Blast From The Past

Everyone has a "ran into someone I used to fuck" story. Mine wasn't very exciting, but it just happened last week, so here it is.

"Grace," the one-night stand from three years ago, works for Playboy Magazine. She was so proud of it that she gave me her business card the one night we spent together. Last Tuesday I made my way to a theater downtown to see The Wrestler (very good film). It was the same theater that "Shelley" and I visited several times during that tumultuous relationship, so if I were going to run into someone I used to go out with, I thought it may be Shelley. I feared that it may be Shelley, I should say. I even had a flashback sitting in the theater because the seat I sat in was in the same position as the ones Shelley and I sat in to watch Rent. That was an emotional movie and an emotional night. So I had to concentrate hard on The Wrestler in order to avoid thinking about that. But anyway, the movie ended around 4P, and I made my way to a bus stop to go straight home. A minute after I got to the bus stop, I felt a woman walk near me, stop maybe six or seven feet away on my right side, and stare at me for like 10 seconds. I had my earbuds in as I listened to my iPod, so I wasn't paying very close attention, but when I felt that stare, I turned and looked in the general direction of the woman but not directly at her. It took a few seconds for her visage to come clear in my mind as someone I knew, but I wasn't totally sure it was Grace until I saw her back and noticed the Playboy logo on her jacket. At that point, I took out my earbuds and started thinking in my brain about what to say to her, or if I should say anything at all. She stood there smoking and not acknowledging me at all, and I walked all around her but never closer than a few feet. I really didn't know what to do. I had some things I wanted to tell her, but I didn't know if they were things I necessarily needed to say, or if she even wanted to hear them. Finally, I chickened out. My bus came and I decided to get on it and not say a word to her. I made sure I didn't look out the window at her as the bus pulled off, because that would have been the ultimate punk move--don't say a word, but then stare her down as I'm riding away and she can't say anything.

The next morning, I woke up thinking about Grace still, and I decided that running into her must have been some sign for me to tell her how I felt after 3 years. So I wrote her an e-mail. And I detailed the fact that I didn't communicate with her after our night together not because I was disappointed in the evening, but only because I started talking with the woman who is now my fiancee right after that night, and I didn't want to ruin what was happening by tempting myself chatting with a woman I fooled around with. It was important for me to tell Grace that she was great that night and that I was immature not explaining to her why I fell off the face of the earth. I knew that she didn't necessarily need the explanation, but I had wanted to get that off my chest all this time, and I was able to do it in that e-mail. A couple of hours later, Grace responded, saying that she was stunned by the letter and didn't know what to say. I told her that was fine, and thanks for at least acknowledging it, because I was afraid she might just laugh at the stupid little boy writing after 3 years and ignore it. We then chatted via IM for a while, as she let me know that she actually didn't recognize me at the bus stop, but was staring because she was "checking me out." Hey, she screwed me, so I guess she's attracted to my type. I told her that because my fiancee is devout to her religion, we had not had sex, so she's still the last person I have slept with. "You poor baby," Grace said. "3 years! I'm getting lightheaded just thinking about it." It turns out that Grace is in a relationship herself, a new profile pic of her and some black guy in glasses side by side as evidence. Instead of reacting with jealousy as I probably would have a few years ago, I actually said, "Aw." Being settled in my own personal life made me more mature as far as seeing exes with other men goes. Grace ended our chat by saying she was very happy now. I couldn't be happier for her. And, unlike my other exes, she was able to grant me some closure.

Super Bowl XLIII

Arizona vs. Pittsburgh (-6.5)

I've heard some media folks picking the Cardinals to win this game, and there's two reasons besides the obvious--Pittsburgh is much the better team--why this is ludicrous. One, these are the same guys who didn't give the Giants a snowball's chance last year against the undefeated Patriots. I really think that these people are so shortsighted that they can't look past last year, when a much bigger underdog pulled off the upset of a lifetime, and therefore they feel that they have to go with the Cards today because, well, they have a better chance than New York last year, right? One has nothing to do with the other, you idiots. Just because you (and me and everyone else) whiffed on last year, that doesn't mean you have to spin around this year and ignore why the Steelers are favorites and just blindly go with the Cards. Analyze the game, not the moment. And two, these are also the same people that didn't give the Cardinals a chance at every level of this year's playoffs. Not a one of them was picking the Cards to go to the Super Bowl, but now that they're in, all of a sudden now they look like the team to beat to a handful of people. Where were these guys when the Cards were outclassing the Falcons, outhustling the Panthers, and outlasting the Eagles? They were coming up with every reason under the sun why the Arizona Cardinals had no chance to go any further. My excuse for not picking the Cards to beat the Eagles is, simply, I can't pick Eagles games for my life. (I've heard that Donovan McNabb will be a Hall of Famer someday, and I think that's not only wrong but patronizing because I think he'd be voted in due to pity in regards to the sometimes unfair criticism he received from Philly fans and Rush Limbaugh and assorted other voices over the years. Just because he got called out in spots just because he was the black quarterback doesn't mean he wasn't woefully inconsistent throughout his career.) In any event, the analysis for Super Bowl Cuatro Tres, as Chad Johnson may call it, reads like this to me: It's the #4 offense for the regular season in Arizona vs. the #1 defense in Pittsburgh, and defense wins championships. I said that the winner of the Ravens-Steelers game would be champs, and I'm not wavering. I just cannot see the Cards, a team that got bent over and plowed like a faggot in jail several times in the regular season, all of a sudden getting it together and beating the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Going through the NFC playoffs? Sure. Beating the 12-4 Steelers, who went through statistically the hardest regular-season schedule ever? Not happening. The defenses got harder every step in the playoffs for Arizona, with the Eagles almost stealing the NFC title game, and now it culminates in the top defense, and I can't pick them to overcome that. As far as the spread goes, I'll use this bit of logic to go with the Steelers to cover: I've heard a lot of chatter about Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger's horrific performance in the Super Bowl three years ago at the end of his rookie year, a game the Steelers still managed to win over a similarly overmatched Seattle Seahawks squad. I believe his QB rating was in the twenties, and for comparison's sake, 80 is considered good and 100 is considered great. I think he's heard just about enough of that shit. I'm calling four TD passes in a Steelers rout.

My Pick: Pittsburgh 34-17

NFL Conference Finals '09

My enjoyment of the games today will be greatly dampened by the fact that the weather here in Chicago has been so bad that I haven't received a satellite signal in a week. Yes, it's back to the old school today--I will be watching the games through the snowy over-the-air reception that will no longer even be available next month. The thing is, yes, it was snowy and 20 degrees below zero last week, but last winter was pretty damn brutal as well, and I didn't lose my signal for a significant amount of time. I'm looking at my dish, and while it's got some snow inside and some icicles hanging off, it's not covered in snow and ice. But it's on the roof, so I can't go clean it off, and DirecTV will not send anyone out here to service it because my problem is weather-related. I don't understand why I'm getting screwed like this. But so long as DirecTV doesn't charge me for the days I'm missing, I guess I'll deal with it. And if it's still like this for the Super Bowl, I can go to a relative's house and tape the game. Anyway, on to the picks:

Philadelphia (-3.5) @ Arizona

Let me take this opportunity to claim that I, and only I, can have any opinion on the worthiness of the Arizona Cardinals to advance to the Super Bowl because I was the only person to pick them to go through the first two playoff games. Not many people had them beating the Falcons, and absolutely no one had them beating the Panthers, and not only did they beat Carolina, they did it the way I said they would, scoring at will on an overrated defense and using their athletes on defense to shut down the Panthers offense. There was no luck involved in that win. That's the way the Cards could play all the time if they were focused and playing as a team, which they have the last two games. And right off the bat, I'll say that I'll stick with them to cover the spread. A home underdog by more than a field goal after the way they've been playing? That's ludicrous, and it's nothing more than the same losers who had Arizona dead way before the NFC Finals today saying, "Oh, well, now they're gonna get it." Yeah, like they were gonna get it against Atlanta and Carolina. STFU. All that said, I always declared that I would take the Cards' opponent the first time they played a real defense. Atlanta, not a real defense. Carolina, not a real defense. Philly, yep, that's a real defense. 4th against the run, 3rd against the pass, allowing a measly 6.14 yards per pass attempt. And maybe most important, 48 team sacks, 3rd best in the league, and 22 forced fumbles, tied for 4th. QB Kurt Warner is due to get dumped on his head a few times and cough up the football, which he got ran out of New York for doing that an average of about 54 times per game. And regardless of how many times he says it didn't matter, Eagles QB Donovan McNabb has been playing his ass off ever since he got benched against Baltimore. It did matter. He obviously asked himself if he still had any good football left, and could he summon it to prove that he's still the man in Philly. And summon it, he has. The spotlight may be a bit bright for the Cardinals, who are not used to being the focus of the football world. The Eagles, after dealing with Terrell Owens and benchings and four conference finals in the past decade, this is nothing new for them. The question will be, is McNabb going to prepare for an all-Pennsylvania Super Bowl, or to get revenge on the Ravens for getting him benched?

