, at about 4:15A or so. My packing was briefly interrupted by meeting my aunt to take some cash she had for me to purchase my couch and tables, and by calling the utilities to get my name taken off of the bills. Jacob and his mom showed up around 8. We picked up the moving truck and came back home, then his mom ran my cable equipment back to the cable company for me. While we waited for her to return and act as the truck lookout, Jacob and I surveyed the scene. I remember vowing last time I moved from my Lakeview apartment to The Dungeon that next move, I was hiring professionals. I did that this time inadvertently. Jacob had so much experience packing trucks for Best Buy and moving himself cross-country a couple of times that he knew the best way to get this house packed and going. He and his mother kept remarking that my house wasn't that big to move, something that didn't make me feel much better considering the task ahead of us. But they knew how to pack it up the right way. My hands lost their muscle power early on attempting to handle the unwieldy mattress, so Jacob had to pick up the slack and move most of the stuff. I was ashamed of being so out of shape that I got tired early and couldn't help like I wanted. But in my defense, I had been packing up the whole house by myself for the past week. I had a right to be tired. It took several hours, but we packed the truck at about 1:30P and took off. I have to give mad props to my play cousin, who swept up all of the rooms as we emptied them and provided extra boxes and garbage bags, and even washed my dishes even though I didn't take them with me. She also arranged my tapes and CDs in crates and boxes so that I didn't have to sit and fuck with those items, which I thought was going to take me forever. The last thing I took with me was a chocolate cake that my play aunt--her mother--made for me. The couple of items that I forgot that were a little more important than cake: my pencil-drawn sketch of my mother, done by a friend, and my associate's degree, which is legit and not a sketch. My play cousin is holding on to those things until which time I can return to Chicago, whenever that may be.

The trip to Tennessee was both a very fun ride and stressful. Jacob and I had a ball yakking in the truck while his mom drove behind us. We stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel, a place I should get used to living in the Dirty South. In the truck, we hooked up a cord and alternated playing songs from our respective iPods, a throwback to the days in which we would have MusicFests over the phone, playing our favorite songs on our respective cassette players. We shot the shit and had some real good male-bonding time. The stress came when it was time for Jacob to decide how to get into the Memphis suburb where my fiancee lives. He took a very roundabout path because he was adamant about not wanting to drive the truck into Memphis city traffic. So at midnight, when we hit the Tennessee state line, which is five minutes from Memphis on my bus trips and therefore 25 or 30 minutes from my fiancee's suburb, I texted my fiancee that we should be very close. But Jacob was on a totally different journey, and as a result, we didn't arrive at my fiancee's house until 1:30A!

From there, we took most of the stuff out of the truck in an effort to free up the bed from the front of the truck. Then Jacob and I took my fiancee's bed apart and rebuilt my bed in our bedroom. This was a concession on her part to my desire to have my harder mattress set instead of her slightly softer one. (She's already rueing the decision because my set rises higher than hers, making her reach for her alarm clock in the mornings more of an Olympic competition.) It was an unusual evening in this normally very quiet town. Piercing the still night was a Penske moving van with two big, loud guys throwing furniture and boxes around. My fiancee and Jacob's mother kept each other company chatting on the front porch while we moved shit into the house as quickly and quietly as possible. By the time we finished, it was closing in on 4A. I thanked Jacob and bid him and his mom adieu as they drove to the hotel room that my fiancee reserved for them. Jacob had to drive in his car back home to middle Wisconsin the very next morning, plus there was a winter storm coming to his residence. So he couldn't stick around to take my other stuff to storage.

That had to wait until my fiancee's roommate, "Jody," was able to give me a hand. Jody lost her job a while back and has been living here ever since, but she is preparing to leave for several weeks to take a truck-driving class in Texas. But before she does, she gleefully drove my moving truck around town, gaining some experience with a larger vehicle even though the truck was a gnat compared to the behemoth big rigs she'll be steering. She helped me move my cassettes and computer and other assorted garbage into storage, then the next day she drove my truck to its drop-off point. I couldn't have completed my move without her because I'm not nearly confident enough in my driving skillz to attempt to take a moving truck anywhere, although I did slowly back the truck up one morning in an attempt to clear it as an obstruction away from the mailbox. I won't get into how much it costs to rent a truck and drive it 700 miles, but suffice it to say that if I had not received my tax return check, I couldn't have afforded it.

Our first day together as one big happy family had a dark and stormy ending. No, we didn't argue. I mean literally dark and stormy. A thunderstorm whipped through the area Tuesday night with such ferocity that tornado sirens were sounding and the power got knocked the fuck out. 35 hours of electricity-free livin' followed, not a fun thing for the fiancee to be sure but even worse for us unemployed folks. (Well, I was unemployed all last week. I start with Symcor tomorrow.) The fiancee had to throw out a big refrigerator full of food because here in Memphis, no power doesn't mean holding still in April at a chilly temperature, possibly salvaging some grub. It means the storm clearing out and 80-degree weather turning the fridge contents into inedible slop. If left to my own devices, I would've tried to eat the ribs. That's a lot of good ribs that went to waste. Oh, and speaking of fridge contents, let me rant on the racket that is milk sales here in Graceland. I insisted to the fiancee that we didn't have to pay $3.79 at Wal-Mart for a gallon of milk. We should be able to go to CVS or Walgreens and find it for much cheaper. There are many different brands for sale in Chicago across those various stores, and as a result, you can find one of those brands on sale any given week for about $2. Not here in Memphis. There appears to be only one motherfucking brand of milk available here, called Turner's, and I can't find it anywhere lower than $3.69 per gallon, which is what it cost at Walgreens. On the part of the sale paper where it has a picture of a gallon of milk and it usually has a sale price of $1.99 in Chicago, here it just says, "Everyday low price." Low?!? My fat ass! My fiancee says it's because Turner's has a plant here and that's why they can gouge like that. Whatever the reason, it really sucks.

Besides that, it's been a fun first week. We raced me over to SunTrust Bank on Friday and I opened a new account. (I would have driven there and to the truck drop-off if my back wasn't acting up--it wouldn't let me get behind the wheel of the fiancee's Toyota Corolla.) We ate at Steak & Shake on Thursday, Genghis Grill on Sunday, and grilled burgers on Good Friday, so already I'm eating much better. We've struggled trying to find the right time to get intimate since there's a third person in the house to avoid, but we'll figure it out over time. We've watched a lot of basketball, and the Grizzlies are putting on a show, hanging with the Spurs in the 1st round. And having me available Friday evening and Sunday worked out for my fiancee's church activities. I got to watch her play handbells at church both days. And the Easter service was wonderful. I was touched by the church members greeting me Friday and Sunday, telling me how glad they were to hear that I'm in town permanently now. I appreciated the warmth. And as always, I appreciated the sermon by the pastor. No matter what the occasion, her sermons always have a message of appreciating the big and little blessings in your life. Today was a very good example. The fiancee and I had a rough night because she wanted me to leave the bedroom and watch the game in the living room, but I didn't feel like it and she didn't tell me why she wanted me to leave, so I stayed in bed, and we went to sleep a little tense and upset. This morning, she explained that she was tense because she didn't know how to tell me that I was upsetting her usual routine of meditation and quiet time, and that's why she wanted me to leave. She also had been expressing dismay at my messy lifestyle and how she felt like she had to pick up behind me. So after she went to work, I was left alone to ponder how I was seemingly under her skin already after only one week. But she decided to text me without prompting, "I'm so glad you're here." Guess she decided to let me know before I could overthink things that it's still all good and she's still happy that I made the move. Well, she's happy for now, that is. Wait until the next time I pass gas in the bedroom! Muhahahaha!!

End Of The Chase Era (A.K.A. My Last Post As A Chicagoan)

2011-04-16T10:16:00.004-05:00

I'm sure the time will come in the next few weeks where everything calms down and a routine develops and I start to really enjoy this new stage of my life living as a Memphian with my fiancee. But right now, I feel like there's a deep, dark unknown dead ahead, and I'm headed for it whether I'm ready or not. I can't be dishonest about it because it really seems bad if I'm asked by my fiancee or anyone else how I'm feeling about everything, and I respond, "Great! Can't wait! Very excited!" My face and voice and demeanor would betray that immediately. I'm not worrying about the relationship with the fiancee. I'm worrying about my entire life being uprooted, all of my routines being changed, everything with which I'm comfortable and familiar becoming unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I spent this last week savoring many things about Chicago and my surroundings that I will miss, and as a result, I now have the next two days to pack my entire house and prepare to move first thing Monday morning. But hey, I do everything last minute. I may not publish this post until tonight because I'll be typing and packing intermittently. But I will eventually publish the details about my last week as a proud resident of Chicago.

Just found out that I misplaced the box of garbage bags that I bought a few days ago. Now I gotta go back. Fuck.

Ok, back. Still immature, still irresponsible, spending money on a product that I already bought but managed to lose. At least it was the dollar store garbage bags.

So anyway, I've been doing the endless list of things one must do preparing to change jobs and cities, so I won't bore you with all that. The new job, Symcor, has been wishy-washy on my start date. Julie, the H.R. person I've been dealing with who's based here in Chicago, told me that originally, they were going to let me chill until maybe May while they get new management people in place at my site in Memphis. Then a few days ago, she said they wanted me to start ASAP. The last days she mentioned to me as possibilities were this coming Wednesday or Thursday, which would give me a full day or two to recover from the move and wash some clothes. I haven't heard back from her, but I figure if she had not called me by Monday, I can spend a few minutes of that 10-hour drive to Memphis calling her.

I had a voucher to have my house cleaned for an hour by an outfit called Sassy Sweeper, and I scheduled a cleaning for April 2, but they never showed up. I called their "customer service" four or five times complaining about this, and each time they said that someone would call back if I left my name and number. Finally, a woman calling herself Audrey, who I guess runs this outfit, got back to me and told me that I should have gotten an e-mail telling me that my previous appointment was canceled because I requested a downtown cleaning crew even though I live near the western suburbs. The stupid website never indicated that I couldn't choose the crew I wanted, so that's what I did, and I never got any fucking cancellation e-mail. Audrey made good on the voucher by scheduling for this past Wednesday at 9A. I was already planning to call in sick just to enjoy the nice weather, so I decided to make it an eventful day by buying a ticket to a White Sox game, scheduled for 1P. Well, it was a day of things not going as planned. The Sassy Sweeper crew didn't arrive until about 9:40, throwing my whole schedule into disarray. I wanted to leave as soon as they were finished because I had to stop downtown at the public library to print the tickets since my printer is out of ink. By Sassy Sweeper not being done until 10:45 (and doing a shitty cleaning job), I couldn't leave the house until 11:15, and I didn't get to the library until 12:10 or so. Then I had to hustle to the renewal desk because my library card was just a little bit expired, like, 4 years or so. Then I finally printed the tickets, paid the pocket change for the printing, and got to the ballpark just in time to miss most of the 1st inning. Not only that, but I bought a "premium club" ticket in the same LG Skyline-sponsored section that my fiancee and I attended a couple of years ago when I won those tickets thanks to the ESPN Zone Sports Spelling Bee. That section provided a free buffet-style meal, unlimited food and drinks, and it was just the best damn time I ever had at a ball game. That section, I was sad to find out, no longer offers free food. They have an usher peeking her head around the corner every couple of innings asking us if we wanted to order anything, but we'd have to pay for whatever we ordered. I got the $5.50 hot dog and chips. We Sox fans as a whole didn't get what we wanted from the game because the Pale Hose managed to take a 3-run lead into the 9th inning, give up 3 runs to tie it, then give up 3 more in the 10th to lose. I got to see my team for one last time, but it was an up-close look at the fact that their bullpen currently sucks a fat dick. Even the postgame meal didn't live up to my hopes--I decided to go to Potbelly, a Chicago sandwich shop, and try their Uptown salad, which had chicken, cheese, lettuce, dried cranberries, apples, and grapes. That combo of cheese and chicken and fruit didn't do it for me. But at least I tried it.

Friday was my last day at Chase, and I had been feeling weird about leaving ever since I gave notice two weeks ago. This was my first job leaving voluntarily, and I was torn between taking it easy since I didn't have to worry about my performance here anymore and still helping everyone out. I kinda split the difference because I busted my ass as always the days that I was there, but I took a sick day this week and last week. But it was still weird because we're just as busy as always and I still cared about my job and the people with whom I work. I felt like I was leaving some unfinished business. Plus, I didn't know if they were going to give me a sendoff or not. But they did, and it was so sweet. The new supervisor, who's only been over me for the past month and a half, stopped work just before 10A to have everyone gather near my desk and share some doughnuts and coffee and tell me goodbye. She gave me a paperweight of the Chicago skyline and a pen. She asked me for a speech, and I got up and just told everyone that my shyness and introverted style was turned out by their kindness and social skills over the years, and I was thankful for that. Then Linda, one of my team leads, presented me with a couple of signed cards, and she was very anxious for me to open one of them. When I finally got around to checking it out, it was filled with many dollar bills, which totally stunned me. I wasn't expecting financial help at all. Like I said, I didn't know if they were going to do anything for me. I'm not the warmest guy at work. I'm very business-minded and cold-blooded, and probably seen as an asshole. Plus, if anyone had been paying attention over the years when cards went around for other people, I never, ever contributed money. I could never see it in my heart to donate to anyone else's cause, justifying it by how poor I am. Well, these folks ain't rich either, and they cobbled together $176 cash just because I was leaving the company. I could never thank them enough. As a final send-off, I couldn't leave the floor all day for break or lunch because we were so busy. Guess that's why everyone was approaching me all week not saying how sad they were to see me go, but congratulating me for leaving, as if I were being released from prison.

I'm watching the Bulls choking against the Pacers while I pack as well. Hopefully that changes before the game ends.

So I took the long way home yesterday, still a little disbelieving that I was taking my last ride as a Chicago commuter after all these years riding buses and trains everywhere. But the symmetry of what happened this morning brought it all home. My aunt took me back to the driving facility so that, once again, I could attempt to get my first driver's license. The insurance card was printed on an 8x11 sheet of paper this time, making it much harder for me to lose. My aunt had to get used to the concept of riding in a car with me driving, and hey, I can't blame her. All these years, I've been the fat ass waiting for people to caddy me around, and now I'm going to do the driving. I guess she thought I was a complete amateur, but eventually she relaxed. The lines and the waiting were much lighter today because it was raining this morning. Not too hard, but really, if you can help it, not the kind of conditions where an inexperienced driver would choose to take his or her first road test. But I had no choice. It was do it now or wait until Tennessee, and who knows when my fiancee and I would have time to coordinate our schedules to get it done. The person administering the test was a young brotha who remained calm throughout, which helped my nerves a lot. After all the varying answers from various folks to the question "What are they gonna have me do on the road test?," all he had me do was drive in a two-block square, turning left with a couple of rights thrown in, then he had me turn down a side street about three inches before stopping and backing out while turning right so that I could turn around and drive back on the previous street. I did it very slowly. The rain probably helped me do everything very slowly, including staying under the speed limit the whole time. At one point, he told me to get all the way to the right in order to prepare for a right turn, and I obeyed a little too well, not checking for other cars or signaling. He immediately scribbled something down on his clipboard. Fuck, I thought, I just failed this damn test! But I kept my cool and did everything else he asked, finishing by pulling headfirst into a designated parking space at the end of the test. He calmly told me, "Now wait until I get out, then park the car in the regular lot and come in and get your driver's license." I almost didn't believe what I heard. I really did think that I fucked up the test, and given my history of fuck-ups, I honestly expected him to tell me that I had failed. But it wasn't a joke. I went in, got my pic taken, and in minutes, I walked out with my very first driver's license in my hand. I immediately took a picture of it with my cell phone and sent it to my fiancee, who wrote back, "YOU TOTALLY ROCK!!!!!!" Yep, I go 35 years, 3 months, and 25 days as a Chicago commuter, relying on public transportation to earn a living and the generosity of friends, family and lovers to socialize. And the day after I stop being a commuter, I become a licensed driver. I guess it was just meant to happen that way.

Bulls win! Derrick Rose is the fucking truth.

So I continue putting my life into boxes and deciding what's coming in the house with me and the fiancee and what's going in a storage unit. She's already decided that my sports and wrestling tapes have no space in her home. They will go to a climate-controlled storage unit along with my music cassettes and vocal diary cassettes and childhood memorabilia. I really should let go of those relics of my past, but that's what happens when you're an only child--you develop relationships with things that represent who you were, who you are, who you wanted to be someday. I mean, I'm sure that happens to some people who weren't only children as well, but I imagine it's a lot easier for those who had to rely on themselves from day one. It's all still so strange, the concept of sharing my life with someone else. I keep telling my fiancee that no matter how much we prepare, the amount of frustration we're both going to experience while getting adjusted to each other's constant presence is unimaginable. And she's expressed concern over my demeanor, since every time she tries to tell me how excited she is that we're finally about to make a family together, I sound like I'm about to be audited or something. But as I said earlier, I'd be lying if I didn't say how worried I am about the move and the job change and the bad times we will have, as every couple has. The good times, I have to learn how to enjoy them, because it's not in my nature.

My friend "Jacob" has learned a lesson on not opening his mouth and offering assistance when someone is in a tough spot. He said weeks ago that when I found a job, if I needed help moving, he could drive down from his current residence in central Wisconsin and git 'er done. Well, I found a job sooner than I expected, and way sooner than he expected, and he is going to undergo an ironman-style endurance test. He's driving to the Chicago area Sunday evening with his mom. They will stay at a hotel, then come pick me up early Monday morning for some grub. Then, while she takes my Comcast cable equipment back to Comcast since they won't come pick it up, he will come here and help me load up the truck. We will embark on the 8 or 9-hour journey to Memphis with his mom driving his car behind the moving truck and drop off the stuff that I'm allowed to take into the house. The fiancee will have a large rib dinner waiting for us whenever we finally make it. Then we will take her bed and load it into the truck to take to goodwill, since she has decided to use my bed for our sleeping needs because I'm more comfortable on my harder mattress. Then we will finally drop off my stuff in the storage unit, which is a 24-hour unit. Then Jacob will take the truck to its final drop-off place. The fiancee is putting Jacob and his mom up in a hotel so they don't have to drive back home until the next day. I'm so lucky that Jacob is going to take on this task because I don't know how I would have moved if he hadn't volunteered. And I will be repaying him by spending an ungodly amount to make it up to Wausau for his wedding in a month. I have to take a 1-stop flight there and back because there's no such thing as a nonstop from Memphis to Wausau. It ain't cheap, and it's not counting the tux rental or their gift. Sigh. The duties of a best man. At least he's not into strippers so whatever bachelor party I can throw together, it won't be expensive, nor will it threaten the sanctity of either of our pending nuptials.

