I don’t have the energy to dive right into the usual depressing noise, so instead I’m going to start a new Captain Hindsight feature where I come clean about particularly egregious cases of bad judgment. And believe me, there are many, so this may take a few years to roll out. Anyway, on to the shit show!
1. In hindsight, I should not have tried Skoal chewing tobacco at the Van Halen F.U.C.K. concert in 1991 at the War Memorial Coliseum when I had braces. [That's actually like 4 bad decisions in 1, but I'm trying to conserve space].
2. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have guilted my dad into taking me to the Sizzler on Coldwater Rd to celebrate my 8th B-day for the all-u-can eat Sirloin & Shrimp Fest and then balked at how nasty the food was. [More on bad seafood choices later in the post].
3. In hindsight, I should not have yelled at my friend Greg in 1989 for borrowing my Janet Jackson Rhythym Nation 1814 CD “too long”. [Again, another 2 for 1 bad judgment special].
4. In hindsight, I should not have treated the 3rd grade “fast skate” at Bell’s Rollerdome like it was the ’84 Olympics, only to crash into the railing and hide in the bathroom until it was time to leave.
5. And lastly (for today), I should not have consumed raw shellfish AND a large Starbucks coffee on a date in Boston in 1998. A little background: I had only been dating this girl (from Philly) for a few weeks, and right after we graduated I drove out to visit her. The next day we drove to Worcester to visit one of her friends and take the train to Boston for a Red Sox game. Now, keep in mind, as a 22 year-old I was not the cool, sexy man’s man that I am now. Not only that, but I was on foreign soil and now had to impress my date AND her friend. Fortunately, things went well as we enjoyed lunch and strolled through some high-end outdoor shopping area. [I think I even pretended to be shopping for a blazer] We were getting ready to head out for the game when disaster struck: a knee-buckling wave of nausea. I felt a giant bubble of bad news swirling in my stomach and for a moment didn’t know which end it was heading for. Suddenly pale, I pretended to want to look at a menu in the closest establishment, some swanky seafood joint, and I nearly stampeded the waiter on my way to the stall. Needless to say, I had to go so badly I would’ve tossed an elderly, handicapped WWII veteran off the toilet. After a few minutes of pleading with my innards to cut the music, the waiter wandered in and spoke through the crease in the stall door: “um, excuse me sir, but there are two girls standing out front who wanted to make sure you were okay”. I remember contemplating whether I could escape through the bathroom window and hitchhike back to Indiana. I decided to just gut it out, but do I tell them I had diarrhea or threw up? Which is less disgusting? I tried to make some jokes about making sure the bathroom was up to code, but the ruse was definitely up. We started walking around again when another wave hit me. ["My god, how could there be anything left?!"] I decided to just ignore the stomach cramps. A moment later and it passed. My mind control technique worked! But another block and the cramps were back with a vengeance. My stomach felt like a lava lamp. Given that each wave of cramps seemed to be getting worse, I made the strategic decision to tell the girls I needed to go home. Keep in mind, they had paid for 3 Red Sox tickets, which when you’re 22 is an impossibly expensive purchase. And I had only been dating this girl for 3 weeks. And it was about a 50 minute train ride back to Worcester. And then another 25 minute drive to the friend’s house. The train was packed with people and I collapsed into a seat while my date, her friend, and about a dozen others had to stand. It was at this moment the realization hit me that there was an 80% chance that I was going to shit my pants on a train full of people, in front of my date and her friend, hundreds of miles from home. And 80% may have been conservative. In fact I recall contemplating disaster remediation. Would I use newspapers to shield myself? Would the stench cause a chain reaction of vomiting? As each passing wave of cramps grew worse, I literally tried to tie myself in knots to cinch the business. I remember thinking “nothing to see here folks, just a guy arching his back into a bridge!” At one point I audibly whimpered. The train itself was inconceivably slow and jittery and seemingly made 8k stops en route to Worcester, as if designed by Satan specifically to induce voiding. I can honestly say that making it to our friend’s car without soiling myself was an athletic feat on par with Roger Banister breaking the 4:00 mile. At 35 years of age, I can say unequivocally that it represents my greatest accomplishment to date, something I’ll eventually tell my Grandchildren about. [My Grandfather had Iwo Jima, I have bad shellfish and Starbucks]. But after inch-walking my way into the friend’s house (I distinctly recall the friend’s mom gasping at the sight of the sweaty madman speed-lurching into her bathroom), I naturally compounded the error by finding the least-quiet toilet in New England. Anyway, the awkwardness proceeded throughout the day as everyone assured me that “it happens to all of us” and we drove back to Philly where it crescendoed with a “be sure to call the incontinent moron if you’re ever passing through Indiana” handshake. Good times!
