Articles Archive for September 2009
All problems, questions, suggestions, complaints and praise should be directed to SGB at brendan_at_jasonmulgrew_dot_com, since I have no idea how this shit even works.
- how to dispose of condoms secretly
- is putting things in your ass wrong?
- bit my penis off
- i want a woman to control me with her giants tits and giant bra
- does david hasselhoff wear tighty whities
- women hou want to get fucked by amish boy
- girls ready to fuck in longview washington
- vengeful girlfriend gave me sloppy seconds
- anger at the tiki barber for marrying an asian
- kittens have bigger penis s than jason mulgrew
- jason mulgrew enjoys fucking homeless men for crackers [alright, alright - I get it, it's hilarious]
- spanish girl crying after her first anal went terribly wrong on a porn casting
- boys get arrested for pushing a hot dog cart down into the subway and go to jail and are abused movie with kevin bacon
- circle jerk buddies seattle
- view having oral sex while wearing ski mask
- can t decide if what i am missing is lexapro or jesus.. but crying every time i get home is unacceptable.
- how are eggs benedict and blowjob alike
- white stuff caked on to scrotum hair
- aunt visited us hug my mistake my penis dick get hard
- im engaged and i know he loves me with all his but he barley talks to me and is quite about everything with his feelings and we never have sex that much anymore and everytime i try to talk 2 him about anything i feel like im a bother to him and i love him so much.
Ah, the internet. Bringing all sorts of weird people to this website since 2004.
To tease you, the email is about my experience at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver this past weekend. It was…a lot of fun.
(Remember, these emails will not be posted here on the site. So if you want to read them, you have to sign up. It should go without saying that your email address will not be shared with anyone, unless I’m offered some serious cash and/or head.)
Love,
Jason
However, one good thing about being an adult is the ability to blow all the money you make on trips and booze. To that end, tomorrow, I’m leaving for Denver, where I’ll spend the weekend at the Great American Beer Festival. I’m fully aware that there’s a chance I won’t make it back. If that happens, I’ve had a good run. Well, a pretty good run.
(And God, I’m only joking. I don’t like joking about such things when I’m about to get on a plane. So just to clarify, I would like to make it back. Thank You for Your understanding.)
In the meantime, I’ve backdated and posted a few things here and here. Hopefully that’ll hold you over for a little bit, and again, I apologize. I should be better next week (and also alcohol-poisoned).
Until then, enjoy the weekend – and wish me luck at the Beer Fest. Jesus. This could get ugly.
(After reading over this paragraph, there is one way to have a bad time: lose a lot of money gambling. Or spend a lot of money in a strip club. Or both. But it’s a part of life – you have to learn when to quit at the tables, even when you’re down, just like you have learn that for the same amount of money it would cost you for transportation, entrance, drinks and lap dances at the strip club, you can stay in your hotel room, drink the beer you’ve already paid for, and hire a girl to come over and give you all the lap dances you want – and much, much more. You know, from what I’ve heard.)
This is why Las Vegas is perfect for everyone. And this is why when I move back to NYC in December, the thing I will miss most about living in LA is its proximity to Vegas. Man, what a city.
Because it’d be impossible (and unreadable, for you) to do a play-by-play of everything that happened – not to mention get some of the guys on the trip dumped/divorced – some general highlights, in chronological form.
The open road
Now that I no longer drive to work and spend 2.5 hours a day commuting 35 miles, I kinda miss driving. As I’ve mentioned previously, I drive a black 1996 Lincoln Town Car, which looks a lot like a hearse and has slightly more sex appeal than a rape van. But one thing that it is certainly built for is long-distance travel in comfort (my old roommate and buddy Brian calls it a “hotel on wheels”).
Because three of the Philly guys (David, Jimmy and Ryan) were landing in Vegas at 10am on Friday morning, I left the office at 3pm on Thursday and headed toward Sin City. It’s about a 4.5 hour drive, and I didn’t want to wake up at 5am to head out there on Friday morning, nor did I want to do it in rush hour traffic or in the complete darkness. And sure, it took me two hours to go 45 miles within Los Angeles, but once I got out of LA, it was smooth sailing. There’s something really special about that drive out to Vegas, listening to my spectacular driving mix, nearly shaking in my seat with excitement, as my sexy (and comfortable) beast of a car ate up those desert roads.
However, it was not all serenity. A few miles after I stopped at Barstow for gas, combos and diet coke, my “Check Engine” light came on. This, more or less, scared the shit out me. It was about 6:30pm, still 95+ degrees out, I was in the middle of the desert, and I could not know less about cars. So I did what every self-respecting 30 year old man should do in such a crisis: I pulled over the side of the road, suppressed my tears, and called my dad, the mechanic extraordinaire.
The following is a rough approximation of our conversation:
Me: “Dad, do you have a minute?”
Dad: [putting out cigarette] “Yeah.”
Me: “I’m driving to Vegas, I’m in the middle of the desert of the side of the road, and the check engine light is on.”
Dad: “Does the car have enough oil?”
Me: “I don’t know.”
Dad: “Did you check the oil before you left?”
Me: “I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound like something I did.”
Dad: “You’re supposed to check the oil on a car like that after every second fill-up.”
Me: “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that in my life.”
Dad: [exuding practically audible disappointment/shame/frustration]
My dad talked me through checking the oil, which it turned out, was fine. He then said that I needed to check the antifreeze. I pointed out that it was about 108 fucking degrees out, so I didn’t need antifreeze. He informed me that antifreeze is actually a coolant, too. I made a joke about how, if that’s the case, “antifreeze” has a really improper name. He didn’t laugh.
But I couldn’t check the antifreeze until the engine cooled down. So with about 120 miles to go to Vegas, after checking the stupid stuff (i.e gas cap on, etc), I rolled further into the desert and toward Vegas.