So this is it. Chicago will be in my rear view mirror literally in a matter of hours. I'm still stunned at how fast this is all happening. I am so Chicago. My tastes, my sports allegiances, my attitude, everything I like has a bit of Chicago about it. No matter how long I'm away from Chicago, a part of me will always be Chicago. And never say never about a return someday. Maybe I will grow a set and pursue a broadcasting career and find my way back to the place I know best. But until that happens, here is the official proclamation: The new home town of this blog from this point forward will be Memphis, TN, and its surrounding suburbs, and my fiancee and I will reside in one of those suburbs. Any blog posts written outside of Memphis or a suburb will have that city as a date line, but the new default location will be Memphis and its suburbs. I will be a full-fledged Memphian as of Monday, April 18. Let our new life together begin!

No Foolin'

2011-04-01T19:38:00.002-05:00

It's not an April Fool's joke--I got the job!! I will give two weeks notice at Chase when I get there on Monday, and I've already hired "Jacob" to help me move in a couple of weeks. I was thrilled earlier when I heard the voice mail telling me that I got the position, especially since it ended a long week from traveling for the interview to coming back and hurting my back to working the last couple of days with the hurt back hoping and wishing that I'd get hired. But when I called my fiancee and informed her, her excited inhale and high-pitched "Really?" kinda broke me emotionally. It's been a long, long journey from our first few dates to this point. We knew that one of us was going to have to uproot his or her life and make a big move in order for our relationship to work. But I have no doubt, as I sit here now, that I'm making the right move for the right person.

Fingers Crossed

2011-03-26T07:27:00.002-05:00

Everything may be about to change in a matter of days. I got an interview with a Memphis check-processing company named Symcor this coming Tuesday. Symcor is a Canadian company that has many operations in many U.S. cities, including, ironically, Chicago. But it's a processing job in Memphis that I applied for, and after playing phone tag with an H.R. person, we finally got together and she set me up for a 9A interview Tuesday in Memphis. I was able to secure Monday through Wednesday off from work, and thanks to my fiancee's credit card, I will hop on a bus to Memphis Monday morning, get a good night of rest, and interview the next day, then hop on a bus back to Chicago later Tuesday evening. A pre-application questionnaire asked me what salary range did I think was appropriate for the job. The lowest range was between $30,000 and $34,000 annually. The Chase job that I currently have pays me about $24,000, and that's after five years of service. So I'm obviously looking forward to this interview for the possibility of working in Memphis and moving down there to start my life with my fiancee, but as a huge bonus, I may be in for a much better paying gig. I would have to work weekends as a newbie, but just like at Chase, I will assume that the longer I work there, the closer I will come to being in line for a shift to a more advantageous schedule.

So in short, in a couple of days, I have the opportunity to break out of the go-nowhere life that I'm stuck in right now and start a series of events that would change everything. Fingers crossed.

Not Responsible

2011-03-14T19:12:00.002-05:00

And my whirlwind tour of fucking up continues.

This latest event points out that I'm not just irresponsible, which is bad enough, but also, I'm not a responsible person. I'm so insulated from having to do everyday things that normal people do. And when I get a shot to do one of those things, I'm so used to not having to be responsible that I screw it up just by being careless.

As everyone who knows me is well aware, I don't have a driver's license. It's something that I've neglected to do over the years just because I never made the effort to recruit a family member or friend to let me practice driving with their car and take the driving test. I've owned a permit many times over the years, but I always let it expire before I felt confident enough to take the test. Urged only by my fiancee's demand that I have a license so that I may drive myself around when I move to Memphis and marry her in several months, I got another permit towards the end of last year and I begged my aunt's husband to take me out driving since I live only three blocks from them. He made time for me a couple of weekends ago while teaching his youngest son how to drive. And despite my jitters and obvious inexperience, I did well enough in my hour or so of driving that he thought I was ready to take the road test.

And there we were this past Saturday at the nearby driver's facility at 7:15A, 15 minutes before the facility opened, and he had let me drive all the way to the place, which was about 15 minutes away. Of course, in a possible sign that my fat head was out over my skis on this one, I drove in the opposite direction of several arrows on the ground in the parking lot because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. And I've never claimed to know how to parallel park, but my aunt's husband made me back out and re-park his ginormous SUV in a side-by-side space because I pulled in so badly. But hey, I'm here, and I'm going to take this test, and if I'm not good enough and I fail, then I'll work on my weaknesses and come back at a later date.

So I left my aunt's husband in the car and stood outside in line in 40° weather behind a melting pot of people, wondering how quickly the line would move once they opened the doors. The answer was, very quickly. But there was a problem once I made it in--the first guy I spoke to told me that I needed the insurance card of the car I would be using before I could go any further. I called my aunt's husband, probably waking him, and asked him to bring me the card. He did so with two hands because the card was just a light square piece of paper and the morning was rather windy. I clutched the paper and went back in line, and soon enough, I was back in the face of the folks that comprise that first gatekeeper crew. I flashed the insurance card and my own ID, and I was on my way. It took a half-hour for my number to be called, but I took my number, insurance card, and ID to a young black dude who calmly put my information into his computer. He took a printout and placed my insurance card and ID together with the printout, along with a couple of pamphlets urging me to fill out info allowing the state to take my body parts in case of accidental death. He connected these pieces of paper with a single paper clip and sent me to the cashier. The cashier took off the clip and examined these documents, then put them back together while adding yet another printout, then told me to take my car around the corner and line up in order to take the road test.

My mind had wandered during all of this, and I wasn't paying much attention when the guy clipped my shit together and sent me to the cashier. And when she unclipped and re-clipped my shit and told me to take my car to the testing area, I was focused on nothing but where I was going to take the car once I went outside and got back to the car. I was not used to being responsible for things like my ID and insurance card because I wasn't used to having to be responsible for those things. I walked back to the car, wind whipping, papers being carelessly clutched by my one hand. And when I made it back to the car and took away the paper clip to make sure that everything was there, well, everything wasn't there. The thin insurance card was gone. I drove around to the testing area, sorta in disbelief that this thing was about to go totally off the rails. I mean, I had to have the card in order to make it this far in the process, so they probably won't ask to see it again, right? Meanwhile, my aunt's husband got out and attempted to go in and look around for the card, but the security guys wouldn't let him because he would have had to cut in front of the dozens of people waiting in line, and I guess they didn't trust that he just wanted to look around for a second. I searched everywhere for that damn card--shuffling through the printouts and pamphlets, opening the car door to see if it had fell in the seat or on the floor as I sat down, even checking my pockets several times even though I had no reason to think that I had slipped it in my pockets. Some old white man with a badly runny nose and a clipboard approached the car and asked, "Which one of you's driving?" I raised my hand. And wouldn't you know, the only thing he wanted to see before letting me drive was the fucking insurance card. When I said that I must have lost it, he just shook his head and said, "Can't take the test without an insurance card."

I decided that I had to make a dash for the facility to see if the guards would recognize that I was just there and let me search. My aunt's husband didn't think that would work, but it did. However, the floor was clean, the two clerks had no idea where my card could have gone, and it had been about an hour since I came out, so if the card hit the ground, the wind had taken it about 450 miles by now. My aunt's husband had one more idea when I got back to the car: He found some expired insurance cards, and he hoped that the old man with the runny nose would accept those. His response only served to make me feel like a complete turd: "Are you sayin' those cards are expired? No, what you're saying to me doesn't mean anything right now. You can't take the test without a valid insurance card, pal. Sorry." And with that, I waited another 20 minutes or so for the cars in front of me to go out for the road test, then when I got some space, I drove home and apologized to my aunt's husband.

I've rarely felt as low as I did Saturday. It was all right there in front of me--a person taking the time to tutor me, providing a vehicle for me, directing me to the facility, and all I had to do was handle the proper documents long enough to get back in the fucking car and drive. Couldn't even do that. I don't know how other people handle it when they have the ball on their rackets and completely miss the ball, and you'd think I'd learn how to handle it better considering I fuck up and miss the ball all the time. But I'm really getting sick and tired of this shit. I can't seem to get it right, and I don't know what to do about it besides whine on my pathetic little blog.

How I Almost Committed Suicide By Accident

2011-03-06T12:32:00.002-06:00

Yes, I failed, which will disappoint some of you, but I almost killed myself this week. It was a rather simple oversight, but a potentially very deadly one.

I tried cooking last Sunday, which was my first mistake, and I turned on a back burner on the stove, which didn't light, so I smoothly moved on to another burner while completely forgetting to turn off the original back burner. And when did I discover this mistake? Oh, try Tuesday after I came home from work. I walked in to a disgusting smell, which I thought may be gas, but for some reason that thought did not prompt me to check my stove even though I was standing in my small kitchen right next to it. I determined that the smell must have been something that went bad in the upstairs apartment or something, or perhaps my eggs went rotten. Meanwhile, "Jacob" came by to visit and eventually noticed the smell as well. "Did you check your stove?" he asked, and I responded that I tried to cook two days ago and turned on a burner that didn't light, but there's no way that I was dumb enough to leave that burner turned on. But, just to ease our fears, I walked into the kitchen, where I saw...the burner turned on. Full blast. Straight gas filling up my house for the past two days. I turned the knob off and took a seat in the living room, my brain trying to process what I just discovered. "Coulda been a murder-suicide, like Chris Benoit," Jacob said. "Oh well. We can laugh about it now. By the way, I think we should crack some windows."

A short checklist of all the things that could have resulted in my death: Lighting up to take a smoke if I were a smoker, pulling a cord out of the wall in the kitchen and creating a spark, passing out from carbon monoxide poisoning in my sleep Sunday or Monday night, and what would have been the funniest (for someone reading about it in the newspaper), taking an air freshener in an aerosol can into the kitchen and getting rid of that foul smell, which I was a few seconds away from doing. Un-fucking-believable.

I've been physically weak and tired all weekend, which could be just the end of a regular workweek, or it could be effects of the gas I inhaled. I'm feeling a little better as I sit here typing right now, but I'm still a little shaken mentally. I feel like I've been slipping mentally lately, even before this incident. Little things, like forgetting what I went into a room to do, or leaving the house without something important. On this most recent trip to see my fiancee on Valentine's Day, I locked up the house and made it a few doors down the block before I remembered that I should go get my bus ticket, which I kinda need to actually go to Memphis. I'm under some stress to find employment in Memphis and spark a chain reaction of events that will change my life. The moment I am able to go to Memphis and interview and get hired, I have to come to Chicago, put in notice to my current job, start packing my shit, make arrangements to rent a van and hire people to help me move, and a couple of weeks later, leave the only city I've ever lived in for one in which I've spent a very small amount of time. Oh, and I will either have to find someone willing to drive me and my shit down there and arrange for that person to get back home, or I will get my driver's license (which I may be taking the test for next weekend) and promptly attempt to make my way through several states to Memphis with very little driving experience. The fiancee is providing me with lots of support, trying to make sure that everything will go as smoothly as possible, but this is still a very nerve-wracking time in my life. Maybe it's taking its toll on my mind. I don't know. What I do know is that all of my complaining about feeling like my life is in a holding pattern while I figure out how to pursue a broadcasting career seems quaint compared to the vise I'm in right now.

Oh, and there's a wedding to plan that occurs seven months from now. But there's plenty of time for that, right?

Snowmaggedon 2011

2011-02-06T13:07:00.006-06:00

Just thought I should take a moment while the endless pre-game hype for the Super Bowl is going down to share my story about the monster snowstorm that hit Chicago several days ago.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. We were being warned for about a week prior to the storm that it was gonna hit, it was gonna hit hard, and we should be ready for it. But we're Chicagoans, so I think most of us felt like whatever it was gonna be, we could handle it. That's my explanation for why I woke up from the storm and headed to work, thinking that I would be ok. I thought that no one else would be at work, so I should man up and go in and pick up the slack for everyone else.

Flash back to the commute home Tuesday night, Feb. 1. The storm had started about 2P, depending on where you were in the city, so by the time I left work at 5, the conditions were already pretty fucking bad. If you don't know what "white-out" conditions means, let me explain: You can't see shit. It's a blend of snow and very high winds that result in your vision being nothing but a sheet of white in front of your face. If you're behind a windshield, like in a car, you can't see a block in front of you, which I'm sure made driving fun. And if you're in the street commuting like I was, well, my walk to the train was a block long, and I did it with one eye closed shut, and the only reason I didn't have both eyes closed is because I didn't want to surge forward with zero concern about what's in front of me and risk steamrolling some 80-year-old bat. Once on the train platform, a gust of wind hit so hard that if I were on the edge, I would have gone over. It was that hard. I was blown two steps towards the platform edge with no chance to stop myself. And this was the "el" train, which stands for elevated, so I would have landed on the tracks with such force that my 380-lb. body may easily have crashed through and splattered onto the street. I was very happy to step gingerly a half-block on the freshly shoveled sidewalk and make it home, and virtually every other person coming home in those conditions said a little prayer and vowed that they were enjoying a day off of work tomorrow.

Not me. Why? I don't know. Maybe I'm just a dumbass.

So I stood in awe looking out my window at the wild and crazy conditions from which I had just came, and I heard the thunder clap, and I watched the sidewalk disappear before my eyes as the snowfall accumulated, and I went to bed thinking that maybe I should leave for work a little early just in case the amount of snow made it hard for the buses to drive and made my commute a little longer. Again, I think it's a product of being a Chicagoan that I thought the aftermath Wednesday morning wouldn't be so bad. What happened while I slept is that the snow never stopped coming, and the streets and sidewalk never got re-shoveled after the initial Tuesday afternoon onslaught, and by the time I left my house at 7:55A, the official measurement had climbed up to about 19 inches of snow. Yes, 19 inches. That's only 3 inches shorter than my cock! Oh wait, that was a dream I had...

Anyhow, this is how my Wednesday morning went: As most of Chicago called in sick and went back to bed, I opened my front door to a snowdrift almost as tall as me. Once I forced the door open, I looked down the path that leads to the sidewalk, which is about 50 feet long. I could not figure out where the sidewalk was. And my first steps were unbelievable to me, because the snow was up to my knees. It's not easy to walk in snow that deep and soft, folks. But I kept taking big steps, and 5 minutes later, I had made it to the intersection, which normally takes about 45 seconds.

I must walk another block to get to my bus stop. I stared down the block at the sidewalk, completely unshoveled, and I figured that if I walk in the street, where cars have been driving, it should be much easier. Problem was, cars had not been driving down that street recently. The snow was so hard that it rendered my little side street undriveable. Therefore, the snow in the street was almost as deep as the sidewalk. At this point, an old white guy living in a corner house on this intersection saw me standing in the street, big black man with a bookbag on his back, no other human beings out in this insanity, snow starting to pick up again. And the man tried to do me a favor. He had to yell a few times to get my attention because I had my trademark huge headphones on. Once I noticed him yelling at me, I listened to him scream the following: "It's not gonna work! Go back home! It's not gonna work!!" And I stood in that intersection, staring at him, then down the street that I would have to walk if I kept going, then back at my house a few doors away, then back down the street. And I must have stood there for two solid minutes contemplating this man's words. "It's not gonna work! Go back home!" And finally, I decided that I had woke up and ate breakfast and showered and climbed out of my house, and I got this far, so I'm gonna go. I gotta keep going. I only have a block to walk, then I'm at my bus stop, and the hardest part will be over. So I'm gonna go. The old man had gone back into his house at this point, so I couldn't wave an acknowledgment at him, but I did appreciate his concern.

That was the most physically grueling block I have ever walked. The snow was up to my knees with every step. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath. Every time I stopped, I looked down the block to see how much farther I had to go. And each time, it seemed farther away, not closer. I was starting to get dizzy. I briefly thought about how silly it would be for me to fall in this 2 feet of soft snow and not be able to pull myself back up and to die out here trying to do something as inessential as get to my shitty-ass job. But the thing is, the farther I got, the more it became obvious by my logic that I had to keep going. I wasn't going to go that far just to turn around and try to get back. I didn't know if I could even make it back. I was so spent physically that I seriously wondered if my body could even handle turning around. As I got closer to the end of the block, I noticed that the business at the end of the block had used a snowblower to open up their parking lot, and, in turn, had built a snowbank sealing off the street for any other traffic and creating a hurdle for me to climb over in order to complete my journey. At that point, a thin black guy emerged from his house and walked past me, asking if I was okay while I was bent over. I nodded. He saw the hurdle and said that it would be all good once we made it over. Then he went ahead of me and created some footsteps for me to follow so that I wouldn't be climbing over the hurdle all by myself. And with that, I got over and stood at the corner hoping that after all this struggling, the buses were actually running. I also turned around and snapped the above picture, which is the street that I had just climbed over like a mountain. It was 8:08. Thirteen minutes to walk from my door to the sidewalk and then a block.

A bus came along about 15 minutes later, and let me tell you, I was wondering how the fuck was I gonna get back home if a bus didn't come along. So I was thrilled to see the bus. I was a little worried when I got on and saw that the driver was wearing street clothes. Bus and train operators usually have a full Chicago Transit Authority uniform. But I was just so happy to see a bus that I didn't care that it may have been stolen by a civilian. There were two passengers on the bus, a young guy and girl, and they were standing at the front instead of sitting, which I found strange. It soon became clear that they were standing at the front door because they were ready to sprint off the bus at the first sign of a store in order to buy booze. The driver stopped at a 7-Eleven, the guy ran off the bus, and 5 minutes later, he emerged with a 6-pack of beer and a bottle of something in a big brown bag.