Anyway, we’ll come back to this Pulitzer-worthy feature later. On to a few news items:
1. So Obama released a budget that cuts social services, particularly those helping the working poor (those greedy fat cats!), that won’t improve unemployment or meaningfully reduce the deficit. This follows Obama’s decision to continue budget-busting tax cuts for the super wealthy, once again pitting BHO the campaigner against BHO the President. At this point, can anyone plausibly claim that Obama’s even remotely progressive or liberal? Or that there’s any meaningful distinction between, say, Obama/Clinton and Bush I or CPAC darling Mitt Romney (at least when he governed MA)? Just another reason why our 2-party, red/blue prism through which we view everything sucks.
There is only one issue in public discourse that rivals race in terms of discomfort, and that is class. Nobody likes to talk about “class warfare”, even the lower echelons who are repeatedly getting screwed. I’m 90% of the way through Matt Taibbi’s “Griftopia”, which again I highly recommend, and it’s simply shocking the extent to which the financial elites have fucked up our economy. I won’t rehash it all again, but what really bothers me today is not just the seemingly immutable fact of life about the rich screwing the rest of us, but rather how they’ve gotten away with acting like they’re the victims. Despite endless bailouts for reckless financial chicanery, we have to hear them bitch & moan about “rhetoric“. Well boo fucking hoo. It’s one thing for Lloyd “we’re doing God’s work” Blankfein and Wall Street to nuke the economy through speculative bubbles and accounting shams, but can they at least have the balls not to blame the recession on blacks or Mexicans or unions? Couldn’t that have been the one concession for the TARP bailouts? Along those lines, I liked Drew Magary of Deadspin’s take on the NFL Lockout:
Q: If there is a work stoppage, who do we blame?
A: The owners. Owners are richer than players. And my rule of thumb is to always hate the richer person more. Furthermore, the owners agreed to a CBA back in 2006 that they all say they didn’t really like that much. So they shouldn’t have voted for it then. Tough luck for you, fuckos. Even though I don’t really give a shit about the players, they’re the ones out there subjecting themselves to horrible injuries every week without lifetime guaranteed health care. As someone who had to buy health care for himself this year, let me just say that the people in charge of health care companies should all get leprosy and left to die in a fucking warehouse.
The NFL makes an unreasonable sum of money. Its owners essentially have a license to print cash. Anyone owner who says his team is losing money is fucking lying. If the Pittsburgh Pirates, the absolute dregs of baseball, can make assloads of money and still cry poverty (as the financial records we posted indicate), you better believe that NFL owners are even more full of shit when it comes to revenue. This isn’t about owners losing money. This is about them not making what they perceive as ENOUGH money. The Bills don’t make as much as the Cowboys do. So where can that team find some money to make up the disparity in both revenue and self-esteem? From payroll. And two of these teams (Chargers and Vikings?) are about to get a sweetheart deal with L.A., giving the league an even greater number of “luxury” teams. That’s what this shit is about. The Panthers started talking this year about getting a new stadium. Know when their current one was built? 1996. Fuck them.
Anyway, I’ll try to keep up a regular posting schedule while I wait to hear from production companies. Check back soon.
