Yes, I know, I didn't write an article on Tuesday. And I'm sure that a lot of you who read this just assumed, "Oh, he's too lazy, or too drunk, or maybe there's a Red Shoe Diaries marathon on Cinemax." These accusations are certainly fair, but the real reason that there wasn't an article on Tuesday was because I was looking out for you. You see, next week I'm going on a ski trip to Colorado, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to write in at all that week. Well, I figured that it would be devastating to the four or five people who read this spot regularly if I were just to stop writing for a week. So rather I decided to wean you off of it by only having one article this week; that way you can ease back into the activities you would have normally been doing if you weren't checking this blog compulsively. You know, things like jogging, or talking to your loved ones, or in Sean Rank's case, visiting beastiality sites.

By the way, I was flipping channels the other day and I came across this stunning blonde on some show called The Loop, which is a comedy on Fox, so it's pretty much guaranteed to suck. I have no idea whether this girl is a regular of the show or just a guest star, but she was definitely hot enough that I will have to check this show out further. Details to come in later weeks.

So, like I said, I'm going to be going on a ski trip next week. I'm going out there with my family, as well as a couple of other families who we're friends with. For a number of reasons (far too many to list here), I think this trip will more than likely be a trainwreck, but the opportunity to ski is one that I cannot pass up. I mean, it's so rare that I get to embarrass myself athletically anymore these days. Why, when I was younger, I could embarrass myself athletically in any number of ways: on the basketball court, or on the baseball diamond, or on the football field. I don't play these sports often anymore, so I really can't embarrass myself with them. Sure, I embarrass myself plenty socially, intellectually, romantically, economically, and uh, etymologically, but it's just not the same as an athletic embarrassment.

I really do like skiing, although anybody who has ever gone with me would more than likely dispute that fact. The thing is that when I fall I get frustrated, and the more frustrated I get, the more times I fall. It's pretty much the cycle of perpetual swearing. The best example of this was one time when I was skiing with my buddy Dan in Colorado. This was one of the first times I had ever skied, so it wasn't like I was an expert or anything, and we decided to go down a trail that was a little out of my skiing ability. I manage to fall multiple times, and I'm starting to get pretty angry. Then I hear some jackasses riding the chairlift laugh at me. I contemplate walking up the mountain to find these assholes, but I only take a few steps before I realize that walking up the mountain would be way too much work. So now I'm really worked up, which means I fall again quite quickly. Dan tries to convince me to keep trying at it, but instead I launch into a twenty minute tirade where I curse out him, the mountain, every single asshole on the mountain, God for creating the mountain, the Colorado Board of Commerce for creating tax incentives to companies that attract tourists to the mountain, the engineers that designed the chairlift that allowed me to ski the mountain, and last but not least, the drugged out guy who rented skis to me. After that, I think I got a seizure.

In addition, spring practice for college football has started up again. This always leaves me mixed feelings. I always feel a little excitement knowing that the football teams are practicing again, and that the season will eventually be here. Also, the Blue-Gold game is a lot of fun and a great excuse to start drinking before nine in the morning, even if it almost ruined every friendship I ever had in college (but that is a story for another article). Still, spring football is the biggest tease of all: it ends, the season is still over five months away, and all us fans are left with an acute case of blue balls. Thank God that EA Sports releases its football games over the summer, just when I'm starting to go crazy with excitement over the coming start of football season. It's kinda funny: I'm ecstatic that Charlie Weis has managed to turn around Notre Dame, but I'm not sure what makes me happier, the fact that the team will be better in real life or that they will be awesome in NCAA 2007. I can't wait to see the rankings: Notre Dame should be an A- overall with a solid A to A+ on offense. Brady Quinn's gotta be a mid to upper 90's guy this year, and Samardzija will probably be up there as well. And yes, I feel a little embarrassed that I have allowed a video game to play such a huge role in my life, but the NCAA and Madden series are a big deal. There ranking system has even entered non-video game sports discussions. Just the other day I was talking to my friend Bucket about the Dolphins decision to trade for Daunte Culpepper rather than signing Drew Brees, and we found ourselves using Madden's ranking system to assess the trade. I happen to believe that considering the way Culpepper played last season, he was at best an 81 or 82 overall, whereas Brees is certainly an upper-80's overall. Sure with Culpepper you might get a season where he plays like a 95, but you're just as likely to get a season where he plays like a 70. Brees, on the other hand, isn't ever going to get much better, but he's also not going to get much worse. More importantly than the actual discussion, however, is the fact that we were using the Madden rankings as a reference for our discussion. They've become another statistic to use when discussing sports, like an ERA or a Rushing Average, and I think that's a testament to how wildly successful the games have become.