I rode this bus to Harlem Avenue, then I caught the Harlem bus after a 15-minute wait to the Green Line "el" train, then took the train to work. Downtown Chicago was dead. There's a very busy expressway that the Green Line crosses over, and I was interested to see how bad the traffic was when we got to that point. I wondered would there be many cars gridlocked or a few cars enjoying an open freeway with little traffic. I was genuinely shocked to see zero cars on this expressway. None at all. And not only that, but it looked like the snow was accumulating on the expressway just like on my side street, indicating that no cars had been there for quite some time. This storm was epic. It was going to be legendary, and everyone was going to have a story about it. Mine was going to be about commuting in the eye of the storm, something very few people did. But I did it, and it was hard and scary and I wouldn't dare do it again if placed back in that same situation. But I guess I'm proud that I survived it. And maybe it will make for an ice-breaker, so to speak, when I move to the much warmer climate of Memphis, Tennessee. Gather round, folks, and lemme tell you a story about why you should never complain about weather here in Memphis ever again...

NFL Wild Card '11

2011-01-08T13:50:00.002-06:00

Because I'm lazy and don't feel like cutting and pasting, I now direct you to the blog that "Jacob" and I have been writing all year, In Much Less Detail. We have had a fun and successful 1st year chronicling our football picks for public consumption, and below is the link to my Wild Card Weekend predictions, where you will also learn Jacob's picks and his real name, if that sort of thing titillates you.

http://inmuchlessdetail.blogspot.com/2011/01/nfl-wild-card-11.html

35 Years Of Fear

2010-12-22T23:50:00.002-06:00

"Scared shitless" is the not-so-graceful term my fiancee used a few weeks ago to describe me after I expressed my displeasure at applying for a job in Memphis that would be in my desired field of broadcasting. The job was member of a "street team" for a radio station morning show. My impression of that gig is that it's not very high-paying, it's not very secure as far as how long one would be employed in that position before the station decided to cut costs and whack said position, and it's not very useful, because I imagine there's a lot of passing out flyers and setting up zany morning zoo stunts. And on top of that, there's a potential loss of money involved, because if I were to apply to that job and get it right now, I would lose tuition money that I'd have to reimburse my current employer for leaving within two years of getting that money, and I'd lose a performance bonus coming at the end of January. The only thing positive about that street crew position is that it would indeed be a foot in the door of the broadcasting industry, and that is all I want. I'm fairly confident that I will show my talent and ascend the ladder once I get that foot in the door. But I declined to apply for the job because of all the previously listed cons versus that one pro. My fiancee's reaction was to declare me "scared shitless" of going for a real position in radio when the opportunity presented itself. I took it hard that she thought of me that way, and I still to this day believe that my reasons for not applying for the gig were valid. And I believe that I would apply for that same job in February after those money issues are cleared up. But I do have to admit, I have a ton of fear inside of me. There are major, major life changes coming in 2011. I'm getting married, I'm moving to a new city that I am largely unfamiliar with, and I'm going to have to take a new job in order to make all of that happen. There's a sensation of rolling a wheel down a hill that comes with any application to a job in a city that I'm unfamiliar with before I've moved into that city. So that's scary right off the bat. Then applying for a job in radio or broadcasting adds another layer of fear because I have absolutely zero experience in those fields and I would likely be starting out at some entry-level position and hoping to give demo tapes of myself to some strangers and make an impression on them. And I think anyone hoping to break into their dream career in their mid-30s after doing something else for 15 years has trepidation about possibly failing at their dreams after all this time. So on this, my 35th birthday, I can only acknowledge the bundle of fears that I still possess. I can plan on being opportunistic and taking advantage of whatever comes my way, but the fact is, there's a moment before I approach a producer with my demo, before I press "send" on my online resume, before I call a prospective employer in Memphis, when I have to overcome a gigantic ball of fear inside me that has always stood in my way whenever I wanted something that I didn't think I was good enough to have. But hey, I'm 35. There are only so many opportunities that I can pursue. I have no choice but to overcome those fears.

Jack Of All Trades, Boss Of None

2010-11-13T15:35:00.004-06:00

Everyone has a day at work where they feel like the only intelligent person in the entire building. I had that day a couple of weeks ago. Basically, a piece of mail came in that was sent to our customer's lockbox address, which is our building, because the lockbox was peeking out of the top of the envelope window. But if one looked down at the lower half of the window, a totally different address in Florida was showing. You had to work to find our customer's lockbox address because it wasn't clearly showing; someone actually peeled part of the envelope up to more clearly see the lockbox, ignoring the Florida address that was clear and easy to read. The return address was to our customer's lockbox. To me, this was obviously a case of mistaken mailing. The post office sent the piece of mail to the lockbox even though it was intended for the Florida address. But absolutely no one saw it my way. My team lead, my supervisor, a learning coach...all of them advised me to process the contents of the envelope to the lockbox instead of returning it to the post office as a missort. This was a two-day argument. One piece of mail came in and I refused to process it, and the next day, a second mistaken envelope with the exact same problem came in. My supervisor had to kindly ask me to process both to our lockbox before I finally gave up and did what I was told. It frustrated me because the company in Florida that should have received that mail will be sitting there for who knows how long waiting for two invoices that won't get there because we were so eager to process any mail that may have our client's lockbox number anywhere on it that we effectively intercepted the invoices and mailed them back to our client. It doesn't affect me personally, but I just hated doing something that was clearly the wrong option. But that's what I had to do in the end, because I'm just a worker bee and I have no real power. The funny thing is, my team lead had taken to calling me "Boss" as a nickname because I'm so adamant and forceful in stating my point, in this situation or any other, that I guess I act like I run the place according to her. I'm not trying to run the place, I'm just trying not to do stupid things like open mail obviously intended for another address. I know, I know, how silly of me.

The prospect of moving to Memphis with my fiancee and leaving this company isn't looking good right now either. I have two networking angles that I'm working, but I'm not optimistic that either will work out. One of them told me straight up that the bank job market in Memphis is the worst he's seen it in 30 years, and this is bad because he's the executive vice president of one of the larger banks in Memphis. As a courtesy, he asked me to e-mail my resume to him anyway. The other angle is the executive director at Chase who claims to have a nephew coincidentally employed at a bank in Memphis. About three months ago, I e-mailed my resume to my executive director for forwarding to his nephew, but he took forever to actually send it off. He kept walking past me every day saying "I haven't forgot about you" and "I'm gonna have something for you soon." It was just this past week that he finally informed me that he was planning to send my resume, but you could call it a bad sign that he then asked me if I had ever sent him my resume previously. Yeah, about a million years ago, buddy. So I'm not counting on that working out either. I'm sitting in limbo right now, searching Memphis job sites and finding not much, while my fiancee waits for me to move down with her in advance of our October wedding next year. I'm trying not to move down until I secure employment, but I may have to just make the move if I don't see anything worth applying for. The move and the wedding are potentially stressful life changes off in the distance. Facing me down right now are my continued financial woes and another cold winter looming, and the winter brings more financial trouble with the heating bill and physical trouble with the way my knees and ankles and toes seem to severely swell and flare up in a freezing climate. Yes, I'm looking for part-time work to ease the cash flow pain, and I may even work overtime on Thanksgiving. However, as much as it seems like I'm depressed and bitching and moaning, I'm sure that better days are ahead. I'll be married to a wonderful woman this time next year, I'll be in warmer temperatures, and I'll be sharing household expenses. I just gotta stay strong and fight through these tough times, and eventually, my patience will be rewarded. So long as I don't snap and go postal on my workplace for telling me I'm wrong when I know damn well that I'm right.

Our Culture Today

2010-09-27T20:00:00.001-05:00

Real civil conversation I heard on the bus going home last Friday.

Old man talking to two guys sitting behind him: "You're making me nervous. Hey driver, these two guys are saying something to each other in Arabic. I don't care what the fuck you're saying, you're making me nervous. I don't care if you're fucking talking about sports, you're making me nervous."

Old lady standing about 15 feet behind the old man: "Okay, pal, you need to take it down a notch. That's enough."

Man: "Yeah, let's just wait until they blow up the bus."

Woman: "I hope they start with you first."

Man: "They want to start with me first, cause I'm Jewish."

Woman: "You should be so lucky."

The Arabic men were silent throughout this situation. The old man shut up after the woman's last line. All I have to add is, in another city, or in this city on another bus, I could easily see a different reaction from the others on the bus, one where they justify the old man's fear and also complain to the driver about being "nervous." It could have turned into a really ugly situation, well, uglier than it already was. You know what I'm nervous about? All the dumbasses in the world that feel like that old man. That really makes me nervous.

Tying The Knot, Part 5: How To Pick A Date

2010-08-10T08:17:00.004-05:00

MURFREESBORO, TN--"So what made you decide on October 16, 2011?" I asked.

"Well, I like the months of September and October," she replied. "They're cheaper for things like flowers and arrangements and catering. Although October is an 'on' off-month. Very popular among the off-months."

Okay...

So I excitedly headed to the computer in the guest bedroom at my future mother-in-law's house here in beautiful Murfreesboro, where my fiancee and I are spending a few days of our weeklong vacation, and posted the date on my Facebook page, double-checking what day that date will fall on. Hmm, a Sunday, I thought. Not too many weddings on a Sunday. Maybe my fiancee, being very religious, has always wanted her wedding to be on a Sunday. So I went with it, warning my Facebook pals that they should save the date in pencil, since my fiancee hasn't actually checked with her church to see if that date is open.

My uncle happily replied on Facebook that it's great that we chose October 16, since it would be my deceased mom's birthday (his sister). I knew the date sounded familiar. But my fiancee had to tell me about this and other replies because right after I posted this Sunday night, I developed the worst headache I ever had, and she was in the room keeping me company at midnight after I burst into her bedroom begging for her Motrin. While watching over me, she checked her Facebook page and saw my announcement. Then she noticed the part about Sunday.

"October 16 is a Sunday?" she asked. I moaned yes while shielding the light from my eyes. "Did you check the date?" Despite me clearly saying yes, she checked herself and discovered her error. "Oops," she said. "I meant the 15th."

Like I said, save the date in pencil.

So finally, we have a (tentative) date. We know what church we want, and we're leaning towards the ultimate cheapo honeymoon, getting a room in downtown Memphis and acting like tourists. We're still debating the other details, such as whether we should cater or go to a restaurant for the reception and what method of invites we should use. I'm just relieved to have a freakin' date to look forward to. Oh, and my best friend "Jacob" is getting married next May and asked me to be his best man! How fucking cool is that? When I leave my job and move to Memphis next year after no longer being required to pay back tuition money to my employer, it will set off the busiest, most hectic year of my life. But since it will result in me and my honey finally starting a life as husband and wife, I will enjoy every second and soak all the memories in.

Yet Another Failure

2010-07-17T11:17:00.002-05:00

So I just saw that the radio station that I auditioned for a few weeks ago chose its Final Four, and obviously, I ain't one of them. Now, I'm no stranger to dealing with failure, but this newest one comes on the heels of a conversation I had with my fiancee a few days ago. She started counseling sessions with a therapist, and she has identified an issue in her life that needs immediate attention. It's her inclination to help people to a fault, to excess, where she ends up being parental and overbearing, giving unsolicited advice and possibly gaining a sense of self-worth in "being there" for people. She thinks she needs to curtail this activity for her own mental health. The problem for me is, I believe that I need that kind of person in my life for moments just like this, where I'm feeling no self-worth and I would love for someone to smother me with advice and love, or just for someone to give a fuck about me. I think that I'm sitting here at 34 with nothing to show for my life partially because I have major problems motivating myself, and I need someone to take charge and motivate me when I'm feeling down. She doesn't think that should be her job, and it shouldn't, but it doesn't mean that it's not what I need. We have also been having dialogue about how difficult it is to be in a long distance relationship, and that's an issue as well. I explained to her how hard it is to get up in the morning and go through my typical workday with no one there for me, even though I'm supposed to be engaged to someone. I got the sense that she didn't quite understand how difficult it can be for me. Maybe she doesn't feel the same difficulty. I find the following irony almost humorous: I'm here alone at home feeling as low as it gets because I failed at something (the talk show audition) yet again, days after explaining to my fiancee that it feels sometimes like no one's there for me...and she and I usually talk every Saturday morning at this time to connect and catch up, but she's unavailable today due to job commitments. The worst part is, I don't know what the hell I would expect her to do about what I'm feeling even if she were here or on the phone with me. I'd still feel like the loser that I am, and I might even take offense at her if she tried too hard to convince me that I'm not a loser because I would feel like she was ignoring the fact that I am a loser and was just trying to placate me. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be getting married. I've got so many issues that are nowhere near resolution--financial, career, emotional stability, personal self-esteem. I still feel like I wouldn't have been ready for a woman in my life right before I met my fiancee. The question on my mind sometimes is, was I really ready when I did meet her? Will I ever be ready? What's wrong with me???

Sound And Fury Signifying Unnamed Sources

2010-07-11T18:29:00.004-05:00

I had to post about the hype and silliness surrounding the whole LeBron James saga the last month or so, despite the drama coming to an end with his TV show "The Decision" this past Thursday. It's a fascinating look into the frenzy that surrounds a lot of media coverage in sports nowadays, and it shines a light on how hard writers and broadcasters are working to try to stay relevant, all while they appear to be less and less relevant.

As everyone knows, LeBron James has been the subject of endless speculation and rumor for the past year or so, because everyone knew that when this most recent NBA season ended, he would be a free agent, and which team he would choose was a great mystery. This speculation played itself out in the media in the form of endless writers and talking heads on TV and radio putting out their hot and heavy predictions and reports from their "sources." You name the journalist, he had a source that was telling him where LeBron was headed. Never mind that none of these people were talking to LeBron himself, since LeBron had announced early in the season that he wouldn't discuss his plans in the media. They all just knew that they had the inside track on his decision. Now, I was in the unique position of having the time to listen to talk shows daily from the top two speculated destinations for LeBron, here in Chicago and down in Miami. I listen to next-day podcasts of the Boers and Bernstein Show in Chicago and the Dan Le Batard Show from Miami while I work. They both happen to air at the exact same time, from 3 to 7 Eastern. (Boers and Bernstein's show is 5 hours long, so they start at 2 Eastern, or 1 Central.) This set up an almost unbelievable sequence of events that occurred live during their shows, linking them to each other in a way that neither could have imagined at the beginning of their broadcast day.

I don't remember the exact date, but I was listening to Boers and Bernstein's podcast, which was a show similar to all of their shows of the previous two weeks in that it was heavy on reports of various journalists writing or blogging or tweeting about their newest LeBron speculation. Bernstein breaks in rather breathily, if that's a word, about 3 hours into the show with word that Dan Le Betard of the Miami Herald had just "reported" that LeBron James was definitely not coming to Miami next season. Bernsie spent the next hour excitedly saying that it jibes with his reports from his "sources" that LeBron to Chicago is the most likely scenario. I was curious about this report from Le Batard because it was coming to Bernstein as if Le Batard had just wrote it, even though I knew that Le Batard normally would be on the air doing his radio show at that time of day. The next hour, Bernstein interrupts a thought and says, "Is this right? This can't be right. Dan Le Batard is now reporting that he was misquoted, that when he said James is not coming to Miami next year, he didn't mean LeBron James, he meant James Jones." Jones was a scrub for the Miami Heat last season, and his contract expired, so indeed, James Jones was not coming back to the Heat. But I felt bad for Le Batard because that would be a huge mistake to make if he wasn't clear which James he was talking about. And indeed, Bernsie savaged him for the remainder of the show for either confusing the Jameses or getting a bad report from a source and trying to backtrack by lying and claiming that he was never talking about LeBron. I was confused as to what kind of reporting Le Batard was up to, and I was very anxious to get home and download his show and hear if he was in the field calling in these reports to his show, or if this would be addressed on his show at all.

Imagine my surprise when I started Le Batard's show on my iPod the next day and heard him yapping away like always. I didn't know what to think at this point. Was Le Batard completely misquoted from the get-go? Were the reports Bernstein referenced from a Le Batard story he wrote earlier in the day? Would Le Batard talk about it in any way, shape or form? I listened very intently to the first 2 hours, and despite a ton of LeBron talk, there was no mention of any reporting being done by Le Batard. Then it unfolded very slowly, and everything became crystal clear. Just after two hours, which would put it in the exact same time frame as when Bernstein first mentioned Le Batard's report on his show, Le Batard and his co-host and producer start talking on the air about receiving phone calls from Canada because of a harmless, sourceless prediction Le Batard sent out on his Twitter that Chris Bosh, another highly sought-after free agent, would be coming to Miami after signing with his current team the Toronto Raptors and then agreeing to a trade to Miami. (The prediction was right on the money, BTW.) Le Batard and his cohorts were genuinely amazed that people in Canada were taking his tweet as gospel and were trying to contact him to follow up on it, as if it were a legitimate news item. They started batting around different shocking things they could write on Le Batard's Twitter account to see what kind of reaction they could get. After rejecting the headline of Pat Riley, Miami Heat top honcho and former coach, flying to Cleveland to discuss becoming their new coach because that would be too incendiary as well as a flat lie, they agree to posting a line about James definitely not coming to play for the Miami Heat next year. My mouth dropped as I realized that Bernstein, and maybe many other media outlets, had been duped into taking Le Batard's silly tweet as a serious piece of news and decided to relay it as a "report." The producer wondered how long he should wait until he posts the clarification that it's James Jones being referred to and not LeBron. But after a five minute break, they come back and realize that it's already out of control because the item had been re-tweeted 50 times in 10 minutes. The re-tweets were from all sorts of people--regular, earnest media folk as well as fans adding their own one-liners such as "No King LeBron in Miami, haha!" and "Suck it Miami!" The producer finally sent out the "clarification" maybe 30 or 40 minutes later as Le Batard half-jokingly chuckled, "My hard-earned credibility is going down the toilet!"