By the grace of God, I made it. The weekend could begin.
Pool party
Thursday night was low key, because I knew that the circus was coming to town early Friday. As I mentioned, David, Jimmy and Ryan were coming in from Philly at 10am on Friday; Brian was coming in from LA at 8pm; and Kyle, the last to arrive, was landing in Vegas from Philly at 11pm.
David, Jimmy and Ryan got off the plane and were ready to go. After checking into the suite (more on the suite later), they wanted to hit Ditch Friday, which is the Palms Pool party on Fridays (we were staying at the Palms Place, the all-suite hotel connected to the Palms).
David, Jimmy and Ryan and I have fundamental differences about what it means to vacation. Their ideal vacation involves a far away destination with a beach or some sort of water, laying down, and being shirtless. My ideal vacation involves going to a city, finding a bar, and getting shitcanned (all while wearing a shirt, possibly even two shirts). So while I wasn’t opposed to hitting the pool – it’s Vegas, baby! – I wasn’t exactly prepared to slather myself in coconut oil.
(Whoa – I think I just got a little hard thinking of slathering myself in coconut oil. Did anyone else feel that?)
So to the pool we went. And of that experience, a few thoughts:
- I’ve never seen a petri dish of the herpes virus, but I bet if you magnified it one million times, it will look exactly like the pool at the Palms on Ditch Fridays. The amount of promiscuity in and around that pool was staggering. I didn’t even go in the water and I still took a saline bath as soon as we left.
- I’m 30 and I’m only coming to this realization now: If I want to have sex with the hot tan girls with the fake tits who wear heels at the pool, I’m going to have to get a lot (lot) more fit, and also several tattoos. Can I chew on this for a little while before I get back to you?
- Miller Lite had a few girls working the crowd, giving out trinkets and beads and such. My buddies and I decided that #4 on the top ten things you never want to hear your daughter say is, “Dad, I got a job in Vegas for Miller Lite. It’s, um, sales.” (Numbers one through three will be revealed at a later date.)
- I wore a blue shirt around the pool, because I thought we were going to the casino. Huge mistake. Thirty minutes after getting there, I was close to heat stroke. Eventually, we all took up a position near one of the bars (literally all of the chairs were taken), and I clung to the side wall of the bar, desperately in need of its shade. Have you ever seen those nature shows were they show a lion, sitting under a tree, looking tired and enjoying the shade? It was kinda like that.
- It was $10 a beer and a $52 for a round of four Jagerbombs (yes, I did Jagerbombs at a pool in Vegas – I don’t even know who I am anymore). That’s a pretty good racket they got going on over there.
After hanging at the pool for a few hours, it was back to the room to get ready for Friday night.
“So on Friday night, we [redacted]“
I’m not totally sure what I can say about Friday night, since, as mentioned, there are relationships that I don’t want to destroy (just kidding!) (for the most part!). So instead, let’s talk about the room.
I have mentioned several times that I plan on dying in a hotel fire, and if I could pick a hotel room in which to perish in a blaze, it would be this one. It was a two-bedroom suite with three balconies, four 42″ plasmas, a fireplace, two kitchens, two whirlpool tubs, 2.5 bathrooms, and just begged for people to party and subsequently orgy-ize each other in it. Good lord. There’s sex appeal, there’s when women wear button-down shirts and the buttons spread apart at their boobs and you get a sneak peak at their boobies, there’s Brooklyn Decker, then there’s that room (well, ok, maybe Brooklyn’s hotter than the room). But again, good lord. It looked even sexier stacked with the $250 worth of booze that I drove in from LA – all of which was consumed on Friday night.
So…um…that was Friday night.
The hangover
We partied until 4am or 5am on Friday night. This was ok for me, since I was on west coast time. Meanwhile, David, Jimmy and Ryan had woken up at 2am PST/5am EST to catch their flight out to Vegas, powered through it, and partied and drank all day and night on Friday, with no rest. The result? I don’t think the three of them left the room until dinner time on Saturday (one of them threw up all day – and I mean, almost hourly). Hell, Brian, who came from LA, was so damaged from Friday night’s fun that he slept until 7pm Saturday evening. So yeah, Friday night got out of control.
I was hungover, but not terribly so. So instead of vomiting or sleeping (or, you know, taking advantage of Vegas), I spent most of my day in the whirlpool tub, looking out over the mountains. Not the most eventful day for any of us.
Killers, fights, and dives
On Saturday night, David, Jimmy and Ryan had tickets to see the Killers, and had bought one for me. Since I’d rather watch my parents have sex than go to a Killers concert, I passed. It was an especially easy decision, because, in addition to the Killers being terrible, the Mayweather-Marquez fight was that night.
I’m not a big fan of boxing (any more, at least), but any time I have the opportunity to watch two minorities beat each other up, well, I’m all aboard. We looked into tickets for the fight, but they were exorbitantly expensive for good seats. So we figured we’d just watch it in the casino. The fight was going to start about 8:30pm, so after a good amount of pre-gaming, we headed down to the casino to place our bets and watch the fight just after 8pm.
But there was one problem: the casino wasn’t showing the fight. Nor we could order it in our room. Yes, the irony: in Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world, a mile away from where the fight was actually taking place, and we couldn’t watch it. WTF.
However, our buddy Cameron, who now lives in Vegas and was hanging out with us over the weekend, had an idea. But before we get into that, a word about Cam: terrific. He’s a great guy, and the last time I hung out with him was in NYC, when I had arguably my most favorite NYC day. It went like:
- While wandering around the East Village on a Saturday afternoon, I call my buddy Jeremy, who just happened to be with Cameron and his brother (both visiting Jeremy from Oregon), two blocks away at Veselka. We all shared delicious pierogis for lunch. It was lovely.
