The 4,326th time I considered giving up on the Red Sox forever

I've done my best to avoid ranting about the Red Sox this season. With the way they are playing I could honestly write about how furious they make me every single day. Even on their off days they find ways to upset me. You would think that when they aren't even playing that I couldn't get worked up but then I find this lovely jewel. Apparently Bobby Valentine spent the weekend wandering the streets of Chicago "rapping." Hopefully he has found a new love and will quit managing the Red Sox post haste. The entire crapfest of a season game to head on Friday as far as I was concerned. Despite everything logic was telling me I decided to spend the afternoon watching the Sox play the worst team in the major leagues.

I knew things were not going my way the second I got to my seat. It was a decent seat, I had managed to avoid sitting behind a pole or anything like that. The problem was the company I would have to keep for the next few hours. To one side of me was a family with four little kids. Sometimes I enjoy sitting near kids, it forces me to act like a civilized human being for one thing. There was just something about these kids. Immediately I could tell that they had never spent more than two minutes sitting still at any point in their short little lives. This ended up being true and they would go on to spend most of the game running around the stadium far away from my seat. Bullet dodged. Then there was the woman next to me. As she turned toward me as I made my way to my seat I saw the two dreaded white letters intertwined upon her navy blue hat. NY. I was sitting next to a fucking Yankee fan, great.

I had fully prepared myself to deal with a very specific kind of asshole; Cubs fans. Meaning I was expecting to sit near some overly drunk men and women who weren't even remotely paying attention to the game. If I was really lucky one of them would throw their arm around me and tell me about how Cub and Red Sox fans are exactly the same, this has happened to me countless times at Wrigley over the years and few things grate at me more. That being said dealing with a Cub fan isn't all that difficult as long as you are in the right mindset. Yankee fans are a completely different breed of awfulness. Any chance that she would be less than obnoxious went out the window as she immediately said to her husband, "Oh no. We have one of those people sitting by us." For the rest of the game every single time something positive happened for the Cubs she would get right in my face to gloat about it. Every time the Sox did something negative she was twice as exuberant. I was deeply shamed by how badly I wanted to smash in the face of a woman pushing 70. She kept going on and on about how great the Yankees were and how horrible the Red Sox have always been. I finally got her to shut up and leave me alone when she started talking about the 27 World Championships the Yankees have won and I naively asked her what it was like to have been alive to see them all. The inning or so of silence that bought was golden.

I truly believe that my seating situation contributed significantly to the fury seething barely beneath my skin, if nothing else it exasperated a rage that was induced by my beloved Red Sox. The game started out promising with Scotty Too Poddy (oh yeah, that's a 90's WWF reference) and Pedroia getting on base to start the game. Sadly this would mark the high water mark of the day. Gonzalez would strike out pathetically and the rest of the game went in the same vein. Later in the game we were treated to a "triple" by the Cubs pitcher. Pitcher triples are so exciting! Of course the only reason this was a triple and not a single with a two base error is that the scorekeepers at Wrigley are huge homers. If it wasn't for Gonzalez misplaying the ball horribly none of it would have happened. Which leads me to my number one gripe about the Sox: WHY THE HELL IS GONZALEZ PLAYING RIGHT FIELD IN THE FIRST PLACE?!!!!

I understand that the Sox have had a tremendous amount of injuries already this year and that the lion's share of them have been in the outfield. I also respect that Gonzalez is willing to play out of position in order to do what is best for the team. My problem is with Bobby Valentine ever putting him in right field to begin with. We just spent a boat load of money to have Gonzalez as our first basemen for the next decade or so. I'm also pretty sure I'm not the first person to notice that since the great collapse last September Gonzalez has been atrocious at the plate. OK, that might be stretch, the point is that he has been worse than he has ever played before. He went damn near a month this year without a walk. Watching him at bat is like watching an impatient kid playing RBI Baseball. Who cares where the pitch is going, let's just swing at everything so that the game doesn't get boring. Instead of letting him get his head right and figure out what exactly is causing this slump Valentine decides to throw him into the outfield so he has to worry about learning to field a completely new position on top of his hitting woes. What the hell? This is completely fucking idiotic. The whole dilemma is caused by interleague play, which I despise, and needing to keep Ortiz in the game. With the way Gonzalez is hitting would it really be that horrible to give him a day or two off? Then Valentine started putting him in right at home where there is no conflict keeping Ortiz out of the game. Why? So that Youkillis and Middlebrooks could both get in the lineup. Look, I love Youk to death, but when he is hitting .215 I don't think you need to completely screw up the psyche of our franchise player to get him in the lineup. Just platoon Youk with Middlebrooks until Youk gets his swing back or Middlebrooks wins the job out right.