Quick note on the college basketball tournament: yesterday had to be considered Bloody Thursday. With J.J. Redick, Adam Morrison, and the entire West Virginia team eliminated all in the same night, who's a white guy supposed to cheer for now? I haven't felt this disillusioned since Larry Bird broke his back attempting to dunk.

So that's all I got to say today. We'll see if I have access to a computer in Colorado. If I do, I might still write articles next week, but if I don't, I'll have a new one April 4.

I have a new favorite TV show. Sure, I still love shows like 24, Lost, or Scrubs, but recently I found a show while flipping channels that is ten times more addictive than any of those shows. It's called Parental Control, and it's shown regularly on MTV. I highly recommend checking it out.

Parental Control is one of what seems to be thousands of dating shows that MTV shows these days. Sadly, I don't enjoy the current trend of all these dating shows, but I do understand why MTV decided to focus on them, rather than on traditional game shows like Remote Control. The success of Singled Out in the 90s taught MTV something: often, introducing attractive horny young people to each other is a prize that is both much cheaper than traditional prizes and equally desirable. In other words, MTV could have a game show that awarded a young man $1,000,000, but that would cost them $1,000,000, and the winner would only be interested in the money because it would get him laid. So, MTV decided to cut out the middle man and focused instead on shows that introduce contestants to skanks or man-whores, depending on the contestant's gender. Additionally, MTV realized that the audience was only watching the shows to see attractive people in embarassing and degrading situations, and dating shows deliver these in spades.

Quick side note on that: I don't understand why MTV hasn't hired any attractive women to be the hosts of these dating shows. Sure, they might have to tinker with the format a little to accomodate having a host, but the impact an attractive host has on viewewship cannot be understated. I genuinely enjoyed watching Singled Out, but I started watching it solely for Jenny McCarthy, and then later for Carmen Electra. In a more extreme case, I absolutely loathed the show Dog Eat Dog on NBC, but I always watched that as well, which was a testament to Brooke Burns. MTV comes into contact with enough young attractive women that are willing to use their bodies to attain fame that I do not think it would be difficult for them to find attractive hosts for these shows. Hell, if they need a casting director, they know how to contact me.

Side note on the side note (hey, you knew I was going to ramble, it's right there in the title): if you want to see a good bar discussion, ask a group of drunk guys which Singled Out host they prefer, Jenny McCarthy or Carmen Electra. I have more or less been constantly debating this for the last decade or so, and I have yet to come up with a definitive answer.

Anyway, back to Parental Control. The show starts off by introducing us to a young person who is in a relationship. The parents of this young person (sometimes it's a guy, sometimes it's a girl) do not approve of his/her significant other, so they convinced their son/daughter to come onto the show. As for why they do not approve of the significant other, there are many different reasons. If their child is a guy, oftentimes his girlfriend is too high maintenance, or sometimes just a straight-up bitch. If their child is a girl, her boyfriend could be disrespectful to her, or he could be too forward in his sexual desires, or he could have no life ambitions, or (in the most entertaining case) he could have previously cheated on her. Anyway, because the parents disapprove of their child's significant other, the mother and father each pick a date for their child from a pool of candidates. Then the child goes on a date with each of the parents' picks, with the parents watching from their home with their child's significant other. This is generally the most entertaining part, as the significant other is (quite understandably, in my opinion) pissed off about the whole experience, and the parents, understanding this, constantly needle him or her about it. After having gone on the two dates, the child then returns home and must pick between the two dates and his/her significant other. The show leads us to believe that the child lives happily ever after with whoever he or she chooses, but more than likely the couple has some drunken sex and then never talk to each other again.