- With nothing to do, the four of us went to the Kabin Lounge on 2nd Ave for a beer. Four hours and way more than one beer later, we were still there. I realized that I had a double-date that night, and raced home.
- I fell in a pile of trash on this race home. Laying in a pile of trash in Chinatown, drunk: not my best moment.
- I met my date and her friends (a couple) at my friend Meredith’s restaurant. Though still drunk (but showered since the fall), I got to act like the cock of the walk, since I knew Meredith and we got free drinks and whatnot (which was not what I needed).
- After dinner, we went to another bar, where the other girl’s date introduced me to the wonderful world of Scotch. A few hours later, I’d dropped my cell phone in a toilet.
- I am pretty sure that I didn’t have sex that night, since I believe I was helped into a cab.
All of this transpired because Cam suggested we stop for that one afternoon beer. So, obviously, he’s an idea man.
With nowhere to watch the fight, Cam had another idea. He said there was a dive sports bar across the street called the Loose Caboose. While not nice by any stretch, it might have the fight. Since the fight was either soon to start or had just started, we headed over.
You can probably guess where this is headed. The fight was not showing at the bar, which was empty aside from a lone biker and some very local people playing pool. This didn’t stop us from sitting there for four hours, getting absolutely wasted, each taking turns playing songs on the jukebox (most of my choices were of AC/DC “deep cuts”).
So yeah, on a Saturday night in Vegas, me and my three friends spent most of the night at the local dive bar, talking only to each other, only about music and sports. And I had a blast.
(Does anyone have any social skills I can borrow?)
Goodbyes, a new pool, resignation
We actually did go out proper later on on Saturday night. We met up with the guys who went to the Killers concert back at the room after the show was over, and though they completely bitched out and went to bed, the Four Amigos from the Loose Caboose went out and gambled the night (and in some cases, their rent money) away.
Sunday morning on the west coast means 9am football (sweet! – and this is sarcasm). Since we were all checking out that day and David, Jimmy and Ryan were flying out at 2:30pm, we stayed at the Palms sports book watching the games. Unfortunately, the Palms sports book sucks, so I could barely see the Eagles game (which, as it turned out, appears to have been a good thing). David, Jimmy and Ryan soon left to head back to Philly, and me, Kyle and Brian checked out of the room and headed to Bellagio, where we were staying on Sunday night.
Look, you guys know me, right? And you know that I like to have a beer and a little fun every once in a while, right? I know that I’m getting older, but I still got my fastball when I need it, and I think I can really put it together and go all out when duty calls. But there’s something about Las Vegas…even though I didn’t do anything on Thursday, after three nights and two days of being there, I mean, the human body can only handle so much. My diet to that point had consisted of beer, red bull, Sonic and second-hand cigarette smoke, and ol’ Uncle Jason was starting to feel it.
Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Kyle and Brian were also hurting, so after checking into the Bellagio, all we wanted was to sit by the pool – which we did, and which was glorious (and yes, I did have a pina colada).
What strength we were able to get back after two hours lounging at the pool was wiped away by a visit to the Bellagio buffet. Though the price tag was a whopping $35/person, I made up for it by eating at least a dozen different animals (for fun: cow, pig, chicken, turkey, quail, shrimp, salmon, lobster, crab, scallop…actually, that might be it).
And so after the buffet, we hit a wall. While watching the Giants-Dallas game, I ordered a Guinness. I couldn’t finish it. I felt like if I tried to drink it, it would just overflow out of my mouth, as my body was so backed up with food and could fit no more. On our last night in Vegas, the three of us were in bed by midnight. We could fight no longer.
The long march back
If the drive to Vegas is exhilarating, the drive home from Vegas is deflating, demoralizing; I think the general mood on the Trail of Tears was more positive and upbeat than it is on I-15 S on any given Sunday. The good news for me was that I was making the drive back on Monday, so there was absolutely no traffic.
Before leaving the hotel, I checked in on the car, remember that the “Check Engine” light never went away. I popped open the hood to check on the antifreeze and learned that there was none – absolutely not a drop – left in the car. But I was a big boy now, a real Car Guy, so I calmly got in the car, drove to the nearest gas station, and bought and put in the antifreeze. Aside from this, the drive was four hours of uneventfulness (thank god).
************
Sadly, this weekend was likely the last time I’ll ever drive to Vegas; my next trip will be from the east coast, probably several months from now. But if this is the case, and I don’t get back to Vegas for many months, well, I’m ok with that. While sure, I may have done some things differently, I can look back at this trip and say that I did the best I could. And if at the end of a Vegas trip you can say this, then it’s alright. It’s alright.
(To break it down a little further, growing up my dad had 65 first cousins – on one side of the family. His grandparents, my great-grandparents, had 66 grandchildren. That’s a grandkid’s birthday every 5.5 days. Wowza.)
I’ve only met Uncle Teddy twice. The most recent time was when my dad, brother and I drove cross-country last year and we stopped in AZ to see Uncle Teddy and his wife. He and I shook hands and, sharp old guy he is, he asked me, “Oh, you’re the one that writes that filth?” Yes. Yes, that would me.
The time before that was at a Mulgrew family reunion in Lancaster, PA a few years back. It was a lot of fun, but a strange scene: first cousins of my dad’s generation walking up to their first cousins and saying, “I’m sorry, I know we’re cousins, but I don’t know who you are”, me feeling uncomfortably attracted to people with my last name, etc. The lowlight and highlight of the weekend reunion came very early on when we realized that we were holding a reunion for 150 Irish Catholic people in a dry county (no booze in Lancaster at all, stupid Amish), and my brother and I immediately set out to the next county to buy hundreds of dollars of booze and were subsequently (and quite appropriately) feted as heroes upon our return.
