humping around

I was on the fence tonight whether to blog up some stuff or go to bed, but then I spilled a beer and it got all over my new hoodie and some placemats, so I had to throw in a load of laundry. Now I have like an hour and a half whether I like it or not. Whether you like it or not.

Why don't I tell you about my weekend? It was pretty weekendy.

On Saturday, I went and played me some basketball, poorly. I didn't really fuck up or anything, I just barely registered. There was no point to me. If our game ever got turned into a movie, you would be like, "Why did they introduce that supporting character in that one scene and then never get back to him?" I didn't advance the plot at all. Maybe they're saving me for the sequel.

After one game I was sitting on the sideline, dripping sweat and trying to make small talk with a guy I know. I was like, "Man, I'm a step slow today...maybe two steps." Trying to be modest but also telling it like it is. He said, "Dude, you've been two steps slow for two years now." Ouch. I'll show him! Ah....fuck it, no I won't.

Then I was talking to another guy about the Knicks. Remember them? Tall, incompetent, irrelevant, unpleasant? Office is over on 33rd? Anyway, this guy was genuinely optimistic about the 2008-09 season, with D'antoni stepping in as coach and all.

"But the personnel..." I said. "They have two big fat center types who can barely move, one with a heart problem, and now they're gonna run? Yikes. It's all the same shitty dudes, I don't see them being competitive."

He said, "I think Nate Robinson's gonna play well. And I like David Lee. And the new Italian guy might be good. And Crawford..."

I was all, "OK man, if you think that's gonna be a good team..."

He said, "This is the time of year to have high hopes."

He's right. Of course, once they start playing games those hopes will fade fast. But why not at least be excited for a month? As he pointed out, this will be a good chance to see how much of a difference a coach can make. My guess: 5-6 games over the course of the season.

Thinking about Zach Randolph got me reminiscing about Knicks I've hated through the years. Greg Anthony will always be my least favorite Knick PG, but I think Charlie Ward deserves some special mention in any discussion of History's Most Loathsome Knicks. Not only did his low-bridge boxout on PJ Brown ignite the fight that cost us the '97 season, but then he took over the locker room with his anti-semitic and anti-woman-reporter bullshit. He was a hateful, small-minded little fuck, and...AND... he had virtually no game to speak of. That combination is unforgivable. Plus he had the charisma of a file cabinet. A file cabinet full of papers displaying the box scores of every game Charlie Ward ever played for the Knicks, with his stat line highlighted.

So a belated F you to C Ward.

Then Saturday night I knocked back a few bierce with some college pals at Tom & Jerry's. It was fun, but around 2:30 everybody (except me) started getting tired. I was about to enter the "rah rah let's tear the night open and throw burning garbage into its bleeding torso" section of the evening, but I sensed that there was no more life to be squeezed from this particular crew on this particular night. They had stuff to do on Sunday and frankly I was becoming more aggressively uninteresting every second. So we parted ways, mostly their choice.

I put on my headphones and started to walk home. The bottom may be falling out of the economy but you'd never guess it from walking through NYC at night. Packed bars, people spilling out onto the street smoking. Traffic all jammed up at 3 am. Horns and loudmouths filling in any silent moment that might try to slip in. Packs of douchebags in pressed shirts, looking to pick up girls so they can brag about it to their bros the next day. Arty kids passing judgment on them. And married dudes walking home from the bar bopping their heads to their favorite songs from 1973.

I walked up Bowery and made a right onto maybe 3rd street. Up ahead something caught my eye. It was a young couple, grinding like crazy against a building. What fun! At first I thought they were actually...you know...doing it. They were totally mashing their parts together in a crazy exaggerated thrusty-dance. I think the words "They're fucking!" actually rolled across my mind.

As I got closer I noticed that they were clothed, which both relieved and disappointed me. I would call it a building-aided vertical dry hump al fresco, if I was keeping score. As I got closer still I noticed that the guy was sort of burying his face in the woman's neck/cleavage area, and the woman was leaning back and apparently enjoying whatever he was doing. Then I looked again...the woman was actually talking on her cell phone!

Wow.

I got concerned for a minute. What if she was in trouble? I didn't want to be part of a 2008 Kitty Genovese moment, so I turned off my music to listen for sounds of distress and/or ecstasy. No sounds I could make out at all. Definitely none to get worried about.