My Pick: Philadelphia 26-23

Baltimore @ Pittsburgh (-6)

I've heard this game referred to on multiple platforms as a "manhood game," the penultimate clash of two defensive titans who just plain don't like each other, the test of wills, the impenetrable force vs. the immovable object. So, um, just how is this game a six-point spread?? I've been back and forth all week on my pick, but not on the spread. I don't see how the Steelers can possibly beat the Ravens by almost a touchdown. After the way the Ravens have played? Not likely. I may get the prediction wrong, because I truly think this game can go either way, but I will enjoy watching it greatly. (BTW, I think this is the Super Bowl. As if the hype isn't big enough, I think that the winner of the AFC title game will defeat the NFC winner in the Super Bowl, whomever the two teams may be, making this game the de facto Super Bowl. No pressure, boys.) It's the rookie QB for the Ravens, Joe Flacco, against the veteran QB for the Steelers, Ben Roethlisberger. It's a couple of top-notch running games taking pressure off the QBs. And, of course, it's the top two defenses in football, with the Ravens coming in 2nd overall for the regular season. The X-factor is Steelers RB Willie Parker. If he's healthy, and he looked healthy last week against the Chargers, then his speed and cutback ability will make him very effective against a large but somewhat immobile Ravens defensive line. The Steelers won a couple of close ones against the Ravens in the regular season, which may give the Ravens a shot of extra adrenaline, not wanting to lose to their hated rivals three times. But the Steelers are experienced and intelligent enough to figure out a way to win a 3rd time. Give me the Steel Curtain on their home field, but certainly not by a touchdown.

My Pick: Pittsburgh 19-16

(UPDATE @ 1:21P--I got my DirecTV back! Wahoo!! And just in time for football.)

NFL Conference Semis '09

Looking back at last year's 2nd round of playoffs, my eyes popped out at those huge lines. It's hard to believe that the favorites were that heavily favored. There's only one game with a spread as big as the smallest from last year, and I love the underdog in that game. On to my picks in much less detail:

Baltimore @ Tennessee (-3)

This was the hardest game for me to pick because these two teams are so similar. They have to feel like they're playing against each other. Both rely on the short passing game, hope their QBs don't throw the ball to the other team, run the ball hard with an attitude, and man up on defense. The Ravens were #4 rushing the ball this season. The Titans, #3. The Ravens, #3 stopping the run, the Titans #6. They were #28 and 27 respectively throwing the rock. This will be hard to watch if you're looking for pretty plays and lots of points. Tennessee beat the Ravens by a field goal earlier this season, and it smells like another 3-point game. I'll take the Ravens to cover because they are as hot as any team right now, but the Titans can pull out the win, perhaps by forcing Ravens rookie QB Joe Flacco into the one critical mistake that costs them the game.

My Pick: Tennessee 15-13

Arizona @ Carolina (-10)

Now this game I'm looking forward to. Arizona really impressed me last week, even they though they beat a clearly not-ready-for-prime-time Atlanta squad. The Cardinals featured an attempt at running the football with Edgerrin James, which they had not done all year. They hit the home runs through the air when they needed to. And the athletes on defense finally played up to their abilities. When DLs Darnell Dockett and Bertrand Berry, LBs Gerald Hayes and Karlos Dansby and DBs Adrian Wilson and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie show up and play as a unit, the Cards are quite formidable. The Panthers know all about them. Make fun of the Cards getting roasted when they traveled to the East Coast to play this season, but they led in Carolina in Week 8 before falling 27-23, a far cry from the poundings they took in New York and New England. Edge is running pissed, like he wants to show the world he's not done yet. And Carolina has a thoroughly pedestrian defense, just like the Falcons last week. Cards WR Anquan Boldin will take the field but may not play very long with an injured hamstring. No problem. The 3rd WR is a man named Steve Breaston, and he's the only 3rd WR this season to go over 1,000 yards. I think the Cards have too much firepower for the Panthers to overcome.

My Pick: Arizona 34-21

Philadelphia @ New York Giants (-4)

And now on to my blind spot, the Eagles. Not that I'm a great handicapper, but I never seem to get it right on Donovan McNabb and the Eagles. When I believe in them, they choke, and when I doubt them, they pull through. I'm going to doubt them this week even though they seem to be getting a lot of love in the national media. The Giants defense is almost as mean and nasty as the Ravens, and they had a week of rest. Yes, the Eagles went to Giants Stadium and won this season. But I can't go against that athletic defensive line of Justin Tuck and his group of maulers. They haven't been able to touch McNabb in the most recent battles against Philly, but I think they know that if they want to win this game, they're going to have to get to him. Giants QB Eli Manning will have to prove his worth, going through the playoffs this year without WR Plaxico "I Think I Just Shot Myself" Burress jumping up and catching big passes. But Eli's got a bruising running game to rely on, with Brandon Jacobs, perhaps the hardest man in football to tackle, leading the way. I'll hate on the Eagles one more time, but I certainly don't feel great about the pick.

My Pick: Giants 23-17

San Diego @ Pittsburgh (-6)

Ah, the gamblers' special. In Week 11, the Steelers picked up a loose ball on a lateral pass and ran it in for a TD on the last play of the game, which would have given them an 18-10 victory, covering the 4.5-point spread that week. For some unknown reason, the replay officials decided not only to challenge the ball being an illegal forward pass, which didn't make sense because the game was over either way so it's not like if the call is overturned the Chargers can win, but they did in fact overturn the call even though clearly the ball was not a forward pass. The call meant that the ball was dead at the spot of the "illegal" pass, keeping the final score at 11-10. All I can say is, I'm glad I no longer gamble because that might have sent me into oncoming traffic. It's only fitting that the Steelers cover this time to make up for the previous game. No analysis, no reasoning, just the universe setting itself right. Oh, and because the Steelers are destined to go to Tennessee for the AFC title game and avenge the Titans disrespecting the Terrible Towel after beating Pitt in Week 16.

My Pick: Pittsburgh 18-10

Wild Card Weekend '09

Very quickly because I'm on my way to work, my picks for this weekend:

Atlanta (-1) @ Arizona

"Jacob" and I correctly predicted that all four road Wild Card teams would be favored four weeks ago. That's how weak these division champions are, and no one played weaker after clinching their division than Arizona. But they have the right opponent in Atlanta. The Falcons will attempt to send their rookie QB, first-year head coach, and subpar defense out to the desert and away from their dome home stadium to get a playoff win in a season in which they weren't expected to be any good. I can't buy it. Give me the high-flying Cardinals passing game in a shootout.

My Pick: Arizona 38-30

Indianapolis (-1) @ San Diego

We saw this movie before. The Colts, 6-4 and on the verge of missing the playoffs, went into San Diego in Week 12 and won, part of an 8-game winning streak that hasn't been broken yet. I can't take the 8-8 division champ Chargers to snap that streak.

My Pick: Indianapolis 27-23

Baltimore (-3) @ Miami

The Dolphins shocked everyone by turning a 1-15 season last year into an 11-5 division title this year, using some razzle dazzle offense to confuse opponents. The Ravens are the wrong defense to try to get cute with. Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and co. should have died out already from the fact that they had to spend their bye week on Week 2 due to the hurricane in Houston postponing the Ravens-Texans game. But they're still going, and playing strong football. I have to give the edge to the Birds.