Anyway, the point is that I don’t know Uncle Teddy very well, and the forward that Jacqui sent me was an email from Uncle Teddy with the subject “Descendants of Robert Mulgrew [my grandfather].” Uncle Teddy was doing some Mulgrew Family Tree updating and attached a PDF of my grandpop’s branch of the family tree. Because I don’t know Teddy well, and because neither my brother or my sister know Teddy well, the source of information for our immediate family’s lil’ branch of the tree was my dad, who is not known for being, you know, good with information.
At the top of the Robert Mulgrew Family Tree were my grandmom and grandpop, below them were their ten kids and spouses, and below those were the grandkids and, if applicable, their spouses and children. Every one of my uncles and aunts, my dad’s brothers and sisters, had assiduously filled out biographical information for themselves and their children, listing dates of birth, dates of marriage, including recent pictures, etc. And then there was my dad’s portion of the Robert Mulgrew clan family tree.
First, there were only two pictures for the five of us: one kinda recent one of my dad, and one for my sister from when she was about nine (she’s 23 now). My brother, my mom and myself had no pictures. There were also some other errors:
1) My birthday was wrong. It was listed as July 7, 1979, when it’s really July 17, 1979. Not a big deal and possibly a typo, but worth noting that in the 40+ on this family tree, I was the only one with the wrong birthday. Maybe this has something to do with the filth that I wrote, or my dad just doesn’t know my birthday. A toss-up, really.
2) I am apparently married to a woman named Helene Mullen. This is a little bit bigger of an error, I would say. I’ve never dated a girl named either “Helene” or “Mullen,” I’ve never been engaged, and the most satisfying and long-lasting relationship I’ve ever had was not with a woman but with a sausage. Yet here I am, on the Robert Mulgrew Family Tree, married to Helene Mullen. Sadly, I don’t know if she’s hot or not, since there’s no picture of her, either.
(That would have been terrific, actually – if there was a picture of my “wife” on the tree, but not me, and she looked something like this.)
3) My mom is listed as deceased as of 1992. This…well, this one’s kinda of a big mistake, since my mom is alive and well. My parents got divorced around 1992, but the “d” in this family tree is used clearly for those who are deceased, and there is no mention of divorce between other couples that are divorced.
But it got me thinking: while I don’t think my dad would intentionally write that my mom was dead, perhaps he maybe saw the “d” and thought, “Yeah…you know, we don’t need to correct that”?
Is that possible? Yes. Would it be awesome, in a weird way? A little bit. Is the more likely scenario that my dad either didn’t even look the thing over or the “d” does means “divorced”? Sure. But part of me wants to leave it as it is, and then ask my mom to show up to the reunion. But then again, that moment – her rise from the dead – must surpass my brother and I saving the previous reunion in Mulgrew Family Lore. So I guess I’ll just email Uncle Teddy and tell him to correct it (using as many curse words as possible, of course).
QBs: Tom Brady, Jason Campbell, Jay Cutler, David Garrard, Matt Hasselbeck, Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner (two teams)
WRs: Donnie Avery, Anquan Boldin, Dwayne Bowe (two teams), Antonio Bryant, Lauverneus Coles, Donald Driver, Larry Fitzgerald, Devin Hester (two teams), Santonio Holmes, DeSean Jackson, Calvin Johnson, Lance Moore, Randy Moss (two teams), Eddie Royal, Kevin Walter, Roy Williams
RBs: Joseph Addai, Marion Barber (two teams), Cedric Benson, Matt Forte, Ryan Grant, Jamal Lewis (two teams), Marshawn Lynch, LeSean McCoy, Knowshon Moreno, Willie Parker, Clinton Portis, Ray Rice (two teams), Steve Slaton, Kevin Smith, Darren Sproles, Jonathan Stewart, Chester Taylor, Fred Taylor, Beanie Wells (two teams), Carnell Williams (three teams)
TEs: John Carlson, Antonio Gates, Tony Gonzalez (two teams), Visante Shaincoe
Ks: Chris Brown, John Carney, Nick Folk, Nate Kaeding
DEFs*: New England, NY Jets (two teams), Washington, Seattle
(*One of my four leagues requires that we start two DEF each week. Otherwise, I’d never carry two DEF on a team.)
I’m sure you didn’t read most of that, but the point is that to play it safe, I’m just going to root both for and against every NFL player this season. Jesus Christ. I do four leagues because there’s tradition to each and each is unique: one is my main league that I’ve been doing for nine years; one is my buddy Kyle’s that I’ve been doing for four or five; one is an “experimental” league that started only last year but is cool/fun/deep; and the last is my agent’s league, and, well, let’s face it – I need to keep him in my life for as long as possible, since there’s absolutely no business reason for him to keep me around.
But really, this is why I don’t like fantasy football. Not only is it all about luck, but the universe of players and positions is small, so that if you play in two or more leagues, there are going to be several times when you have a guy or two playing for you in a one league but that same guy or two is playing against you in another league. Ugh. So much confusion.
Since we’re here, allow me to indulge further and provide my team names, with explanations:
- ZZ Top Dirty Rapers (Iron Sheik): Discussed before, but this is some of the funniest shit I’ve ever heard and totally worth the ten minutes (you can minimize, because you don’t need to watch the video). This team name specifically comes around the 8:30 mark, courtesy of Norm MacDonald, though you kinda have to listen to the whole thing to get the joke.
- lil’ brown hairs (Kyle’s league): “lil’ brown hairs everywhere – ‘you nasty, twin!” – I’un care!” (RIP, Pun.)