But I couldn't help wondering: who was she calling? Was she listening to work voicemails? Calling an ex to taunt him with the live play by play of her latest hookup? Looking to recruit a third? Naively trying to pre-order Mets playoff tickets? Calling Ghostbusters? Making a spa appointment for Sunday?

And did her paramour care that all his best moves were only enough to consume a fraction of her attention? He didn't seem to.

I like to think I would.

the bowling bachelors of billburg

Went to a bachelor party on Saturday afternoon-evening in Non-Colonial Williamsburg.

My college pal, with whom I just reunited after about 18 years without contact, is getting married in like three weeks. Another of our college pals was there. Plus like 6 of the groom-to-be's new pals. They all seemed like nice fellas.

groom-to-be:


nice fellas:

Started things off at the local 8-lane bowling alley:

I didn't have my oh-so-fine-209-level-game going. Whatevs. It was fun. I recommend the place, but it was fucking hot in there with no A/C.

Then went to a bar one of the dudes owned. Owning a bar seems like a damn fun thing to do. Why don't I own a bar? Why don't you own a bar? You're a real schmuck, y'know that? This was a nice little place.

There was a perfect garden in the back. Somebody had a dog there that was actually a fox, I believe. Kind of fuzzy on that one.

One of the Groom-to-be's pals is a trivia expert, and we got to talking about the greatest snubs in Academy Awards history. I know the Oscars are political bullshit and who cares blah blah but man, listen to the shit that went down in 1989. Sorry if this is a big ol' rehash.

Best Picture Nominees:

Driving Miss Daisy (winner)
My Left Foot
Born on the 4th of July
Field of Dreams
Dead Poets Society

Pretty mediocre list, right? Dead Poets Society? Please. And Driving Miss Daisy is among the all-time lamest Best Picture winners. Now look at these three awesome awesome movies that were not even nominated:

1. When Harry Met Sally -- perfect romantic comedy, and it kind of created the template for every romantic comedy since, not to mention Seinfeld. Only strike against it is having to accept Billy Crystal as in some way Sexy to Women.
2. Crimes and Misdemeanors -- I haven't seen it since it came out, but if I can trust my memory it is one of the top 5 Woody Allen movies, and maybe his best blend of comedy and drama.
3. Do The Right Thing -- this is such a fantastic movie, and it holds up beautifully today. If this isn't Oscar material, what is?

20 year-old movie spoiler alert!

We started talking about Do The Right Thing, and I mentioned that I had read an interview with Spike Lee where he said that the thing that white people ask him about all the time, the thing that really bothers them about that movie, is why Mookie throws the garbage can through the pizzeria window at the end. He said not once has anyone asked him about Radio Raheem's senseless death at the hands of the cops. So he figures people care more about a pizzeria than they do about a young black man's life. I brought this up at the bachelor party and of course half of the people I was talking to were like, "Well, we all know why Radio Raheem dies. But why does Mookie throw the garbage can through the window?" And I was like, wow, THAT's a movie, we're still getting all worked up about it 20 years later.

I also thought about the irony of Mookie, played by Spike Lee, throwing the garbage can through the window, and probably costing Spike an Oscar nomination in the process. If he doesn't throw the garbage can, I'm sure the movie would have been selected. But Mookie, and Spike, went with their heart when it really mattered. Nothing gets neatly tied up in Do The Right Thing. The characters don't necessarily do what you want them to do. That's one reason it's so good.

After that we went to a big beer hall place which was really nice and spacious.

I was getting pretty full/drunk/tired at this point, and the 900-ounce beers they sold us there didn't help me.

I failed to observe Eastwood's Law, leaving a half-full beer on the table as we departed.

We went to the next place and I just wasn't feeling right. Not nauseous or dizzy, just beat up and defeated. I was having a great time but the body kept repeating "No mas" gently in my ear. So I went next door to the world's poshest San Loco with my old college pal (non-groom) in an attempt to soak up some of that beer with nachos. Didn't work, and after a cameo at the next bar, I was forced to call it a night around 10. Drunk and tired at 10.

