Calling it a year...

It is time to close the book on 2008. I’ve picked up my 2009 calendars: a Chagall wall calendar for my home office, a Get Fuzzy desk calendar for my work office and a Snoopy Day Planner for my briefcase. The last is proof that I will either a) never be an executive or b) never get married or c) possibly both. And there is much of the typical review of 2008 that I plan on doing. I’ll discuss the books I read over the year next week as well as the concerts I saw and the highlights of my five years of concert going in Kansas City. I’ll even post all of my resolutions tomorrow. But tonight I don’t wish to focus on any of that. I just want to try to piece together what this year has actually meant to me.

I don’t think that I have ever had a year quite like this one. 2001 and 2003 were both years of upheavals and changes but neither of them matched the range of emotions that I felt this year. There were moments this year that rank amongst the highlights of my entire life. I also suffered through some times that left me shaken, befuddled and in tears. I feel as though I have gone through the ringer this year and I have come out more confused than anything.

Maybe I should have taken it as a sign when the year began with a trip to the emergency room followed by time spent with a cardiologist. Looking at a monitor and thinking “That is my heart. All that I am is powered by that pulsating mass. That is all that I am” leaves you wondering just what are you doing with yourself. I am lucky in that despite all the tests I am still considered to be in good health and I truly want to keep it that way. Life is much too precious.

I was offered the opportunity to leave a job that I had grown tired of and I jumped at the chance. Even I was surprised by the ease in which I made my decision. I left a steady, well paying, if not entirely exciting position for a completely uncertain future. I didn’t even have a finalized resume or a clear idea as to what type of work I wanted to do. I just knew that I needed a change and that when someone offers to pay you for four months if you would just stop showing up in you say yes. And in all honesty it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

Because it provided me with a much needed sabbatical from all of the pressures that I place onto myself. For once my focus was not on others or a faceless corporation but it was on making my life what I wanted it to be. I spent more time writing, making progress on my novel but failing to complete it. I spent time being me; just letting my schedule be whatever I wanted it to be. And I spent a lot of time being with people and just enjoying life. You wouldn’t believe how much of a change that was at times.

But at some point I needed to find work so I entered the job search just before the recession took its toll. In a case of wonderful timing and networking I was able to find a job with a former employer doing precisely what I wanted to do. I now have a job that pushes me to my limit and I can see several fulfilling career paths to me. It might be strange to be celebrating the fact that I now use the word megawatts on a regular basis but the energy business is something I enjoy. Entering a new company is different and confusing and sometimes scary but it was something that I had to do.

It also meant that I had to pack everything I owned and travel to a place where I knew absolutely no one and start a brand new life. I may have joked about KC (ok, I always made fun of the place) but I had met some incredible people there who cared about me for who I am, which is my measure of being a true friend. Leaving them behind was one of the toughest things that I have ever done. I’m now in Delaware and four months later I still know absolutely no one and am spending New Year’s Eve at my laptop, wearing sweats while the rest of the world is in formal wear, trying to figure out where I am in the world.

I lost friends at tragically young ages this year. I saw how quickly a constant in your life can just disappear. I’ve been forced to face the fact that this world can be completely senseless and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Sometimes no matter how smart you are, no matter what you earn or how good of a person you are you will lose some people that you love. It is a lesson I knew I would learn but wished I could stay blissfully ignorant for just a little longer.

I’ve had friends reappear from the past. People I never thought I would talk to again suddenly showed up and asked “So what have you been doing this past decade?” I’ve discovered that my blog has a truly worldwide readership and it amazes me. I’ve seen political history and had chills go up my spine as it happened. I even got to host trivia games. But maybe there is one story that will signify this year. One that I’ve never really discussed here before.

Earlier this year I met someone who is simply one of the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. If you ask me what I look for in someone I could point to her and go “pretty much everything she is”. We went out and instead of the tragically comic misadventures that I usually have everything clicked. Neither of us could believe it, neither of us expected it but it felt totally right. Soon I found myself walking through an art museum hand in hand with her, making jokes about artists and how only a Kansas City museum would have so many paintings of cows and just feeling that this was what I had been looking for. If I have ever had a perfect moment it occurred that afternoon at Nelson-Atkins.

It dawned on me while I was Christmas shopping that if things had gone differently I might have ended the year by buying something very sparkly. Maybe in some parallel universe I did. In that universe I am still in KC and almost certainly unemployed but I wonder if I am better off all the same.

Because a perfect moment is just that: a moment. Then life comes back into play and reality seeps in and suddenly you find that a relationship is ending and you aren’t quite sure why. I know that it wasn’t meant to be and I’ve moved on but I still look back and wonder. It just seems to sum up this year perfectly. I occasionally have my dream in my hand but then it disappears. I look to 2009 and I know that, yes, I can find someone that is perfect for me. But then my self-doubt creeps in and I ask “but will I ever be able to hold on to her?” That my friends is the biggest question weighing on my mind at the moment.

I’ve been wondering what song I should end the year with. Last year it was “The Championship” by The Polyphonic Spree; a song of hope and determination that carried me through many a dark day this year. I decided that it would be a Frames/Swell Season song as they are both my favorite band and my most memorable show of the year. At first I thought of using “When Your Mind’s Made Up” as I have learned that nothing shall ever trump a woman’s decision. But even I found that a little cynical. I then considered “Keepsake”, a song about closing the door to your house, breaking the key in the lock and setting the whole place ablaze. As someone who yearns to just start anew it is a very intriguing choice.

In the end I came across this clip on YouTube and it was clear that this is it. It starts with a cover of Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” and ends with “Red Chord”, a song that speaks of possibility and of regaining joy. I watch this concert clip from 2001 and realize that by staying true to what he believed Glen Hansard was able to win an Oscar for his music this year. That dreams can come true just by believing in yourself, following your heart and making art. That is how I want to end the year. Just stay true. The rest will occur in due time.

Have a safe and prosperous new year, everyone.

A request for advice

So I am faced with a dilemma at the moment. Ok, maybe dilemma isn’t the proper word here. Being faced with Sophie’s Choice is a dilemma. Choosing between briefcases on Deal or No Deal is an even bigger dilemma. I’m faced more with of a complete befuddlement at the moment. Mainly, I have no idea what to do on New Year’s Eve.

Now this would not be a problem if I was in Kansas City. I know exactly what I would do tomorrow night if I was in Kansas City. I would go down to The Brick and watch The Kelihans play and just drink and relax and have a good time. A dive bar with cheap drinks and a good Irish band is all that one needs on the last night of the year. Plus, going to The Brick is just like going to the Power and Light District except it doesn’t suck.

But I have escaped the vortex that is Kansas City and now find myself in Delaware where I do not know a single person that I do not work with and haven’t found a bar where I feel even remotely at home. Plus, all the places around here tend to have DJs so I haven’t even been able to find any decent live music in the area. So I am putting out an open plea to the blogosphere: What the hell should an unattached, single guy do on New Year’s Eve?

This is a much tougher question than one would originally think. I know that many of you will immediately suggest going to a bar but I must remind you what it is like to be in a crowded bar at midnight by yourself. Everyone around you is wildly drunk but you are not because you have to drive yourself home. The crowd is filled with people who only drink twice a year so they are annoying drunks as well. And, when the clock strikes midnight, everyone pairs off in an attempt to show just how much of a pathetic loser you are. So while it is an option it is not a preferred one.

(There is a counter option of going to a place of, how shall I put this, adult entertainment. There you can rest assured of female companionship at the midnight hour at the cost of overpriced drinks and your dignity. I’m cautious ever since I drove past one a month ago that advertised its Thanksgiving Buffet. I don’t even want to imagine what that was like.)

I could stay home of course and sit around writing, having a few drinks and ending the night by swearing at Ryan Seacrest and then turning off all the lights and listening to Smiths CDs until I pass out on my couch. Or I could do some shopping, which is a wonderfully American way of avoiding the fact that another year has passed me by. But this has been a rather momentous year for me with some of the best moments of my life and some of the absolute worst all included in it. I just feel that I should remember it in some special way. So if anyone has any ideas please pass them my way.

This Land is Our Land!

As many of you know, I have been watching the political scene in my former home very closely over the past several weeks. The corruption and arrogance evident amongst our elected officials is too much to behold. Never have I seen such a mistreatment of the public trust. As a result I feel that it is my duty to lead the charge to make a change in the way our great land is governed. I ask all citizens to join with me on this cause.

We must impeach Mayor McCheese!