- “shut it” (experimental league): About a month ago, some model here in LA went missing, then was found stuffed in a suitcase with her teeth and fingertips missing (but wait, it gets better). She eventually was ID’ed by the serial number on her breast implants (but wait, it gets better). Her murderer was her husband who eventually fled to Canada and killed himself, but who, prior all this, was on a VH1 reality dating show (but wait, it gets better). After the model went missing, her friends, including her ex-boyfriend texted her; the husband/murderer answered the ex-boyfriend’s text from the victim’s phone, presumably while dismembering her body, with the simple response: “shut it.” This is how the ex knew something was seriously wrong. These are the things I will miss about California.
- The Jersey Stranger (agent’s league): (n) the process of masturbation by which a man sticks his arm out of the shower and around the shower curtain and masturbates, therefore giving the impression that a stranger, likely from New Jersey, is reaching into the shower and masturbating him. Origin: unknown, but I heard a friend say it once and am sort of championing this expression.
(Having secured myself a spot in the eighth level of Hell for talking so much about my fantasy teams, I’ll stop now. Thank you for your cooperation.)
************
My friends and I joke that there are five levels of bets. Each level corresponds with how strongly one feels about that particular bet/game, which is represented by what one would be willing to bet on that game. For example, the highest level, the one that means “I can’t have more confidence in this bet,” is Mortgage (as in, “I’d bet my mortgage that Atlanta doesn’t cover.”) The lowest/least confident level is Beer, as in, “Sure, whatever – give me the Giants at -6.5 for beer.” Get it?
That being said, with the excitement of football now being upon us and because I’m going to Vegas next weekend, some quick football picks:
MORTGAGE
- Dal -5.5 TB
- Phi -1 CAR
PAYCHECK*
- CLE +4 Min
- Buf +10.5 NE
- Det +13 NO
STEAK DINNER
- OAK +9 sd
- GB -3.5 Chi
- NYG -6.5 Was
CASE O’ BEER
- kc +13 BAL
- nyj +4.5 HOU
- IND -7 Jax
- SEA -9 stl
BEER
- ATL -4 Mia
- CIN -4.5 Den
- ARI -6 sf
* Over the past few years, I’ve sometimes used a system which relies on the following: “Take the three teams getting the most action and best against them.” I’ve sworn up and down that this works, but I’ve never really kept track – until this season. While you and I both know I’m not nearly disciplined enough to do this on this here website, every week I’m going to bet against the three teams getting the most action and note how I fare. This week, 78% of people are taking Minn -4, 71% are taking NE -10.5, and 70% are taking NO -10, so I’m taking the opposite. The one I feel least confident about is betting against NE, but one of the best rules of gambling is that the majority of people are idiots. With the break even being a 55% correct rate, a system is a success with anything above, say, 60%. If I never pick a single game on here again, I’ll be keeping track offline and let you know how it turned out at the end of the season.
************
With that, please enjoy one of my favorite weekends of the year. On Sunday, I’ll be standing outside a bar in Santa Monica at 8:30am, wearing a Randall Cunningham jersey, waiting for it to open. By 11am, I’ll either be having a blast or desperately missing the NFL package. Let’s hope it’s the former.
And I totally, totally didn’t care. To me, being in-shape didn’t really matter much. I figured that the good Lord made it so people can only be good at so many things. Sure, I wasn’t in good shape, but I was (reasonably) smart and (somewhat) funny and had (unquestionably) excellent taste in music. And it’s not like I was morbidly obese or anything; there was nothing that I couldn’t do on a day-to-day basis that anyone else could do, like getting out of bed or climbing stairs or I don’t know, carrying a TV. If I was pretty good at three things and bad-but-not-disastrous at another, who gives a shit? As long as I was healthy enough for sexual activity, I was fine.
(Should any potential sexual activity present itself, of course.)
But then my grandmother died. No, this isn’t what you’re thinking: she was in her late 70’s, so it’s not like she died young. And no, it wasn’t as if death made me start thinking about my own mortality, like I should get my shit together and start getting healthy or I’d be next.
Instead, it was a picture from her funeral that made me change my perspective. My grandmom had six kids, and maybe, say, fifteen-plus grandkids (it would take me at least an hour to write down everyone’s names and figure out the exact number, but I just don’t have the time/strength/desire to do so). After the funeral, we gathered at a hall for food and drinks and all the grandchildren got together for a picture. I’m the second oldest (my cousin Michael’s maybe three or four years older than me), so at the time the grandkids ranged in age from 30 to about 8. I, being tall, found myself in the back row, smack in the middle. The picture was snapped and we carried on with the boozing.
A few days later, I saw the picture – and I was shocked. It didn’t look like a collection of grandchildren after their grandmother’s funeral. No, with my beard and chubbyness, I looked like the dad in the picture. No shit, I looked like the big, fat, bearded Mormon dad, and these were my fourteen children (even my older cousin Michael look younger than me, like my first-born son). And truly, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it. There I stood, in the middle of the back row, big beard, big smile, and big belly, looking pleased at my brood.
Now, it just so happened that I had started one of my occasional pseudo-fad diets a few days before my grandmother’s death, but this was not unusual. Once a year, I’d go on a diet for a week or so, a diet which consisted of eating nothing the first day, eating a little more the second day, eating everything the third day, repeat two or three times. Then I’d give up and go back to my normal eating/gorging habits. And on these diets, the gym was hardly involved, if at all.
But things changed when I saw that picture. I decided that it was not right for a 26 year old man to look like the father of his 30 year old, 22 year old, 19 year old (etc) cousins. I was going to diet for real, for the first time – we’re talking calorie counting, gym attending, the whole shebang – and I was gonna drop 20 pounds.
The first day I went to the gym, I couldn’t run at all. So I just walked on an incline. A week or so later, I could run maybe .25 miles without stopping. Two months later (and with better eating), I was running three miles a day, five days a week, and had dropped about 35 pounds (all told, I think I went from 233 to 196 in a little over two months). Boom – just like that, I was much, much healthier, and perhaps even “healthy” for the first time in my life. And it felt great.