My conclusion: I can drink pissy American beers for a hundred years straight without a break, but as soon as I start mixing up all these fancy microbrews and fruity bullshit beers and anything with "moon" or "special" or "Autumn" in the name, I will bloat up quick. Love trying new beers like that with a nice meal, but if I am out on the town pouring 'em back I need to stay within my comfort zone:

Bud
Bud Light
Miller
Miller Lite
Rolling Rock
Yeah I said it, Rolling Rock light
Pabst
Old Milwaukee
...and assorted variations.

Congrats to the groom, sorry I leaked out like a little 9th grader.

winded

Chicago wore me out but it was worth it. Sleep was at a premium and often got interrupted by random acts of hostility.

I like to think I left the city itself a little worn out, too, but I know I'm dreaming. Chicago's always ready for more.

It was the usual.

Drank in the bleachers.


Talked shit in the bars.

Witnessed middle-aged people swallowing each other's faces.

Greeted my two fellow members of the Unholy Trinity.

Saw the Cubs lose.


The mostly white bleacher crowd didn't care. They came to drink like they have for the last 90 years. A million Lee Elias can't put a stop to that.

Fukudome looked lonely and maybe a little bit regretful.

The view through the fence is really not all that good.

Our view from center was better.

Passed the hat, I mean cup.

Got two (ungloved) fingers on a BP homerun. My friend D (not pictured here) got the ball on the carom.

Ate five different meat products in two and a half days. And lots of that gross deep dish Chicago pizza.

But nothing tasted as good as this Western Omelet Sandwich (!) with hashbrowns, coke, and chocolate milkshake. Holy crap.

I had a bad experience on the El, and it makes a loud fucking racket, but it's so full of Chicago romance that I guess I like it.

I couldn't ask for a better group of friends. A lifetime ago, I showed up in Wisconsin raw and rude and they took me in anyway. Here we are, 20 years later, 18 kids between us, still able to insult each other with love.


Lots more pictures were taken but they're just dumb drunken bar pics and who needs that?

another embarrassment in a lifetime full of 'em

It's been a rough stretch for me. I feel like I've been buried alive for the last 6 months but the tip of my nose is finally busting through the dirt and breathing real air again.

I think it might be HIATUS time. I'm afraid to say it out loud (SHYATUS?) because I wasn't sure I was even getting a HIATUS but now I seem to be on it for at least a couple of weeks and man is that a just-brushed feeling I could get used to. I haven't given it nearly as much thought as I did last year, and maybe that's good. I'll just see what happens. Who's up for a daytime drink this week?

I am about to sign a three year contract at my job. Holy hell am I worried. I hope it gets easier. The bright side is that I negotiated a much better deal for myself so at least I am OK with my compensation level.

On Friday I went bowling with a bunch of people from my old job and dear friends I overdid it again on the drinking. I made a raging ass of myself. I told people truths they should never have heard. I guzzled down what they put in front of me and asked for more. I laughed and slapped backs and pretended I knew all the answers. Not just to my problems, but to his and hers and yours. If you didn't have a problem I'd assign you one and solve it within minutes. For a good two hours, I felt like the goddamn King. And it's a safe bet that if I feel like the King at some point in the night, I will rise in the morning with the shame of a thousand sinners weighing on my soul.

That's what happened. A rough morning and a day full of resurfacing snippets of stupidity from the night before. I still haven't put it all the way behind me.

After more than 20 years together, I am not even one step closer to figuring out the mysteries of booze. My relationship with alcohol is similar to Bruce Banner's with stress -- during sober times I am mild mannered, cautious, insecure, always worried about saying the wrong thing. The minute the cold beer hits my lips I am alive with confidence, unstoppable, surging, arrogant, obnoxious, not nearly as fun or clever as I think I am but determined to prove otherwise. And I am usually shirtless and wearing purple pants. Stay away from me.

I wonder if my drunken asshole personality is a closer reflection of who I am than my sober scared schoolboy personality. I wonder if the real me lies somewhere in the midlle. I wonder if the reason I am so aggressive when I am drunk is that I have so much repressed rage swelling up inside me from biting my tongue all the time. Mostly I just wonder if I'll ever learn.