My Pick: Baltimore 24-12

Philadelphia (-3) @ Minnesota

The Eagles seem to be playing great heading into this matchup with the Vikings, but the funny thing about Philly is, you never know when they're going to choke. This is the same team that could only manage a tie with the woeful Cincinnati Bengals. Everyone knows that Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson will dial up extravagant blitzes and confusing defensive schemes against Vikings QB Tarvaris Jackson. I say that the Vikings do the smart thing and take the ball out of Jackson's hands, relying on the ground attack of Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor. Eagles QB Donovan McNabb has a knack of making mistakes at the worst times, so I'll take the Vikings to capitalize on that and win the game despite throwing the ball less than 15 times.

My Pick: Minnesota 20-7

Tying The Knot, Part 3: The Proposal

MEMPHIS--In my last installment, I talked about losing the card upon which my girlfriend wrote the serial number and description of the ring that she liked when we went window-shopping for rings in November. That was true, but I had to fudge when and where I lost it so as to keep it a secret that I was actually buying the ring much sooner than anticipated. I went back three days after we went to J.B. Robinson Jewelers to get the ring that she liked, with the intention of proposing to her when I visited on New Year's. I actually lost the card on my way to the jewelry store. But since it had been only three days, I figured that I could go on memory and get it right.

I was wrong.

The same salesman that we saw the previous Saturday was there on this Tuesday, and when I asked him about the rings we looked at before, he went under the counter to the same section of rings we were looking at. I won't get too technical about the specifics of what goes into rating a diamond, but I definitely remember that the ring my girlfriend liked had a clarity rating of VVS, which is like one or two steps below the clearest a diamond can be graded. And when I asked the salesman if that ring was the same VVS that we looked at before, he said yes, and with that, I signed the papers and took my purchase home. Only after I got home did I decide to look over the paperwork and look at the actual ring, and I don't remember what clarity the paperwork said my new ring was, but it was far below VVS. But I already took it home, and it was expensive, and it was a solitaire diamond like she wanted, and hell, she's not gonna care if it's the exact same clarity, and how could she tell anyway? But before I could lock it up in my mind that I was keeping this ring, I showed it to two people, my aunt's husband and my play cousin, and both separately reacted very, very unimpressed, like "Oh, that's nice." I decided to return the ring. If they didn't think much of the ring that I was going to propose marriage with, then the girlfriend was liable to spit in my face.

So there I was a week later sheepishly telling the salesman, "I think you sold me the wrong ring." He reacted as if he suddenly couldn't tell the difference between the rings he enthusiastically showed us before. But after I met his confusion with a look of Don't Fuck With Me, he initiated the paperwork for me to exchange rings. After searching that section of solitaire diamonds again, he informed me that the VVS was no longer there, but he could have one ordered for me and delivered within a couple of weeks. That was fine by me because I wasn't going to need it until the end of December. Fast forward another week to Tuesday, December 9, when I rushed out of my mass media class after giving my final speech and went to the jewelers. They called me a few days before and left a message saying my special order had arrived. I get to the jewelers, and there it is: a solitaire ring with VS clarity, which is a notch below VVS. I asked what happened to my request for a VVS ring, and the woman at the counter explained that they were only obligated to provide a VS quality ring at minimum for my exchange. I didn't even want to know how they came to that conclusion. She explained that they could call other stores and continue to search for a VVS, but it would take time, like a couple of weeks or so. I said fine. I made another trip a week later without a call from J.B. Robinson to check on the status of my order. Mr. Confused Jeweler from my first couple of visits was there this time, and he explained like the lady did that they are searching stores nationwide for a VVS solitaire, and it may not come in until after Christmas. And I explained again that since I wouldn't need it until New Year's, that was fine. But something got lost in the translation, and a few days later, a different man, a "diamondologist" that tried to hard-sell my girlfriend and me into making the purchase on our first visit, left me a somewhat patronizing phone message essentially saying that he didn't know if I understood clearly, but they were not obligated to provide me with a VVS ring for exchange. I returned the call and let him know that, yeah pal, I fucking understand clearly. Well, I didn't use salty language, but he got the message.

I then waited until after Christmas to get a call letting me know one way or the other that my VVS ring was or wasn't going to be delivered. No dice. So I waited until this past Monday to go to the store myself, and only because I was flying to Memphis Tuesday morning. After a half-hour wait because the lady at the counter was cleaning all 857 pieces of jewelry that some old bat brought in to be cleaned (or at least it seemed like that many), she finally got to me and recognized me by face. She said that the diamondologist guy called and left a message saying that they weren't obligated, blahblahblah, and I said I understood that. I asked were they able to find a VVS yet. She said no. I told her to give me the VS they had at the store already, and after tacking on the extra price for that ring, she wrote up the new papers, and I was finally ready to take the rock down south.

The actual proposal went off pretty much the way I planned it. Last night after spending time at a church function playing bingo and eating dry BBQ, my girlfriend and I came home to spend a quiet New Year's Eve counting down and toasting with some Sprite Zero. My plan all along was to propose right after the ball dropped, after telling her that I could only think of one better way to "ring" in 2009. The only couple of hitches were that it was a chore keeping her awake for midnight because she was so tired, and then when I was going under her couch to retrieve the ring, I had slid the box too deep underneath while hiding it, so it took literally a minute for me to dig it out, and I almost knocked over her lamp in doing so. "What in the world are you doing?" she muttered at one point. But I finally got it, she cooed and said "Awww," and I dropped to one knee and said, "I've said this before and I meant it--every day without you is a day lost, and I don't want to lose any more days. Will you marry me?" She immediately said yes.

And To Prove That I'm Not A Total Scrooge...

...A heartwarming story about a Samoan Savage and his Christmas Myracle. Happy Holidays all!

http://sacbee.com/topstories/story/1496331.html

(From the Wrestling Observer/Figure 4 Weekly website)

33 Years Of Opportunism

Ballots were handed out at my job a few weeks ago voting for 2nd shift's various characters, such as Most Likely to Transition to a better job in J.P. Morgan Chase, Most Helpful, Most Outspoken, etc. The last category was for Most Quiet, and almost immediately after the ballots were distributed, several people approached me asking for my last name so they could rock the vote for me. I didn't have to guess which category they were putting me down for, but after that day I forgot about the ballots until the awards show happened this past Friday. I have to admit, I expected to be in the running for Most Quiet, but I didn't necessarily expect to win. There are close to 100 people working 2nd shift, so I didn't think I'd be able to beat everyone out. But the nominations came up on the TV screen, which displayed the nominees for each award with their name in lights and music in the background, and for Most Quiet I was the 2nd nominee displayed. It was so funny because my name popping up was immediately followed by several people in the room saying, "Who??" I was so quiet that a lot of folks legitimately didn't know who the hell I was even though I've been working 2nd shift now for a year and a half. I guess if I'm that unknown, I deserve to be named Most Quiet, and indeed I won. Now, I didn't vote for anybody in any category, and I dismissed the whole thing as silly the day that ballots were handed out, so you'd think I would be embarrassed or nonchalant about winning. But, once again proving myself to be a hypocrite and proving that when it comes to the spotlight I have no shame, I basked in the "glory" of my win, stretching my arms out when my name was called, strutting down the red-carpet aisle, and accepting my award with a big smile as if I accomplished something. I grabbed the microphone for an acceptance speech, and, no lie, I heard several people gasp at the prospect of me speaking, and one woman said, "This should be something. I haven't heard him say a thing in two years." I then gave my one-word speech: "Shhhh..." Then I took a bow and headed back to my seat in the back of the room as everyone laughed and applauded.

Hey, if I thanked the Academy and took forever in my acceptance, then I wouldn't be deserving of Most Quiet, now would I?