While my head was completely frazzled by worrying about how we are destroying Gonzalez and effectively ruining the lynch pin of our offense for years to come I was distracted by the worst free agent signing in the history of baseball. Oh Dice K, it is so wonderful to have you back. What I witnessed was absolutely the most Dice K start of all time. He couldn't find the plate to save his life and walked 3 guys in the first. It took him over 50 pitches to get out of the first two innings. During those innings he gave up 3 runs and then magically figured things out and made it through six innings without any more damage and looking pretty good at times. If you looked at it in a vacuum one would assume this was a bit of a hard luck lice for Dice K. If the team doesn't score any runs it can't be his fault, it was a quality start after all. Yet from watching him pitch it was a fucking travesty from the get go. He tries to paint the strike zone so carefully that he is afraid to actually get that ball over the plate. It's especially infuriating because he never appears to be that wild. There aren't balls bouncing in front of the plate or sailing to the back stop, instead he just throws a lot of really close balls. As a fan this just drives me batty. I'd rather see him go full on Rick Ankiel than to endure watching Dice K nibble at the plate while working his way to 3-2 count for every single batter.

Damn this blog is long. I'll wrap things up. I ended up walking out of Wrigley furious that I had even bothered to head out to begin with. I guess I had a good time, it was a beautiful day and I had a wicked good brat. Of course the Sox would go on to win the games I didn't attend. And of course I took this a little bit personally. I had such high hopes for this season, sooner or later I have to accept that I'm a fan of a last place team and just give up on them. Ah, who am I kidding? I'll torment myself all summer long.

No anger here, just trying to cure Cancer, no biggie.

I know that this is super late to post this on here, I'm a bit of a screw up that way. I just figured there may be some people out there who read my blog, hate cancer and love drinking. If that's you please come on out to:

TONIGHT!
Nisei Lounge
3439 N Sheffield, Chicago
7-9 PM
TONIGHT!

I'm going to be guest bar tending to raise money for Kicks for a Cure. We're going to have a raffle for a signed Blackhawks hockey stick as well. BOOM.

The worst movie character ever

Before we get down to the vehemence I feel that I need to lay out a few ground rules as to what criteria I used to determine the worst movie character ever.

1. The character had to be in a good movie. When you look at a movie that is a complete pile of steaming horse crap then it's more than likely that all of the characters will be of a similar quality. What I'm looking for is a character who stands out due to their extreme crappiness amid an otherwise fantastic cast. I'd love to pick the car from Cars Who Eat People but what's the fun in that? For those who don't know, the car was a crappy beat up VW Bug and at no point in the "film" did it eat a person. Not one.
2. Jar Jar Binks is exempt. Not because he isn't the worst character in film history but because who wants to spend any of their time reading another angry nerd rant about Jar Jar? Everyone knows he sucks, let's move on.
3. The character must be memorable. It would be easy to single out a horrible cameo or a horrendous acting job by a glorified extra (Think Pee Wee Herman playing the bellboy in the movie within Pee Wee's Big Adventure.) For my consideration the character had to have a fairly major role.

Now that I have laid out the ground rules we can get down to the nitty gritty. Drum roll please. . . . and the worst movie character of all time is. . . . ROLLER GIRL FROM BOOGIE NIGHTS!

I watched this movie the other night on the HBO and was completely struck by what an all around lazy character Roller Girl is. Boogie Nights is a fantastic movie. PT Anderson really directs a masterpiece of a film featuring fantastic performances from Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore and Marky Mark. Actually when I really put my mind to it everyone in this movie is above average to great, in fact Heather Graham doesn't do badly acting either. Yet in a movie where seemingly every little aspect had a great deal of thought put into it (I love that the speaker modification is called a TK-421, epic Star Wars reference) Roller Girl seems to be a cliche that was thrown in as a joke. Roller Girl is a porn star who has a quirky little gimmick; she never takes off her roller skates. Ever. For the whole fucking movie. It does not matter what sort of situation she's in.