For too long we have been complacent in our acceptance of his governing practices. We elected him on his promise of bringing law and order to our streets. We cheered when he announced that Officer Big Mac would lead the crime reduction task force. But are we any safer now than we were when he was elected? Captain Crook and his band of pirates still menace our fishing fleet and constantly raid our ships loaded with imports from the Tartars. Even more concerning is the continual threat to our society known only by the name “The Hamburglar”. This criminal makes even the strongest citizen scared to venture onto the city streets for fear of being robbed by a masked lunatic. Have Mayor McCheese and his flunky Officer Big Mac captured this repeat criminal? Of course not as all of our tax dollars that were meant to go towards the hiring of additional police forces have been diverted in order to “make meal time a more joyous occurrence.”

Let us not forget his domestic policy. We all remember Mayor McCheese’s disastrous press conference during The Great McRib Panic of 2005.



Never before has an elected leader been so negligent in such a trying time. We all knew that the food supply was too dependent on the McPorcine and that any natural disaster in the agricultural region would have horrible consequences. It is why every spring they would have the annual Faux Gras celebration as the entire area had a conscious understanding that their entire lifestyle could be wiped out in an instant. But did McCheese see the warning signs? No, he watched idly as days passed while rioters and looters roamed the streets looking for one last packet of sauce. Why wasn’t Birdie the Early Bird placed in charge of the early warning system as all of the experts recommended? It was a case of criminal neglect of the highest source.

Then there is the threat from foreign sources. The Burger King has been amassing forces for years, always threatening to invade our peaceful land. An insurgent terrorist element has been planting Jack in the Boxes across our fair city. And I shiver when I hear the garbled messages of the one they call Wendy. Has Mayor McCheese done anything that makes you sleep soundly at night? Are we more secure knowing that the Fry Guys are on patrol? I think not.

Now I know that many will claim that this is driven more from a disagreement with Mayor McCheese’s lifestyle. While many people have issue with the Mayor and his life partner Grimace I do not fall in that group. I feel proud that I live in a land where someone can be elected leader regardless if their spouse is male, female or an amorphous purple blob. I also do not discount the Mayor’s accomplishments. Thanks to his appointing of Uncle O’Grimacy as ambassador we now have secured a year round shipment of Shamrock Shakes. He instituted the space program providing us with our national hero CosMc. But these successes have been few and far between and our government is now a greasy slab of disease due solely to his leadership.

So let us rise up and retake our government! There is only one person who can save us from catastrophe!



Help us Ronette. You are our only hope.

You can't get there from here

Like many people, my holidays were spent in a nerve racking attempt to actually get to where I was meant to be followed by the stressful gift giving experience. Now that I am safe and sound (and tremendously bored) in Delaware, I guess I can provide the full story.

I originally had an evening flight on Tuesday from Philadelphia to Chicago. However, thanks to the fact that in my new job I have a meteorologist on staff I was able to get the latest forecast and switched to a morning flight. Yes, I now have a meteorologist on call as opposed to the astrologer on call that I had at Sprint. While the accuracy level has increased I no longer get to have conversations where I answer questions with “Well, you’re the astrologer. Aren’t you supposed to know these things in advance?”

So I head to the airport on Tuesday morning and can I just say that the construction at the Philly airport around the Southwest check in is the most inane imaginable. It will be awesome when it is done but right now you have no clue where you are going other than you will be stuck in a long line to get your bags checked. Once I checked in and got passed security I did something that indicates that I travel way too much. I went from Terminal D (where my flight was) to Terminal B just because I like the Dunkin Donuts in Terminal B more than the Dunkin Donuts in Terminal D. There is logic in that statement but damn if I can find it.

But my flight takes off on time and I am relaxing on my way home. It even looks like we’ll be in ten minutes early as we start our descent. Slight problem though as I know how long the descent should take and we were in the air much longer. This is finally explained as the snow has hit Chicago and no one can land and we were now circling South Bend. We circle for a while as I remember that planes do not have infinite fuel and finally we are all told that our flight is being diverted to Omaha.

Now I wasn’t really planning on spending my holidays in Omaha. Like a good engineer I immediately start working on contingency plans. I figure that if I ended up stuck in Omaha I could probably get a flight to KC and then make my way to Chicago from there and if not, well, I at least know people (and more importantly, bartenders) in town. However, given that I didn’t want to spend Christmas in Kansas City when I lived there I was pleased when we just refueled on the tarmac, flew back to Chicago, and I was able to get home even if it was much later than I had hoped.

The holidays themselves went fine. Spent a lot of time with my family and played the favorite uncle, which is my role in all family functions. I did not receive either of the gifts that I was hoping for this year. I did not find the Tila Tequila tome under the tree. Yes, Tila Tequila has written a book. Ok, she has dictated a book. Or more accurately someone wrote a book, she looked at it and went, “what do all of those squiggly lines mean?” and they went ahead and published it with her name on it. I also did not receive a Lexus with a large red bow on it and if watching television this month has taught me anything it is that without a Lexus with a large red bow on it my life is completely meaningless.

(Though on those commercials remind me to never date any woman who received a pony for Christmas as a kid. Seriously, no matter what you do, no matter what you spend, all you will ever hear is “my daddy got me a pony for Christmas one year.” How are you supposed to top that? You don’t need to buy a car; you need to buy a Transformer.)

However, I have no complaints about my gifts as what I did receive was even better than what I had hoped for. Yes, I received a copy of The Bro Code written by Barney Stinson himself. I am not making this up at all. I am immensely proud of having this piece of literature on my shelf.

So after spending days with my family I made my way to the airport on Friday to fly back out. This was a bit of an issue as an ice storm overnight made the roads impassable for a time and put all of the flights way out of whack. It is never good when you look at the departures board and you don’t even see times; just the word Delayed repeated over and over again. I picked up my customary lunch of an Italian Beef sandwich (I can only get those in Chicago) and made myself a spot on the floor. Luckily, my plane was coming in from Oakland and was actually vaguely on time. I boarded my plane all ready to make it back to the east coast.

Except that they were making a crew change and the other pilots weren’t here yet. Then they started to disturbingly remove bags from the plane. Then there was a sudden rush of new passengers as the later flight was cancelled and they tried to get everyone on my flight. All of this while the fog kept on getting worse and worse. Finally we were able to get up in the air and after a later check realized that I had one of the last flights out of the airport before they had to close because of the weather, which means that I shouldn’t complain too much about the whole situation given that there are other people still stuck at the airport.

So I was lucky in that I was able to get into and out of Chicago ok but it was more than a bit harrowing. But still, this is the holidays and I will gladly suffer the hours spent on cramped planes and unexpected road trips to Nebraska just so I could spend a few days with my family. It makes it all worthwhile.

Best of 120 Minutes: Ah, Sleater-Kinney. Proof that you do not need to be in tune or even know how to play your instruments to make up a kick ass rock band. Somehow going to the University of Delaware campus to see bands like this just doesn’t carry the same panache as going to Lawrence. Anyway, if you are like me and have to work tomorrow here is pretty much what I’ll be doing all day.

Sleater-Kinney MTV Music

The Curse of the Nice Guy

Author’s Note: Back when I was pegged to write for another website in order to provide the mid-thirties, chronically single perspective on life one of my first major posts was supposed to be on this subject. However, thanks to my aversion to deadlines and the fact that the website was apparently managed by lemurs the website was shut down before I could actually write the article. Here it is, in its full glory. Enjoy.

The Curse of the Nice Guy

A friend recently forwarded me this link with the subject: “This totally explains your problem”. I’m always frightened by the thought that Yahoo may hold the answer to any of my difficulties so I cautiously took a look at the article pleasantly titled “Why Nice Guys Finish Last” written by the botox enhanced “Dating Expert” April Masini. Check it out for yourself.

Why Nice Guys Finish Last

Now as a sufferer of “nice guy syndrome” this subject is very close to my heart. Not only have I heard “I only like you as a friend” I’ve also gotten “You’re not the type of guy I want to date. You’re the type of guy I want to marry” and “You are naturally the nicest guy I’ve ever met. However, when you actually try to be nice you freak me out to the point that I want to call the cops.” Now this sets up a very awkward scenario as I have always been given the advice to “be myself”, which is being a nice, considerate guy, but as this article proposes that is the worst thing imaginable.

Let’s run through April’s arguments (ignoring the fact that a dating expert should not look like someone prowling the edge of a divorcee bar). First, apparently nice equates to boring. Really? So women prefer the excitement of being treated like crap and ignored over being treated with respect? Or purposefully being ignored so that when the guy pays attention to them they get to feel as though they have earned it and changed him even though he was just following the rules laid out to him on a VH1 reality show?