Hey, maybe I will try to eat better and exercise during my break...I could stand to lose about 25 pounds. LOSEWEIGHTUS.

mr. shaw, i presume you've met mr. shank

damn, it's been a whiley while.

sometimes when you don't post anything for a long time you start questioning the merits of having a b-log in the first place. like, the world seems to be doing fine in the two months since i last posted, maybe i should just say fuckitall and leave this behind so i can concentrate on other more important crap.

but this time wasn't really one of those times -- this time i always felt like the next post was right around the corner and i was excited to make it. unfortunately work kept pounding me with body shots against the ropes and i haven't been able to wrestle myself free for an instant.

even now, time is short. starting tomorrow i have two weeks of concentrated hell at work. it's the final two weeks of the season and it's gonna take a hail mary or two just to get through it. fuck. and no hiatus after that, either. straight from hell into an extended shawshank -- something between 2 and 6 weeks at the old job. i am actually looking forward to it.

in the middle of all of this i have to decide what to do about next year. should i continue to allow myself to be victimized by 15 hour workdays and constant work-related anxiety? probably i should, right?

no, i don't think so.

i have my year-end review on thursday and some things need to be said. demands, complaints, sighs. it's going to be a shockingly uncomfortable 25 minutes. the good news is that as far as i am concerned, there can only be two outcomes. i get a much better deal for next year or i am done. no hard feelings towards anyone in particular, just that if a job can take as much out of a person as this one's taken out of me, there has to be some kind of reward.

i am ready for either of those two outcomes.

here are some things i've done, thought about, or encountered in the last month or two:

did you guys see this colbert-o'reilly thing last week?



that is pretty awesome -- I am really impressed that they can crank out stuff that joke-packed and good on a daily basis.

on the other end of the spectrum is this:


I just don't get olbermann. i thought he was lame and annoying on sportscenter, and now he's still lame but he's also taking himself too seriously. he's trying so hard to be provocative yet somehow he still manages to be boring. he talks like one of those guys who's real smart but too nerdy to be appealing on television, but when you listen closely he's just stating lowest common denominator obvious shit that's been said before. he's not smart, he's not interesting. he's just not good. he gets all worked up and then he never delivers any good blows. how can you tell the president to shut the hell up and still seem like a megadork? ask olbermann. i hate him the way i hate klosterman.

we had our wrap party at work. it was pretty fun, i got a few drinks in me and narrowly avoided stupid behavior. man it's easy to do stupid things when you are drunk. luckily this time i wasn't that guy. one nice thing was that a lot of drunk people came up to me and said incredibly nice things like, you've made this year bearable, you're one of my favorite dudes, etc. i couldn't help but agree with them.

one guy started talking about my dad being in heaven watching us. i know he meant well but it was pretty weird talk for an office party.

the yankees suck. i had meant to say that at the beginning of the year: "the yankees are gonna suck." i would have been right. i am not a girardi lover but i don't blame him for the slow start. you got stinky old dudes getting stinkier each year, and who do you bring in to make it better? nobody. they didn't bring in anybody at all. name one guy on this year's team who wasn't there last year and can be reasonably expected to make them better. you can't. now name a guy who they already had who you'd expect to be better than last year. maybe a couple of those young pitchers, but that's far from a sure thing. how did they expect this to work? time to get out the gold card and start buying some new dudes.

i read another book, it was good: play it as it lays. took about three hours. i am in an early 1970s state of mind. maybe i need to grow my stache back.

i got in a cab one night after a horrible day at work and sat down. i absentmindedly asked the driver how he was doing, just out of politeness.

"terrible," he said. "i got prostate cancer and i'm pissing in this bag (turns around in seat and shows me bag), i got 39 electrodes in my ass and i gotta sit all day. i can't get a fare this time of night, it almost doesn't even pay to stay out and work. i don't know what i'm gonna do. i was in the garment business but it went to shit. maybe i'll write. i have like three unpublished novels at home. steinbeck wrote a bunch of duds before he made it, too."

kid 'n play

Sometimes I miss going out. Not always, but definitely on crisp early fall evenings when even New York City smells and feels like the Midwest on a football Saturday.

Nick S. was in town this weekend and he and PBdotC and company went and drank down a few over in the East Village. I was invited. But I got home at like 11, collapsed in a heap and dreamed fucked up dreams about work and dying and maybe a little bit about my lost moustache. I missed the bar.

I miss the bar.