Taking a test in school? Skates are on.
Out at a wedding? Skates are on.
Cleaning her bedroom? Skates are on.
Hanging out by the pool?
Stomping the crap out of some guy who disrespected her? Oh, you better believe the skates are on.

Look, the whole idea made me giggle a bit. The scene when she first has sex with Dirk while listening to "Brand New Key" is pretty brilliant, I'll concede that. If they want to show her always wearing skates while filming something I'm totally fine with that. But she never takes them off, that's insanity. Look, maybe Mr. Anderson had been out of high school for way too long when he made this movie but there is no way in hell they would let her wear her skates in school. I used to have a wallet chain that was 2 inches longer than regulation and they called me on it every damn day. I also know that the majority of clubs/restaurants in this world would kick her ass out in two seconds flat for skating into the establishment. Yes, hot women can get away with a lot in this world but come on.

Then I came to horrifying realization. The movie takes place in southern California, a locale noted for having warmer than average weather. Roller Girl NEVER takes off her skates. THE SMELL FROM HER FEET WOULD BE HORRENDOUS. For six years we are led to believe that she never takes her skates off. Do you have any idea what the smell would be like? I'm pretty sure that by year 2 she would have become a biohazard.

The absurdity of the character completely threw me for a loop to the point that I couldn't focus on anything other than my undying hatred for Roller Girl. Every time she came on screen I kept hoping that I would catch her walking just one time so that I could let all of this rage go. That scene never comes.

Do you understand just how much I have to hate Roller Girl for her to win this award? Heather Graham is beautiful and naked in this movie, I should have no complaints. Yet the shittiness of the character manages to over rule all of the good feelings that scene gave me. Although, to her credit, it took me roughly 10 years after first seeing the film to realize just how much I hated the character, I assume the nudity distracted me.

You know that awesome montage at the end of the movie where it shows where everyone's life ends up? For the most part it's all happy. Nothing would please me more if they replaced Reed's triumphant magic show scene* with him accidentally cutting Roller Girl in half on stage. Oh yes, that would be glorious. The movie could fade to black as the camera focuses on those stupid roller skates as they hang lifelessly out of a box while the crowd screams in horror. OK, maybe I've gone too far. She's still horrible.



* He completely reminds me of Gob Bluth in that scene. If only The Final Countdown were playing.

The first rule of book club is you don't read fight club.

I want to be in a book club. Yeah, you heard me. For some reason book clubs have been taken over by women which is complete bullshit in my opinion. It is a common fact that women are unable to write good books (I have since been informed that this is not so much fact as it is my chauvinistic opinion. Or I just said it for a laugh) why should they get to have a monopoly on book clubs? As far as I can tell the majority of book clubs consist of a bunch of women drinking wine and discussing The Kite Runner once a month. If I were to join such a club I'm pretty sure I would get a lot of strange looks and feel kind of weird. Yet I yearn to read a book once a month and discuss it with a bunch of people. Everyone takes away something different from each book they read and longs to share them with others. Where as I need to be placed in a situation where I get to hear all of these diverse opinions, drink some booze, and loudly tell these buffoons that all of their opinions are wrong. As a man I am pretty much only allowed to act in this manner when watching sports, which is nice, but I need to broaden my horizons. I want to become a Jack (ass) of all trades.

God forbid a bunch of men get together and do something where they use their minds. If you were to judge men by what is portrayed in pop culture once could easily assume that men were incapable of spelling their own names let alone reading, discussing and understanding literature. Look, I love doing stupid shit more than many. I have an especially soft spot for horrid beer and sleeveless shirts. You know what else I like? Noam Chomsky, The Beats, Chuck Palahniuk and Leo Fucking Tolstoy.