But here's the thing: Those close to me who work with me every day don't think of me as very quiet. When someone does something stupid at work, or my boss gets on my ass about my numbers, or something happens that pisses me off, I'm not quiet at all. I'm quite loud and outspoken about dumb shit. I don't say much when things are going smoothly, but there are days where everything seems to be going off the rails and I appear to be the only one capable of steering the train back on track. A good example would be last month, when an account in my workgroup that has a lot of difficult instructions became a problem because I wasn't there to work on it for a few days and people in a different workgroup tried to do it. They screwed it up, but it wasn't their fault. There are a lot of instructions that were accidentally cut off of the online instruction page for that account, but because I've been working that account for a couple of years, I know what instructions are missing, and I work the account the right way. I have mentioned to previous supervisors and team leads that the instructions need to be fixed, but no one listened, and now people were running up to me saying "I'm so glad you're here!" because I returned from having a few days off early in November and I was known as the only guy who really knew how to work that account. Really, when you're running up to me saying "I'm glad you're here!," you have major issues. Because I had mentioned the problems with this account's instructions page many times before, I decided that I was going on a full-on crusade to have this taken care of once and for all, and I talked to team leads and supervisors from 1st shift, who seem to take these things more seriously than 2nd shift, and I grabbed Maria Perez, one of my old supervisors who got promoted upstairs, as she was walking by. And I explained to everyone, one by one, in a calm voice that--how did I put it--this account's instructions are extremely fucked up and someone needs to get off their ass and fix it. After four or five days of different people consulting with me about what needed to be added and subtracted from the page, the job was done. If I wasn't so quiet, this could have been done months ago, I admit, but the point is, when I take charge of getting something done, I'm not quiet at all. I'm rude, crude, brusque and straightforward, and I'm relentless, never pulling up until I accomplish what I need to accomplish.

On this, my 33rd birthday, I am reflecting on that bulldog attitude that I have at certain times that make it such a laugh that I won an award for Most Quiet. I am who I am, and I wouldn't want to change that. And who I am is a quiet person by nature who gets loud and aggressive when he senses the achievement of an accessible goal or the stench of incompetence. I'm like a chameleon in that respect. Last Friday I made a section of a room gasp in shock when I opened my mouth to speak, while another section of the same room winked at me as I accepted my award, knowing that I can get vociferous with the best of them. I like to think of that as being opportunistic. Like one of my favorite wrestlers growing up, Arn Anderson, I will take shot after shot waiting for the right time when I can hit my one good blow that does as much damage as many shots by other people. In other words, when I strike, I make it count. Looking back at my birthday entry from last year, it seems that I decided to keep my cloak of invisibility a little while longer, until I choose my moment to stand up and make myself heard. That's not so much being anonymous, that's just being opportunistic, and I don't think I want to live any other way.

On Being A Real Man

Finishing up my last class in order to earn my A.A. this week dovetailed nicely with a couple of incidents in the National Football League that reminded me of why some parts of our culture are royally fucked up. Just as I finish a part of my life that was needed to help me grow as a man, here comes a reminder that some don't know what being a man is all about. Left Eye from TLC rapped on their remake of The Time's "Get It Up": "Are you ready to make me feel the definition of a man?" To which one NFL player would respond with a gat in his sweatpants and another with a middle finger.

Let's start with Giants WR Plaxico Burress, who famously shot himself in the leg two weeks ago while trying to take the bullets out of the gun that he had in his sweatpants at a nightclub. He's in legal trouble because he had an unregistered gun in New York, which is a felony. His teammate who was with him that evening, Antonio Pierce, attempted to get rid of the weapon in order to save his friend's ass, but the cops were all over it, and Pierce has since flipped and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. I have heard several football players, current and retired, all black, talk about why it's necessary for some guys to have guns. I heard Marcellus Wiley say that it just made him feel safer, and I heard Joey Porter say that until you're robbed at gunpoint, you don't know what it feels like. Yep, that's the mature reaction. Some athletes have been robbed over the last few years, sure, but the answer isn't to strap on a weapon and walk around like you're the Terminator. The answer is to quit hanging out in places where you might get robbed. But these guys don't want to do that because they don't think that's what a man should do. They look at nightclubs and strip clubs and other various places that are clearly unsafe as joints where they have to go to enjoy themselves. It's all about the "stayin' real" bullshit mentality. They think that just because they grew up in the ghetto, they have to keep hanging out in the ghetto, even after they've made enough money where they no longer have to set foot in the damn ghetto. But they feel that they would be leaving their homies behind if they didn't hang out in dangerous places surrounded by dangerous fools who have no problem ending your life over the cash you're flashing or the jewelry you're wearing. That's what men do, right? They go where they want, when they want, and no one can stop them or intimidate them? No, dumbasses, that's not what men do. Real men avoid dangerous situations. Real men don't step into venues and areas where their lives may be in danger and their families' source of pride and income may be gunned down for no good reason. That's not being a man, that's being a retard. I've never held a gun in my life, and I never will, because I'm a grown-ass man and I don't need one. Of course, I stay out of places where I might feel like I need one. And it's always the black guys doing this shit too. You never hear about a white boy who came out of a dangerous neighborhood to become a star and make money, yet always came back to that hood at night and hung out in the seediest clubs surrounded by shady people. I have no problem with anyone, black or white, going back to their communities and helping to improve the area so that it's not so dangerous, but morons like Plax and Joey Porter would never wish for that. That "thug life" is so ingrained into their minds that they would hate for anything to happen that would take it away from them. They really think that guns and hoes and flashing your money is the definition of a real man. It's not. It's nothing more than putting yourself, the breadwinner of your family, in imminent danger for the sake of entertaining yourself and impressing your thugged-out friends, and that's the definition of stupid.

Detroit Lions center Dominic Raiola addressed the dangers of fools with guns as well, although in a different context. Raiola this past Sunday was being booed out of the building along with the rest of his pathetic team, who haven't won a game this season, when he showed them they were #1 with his middle digit. When the press asked him about it, he didn't give the typical B.S. apology, instead saying he wasn't sorry and wished that he could give his home address to the hecklers but couldn't because "nobody wants to play with fists. Everybody wants to play with metal." In other words, he'd fight the fans who pay his salary if only he could be sure they wouldn't pull a Plaxico and tuck a .357 Magnum or sawed-off into their jogging pants. I understand the frustration of being hated on all the time, really I do. But you can't accept the paycheck every week that you know is coming thanks to the ticket prices and concessions paid for by those same people you would like to fight. That's hypocritical. If I were playing in the NFL, I could care less what the people were yelling at me because I'd be going home after 3 hours of work to my huge pile of money and my supermodel skank collection. But again, here's someone who wants to prove that he's a real man, this time by getting into a fistfight over some words some drunken idiots are shouting at him. Get real. That's almost as stupid as walking into clubs late at night where the best thing that could happen to you is you get drunk, high and laid, which you can do in the privacy of your own home, and the worst is that you die. Today's culture gives so much cash and fame and power to athletes that it sure seems like they believe they are unstoppable. They really need to get a new dictionary and figure out what being a man is really all about.

The Strangest Thing I've Ever Seen In A Wrestling Ring

All I'll say is, it's from Japan, so maybe that explains its weirdness. But I ain't never seen anything like this before.

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/tajiri/video/x2cg2f_tajiri-yinling-vs-rg-the-great-muta_extreme

And while I'm at it, here's perhaps my favorite all-time Wrestlemania match. That pop for the first wrestler that comes out has got to be the loudest I've ever heard. If I were there live, I would have lost my hearing.

http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/jeffmartin48/video/x306ie_wwf-wrestlemania-xseven-stone-cold_extreme

http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/jeffmartin48/video/x306la_wwf-wrestlemania-xseven-stone-cold_extreme

Tying The Knot, Part 2: Shopping For The Rock

My girlfriend was in town this past weekend, having her own experience with Megabus (she agreed with me that it wasn't half-bad). We planned to spend a day out at stores having her try on different rings so that she could get a feel for how they looked on her hand. I would then have a clue as to what she prefers when I decide to buy the engagement ring. The experience was insightful because it gave me a hint as to what I'm in store for during marriage: The more you think you know what your wife wants, the more she mixes things up.