Aside: a guy stood up during the Colorado-San Diego tiebreaker game tonight and he had a shirt on with huge-ass letters going down the side:

A
B
E
R
C
R
O
M
B
I
E

I didn't hate him or nothin'...but I thought to myself, man, that guy and me could never, ever be friends. Like if he was my friend and he bought that shirt, even if he had a pretty good reason, I would probably have to stop being friends with him. That would be it: the proverbial letter to Urkel* certifying the end of our relationship as humans.

End of aside.

Anyway, I miss going out so much sometimes. Maybe it's 'cause I'm feeling old; I just got the invite to my 20 year HS reunion this weekend (anybody going?). Maybe it's 'cause going out is fun as hell.

The Bar, sure. But The House Party, oh The House Party. That's what it's all about. You're never more alive than when you're at The House Party. The only limits on your good time are your imagination and your ability to inspire stupidity in others. And eventually the unwelcome arrival of the morning sun with its sack of daggers.

I hopped out of a cab that night, the night I almost made it out to the bar, and there were like seven young people spilling loudly out of the apartment building next to mine. They were drunk but they were gonna get drunker.

"Where is it again?" one of them asked.

"14th and 7th," another answered.

Two cabs lined up perfectly for them like chariots and since they were young and drunk and getting drunker they didn't even take the time to appreciate how good they had it. There were like four dudes and three girls and you knew that meant one of the dudes was gonna end up being the extra dude at 4 in the morning and they probably already knew who he was but it was 11 o'clock and the night stretched out ahead of them like a water slide full of possibilities and who had time to be lonely or angry when The House Party was already in full swing on 14th and 7th?

They knew that 4 in the morning was still a ways off. And even though they were young they already knew a lot of the many things that can change between now and then.

I miss The House Party. I miss the moment where you walk in and you look around and half-wonder if it's gonna be lame while knowing damn well in the back of your mind that the only way it's gonna be lame is if you let it be lame and there's no way that'll happen. I miss glaring at the asshole in the corner who thinks he's really funny. I miss being that asshole. I miss losing my beer cup, giving up and grabbing another. I miss meeting new people and trying to entertain them with my tired old stories. I miss discovering pearls of Midwestern wisdom like, "Johnson, Party of One" and "I don't drink anymore...I don't drink any less..." and "I wish I had a horse's cock...instead of this big thing." I miss girls chewing tobacco and guys on crutches with crazy stories and I even miss the fear accompanying the moment when you realize you've pissed off an NFL offensive lineman. I miss lying about who I am to strangers for no reason and fake New Year's Eve countdowns at 11:47 and beating the same joke senselessly into the ground until you're the only one who still thinks it's funny.

I miss the beer and the conversations screamed into each other's ears, as private as whispers. The crappy songs and the fight over the stereo and the guy who lives there eventually telling you you gotta go man. And I miss the triumph of talking yourself back in.

* This reference is to an underrated SNL skit from the mid-90s in which a bunch of office workers sneak into their co-worker's empty apartment to give him a surprise party. When they get there, they find all sorts of creepy shit in his pad, including a blowup sex doll with the face of his female co-worker attached to it, and a fan letter the dude was apparently preparing to send to Urkel. They are so repulsed by the stuff they find that they decide to leave. Just as they are about to walk out the door, the guy comes home and is excited to see his friends. They insist on leaving, but he won't hear it. He's all, "Come on, guys, hang around," and they are like, "Nah, man...this is weird," but he keeps insisting they stay until one of them finally grabs him and says, "Look, we found your letter to Urkel." The guy still looks unconvinced, so the dude shakes him again and says, with immacculate comic timing, "We FOUND...your LETTER...to URKEL." As in, the jig is up. please never speak to any of us again, don't you fucking understand? Does anyone remember this sketch? I can find no mention of it on the internets. It was funny. Nearly as funny and underappreciated as "Connie Stinson Talks"-- which is now, finally, gloriously, likely temporarily, available on YouTube.

just like keith hernandez

We are coming out of the tunnel at work. I can feel it. The nights are slowly getting shorter. There is hope. There is laughter. There are awkward fist-bumps and calm coffee runs.

And, lucky me, I love the people I work with. Strong citizens of the world. Team players. Sarcastic, angry, prone to swearing, but righteous in their hearts and committed to the job at hand.

Plus, I have discovered one antidote to the long hours and the completely unexciting pay: I have begun openly drinking beer at work.