After the two months were up and I bottomed out at 196, I stopped being as hardcore with the gym and the diet. I knew I would gain a couple of lbs back, but that was fine, since I figured my ideal fighting weight to be around 210. 196 for a (6′1″) guy who practically made a living calling himself fat would not really work, anyway.
And for the next few years, I stayed around 210. Whenever I felt like I was getting chubbier, I’d do another temporary diet, but this time, it was much more hardcore: cut the calories and hit the gym, and I could drop those extra five or so pounds in a week or two.
[I did, however, balloon up when I moved to LA and a) stopped walking to work, b) spent 2.5 hours a day in traffic, and c) frequently took advantage of the multitude of new and exciting fast food options (i.e. In-N-Out, Carl's Jr, Jack in the Box, etc). But a diet competition after the New Year brought me back to normal size.]
So I could run. That much was settled. But I still wasn’t “strong.”
I had tried lifting weights at various points in my life, but they didn’t mesh well with my idiosyncrasies (bear with me). I don’t know if you’ve picked this up – whether you purchased my fantasy baseball secret sheet that had over 50+ total columns of data for hundreds of MLB players or read about how almost all of the 9500+ songs in my iTunes library have star-ratings – but I can be a little OCD. I like I stats, and I like them to be sortable and trackable. I enjoyed running in large part because I enjoyed tracking how much I ran, and I kept detailed spreadsheets listing how much I ran, listing miles run consecutively, total miles run, total distance covered, total calories burned, calories burned per mile, etc – there are 12 metrics by which I measure each run.
So I get psycho about this shit. I love stats, numbers, order. And with lifting weights, there are too many variables to keep track of. First, there are you four muscle groups: legs, back and biceps, shoulders and traps, chest and triceps (not to mention your core exercises). Then, of those four, they can be further divided into three to six exercises per muscle group (i.e. four workouts for your shoulders, four for your traps) and then broken down even further into sets (i.e. those four shoulder workouts each get three sets of 10 to 12 reps per set, etc).
Therefore, lifting weights was almost like information overload with me. Sure, maybe I need to take some medicine for this, but I was more worried about all the numbers I’d have to track – “ok, so this first set was 90 pounds times ten reps, the second was 80 times ten…” – than the actual exercises. I needed it to be simpler. Just writing about it makes me anxious, so yeah, maybe I should talk to a professional about this, but whatever.
Then I remembered how when I was kid my dad would tell me that Herschel Walker got to be the beast he was by doing 2000 push-ups and 2000 sit-ups a week and never touched a weight. Now, I didn’t want to be Herschel Walker, but that sounded simple and trackable, so, 25 years after he told me this, I decided to give it a try.
A few months back (in May, I guess), I started doing push-ups. The first time I tried, I did seven in a row before collapsing into a sobbing, shaking heap on the floor (and the last five of the seven may or may not have been head-nods). Seven push-ups, I have since learned, is really, really not good. So I backed the truck up and started really slowly, literally doing sets of two or three at a time, times four or five, to build my strength up.
About a week into my push-up regimen, I confided in a fit friend about my little plan, and he pointed me toward the One Hundred Push-Ups Program. And with this, my world was rocked.
A few months later, I no longer use the program (I have to be honest – I never got to 100 straight, as the most I could do consecutively was just shy), but I followed it religiously for many weeks. Now, I have my own maintenance program and try to do a crapload of push-ups a week (not quite Herschel Walker’s 2000, but comfortably in the triple digits per week). And so once again, in a matter of eight to ten weeks, I’d significantly changed (parts of) my body.
Now – and listen up, because this is important – do not misunderstand me when I say that I am still a train wreck naked. I do not want to give the false impression that I am fit or cut or sculpted in any way, shape of form. If anything, I went from looking like a sloppy 35 year old beer league softball player to looking like a sloppy 35 year old good beer league softball player – and that’s being generous. If you saw me last year or a few months ago and saw me again today, you would not notice a difference at all. So please, let’s be very aware of this, especially if you plan on seeing me naked in the future (read: you’re the hot half-Asian broad who lives on the ground floor apartment two doors away from me who I’m more or less going to show myself to naked, likely as soon as this weekend).
There’s no noticeable difference because of that ol’ apathy. If I wake up and I think, “You know what? I want nachos and butterfinger McFlurry for breakfast,” you’d better believe that I’m eating nachos and a McFlurry for breakfast (actually, a few weeks ago I had a chili cheese omelet and bread pudding for breakfast, so I’m really not joking here). So while I can become almost psychopathicly obsessive when it comes to running or the push-ups, I make no concessions in other parts of my life to achieve any further fitness. I just want to be able to run and do the push-ups and eat as much sour cream as I want, whenever I want. I think this is fair, no?
*************
But the problem is that I peaked with the running and with the push-ups separately. Meaning, when I could run like the wind, I couldn’t bench press a medium-sized dog; now that I can lift a small car, I’d be afraid to start crossing a one-way street on a yellow light.
(I’m exaggerating of course, but you get it.)
This is where the 3-50 Fitness Challenge comes in.
I think that the minimum fitness requirement for a human being with a penis to call himself a “Man” is that he must be able to, at any given time, run one mile without having to stop and do 20 consecutive push-ups. I know, I know – this is a bold statement for someone who still kinda believes in Santa and sobs uncontrollably whenever those bride shows are on WE. So I know I’m about the last guy to set minimum fitness standards for what it means to be a “Man” (capital M).
But if you think about it, one-mile/20 push-ups is a pretty good rule. It might sound like nothing, but it’s harder than you think. Also, the catch here is the “at any given time” part. Sure, you might be able to run a mile and then drop and give me twenty after you’ve warmed up at the gym or are chock-full of cocaine and red bull, but what about if I came into your office at 10:30am on a Tuesday and asked you to do it? Or what about 9:14pm on a Wednesday night, between commercials for “So You Think You Can Dance?” That’s the key.