Now, this show is only a half an hour long, but I find myself constantly wanting it to be longer. They simply do not give enough time to such an interesting idea. For example, they don't have any footage of the parents telling their child they want them to go on the show. If you were a parent, how would you sell this? I gave my parents crap when they asked me to take out the garbage; I can only imagine how I would have reacted if they would have told me they were taking me on an MTV show in order to break up a relationship that by some act of God I had managed to be in. Similarly, they don't show the son or daughter telling the significant other about the show. What would that sound like? "Hey baby, remember when I said our love could overcome anything? Well, now we're gonna find out. My parents have volunteered me for a MTV show where I will be going on dates with two girls they pick out for me. Oh, and by the way, you'll be forced to watch these dates from my living room with my parents. That's not going to be a problem, is it?" This seems to be an incredibly compelling part of the show, and yet MTV gives us none of these answers.

I also wish they would give expanded coverage to the process by which the parents pick the two dates. MTV has a pool of candidates, and the parents interview these candidates trying to find a good fit. I've found that these segments are often most interesting when the child is a guy, because the father always seems to ask inappropriate questions of the girls, with the mother getting increasingly annoyed with the father, especially if the parents are divorced. The girls then either act flattered or creeped out by the fact that a middle aged man appears to be hitting on them. As I said, MTV doesn't devote too much time to this interviewing process: the whole thing only lasts 3 or 4 minutes. Really, though, I think they have enough material for an entire trainwreck of a show here; give me a half an hour of a divorced couple attempting to pick women for their son to go on a date with, and I won't leave the couch for that half an hour.


Finally, there is one last segment that I think they could expand. After the child has returned from the dates but before he makes the final decision, he talks to his parents about the dates, while the two dates and the significant other sit on the same couch, awaiting the decision. MTV only briefly shows this scene and doesn't show what each of the dates says to the significant other. I think this set-up is a great opportunity for some awkwardness, and in the case of the child being a guy, a really great catfight. I'm demanding MTV increases the time the three of them sit on the couch, mics all of them so we can hear what they're saying to each other, and just to add some gasoline to the fire, provides all of them with a ready supply of alcohol. The result could be reality TV magic, trust me.

Random Thoughts

Here are a couple of random thoughts that are in no way related to each other. It's one of those days where I simply do not feel motivated enough to craft an entire coherent idea. You want that shit, you can go to one of those "educated" blogs that is written by "people who are not mentally retarded."

So this whole United Arab Emirates port thing fell through recently. I tell you, I'm a little disappointed in that. So what if the country was the home of two of the 9/11 hijackers, or that it has repeatedly supported terrorism in the past? This is port security that we're talking about here. It's important that we find individuals who can get into the minds of the terrorists and figure out what they will do next. Who better to do that than the actual terrorists? It's kind of like when Rocky asked Apollo Creed to train him in Rocky III. And gay beach hugs aside, that partnership was certainly successful; Clubber Lang did not stand a chance.

It's NCAA tournament time, and this is the year that I'm finally going to win my pool. Having seen the girl in the pool who has no basketball knowledge whatsoever routinely beat me for at least seven years now, I'm employing a new strategy: this year I'm going to start thinking like a woman when I make my picks. Unfortunately for me, as any girl I've dated/talked to/drunkenly pawed at can attest, I have absolutely no idea how women think. Still, I was persistent in attempting to think like a woman. I popped in a John Mayer CD, watched an episode of Sex and the City, and then cried for no apparent reason. After that, I was prepared to make my NCAA picks, and it became immediately clear to me who will win the entire thing. Now you may be asking yourself who I picked to win it all. Well, I could tell you, but if you really knew me you would already know who I was thinking of.

God bless American innovation: first the cotton gin, then the light bulb, and now the Donut Burger. A minor league baseball team called the Gateway Grizzlies has begun offering at their ballpark a surefire cure for the lack of sustenance that has currently been plaguing most of America, the Donut Burger. The burger will consist of a hamburger topped with cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon, placed between two Krispy Kreme glazed donuts. ESPN.com reported that the burger is expected to contain over 1000 calories and 45 grams of fat. To put that in context, the entire population of Somalia probably consumed around 1100 calories today total (numbers based on pure conjecture). I'm all for this invention, and can't wait to see it make its way to Wrigley Field, where I would certainly eat it every time I see the Cubs play. That way, I would only have at most about 20 more years of Cubs futility to deal with in my lifetime, rather than the regular 50-60.