This is to say, she looked at a ton of rings that seemed to be the exact size, design, and metal that she wanted, and over and over, she shook her head no. I could just stand by helplessly and wonder just what precisely she could be searching for. She had been saying all along that she prefers a solitaire diamond, no little diamonds on the side or anything like that, preferably white gold, princess cut, at least a half-carat, with a small band. Simple enough. But we searched at least five jewelry stores at North Riverside Park Mall, and they all had many rings fitting the above description, and my honey kept her head shaking back and forth as if a switch on her side was stuck and she couldn't stop. On one, the small band she thought she desired was too small; on the next, the design of the setting wasn't something she liked; on the next, the diamond didn't "bling" enough; on the next, the diamond was too small. She kept looking at me during the process and asking what I thought, but honestly, I didn't have much to add to the proceedings because it's not my ring. She had to be happy with her choice, not me. I was just the money man. I appreciated her trying to keep me involved, but since I was mostly ignored by the jewelers anyway, this is something she honestly could have done without me. One of the jewelers turned to me at one point and said, "You're gonna have your work cut out for you." Don't I know it. I can just see her dissecting my attempts at buying her a dress or decorating a room. The one thought I kept telling myself was, hey, she's obviously a choosy person, so I suppose that makes me special because she's choosing me to be her husband.

She finally wrote down the model number of a ring that "blinged" enough for her and gave it to me for safekeeping. I have since lost it. So when I do finally get the funds to buy the ring, I will have to go off my recollections of what she said she liked about this particular ring (that looked exactly like all the others) that made it stand out from the crowd. And so goes another valuable lesson--pay fucking attention at all times to what the lady wants, even if it seems like it makes no difference.

Nominate The Whole State For Darwin Awards

This article calls the large amount of drinking in Wisconsin a problem that results in possible deaths...I call it "thinning the herd."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/16wisconsin.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Time To Eat Some Crow

I proclaimed in this post over a year ago that Barack Obama would not be elected president because the country still looked at blacks as an evil entity up to no good and not worthy of the highest office in the land. I'm stunned and, yes, proud to admit that I was very wrong. Like almost every other African-American, Tuesday night was a night that I had a hard time imagining I would ever see. But it indeed happened. I wouldn't dare try to attend that Election Night celebration in Grant Park (thank God I didn't have to work that night), but I did watch the telecast over the phone with my girlfriend, so at least I can tell my grandkids. I take zero credit for Obama's win, because I didn't do my part. I'm not registered to vote, and that was a point of contention between me and co-workers and family. A couple of weeks ago my uncle, who I didn't even know had my e-mail address because he's never sent me an e-mail before, sent me a video from moveon.org personalizing my name in a 90-second "news clip" blaming me for causing Obama to lose by one vote. I guess if you go to that site, you can personalize that video for anybody. It was actually quite funny, and also timely because I just recently had an argument with my aunt about the fact that everything I do is tsk-tsked by my family. Even as a kid, it seemed everything I did was treated as not good enough or not living up to my potential, and a few days after my aunt tried to deny that, here comes that e-mail from her brother. Perfect timing. I haven't even spoken to him since July 4th, but he took the time to let me know how much I'm letting him and everyone down yet again. But I don't believe in a system that smiles and lies to your face telling you that you can elect anyone you want while completely stomping the flame of anyone who doesn't buy into one of the top two political parties. And I don't apologize for not buying into the two-party bullshit.

I have to admit that since I wasn't voting and therefore wasn't paying attention, I don't know anything about exactly what will happen when and if Obama is able to execute this "change that we can believe in," except I do know that he plans to heavily tax the highest wage-earners. So maybe he really was voted in on the issues. But I wonder how much of it was the novelty of putting someone in office that wasn't a white male, which is what the previous 43 were. I wonder how much of it was a rejection of all things Republican and all things Bush, and I wonder if almost anyone could have ran under the Democratic banner and won, although if this country was really that sick of Bush they would've voted him out after that first disastrous term. I wonder how much of it was the American Idolization of American society, voting for someone based on a two-minute TV clip or ten-second soundbite, or the Hot or Notization, voting for someone because they're cute. I wonder how much of it was the stigma of interracial relations melting away in this internet era, when people of all colors in all corners of the globe hooked up with each other and black men by my distant observation became the hottest property since the slave trade. I suppose I should just be grateful for the social progress necessary to make this happen, and I do know that there had to be a tremendous amount of social progress. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't wonder exactly why this progress occurred at this point in time.

One of the many co-workers angered by my inaction asked a really good question--what could Obama do in this term that would change my mind about the process and make me want to register to vote next time around? The first thing that popped into my mind was the discrepancy between the percentage of black men in jail and the percentage of white men, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me, although it may not make sense to anyone else. But if Obama, being an African-American male, can't affect the change necessary to stop the ridiculous amount of black men being incarcerated for shit that white men get off, then I would think that I have no reason to vote for anyone else to get it done either. Research any study and you will find that the average punishment for a black man charged with selling drugs is incredibly stricter than a white man doing the same thing. I would assume that it's the same thing with other crimes, but I haven't seen those numbers. So that's my stance. Barack Obama is a black male. Surely he's noticed that black males in the American judicial system are sentenced to do harder time than white males. Surely he's noticed that one in four black men have been jailed at some point in their lives, and I think we're enlightened enough to know that it's not because black men are just more criminal than white men. If he's the most powerful person in the land, he will change that in the next four years, and if he doesn't, then maybe he ain't so powerful. That's what I'll be watching for. Everyone else can watch for whatever they want to see.

Tying The Knot, Part 1: Initial Reactions

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend casually informed me during a conversation that if I was waiting on her to give me the OK to propose to her, she was giving me the OK. After I got off the floor, I started to consider how big of a deal getting married would be. I actually freaked a little the first couple of weeks after this chat. Not that I'm running around trying to get laid like I used to, but I have gotten used to having no restrictions on me, going where I want when I want without answering to anybody, and maybe in the back of my mind, thinking that I would be free to get into something with a chick at the drop of a hat, like a bad Penthouse Forum story. ("So there I was standing at the bus stop when the hottest freckled redhead I've ever seen asked me for the time...") Getting married means that I would announce that I had no plans to get busy with any females in the entire free world except one, and no matter what, folks, that's a HYUUUGE statement to make. I have since sobered up, so to speak, and realized that I don't want to get busy with anyone else if it's going to possibly cost me my girlfriend. I don't want to lose her for any reason. Marriage is the next logical progression when you feel about someone like I feel about her.

The first few reactions were calm yet amusing. The first person that I told I was going to start shopping for a ring was a co-worker, and without hesitation, she asked the big question: "Are you ready to get married?" The enormity kinda caught me by surprise, and my answer was a nervous "I don't know!" And she said, "You're not ready to get a ring unless you can answer that question." That was the day after the conversation between me and my girlfriend, so I don't think I realized just how major this was. If asked that question by my co-worker today, I would nervously chuckle because I still can't believe that I'm considering doing it, but then I would answer, "Definitely." Another co-worker was thrilled for me. I can tell she's going to be one of those who wants every detail of every bit of planning, as if she's watching a reality show. My aunt reacted much calmer than I thought she would at first. I thought she would be a little crazy about it because no one I've ever dated has been good enough in her eyes, and she had a problem with my girlfriend last year over a harmless joke. But she seemed okay. I then informed her that my girlfriend would really like to get married down in her hometown of Memphis, TN, and she didn't take kindly to that. "We ain't all goin' down there! You got way more family up here than she got down there!" Never mind that my aunt has no idea how much family my girlfriend has down there. So that may become an issue, but I don't have to have my family at the wedding. Hell, with the economy and gas prices (driving or flying, you pay either way), I'd be hard-pressed to commit to a trip next year as well. We can always have a Chicago reception after the honeymoon for my friends and family. "Jacob," in typical guy fashion, responded to the news with, "Insert whip-cracking sounds here." And "Drew" was surprised, saying that he didn't think I was the "marrying type." I reminded him that the reason I went bonkers after finding the infamous "Karen" topless on a swingers website is because I planned to move to Milwaukee with her and maybe get hitched to her later. Wouldn't have been a smart move considering I had fuck buddies and wasn't exactly honest myself, but the fact is, I thought she was going to be The One. My sense of what made someone The One, of course, was incredibly warped. Now I know.

The next step is strolling around a jewelry store or two with my girlfriend when she visits next month so that I can get a grasp of what style rock she wants. After that, I gotta rob a bank or something to afford it, then figure a good time and place to pop the question, since that's the only elements of surprise that I still possess. Looks like big, big changes on Planet Dre brewing for 2009.

Whose Season Do I Ruin This Time?