I'm still not completely sure why I found the whole episode so hilarious and brilliant. Maybe it was just because I was in on an inside joke that most people wouldn't ever understand because they won't know all the details. Or maybe it's because I got so sick and tired a long, long time ago of all these "insider" reports with these unnamed "sources" claiming that they have the latest scoop on LeBron when none of them knew any more than me. Maybe it was the fact that Dan Bernstein got pantsed on a Le Batard tweet, acting as if it was some sort of real report that backed up his bullshit claim that he somehow had the scoop that LeBron was likely coming here. As much as I love the Boers and Bernstein Show for the way that they rip anything dumb in sports and society, Bernstein gets off on being an insufferable prick, and he was actually trying to use this tweet to justify his claim that he had some knowledge of LeBron's decision. He knew NOTHING, just like everybody else. But this whole LeBron thing has been a real eye opener for me, as someone who hopes to be part of the media someday soon. (I even tried out last month for an open mike contest for a local sports station in which the winner gets a weekend talk show. Fingers crossed.) I hope and pray that I am never in a position where I have to rely on unnamed "sources," who could be anybody from a team exec to a member of a player's posse to the stadium janitor, to relay news to my listeners. I hate that shit so much. If my source turns out to be full of shit, my name and reputation take the hit, and the source gets no flak because he was unidentified. I'd rather find a way to fill my airtime in an entertaining manner talking sports and whatever else my listeners want to talk about. I don't want to have to step into the sewage that is reporting and journalism in a society where reporters are more and more unnecessary and uninformed. After all the speculation and punditry, LeBron's decision was announced by LeBron live on ESPN with more people watching than those who watched him actually play the game of basketball in the NBA Finals two years ago. That rendered all the Stephen A. Smiths and Ric Buchers and Chris Broussards and all the other jokers who claimed to have inside knowledge completely useless, and it pointed out how desperate those writers are to continue to matter in today's world, where the athletes or celebrities can take to their blogs or Twitter to break whatever news about themselves without the assistance of journalists. Chuck D. wasn't talking about them when he rapped about folks "talkin' loud, ain't sayin' nothin'." But he might as well have been.

So Much For Getting My Title Back

2010-06-11T07:34:00.002-05:00

Just found out this week that all of the ESPN Zones are closing. Guess I won't have to be tortured until next year aching to get my Sports Spelling Bee title back. I'll now have to ache...until the end of time!!!!!

Or, I can get over it and focus on pursuits that actually mean something.

The Perfect Storm

2010-06-07T20:43:00.001-05:00

There's a great old episode of The Honeymooners where Ralph Kramden is entered to compete on a Name That Tune-type game show and has to bone up on his music knowledge to prepare for the show. He enlists Ed Norton to come to the apartment and play sheet music on a piano, and Ralph practices being able to name the song, artist, writer, and composer. Ed, being a quirky character, has to play a little piece before every single song as a warm-up. Ralph gets annoyed quickly with this, but he's running through the songs with ease, and his confidence swells with every tune. Well, Ralph finally makes it to the show, smiling, cocky, rarin' to go, and then as the first song is played, you can see the blood rush away from his face as he recognizes the tune as that annoying little piece Ed had to play before every song. Ralph had failed to learn about that little piece because he completely overlooked it, focusing instead on the songs that were there on paper. It never occurred to him that the annoying little piece--which, BTW, was "Swannee River"--could possibly be one of the songs on the show. It's a wonderful lesson on confidence, overconfidence, preparation, and the pitfalls of assuming that you're totally ready for anything.

It's a lesson that I thought I had learned throughout my years, because I get the feeling that the ratio of times in my life that I felt that I was going into something ready to dominate and excel compared to the number of times that the event went all wrong and I looked like a damn fool is a very high ratio. There's going into a new grammar school thinking that I was going to be the cool dude because I was from a hardscrabble part of town and they were just a bunch of nerds; they turned out to be rich nerds who knew how to manipulate any situation so that I always seemed uncouth and beneath them. There's going to parties as a kid thinking I was going to dance and show off and be the man; but others were always much better at dancing and showing off, and I usually chose to be a wallflower and not risk embarrassment. There's going on various dates and social outings thinking that I was going to dazzle the women with my intelligence and charm; that almost never worked out for whatever reasons. (Maybe I'm not nearly as smart and charming as I think I am. Thank goodness my fiancee has been fooled into loving me anyway, or I might still be on Craigslist getting taken advantage of by fat sluts.) The point is, I feel that my life has been a series of lessons on not getting too confident about any upcoming event or contest no matter how good I feel about it.

Chalk up another painful lesson for me. Guess I still haven't learned.

I had been looking forward to the ESPN Zone Sports Spelling Bee literally from the moment that I won it last year. It was such an intoxicating feeling to walk into a competition that I felt like I had a right to be in--unlike, say, trying to pick up a hot chick at a bar or applying for a job that I'm not qualified for, which are events that are not very fun because of the underlying feeling of shooting for something that's out of my range--and actually winning the thing. I couldn't wait to come back this year and repeat the feat. When I e-mailed my registration, I wrote an extra little note at the end: "Make sure my trophy is nice and shiny." And I felt even better about my chances this year because there were several Chicago-area sports names that I would have been eliminated on if I got them last year, and I did some studying in an attempt to be prepared for them. I took the day off work this past Thursday because I didn't want to be tired after working all day and go to ESPN Zone and defend my title while trying to stay awake. I had taken some online tests last weekend to brush up on some of the popular hard-to-spell sports names nationally. I wound up typing "Krzyzewski" about ten times. So Thursday, I spent an hour or so researching the web sites of the Chicago Fire (soccer), the Chicago Sky (women's basketball), and the Chicago Blackhawks (hockey). I figured that I knew the names of all the Cubs, White Sox, Bears, and Bulls, because those teams compete in sports in which I play fantasy versions, and it's imperative that I know how to spell baseball, basketball, and football names so that I know who I'm drafting and acquiring in trades. So I wrote down names from the Blackhawks, Sky, and Fire that may trip me up because I was unfamiliar with them, and I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket as I left for ESPN Zone supremely confident. It was names from those other fringe sports that would have knocked me out last year, and that's why I chose to study them this year. But apparently I didn't study them hard enough.

My friend "Drew" decided to attend the contest this year since he works downtown and it wouldn't be a big deal to check me out after work. He even texted me hard names as a way to quiz me, and I knew them all. Byfuglien. Hjalmarsson. Brouwer. Antti Niemi. Cuauhtemoc Blanco. You name it, if it was a Chicago sports star with a difficult name, I had studied it and felt that I knew it. When I arrived, I looked for him briefly, but he wasn't there yet. I then went to the sign-in table where a couple were just ahead of me receiving their placards. That meant that if I had arrived a minute earlier, I would have been ahead of them in order. (Remember that for later.) Drew arrived shortly after that. It was about 6:05. The lady at the table told me to come back to that same area just before 6:30 so that the director of the event could give us contestants the rules. I decided to sit with Drew up front in leather reclining chairs that he requested just so he could be in the front row for my coronation. He ordered food and I ordered a Coke from a comely black waitress. Drew and I shot the shit for about twenty minutes, then when the waitress asked if I wanted to order food, I made a show out of taking one last sip of Coke, grabbing my placard, saying, "Maybe later, I got some business to take care of," and running off as if I were O.J. sprinting for my plane. I got to the entrance area and saw the aforementioned couple and several male geeks standing around with placards around their necks looking for all the world like they were attending DragonCon. One guy was a brotha and was wearing a Blackhawks T-shirt with Jonathan Toews's name on the back, and I made a mental note to amuse myself if Toews's name came up in the competition. I actually heard one dude tell another dude, "He won it two years ago, and he won it last year," pointing at me. Obviously, the man who won in 2008 was here, but I didn't acknowledge being pointed at because I didn't want to seem too geeky. I just coolly stared at a TV screen pretending to watch something. We had been standing around for about ten minutes before the comely black waitress approached me from the left, tapped me softly on the elbow, flashed a billion-dollar smile and said, "Good luck." I thanked her and smiled back, then wondered how big of a tip she expected just because she pretended to care about how I did in this silly-ass competition.

Another ten minutes passed before Drew came back there wondering what was the hold-up, but at that same moment, the director walked through and I shooed Drew away thinking we were about to start. But it was yet another five minutes (and a walk-through the opposite direction by the director, who recognized me from last year and said "Welcome back") before he finally gathered all 16 of us competitors in a fire-escape hallway and ran down the rules. He had the 2008 winner and me raise our hands and take sparse applause for being past champs back for more. I had the most arrogant smirk on my face as he ran down the rules because I knew the rules and I was just waiting for the show to begin so that I could show off the skills that I had been harnessing for 365 days. It was a complete turnaround from last year, when I didn't know what I had gotten myself into and I just hoped before the contest started that I didn't embarrass myself by going out on the first name. I did a mock "Ooh" when the director told us that two extra prizes had been added for the grand prize winner, a year's supply of Powerade and a signed Luol Deng jersey. I wondered how I would cash in that many Powerade coupons at the store, especially since I don't have a car. The director finished his instructions and lined us up down in front, just like last year. I didn't even look at Drew presumably sitting in his seat right up front. I was the focused gladiator, ready for the war to commence, with no fear of losing. I even rubbed the trophy as I passed by before the contest began. I figured I was gaining a companion for the trophy from last year. I imagined them sitting side by side on top of my TV like twins. I had but one concern, and it was a bit irrational: I worried that I might go too fast on a name trying to show off, and I would put a letter accidentally in the wrong place. Never did I think they would give me a name that I didn't know.

The director told us right before the show began that there was a film crew there, which was not the case last year. They were from some local website, not a real news crew. We were told who the cameraman and interviewer were literally seconds after I saw them talking and noticed how incredibly ill-fitting the interviewer's dress was, way too tight for her age and too low-cut for her drooping breasts, and I wondered who the fuck they were. Then it was time to do it. As was the case last year, the guy who won in 2008 went first, because remember, the order was determined by who showed up first. The director told him that to make things a little more fair, he was to pick a number between 1 and 27, and the director would start reading names from that number so as to thwart any complaints about certain names being harder than others. This way, it was a totally random deal as to who got what name. The 2008 champ said, "It doesn't matter. We'll start with 1." My first name was Derrek Lee. I may have gotten him last year, too. I don't remember who my second name was. A blonde standing in front of me, half of the couple that arrived seconds before I did, asked me about the prizes that I received last year. I remembered standing behind a chatty blonde last year, too. I wondered if it was the same one. I was cool, calm, collected. Then the third round began.

This is a good spot to point out to those of you who aren't sports fans that the Chicago Blackhawks are smack dab in the middle of the Stanley Cup Finals, and the city has hockey fever like never before. In fact, the 2008 winner was decked in a Hawks jersey and cap, in addition to the black dude with the Toews shirt. So it should have come as no surprise that the list for the third round seemed to be all Blackhawks. Those hockey names are really good for spelling bees, you know. Our friend the 2008 winner was again given the choice of what number to pick so that the moderator could maybe start in a more random place. He again chose to start right at 1. It truly didn't matter to him. I don't remember if there were four or five people ahead of me at this point, but I do remember that all of the names in that round up to my turn were Blackhawks. Remember, I wrote down several of the more difficult Hawks names and glanced at the list on the train before I arrived. I looked at the Hawks roster online. Whether I spelled it right or wrong, if I received the name of a current Hawk, Sky or Fire, my eyes had seen the name earlier that very day. I recognized the name I got as another Blackhawk, but not as a difficult one that I had written down. The name was Brian Bickell. Now, I'm no hockey fan, despite the shaggy beard that I'm currently sporting in support of the Hawks' playoffs. (It's a tradition that teams in the hockey playoffs don't shave until they're eliminated or win the whole thing; certain loser fans with no lives, like me, chose to follow the tradition as if we're on the team.) So I didn't know who this Bickell guy was. And as a result, I had overlooked studying the one name that isn't difficult at all if you know the player, but it is difficult if you don't know him because there are several plausible spellings of Bickell. The first one that popped into my mind was Bickle, like Travis Bickle, the DeNiro character in Taxi Driver. So I start spelling the part of the name that I know is right, the B-I-C-K part. Then I pause, and my eyes widen as the realization washes over me that, uh oh, I actually don't know this guy's name and I'm gonna have to guess. I hate guessing in a spelling bee. What's the odds of being right on a guess in a spelling bee? The world stopped spinning as I pushed out the L-E from my voice box with a questionable inflection. The whistle blew. The yellow flag went up in the air. I had been eliminated. And my little insulated world imploded.

I never did look over at Drew.

I selected a cap from the collection of caps and T-shirts that were available as prizes for the also-rans after they got knocked out. Then, because to walk to my seat next to Drew would have been impossible thanks to the show going on right in the path that I would have to take, I stood in the back, lurking in the shadows as if waiting for another chance to enter, and I watched the rest of the competition. I swear before God, there wasn't a name that I heard that I didn't know and wouldn't have gotten correct, except for, of course, the name I got. Not in the entire fucking contest was there read another name that I didn't know. It didn't end much later after I lost because the list was so hard that people were getting eliminated very quickly. Maybe ten minutes after I got knocked out, some guy put an O in the name of Bears safety Al Afalava, the 2008 winner nailed Bears long snapper Patrick Mannelly, and the sordid affair was over. The shaking of the winner's hand by me had to endure a horrible five-minute interview of the new champ by the whore in the tight black dress. I nervously laughed as I shook his hand and said, "Those damn hockey names!" He laughed back and tossed me some kind of compliment. I didn't hear it because I was looking at this guy with his thick glasses and shaggy hair and slovenly clothes, who was entry #1 last year and this year because it meant so much to him to win this thing that he showed up twice before anyone else, and I was thinking, "My God. It's like I have a twin!" I then sat next to Drew, who just shook his head and smiled and asked, like a child whose hero had missed the game-winning shot and had let everyone down, "Brian Bickell?" The waitress came back and said, "I'm sorry. You better come back and win it next year!" I promised that I would and ordered dinner, then turned to my left to see the champ take the recliner next to me, trophy still shining in his hand. I mostly ignored him and watched the NBA Finals Game 1 with Drew. We left at halftime.

Since then, I've been reeling. I'm gonna say this big shpiel and then try to let it go. It was, by any rational observer's viewpoint, a perfect storm of coincidences and situations that led me to get this one name that I didn't know in a contest where EVERY OTHER FUCKING NAME was a name I knew. I left my house a little earlier than I did last year because last year, I was running in the door right at 6:30 and I almost missed the damn thing. Also, I took a different route that avoided all the traffic that slowed me down last year. That's why I was there at 6:05 and not at some other time. Any other time, I would not have been the #8 competitor. The route that I took had me going down the stairs to the subway, where I came across a friend from high school that I hadn't seen since 1995. The five minutes that we spent chatting and exchanging numbers may have caused me to miss an earlier train, which would have gotten me to ESPN Zone earlier than the two people who were registering right as I got there. If I had been really cool and not registered the moment I arrived, I would have gotten a different number. In the actual contest, if someone other than the 2008 winner would have been contestant #1, perhaps they choose a different word to start on than #1. If the guy has the slightest bit of creativity and chooses ANY OTHER NUMBER than #1, I don't get that name. If the list isn't created with that name in that position, I don't get that name. And, of course, if I don't overlook that name while studying, then I don't have a shitload of excuses to whine about.

I was fine in the direct aftermath of the spelling bee. Sitting there with Drew, eating and watching some hoops, ignoring the guy next to me who stole my title...I felt fine, no big deal. But as soon as I got ready to leave, it started to bother me. I received a certificate for a game card in addition to the cap. I gave the certificate to Drew. I looked at the cap and noticed that it had the apparel company's name across the front. The company was Champion. I figured that I used to be a champion, but today I wasn't. I left the cap. I also left the placard, which I kept last year. You know, when I won. No point in keeping it to commemorate this year. I got downstairs to take the subway home, and found myself standing against a big brick wall. I nearly turned around and banged my head off the wall. I was absolutely crushed. Who takes a day off and studies for a sports spelling bee and then LOSES on a name that he looked at and didn't bother to study? What kind of world-class loser does that? It could only be me, the one and only Planet Dre. This year of frustration and self-doubt and self-loathing that I'm about to go through before next year's contest, I wonder: Did the guy who won in 2008 and this year but lost to me last year go through this in the days and weeks and months after he lost? If so, then I guess the only solace I can take is that he stepped up and took his title back. He ignored anyone in his life trying to give him perspective, telling him not to worry about losing because you can't win 'em all and it's just a silly spelling bee, and he came back and took what he thought was rightfully his.

In 2011, once again it will be my turn. Toews, Byfuglien, Swannee River, and any other word they wanna throw at me. I will own them all. Unless I'm living in Memphis with my wife. As important as it is, it's not quite that important.

Unc To The Rescue?

2010-04-25T16:45:00.002-05:00

On my Facebook page, I basically reiterated the whining frustration that I spit out in my previous blog post about not being able to go back to school and continue my pursuit of a broadcasting career. My uncle, to my surprise, left the following comment: "Find out some prices for classes and get back to me." I am thrilled that my uncle wants to help me out financially. I know that he has gone through some changes recently concerning his employment, and I'm not sure what his cash looks like at the moment. But it's a big gesture nonetheless. The fall semester is closer than I think, so I will have to figure out a course of action soon. I plan to spend a weekend with my uncle and have a conversation about how much help he can give me.

My fiancee has had to figure out for herself how best to support me as I writhe in anguish about my uncertain future. She's said that basically she will back off trying to verbally encourage and push me and will wait for me to let her know in what manner she can assist me. This is on the heels of my reaction to her "You don't want it bad enough" statement, which was not nearly as tame as my blog post. I hate the thought of shoving her away so bad that she now feels like she has to totally leave me alone. I really like having someone pushing me actually. But if I can't react to said pushing like a grownup, I shouldn't be getting pushed. She said that she has to work on how to be constructive in her criticism. Perhaps, but I certainly need to work on my reception of criticism. Now that I think about it, the archive of this blog is a running record of my inability to accept criticism. Guess I'm still working on it.