St. Patrick's Day Party

Ok, so this may really be my favorite thing about spring. My family will be having a St. Patrick's Day Party at our house on Saturday, March 11. The party will start some time in the afternoon, and it will end when we run out of booze or pass out(by the way, my money's on us passing out long before we run out of booze). Any and everyone is invited. Call my phone if you need directions.

Spring

Well the snow seems to be melting, girls with eating disorders are throwing up twice as much out of fear that they're going to soon be seen in bathing suits, and the Cubs are exactly zero games out of first place in their division. That can mean only one thing: spring is finally here. It never fails to lift my spirits when winter begins to end. Sure it happens every year, but when in January it's -10 degrees with 30 mile an hour winds, there's always that fear in the back of my mind that maybe this is the winter that is never going to end. I suppose this year I really shouldn't complain: this was my first non-South Bend winter in five years. And you really haven't experienced hell on earth until you've lived in South Bend for a winter. Sometime around November, the sun disappears, and wouldn't you know it, the damn thing doesn't come back until around mid-March. I don't really know where it goes; I'd imagine to places like Florida or Arizona, where thousands of college girls wear bikinis all the time, are constantly drinking, and give it up like there's no tomorrow(at least that's what I've been told. Why did I go to Notre Dame again?). But that doesn't happen in South Bend. I've often called South Bend the armpit of America, and there certainly are some similarities. It's dark, it's usually damp, and it smells funny. But at least an armpit is warm.

But anyway, enough about complaining about the past: spring is here, which means we'll probably only have one or two more snowstorms before we're in the clear until November. Here are a couple of reasons that I love spring:

1) Shamrock shakes - What can I say? I am a sucker for those delicious mint milkshakes, and it's not just because they have an Irish connection or that their appearance means St. Patrick's Day is never far off: I really love their taste. The shamrock shake really only loses points because I have yet to figure out a good mixed drink that incorporates them, although that's not for a lack of trying.

2) Tube tops - Hallelujah! After months of seeing nothing but parkas and sweaters, there's usually one day when every woman alive decides at the same time that it is warm enough to start wearing more revealing clothing again. This whole process fascinates me, as I always wonder how women all manage to pick the same day; it must be an estrogen thing. I only wish that someone would give me the heads-up the day before, so that I could cancel any plans I may have made that day to bear witness to this glorious occasion. Still, there is nothing more exciting than walking down the street, seeing a couple of girls in tube tops or summer dresses, and realizing that today is the day. A word of warning, though: it is dangerous to ask a girl out on this day. The exuberance one feels from finally seeing some skin is not dissimilar to the phenomenon of beer goggles.

3) St. Patrick's Day - The holiest day of the year, as well as the most fun. At least, I'm told I've had fun on St. Patrick's Day: personal memories get a little sketchy after 10 A.M. As my friend Bucket often noted, "Where else are you going to find a holiday that reinforces stereotypes about an entire ethnicity?" And sure, there can be problems with millions of people deciding to act like a stereotype for a day, but remember: it's not just the Irish people who are joining in the festivities. There may be a large number of public intoxication or urination tickets given out that day, but they were more than likely given out to Italians: a real Irishman has no problem holding his liquor.

4) Sundays in Lent - Sure, Lent itself is not terribly fun. A period of forty days where Catholics are supposed to fast or abstain from certain enjoyments, Lent has probably caused more than a few Catholics to seriously consider Scientology. Understanding, however, that humans can be weak and that forty days is a freaking long time, the Catholic Church allows Catholics to take Sundays off from their Lenten fasts. Oftentimes these Sundays, chock full of fornication, masturbation, Girl Scout cookies, and ice cream, are a lot more fun than regular non-Lent days as a Catholic.

5) Baseball - Like dating the head cheerleader in high school, oftentimes the idea of baseball is better than the actuality of it. The slow pace of the game has meant that more than a few times in the middle of watching a game I will start flipping the channels, trying to find an episode of Blind Date. But baseball makes this list for two reasons. First, going to a game is a blast, provided it's not 35 degrees out and you're inexplicably wearing shorts and sandals. Secondly, the length of the season makes for great drama, even if watching every single pitch can get a little old. No other sport has nearly as long of a season with so many games, and I enjoy following the outcome of every one of them. Spring is special because it's right at the beginning of that long season, and every team has a chance to make this year their year(well except for the Royals, Devil Rays, Reds, Pirates, Diamondbacks, Rangers, Orioles, Brewers, Marlins, Nationals, Rockies, or Padres). Hell, in spring I can imagine that the even the Cubs have a chance this year, assuming of course that Roger Clemens is done pitching for the Astros and that half of the Cardinals team catches the bird flu. It could happen.