Why can't a group of men get together and have a totally masculine and awesome book club? I'm sure I can find a group of like minded fellas who would enjoy doing such a thing, right? RIGHT?! Instead of reading all of the books that Oprah commands us to read we'll read manly books, like Bukowski and Hemmingway and basically anything about war and shit. We won't sip wine while we politely discuss the literature. No, we'll pound whiskey and challenge those with different opinions to step outside for a few minutes. If a book isn't good enough to get into a bare knuckle brawl over was it really worth the time it took to read it? I say no. Sure, it will be a bit difficult to avoid picking a different biography of Teddy Roosevelt every single month but I bet we can work around that. I can't be the only man out there who wants this, can I? Men in Chicago, let me know if you would seriously be interested in this. I may even be willing to host. Football doesn't start for 3 more months so it's not like you have anything better to do.

I don't care if you're nocturnal, 5 am is not dinner time

Growing up we always had pets. By the time I was 24 a couple of rabbits, a slew of fish, an insane cat and the best dog ever had come and gone from my life. Since then I have been mostly pet less with the exception of some very unexceptional fish who had mere cameos in my life. Although the fish I had that lived in an old 40 oz. Colt 45 bottle (the first being named Colt 45, then Colt 46 so on until 51 I think) hold a special place in my heart they never really required much attention. Then I moved in with my girlfriend and became step father to a cat. Since then I have been super reluctant to mention what a fucking nut job this cat is lest I become that guy who talks about his cat all of the time. I mean, I know I'm pathetic but I don't want to be that pathetic. I know that I have dedicated one blog to the furry jerk and that seems like more than enough. Then I went through a monstrous ordeal last night thanks to this feline fury and I can't help myself, I have to write about her again. Hopefully this will be the last time.

It was roughly 5 am. I was sleeping like a baby. OK, that might not be entirely true as I do like to snore and thrash in my sleep. It is probably more apt to say that I was sleeping like a baby warthog. Anyway, I'm fast asleep and I as I start to come out of my slumber I feel a weight on my neck. Not on my chest, not on my face, directly on my windpipe as if something is attempting to choke me. I awoke with a start to Myrna sitting on my throat staring directly at my face. "Meow!" I toss her halfway across the room and barely contain myself from pissing myself out of sheer terror. She jumps back up on to me and puts her little head right in my grill, "MEOW!" After tossing her across the room for a second time I get up and decide I may as well go pee while I'm up. 

Once I start walking Myrna starts weaving between my legs intent on forcing me to kick her or trip and fall on my face. I go to the bathroom hoping that she won't follow me in, to no avail. For a devious split second after picking her up I consider dropping her in the toilet to teach her a lesson but I assume that will go poorly, plus I'm not that mean. I toss her out of the bathroom and close the door to micturate in peace. "MEOW! MEOW! MEOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!" Normally Myrna is a quiet cat but she just wouldn't shut up. She kept doing the weaving between the legs act and basically herded me into the kitchen so I could see that her food bowl was. . . half full.

"WHAT THE HELL?! You don't need more food you greedy fur ball. I slaved over a can of fancy feast for close to 15 seconds last night, you will clean your plate and love it before I feed you again," I snarl at the cat. Yes, I talk to the cat. Never said I wasn't insane.

 "MEOW! MEOW!" She responds while staring at her food bowl. 

Oh goddamnit. There is no way in hell she is going to let me go back to bed without feeding her. It's 5 am, it is not breakfast time. I don't give a shit if cats are supposed to be nocturnal animals in my house you adapt to my rules, dammit. We all know what happened next as I abandoned my principles and fed the damn thing. She hungrily dug in and I decided that it wasn't that bad. I had just overreacted and if I was hungry and unable to get food I would have done the same thing. Then I felt something furry run past my leg and by the time I got back to bed there was a black thing on my pillow. Apparently those 3 bites of food were all that Myrna wanted. She ruined my entire night/morning for 3 bites of food! Or maybe it was all a complicated ruse (that I fell for completely) for her to sleep in the warm spot I left on the pillow. All I know is that I have never wanted to test just how many lives a cat may have more in my life than this morning. 

Once I cleared her off and fell back asleep I had the most wonderful dream. I was in Red Square competing in a drinking contest against Ivan Drago in the middle of winter. I was shirtless but wasn't even remotely cold. This confused me for a second until I saw my reflection in the ice block that was serving as the table for our contest. I was being kept warm by the most spectacular black fur hat. It was in the typical Russian style except for one little difference. It had two tiny little cat ears on the front.