Since my sports predictions seem to always be way off, I freely admit that whoever I pick to win the Super Bowl this football season should quiver with fear because I will be putting the Planet Dre Whammy on them! Hey, I should have that trademarked. Anyway, here's my call for the Super Bowl in five months:

New England over Tampa Bay (in a rout, obviously)

I really do not like the "elite" teams in the NFC. Dallas has proven that they have no idea how to win big games, specifically that QB Tony Romo. The World champion New York Giants haven't proven that they know how to win big games at home. I don't think they can rely on having every playoff game on the road again. I bet if they had even one playoff game at home, QB Eli Manning would have thrown up before the game and they would have never made it to the Super Bowl. The only other NFC team I like even a little is Minnesota. No one runs the ball and stops the run on defense like those guys. But I'm not picking a team led by Tarvaris Jackson at QB to make the Super Bowl. Someone in the playoffs will find a way to slow down the Vikings run game, and when they do, it will be up to Tarvaris Jackson to win the game with his arm, and that ain't happening. So I'll pick old man Jeff Garcia and his creaky band of veteran brothers in Tampa to find a way into the Super Bowl, racking up boring 17-13 wins along the way, putting the television audience to sleep all at once. The running game is solid with the underrated Earnest Graham, the passing game is just barely good enough with 91-year-old WR Joey Galloway and whoever else they can dig up, and Garcia at QB is wily enough to not make mistakes with the football and let his defense make the impact plays. In the AFC, it's gonna be wild. Just sit back and enjoy the war. San Diego, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, New England--all teams that can claim that they are better than anyone in the NFC, and they won't get too much of an argument. I predict that after a long, grueling regular season in which New England gets beat so many times that they are in jeopardy of not making the playoffs, the Patriots wake up the morning of the playoffs, cry in their pillows at the bad memories that flood back from their last playoff game last season--where they somehow lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl--and get up with a burning passion to destroy anyone who dares challenge them this time around. I've seen it happen too many times where a team suffers a devastating loss in the playoffs and uses that experience to band together and win it all the next season. I say the Patriots do just that this time. They won't have any silly perfect season pressure on them, nor will they be running up the scores and setting all-time records. They're just going to storm the field and win every playoff game by an average of three touchdowns. And as for the Super Bowl, they will beat the Buccaneers by at least 24 points.

It's Been 5 Years...

...since I responded to "Karen's" personal ad and started my own personal hell. I felt blue all day Friday and couldn't figure out why, and then I realized, it's Labor Day weekend, and that's when I was bored enough to respond to Karen's online ad in 2003. But there's a silver lining, and it's my girlfriend. See, I was going to write a long sad post about how I wish I could be free of all thoughts concerning Karen considering it's been five fucking years. I was going to wonder why I still think about why she did what she did, why I still get a muscle twitch in my gut when I see in print any variation of her name or the town of Mukwonago, WI or any writings about the topic of interracial dating and marriage, why do I still want to pour bleach down her cunt, and when if ever I was going to get over the whole damn thing. But after work last night and all day today, my girlfriend has been playing text tag and e-mail tag with me, writing suggestive notes telling me how much she thinks about pleasuring me, getting me all hot and bothered. And she managed to take my mind off Karen completely. I don't know if she meant to do that, but I suspect she did. Friday night, I explained to her how frustrated I was at my inability to put Karen completely out of my head, so she knew how tortured I was all weekend. I bet she started flirting with me through text trying to make me think of something else. And boy, did it work. I had a very fun day sending dirty messages back and forth with her. There's a lesson in there somewhere about appreciating what you have in your life instead of ruminating about the garbage you've been through previously. And there's also a lesson about letting the people closest to you know how special they are to you. I surely would have been in another deep depression today if not for my girlfriend. But she loved me enough to make sure she occupied my thoughts and not some demon from my past, and she doesn't know how much that means to me.

The Megabus Review

Ten hours one way, 26 hours with my honey, and ten hours back the other way--without a doubt, I knew when I decided to visit my girlfriend in Memphis by bus, it would be a tough trip on me physically. I didn't expect my left knee to still be swollen almost a week later, but hey, I was scrunched up in my seat both ways the whole time, so I shouldn't be too surprised. Here's the Megabus blow-by-blow:

The trip was booked back in late July, which is less than a month in advance, but I was still able to snag my seat for $30 each way, which is a bargain no matter what considering gas prices. If you book a trip early enough, the gimmick goes, you can grab a seat for only $1, but we didn't plan the trip ahead of time. I kinda decided to come down sometime in August before I started back to school. (My girlfriend says she will do the Megabus on her next visit, so if she plans early enough, maybe she can get the super cheap seat.) There are no assigned seats on the bus, so the recipient of the $1 fare was never revealed, nor was he/she forced to sit next to the restroom or something. I happened to time my arrival to the bus stop last Tuesday morning so that it was pulling up to the curb, ready to start boarding, and because I didn't have to wait to put my bag in the luggage carrier on the side of the bus, I jumped the line and boarded second. I flashed my registration number, printed from the confirmation e-mail, and the driver checked me off, then I picked a seat and sat upon it. I put my book bag in the seat next to me, signalling to everyone else boarding that yes, I'm a jackass, and I'm not sharing this seat unless forced to. Fortunately, not enough people boarded to make me give up the extra seat, and soon we were on our way. Eating was not a problem--I had a breakfast sandwich and orange juice, as well as potato pancakes that I brought from home, and there were no restrictions on my gluttony. There was one stop the bus made in order to pick up and drop off people--Champaign, IL, about two and a half hours after our 11A takeoff from downtown Chicago. Champaign is the home of the U. of Illinois, so it makes sense that there's a stop there. About twelve people got off at that stop, and about seven people got on. There were no problems at all with the ride (save for the lack of legroom, but I'm 6'2", so I would complain), until we left Champaign, because someone decided that the ride was too quiet and busted out the bootleg DVDs, and soon the TV screens on the bus were filled with a shaky-camera version of Hancock, complete with laughter from the audience during the funny parts. I was so turned off by this that I put on my headphones and read my book for most of the film, occasionally glancing up during some of the action scenes. The movie was near the end when we arrived at a rest stop in Effingham, so I assumed that the nightmare would be over when I came back from the restroom, but instead, the movie was being played again from the beginning. I can't say exactly why this annoyed me, but by far it was the worst part of the trip. I guess it just made me feel like I was riding on the Soul Plane or something. I mean, white folks don't fucking break out bootleg DVDs as an entertainment option, do they? They changed to a different movie after the second screening of Hancock--The Incredible Hulk, in English, but with Japanese subtitles and a man's cranium partially in the way the whole time. Sad. The second rest stop was somewhere in Missouri, and I could tell that we were pretty far south because I immediately started to sweat profusely upon exiting the bus. I made an impulse buy at this stop--a new iPod holder, aluminum with a neck cord. I was psyched. Okay, I was mildly pleased. I had my midday meal, a slice of pizza from home and a sparkling water, and I went back to my book and headphones as we made our way to Memphis. The older bus driver provided a quick drive, but at one point the wheels made that startling sound when you run off the road onto the ridged shoulder, and I snapped my head up, hoping that the guy wasn't dozing or something. He righted the ship, and we continued on. Another DVD was popped in, but it was an actual DVD, not a bootleg. However, I didn't recognize it, so I wasn't interested. All I know is that it starred Reese Witherspoon, and apparently she had a husband trapped in another country, possibly Middle Eastern, and she was trying in vain to find him. Daytime turned to night, and in the span of about five minutes, all of a sudden we went across the bridge over the Mississippi River, we arrived at the downtown Memphis MATA bus station, the movie ended, and my girlfriend texted me asking when we were going to be let off the bus, since we were just sitting there for a while after we arrived. The driver was waiting for a bus ahead of him to move so he could pull up to the corner. Finally, at 8:20P we unloaded, I hugged and kissed my sweetie, and I almost kissed her A/C in her car because the air on the bus had stopped working by the time we made it.