So there you have it: my five favorite things about spring. A couple of honorable mentions: March Madness, finding a 20 dollar bill in the pocket of your shorts that you put away for the winter, and the opening of the seasonal Dairy Queen by my house. And yes, I am fully aware that by writing an article about spring being here I am virtually guaranteeing six more weeks of frigid snowy weather. I'm like the anti-groundhog, but I don't care.

Cleaning Out My Room

I've been cleaning out my childhood bedroom in my parents' house recently, and it has been a very time-consuming task, to say the least. You see, I'm the biggest packrat in the world, and I hate throwing anything out. Unfortunately, my mom has been putting pressure on me to get rid of all the crap I've been storing in my room in the basement, and she threatened to clean it out herself if I didn't do it. This is a completely unacceptable scenario because I don't remember if I hid anything down there that I don't want my parents to know about. Even though I don't remember having anything incriminating, you never know if you hid something so well that you forgot about it. I'm also unsure of what the statute of limitation would be for my parents finding out about numerous indiscretions, so I'd rather not risk it. What this means is that I've been having to make a bunch of tough decisions, such as whether or not to keep that ticket stub I got for seeing the movie Dante's Peak at Hawthorne Theaters in 1997. I mean, how can I live without this priceless heirloom that reminds me of when I went to see that timeless film?

Quick aside: in order to determine the year that the ticket stub was from, I visited imdb.com. When I got to the Dante's Peak page I found that there were upwards of thirty different users who wrote a review for Dante's Peak. Checking some of the other things that some of the actors were in (one of the guys in the movie was the university president from Coach and has appeared in about 500 shitty sitcoms during the 90's) I came across the pages for some other forgettable movies/TV shows, things like The Jackal(Bruce Willis as a hitman), The Fan(Robert DeNiro as an obsessed fan of Wesley Snipes), Phenom(a sitcom about a teen girl who was training to be a tennis star), and Grace Under Fire(Brett Butler as a single mom). All of these had similar numbers of user reviews and comments. Do you ever wonder where exactly all these internet reviewers came from? Of all the people I know, two or three might actually remember the movie Dante's Peak, but they neither remember nor care enough about the movie to take the time to write an extensive review about it. So who is actually doing this? Was Grace Under Fire really that great of a show that it built up a loyal fanbase who still discuss it on the internet today? Did I just miss the genius of it or something? And yes, I am well aware of the irony of using a blog to ridicule people for wasting time online.

Anyway, during my cleaning duties I also have come across a lot of old pictures, which aren't always enjoyable to look through, especially if they are old pictures of you. In fact, after looking through these pictures I've come to the conclusion that in all my life, I have never once looked cool. Sure it's not always the same thing-- sometimes I look awkward, sometimes I look dorky, sometimes I look stupid, sometimes I look confused, sometimes I look drunk(in some of the more recent pictures, and really is just a combination of looking awkward, dorky, stupid, and confused at the same time), oftentimes I'm blinking-- but I never look cool. And this is a little unsettling because for at least a couple of these pictures, I'm certain that at the time I thought I looked cool. Otherwise, why have a rattail or a bowl cut? Or why wear the red and black plaid suit with a smiley face tie? It sure makes me wonder what me in five years is gonna think about pictures of me now. Whoa, these are some pretty heavy thoughts, I think I might need to lie down for a little bit.

So I was gonna write an article today about how I was so excited that spring was just around the corner, but then a snowstorm today made me think it might be a little early for that article. You know, God, it's hard enough to make this stuff on my own; you don't need to attempt to screw me at every turn. So at least I have an article that all three of you who read this will be able to look forward to; it's always good to have something to make the audience keep coming back. So if this article seems a little less organized than any of the other ones, it's because I'm pretty much throwing a bunch of shit together at the last minute. If you don't like it, you can start your own blog.