I hate this argument because it assumes that one cannot be both nice and confident. Since when have those states been mutually exclusive? True, it is one thing if a guy is nice to the point of letting a girl walk all over him. For example, if you drive the girl of your dreams to another guy’s house because her car is in the shop you probably do fall into the category of being too nice. But as a guy I feel I can be damn confident of myself and go “You know what, I like you and I want to treat you the way you deserve” and not play any stupid games around the way that I am feeling. I never understood why two people who like each other will spend months avoiding each other’s company just to prove that they do, in fact, like each other. A simple questionnaire would solve that issue in minutes. If in grade school we could use a note with “Do you like me, check yes or no” as the basis of courtship I don’t think that we need to make it much more difficult as adults.

Now the second (and to be honest, only) point of the article is about how relationships work in terms of a negotiation. Admittedly, this could be the whole reason for my lack of a girlfriend because I suck at negotiations. I’ve been beaten at negotiations by people who are more fluent in Klingon than English. On some level I can even agree with this argument. In dating we are all trying to judge whether we are dating within our league, testing the power dynamic, and running the counterparty past a set of impartial judges in order to determine their true mating value. In such a situation it is best to place yourself in a position that indicates just how worthy you are in terms of breeding stock. Anything that indicates that you realize that you are way out of your league, and trying to do everything right is one of those things, does place the relationship at risk.

But just read the way I phrased that and you can tell how ludicrous the entire thing is. The guy is being punished for trying to do things right. In fact, the nice guy does absolutely nothing wrong in the entire scenario and yet he still doesn’t get the girl. He doesn’t insult her, he doesn’t leave her waiting by the phone sobbing, and he doesn’t sleep with her sister giving the excuse “it was late and I got confused.” That guy gets second and third chances because of his long hair and motorcycle. The nice guy just sits at the bar drowning his sorrows until the relationship shatters into a million pieces and he is left to put her back together hoping that maybe this time she’ll notice before the next guy with a tattoo walks through the door.

What is missing from April’s piece, and what I would love to see written just once when they discuss why nice guys don’t get the girl, is the simple statement: “Women are completely irrational. Nothing that they do or say can be viewed in any sort of logical construct.” Nowhere in that article does is state that women are doing anything wrong with ignoring the nice guy even though by definition they are. They talk about showing yourself as having value when by being considerate you are showing that you have value. Hell, it shows that you have values! But that apparently doesn’t matter.

As much as people talk about relationships in terms of negotiations it isn’t as though the woman is sitting there performing a net present value calculation as to the benefit of dating the other party. If so, I’d have a full social calendar just do to the sheer fact that I am willing to pay for dinner. Yet that is what all of this advice is meant to portray. Show value by being a jerk. Don’t pay attention. Let her walk away. God help you if you are actually honest about your feelings for once in your life. That is romantic suicide. Act like your twelve and pull on her hair to indicate your desire.

What gets me most about this is that it assumes that there are no women out there looking for nice guys. There has to be even if I seem to have a hell of a time finding them apparently. If the world’s fattest man can get married even though he needed a flatbed truck to get to the church you would think that I could get a woman to not break up with me just because I like opening a door for her occasionally. So instead of trying to change who I am into someone I clearly am not I want to pose the question this way. Where does one find a woman who is looking for a nice guy? Where are the women who are looking for a guy who will pay attention and be there when they need support? Because trust me, if you let me know where they are hiding I’ll be out there handing out resumes complete with references as to just how nice of a guy I actually am.

Holiday Thoughts

I'm just going to toss out some random holiday thoughts as I am more that worn out from a day filled with family and food and more little ones running around the house than you could ever imagine.



I really enjoyed the fact that the local news, in addition to the usual stories from the homeless shelters and donation sites, had a story from a Chinese restaurant. I had never actually seen a news story that basically went, "If you ever wondered where the people who don't celebrate Christmas go, here you are. Let's observe them in their natural habitat."



One of the things I miss is the joy of getting up on Christmas morning. I no longer get to race down a flight of stairs in order to see what I got. Now I try to a) stay under the covers so I can get as much sleep as possible and b) recognize the fact that getting up early will not result in my getting any presents any earlier as we exchange them in the mid-afternoon.



Once again, Santa did not get me a fire truck this year thus making it twenty five years that the fat guy in the red suit has let me down. And I've been good this year. Ok, mostly good. I mean, what do I do that is so wrong? Oh yeah, the heartless cynicism. Right.



I still don't get the heartless part. I had an electrocardiogram this year. I actually have pictures of my heart. So there is proof that I have one, just that it is three sizes too small.



I am also a little bummed by the fact that Midnight Mass now takes place at 10 PM at my church. Partly because of the blatant false advertising but mainly because it reduces the number of people who arrive at church after a night of drinking. It always provided a last call atmosphere to the event that is sorely missed much of the year. Still, it is my favorite mass because of the fact that it is set apart at a special time and it features the intoning of the date where we discuss the date of the nativity in such terms as olympiads and years from the founding of Rome. I loved that as a kid and I still enjoy it today.



Yes I did get a Christmas present of a Notre Dame victory in a bowl game. I wish people wouldn't react to it as though ND has now returned to national prominence. We beat a bad Hawaii team in a meaningless bowl game. This isn't a celebration of how great we are; it is more like "wow, we didn't screw up this time." Also, what does it say when Weis doesn't even leave the press box at halftime? Did he at least call down to the locker room?



And no matter how cynical I am, getting to be surrounded by my family and looking at the same stockings and ornaments that we have had since I was a kid is a wonderful thing. Sometimes it is all you wish for in the world.



I might toss another post out this weekend. Enjoy the long weekend either way.

Thoughts on what is important

Comment on the Board Game Post: You seem to be missing "Life"

My reaction: Finally someone identifies what it is that I ponder while sitting in the dark late at night.

It is Christmas Eve, large portions of the country have snow on the ground, NORAD is tracking Santa and I am going to try to remove my sarcastic hat for a little bit. This is a major challenge as sarcasm is my main defense against this world to the point that people can't tell the difference between my sarcasm and my honesty any more. Earlier this week I joked that I was in the hunt to be cast in the fourth season of Beauty and the Geek and people believed it. I'm not sure what worried me more a) the fact that people thought I qualified as a contestant, b) the fact that people thought I was the type of guy who would apply for the show or c) that no one can tell where the cynicism stops and the honest begins. None of those are pleasant thoughts.

Still, this is the time of the year when you have to do your best to view the world in a sense of snow covered innocence. I've mentioned it before but one of the reasons I love the snow is that it covers all of the imperfections of the world with a white sheen. Everything becomes clean and pure. horrible to drive on and a pain to shovel, but there is a serenity to the scene. A serenity that adds to the heart of the day.

Here is what I love about the Christmas story. It is a story of God entering the world not as an adult but as a helpless child born in the simplest, basic, almost downtrodden environment. It is not a story of God entering as a heroic leader, or as a fiery avenger, or even a wise prophet. It is a story of an innocent child entering the world in a stable with nothing but a loving family surrounding him.

And that is what the day is about. Surrounding yourself with a loving family. All of the stories about people stuck at the airport trying to get home for the holidays showcase how important it is to be with the people you love on this day. No one is willing to sleep at O'Hare in order to get a Best Buy gift card but people will willingly do so just to be together for this one day a year. As much as we might have issues within our families they are still the people who will love you unconditionally. The people who will pick you up at your lowest point and remind you of your best self. We do not take enough time in our lives to remember this; it all gets caught up in the noise of every day life. But at least one day of the year we try to thank each other for all of the good that they do for us every day of the year. And I wish I could bottle up the feeling and keep it near me at all times. It would help me through a lot of dark nights.

So I sincerely (and yes, I can be sincere) wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Enjoy the day with the ones you love and cherish the moments that you have. Because life is a precious thing that should not be wasted or missed. We do too much of that as it is.

Gifts for people you secretly loathe

I know that I am far behind the pop culture bandwagon on this one but I have to give the Snuggie the Clapper Plus Memorial Award for most unnecessary enhancement to an existing product. As we all remember, last year saw the introduction of the Clapper Plus: the Clapper with a Remote. So just in case clapping your hands is too tiring for you there is now a handy remote option. The Snuggie may even top that as it is, for all intensive reasons, a blanket with sleeves sewn in.

Now let us examine your typical blanket. It is a rather functional piece of equipment. If Douglas Adams has taught us anything it is that a towel is the most important item in one's possession and a blanket is simply a larger, warmer towel. And since the dawn of mankind, when we realized that God made several animals out of very warm fur just so we could mercilessly slaughter them to stay warm at night, the blanket has been an entirely effective design. And, on those occasions when one's arms were cold you would simply place them under the blanket. True, that kept your hands out of sight but since you still knew that you had hands it really did not raise any alarms.