After a fun day with my girlfriend frolicking around her house, she treated me to a jerk chicken pasta dinner at a Jamaican restaurant, then I boarded the Megabus back home. Takeoff was at 11P Wednesday night, and I got on at about 10:40P. I had to take a seat on the upper level of the double-decker because all of the seats on the lower level were taken, but it still wasn't a whole lot of people on the bus. The upper deck had maybe 12 folks, and that's counting the four Bebe's Kids in the very front row, prepared to be the first ones ejected out of the bus along with the two women accompanying them if there were to be an accident. Yes, they were loud and annoying, to no one's surprise. I don't know why we had a double-decker going back; we had a regular bus going to Memphis. Nobody else boarded the bus after me until about 11:03, when a car pulled up next to the bus and two women hurriedly grabbed their respective bags out of the car and rushed onto the bus. Strangely, they didn't sit together. One, a Latina, came to the upper deck and sat across from me. I don't know what happened to the other, a black woman. Maybe she didn't get on the Megabus but rather wound up running into the MATA bus station trying to catch a different bus altogether. In any event, we left about 3 minutes after that. I knew that it would be hard trying to get a night of sleep on a bus, but I underestimated just how hard. Again, the legroom or lack thereof made it difficult to get comfortable. I let the seat back as far as I could, but that's not very far. I kept alternating between lying back and sitting straight up hugging the seat in front of me. I didn't have a pillow, but that turned out to be the least of my worries. The A/C was working on this bus. I was a little warm when I boarded, so I had the overhead air blowing directly on me. Then, once I started feeling cool, I turned off the overhead. Then I turned off the overhead on the seat in front of me. Then I pulled up my shirt so that my shaved head was covered. Then I took out my spare shirt from my book bag and wrapped it around my bare arms. The A/C was absolutely freezing. I can't imagine how high it was, but I was unbearably cold. One of the kids was actually crying at about 2A, sobbing, "I'm cold!" I would have complained, but I know that I'm not the only person on the bus, and I didn't want to ask the driver to make it warmer when the others may have been just fine. I'm the idiot that didn't have a blanket or jacket, so I decided to just suffer. But yeah, I didn't get a lot of sleep. We only took one rest break in Effingham at about 4A, and it was eventful. I happened to be awake and saw the driver attempt to pull into a gas station whose overhead ceiling may have been too low for the bus to clear. After two or three reverses and attempts to pull in, the driver gave up and pulled out, driving two blocks to a different gas station, a bigger one with a very high overhead and a McDonald's and a convenience store and restrooms. He then announced over the speaker that everyone had to leave the bus while he filled up. I didn't know why we had to leave the bus while he put gas in it, but I was too groggy to question anything, so I got up and left. When I came out of the restroom (and contemplated buying a pillow and throw blankie but couldn't make myself take out the cash), the bus had vanished. There were gas pumps right there in front of the convenience store, but the bus wasn't there. I hoped and prayed that the driver decided to go back to the original gas station, although I don't know why he would. I was able to spot a couple of people on the Megabus also standing outside, including the Latina and the Bebe Kid complaining about the cold, which made sense because he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. So I knew that at least the bus had not left to keep going to Chicago without me. However, we stood out there for about 20 minutes, and about the time that I started taking inventory of all the things I owned that were on that bus and how would I replace them all and I'm never taking Megabus again, the bus reappeared and took us all back in. The A/C continued to be an issue even though someone asked the driver to turn it down, and eventually I gave up trying to sleep and turned on my reading light so that I could finish my book. 6A brought daylight and brought us to Champaign, where we let a handful of people off and let a large amount of college kids on, so many that I almost had to give up the seat next to me. It was straight to Chicago from there, but to show how slowly this driver went as compared to the driver who took us from Chicago to Memphis, we made that trip in nine hours and 20 minutes with two rest stops, and we went from Memphis to Chicago in ten hours and 5 minutes with one rest stop. I almost ran off the bus when we finally made it to Chicago. My knees were a little sore from two days of banging off the seat in front of me, but the left knee didn't swell up until Friday, and it hasn't calmed down yet.

So my recommendation for Megabus is, it's certainly a quality ride for the value, it's not a dirty bus, and the people aren't disgusting vermin as one might expect on a discount bus. I believe the key is, with Megabus not having a bus station of its own, they don't have a place set up for anyone to buy $1 tickets or $30 tickets or whatever price tickets on the street. As far as I know, only someone with internet access and a credit or debit card can get these seats, so that eliminates a somewhat sizable portion of the general public. I'm not sure how they make enough money to keep the fares so low, especially with current gas prices, but they don't seem to skimp on anything. The bus to Memphis had some seats equipped with trash bags, which I thought was a nice touch. I'd love to rail on about the lack of legroom, but honestly, it's a bus. You really shouldn't expect much legroom. As long as you pack a blanket and a pillow and some snacks, a trip on Megabus appears to be as good a bus ride as you can get for the money.

My (Very Quick) Summer Adventure

I'm off this morning to Memphis to visit my girlfriend, but due to my lack of vacation time, I'm coming right back tomorrow night. My off days from work are still Tuesday and Wednesday, so this morning I board a Megabus and take a 10-hour ride to see my honey. I'll spend the night, fool around with her tomorrow as she has tomorrow off from her job, then board the Megabus tomorrow night, ride all night, come back to Chicago Thursday morning, and go to work Thursday afternoon. I'm very worried that I'll be worn out from all the riding, but if the seats are comfortable and no idiots disturb my sleep attempts, I think I'll be fine. Megabus has deeply discounted prices from Greyhound service, not to mention what it costs to get on a plane these days, so that's why I'm hopping a bus for a 10-hour excursion instead of my usual 1.5-hour flight. But I'm excited to see my girlfriend, if only for a day. I'll take some food with me, along with a book and, of course, my headphones, which are with me everywhere I go. It'll be my one-man road trip. I think my girlfriend knows how much I love her, if she ever had any doubts. How many other guys are climbing a bus for 10 hours there and back, for a 1-day visit, knowing there won't be any sex?

The Star-Mangled Banner

I joked the other night with my girlfriend about solving her recent troubles getting to sleep by singing her a lullaby over the phone. I was totally kidding. I can't sing a lick. I can't imagine a scenario in which I would volunteer to sing anything in public, although I do have "Perform 'Hotel California' At A Karaoke Bar" on my lists of things to do before I die. But there were some occasions where I decided to open my yap and try to belt out a tune or two as a kid.

A couple of them involved tryouts for musicals. In 8th grade at Ogden Elementary in downtown Chicago, there was an audition for "Annie Get Your Gun," a play about Annie Oakley. Now, a couple of factors affected my, ahem, performance during this tryout. First, the rules for the tryouts were that a trio of people would perform a part out of the play to assess our acting skills, then one by one each member of the trio would sing a short piece of their own choosing. So I'm nervously watching trio after trio go through their auditions in the auditorium, letting the tension build, fretting about my acting more than my singing because I didn't care about the singing part. I knew I was a bad singer, so I thought I would just sing whatever song came into my head and get it over with. The acting, that part I really wanted to get right because I like acting. Now, while this was going on, my eye was never far from my junior high crush, whose real name I will use because she may read this and want to contact me, and I would love to see how she turned out as an adult. Her name is Tamara Todd; her friends called her Tammi. She had me lovestruck from the moment I saw her, and for those two years at Ogden I couldn't take my eyes off her whenever we were in the same room. She was tall, black, light-skinned, straight light brown hair, juicy lips, huge brown eyes that seemed to light up when she smiled, and a soft honey voice. I was told that she had a speech impediment, but the only thing that sounded strange when she spoke was that her enunciation was a little forced, making her sound British. Hell, that made her even sexier to me. (I'll have to recap those two years at a later date, because they were crazy.) Anyway, she was very shy, even more than me, so when it was her time to audition, I watched raptly. Her acting was nonexistent; she was way too quiet to make an impact there. But then she opened her mouth and sang a soft version of "The Greatest Love Of All" by Whitney Houston that left my hands shaking. She wasn't a powerhouse singer, don't get me wrong, but rather a delicate, dainty little crooner whose voice just made you want to run up to her and cover her with a blanket and carry her offstage to shelter. Okay, made me want to do that. What this did was ramp up the anticipation for my audition, because everyone knew how I felt about Tammi, and when she was done, my friends all looked at me as if to say, "Okay big boy, top that!" So my group finally gets around to hitting the stage, and my acting was okay, and then I decided to be the last of my trio to sing because I was legitimately scared. I didn't know what I was going to sing, I didn't know how I was going to sound, and I couldn't help but spot Tammi still sitting in the auditorium even though we waited until we were one of the last groups. And Mrs. Oberhardt, the hot blonde French teacher running the auditions, signals me to go, and I open my mouth and try to crank out The Star-Spangled Banner, but I started that first note way too high, and the subsequent higher notes in those first two stanzas were hit by me not with force and confidence, but with a quivering, wobbly voice that went up and down in the middle of a note. I could hear the giggling and see the smirks, but I was no longer in my own body, and I just kept going. Oberhardt saw the train wreck coming as I approached "And the rocket's red glare," and she said "Thank you Andre!" very loudly and clapped. The whole auditorium erupted in shouting and applause, and I knew without a doubt that it was because I had just embarrassed myself in front of the whole 7th and 8th-grade classes, and they were giving me the standing "O" for providing hilarious entertainment. Even shy little Tammi was laughing. Folks, it was so bad, if you YouTube Carl Lewis's rendition, that was Marvin Gaye compared to my version. (Not learning my lesson, I attempted to tackle The Star-Spangled Banner again during my tryout for "Les Miserables" in high school. About the same lack of success, but a lot less people in the audience, and Tammi was nowhere to be found.)