Anyway, I've now been unemployed for two weeks, and I'm starting to get a little antsy about this whole job search. I've been going on interviews every day, which is annoying in and of itself. After all, I promised myself that I would never again wear a suit after the case of Krazy Kaplan's Fireworks Store v. Brian Dolan. If the search doesn't start getting better soon though, I'm gonna start getting desperate. I may even have to go back to my first job: giving handjobs for crack. Sure it may not be the most glamorous job in the world, but it is a growth industry, at least if you do it right. And I know I told my dad I wouldn't be interested in pursuing the family business, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I bet you all thought this was a just an article in a blog, huh? Well it’s not: all it really is is an advertisement for my services. I even wrote a little jingle. It goes like this:

If you have some crack, even just one rock
Come to my place and I’ll fondle your cock.

I should be in advertising. Couldn’t you see that being in a radio ad that runs approximately every five minutes?

Anyway, even though I'm a little unsure of what I'm going to be doing next, I still don't regret leaving my old position. Like I said before, this sales job really wasn’t for me. I was selling stuff to businesses over the phone, and it was plain frustrating. The biggest problem I had was with these sales scripts that the company had. When I started working there, my manager gave me a bunch of scripts of what I was supposed to say on calls. It’s not a bad idea to give people an idea of what they’re supposed to say, but my manager really wanted me to constantly stick with these scripts. The problem was that reciting the scripts made you sound like a jackass. You know when you receive a call from a telemarketer and it’s clear that all they’re doing is reading off a script? Well that’s what I had to do over and over. When they’d pick up you’d say hello and ask how the person was doing. You always ask how the person is doing, but if you listen to their answer too closely, you could get in trouble. That’s because according to the script, there were only two different responses a person could give to “How are you doing?”: either the person was doing well or the person was doing poorly. If the person was doing good you said, “Great to hear that,” and if the person was having a bad day you were supposed to say “Oh? Well I’m sorry to hear that.” Absolutely no wiggle room allowed. So even if you ask someone how they are doing and they answer, “Oh my God! I’m so scared! There’s a guy in the building with a gun, and he’s shooting people!” you were supposed to answer, “Oh? Well I’m sorry to hear that.” Then during the actual sales pitch, you’re supposed to ask the most asinine questions that no one would say no to, things like “If you could save a million dollars a month, that would be good, right?” or “So you increasing your employees’ productivity would be good, right?” or “If a blazing hot poker was shoved up your ass, that would hurt, right?” Next time a telemarketer asks you one of those questions, just answer the opposite of what he is expecting. Trust me from experience, you’ll actually be able to hear his brain explode. “Uh…um… you sure you wouldn’t like to save some more money?”

But I tell you one benefit of those sales scripts: they’ve helped me out on the dating scene. I used to never know what to say to girls I met at bars, but thanks to the sales script, I now have something to say. All you have to do is change a couple of words in the script and it works for women. Here’s what I say.

"Hi Melanie, how are you doing today? Great to hear it. Anyway, I know you weren’t expecting me to come over here and talk to you, do you have a minute? You do, oh great. Anyway, the reason for my visit over here is that I’ve been working with a lot of different women in the Chicago area, helping them improve their romantic lives, which gives them more sexual satisfaction and stability from their significant others. What I’d like to do is set up an appointment at a later date where I can discuss my romantic solutions more in depth and we can see if any of them might work on your love life. So how about we go to dinner and a movie next Wednesday at 7:00?" Then if she actually agrees to go out with you, you spend the date talking about your romantic solutions and how they will benefit the girl. Then at the end of the date, it’s time for the pitch. This is another heavily scripted area. “Wow, Melanie, thank you for sharing so much with me. I’m glad you were so open with me about your desire to find a man who has better sexual stamina and also remembers your anniversary. I believe that my romantic solutions could help you in both of these areas. Now the package that I would recommend for you is a trial pack where you can get a little familiar with my romantic solutions without committing long-term. What the package consists of is a second date in about a week at a fancy French restaurant. Now all that this will cost for you will be one hour of passionate sex, with little to no conversation afterwards. I'll tell you what: if you act right now, I’ll even throw in breakfast next morning and your cab fare back to your place. So, would you prefer to take care of birth control, or shall I?”

It hasn't actually worked yet, but I'm sure it will soon.