So heed this warning Myrna, if you ever wake my ass up at 5 am for this sort of bullshit again I will make that dream come true.

My girlfriend's popularity is crushing my soul

For some inane reason I have always loved getting the mail. When I was five years old it was especially thrilling despite the fact that I never got any mail for myself. When I was twelve there was an added element of intrigue as I tried to intercept a notice from school that I had actually been in detention (for using colorful language) instead of at a friend's house playing Warhammer after school the week before. When I was in college we received so little mail that each time there was something it was worth throwing a party for. In summation, I really like getting the mail.

I'm not sure if I would go quite as far as to say that I'm OCD about it but I'm definitely on the borderline. If I hear the mailman you can be damn sure I'll be running down with the mail key within the next five minutes to see what bounty he has brought. It is here that I encounter heartbreak day after day. We receive an ungodly amount of mail. Envelopes, letters, catalogs, bills, junk mail; we get it all. And every damn piece of it is addressed to my girlfriend.

What the hell did she do to become so popular? I know that a good portion of it is due to the bills being in her name but that only scratches the surface. Every single day she has at least 3 envelopes of mail. Sure, a lot of it is junk mail and bills but I feel so inadequate in terms of mail reception that I wouldn't mind getting those. She is so popular that she gets magazines that she doesn't even remember subscribing to. Then when she comes home and I point out that her mail pile is roughly as tall as I am she does nothing about it. HOW CAN SHE CONTAIN HERSELF?! I would leap into the pile gladly and rip open every envelope with reckless abandon as I reveled in the sheer volume of correspondence.  

The question I should probably be asking is what have I done to make the world shun me in the mail department? When I moved it took weeks for me to get a single forwarded letter, maybe there is a secret vault at the post office where they are keeping all of my mail. I bet I have to undergo some sort of quest in order to prove my worth to obtain it. Ugh, who am I kidding. I have no mail. I use automatic bill pay. I have asked to go paperless. I brought it on myself. Yet I still get disappointed every single time I go through all 9 letters that we have only to find none with my name on it. I assure you that I fully understand how breathtakingly stupid it is for me to feel downtrodden because I didn't get a Restoration Hardware* catalog or a "letter" from the local State Farm agent wanting to sell me stuff. I just feel like every letter addressed to the lady is sticking it's tongue out at me and gloating because I'm not worthy of junk mail.

I figure that in order to save what is left of my self esteem I need to take one of two drastic measures. I can intercept all of my special lady's mail and change her address to somewhere in Siberia, thus we will get far less mail but it will all be for me. I'm sure this plan will backfire on me leading to a chain of events where I won't receive any mail at this address any more since I will be living elsewhere. So that's out, not changing anyone's address. Which leaves us with a more drastic solution, I will sign up for every free newsletter there is. I will get rid of my automatic bill pay. I will start sending weird fan letters to D list celebs with self addressed/stamped envelopes begging for singed head shots like I did with Tom Jones back in the day. I will start becoming pen pals with guys in the joint. Sooner or later I will be getting so much mail that it will be like the court scene in Miracle on 34th Street. It will be glorious. My self esteem will return and it will be a new day. HUZZAH!

Or, you know, I will do nothing and eventually learn to stop being neurotic about stupid shit. Something tells me that is far more likely.

*Have you seen this fucking thing? It makes the phone book look like a pamphlet. I was terrified that if I knocked it off the table it would fall through the floor into the basement, it's that heavy. What in the world can be in there? All they sell is crap. Sure, it's kitschy and fantastic crap but it's still crap. Why do they need to have the world's largest catalog?

I Hate-O NATO

It's been a very exciting weekend here in Chicago thanks to our idiot mayor thinking it would be a good idea to invite NATO to have their little conference in the Windy City. I hate this on so many levels it's going to be difficult to even remember to cover all of them here, some of my hatred is so inborn that I might not be able to consciously recall it. Normal people never have hatred that intense, it is all too common for me. Let's kick it off by attacking our friend Rahm, shall we?