(To be clear, there are limits to the “at any given time” clause. For example, if you fed Usain Bolt sixteen Red Stripes and a pound of goat meat curry, even that mutha might not be able to run a mile straight. So the “at any given time” clause does not apply to certain special situations, like immediately after Thanksgiving or after drinking a goodly amount of alcohol.)
But this is the first level, the minimum level of Man fitness. And believe it or not – and I know this may come as a shock to a number of you – I can do this. I’m confident that at any given time, I can run a mile and drop and give you 20. And yes, I’m the say guy who “failed” gym sophomore year of high school and had to go to summer school for one day to shoot hoops. Not my finest moment. Or year. Or several years, really. Let’s move on.
The next level of Man fitness is if one can do a two-mile run and 35 consecutive push-ups at any given time. Now we’re getting serious. You might think, “Meh – what’s another mile and a few more push-ups?”, but this level separates the Men from the, um, lesser Men. If you can do this, you are definitely in pretty good shape (unless you’re a junkie who happens to be good at running and push-ups).
Ol’ Uncle Jason is close here, but again, there’s that whole “at any given time” thing. I feel like under optimal conditions and with some very, very loud Motley Crue, I could pull this off. However, I think I need a few more weeks (like four to six) of steady work before I can consider myself graduated to this level, before I feel comfortable that I can do this whenever, wherever.
Finally, there’s the third (and for our purposes, final) level: to be able to run three miles straight and do 50 push-ups consecutively. Hence, the 3-50 Fitness Challenge.
This, my friends, is what I’m shooting for. Maybe it’s me – and I’m sure I have a bunch of fit friends who can do this easily – but I think that I’d be in pretty good shape if I could take off on a three-mile run and drop and do 50 push-ups – again – at any given time. I’ve done each of these separately and under optimal conditions, but to do them one after the other and whenever is required is the issue here. If I can pull this off, realizing that it will take me at least two months to be able to bang out the 3-50 on a regular basis, I’d consider myself a pretty bad-ass dude and thus, likely to have more frequent (and hopefully less bizarre and financially devastating) sexual encounters.
*************
I know that there are some who might take umbrage with this plan, particularly those who are extremely strong. For example, maybe you can bench 300 pounds fifteen times but couldn’t run two miles straight if your life depended on it. Does this make you any less of a man? Of course not. Personally, I felt it was important to having the running in there, to get that aerobic exercise and work the ol’ heart and lungs, because in my case my diet breaks down like:
- 40% foods with the word “cream” in them
- 32% something that was once alive and but is dead now and has cheese on it
- 23% alcohol or other poisons
- 4% other (mostly foods I take from the fridge, think might be stale, eat or drink, and then realize are stale)
- 1% all of the above
So again, this is a personal thing, for me and me only (I mean, you’re welcome to try, but that’s not the point here).
It’s just that I need goals. When I set out on that first diet to lose 20 pounds in two months after my grandmom’s death and the “Dad Picture,” I lost over 30. When I got fat(ter) in LA, my buddy John and I had a diet competition and I crushed him, running almost 100 miles in the last few weeks of the competition. When I finally nailed down the push-up thing and was doing that 100 Push-Up challenge, I was doing more push-ups in one afternoon than I previously had done in the first 28 years of my life combined (which is, sadly, not an exaggeration, and speaks more to my lack of strength back then than my current strength now).
Alternatively – and I know you’re probably sick of me talking about the book, but this is pertinent to our discussion – when I first started writing the book, I took a four month leave of absence from work. The book needed to be at least 60,000 words. In those four months off, with absolutely nothing to do, I wrote 10,000 words. To give you an idea, when I was at the peak of my posting, I was writing over 10,000 words a week (this very post will be about 3000 words). And yet, in four months off, I lost direction, did nothing, and wrote only 10,000 words total.
Then, suddenly, I went back to work. And, suddenly, the book deadline was only six weeks away. So in those six weeks, while working full-time, I wrote something like 55,000 words (mostly by getting out of the city on the weekends). 55,000 in six weeks while working full-time; 10,000 in four months while having absolutely nothing to do.
So I need that pressure, need that routine, need that light of the end of the tunnel. And finally, I’ve found two things – the running and the push-ups – that are trackable and allow me to set specific numerical goals to work perfectly with my OCD re: stats and numbers. It may not be the most orthodox fitness regime, but, for me, it’s likely to be the most successful.
(Wish me luck. Like, a lot of it.)
QB Kurt Warner (4)
QB David Garrard (7)
WR Randy Moss (1)
WR Larry Fitzgerald (2)
WR Lance Moore (10)
RB Ryan Grant (3)
RB Knowshon Moreno (8)
WR/RB Donald Driver (10)
TE Antonio Gates (5)
Bench Marshawn Lynch (6)
Bench Beanie Wells (9)
Bench Laveranues Coles (12)
Bench LeSean McCoy (13)
Bench Chester Taylor (14)
Bench Mark Bulger (15) (since dropped for Cadillac Williams)
K Nate Kaeding (17)
DEF New York Jets (16)
What do I think? Meh. This is a very different team for me – two WRs first, only one RB in the first five rounds – but I’m willing to try it out. I’m not thrilled with Kurt Warner – I wanted a more marquee QB1 – but in a two starting QB league, he lasted all the way until the 4th round, which is pretty good value. Also I think Garrard, with an improved O-line and a real-live WR, will be better this year.