Here's how it goes: once the higher-ups filter out, around six or seven, I have decided it is officially OK to drink beer. Not a lot, just a couple. Maybe just one, depending on how precise my work has to be on that given night.

Even the higher-ups drink wine on certain occasions. My beer drinking is practically sanctioned. I might shotgun one at my desk tomorrow.

It makes things more better. Although it isn't helping me get skinny, and I have a big red gin blossom on the bridge of my nose.

Whatever, I am drinking beer at work. I got no worries. Are you drinking beer at work? You should be.

Although the other day I was in the middle of a beer and I left it somewhere in the office and was unable to find it. I don't think that's very smart. It's not Nancy's house party on the corner of Bassett and West Mifflin, it's a place of business and some people there don't even drink on the job. Keep track of your beer, son.

I think it is now just about safe to say that the Yankees will make the playoffs (I might regret that, but I doubt it) and if so, it has been the most enjoyable season in years. Well played, Yankees. Joe Torre, go win us a WS and step aside with dignity and grace. Mike Mussina, keep sprinkling the HGH on your wheaties for another month and then disappear. I still think it's a flawed team with only one and a half reliable pitchers, but the bats are scary and if they get hot they could do a little damage. As anyone with half a brain can tell you, the playoffs do not necessarily measure anything more than luck, timing and luck. Sad as it is, the best team does not always win. The regular season, 6 months long, full of twists and turns and injuries and slumps and underage girls from the hotel lobby and angry wives and bad food and long flights and 81 performances of "Cottoneye Joe" and repeated offenses of ignorance and malice by the sports media who read way more into every loss and win than they need to and clubhouse music arguments and facing every team a whole bunch of times, while less romantic and exciting than the postseason, is a better indicator of who is good and who is not. Consider the playoffs a fun little lottery that the best teams get to play in as a reward for being good for half a year.

Do you ever hear about something and you know you'll like it because it's right in the middle of your wheelhouse, and you get embarrassed at how predictable you are, so you don't check it out? That's how I was with The Hold Steady. Everything I heard about them excited me and reminded me of my own lameness. From Brooklyn via Minneapolis. Replacements fans. Springsteen comparisons. Nerdy emphasis on lyrics. I was ashamed of them and of myself. And then I broke down and I iTuned all their records. And I like 'em a lot. Dammit. The singer's speaky style gets super-annoying sometimes but overall I'm digging that shit.

This goal is 10 feet, bitches:

Photo by PBdotC

Good Times Ahead

The other day when I was posting the whole "five things that determine how bearable your day job is" nonsense I think I shortchanged us all by not assigning point or percentage values to each of those things. I love making little numerical scales for all sorts of bullshit like that.

I do like keeping it simple, however. So for the Job Satisfaction Index, I will not weigh each category differently based on how important they really might be. Instead, each category will be worth 20 percentage points, bringing your maximum job total to 100 points. Once you get this total, say a 73 or whatever, you may then add plus or minus up to ten points for intangibles, those things that really cannot fit into any of the other five categories.

So here it is:
1) Good pay - maximum 20 percentage points
2) Good working environment/co-workers/bosses - maximum 20 percentage points
3) Low stress - maximum 20 percentage points
4) Fulfilling/Stimulating work - maximum 20 percentage points
5) Reasonable Hours/Time off - maximum 20 percentage points

Add those numbers numbers up and then add/subtract up to ten points for anything good or bad about your job that cannot be filed into one of the other categories (such as crsmal's "health risks").

Therefore a perfect job, like say highly-paid cheeto tester, would be like 110. Anything below 65 and you should be looking for something else. Unless you are profoundly unskilled and are lucky to even have a job.

***

Two facts that will make you feel extremely old:
1) Back to the Future came out 22 years ago.
2) Lindsay Lohan turns 47 this June.

***

The bad news in these parts is that my dad went back in the hospital after another low blood sugar episode. The good news is he's now out and he took home 100 clams for finishing second in the NCAA pool at my old job. Well done, pops. I watched the final with him in his hospital room and he let out a couple of woo-hoos when Fla. nailed big threes.One night when I was home from college on a break, let's call it 1990, a friend came over and together we consumed a bottle of vodka in about two and a half hours while sitting in my parents' living room listening to my sister's old records.