So with that in mind the Snuggie is designed for those people who believe that if they cannot in fact see their hands that they truly believe that their hands no longer exist. This is the first time in my life that the Ravenous Bugblater Beast of Traal has been used as the basis of product design. It is quite possibly the dumbest idea that I have ever seen. One of the reasons that they give on the commercial for this product is that it makes reading easier. I have two issues with this: 1) I have never had a problem operating a blanket and a book at the same time in my life and I have the dexterity of an intoxicated sloth and 2) I have a strong indication that the people who purchase this product do not read.

I can understand the attraction of certain products advertised on television. I own and use a George Foreman Grill as do all other single men. Even that Set It and Forget It rotisserie oven looks enticing at times, if by chance I would ever need to cook a medium sized turkey in an unappetizing manner I would probably by one. But I don't understand the Snuggie. And dont' get me started on the commemorative coin collections that have absolutely no connection to anything and therefor by definition have no value. Those things are just embarassing.

So for those of you who still need to get a Christmas gift please don't get a Snuggie. Do what I do and go to Walgreens instead. You can always find a Chia Pet, or my favorite the Chia Tree, at this time of year

What to read...

I’m tired and worn out at the moment so I’ll try to keep this short tonight. I’ll have more time later in the week to try to be witty and clever and explain why a fire truck is a great gift to receive on Christmas morning until your older brothers take it from you but I just don’t really have the creative drive to write that at the moment. Instead I am going to put in a call for a request.

It has been tradition that I spend the month of January reading one incredibly challenging book. This is part of my annual triple reading challenge along with a) reading a Shakespeare play and b) reading something written by a woman. I know that last one sounds horrible and it is but it was added years ago after I looked at everything that I had read over the course of the year and discovered that I did not have a single female author in the bunch. (I’ll always accept any suggestions of female writers that I must read (as long as their names are not Anne Rice or J. K. Rowling)).

In the past I have used the month of January to read books such as Infinite Jest, Ulysses, Faust, On the Road and To Kill a Mockingbird. Ok, so they are not all challenging reads but the idea is really simple. It should be a book of solid artistic merit, the type of book that the lazy student will by a copy of Cliff Notes for, and I must read it over the course of the month. This is meant to fill in the gaps of my non-English major background and take advantage of the fact that January is really cold out so I’ll spend a lot of time at home alone during the month.

So I’m asking everyone out there to throw out the books that you feel that I need to read in order to consider myself an educated individual. Whether you like these books or not really isn’t important. I would prefer them to be worth reading but part of this is meant to be a challenge. Post your thoughts in the comments and I’ll choose the best one to be my focus for the rest of the month.

Until then, I’ll just work on the three books I have with me at the moments: Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (a frank look at Vietnam), a Neil Gaiman career retrospective and “How to Talk to a Widower”, another one of those guy Bridget Jones’ books that I don’t actually like but don’t tax my brain in the least. At least I finished my Shakespeare already.

It's never darker than...right now, actually

No one celebrates the shortest day of the year. Even the pagans don’t bother to hold a party for it. For Summer Solstice they’ll rent out Stonehenge and break out the Phish concert bootlegs but for the Winter Solstice the universal reaction is “Screw this, it is too freaking cold outside to do anything.” So while my idol Fitzgerald was correct in Gatsby in saying that we all look forward to the longest day of the year but do nothing to celebrate it he neglected to mention that we all dread the shortest day of the year but avoid any actions to fix it either. I mean, shouldn’t we all be out lighting candles or something in a plea to have the large yellow ball returned to our sky?

(Apologies to my Australian readership, which I apparently actually have now, as this is the complete opposite of what you are experiencing at the moment. I’d suggest pulling up one of my June 20th posts where I mention Daisy Buchanan and rue wistfully over what it means to catch a clock in one’s hands.)

What is strange is that I don’t really dislike winter. The short days do bother me and I hate driving home in the dark (though my laziness does allow me to drive to work in the sunlight). But I actually enjoy a good snowfall blanketing the world in a pure white sheen. Right now, my readers are having three reactions to this statement. 1) The people who are experiencing blizzards at the moment are raising their shovels in anger and threatening to inflict bodily harm on me once they can get their car out of the driveway. 2) The people whose only knowledge of a blizzard comes from Dairy Queen are wondering why in the world would anyone want to live in a land that requires wearing long sleeves. 3) And the three people who actually live in Delaware are going, “What do you mean, winter? There is no snow on the ground.”

Yes, even though the entire country is apparently blanketed by one of the worst storms in memory there is no snow on the ground where I live. Woke up this morning to a little bit of ice that was melting off the trees but that is it. People are complaining about a biting wind but it is forty degrees out. I’m still wearing my fall jacket. Apparently there is no winter in Delaware. Just a fall that forgot to pay its electricity bill.

Anyway, like most people this is going to be one of those weeks that exist solely for vacation purposes only. Even when I am in the office it is going to be such a sparse crowd that it won’t actually feel like work. It is a bit disconcerting that so many people have to take vacation because otherwise they would lose it (which reminds me to book my trips now) but at least it shows that people get time off. But really this is going to be a quiet week. Not sure what I’ll do on the blog though I might try to get in one more random toy post. Just all of the other odds and ends of my childhood memories as well as some Christmas thoughts near the end of the week. And who knows, if all else fails I’ll tell more dating stories. Those are always good for a laugh.

Best of 120 Minutes: We’re going to kick it old school with a video that technically wasn’t in the 120 Minutes rotation but probably should have been: Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis”. Yes, this song is more than 20 years old. Dear lord, do I feel old now.

Run-D.M.C. MTV Music

Further Tales from the KC Dating Scene...

The farther removed from Kansas City I find myself (both in terms of time and pure geographic distance) the easier it becomes for me to fill everyone in on all the stories that I would not tell on the grounds that they could come back to haunt me. Especially my tales of what is was like being single in that town. This story from my first few months in town pretty much encompasses what it was like for me during my five years there as well showcasing what I loved and absolutely hated about the city. It also was, until my last year in town, the highlight of my dating adventures in KC. Which, when you read the story, will indicate something rather amazing. Names have been kept the same because I am really too lazy to change them at the moment.

Now first off I need to explain two important things. The first is that Kansas City is notoriously bad for single people. Usually when they rank the 40 largest cities in the US KC falls somewhere around 38th in the rankings. A lot of people in town say that this is wrong and it is a great place to be single. That is because they are a) from the town, b) went to either Missouri, Kansas or Kansas State, and c) got married at 24. Because that is what the entire single scene in Kansas City consists of: people under 24 who went to one of three colleges and know each other from high school. My moving to town as a 30 year old alumnus of Notre Dame and Illinois who didn’t know a soul in the entire bistate area put me at a distinct disadvantage.

The other point is one about where I was at in my life when I moved to KC. I had just left Notre Dame after what was probably from a social perspective the most amazing few months of my life. I went to school as an incredibly shy person with little self esteem and came out as someone who was just having a blast with life and was at least going out with, if not technically dating, women. That was a huge accomplishment given where I started. But even with that I was miles from who I am now in terms of confidence in myself. (Sometimes I wish that people I met before could meet the person I am now. So many things could go differently.)

Anyway, so the first few months in town were spent going to various bars, talking to people and realizing that for the most part I was too old for the crowd. It is fun to talk to a 23 year old but as a 30 year old you begin to wonder if this is the right path to take. That and I was never really getting anywhere and I was missing all of the people I knew in South Bend. I hadn’t made a single friend who wasn’t a bartender and everyone I knew was drifting away and in one memorable instance did so by threatening to never speak to me again. So I was kind of adrift in a town I wasn’t quite sure I liked.

But I had at least found one place that I liked and that was Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, which was a small music club in town that was conveniently located a) two miles from my apartment and b) directly across the street from an adult book store. Very seldom do you find the perfect storm of alcohol, music and porn on one street corner but here it was. I quickly became a regular at shows and friends with the owner and staff. This fall night I was there to see Pieta Brown, a singer-songwriter that I had seen a few times before and quite liked.

(Side Pieta Brown story: At another concert I was introduced to Pieta by her step-mom Iris Dement, another singer I am a huge fan of. The fact that she introduced me in a tone of voice that said “this is a guy you should date” is still one of the highlights of my life.)