I was able to spend a quick weekend in Memphis with my fiancee this past weekend. It wasn't quite running down there for two days, but it was damn close. I called in sick to work last Friday, rode the bus for nine hours, got there Friday night, then left Sunday evening at 11 and rode ten hours back to Chicago, where I decided to go straight to work upon arrival because I didn't want to use another vacation day or sick day. (I don't think I'll ever try that again.) So that's two days and Friday evening, officially. Her job is not letting her use multiple vacation days in a row for some reason, so she can't take off for a few days to come see me. At the moment, it's up to me to make the trips and keep up the face-to-face contact. I'll be back down there in August for a week, most of which will be spent visiting her mother. She's lucky I love her, or I'd really be bitching and moaning about the travel. She did have to cook me a meal of my choice thanks to me beating her in the college basketball Bracket Challenge, and I really enjoyed the whole wheat tortellini with chicken and creamy pesto sauce. A Caesar salad and garlic bread accompanied the main dish, and a French silk pie for dessert made the meal complete. Magnifique! And the fooling around was much fun, as always.

Finally, I wanted to write up a sports-related rant just to get into the rhythm of it. I figure if I'm going to start a podcast soon, or maybe even take a freelance sports writing gig, I should find my voice as it relates to how I want to set the tone of my maniacal ravings. So don't be surprised if I make this blog much more sports related in the future, even more so than it already is. But I'll never delete the past postings or totally turn away from the personal nature of my past postings. This will always be the story of my adult life post-"Karen," no matter what. Anyhow, the only sports-related item I want to briefly talk about is the walking turd that is Milton Bradley. Bradley played for the Cubs last season, and he was so bad on and off the field that they traded him before this year began. If you're not aware of the Milton Bradley Show, then Google him. Basically, he's been hated everywhere he's gone throughout his decade-long career because his attitude is completely sour. Nothing that happens to him is his fault, if you ask him. It's all the bad fans, or the manager who doesn't understand him, or the players who can't stand him, or the media who wants him to be the bad guy. But the one that sent me over the top was his comments about the racist Cubs fans in Chicago, specifically the ones in the Wrigleyville neighborhood, where he and his kids lived during last year. He accused the primary school where his kids went of being racist against his 5-year-old. The kids and the teachers used derogatory names, according to Milton. That sounds completely ridiculous to me. The thought of 5-year-olds being allowed to use racial slurs in a big city in 2009 or 2010 doesn't make much sense. What really got me upset was the accusation that the surrounding neighborhood was racist. It's bad enough that the man has no credibility as it is, because there's always been a problem with everyone else wherever he's gone. He's never the issue, according to him. But this time, he decided to point the finger at an area where I used to live. For three years, I lived five blocks from Wrigley Field. So I can say this with total certainty: Not only is the Wrigleyville area not racist, it's probably the most diverse in the whole fucking city! I saw every mix of creed and color you can imagine on a daily basis--interracial couples and families, gay couples, lesbian couples, you name it, it's walking in the streets every day in that part of town. I never once saw an act of hate against anyone. In all the times I socialized with whatever white woman I happened to be dating, I never had a bad word said to me or had a cross look thrown my way. So this asshole slandered a part of Chicago that probably least deserved slandering, all because the fans in that ballpark booed his dumb ass when he played like shit. When blacks in general complain about racist behavior, we usually get an eyeroll from whites, who are sick of hearing us bitch about the bias that they feel we're making up. The reason Milton Bradley pissed me off so bad is because he's the type of person that whites sometimes imagine we all are like. We're not all complete jerks looking to accuse anyone who dislikes us of being racist. But the more guys like Milton and Dusty Baker complain about those big bad evil white people, the less white people are apt to trust us and treat us equally, which is all we really want.

"You Don't Want It Bad Enough"

2010-04-10T09:07:00.002-05:00

That was the sentence my fiancee said to me a few weeks ago when I was running down the list of excuses I have relating to why I am not currently pursuing a broadcasting career as I claim that I want to. It stopped me in my tracks. I sat in silence for a few minutes after she said it, and I'm sure she was wondering what was going through my mind. I just kept thinking how breaking into broadcasting is the thing I think about every day, dream about every day, the thing that I want as much as anything. Hell, I listen to three to six hours of sports podcasts daily while working, listening to different styles and rhythms, comparing what I want to do with what's being done successfully right now. There's a lot that can be said about why I'm not taking any steps right now to achieve this dream, but the last thing I thought anyone would say is that it's not something I want bad enough.

The truth is, I'm a pussy and I'm scared to jump into anything that is uncertain and unfamiliar and doesn't have a clear path to guaranteed success. That doesn't mean I don't want it bad enough. It means that, just like my pursuit of any woman or any job or any material possession, I am very careful when I don't have a clear path carved out to something because I'm so afraid of the unknown, not to mention failing spectacularly. (I have to write a post at a later date about all of the comically tragic things I did in a vain attempt to pursue my junior high school crush.) This fear is a bad thing, I realize, but like any other bad habit, it takes a tremendous amount of hard work to overcome it, and I haven't overcome it yet. I have to keep thinking about my successes in order to keep myself from falling into the depressing rut that I used to be in. There was a time six to twelve years ago that going back to school was not something I wanted to try for fear of failure, that proposing to a woman was laughable because I couldn't imagine anyone saying yes to me, that even taking a role speaking out at meetings at my job was something I couldn't see myself doing. I've done all those things in the last few years, so I'm getting there. But to overcome my fear of failure and fear of not being good enough to take the next steps needed to pursue a broadcasting career, it's going to take a monumental surge of self-esteem. That's because I don't have any contacts in the industry, so my next step will have to be some kind of leap of faith. The way I see it, I will either have to start my own webcast and hope that a dozen people someday listen to it, or I will have to intern at a radio station and hope that someone takes the time to help me break in. But that's not something I have the time to do because I am living check to check and I can't sacrifice the forty hours I work per week, and I'd like to keep my weekend hours free in pursuit of a side job to help pay my bills. It was in the midst of running down this list that my fiancee flatly said, "You don't want it bad enough."

So that's what's up with me right now. I'm square in the middle of this spot in my life where I want to go higher, but I have absolutely no idea how. It sucks. I even briefly considered looking into an opening in Tampa, a place I've never been in my life, for a P.A. announcer for Tampa Bay Rays baseball games. If I wasn't engaged and I could leave my job, who knows. All I can do is hope that I figure out my next move soon and gather the gumption to actually make that move. But anyone reading this, make no mistake: I may have a ton of reasons why I'm not on the air right now, but lack of desire is not one of them.

Super Bowl XLIV

2010-02-07T10:38:00.002-06:00

New Orleans vs. Indianapolis (-4.5)

There's not a lot to break down in this game, so I'll be brief. These are the top two teams in the league. Indy was famously 14-0 before they made the conscious decision to quit trying to win until the playoffs started. New Orleans made it to 13-0 before faltering. It's so rare to get the two best teams against each other in the Super Bowl. I am so excited to see this game. And they're built similarly as well. Both use a wide-open aerial attack to establish leads in the first three quarters of games, then rely on a fresh ground game and opportunistic defense to lock the contests away. The Saints passing offense has Drew Brees and an endless supply of weapons. The Colts have Peyton Manning, the greatest commander of an offense I have ever seen, and an endless supply of weapons. So why am I taking New Orleans to win? A couple of reasons. The main one is that I simply trust the Saints pass defense to make a play late in the game more than I trust the Colts pass defense. I'm calling a crazy back-and-forth battle of offensive machines marching up and down the field, but I believe in Darren Sharper, Jonathan Vilma, and Will Smith to make the one play that changes momentum more than I believe in Antoine Bethea, Robert Mathis, and a hobbled Dwight Freeney. The secondary reason that I don't like the Colts has to do with my background betting horses. Not that I was ever much good, but one lesson I picked up is, before you fall in love with a horse's credentials and his streak of placing well in his last several races, check the class of those races. Make sure that you're not about to bet on a horse who has won his last three races on the claiming level but is now stepping up to allowance company. Or a horse riding high in lower allowance races who's now running in a graded stakes race. In other words, I absolutely hate the Colts pass defense in relation to the two playoff games they played. First, they got to hold Joe Flacco and the 18th-ranked Ravens passing offense to just three points. Then, they saw rookie Mark Sanchez and the 31st-ranked Jets passing offense, and even then, they let career underachiever Braylon Edwards get behind them and score an 80-yard touchdown. Ladies and gentlemen, the New Orleans Saints and the #4 passing offense in the NFL represent a major step up in class. If the New York Jets could throw for 257 yards in the AFC title game, what the hell are Drew Brees and the Saints going to do to them? Give me the Saints in an all-time gunfight at the OK Corral. Who dat?

My Pick: New Orleans 42-37

NFL Conference Finals '10

2010-01-24T09:31:00.002-06:00

The big day is here, the day where we find out which two teams will advance to play for the title. (Can I say play for the Super Bowl? There's so many lawsuits if you use that term without the NFL's permission, I'm not sure if I can even utter it out of my mouth without paying royalties.) On to my bad predictions!

New York Jets @ Indianapolis (-7.5)

Now where the heck have I seen this matchup before? It seems so familiar to me...oh yeah, now I remember! Week 16. Colts are 14-0, on the verge of a perfect regular season. Jets are fighting for their playoff lives. But the Colts have everything clinched. 1st round bye, home field throughout the playoffs--Indy has everything wrapped up already. Rumor is, they're going to yank their starters out of the game about halfway through so as to protect them from a freak injury, because we all know that starters can't get hurt during the 1st half of games. Middle of the 3rd quarter, Colts have just rallied to take a 15-10 lead on the Jets...and here comes something named Curtis Painter to play QB for the Colts as Peyton Manning looks on helplessly. Final score: Jets 29, Colts 15. Goodbye perfect season. Big middle finger to the fans who not only root for the Colts, but specifically the ones who paid good money to see this farce. Ironically, the Colts threw a game to the Jets in order to theoretically give themselves a better chance to get to the Super Bowl and win. And today, who stands between the Colts and the Super Bowl? It's the Jets. The same team the Colts could have killed if they played to win the game (hello?) in Week 16, because a loss would have knocked the Jets out of playoff contention. All karma points toward picking the underdog Jets to stick it to the Colts and beat their starters today instead of their junior varsity. I can't pick that. My thoughts on the Colts last week applies tenfold today--Manning and everyone else on that team have to feel like the Super Bowl is the only acceptable outcome to this season after pissing away a chance at perfection, and even more so today because to lose to the team that wouldn't have been in the playoffs at all had they beaten them would be a monumental boner. I'll call the game like this: The Colts had to rally to take a lead in a defensive struggle in Week 16. But to put the Jets behind means to make them rely more on QB Mark Sanchez through the air than RBs Thomas Jones and Shonn Greene on the ground. Therefore, if the Colts would have kept playing in Week 16, and not let Curtis Painter and the other scrubs in the game to turn the ball over and give up great field position, then the Jets would have had to come back using their passing game. Yes, the 31st-ranked passing game in the league. Don't know in what quarter, but I say Colts get a lead today and never give it up.

My Pick: Indianapolis 24-10

Minnesota @ New Orleans (-3.5)

In the main event of the evening, two heavyweight offenses slug it out in the Bayou for the NFC title. In one corner, an offense in the Saints that seems capable of looking as good as any offense in the league when it's clicking. I talked last week about how awesome the Saints looked against New England earlier this season, but I couldn't pick them over Arizona because they hadn't looked that good since then. Well, last week they looked that good and then some. The bye week clearly did them good. In the other corner, an offense that seems to constantly be at odds with itself, but it didn't matter last week because the Vikings defense terrorized the Dallas Cowboys and didn't allow QB Tony Romo any time to operate. I was afraid of that happening when I picked Dallas, and sure enough, the front four of Minnesota dominated the Cowboys offensive line all day long. They're certainly capable of doing that today to New Orleans, too. But I think about the perfect storm of happenings that have to occur in order for the Vikings to get the job done today: Brett Favre's wild passes have to find Sidney Rice or any of his other WRs in perfect stride while the defensive backs aren't even looking for the ball (honestly, the Cowboys secondary looked like they had no interest in picking up the football in the air, and once it was caught, they had no interest in stopping the receiver from running away), Favre and coach Brad Childress have to co-exist knowing that they have widely differing viewpoints on how the offense should be run, the playmakers on the Vikings secondary that were playing at a high level at the beginning of the season have to get it going against one of the top offenses in the league, AND they have to do it in the Superdome, one of the toughest places for a visitor to play, even though the Vikes sported only a 4-4 road record this season. That's too many obstacles for me. Saints QB Drew Brees wasn't even called on last week to have a great game because the defense and RB Reggie Bush were so effective. So I can see Brees having a tremendous evening in the town that has adopted him in the last few years as maybe the best player in franchise history. And don't forget Favre's tendency to gag in big moments and start heaving up multiple interceptions in desperation. Ask the Jets how that felt towards the end of last year. I'm picking Saints vs. Colts in a very entertaining Super Bowl matchup.

My Pick: New Orleans 38-34

NFL Conference Semis '10

2010-01-16T08:47:00.003-06:00

A perfect 0-4 last weekend. Nice. Hey, I warned you to print my picks and bet against them if you want to make some money. You degenerate gamblers out there missed a beautiful four-team parlay betting against my dumb ass. So here's your opportunity to make some cash this weekend. On to my horrible picks!

Arizona @ New Orleans (-7)

It was Week 12 this season on a Monday night when the New Orleans Saints dismantled the New England Pats 38-17 in one of the most complete football games I've ever seen by one team. The Saints looked like the greatest team of all time in that game. They threw, they ran, they defended, they could seemingly do no wrong. Here's what they've done since then: Week 13, went to overtime with the putrid Redskins, winning 33-30; Week 14, could only beat the Falcons by 3 in a game where the Falcons were missing their starting QB and RB; Week 15, fell to Dallas at home on a Saturday night; Week 16, fell at home in OT to the Buccaneers, one of the worst teams in the league; Week 17, resting star QB Drew Brees, got blown out by the Panthers. This is called whatever the opposite of momentum is. I'm afraid to pick the Cardinals, however, because the Saints are still the biggest socioeconomic happening in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. Big games at the Superdome since then have taken on this feeling of something much more than just a football game. They've seemed like celebrations of the spirit of New Orleans, what with the U2 pre-game concerts and the announcers hyping it up and the fans taking their fandom to another level. But I'm going to have to go with my instinct and say that the Saints haven't played good football in so long that I'm not confident at all in their ability to flip the switch and get it done this afternoon. The Saints defense has to hold Arizona somewhat in check in order to have a chance, and I don't see it happening because they don't have a great pass rush to disrupt the phenomenal Kurt Warner from throwing wherever he wants, and the secondary may be talented, but it's also old. A hidden x-factor may be Cards RB Beanie Wells, who is getting better and better in his rookie campaign. Give me the Cards in a wild aerial battle.

My Pick: Arizona 40-30

Baltimore @ Indianapolis (-6.5)

Indy is a big blind spot for me because of my admiration for the QB, Peyton Manning. I've had a chance to pick two Colts playoff games on my blog since I started posting my predictions, and both times I took the Colts, and both times they shit the bed. (This isn't counting my correct prediction of the Colts to beat Da Bears in the Super Bowl, because Stevie Wonder could have seen that one coming.) But I will take the Colts once again, because it's just too hard for me to overlook the most poised quarterback I've ever watched play the game. I started talking about Manning for MVP halfway through the season, and I didn't think it was close. What other QB would have led that group of wide receivers to 14-0? I know Reggie Wayne is as good as it gets, but who the bloody hell is Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon? I love Jay Cutler, the Bears QB, but he had better receivers than that on his team and couldn't do anything with them. And if you took Greg Olsen off the Bears and put him at tight end with Peyton Manning throwing to him, he'd be All-Pro. Instead, it's Dallas Clark making every catch thrown his way, because it's put in a perfect spot for him to catch it. The fact is, no one, and I mean no one, commands his offense the way Manning commands his. He's been in the system so long that he is the system, and anyone that comes on his team had better configure their skill sets to work in his system, or else they will not see the football come their way. Judging by last week's slaughtering of the Patriots, the Ravens still have what it takes to bust a QB in the mouf and screw up his game plan and make a mess out of the situation. But Peyton and the Colts have a unique motivational factor--throwing away those last two games of the regular season after finding a way to win every game prior to that. You could tell that Peyton and the rest of his teammates were very unhappy when they were yanked in the 3rd quarter of the Jets game in Week 16 so that Curtis Painter could come in and show the most ineffective leadership this side of the Republican Party. But this playoff run, starting tonight, was why the move was made--so Peyton and the rest of the team could be fresh and ready to make their big run towards the Super Bowl, the only thing that matters according to the Colts upper management. They can't come out and throw up in the very first playoff game after all that, can they? Well, they can, but I'll pick them not to.