My duet at a summer camp called Project '91 should have been much more successful. I took a music class as one of my activities at this camp, and the class was infamous for putting on a concert of sorts at the end of the camp. Of course, with the large amount of students in this class, I didn't have any designs on being out in front during this concert--I joined to be in the background because it looked like fun. Well, I struck up a friendship with a sweet girl named Amanda during this class, and she was the opposite of me, white, slim, attractive, so the teacher got the idea for us to perform Paula Abdul's smash hit "Opposites Attract" as part of the show. The reason this should have been successful is because the role of the male singer in this song (a cartoon cat, if I remember the video correctly) is not difficult at all, not that ANY song featuring Paula Abdul is going to have difficult vocals. It was more of a rap than singing. I learned the lyrics easily and practiced with Amanda every day, and it seemed like we were going to be a hit. (The teacher even changed a lyric to make it kid-friendly; in the song Paula says "I don't like cigarettes," and the cat says, "I like to smoke," and the teacher brilliantly changed it to Amanda singing, "I like my Pepsi," and me responding, "For me, Classic Coke!") Well, a couple of things screwed up that night for me. First, the performance had me make one tiny error, where I started to sing one of Amanda's lines by mistake, and it didn't fuck up the song or anything, it's just that I hate making errors of any kind. I mean, what's the point of practicing if I'm just going to flub it anyway? Then the big screw-up was when I decided not to tell my folks that I need black shorts for the performance because the "uniform" was going to be black shorts and white t-shirt. I don't know why I waited forever to mention this; must have just slipped my mind. So the night before, we bought some black shorts, and they were WAY too small for me, but it's all we could find. It was bad enough for me, being grossly overweight, to wear shorts and a t-shirt for any reason, but during this performance, at one point we all were supposed to do this twirl move during someone else's song and drop to the floor on our knees with our backs to the stage and hold it for a while. I had to be in the front row of the backup singers because I had a feature song myself, and those who were singing solos or duets were placed in the front row. Small shorts and t-shirt + front row on stage + dropping to the floor with our backs turned in a bent position = you guessed it, the whole place got to see the crack of my fat ass. I could tell not just because my poor, embarrassed family told me so later, but because I could instantly hear the giggles the moment I dropped down, and I'm not dumb; I could feel the breeze where my Fruit-Of-The-Looms should have been. A bunch of white families have this lovely event videotaped for prosperity because they were capturing their kids' shining moment. Those families also wound up with my shining hiney on their tapes as well, and thankfully, I've never seen any of the tapes, nor will I ever.

Of course, my lack of singing skills is all someone else's fault. The teacher in charge of the winter assembly at Skinner Classical School had given me the spot to sing "Silver & Gold" in 1st grade, but one day I was running around chasing my friends right before practice, and when it came time for me to sing, my voice was all shaky and nervous-sounding. The teacher on the spot decided to give my part to someone else! I tried to explain that I was out of breath from running and that's why my voice sounded like that, but she was having none of it. If she would have kept me in my rightful place, perhaps I would have had the confidence to get better and better at singing, and it could have been me sweating on stage in front of 40 million TV viewers instead of Ruben Studdard. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Would You Put $500 On A Coin Flip?

Well then, you may have a gambling problem, as I do. I've always acknowledged a very unhealthy obsession with winning, and gambling became a part of that obsession when I was around 21 and started betting sports over the internet and playing the ponies with "Ronnie." Since then I have racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt due to my bad bets. But I've always had a plan--I'd get better at sports betting, thanks to websites that allow me to predict games for free and therefore keep up with when I'm having a hot streak or when I'm doing very well predicting a particular team's fortunes. I would then jump on a gambling site when I felt the time was right and knock out a few big wins in a row until my streak stopped, then I'd wait for my next hot streak before I played for money again. I even started a blog called The Road To Redemption, and I planned to keep track of my winnings as I slowly brought my credit card balances back to zero. Predictably, the first game I bet after starting this blog last year was the Pistons to beat the Bulls, and they didn't; I promptly deleted the blog and went back to the drawing board.

But make no mistake, my thought process has always been that one day I will make back the money I lost in my 20s, and I will make it back the way I lost it--internet gambling. After all, how else am I going to pay down my credit cards? Not with cash, not with my shitty salary. Well, I was trying to explain all this to my girlfriend on the phone last night, and she wasn't hearing it. She's never been a fan of my gambling, mostly because of the large sums of money I bet, but also because I usually don't win. As she put it, it would be different if I came to her with the occasional tale of victory, but every time I have told her that I bet a game and watch for the results and wish me luck, I have come up a loser. I can't tell you how frustrating that is because I call myself being careful and waiting for just the right game that I feel "can't lose." I mean, I used to play four and five-team parlays (where each team has to win for me to win any money) every night just because I felt like I could hit one of those and make a boatload of cash in one night, and every now and then I did hit it, but usually I failed miserably. Now I bet on average three or four times a year, and only single games. Anyhow, I was trying to explain to my girlfriend how much better this strategy is, because instead of four games having to win, I just need one game, and since one of two teams is going to win every game, I'm just looking for a coin flip, a 50% shot, and I'm convinced that this strategy will work for me once I get on that hot streak. It then dawned on me right in the middle of the argument that I've been plopping down hundreds of dollars on a coin flip for over ten years. I almost had to lay down from my head spinning.

It's come to the point now where my girlfriend is telling me that before she moves her life to Chicago and becomes my wife, she needs to know that I'm not going to take our hard-earned money and put fistfuls of cash on the line in what essentially amounts to a series of coin flips that last three hours, three gut-wrenching back-and-forth hours, in some misguided attempt to "redeem" myself. She says that I have to stop tying my self-esteem to how good of a gambler I am because it's a game that I can't win, and that I have to mentally and emotionally let go of the notion that I will one day gamble my way back to the break-even point because of how much I might lose trying to get there. And it makes me think of something that I figured out a while back when I was rebuilding my self-respect after all the drama that I went through a few years ago. I realized that as much as I like to jump on all of my ex-girlfriends for whatever vices they had, from "Karen's" drinking to "Torrie's" smoking to "Sarah's" need to be dominated, we ALL have some vice. Because mine isn't one of those things, I held myself in higher position than them. But mine are food and gambling, and those aren't any better than drinking or smoking. Karen even expressed concern about my gambling one day, and she never showed any emotion. To deal with the everyday pressures of just living, everyone has something that they fall back on, that makes them feel good, that takes their minds off their troubles. Just because I don't gamble every day doesn't mean that my vice isn't still gambling. Every single day I wake up wondering if I should bet that White Sox game today, or the football game, or the basketball game, whatever season it happens to be. And it was always with an eye toward making back the thousands of dollars I've gambled away so far. It's obvious that I need to do away with my vice, for myself and for my future marriage. I always figured that I'd one day have to choose between my girlfriend and gambling, and I was very scared because I really didn't want to give up gambling. But coming to the realization that I'm putting $500 on a coin flip is going to be what makes me give it up. Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that putting $500 on a coin flip is very, very, very retarded.