I was sitting at the bar before the show having a beer and watching a Johnny Cash tribute show on television. Next to me was this guy with two women, maybe a few years younger than me, also watching the show and we started talking about it and Pieta and life in general. Nothing specific, just general pre-concert bar banter. As the show is about to start we all walk over to the stage together. As we stand there mesmerized by the performance, Kristen, a cute blonde who I had talked to the most, turned to me and said a line that I have never forgotten

“If I wasn’t sweating right now I’d have chills.”

After the show we all returned to the bar for another round of drinks. Kristen and I continue talking and don’t even really notice that the other two had left. We spent time talking about all of the obscure music we loved: Neko Case, Kelly Willis, Kathleen Edwards, The Be Good Tanyas. All of those acts that I continually mention but no one has ever heard of because they’ve sold 2,000 CDs in their career. Well, we both were one of the 2,000 that had them and you could feel that connection. She told me of her career goal of being a museum curator while I mention my goal of writing my way out of a finance job. All of the while I am stunned at how amazingly well we are hitting it off. Everything was effortless, we had a ton in common and we both seemed to be two good souls who would get along well together. I swore to myself “Get her number, see her again, this is the first person you’ve met in this town that is worth dating.” Just as I was getting up the courage to ask for her number we had the following exchange:

Kristen: “Did you happen to see the score of the Kansas State game this afternoon?”
EC: “Yeah, K State won pretty handily.”
Kristen: “Good, my boyfriend will be happy. He was at the game.”

My heart fell out of my chest, slid down the left leg of my jeans, and bounced four times before coming to rest leaning against the Golden Tee machine. Finally I had met someone and hit it off and it ends before it starts. Even Kristen seemed rather disappointed in that she had to tell me this because she knew it was going to end the conversation. It was as if she had to sigh before she said it and I had to bite my tongue in order to not yell, “Want to date me instead? I know I’ve never met your boyfriend but given that he went to K State I’d put money on the fact that I am better than he is. Unless for some reason you are really, really fascinated by corn.” Instead I just politely continued the conversation while silently cursing my life. We said goodbye without exchanging numbers but saying that we will see each other around. Given our musical tastes it was certain that we would.

Which we did five days later when I ran into her and her boyfriend Bill, who was a really nice guy, at a bar. Just randomly ran into her and she introduced me as “the guy I was telling you about from Saturday night.” This then led to us meeting each other roughly every four months for the next several years. Whether it was in Kansas City or Lawrence, at a Ditty Bops show or a Robert Earl Keen concert, we would continually run into each other. There are two stories in particular of our random meetings that I have to share.

The first took place at a Lucinda Williams show at the Voodoo Lounge at Harrah’s Casino. I hate casino shows because almost no one is there for the music and the dregs of humanity you see in the buffet line really does not put you in the mood for a concert. They also seem to have no sense of timing as while I got to the show at ticket time the opening act had apparently started a half hour earlier. As a result there were no seats on the floor so I snuck up to the balcony and sat in the very last row. Fifteen minutes later, out of a crowd of maybe 800 people, Kristen and Bill randomly show up and sit next to me and we all act as though this is perfectly normal. I’ve called people to meet me at shows and have had a harder time finding them. We didn’t even have each other’s numbers and for some reason we always found ourselves next to each other.

The other took place at a time when I completely did not expect it. Being a single guy who works I spend much of my weekends running all the errands I ignore during the week. That means trips to Walgreens to get all of the things you need to keep an apartment clean. So on this day I was running around with dishwasher detergent, Kleenex and a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner in my hand when I turn a corner and run straight into Kristen and Bill. It is incredibly difficult to have a meaningful conversation while holding toilet bowl cleaner in your hands. Especially when the one thing you want to say is, “Will you please break up with him so I can go out with you? Seriously, it’s been three years since I’ve met you and you are still the coolest person I’ve found in this town. Look, I’m willing to scrub my toilet for you. Hell, I’ll scrub yours if it would help.”

But no such luck. Every time I saw them it was Kristen and Bill. Don’t know what happened to them (I’m not sure if I ran into them when I knew I was leaving town.) I hope they are married and living a perfectly happy life. It wasn’t until I was set to leave town that I met someone who topped her. But that is a story for another day.

Kansas City is a tough town for an outsider. Everyone knows each other and seems to have no need for additional people in their lives. People couple early and being by yourself leaves you ostracized. By being a smaller city I could enjoy a music scene that allowed me to see everyone I wanted without having to drive more than a few miles though it would mean that I would see the same faces around town day after day after day. And that is what the Kristen story is all about. We never dated, I never got her number, hell, I never even knew her last name. But she was a constant in my life and a sign that there were women in KC who were worth dating. You just had to find them during the five minutes that they didn’t have a boyfriend.

So I was reading the paper the other day...

Due to all of my childhood recollections there are a great number of serious news stories that I have neglected to comment upon in the past week or so. I’ll try to catch up…

The Gov. Blagoevich Scandal: As I have been telling everyone for the past week: bribery is not a crime in Illinois so I don’t see what the big deal is. Who doesn’t get paid for a senate seat? And if the Children’s Hospital wants some additional funding I see nothing wrong with them ponying up some additional cash for the old campaign fund. (That is the most insane part of the entire story. He blackmailed a freaking Children’s Hospital.) Even better is the picture of the Governor outside of his Chicago home next to a sign promoting “Rat Catching” services.

I really didn’t think he would last the week but it now looks as if we are in for a long haul of impeachment hearings, court cases and nothing happening in the state until we can finally get him out of office. I really want to understand his mindset. Even if he is not convicted his political career is over. So instead of stepping aside he decides to fight to the end and take the entire state down with him. Maybe common sense will hit him at some point like a flying shoe. Speaking of which…

The shoe throwing incident: Others have written about this and I will have to agree. I have no love loss for this president. I started the blog after he was reelected and I will be glad to see him out of office. The state that the country is in right now is his legacy. But even with that, I am disgusted by the way that this was immediately treated as a joke. A “look at the wacky hijinks Bush has gotten himself into this time” type of thing like a sketch on a bad comedy show. He is the leader of my country, the most powerful nation on the planet. We are a country that does not bow our flag to any world leader. We stand with pride and honor at all times. But now our president has been reduced to ducking shoes like some honcho of a banana republic (either the nation or the clothing store). I’m ashamed and disgusted by the act.

Simply Red releases a Greatest Hits CD: I saw this a little while back. I know of only one Simply Red song. I can’t actually name it but I know that they had one song. Now they apparently have twenty tracks for a Best of disc. This astounds me. I couldn’t believe that anyone would want one tack, much less twenty. Or even remember who they are. That is marketing for you.

Whopper Perfume: For those of you who are like me and are desperately seeking to find that perfect gift for that special someone in your life I direct you to go to your nearest Burger King and pick up a bottle of Eau d’Whopper. I am not making this up. Some of the people at Burger King came up the idea of a scent of “flame broiled goodness” called Flame and they are actually selling it. So if you like your women smelling like grease and looking like they are available on the dollar menu here is your best opportunity.

This just tops the Penn State fragrance that was all released this month. Because even Mystery can’t compete with Joe Pa.

Space Shuttles for Sale: Ok, I am going to call upon my financing team to work with me on this one. I know the markets are tight but this might be the best thing ever in terms of impressing women. I originally thought that buying Bjorn Borg’s Wimbledon trophies would be the smartest move I could make (bring a woman back to your place, have her see the trophies and when she asks go, “Oh, I won Wimbledon a few years back.”) but this would top it. Some guys buy a sports car for their mid-life crisis. I buy a freaking space shuttle.

Of course, once I purchase it a few improvements will need to be made. Racing stripes for one. A kick ass stereo system and some hydraulic jacks will also be added. To pay for it I’ll get MTV to film it as a series called “Pimp My Space Shuttle”. Xzibit probally could use the work.

Publishing note: I’ll post another Kansas City dating story over the weekend as a treat for those of you who do check the site. I think I’ll tell the story of my introduction to the Kansas City scene. It is definitely worth checking out.

Collect them all!

Time to continue down Christmas memory lane by examining more of the toys from my youth. Tonight: Action figures or how to raise your son to be a brilliant military tactician.



Transformers: This might come as a surprise to a lot of people but I always found Transformers to be highly overrated. I am discussing the figures themselves and not the animated series that was so many different levels of awesome they had to construct a periodic table of awesome just to quantify it. But the toys themselves proved the basic point that if you try to be two things at once you fail at both. Let’s say you are given an Autobot for Christmas. After whining about not getting Starscream you start to play with it as a car and discover it doesn’t roll very well and can’t keep its car shape. So you turn it into a robot and it is armed but it doesn’t have the sleekness or freedom of movement that you’d like. Still, better than a GoBot. What a waste of plastic those things were.