Every time NATO has their summit the location become inundated with protesters. Why would anyone ever want to invite this trouble into their city? Rahm, that's who. Primarily our mayor has given two reasons for wanting to bring the NATO summit to Chicago. The first is that it would cement Chicago's place as an international city. Bullshit. Chicago is already internationally known and it wasn't for hosting a bunch of politicians. There have been things like The Camp David Accords that Rahm compared to the possible history that could be made by NATO this weekend. Imagine if there was a Chicago Accord. All that does is make 7 people around the world name check Chicago when bitching about something they disagree with politically, if Rahm thinks that boosts our rep he's a moron. Chicago is known for having one of the most amazing skylines in the world, fantastic food, shady politics and according to everyone I met in China for having Michael Jordan. NATO is going to do jack fucking shit in changing our reputation internationally unless something terrible happens. The other reason Rahm has given for wanting the summit is that it will bring an immense amount of money into the city. Really? Where is that money coming from? As far as I can tell everyone who has half a brain has gotten the hell out of the city this weekend. Downtown looks like a Romero movie; it's completely empty save for a few mobs of slowly moving zombies, er, I mean protesters. Does Rahm think that we're making a ton of money off of all the protesters who have been sleeping in parks? Is he that stupid? When you end up shutting down half of the city it's not going to give much of an economic boost, sorry pal.

This leads us to the protesters themselves. Goddamn do I hate me some protesters. The awkward thing is that often I find myself agreeing with them politically or at least I agree with the less batshit crazy of them. For example, I hate the idea of the city closing multiple mental health facilities. Yet I understand that I'm not going to change that by sleeping outside of Woodlawn. And I know that I'm damn sure not going to accomplish anything by protesting out side of Rahm's house when HE ISN'T EVEN HOME. (I'll admit personal irritation about this protest. Rahm lives in the next hood over and news copters were circling overhead around 7:30 waking my ass up way too early. Then when I tried to take the bus somewhere the assholes were marching around and blocking Irving Park. Argh) There are so many more productive things one can do to fight the power than protest. In my opinion all protesting really does is piss people off because you are creating an inconvenience. I respect the passion, I often agree with the stances, I just think that protesting is the wrong tool to accomplish the goals.

Specifically let's talk about that special little slice of the protesters that fancy themselves "anarchists." I know that the vast majority of protesters are going to be peaceful and just wave their signs and chant monotonous and unoriginal chants. This hatred isn't aimed at them, it's aimed at all the jackasses who rode buses to Chicago for no reason other than to start some shit. They'll be wearing hoodies, gloves, and bandannas to cover their faces while protesting in order to protect their identity. Here's the thing, you aren't going to try and stay anonymous if you aren't intent on causing trouble. Sorry, that's the truth. So you come to our city to fight our police and wreck our streets. Shockingly your behavior isn't going to woo me into agreeing with your stance that we need to smash the government. Look, I really like listening to old Anti Flag and Against Me too but that doesn't change the fact that anarchy would be fucking horrible. Across the whole world there is one constant among every culture, they have all established a society because living in anarchy is horrifying. There is always going to be someone bigger (or better armed) than you and they will destroy your ass, is that what you really want? It's such a short sighted and idiotic way to perceive the world. I hope these morons remember that if they had their precious anarchy the police that just arrested them wouldn't be charging them with a misdemeanor and letting them go after a few hours, they would be getting rid of them for good.

All of this hints at a bigger question, what's so wrong with NATO anyway? I understand from a strict anti war stance there are plenty of reasons to despise them. Although I think that it can be argued that the majority of actions that NATO has participated in were justified, I don't see a lot of people arguing for Milosevic. I don't understand the demonization of the group. Would I prefer if we lived in Candyland and there were no wars, sure. We don't. I have no problem with an organized world effort by NATO doing what was needed to get rid of Ghadaffi or the Taliban. It would have been nice if military action was never needed but that's insanely naive.

I'm going to be extremely happy on Wednesday morning when we have our city back. Hopefully everything will stay peaceful as it has so far. I hope everyone enjoyed their visit to internationally renowned Chicago and refrained from burning it down, we have a little problem with that from time to time. Feel free to come visit some other time, just leave your bandannas and pithy signs at home. Oh, this is a little uncomfortable, but can you please, PLEASE take a shower before you come back? Thanks.