My Pick: Indianapolis 24-16

Dallas @ Minnesota (-2.5)

The smallest spread this weekend, this is the gamblers' favorite for an upset of the better team, and I will reluctantly go along with the wiseguys on this one. I just hate the feel of the momentum going into the playoffs for the Vikings, even more than what I feel about the Saints. Bickering between the coach and QB, throwing a game away in Chicago on purpose to prove a point about whose style worked better (and the game mattered, too, because if the Vikings win that game, they would have finished the season with the same record as the Saints, and through tie-breaking measures would have gained home-field advantage throughout the playoffs)...and the coup-de-grace is that same coach, Brad Childress, thought to be on the hot seat before Brett Favre descended from on high and gave the Vikings the great season they had, deciding that the team was sick of him and he was sick of the team, so they had the entire bye week off so that they could spend time away from each other. Ladies and gentlemen, that don't sound like a team ready to unite and make a long playoff run. Not even a little bit. Now, to pick the Vikings to lose means that I now have to jump on the Cowboys bandwagon. Someone pass me the Alka-Seltzer. But hey, I can't deny that the Cowboys at the moment look like the picture of a unified team performing at its peak. Ironically, it started with the aforementioned upset win at New Orleans a month ago, and the 'Boys haven't stopped since, shutting out the Redskins and Eagles back-to-back to end the regular season, then repeating the domination of Philly last weekend. The pass rush is storming the gates, led by all-world LB DeMarcus Ware, and that allows the linebackers and secondary behind them to play great football because the opposing offense doesn't have time to execute the game plan. Meanwhile, QB Tony Romo may not look like a Hall-of-Famer, but he's not making mistakes, and he's got a devastating running game to rely on when the Cowboys take a lead, with Marion Barber's heavy, punishing style softening the defense up for Felix Jones to come in and sprint away from the pack. The Dallas Cowboys are ignoring the fact that the hapless Wade Phillips is their coach and Romo is their QB, and they are playing to their considerable abilities. The Vikings are arguing whether it's better for the 40-year-old QB to throw it up every play or for the young, talented RB Adrian Peterson to get more touches. And the Vikings' best CB, Antoine Winfield, was banged up and beaten badly on many plays the last few games of the season? Looks like the Cowboys are definitely the play here.

My Pick: Dallas 36-24

New York Jets @ San Diego (-7)

I must have yelled four or five times at my TV during the Bengals-Jets game last Saturday, "God, neither of these teams deserve to be in the playoffs!" Then Jim Mora called and said that if I excitedly yelled "Playoffs!?!" one more time, I would have to pay him royalties. But I digress. For those of you that watched that abomination of a game without digging your eyeballs out, congrats, and you can testify to the homeliness of Jets football: Run on 1st and 2nd down regardless of field position, keep your overrated rookie QB from having to throw as much as you can, and rely on your Pro Bowl cornerback to keep the other team's star receiver on Revis Island away from the footballs flying five yards over his head. And even with all that, the Jets should have lost because their TE Dustin Keller shouldn't ever be that wide open, and the "star" WR Braylon Edwards should be able to catch wide-open passes in the end zone, and against a real playoff team, dropping TDs loses games. Well, San Diego is a real playoff team, having won their last eleven games in a row, and Philip Rivers shouldn't miss his receivers by five yards, not only because he's better than Bengals QB Carson Palmer, but because his receivers are all about nine feet tall. Vincent Jackson, Malcolm Floyd, Legedu Naanee, and the great TE Antonio Gates--seriously, Rivers is flinging it to a bunch of Jolly Green Giants. That said, I can't go with the Chargers to cover a touchdown. For some reason, I see the Jets hanging in there. I think they're playing with that attitude you see some teams adopt, that "no one believes in us, so screw everyone" attitude, and that's always dangerous. Even with that, I see the Chargers and that big-time passing game putting the Chargers in the 20s or 30s, and the Jets having to play catch-up, which means more throwing for rookie QB Mark Sanchez and less running for the #1 rush offense in the league. Should mean disaster, yes? Maybe not. Sanchez did hit his receivers when asked to throw last week (as I mentioned, Edwards dropped a sure TD). The Chargers can allow some passing yards if they get in a shootout. And in the most random factor I've ever pulled out, Sanchez is playing on the West Coast, where he enjoyed great success in college at USC, so perhaps he will relive some of his glory days. I'm pretty much taking the Jets to cover because they look like the least likely playoff team playing this weekend, which means no one thinks they have a shot, which sometimes emboldens that team to play at a level they wouldn't think possible, just to prove loudmouths who know nothing (like me) wrong.

My Pick: San Diego 26-20

Wild Card Weekend '10

2010-01-09T07:27:00.003-06:00

Happy happy joy joy! Playoff football is here, and I am no longer working weekends so I get to watch the games live in their entirety instead of at 2A on tape after praying that I could get home from work without accidentally hearing guys talk about the games and spoil the results for me. (This happened. One Sunday a year or so ago I was walking down the street after work hoping to get home to see a Bears game that I taped, and some drunk strangers walked past me yelling about that awesome Bears win. I silently weeped.) And now, without further ado, here are my picks for the weekend. Print and bet against me if you want to make some cash:

New York Jets @ Cincinnati (-2.5)

I have to refer to ESPN writer Bill Simmons, who summed up the Jets brilliantly in his most recent column: "...everyone likes the 'red-hot' Jets to upset the Bengals this weekend, conveniently forgetting that they dropped six of seven games midseason before beating the Panthers to end the Delhomme era (Jake went out in style with four picks), winning consecutive road games over the 6-10 Bills and 2-14 Bucs, then mustering seven points at home against the Falcons in Week 15. From there, they whupped the Colts' second string and the Bengals' second string to sneak into the playoffs. Suddenly they're an enticing underdog pick. Huh???? They can win a road playoff game with a rookie QB who finished with 12 touchdown passes and 23 turnovers?" My thoughts exactly. Look, the Bengals don't exactly inspire confidence either--would it surprise anyone if Chad Johnson Ochocinco killed himself falling out of a pickup truck while filming a Chris Henry biopic?--but the Jets were one of four or five teams trying to make the AFC playoffs in the last week of the season, and none of them are any good. It's been said that the Bengals lost to the Jets last week knowing that the Jets would have to come play them in Cincy, and they would rather see Mark Sanchez and his 23 turnovers than the Houston Texans with the best wide receiver in the game, Andre Johnson. Perhaps. I saw a lot of dropped balls by the Bengals, so I don't think they were trying to lose necessarily, but they had a really bad game on the road in a hostile environment with their 1,000-yard RB, the great Cedric Benson, inactive. There are a lot of factors swung in the Bengals' favor today, so I'll take them to barely cover in the ugliest game of the weekend.

My Pick: Cincinnati 16-12

Philadelphia @ Dallas (-4)

Ah, the Eagles, the team that I absolutely cannot predict to save my fucking life. Since I'll get it wrong anyway, let's make this quick: I had Philly going into Dallas and whipping them last week to win the NFC East and get a 1st-round bye. They completely gagged it up, meaning the Cowboys won the division, and the Eagles happened to draw the Cowboys in Big D again as a playoff opponent, the second of three rematches this weekend from Week 17 regular season games last Sunday. The same theories apply this week as to why I liked the Eagles last week: Cowboys coach Wade Phillips and QB Tony Romo have atrocious track records in big games, especially late in the season and the playoffs, the Cowboys passing game would appear to be relatively easy to handle once you realize that there's one NFL wide receiver on the whole damn team (Miles Austin), the Eagles defense is underrated and capable of dialing up big blitzes and creating turnovers, and it would seem that this is the best core of receivers that QB Donovan McNabb's ever had, and they should never be out of any game with Jeremy Maclin, DeSean Jackson, Jason Avant, and TE Brent Celek running around. Give me the Birds in a Lone Star shootout.

My Pick: Philadelphia 41-37

Baltimore @ New England (-3.5)

Now I'm really going to get special on you: I'm going to use statistics to completely contradict myself. Pay attention. I like New England because Baltimore isn't young and talented enough on defense to overcome their rough, heavily-penalized style of football. The Ravens were tied for second this season in most penalties per game with 7.2. 7.2! I cannot take the Ravens to come into New England with their pop-gun passing offense and a highly motivated Patriots team playing their first playoff game since the David Tyree Bowl waiting for them, knowing that the Ravens are good for three or four silly penalties minimum in each half. The Ravens are so predictable on offense that even the Pats' subpar defense should be able to recognize: Run with Ray Rice, throw it up for 94-year-old WR Derrick Mason, occasionally try to hit 95-year-old TE Todd Heap on a seam route, lather, rinse, repeat. And Rice can be a weapon out of the backfield in the passing game as well. But the Patriots have the real weapons on offense in this game, with a (somewhat) healthy QB Tom Brady throwing to fellow Hall-Of-Famer Randy Moss. Moss seemed to be miffed earlier this season at the amount of balls being thrown to WR Wes Welker, who is much more willing to catch short passes over the middle for first downs than Moss. Mr. Moss no longer has to worry about Mr. Welker; he tore his knee up last week and won't be playing football anytime soon. This should result in a huge game for Moss against an exploitable Ravens secondary that at times this year looked old and decrepit. And don't be surprised if something named Julian Edelman makes a lot of those over-the-middle first down catches in place of Welker. He seemed to thrive in that role when replacing Welker earlier this season.

My Pick: New England 27-21

Green Bay @ Arizona (-1)

And now for the contradiction: Who led the league in penalties per game? That would be the Green Bay Packers at 7.4 (but hey, only 5.3 in their last three games!). And yet I will gladly take the Pack and all those penalties on the road. The matchup seemed like a slam dunk to me last week when I picked the Pack, and even though the Cardinals had nothing to play for and rolled over for Green Bay, I think Arizona is too old and beat up to turn on the juice and beat the Packers this week when it counts. This ain't quite the same Cards team from last year, when they shocked the world and got all the way to the Super Bowl. The parts are the same, but they're a year older, and some of them won't be playing anywhere near 100% this Sunday. Stud WR Anquan Boldin didn't practice all week and is a game-time decision. Top cover corner Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is banged up, and that's the wrong passing offense to be facing when your best cornerback is banged up. This seems too delicious. It's the 7th-ranked pass offense of the Pack against the 23rd-ranked pass defense of the Cardinals. And whatever comeback ability may remain in aging Cards QB Kurt Warner's arm should be curtailed by the much improved Green Bay defense, led by defensive MVP candidate Charles Woodson creating all sorts of chaos in the secondary. To top it off, Green Bay should be able to hold on to a lead late because RB Ryan Grant has lost his fucking mind lately. Yards per rush for Grant his last four games: 6.9, 4.6, 6.1, 4.6. That's Adrian Peterson at Oklahoma numbers, and he won't get much resistance from the Cardinals to keep that up.

My Pick: Green Bay 38-27

34 Years Of Thankfulness

2009-12-22T10:02:00.003-06:00

I recently posted my status on Facebook as "(Me), despite all his bitching and moaning, is pretty darn lucky." This was sparked by my fiancee calling before she went to bed just to tell me she loved me. That's not the first time she's done that, but it just struck me as special because of how miserable I've been the last several months, living on a shoestring budget now that my credit cards are in a debt consolidation program and can't be used by me until they're paid off, wondering when my fiancee and I will be stable enough to decide on a wedding date, living alone in my house despite having a fiancee...the madness never seems to stop. The reason I'm home typing today is because I had to use a sick day because my ankle is swollen, but a day off from work is something I'm always glad to take. So for once, I want to acknowledge the fact that I have many things to be thankful for, like said fiancee, and my family, and my job, low paying as it may be, and the roof over my head, and the food in my fridge. You know, things that 98% of us take for granted every day, including me. And since I haven't posted in a while, I'll touch on a couple of popular subjects that make me even more thankful.

I'm thankful that I'm not Tiger Woods. But I have to be clear about this. Under no circumstances will I say that Eldrick--I feel nasty calling him Tiger, considering that probably every single slut he had called him that as he came--had a bad life screwing a Swedish underwear model, slipping out of the house to bang every white girl he came in contact with, sometimes slipping them into the house (which is either the ultimate pimp move or a sign of a serious sexual addiction problem, or both). No, that lifestyle, amoral as it was, would seem to be the dream of every heterosexual male, except for one small part--the "wife" part. In today's modern sports world, Derek Jeter is the example held up as the guy who can fuck anything he wants and get no public persona hits because of the simple fact that he ain't married. But there are thousands of guys out there like him. They're what I like to call "adults." Nobody, and I repeat, NOBODY, should ever get married living the lifestyle that Eldrick did. There is absolutely no reason to vow that you will be faithful to one woman under God and the world knowing damn well that you won't be. I'll allow the possibility that he didn't realize how much he needed to get his freak on until he said "I do," and maybe he was intending to be faithful to Elin Nordegren, but that still makes him a child because you have to understand yourself enough to know that you're not ready to be in a committed marriage. I would allow that Elin agreed to an open marriage that would let him screw everything that moves, except I'm not sure why she then would be so upset with him that she'd bash his mouth in with a 5-iron Thanksgiving night. And all reports now say that she's divorcing him, so she's clearly not happy with his actions. The part that makes me glad I'm not Tiger is his reaction to all of this. For two solid weeks, whore after whore after whore came out of the woodwork and made some huge claims about Tiger--oops, Eldrick--that shocked and titillated certain people, and he hasn't confirmed or denied one of them. Not one! What kind of man either does all the bold things he's accused of doing and hides behind his website when he's exposed, or doesn't do those things and hides behind his website while skanks make cash off false stories about him? Oh, and cost him cash, too, because sponsors are dropping Mr. Woods left and right while he cowers under his silk covers. I don't care if he came out and cried in front of everyone, or if he came out in sunglasses and told everyone to kiss his Cablanasian ass, but to say absolutely nothing in hopes that this would blow over is wrong on every level. Thank goodness that I'm not as afraid of the world knowing the real me as Eldrick Woods is.

And also, I'm thankful that I wasn't Chris Henry. Henry was an NFL wide receiver who was such a malcontent that the Cincinnati Bengals cut him a few years ago, not because of his production on the field, but because he was dealing with various arrests and legal issues and was driving his coaches and bosses crazy. The Bengals brought him back this season, however. Character doesn't matter in sports so long as you can make the play. What, you don't think O.J. wouldn't still be getting tryouts if he could prove that he can still run the ball? Anyway, Henry was not with the team because he was injured, and he decided last week that a good use of his free time would be to chase his fiancee out of the house during an argument over wedding expenses, watch her climb into a pickup truck and drive off, and pursue the argument by jumping into the pickup truck and banging on the window yelling at her. He didn't stay in the truck very long. He fell off in the street, split his head wide open, and died the next day. What an incredibly stupid way to go. The sports media coverage was predictably slanted toward portraying Henry as misunderstood and a guy who was turning his life around and behaving well, blindly ignoring the fact that he was chasing his fiancee and may have had a violent message or two for her once he caught up to her. So if he didn't fall out of the truck and crack his skull open, he was on his way to not turning his life around and getting arrested again for assault and battery, at the least. I shouldn't have been surprised at the cameras capturing members of the Bengals wailing like some tragic thing had happened, especially when one of those men crying was Chad Johnson, a man so caught up in fame and the media spotlight that he legally changed his last name to Ochocinco in some bizarre tribute to his number, 85. Chad's tears probably didn't start until he felt the heat of a camera light on his skin. But I was a little surprised that of the many various media that I listen to--four sports podcasts daily, as well as a lot of ESPN television in the evening when I come home--only one expressed the opinion that this was a bad guy who died a bad, violent death, and the world's better for it: The Boers and Bernstein show in Chicago on 670-AM. Everyone else either ignored it or said that it was a horrible thing to happen. No it wasn't! It was a funny and really ignorant thing to happen, and it couldn't have happened to a more ignorant guy.

So on this, my 34th birthday, I recognize my need to be more aware of the good things in my life instead of always whining about the bad things. I may not have fame or riches like Eldrick and Chris Henry did, but at the moment, I wouldn't want to be either of them. Well, maybe Eldrick, not because of the pussy, which is nice but ultimately unimportant, but because of the moolah.

Stuck

2009-11-01T07:27:00.002-06:00

I'm stuck. I want to pursue a broadcasting career, which means higher education, but that takes time and money, neither of which I have. What little money I bring home from my crappy job is being sucked away by rent and credit card payments. Earlier this year, I had to enter a debt consolidation program because the monthly minimum payments had become too much for me to pay in cash, and I ran all my other cards up to their limits so I couldn't use them to pay off each other. So in exchange for having my payments lumped into one monthly debt and having that lump be considerably less than what I would owe if those debts were kept separate, I don't have access to those credit cards anymore. For the first time in more than ten years, I have to live on the wages I make and nothing else. The lifestyle adjustment has been at times overwhelming. No longer can I decide that I feel like going to Quizno's and getting a $7 sub because that's what I'm in the mood for. No longer can I notice that I'm short on cash and drop by an ATM to get more green. It's a very humbling experience to continually ask my aunt to let me pay $50 less than what I owe for rent because I simply don't have the money. It's very humbling to have my fiancee notice that I'm desperately short on food money and send me a big box of food, like I'm deployed in Afghanistan or something. She also recently sent me a $50 gift card to Jewel Food Store. I appreciate her efforts immensely, but she can't continue to support two people on one salary. I have been looking for a second job, but no luck thus far. And even when I find one, it's just a temporary Band-Aid, a way for me to pay my bills, not to save money and pursue an education. My fiancee and I can't really discuss wedding plans because nothing's stable in our lives. I can't afford a wedding right now, and if I could, she wants to wait at least a year because she may want to stay in Memphis and have me move down there instead of her coming up here. She found a job that she's happy with, and she sees potential career growth, so she's no longer a slam dunk to move to Chicago upon our nuptials. It's frustrating because we're both anxious to start our life together, not to mention the financial help I would have paying bills the moment I gain her as a roommate. I was determined not to be one of those couples who were engaged for seemingly years on end, but due to circumstances beyond our control, that's exactly where we're headed. And I'm not getting younger, on the marriage front or on the education front. I didn't want to be earning my bachelor's at 40 and trying to break into broadcasting then, but I may have no choice. And I don't want to wait any longer to get married now that I've found the one woman worthy of it, but unless we put together the world's cheapest ghetto wedding, it's not happening soon. I just feel like I'm in a hole that I can't get out of, and it's very, very frustrating.

Prediction Sure To Go Wrong

2009-09-12T09:50:00.003-05:00

I hate using a line from ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning Show, which is as cliched and hackneyed a sports talk show as you will ever hear, but it's true: My predictions always go wrong. I picked the Patriots to win the Super Bowl before last season started, and Tom Brady goes out and breaks his leg first game. So it's time to ask the question, Whose Season Do I Ruin This Time?