(Comment on the movie. It can’t be considered a Transformers movie unless Soundwave is involved. I’m sorry but that is the rule. They said they couldn’t include him because they didn’t want to break the law of the conservation of mass in the operation of transforming. This even though we completely ignore what happens to the tractor trailer that Optimus Prime is carrying every time he transforms. Completely unfair. Even worse than Megatron no longer being a gun.)



MASK: This is the completely forgotten toy/cartoon series. It was kind of this combination of Transformers and G.I. Joe in which you had people using military vehicles masquerading as regular cars. Why I was taught as a child that all cars should be armed is beyond me. MASK should be used as a case study in business school in the importance of naming your product. The toy series and cartoon was released in 1985, the same year the movie Mask was released. If you wanted to freak out your parents as a kid in the mid-80’s ask for a MASK action figure. No one wants to get their son a Cher action figure.

Oh and MASK stands for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. Sigh. I think I lost twenty IQ points writing that sentence.



Those Little Plastic Army Men: Oh, let me count the ways that these guys ruled. First, after the Stratego debacle I finally received toys that allowed me to fight World War II battles and that means tanks and bazookas and flamethrowers. Also, thank to their relative inexpensive nature it was incredibly easy to bring in a few new brigades of reinforcements. I should thank my parents for getting one of my brothers the Guns of Navarone playset that taught me the importance of having the high ground in any military battle. (It was this huge mountain playset where you could either a) decide to play it as is and try to defeat the Nazis or b) use it as a secondary Death Star and lead an X Wing assault against it.) More importantly, I still remember that several of the plastic guys were of someone being shot with their helmet flipping into the air. War takes on a little different meaning at eight when you see that on the basement floor in front of you.



GI Joe: (No, that is not a picture of my apartment. I never did get the aircraft carrier.) The amount of time I spent in my youth watching GI Joe cartoons is too much to even try to calculate. Especially when you realize that there weren’t that many episodes and they all had the same plot. Here is my concern about the modern US military. The people leading it will all have watched the show growing up and we have all been raised to believe that it is perfectly fine to hang completely exposed on the outside of a vehicle in the midst of a battle. Or that all assault vehicles should have large glass windows in the front so that the driver can see clearly. As always, one wanted to have the Cobra guys. Even Dr. Mindbender was cool in comparison to Shipwreck (who looked as though he moonlighted in a Village People cover band in his off hours.)



M.U.S.C.L.E.: I had some of these as a kid. I have no idea why. I’m not sure how was one was ever meant to play with them. Maybe I thought that since they were Japanese they had to be cool. If anyone can fill me in I would be glad to know.



He-Man: (As you can guess, I’ve been grabbing these images off the net. I am incredibly scared as to what might be behind these black bars.) Ok, I had He-Man action figures as a kid. A lot of them. And they were played with constantly. Not sure if I should admit it but hey, I’m reading Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part II this week so I think I turned out ok. What is most interesting is that the way I played with them completely changed as I grew up. I started off following the plot of the cartoon show as He Man led the charge to clean up Eternia of Castle Greyskull, which was another one of those cool toys as a kid. But as I grew older that changed.

I realized that the He-Man figures worked really well as wrestling action figures. The WWF action figures at the time were horrible but with He-Man you had a lot of flexibility and a lot more natural flexibility. Then I realized that four gym shoes provided a makeshift ring and a plastic milk crate a steel cage. So it went from from defending Eternia to competing for the Galactic Heavyweight Title. I hope this shows that I was creative as a kid. Probably shows that I watched way too much pro wrestling.



Star Wars: You know I had to finish with this one. The picture is of my actual printer where from left to right I have Darth Vader, a Tie Fighter Pilot, R2-D2, Boba Fett, a Stormtrooper and Chewbacca watching over me. This was the absolute ultimate in toys with me for ages. I even had two stormtroopers because you could always use more stormtroopers. There was nothing better than the Death Star playset. Here is what you got with it: a gun and turret in order to launch X Wing raids on the station, a sliding bridge and rope to recreate Luke and Leia’s swing, the control room to recreate the battle scene (or as often, have Luke crash into when he fell off the rope swing), a trash compactor with foam trash and trash compactor monster and finally, a freaking elevator to get the figures between floors. Absolutely nothing better than that.

Sure it is probably a little embarrassing that I actually have these things sitting on a desk underneath two diplomas but I like what they symbolize. They are from when I was a pure and innocent kid who just liked to sit on the floor of his bedroom and create adventures out of every corner of his mind. Every time I look at them I have to smile and I don’t think anyone could complain about that situation.

Wednesday Night Music Club: To stay in the holiday spirit here is a song from a Christmas record you need to own: Mindy Smith’s “My Holiday”. Watch it, listen, buy it. Makes the holidays perfect.

Packing up the board games

Here is a sense of the way my life works. I went to play trivia tonight and guess what the answer to one of the questions was? Stratego. This is precisely why I blog. I write about so many inane topics that by the time I play in a weekly trivia game I have written about every possible thing that could conceivably be an answer. Came in fourth tonight as a team of one. Pretty impressive but I could still do better.

I also still walk to trivia like I did in Kansas City. I like walking as it a) gives me the illogical notion that going to a bar counts as exercise and b) means that I do not have to worry about what takes place in the bar because I am walking home. However, instead of the five minute walk to Record Bar it is now a fifteen minute walk and doing so in a cold rain is quite annoying. I’m still vaguely drenched.

Ok, on to the board game front (which I’ll wrap up here due to it being too late to surf the net for action figure images. I’ll do that tomorrow.) I did exclude Monopoly and I’m not entirely sure why other than it is such an iconic game that it makes it difficult to discuss Mr. Moneybags in any logical sense. First off, the game begins with the fight over who gets to be the race car. This can turn violent as while settling for the horse or the cannon is acceptable absolutely no one wants to end up with the thimble. That has to be the dumbest playing piece in the history of mankind.

Second of all, much like in Risk, Monopoly requires social interaction and deal making for a game to be successful. This is an inherent flaw in my point of view as I prefer to not have to speak during a game, preferring to just utilize statistical analysis and game theory to dictate my actions. I mean, playing a game and being forced to talk to my family? What the hell? Also, by nature the game can last forever as players can just keep circling the board, collecting $200 and doing nothing. At least in Risk you get to envision laying waste to places like Irtusk.

Switching games, I actually remember playing Pay Day as a kid and really enjoyed it. It was really difficult as an eight year old to get your head around the concept of rent payments and life as a low level wage slave. I checked Wikipedia and your monthly pay in that game was $325 a month. That has to be one crappy apartment you are living in. Hell, even at a $3 an hour minimum wage you aren’t pulling in 40 hours a week. No wonder you had a “Sell your plasma for the free cookie” card.

There was one more game I wanted to list but after thirty minutes on Wiki and racking my brain all day I still can’t remember the name. If any of my siblings read this (or if anyone else knows) please post it in the comments. It was a game in the same format as Guess Who except that instead of vague pictures of children it was pictures of adults with various occupations. Each player chose a card representing who you are and the other players asked “Does your person have glasses?” and you could only answer yes or no. So from that point it was process of elimination.

The reason I remember this game so clearly is because of two cards. If you held one card “The Sycophant” (not the name but close enough) no matter what another player asked you would always answer “yes”. My favorite character was “The Liar” who would always lie about whatever question was asked. Playing as, or against, The Liar made the game incredibly challenging. Yes, the fact that I was enjoying logic puzzles at age 9 does say a lot about me.

Tomorrow: Action Figures! They’re not dolls, damnit, they’re action figures.

Holiday Memories: The Board Games

Given that it is the holidays and all I thought that it would be fun this week to look back at some of the favorite toys and games from my youth. I’ll be doing this on and off all week so who knows what you are going to get. To start, I’ll look at some of my favorite board games. Keep in mind that I am the fourth of five children in a highly competitive family. The only rule was if you cheat you better not get caught especially if you are proven to be cheating through the use of a mathematical proof. On to the games.



Clue: The classic game to find out who killed Mr. Boddy has a number of aspects that absolutely no one bothers to discuss. To start with the entire premise of the game is that you are locked in a house with a murderer and you go around trying to solve the crime as opposed to grabbing the revolver and barricading yourself in the conservatory with Yvette the French Maid. Secondly, on those occasions where you discover that you yourself are the murderer there is a whole host of quandaries that are avoided as you senselessly confess to the crime. Like “Why did I just spend the past half hour trying to figure out something I already knew?” and “Why don’t I now escape through the open conservatory window?” and “Why don’t I just framed Mrs. White, who no one wants to be anyway?” However, this game does provide for the wonderful moment of accusing your sister of murder. For those wondering, I was always Colonel Mustard though as an adult I’ve realized that Professor Plum is the coolest. Also, this game becomes infinitely better if someone in the family can do a Tim Curry impression.