The WRs, I do like: Moss and Fitzgerald combined could put put up in the range of 2600-3000 yards and 24-30 TDs, which, I think, are better than two RBs I could have taken at 9 and 12 overall. I can make a solid WR3 out of Moore, Driver and Coles, who are basically the same to me.
I like Ryan Grant this year (love the whole GB offense, really) and I do, indeed, love Knowshon – despite the mess that is Denver, hey, they have a good O-line. One thing worth noting in this league is that 8 of the 10 teams make the playoffs, so I’ll be rolling out Grant-Lynch-Knowshon starting Week 4. Throw in the preseason stud Beanie and the handcuffs of LeSean and Taylor and while I’d like another stud RB, not bad for, again, taking one RB in the first five picks.
I never get a marquee TE but when Gates was sitting there in the 5th, I had to take it – couple him with Moss and Fitz and those three are pretty terrific. I don’t care about kickers or defenses, but am happy with Kaeding (good weather, high-scoring offense) and NYJ (Rex Ryan is a defense-minded coach who imported leader Bart Scott, etc).
So all in all, I’m ok with this very-different-for-me team. However, I don’t like saying, “The key to my season is Kurt Warner.” If he does something like last year, I’m cool. If he goes down…when does baseball start?
Therefore, after a week of heavy duty research (fifth and final draft next week), I only gots music for you.
************
Six Songs
“Wild Mountain Nation” Blitzen Trapper
Let’s see, how can I put this? How about: “Holy crap, this song is totally fucking awesome.” For real, I nearly shit myself when I first heard it; rock me to my very bowels, it did. It’s kinda like if the Raconteurs joined forces with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, and were co-produced by Jimmy Page and a heavily-under-the-influence God. Great, kick-ass stuff.
“Let’s Stick Together” Roxy Music
Oh boy – here’s another one that demands that the volume be turned up. I was introduced to this one by my buddy Brian after I wrote about how Roxy Music is a guilty pleasure of mine. He sent me an email with the subject “Roxy Music” that read:
“Let’s Stick Together”
It will not disappoint.
And yes, Brian was right. This is now threatening to take the number one position on my “Dance, Hipster, Dance!” playlist. Impossible not to love it.
“Songbirds” Marah
Marah is so fucking perfect that, even though I love them, it almost makes me angry. This is one of the few bands where I’ll buy an album of theirs, decide which songs I like, which are ok, and which I don’t like, and then slowly, over time, return to those songs that fell into the “meh” or “don’t like” categories and grow to love them. I’ve had this song on my iPod for over a year. How is it that only now I’m realizing how great it is?
“Mimizan” Beirut
I have a playlist called “Weird Music” without which I could not have written the book. It’s filled with songs by Beirut, Midlake, Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, My Morning Jacket, and other quirky artists and songs that I can’t think of right now (I don’t have the playlist in front of me). Basically, I did 90% of my book writing at my aunt and uncle’s house on the Jersey shore in the dead of winter. This is how my days went:
- Noon: Wake up
- Noon – 1pm: eat breakfast (CCB with tater tots) at Star Diner and read the paper
- 1pm – 2pm: read in the shower
- 2pm – 5pm: nap
- 5pm – 6pm: read in the shower, actually shower
- 6pm – 7pm: watch the news
- 7pm – 10pm: go out for dinner and beers
- 10pm – 11pm: read in the shower
- 11pm – midnight: pre-game with drinks, dick around on the computer, begin to think about writing
- midnight – 6am: drink, listen to music, and write until too drunk to properly operate keyboard
Also, there was usually a sundae (Breyer’s cherry vanilla ice cream, microwaved for 22 seconds, with a 2:1 ice cream: whipped cream ratio) somewhere in there.
The key in this whole process (well, besides the booze) was the “Weird Music” playlist. In order to write and think properly, you need music that is good without being engaging, one that creates an atmosphere that is conducive to creativity without being intrusive. What better way to get in a creative mindset than by listening to music that goes well beyond the realm of three-chord rock and rhyming couplets?
(And bear in mind: I am fully aware that what I do/did is not really “writing.” We’re not talking about Vladimir Nabokov sitting down at a manual typewriter to produce something beautiful and perfect, but rather a chubby guy with a beard more or less falling half-drunk into a kitchen chair to type sentences like: “While love is trafedy [sic] and tragedy love, love is the best, the most, the everything – the lite [sic] and the world, much like Jesus, God’s only son, so far as we understand curently [sic].” Just as there’s nothing worse than comedians trying to deconstruct what is “funny,” there are few things worse than a someone with an internet diary talking about his/her writing process. So I know this, even if I did just went ahead and talked about mine. Sorry.)
So anyway, it’s a good song, and particularly inspiring if you deal in run-on sentences and curse words.
“Book of Love” Fleetwood Mac
This song represents either everything that is right with Fleetwood Mac or everything that is wrong with Fleetwood Mac. Listen to it, and this statement will make perfect sense. Beautiful soaring harmonies; complete and total pomposity. But do you listen to it every time it comes on? I know I do.
“Worried About You” The Rolling Stones
I know I wrote about “Tattoo You” recently, but if there’s one song I’d recommend checking out (and subsequently getting bombed alone to), it’s this one. Early 80’s falsetto Mick is really terrific, and I love the slow/smooth starts interspersed with bouts of yelling and the fast middle part. The whole album could be a complete soundtrack, but I promise you that if I ever write a movie (which will never, ever happen), I will use this song somewhere in the soundtrack, likely in a scene in which the protagonist – me, played by whoever Meatloaf’s son is, due to the (likely) striking resemblance – is sitting at a dusty bar, drinking whiskey, and – let’s face it – masturbating under his jacket on his lap. As a matter of fact, that might be the whole movie: 5:17 of this song and Meatloaf’s son as me, getting drunk and secretly beating off at a bar. You’d pay $8 to watch that, right?
[Have a good weekend.]