With all that booze inside us we decided it was time to go out and see if the world needed a hand with anything. We hit a couple bars, got to the point where if you knew us you would have politely excused yourself and gone home. We were obnoxious, unruly, and certain that we could do no wrong.

We finally left The Bar, bought a couple of Tall Boys to keep us company, and began walking down 3rd Avenue. We came upon a construction site and sauntered up to a rather large crane. The operator's seat was exposed, no locks or anything, so we climbed up and sat there, guzzling our beers and talking in the confident tones of drunk young men. At some point we became convinced that we should take the crane. How goddamn funny would that be? we reasoned. As we began plotting just what we might do with the crane once we figured out how to steal it (how hard could it be?), a concerned citizen came up to us and began yelling at us.

"Get out of there," he said. "I'm gonna call the cops."

I was pretty much ready to do as the guy said, but my friend yelled back, "Fuck you!"

And when you think about it, who the hell did the guy think he was, telling us not to steal a giant crane? Fucking balls on that guy. Mind your own bizznizz, boss.

The guy walked away, threatening again to call the cops, which I'm sure he did. My friend and I sat there for another minute or two, fumbling around halfheartedly for an ignition, before leaving, ON OUR TERMS.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that as I walked out of the emergency room the other night, I looked up at the crane that is being used to work on the hospital. This crane is literally like 500,000 miles tall. Literally. The point I'm getting at is that it's a very tall crane, taller even than the one we tried to steal all those years ago. And when I looked at it, its steel claw barely visible in the night sky, it came to me:

Nothing all that good would have happened if we had stolen that crane back in the day.

Imagine getting pulled over on like 57th and 6th, driving a huge stolen crane? You better have some quick excuses lined up, or you're looking at some major community service right there.

Baseball's back, I sorta care. And starting Sunday, softball's back. We all care about that. Thanks to all the fellas who came together and made it happen after a scary moment there.

Details to follow soon.

A request has been made for a GISG (rules below*). So here one is (10 GP's). Kinda easy, but we're just getting started. Also, here is a whodat (10 points). And I am thinking about having T-shirts made up for the three previous geniuses (cW, Joe M., smoker), but I can't think of a good design or slogan. I want it to include the word "verbungle" or "Hans Bungle" and some sort of proclomation of geniusitude. Like, "Verbungle Certified Genius" or some such. 25 points to anyone who can come up with one. It'll go right in the shop.

*Rules, originally printed here .
1. I will post an image, CLEARLY LINKED from this page, and that will be the image of the day.
2. Safesearch is off.
3. The goal is not just to submit a search term which brought up the image in question -- you have to guess the term my dirty little fingers actually typed into the search box, pretty much exactly as I typed it. I reserve the right to grant leeway.
4 The image must appear on the first three results pages for the search in question. I may trim that to one page if nobody gets any answers right.
5. There must be something visible in the image that makes it a logical (but not necessarily obvious) result for that particular search.
6. You can just guess shit if you want, or you can check your guesses on google before submitting them. Guess as often as you like.

O'Malley's Rule: Never Bet with Your Heart

From last Monday through this Sunday, my life was a 168-hour suckfest of the 19th order.

One week, countless humiliations, failures, aggravations, irritations, and anxieties. And I am completely spent now. I look and feel like a zombie with a tequila hangover.

Working a week at my old job was far far more unpleasant than I'd anticipated, and I'd anticipated it being quite unpleasant. It was good to see certain people but others acted like fuckweeds. I'll spare you the details.

I also repeatedly tripped on a stupid bunched-up rubber safety mat that had been improperly installed. This happened like 38 times. Once I actually fell forward and jammed both hands hard on the counter. When you're already in the middle of a crappy day, stuff like that really turns you into a raging maniac. Which for me meant that I muttered a few swear words, phoned in a complaint to the facilities department, and continued my business. But in another universe I stormed out of the room without saying goodbye to anyone, after kicking those who desperately needed it right in the balls.

In the middle of the shittiness of the work situation, I was further tested when Ma Bungle got stuck in Toronto for three days due to bad weather, leaving me to take care of Baby Bungle on my own. Thank God that she's such a good kid. She didn't give me any problems at all. Only a couple times did she even say "Mommy?" as in "Where the fuck is Mommy?" When she did, I would say, "Mommy's at work," and she'd nod and say, "work," like, "wow, mommy works hard for the good of this family and I for one appreciate it." What a kid.