Risk: The game that can never be won. I ended up buying a version of the game for my Commodore 64 just so I could finally win one and even that took me a month to accomplish. I was probably an adult before I realized that when other people play they do things like form alliances and work together. In our family it was every person for themselves with no niceties involved, especially for whoever had Ukraine. I did invent the “Falkland Islands Rule” in which Great Britain can attack Argentina. I was nine when I made this rule. That explains pretty much everything you ever need to know about me.



Mousetrap: If there is one game that I wanted as a kid but did not have it was Mousetrap. I don’t know what it was about, whether it was interesting or not, or if I would have lost a piece the second time I played it and thus made it completely worthless but man, I so wanted to build the thing. I still do, come to think of it.



Trouble: The only reason anyone ever played Trouble was for the little pop up bubble dice roller thingy. In fact, they probably could have saved a lot on manufacturing costs by just making that and selling it for fifteen bucks a pop.



The Game of Life: Easily my favorite game growing up. It teaches you so much about the importance of getting a good education and buying insurance. It is interesting in that while theoretically you could institute same sex marriage in the game (by assuming that all children are adopted and that everyone lives in Connecticut) it is impossible to go through life as a bachelor. So apparently my life is in violation of the rules of the game. Really this game had everything you could hope for as a kid. Cars, a spinning wheel, little hills to climb, people to place in the cars and the ability to swindle money when the banker wasn’t looking.



Trivial Pursuit: No surprise about having this game on the list. I believe that in all our years of playing the game the team of my mom and myself lost only once. She covered all the entertainment and literature questions and I covered sports, science and geography (we split on history). Also, this was great in that it created huge arguments over rule interpretations, definitions of questions, and whether or not we should let my younger brother answer questions from the children’s version or not. For some reason the children’s version had a surprising number of questions about the Mister T board game. Twenty plus years later and I still remember that.



Stratego: This game was like the counterargument to Risk where instead of conquering the world you were trying to win a battle. Why you were doing so with Napoleon’s army is another mystery for the ages. Just for once I wanted to have a tank on the battlefield. This game is essentially Capture the Flag with bombs thus allowing you to go into such strategic moves as placing one bomb behind another or the famous “switch your pieces while your brother isn’t looking” gambit.

Any board games that I missed? What other favorites are out there?

Holiday spirit (Bah Humbug edition)

Lots of holiday related thoughts on my mind as I actually did some Christmas shopping today. I mean, I could wait until Christmas morning and make my purchases at Walgreens like I usually do but I thought that I would try this year. Anyway, here are some thoughts on the season so far.

1) Did Jesus ever get pissed for having his birthday on Christmas? He was screwed out of presents every year and even when he did get something it was completely useless. Myrrh? How about a big wheel instead?

2) A few weeks ago I did my Holiday Viewing Guide and I was very upset that my favorite Christmas special was not scheduled to be aired on any network throughout the entire season. How can I make it through the month of December without watching Emmitt Otter’s Jugband Christmas? How are children today supposed to learn the importance of not putting a hole in the washtub or the wonders of forming your own bluegrass band? This was a true favorite of mine: a Muppet retelling of the O. Henry story featuring otters. What can be more Christmas than that? Ok, the California Raisins Christmas Special, which featured singing camels, but nothing else.

3) I read online today that KB Toys has filed for bankruptcy for like the twelfth time and is now closing its stores. When you can’t make money in a toy store at Christmas you can tell that the economy is bad. That said, KB Toys was the mall toy store you never really wanted to shop at. There was no order, you always had those yapping plastic dogs running around and for some reason everything seemed to have been made out of the cheapest material possible. I much preferred Toys R Us for my shopping escapades.

4) Oh, speaking of companies taking economic hits I finally realized which company is suffering the most this holiday season. The makers of the giant red bows you place on top of new cars must be tearing their hair out right now. I know that many people are against the Detroit bailout but think about the giant red bow manufacturing industry! If there is anything more American than a superfluous red bow on a large piece of machinery I know not of it.

5) I have been having a huge problem getting into the holiday spirit. It’s not because I’m a Grinch (look, having a heart three sizes too small isn’t that unusual); I think it is more due to my situation. Part of it is that I have absolutely no Christmas decorations up in my apartment. That is one of those things that happens when you are single and live alone. The idea of buying, much less putting up, a tree when you are the only who will see it seems kind of silly. But not having lights or stockings up means that my apartment looks no different than it does any other time of the year.

6) The other issue is one of location. It is not as much that I am away from my family but that for six years now I have been living in places where winter isn’t really winter. We’ve had two snowfalls in Delaware so far and they have both melted the next day (though still being severe enough to send people skidding off the road apparently). I can’t feel as though it is Christmas if I look out and everything is nice and clear. I have no idea how people in Florida handle this time of year. Christmas means snow on the ground and sweaters and shoveling driveways. I don’t really miss that I now avoid the below zero wind chills of my native Chicago but I really do miss the snow.

Best of 120 Minutes: In keeping with the Christmas theme, it is time for my yearly posting of Do They Know It’s Christmas. This year I’ll post the Band Aid 20 version because I don’t think anyone has ever actually heard this version. I’ll still say that this is one of the best songs ever written. It still puts a chill up my spine.

Saying goodbye to a dear friend

I really, really, really do not want to write this post.

I’ve been avoiding writing about this subject on the hope that if I didn’t mention it maybe I will find out that it never happened. That I misread a news article and an email and that it is all just my mind playing a trick on me. But no matter how much we would all like to lie in bed with the blanket over our heads and stay safely unaware in the end we must all face reality.

I received news today that my good friend Donna had tragically passed away at much too young of an age.

I’ve mentioned Donna a lot in my years of keeping the blog. I’ve always referred to her as my favorite bartender, which is undoubtedly true but misses the entire point. Bartender was just her job title. She was at times my confidant, life coach and friend. And one of the most amazing people I have ever met.

One of the things that I have noticed about this world is how little interest people have in one another. Sure we are polite and say, “Hi, how are you doing” but I don’t know if we ever mean it. We all say niceties as a way to make it through the day. But Donna legitimately cared about everyone she met. She would take a genuine interest in someone even though she didn’t have to. She helped me out just by being herself and caring about how I was doing. It’s tough to explain but the person I am now is in part due to her encouragement. She helped to bring me out of my shell at Notre Dame and I owe her great thanks for it.

There are so many great times that I will remember. Flying down to Mexico for Gabriel’s wedding and splitting a hotel room with her and friends. Closing down the Backer with her one night where I looked around to notice that I was the only customer left in the entire bar. The huge hug she gave me when I ran into her in front of the football stadium after graduation. And most of all, her look of joy when we all thanked her for all that she had done for us in our two years of graduate school.

I can’t believe that she is gone. I can’t believe that I’ll never get to see her smile again or hear her laugh. But I will always have my memories and I will always remember someone who took the time to care about someone when he needed it. And maybe I’ll be able to pass that gift on to someone else.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Donna and all of her family and friends. She will be missed.

2008/2009 Bowl Preview (Part Three)

Time for the final installment in the college bowl preview extravaganza. We finish off with the January bowl games otherwise known as “the only games that matter, though a few of them really don’t.”

January 1:
Outback Bowl: South Carolina vs. Iowa: The bloody mary of bowl games as this is your first taste of football after a night of debauchery. Once again, my internal twelve year old’s dream of a South Carolina – Oregon State matchup has been thwarted. My hatred for Iowa holds no bounds. This is not just because I am an Illini and for some reason we hate Iowa and all the people in the state (mainly because they are so arrogant in the way they act like they invented corn). It is also because I have had to drive through the state on numerous occasions and other than picking up the Rural Singles Guide at the rest areas there is absolutely nothing to do in the entire state. So I’ll cheer for Steve Spurrier on the hope that his winning in Carolina keeps him at bay.

Capital One Bowl: Georgia vs. Michigan State: Back in the good old days this was the Citrus Bowl with the annual matchup of Tennessee vs. Big 10 Team That Overachieved in the Regular Season. Now we name it for a bank that may or may not exist (though it does promote itself through superheroes) and it still features a Big 10 team that surprised you. This year it is Michigan State which for the first time in its history actually played up to expectations. For that they get to face Georgia which at one point was a national title contender until everyone realized that they weren’t a very good team. I’ll cheer for the Big 10 out of habit and hope that they still do that Mascot Bowl at halftime.