Well, I'm going to go with the upset special of picking an NFC team to win the Super Bowl despite being the inferior conference. Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb's window is slamming shut. He was able to close out a run of four straight NFC title games with a victory and a Super Bowl appearance, only to barf all over the field figuratively and literally in their loss to the Patriots. That was several years ago, and the Eagles managed to find their way to the NFC title game again last year only to bow down to Kurt Warner and the miracle Cardinals. I believe that the Eagles picking up Michael Vick despite having one of the best quarterbacks in football was a bit of a desperation move. But the fact is, the Eagles have one of the best pure athletes ever on their roster. Vick was the greatest running QB by the numbers that the game has ever seen. I'm convinced that the Eagles will figure out a way to put him to great use by the end of the season, even if it means taking plays away from McNabb at QB. Hell, McNabb is a pretty good bet to hurt himself at some point this season, and now instead of some unproven mark as a replacement, they have a QB with plenty of NFL experience. I just think there's a hint of desperation in Philadelphia. The veterans aren't getting any younger (and one, safety Brian Dawkins, left town this past offseason), and the defense has some extra motivation after their guru, defensive coordinator Jim Johnson, died two months ago. The running game got some help with rookie RB LeSean McCoy to spell oft-injured Brian Westbrook. The passing game may not have the high-quality weapon that Terrell Owens was, but the receiving corps has much depth. And I'm always a fan of motivation from a tough end to the previous season, and the Eagles led the Cardinals late in the NFC title game before choking down the stretch. I will take the Philadelphia Eagles to go to the Super Bowl and get that one elusive ring, outlasting the Baltimore Ravens in an ugly, hard-fought game. Let the season begin!

Catching Up

2009-08-09T10:42:00.006-05:00

I'm chilling at home watching some Law & Order: CI, and I finally did the dishes last night, so I have an opportunity to write a blog post and catch up on some events in my life and outside of it that I haven't commented on. Not a whole hell of a lot is happening in my life. There's a shift of lifestyle that I've had to adjust to, now that my credit card balances spiraled so far out of control that I had to enter a debt consolidation program and cut out my credit cards entirely. My lunches are consisting of homemade sandwiches almost every day, and if I don't find a part-time job soon I'll be forced to really start cutting some luxuries out of my life. But I strangely don't see the whole situation as that big of a deal. Lots of people are trying to get by daily on a lot less money than me, due to car payments and trying to raise children and other expenses that I don't have to worry about. So I'll be fine. I've survived much worse shit than this.

Here are some current event topics that I wanted to make blog posts about but never got around to it:

The Psycho-Pussy Phenomenon. Within a couple of weeks of each other, former NFL QB Steve McNair and boxer Arturo Gatti were murdered by their respective lovers. (McNair's wasn't his wife, and Gatti's death by purse strap strangulation was ruled a suicide by the cops in Brazil where he was murdered, just for the record.) But I pause one second to gather my thoughts on why men who can get any piece of ass they want instead go for young and mentally instable ass, and next thing I know Jason Whitlock has a column out saying the exact same thing (via Deadspin, although I'm not writing an article here, so I don't know why the fuck I'm bothering giving credit for where I saw the column). Whitlock says basically what I was thinking when I first heard about both cases, which is, why in hell would an athlete with money and some fame choose to shack up with young women who don't know what they want in life because they haven't lived long enough, not to mention might be psycho? Having sex with hot, young chicks, that's understandable (although it would have been nice for McNair to decide he wanted a divorce before having sex with hot, young chicks, but in a way that's none of our business). But McNair had an entirely separate life away from his home living with the nut that shot him, going on vacations with her and everything, as if she's mature enough to make your second wife at the age of 20, and Gatti made some 23-year-old stripper his wife. Both men were in their late 30s, and mark my words, both were going to throw the girls aside in ten or fifteen years once they got too old for their tastes. I don't have a problem with that. But you never make one of those young girls your life partner. You're asking for nothing for trouble when you take a hot flame and try to mold her into a housewife. And I can't even get into the press coverage of the McNair story because it was so ridiculous. He was painted as this warrior and great family man who had this tragic thing happen to him. You know who doesn't have tragic things happen to them? Guys who don't fuck little girls and then cheat on them while sleeping in the same house with them and guns are lying around. Try to avoid those loosely connected situations, and still be alive today. See how easy that works?

RIP, Freak. Speaking of sexually confused people, the world's most famous pedophile, Michael Jackson, passed on, and honestly, my second reaction (the first, like everyone else, was "OMFG!1!! MICHAEL JACKSON DIED!!!1!!") was, "I hope he's happy wherever he is." Talk about a guy who didn't like the skin he was in from a very early age. It's hard for me to imagine what being Michael Jackson must have felt like. I like to think I'm the foremost authority on not liking yourself very much, but I've never tried to go from a black man to a white woman, I've never tried to get my nose surgically reduced so much that it looks like a cheese wedge, and I've never desired to fuck little white boys as a way to reclaim my lost childhood. This guy was in so much pain, I can't even fathom it. Only those closest to him could possibly know what went through that guy's skull on a daily basis, and we'll have to wait a year or two for the tell-all books to start coming out. And for what it's worth, I don't think there's a valid reason for fucking little white boys, and it's despicable any way you slice it, but I'm just guessing he did it because it was a way for him to live out his lost childhood; perhaps little white boys were the purest, most innocent form of humanity to him, moreso than little girls or grown humans. But I really hope more than anything that his spirit finds a way to be happy now that it's freed from his body. Someone making as much money as he did, showing his talent as effortlessly as he did should have had so much more fun during his time on Earth, yet no one seemed more tortured in his own skin than Michael Jackson. It was time for him to get off this planet, when you think about it. He didn't die too soon. If anything he died too late, before his desires and psychological issues led him to suck off little boys and ruin their lives forever. Oh, and I've been told that Michael's daddy is a damn fool, but since I've never once paid attention to anything he's said, I can't confirm that.

Support Your Local Indy Fed. About six weeks ago, while walking home from the Metra train on the last Saturday night that I had to work before I started my new shift of M-F, I noticed a small white cardboard sign shoved into the ground that said "Pro Wrestling Tonight," with an arrow pointing across the street at a lonely-looking truck company office. I was thrilled and confused at the same time, thrilled because who knew there was a venue in my neighborhood large enough to hold wrestling matches, and confused because, well, where could this venue possibly be?? I'm telling you, that truck company office is a one-flat storefront, so I knew it couldn't be in there...could it? I went home and decided to search around the internet for any wrestling events on the West Side of Chicago, and thanks to the upcoming events tab at this website, I was able to locate the address and next event of an indy league called the UWC. The address was exactly where that truck company office is. The next show was the very next Saturday after I saw that sign. The cost was $5. I decided to attend. It wasn't worth the $5. First, finding the venue was a trip because as I said, that innocent little office didn't appear to be where the event could be taking place. Well, if you walk along the side wall of that little office, you have to go back about two city blocks to where most of the trucks are parked, but eventually you come upon a building with a row of offices lined up in a way so that it resembles a row of trailers in a trailer park. I frightened the shit out of this 40-year-old white woman who clutched her purse as I approached her and asked was there a wrestling match taking place around here somewhere. "OH, yes," she cheerfully answered, relieved that I wasn't there to rape her, "right through that door." This trailer-park looking place was also a one-flat, so I was still wondering how there was a wrestling match happening here. "Is this the way to the wrestling?" I asked a fat white girl in black jeans. "Yeah," she answered sarcastically, "did my t-shirt give it away?" She turned to show me the UWC t-shirt she was wearing, which was impossible for me to see since I was walking behind her, so yes, cumbucket, the t-shirt that I couldn't see gave it away. Through a corridor, I came upon a small room that had a front wall with framed wrestling magazine covers and pictures of guys that you've heard of and therefore wouldn't be in attendance this evening. Then, around the wall, the rest of the room was empty except for a concession area to the left with food that I wouldn't be ordering and t-shirts and lucha masks that I wouldn't be purchasing. A middle-aged Latina woman took my money at the door at the front of the room, and I stepped through into a larger room resembling a section of a warehouse with about 50 or 60 flimsy folding chairs set up in rows and a rickety ring against the far wall that looked like it would fall apart if someone breathed on it. One wall had a small opening at the bottom resembling a mouse hole. The smell was strong, like people had been sweating and grunting in there for many days before I ever showed up. Less than half the chairs were occupied. I was the only brotha in attendance, although there was a black guy doing very annoying play-by-play over the house mike, and there were a couple of black guys wrestling during the show, and the one and only referee they had was black. I had to sit on two of the chairs at once because I didn't trust just one of them to support my weight. One single small camera on a tripod stood to the right of the ring filming the night's activities. Of the first three matches, one of them featured a wrestler in wrestler's gear--you know, trunks and pads and wrestling boots. Everyone else seemed to be in their street clothes or workout pants with no shirt on. The 350-lb. brotha who came out in a camouflage hoodie almost lost his gym shorts during his match, but thankfully for all of us he had shiny red trunks underneath covering everything up. All five matches were as painfully amateurish as you'd expect, with lots of blown spots and moments that left you wondering why some of these guys were even being allowed in the ring. During intermission, I asked the referee, who was outside on his smoke break, how often they have shows. "Every three weeks," he replied, then looked me up and down like a piece of meat and added, "But we do have training every Saturday!" Hell to the naw, I replied, or something resembling that. For the main event, the champ, a large white dude in a mask, stood in the middle of the ring while his manager and white-trash skank valet issued an open challenge, meaning they charged $5 for a show in which the title match had no advertised challenger. Five minutes before this, two heavy Latina women showed up and sat right behind me, and when the champ came out for the open challenge, they both immediately started booing him and shouting him down, so based on nothing more than this, I assumed that the man answering the challenge would be Hispanic, and he probably just showed up to the "arena" and dropped those two women off in his 1984 Chevy Caprice. I was right. Some fat dude named Will E. Bling ran out and fought with the champ for about five minutes before the champ's manager and entourage jumped into the ring and attacked Will, laying him and some other Latino who charged into the ring out with chairshots. The women howled in anger and shouted words too salty even for this blog, as if this were an actual mugging in the street. They were as entertaining as any wrestlers on the show. The next show after that, according to that Chicago wrestling website, was going to have nine matches but was going to cost $7 for admission. I almost swallowed my tongue when I read that. I didn't go back. That's not to say that I wouldn't someday check it out again just for the cheesy atmosphere, and also because I feel good supporting an indy fed that clearly needs the support, and also because if I ever got the guts to ask if they need an extra announcer or something, I may wind up breaking into the wrestling business after spending my entire life fantasizing about it. But I can't ever see myself in the ring despite my size. Too many bad things can happen trusting an amateur to protect you while you try moves that you're just not coordinated enough to do.

Chicago Sports In The Spotlight. It's fun to see our major league pro sports teams step up and go for the jugular instead of always waiting back and hoping things turn around on their own. The Bulls, despite their horrible draft picks a couple of months ago (Taj Gibson? What, we don't have enough mentally challenged spazzes loitering underneath the basket?), still have a chance to clear salary off their books and jump into the free agent pool after next season. That's the only way they're ever going to get Derrick Rose a supporting cast that can contend for a title, and they know it. Drafting turds every year isn't going to cut it. It may not look like it, but they are putting themselves in the best position to succeed. The Bears are about to fire up their first season with Jay Cutler as their quarterback, and I still can't believe they had the balls to pull off that trade. Cutler is without question one of the seven best QBs in the damn game, and we went out and got him. I'm not perfect with predictions, but I'm not always wrong, either. Prediction: Cutler will throw for 3,500 yards and 25 TDs. Prediction: WR Earl Bennett, who couldn't do much of anything last year for the Bears with Kyle Orton at QB but set records playing with Cutler in college at Vanderbilt, will go for 1,000 yards receiving. Prediction: The Bears will win the NFC Central and will have a really good run through the playoffs, falling just short of the Super Bowl. Prediction: The Denver Broncos, who traded Cutler here for Orton and some draft picks, will suck. Hard. And how about the White Sox going after former Cy Young Award winning pitcher Jake Peavy? I never would have thought the Sox would move that far forward to get an ace for their rotation, but giving up four pitching prospects was not too stiff for GM Ken Williams. Good for him. They don't trade aces every day in baseball, so huzzah for going after one and getting him. It's a strange deal considering Peavy is on the disabled list, and I didn't know you could trade guys on the DL, but I guess when you want someone that bad, you don't care if he's temporarily sidelined. Around the same time the Bears will be gearing up to start the season a month from now, Peavy should be getting set to lead the Sox into the last month and go after a pennant. I'm really, really looking forward to September. Makes me wish I was a sports columnist, because there would be no shortage of topics right now.

And Speaking Of Writing...While looking for part-time jobs, I came across a website called Examiner.com that was looking for columnists, but they wouldn't say how much they would pay. I applied anyway because I hoped that I could write for them and make some extra money, but I never expected that it would pay a lot because if it did, they would say upfront what kind of money they were offering. Well, I got the gig, and I am now the Chicago Long Distance Relationships Examiner. Sure enough, the pay is virtually nothing. They appear to give me a whole penny every time my page is viewed. There's no actual salary for my labor, so page views is the only way I will make any cash. Plus, they won't send me any money until my account grows past $25. At this rate, that will happen around 2013. Oh well. At least I will have a catalogue of writing that I can send a future employer if I want to get into freelance writing, and that catalogue won't have profanity or diatribes about wanting to murder ex-lovers.

Finally, How's The Missus? My fiancee is still searching for work, although she's having success doing volunteer work for nonprofit organizations, which could easily lead into paid labor if she impresses the right people. She visited here twice this summer, and the second time she was able to attend my dinner at ESPNZone that I won at the Sports Spelling Bee. We did it on Saturday, July 4, because I wanted my whole family there with me, and they agreed to be there with me on that day. I was very proud to have everyone there, including my fiancee. I looked over the scene a couple times--all nine of us, including my aunt's family and my uncle's family, except for my uncle's oldest son--and I imagined that this is what it will look like if all of them come down to Memphis for the wedding. It was a little emotional. It sounds strange, but I miss being the center of my family's attention. This happened all the time when I was a child. I'd have a play at school, or a part in some sort of assembly, or they would take me to dinner for some sort of academic achievement. And it was an occasion for my folks to tell me how proud they were of me and how much joy they took in my accomplishments. And the fact is, I ain't accomplished much since I grew up. I still don't want a celebratory dinner for getting my Associates degree because that's something that I shouldn't have done when I was fucking 33 years old. That should have been taken care of twelve years ago, but I was so immature that I avoided college at all costs. I don't think I should be celebrated for something that I put off so damn long. Anyway, my fiancee also went with me to the Sox game that I won tickets for, and that was really fun. They weren't just regular old tickets, they were tickets to something called the Jim Beam Club, and that got us free food, free drinks, free dessert, and a seat one level up from the ground right behind home plate. At one point I got up from all the food and headed out the door to go down to field level because I assumed that I had to go into the actual stands to buy a scorecard. (I like to keep score of the game.) The lady at the door informed me that no, I don't have to leave the Jim Beam Club to get a scorecard, they have them right there at the door. I gladly whipped out a dollar to pay for the scorecard, delighted that I didn't have to go searching for one. She told me the scorecards were complimentary. I then started wondering how I could break the news to my fiancee that I wasn't EVER LEAVING THIS PLACE. To top it off, it was Fireworks Night, and the Sox won, so you couldn't have made it a better night. The only down part about my fiancee's second visit was that I used most of my vacation time on her first visit, so I was going to work, coming home, eating the supper she prepared, and promptly falling asleep. So yeah, we didn't mess around a whole lot. We're both still getting used to each other on some levels. We're shy people by nature, so it's a battle to make that first move. I believe she thinks it's incumbent on me to be more forward since I have more experience, but I'm just not that guy. And she's definitely not that gal. I have a feeling we'll get more comfortable once she moves up here permanently. But after three and a half years of long-distance dating, we still are getting to know each other.

But hey, no excuses. I'll just have to get it together and do better next time. After all, I am the Chicago Long Distance Relationships Examiner. I'm a fucking expert! Right?

Hello? Anybody home??

Say Anything, No Matter How Moronic

2009-06-27T07:24:00.003-05:00

Just a couple of tidbits I heard while listening to sports talking heads the past couple of days, which just reinforce how much I want to become a sports broadcaster if only to raise the intellect of the everyday banter:

First, during the NBA Draft coverage on ESPN Thursday evening, main booyah Stu Scott and the Seven Dwarfs doing running commentary next to him were yapping about the #3 pick about to be made by the Seattle, er, uh, Oklahoma City Thunder. Since the Clippers took Blake Griffin #1, and the Grizzlies took Hasheem Thabeet #2, Stu and the boyz assumed that Spanish PG flash-in-the-pan Ricky Rubio would certainly be the next pick due to all the hype around him. For a solid minute, which is a long time with gasbags like these, they did not mention the possibility of anything happening other than the Thunder drafting Rubio any second now. So NBA Commissioner David Stern sidles up to the mic and announces, "With the 3rd pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, the Oklahoma City Thunder select...James Harden from Arizona State." To which Stu immediately responds: "The Thunder liked James Harden all along." WHAT?!? You imbeciles just spent the last minute or two telling everyone how good Ricky Rubio will fit with the young talent of Oklahoma City, and three seconds later, they liked Harden all along? Stu, STFU, you retarded Cyclops. You know NOTHING. None of you know ANYTHING.

Then, just this morning, I woke up to some golf show on WSCR-AM, which I guess is what I fell asleep listening to last night, and I had the pleasure of hearing this exchange between two twits talking about great sports owners, specifically Bill Veeck:

Twit 1: "Is Veeck in the Hall of Fame or no? He should be."

Twit 2: "Charlie Finley is not in the Hall of Fame. Veeck died in '86 but was inducted in '91. That's a shame. I'd have loved to hear that induction speech."

Twit 1: "You can YouTube it, right? Everything's posted on the internet nowadays."

Once Again It's Time...

2009-06-13T06:01:00.003-05:00

...for the annual Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon. It's (hopefully) a perfect day for it today, starting around 9A, along the lake starting at 31st St., up to about 67th. Come out for a good cause, and the good weather!