The nanny helped cover some of the extra baby shifts, so on Saturday I rushed out of work to relieve her after what was probably the lamest day in my mediocre career. Not the hardest day but one of the most stressful and unsuccessful. A series of small calamities, some of which were unresolved when I bolted out of there. I hate leaving stuff in the air.

Ma Bungle finally got home at like 2am. Then this morning we had to do some stuff, which we did, and then I wanted to go home and watch some of the Wisconsin game on TV. Of course, a) it wasn't televised here and b) they shit the bed anyway. Serves me right for picking them. On the way home from our errands I stopped for a six-pack of Rolling Rock at the corner deli and the lady behind the counter had to look up the price on the wall (bad sign).

"$13.00," she said.

"$13.00?!?" I said. "I think there's some kind of mistake."

"No, no mistake," she said.

I shook my head and returned the sixer to the shelf. I've been buying Rolling Rock beer in New York City for over 20 years, and I am fairly certain that it is never $13 for a six-pack. The reason I buy it is because it is never $13 for a six pack. For more than five years it was $5.50 at the deli across from my shitbox apartment on East 9th street, although that six-pack was actually a 12-pack that the guy sawed in half to maximize his profits (and give us a good deal at the same time). Generally I don't think it should be more than $7 for a sixer, even at a deli. Although maybe I'm a couple years behind on that. Whatever the case, I went to Gristede's right next door to the deli and picked up a sixer for $7.58, which suddenly seemed like a bargain.

Ma Bungle did bring me back a nice gift from her trip, a pair of swanky headphones (pictured above). I am liking them much better than my previous pair, which occasionally sent mammoth electric shocks through my skull.

I am ready for some spring weather and some Yankee baseball.

The tournament thus far has seemed way suckier than usual. I haven't seen that much but it just seems dull. And somehow CBS only booked college basketball's best play by play man Gus Johnson for the first weekend, replacing him with snooze-inducer James Brown at the Sweet 16. Senseless. And that curmudgeonly prick Billy Packer and his terrifyingly bland partner Jim Nantz will get the big assignments as always. I just don't fucking get it. Sigh. I guess my memo of two years ago fell on deaf ears.

2 points for each thing you suggest that probably annoys Billy Packer, up to ten suggestions per person.

beer, ball and baptism

That was my weekend. Hung out with BJL, his buddy Will, and the King of Beers on Friday night. It was fun as hell, even if we were patronizing what may be the worst bar in NYC, a bar with a name like a Simpsons punchline, a bar where bands (Live, Bush, Blues Traveler, Collective Soul) that have been mathematically proven to suck still rule the juke box like it's 1994. Still, the Bud was cold and tasted as sweet as the first girl you ever kissed.

On Saturday I played ball. My leg was operating at like 82% efficiency but for some reason I freaking turned back the clock and played out of my mind. Shooting, rebounding, passing, even remembering to hydrate properly. Ma and Baby Bungle were there watching, maybe that was it. Whatever the case I need to bottle that shit and guzzle it every time I play. It felt like 1988 except that I wasn't wearing a T-shirt with a pink and blue Nike Air logo on it.

Then on Sunday I got baptized at 1st Presbyterian Church on 5th Avenue, former nursery school of Hans and DLee. Baptism and all that stuff is weird, standing there in front of all the people and getting publicly moistened. What really bothers me about church is how everybody except me knows all the rules and traditions and when to stand, what to say, where to go, etc. There was one point where everybody turns to each other and shakes hands and says "Peace be with you" -- only since I didn't know that was what you were supposed to say I just said, "How ya doin'?" At least nobody laughed.

Anyway, I'm going to heaven now so you can all kiss my ass.

At least I'm not making rock videos like this poor bastard:

That face is not selling tickets.

For ten GP's, which horrible hair-metal ballad did MDilly insist on defending to me in like 1990? (MDilly, please refrain from answering until 6pm CDT on Monday, February 12th, 2007.)

Also, DLee, tell us what we need to do to make the permit a reality. We will marshal whatever forces we need to marshal to make it happen. Give us names to write to, numbers to call, officials to bribe, low-level bureaucrats to blow. Canceling softball would be like canceling Christmas. It simply cannot happen.