Konica Minolta Gator Bowl: Nebraska vs. Clemson: Sponsored by the camera used by Ashton Kutcher the Gator Bowl is best known for taking place in Jacksonville where when they ask you to leave the bar it is wise to just leave the bar. This would be an incredible matchup if it were 1981 and cable television did not exist. Instead we feature a Clemson team that might still be employing one of the interchangeable Bowdens as coach against a Nebraska team that really should be helping get the crops in for winter at this time. Also, for those who think that the name “Cornhuskers” sounds slightly bizarre there is a high school team in Illinois whose nickname is, and I am not making this up, the “Cornjerkers”. As a rule, you do not send little kids over to meet their mascot.

Rose Bowl Game Presented by Citi: Penn State vs. USC: I am cheering for Penn State in this one for one reason and one reason only. Every win by Penn State makes it that much more likely that Joe Paterno will remain head coach. This will then result in Penn State combining the brightest minds in their engineering and medical schools to create a robot body for Joe Pa so that he will be able to coach indefinitely. Meca-Paterno will have advanced features like infrared vision and a flamethrower in order to best challenge officials rulings. Meca-Paterno will not be stopped. We will all fall to him as robots are strong and their hands are made of metal. This is what football is about.

On the other hand you will have Pete Carroll deciding to go one step beyond wearing red jerseys as the visiting team and will order half of his players to wear no jerseys, a quarter to not wear shoulder pads and the remainder to not wear helmets. They will also play under Canadian Football rules the entire game and will not be able to use the same player as quarterback twice in any given quarter. They will still be a two touchdown favorite.

A few of you will get up early enough to watch the Rose Bowl parade. For those of you who will not I will now provide all of the comments that you would have made if you were awake. “Wow, isn’t that float pretty?”, “Look, another marching band”, “Willard Scott is still alive?”, “They really should have a float made entirely out of hemp” and “Given that you are in my apartment it is safe for me to assume that I kissed you at midnight?” I, on the other hand, will just set my DVR to record the game on the hope of catching one of the Song Girls cheering for the wrong team again.

FedEx Orange Bowl: Cincinnati vs. Virginia Tech: Of all the BCS Bowl Games the Orange Bowl seems to always suffer the worst fate. First, they get the teams that no one wants to see in the BCS to begin with. In years where the Big East and ACC can’t put together a decent football team they should just end football season early and start basketball practice. No one would mind and it would save me from having to write about a Cincy team that does not have a single player that I could name and a Virginia Tech team that lost to East Carolina. Besides the horrible matchups the Orange Bowl also has lost much of the mystique that it used to have. It was the evening game after a full slate of daytime bowl games and it featured the extravaganza that was the Orange Bowl halftime show. The halftime show was often a thirty minute extravaganza featuring elephants, fireworks and washed up celebrities who would otherwise have been working on cruise ships. The third quarter was always fun to watch as the teams had lost their rhythm and had to deal with tire tracks on the field. Smart teams would actually perform surgeries during halftime to repair injuries suffered during the first half. I believe that one year Miami successfully installed a wishbone offense at halftime. Now I’ll just probably watch Chris Berman talk for ten minutes. Takes all the fun out of it.

January 2:
AT&T Cotton Bowl: Ole Miss vs. Texas Tech: I’m going to be working on January 2nd. A decent number of people will be working as you typically don’t want to blow a vacation day on your first day in the office. So I have to say I am really confused why this game isn’t on New Year’s Day. It will be a fun game to watch since Texas Tech runs the Playstation offense in which you line up with five wide receivers on every down regardless of where you are on the field. Of all the Big 12 squads they are the most fun to watch and since they are new to the national scene you don’t feel bad for cheering them. Ole Miss will feature Archie Manning on the sidelines because I believe it is a law that he must be on the sideline whenever anyone cares about the result of an Ole Miss game. Also, have to love the fact that it is assumed that people can’t spell Mississippi so we just call the school Ole Miss.

AutoZone Liberty Bowl: Kentucky vs. East Carolina: Nothing could be finer than living in East Caroliner. My first Illinois game was against East Carolina and I couldn’t find the state then and I can’t find it now. It does have Skip Holtz though so that counts for something. What I like most about the Liberty Bowl is that every year they make this game later and later to the point that now it is in January. This is interesting because the game is played in Memphis and while it is technically a southern city it really isn’t a warm temperature destination. So every day the game is delayed the odds of having the instruments freeze to the faces of the members of the marching bands increases exponentially. You just can’t pay for that type of entertainment value anywhere else.

Allstate Sugar Bowl: Utah vs. Alabama: I haven’t checked with my New Orleans crew as to how the city is taking this matchup. They must love having Alabama in town but are probably a little afraid of the Utah fans. This is because of the dirty little secret behind bowl games and why they don’t want a playoff. Bowl games are meant as a windfall for the cities that host them. For a place like New Orleans the Sugar Bowl (along with Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest) is when the bars earn their profit for the year. So they want nothing more than to have two teams with fanbases who travel well, drink heavily and in the case of the Sugar Bowl, are willing to buy large amounts of plastic beads and enter houses of ill repute. And while Alabama fits the bill Utah might be a little bit of a tougher sell.

I’ll give credit to Utah for making it back to the BCS. Two berths without being in a major conference is a big accomplishment (and one that I don’t see Notre Dame putting together any time soon). But I’ll cheer for Bama just because they are classic college football. Just look at the jerseys and the fans. They epitomize the game. Even if you never understand what an elephant has to do with the Crimson Tide it is still a team you want to cheer for.

January 3:
International Bowl: Buffalo vs. Connecticut: This game is being played in Toronto, which actually makes it convenient for both the teams and the fans. I also love the fact that Toronto is considered international given that the city is used as a backdrop for Chicago or New York in every television show and movie ever made. I don’t think you can call yourself a world traveler if all you have done is visited Toronto. This game features two schools that most people would be surprised to have football teams. In fact, most people would be surprised to find that there is a school named Buffalo. I’m not even sure if I believe it. There is a possibility that this is a nefarious plot by the Canadians to distract us in advance of an invasion but I would not be too concerned. Their military’s advance will be slowed by the fact that they will have to bring out the zamboni every twenty minutes.

January 5:
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl: Ohio State vs. Texas: My impersonation of a Texas fan. “Wah, we should be in the title game!” My impersonation of an Ohio State fan: “Got to love any school that will admit you solely because you were born in the state of Ohio and can lift a pencil.” This certainly looks like it will be a good matchup and I want to see more of the Ohio State QB. He plays like Juice Williams but with things like an arm and poise. They will be matched by a Texas team out to run up the score in the hopes of securing a claim of the title. This is one to watch.

January 6:
GMAC Bowl: Ball State vs. Toledo: Really? We have to wait until January 6th for this game? Is this the second most important game of the season? Do Ball State and Toledo need that much time to prepare? Is the trip to Detroit….wait a minute, this game isn’t in Detroit? The GMAC Bowl is in Alabama? Why the hell is General Motors sponsoring a bowl game in Alabama? First GMAC becomes a bank and starts advertising that I should buy a CD from them since I won’t buy a car from them and now they are sending their advertising dollars out of state? This is totally wrong. I’m going with Ball State just because it is the home of David Letterman.

January 8:
FedEx BCS National Championship Game: Florida vs. Oklahoma: The granddaddy of all the bowl games: the…it’s not even called a bowl game? Wow, you think they would have come up with a better title. So this is the game for the national title between the two most deserving teams. Well, if you ignore the fact that Utah and Boise State are still undefeated. And that Penn State and USC both won their conferences with one loss as well. And that Texas actually beat Oklahoma. And that Alabama is super cool. So yeah, this one will clear up everything.

Let’s look at the two teams. You have Oklahoma, which has just been slaughtering its opponents and scoring something like 60 points a game all year. I’m still not sold on whether that is because they have a great offense or that no one in the Big 12 knows how to play defense. It is not as though those game were 63-3. They have played a lot of tough teams, though. Florida, on the other hand, made its way through the SEC with just a loss to Ole Miss to its credit. A loss that cased Tim Tebow to give his Gipper speech, which announcers are saying will be remembered forever though I still feel he sounds kind of like a dork when he is saying it. Still, they guy knows how to win and he beat Alabama by himself on Saturday.

My pick: If Percy Harvin is healthy I see Florida winning this one easily. No way can Oklahoma match all the weapons that Florida brings to the table. If Harvin’s ankle isn’t healed I still would go with Florida. I just trust Tim Tebow when the game is on the line.

Wednesday Night Music Club: People wonder why I am a fan of Arcade Fire. One simple reason: no one else writes song about power outages.

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