Local Boy Does Good

2009-05-29T10:12:00.002-05:00

I have a strange combination of tunnel-vision desire to win anything I compete in and crippling fear of failure. So when I first heard about a sports spelling bee at ESPNZone this past Tuesday, I only had a couple of days to chicken out and decide not to go even though I officially registered for it by e-mail. The event was Thursday (last night), and I had to call my job several times to find someone with authority to give me the day off work, yet still I came close to not going. Wednesday night, I found myself contemplating how embarrassing it would be if I made the trek downtown and got all riled up only to get knocked out in the first round on some obscure hockey player's name. Then, in a flash, I got the inspiration to go to the Blackhawks web site and look at their roster, just to see if I could perhaps memorize the crazy surnames hockey players seem to possess. And with that, I decided that I was in. If I'm going through the trouble of doing even a little bit of studying for such a goofy event, then by God, I was going to take my shot.

I also have a tardiness problem, inherited from my dad. So I arrived at ESPNZone at 6:35P, five minutes later than I was requested. I rushed out of the train station and speed-walked two blocks to the place, and panting hard, I asked the young black girl at the front desk, "I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm here for the Sports Spelling Bee?" "Why should you be embarrassed?" she said with a smile. "You might actually win the thing." How nice of her to not laugh in my face, as I'm sure she must have been tempted to do. She directed me to someone sitting at a desk upstairs, who gave me an entry sheet to fill not and told me to hurry into the pre-game briefing and bring her the sheet later. I stepped into a side room--coincidentally, a room where my friends and I sat and had dinner the last time I was at ESPNZone, about five years ago--and as I put on my participant's placard and sized up the competition, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't too late. The moderator for the event, a Bob Saget look-alike in a suit more expensive than my wardrobe, was giving the rundown of how a spelling bee works, and because I'm a veteran of spelling bees, I didn't think I missed anything pertinent, so that allowed me to catch my breath and relax. He said at one point that the names in the first few rounds would be rather easy and would be current Chicago sports names, so it would be a get-your-feet-wet situation. Some guy mistook that for getting a free pass in the first round, and we all had a chuckle at the idea. I figured the others competing would be nerdy white men, and I was right. There were fifteen of us, and one was a white woman, and two (including me) were brothas. Considering the prizes for the winner--a VIP party at ESPNZone, two White Sox tickets, and a trophy--I thought there may have been more, but there was no publicity for the event. I heard about it because I'm a member of a Facebook group for former National Spelling Bee participants, and the moderator of the group works for ESPN, so she posted a one-line blurb about it and put a link to the website.

I didn't have time to get nervous after the briefing, because Bob Saget led us to the front where the big-screen TVs show various sporting events in perpetuity and started the show. The sound for all the TVs was turned down, and Bob Saget let everyone know that he was aiming for us to be finished by the time the Magic-Cavaliers NBA playoff game started at 7:30P, to which I thought to myself, Man, he must have some hard names on his list if he plans to have us all eliminated in the next half-hour. He introduced the first contestant as last year's winner, and I started to get a little scared at the thought that hey, maybe there are some guys in this field that are even bigger sports geeks than me and will spell until midnight if they have to. We all stood in order of arrival against the wall and walked to the back of the line when we got a word right, so I, being #15, had to wait until everyone spelled one name before I had my crack. And when the first person got eliminated--he froze on the name Urlacher, which is dumb if you live in Chicago because he's a legend here--I thought, yes, I'm not the first guy out! The woman was about three people ahead of me, and I heard her chatting with someone else in line, telling him, "I'm gonna win." And believe it or not, that actually got me fired up. Not because it was a girl saying that, but because how dare anyone say that out loud. I took offense for some reason. I guess I figured that we're all here trying to win, so for her to verbalize her plan to win regardless of everyone else was more than a little arrogant, and besides, I'm the former Spelling Bee champ here, so if anyone has a right to victory, it's me! When Bob Saget asked me if I had a job that helped me in knowing all these names, I responded, "No, but I must admit. I am the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee champion." I heard some cheers from the people for that, then I saw a yellow flag fly towards me. The judge, a curly-haired guy who couldn't have been older than 23, had "penalized" me for being a ringer, to which I replied, "You never said that professionals weren't allowed!" I was much more relaxed after that exchange.

I have to say, they pulled some fucked-up names not only from the Blackhawks but from the Chicago Fire soccer team that would have eliminated me had I gotten those names. But I didn't. And as the competition went along and people dropped off--the otha brotha, some prick from Milwaukee, some guy in a St. Louis Cardinals cap, the girl, a guy right in front of me with those paraplegic support stilts that attach to your wrists because his legs were all rubbery, and even last year's champ, who didn't know there were two Rs in Correll Buckhalter's first name--I started to have a little more fun with each turn. At one point I wrote out the name on my placard with my finger, like the little nerds do in the actual spelling bee because they're visualizing the word, and at a couple of other points when Bob Saget read off NBA names that had been retired several years ago like Dan Majerle or Detlef Schrempf, I gave him a raised eyebrow and said, "Are you serious?" That got a laugh out of the crowd. But the reality was, either you knew the names or you didn't, and fortunately I knew all of the names I got. However, I'm old, so I don't remember the name that I got right to win. I do remember my celebration when I won--an exaggerated fist pump and four thumps of the chest with both fists like I saw Rafer Alston do for the Magic a few nights ago. I proudly held my trophy up for the patrons to see, and they politely applauded for the geek with way too much glee for winning a sports spelling bee. Then I was interviewed by a reporter for a newspaper in Indiana, congratulated by some of the competitors who stuck around for the end, and asked to fill out some release forms by Bob Saget, who also took a bunch of pictures of me and the trophy. Then I shook his hand and went right back to the train station that I just ran out of a couple of hours ago, shaking my head at how eerily similar the experience was to my win in 1990. All the same emotions--pride, joy, shame at being so happy about something so utterly meaningless, and a little bit of bashfulness at my moment in the spotlight. And the same lasting emotion when all the others have cycled through--the thought that no matter what, I accomplished something, and no one can ever take it away.

The Champ Is HERE!!!

2009-05-27T18:40:00.001-05:00

The Spelling Bee Champ is back! For one night only...Sports Spelling Bee, Thu. May 28, 6:30P, ESPNZone, downtown Chicago...I'm in it to win it!!

Tying The Knot, Part 4: Keeping The Flame Alive

2009-05-27T17:55:00.002-05:00

Nothing is easy about a long-distance relationship, except perhaps for the fact that my fiancee and I don't have a chance to get on each other's nerves. But one of the worst factors is that there's no physical contact. It's not just about sexual intimacy, which isn't even a component in our relationship since we are waiting to have sex until after marriage, but even the slightest bit of staying in touch is key to not feeling like you're in a loveless relationship. I was pleasantly surprised by my fiancee's attempts this past weekend to spice things up.

A week and a half ago she sent me an online article she read about how there should not be any secrets or shame in the bedroom between two married people. Anything goes when it comes to being intimate with your spouse. Many people feel that they can't or shouldn't do certain "dirty" things in bed, the article said, even when it's with their own husband or wife, when in fact the Bible says that it's part of the act of marriage and love to explore the heights of intimacy. My fiancee took this to mean that maybe we should be less inhibited about sex when it comes to talking about it or expressing desire. To that end, she sent an e-mail detailing three things she decided to do: 1, she told me that anytime I was willing to try phone sex, although she may not be any good at it initially, she was game. She had always said that she believed phone sex was something we should do only after we got married and were separated from each other for a few nights. 2, she said that she was fine with any kind of dirty talk or passionate utterances I wanted to say the next time we fooled around. Before, she has had a problem with the chance that in the heat of the moment I may say something she takes offense to, like "Suck my dick bitch!" or something to that effect. I've been very careful not to go down that road, and I won't say that it has stifled my enjoyment of our fooling around, but it would be fun to see how nasty we can get. I'm not sure if I should take her up on it, though. I have a knack of fucking things up, and it would be my luck that I find the one thing to say that makes her burst into tears or something. But it's still makes me smile to see that this article has given her the idea of having no limits to our sexual experiences. She said that her 3rd point taken away from the article would be revealed at a later date. I had no idea what that meant, and it slipped my mind after a day or two.

Then a week ago, as I'm about to play a video game, I got a text from my fiancee saying that I had something special waiting for me in my e-mail. It wasn't there yet, so I had to wait a couple of minutes, but when it arrived, I was surprised to see that it was a picture she took of herself in her bra and panties after getting out of the shower. She had scrawled "I LOVE U!" on a piece of paper and attached it to her bathroom mirror, then took a pic of herself in the mirror. This was a bit of a shock because it was out of her element to take pictures that could be construed as naughty. I was happy more for her shedding her inhibitions a little than for receiving the pic. Then I got another e-mail titled "The Girls." Sure enough, it was my God-fearing fiancee with her bra off and a devilish smirk on her face. Very arousing. A third pic came in titled "Booty," and this was her in her thong showing off her fantastic ass. (She told me later that she had originally bent over for the ass shot, but decided that it made her butt look too big. Sigh. Typical woman.) A fourth e-mail came in titled "Something To Suck," and because she was literally and metaphorically letting her hair down, I assumed this would be a spread-eagle pic of her clit, but she wasn't quite ready to go there yet. It was a close-up of one of her large nipples. I was still very impressed at her ability to let herself go free. She even promised that I could take more intimate pictures when we got a chance, especially since "it's hard taking those kind of pictures of yourself." I can only imagine.

My fiancee and I had been having some issues lately concerning how I handle my money and how I would handle it when it became "our" money. We had avoided name-calling and hurtful dialogue, but it was still stressing us out, on top of my stress from the job and her stress from job-hunting and our stress from the distance between us and the inability to plan our wedding at this time. But by this one (or four) act (or acts), she let me know that continuing to want each other emotionally and physically is still a vital part of our relationship. It worked, too. She's visiting in a week and a half, and I want her as much as I ever have.

He's Done It Again

2009-05-24T10:42:00.003-05:00

http://jimcornette.com/Commentary.html

Jim Cornette, a long-time manager in the wrestling business, has written another all-time great commentary piece (blog post, do I dare call it?), this time about the history of "hardcore" wrestling and the damage it has done to the industry. I actually expected to hate the piece due to my neverending love and respect for the old Extreme Championship Wrestling, or ECW, of the 1990s. But after reading the article, I see the harm done by having those kinds of matches night after night. I should just find a way to link to Cornette's web site so that every time he writes a new commentary, it automatically shows up on my blog.

BTW, I'll have another blog post about me and my fiancee in the next day or two. I'm sure you 3 people still reading my blog just cannot wait.

Normal Working Hours?

2009-05-07T09:54:00.003-05:00

I almost forgot what it was like to work Monday through Friday, morning to evening, but through a chain of events, I will rediscover the feeling. Due to the U.S. Postal Service eliminating the time shift that allowed us mail extractors to receive mail on 2nd shift, we were informed in a meeting a few weeks ago that our 2nd shift would also be getting terminated. We were handed sheets with new potential schedules and told to put our names on the sheet and rank our most and least desired new shifts. There were only two choices for full-time workers, which is what I am, and they were 7A-3:30P and 9A-5:30P. I chose the 9A-5:30P slot because I couldn't imagine waking up at 5A to get to work by 7A every day. But either way, I was excited to be leaving 2nd shift and going back to 1st, freeing up my evenings again. I had become accustomed to my life as an evening worker, but it was stifling the slightest bit of social interaction I may have had a chance to experience, and it was also not making my fiancee happy that she couldn't have a decent conversation with me after work because she and I were tired at that time of night.

I worried about not getting the 9A shift and having to work at 7A, but I would adjust if need be. Hell, I knew I'd be okay with the earlier shift the first night I would be able to be home at 6P for the start of the night's baseball games, which I'm never home to see except on my off days, Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, a couple of things happened a week ago that altered my plans. First, we were informed in another meeting that J.P. Morgan Chase had worked out some kind of agreement with the USPS to have a skeleton crew work that shift, making it possible for us to retain several people for our 2nd shift. Chase still wanted some people to move to mornings, but it was no longer necessary for everyone to have to find a new shift. They handed out new sheets for us to ponder what schedule we preferred, and now I had to make the decision: Did I really want to go back to mornings, or was I comfortable enough working evenings to stay? I chose to ask for the 9A shift again. It was just too tempting to not have to worry about getting home at night because certain bus lines had stopped running, and finding places to go on my 7P lunch break since some restaurants around my job closed by 5 or 6P, and like I said, it would make my fiancee very happy to have me available in the evenings. At the same time, I had been placed in a program where I was processing all of the courier packs of mail that were dropped on the floor, which is a lot of work because sometimes those FedEx and DHL and UPS envelopes are just stuffed with checks. But hey, processing checks is processing checks, and I have to be at work 8 hours every day regardless. I was never given a straight answer why I was chosen for this project, but I've been doing it for almost a month now, and I'm getting used to it. Little did I know how important doing this project would turn out to be.

Last Friday, I was informed by my current supervisor that I received the shift that I asked for, which is 9A-5:30P. I was excited. More chances to hang out with friends, more baseball and football games that I could actually watch, more conversation with my fiancee. Now, I assumed that I would keep the same weird days that I work, Thursdays through Mondays with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, because I've been constantly told in the three years that I've worked there that we get most of our mail on weekends and Mondays, and that's when they need the most people. And it's true; I've worked a couple of Tuesdays in the past month in order to free up a weekend day to have off instead of burning a vacation day, and the work has been so light, I've seen people arriving for work on 3rd shift at 10P be turned around and immediately sent home. However, when my supervisor told me that I would be placed in the same courier-pack program when I move to mornings, I wondered how it would work out. We get almost no courier packs on the weekends. Would I be sent back to my regular workgroup on Saturdays and Sundays, as I am now? Wouldn't it make sense for morning courier-pack people to work Monday through Friday, since we don't hardly have any courier packs on weekends? I wondered this to my fiancee, but I never spoke to anyone at work about it. Then, this past Monday, my supervisor gave me my new schedule in writing, and there it was: Courier Pack Group, 9A-5:30P, Monday through Friday! OMG!! She explained that on 1st shift, everyone in the courier-pack group works weekdays only. For the first time in 3 stinking years, my weekends are free again!

I have to wait until June 1 to start this new stage of my Chase career, but I cannot wait. All I've been thinking about the last several days is, Saturdays and Sundays off to do as I please...talking on the phone with my fiancee...stepping out and going to weekend activities with her when she's in town...watching baseball...watching FOOTBALL, which I haven't done much of the last 3 years...attending family functions and events without using up vacation days...perhaps once again joining a bowling league with my uncle, who only bowls on Sundays...spending a weekend at friends' houses, or maybe even hosting a poker weekend at my crib...getting home every day when the sun's still out...I'm not going to know what to do with myself. I suffered through 3 years of that shitty schedule, and now it's paid off, because I have to believe that I wouldn't have been chosen for the courier-pack group unless I had the experience at this job to not panic at the large volume of work and the daily deadlines that come with courier packs. Of course, seemingly everyone else at my job is unhappy with their new shifts, but we've been told that preferences for certain shifts were assigned based on productivity and quality of work, and since I don't make errors and do a decent amount of work every month, well, I guess that made me the pick of the litter. I'm a little sad for some friends who didn't get the shifts that they wanted, but I'm certainly thrilled about how things worked out for me. Sometimes, patience does pay off.

On Looking Like A Good Singer

2009-04-29T11:30:00.003-05:00

Everyone has had a first reaction to the Susan Boyle appearance on the variety show "Britain's Got Talent." Whether it's disgust at Boyle herself, or laughing at her look, or being moved by her singing voice, or a combination of all kinds of emotions, no doubt you've got some kind of reaction. And obviously, to get almost 50,000,000 hits on YouTube, a reaction of some kind is being generated. Here's my reaction: This is all Madonna's fault.

Yes, Boyle can sing, and that's not up for debate. My problem is with everyone being so surprised that she can sing. The gasps and giggles from the audience when Boyle walked out on stage came from a place inside those folks in which they've been trained to think over the years that anyone not hot or attractive obviously can't sing. Even the damn judges on the panel, whose jobs, I thought, were to judge talent, not PREjudge talent, were stunned by her ability. And I couldn't have been angrier. See, all the pop tarts out there like Britney and Pink have contaminated the pool by becoming singing stars not because of their singing, but because of their ability to writhe around on a beach or on stage and look like porn stars while lip-synching to their mechanically-enhanced vocals. And it all started with Madonna. I say that because, before she and MTV came along in the early 1980s, I don't recall your looks having anything to do with how well you can sing. Of course, I wasn't around in the '70s, but I'm guessing that you still had to sound good to sell records back then, and I'm definitely going to assume that for before the '70s. But fast forward to today, where a judge of a talent show can actually have the temerity to say to a contestant, "I didn't think you could sing so well based on how you looked when you walked out here." What the fuck does that mean??? Someone please tell me how your looks are in any way connected to how well you can sing. Once Madonna showed how you can make it to the top of the music charts without the ability to hold a note, the floodgates opened, and Janet Jackson, Britney, and tons of others whose names I've since forgotten managed to hit our radios and make our ears bleed while horny teenage guys and insecure girls who wanted to be like those pop tarts pushed their popularity sky high. And hey, I was one of the horny guys; I wasn't a teenager when "Like A Virgin" came out, but I bought the extended version on vinyl, I still own it, and I never liked it for Madonna's vocal range, I liked it because hearing a hot chick cooing "Touched for the very 1st time" when I was nine years old make me feel tingly and warm, and I like the feeling, although I didn't understand it.

So I get that it's a marketing coup when you can make a singing star out of someone who cannot sing for shit. That's great, and congrats to everyone involved. But what's been created as a result is a situation where a woman can come out onstage looking not so hot, and people all around the world express shock and amazement when she sings well. No, my friends, that's not amazing. What's amazing is that we've allowed ourselves to judge vocal talent on how sexually charged the vocalist is. The only worse reflection on our society is the fact that I guarantee you, Susan Boyle, sometime soon, maybe this year or perhaps next summer, will get a full makeover by some marketing genius in an attempt to sell recordings of her voice, which, of course, have nothing at all to do with her appearance.