Fig Equals Good

A Few Quick Thoughts

2006-10-05T21:16:00.000-05:00

HOW ABOUT THOSE BEARS?!?!?!

I am so mad that I am not playing flag football this season. My old team’s coach just got married and apparently since he was busy planning his wedding he could not sign the team up for the season. So, 14 other guys don’t get to play because one guy has to pick out center pieces and floral arrangements. At least this is what I was recently told. It could be that or maybe they did not want me on their team this year and when I called about it they told me this story. That better not be the case. I am going out to the fields on Tuesday to see if any of the other teams that did sign up to play this year needs me. So help me if I see my old team on the field I am going to go Tommie Harris all over their asses.

I was a little disappointed in the season premiere of South Park. They have been running the best of for the past few weeks and they have been fantastic. So going from the best of to an average season premiere was very disappointing. The Lost season premiere was alright. I think it is going to take off next week.

This weekend I am going to see Motley Crue and Aerosmith at Alpine Valley. How can that concert not rule? I saw Poison in concert not too long ago and that kicked ass! What is going to be even cooler is that we are going to tailgate before the concert. I’ve tailgated at football games and baseball games but never at a concert. I just wish I had a goof Motley Crue flag to wave over our car in the parking lot.

Is anyone going to watch the movie Rocky 6? That has got to be terrible. I do want to go see Jackass 2.

What I really can’t wait to see is the new Real World/Road Rules Challenge. I guess they are going Thunderdome style and not having any team. Everyone is on their own and it’s for a half million dollars. God bless those kids.

What A Week!

2006-07-16T18:44:00.000-05:00

Nothing really too big happened to me this past week, but a lot of little stuff did occur that do not warrant their own entry but does probably need to be mentioned.

I was in the gym the other day changing into my workout clothes when this guy walks out of the shower and makes his way to his locker which so happened to be right next to mine. This guy proceeded to dry his hair with his towel while he was walking from the shower to the locker and just letting his balls out there for the world. Then he stood next to the locker and dropped the towel on the bench while he undid the lock. Then he put on his shirt first, then his socks, and then finally his underpants. What the hell is wrong with this guy? Is he a gay? Is he just proud of his balls? Man, that really bothers me.

I can’t stand it when I am on an elevator and the doors open and the people on the outside try to get in the elevator before I am able to get out. Elevator etiquette states that people get off first. I have just adopted the policy of bumping into these people and stating, “First time in an elevator, huh?”

I love the Real World Road Rules Challenge show! Wes is such an ass! But I am cheering for that chick that he is teamed up with. Besides being hot, she is kicking ass by holding her own in the final challenge for 4 times in a row and having to endure Wes. Is there any way that he can leave and she can stay on? Is there any way she could make out with me?

I went to the Cubs game on Friday and totally got drenched during the rainstorm. We were cooking out there in the bleachers for an hour, so once the rain hit we did not want to leave. The rain felt soooo good, but it killed my cell phone. I can still receive calls, but the buttons no longer work so I can’t dial out or check my VM. And we did not even win the game. (Surprised?) DAMN YOU CUBBIES!

I saw that Brotherhood show a few days ago. Its looks pretty good. Hopefully it will be able to fill the void of violence that the Sopranos have left. And thank God it came along when it did. Summer TV sucks! With the exception of Entourage and a few guilty pleasures that are on MTV, there is nothing else on.

Instead of grabbing a Subway sandwich for lunch yesterday, I opted for a Jimmy John’s. Best call of the weekend.

My sister told me that I could rent Dan Hampton for $4,000.00 to come and watch a Bears game with me at my house. He will have to leave after the 3rd quarter because he has a radio show to do after the game, but he’ll hang out with you, take photos, sign autographs, and whatever else you want. At first, I though this was kinda sad. How hard up does Dan have to be for money? However, $4,000.00 for hanging out for 3-4 hours is not too shabby!

God bless the ladies of Chicago in the summertime.

Not only am I staying inside today because of the heat, but the Gay Games are taking place on the south side of the city…where I live. Good for them, but I am staying inside until it’s all over.

I don’t know why, but I am strangely attracted to Rachel Ray. She is not the normal lady I find attractive. (Brunette and little boobs are normally 2 strikes.) She even loves to talk out of the side of her mouth all of the time…which I find annoying. But, as Tesla once said, love will find a way.

You really aren’t a man until you see your face on a thong. (Check out www.askfig.com to see.)

DING DONG THE DICK IS DEAD!

2006-07-11T20:01:00.000-05:00

I have been calling for this guy’s head ever since he took his 4th grade lame ass Howard Stern wanna-be act here to Chicago in 1998. Finally, I have the last laugh! (Actually, the first laugh ever involving this guy!)

Mancow was officially fired from Q101 this afternoon!

"It's just not what it used to be," according to Q101 General Manager Narv Nyren. "I felt a little bad; I think he wanted to stick around. But it's the best thing to do knowing his audience. Best for both of us."

They are going to play some best-of stuff for the remaining of the week (good luck finding it!) and then music for the rest of the summer.

Apparently, Mancow did not take this change with a lot of grace and refused to record any good-byes to his 6 remaining listeners in the Chicago area according to Nyren.

He leaves behind him an amazing legacy.

1993, he blocked traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during rush hour traffic and had a sidekick cut his hair in retaliation for a rumor that he heard about President Clinton doing at LAX. For this stunt, he was convicted of a felony.

In 1996, he faked his own death.

He also did a show at a Hard Rock Café while “trapped in a block of ice”.

I don’t know how we are going to get along without this dope. And we still have the Eric & Cathy show and Drex to get rid of. But at least we have taken one step in the right direction.

GO TO HELL COW!

ASK FIG SHOW TONIGHT!

2006-06-21T12:17:00.000-05:00

Make sure to tune in to the show tonight featuring our special guest star Jeff Daniels.

ASK FIG

2006-06-15T12:35:00.000-05:00

In case you missed the radio show last night, we had a lot of questions this week to answer but never got a chance to address them. So here we go!

“If you see your buddies ex girlfriend dancing at a strip club…is it OK to buy a dance?”
Wow, good question! First, we are going to assume that this young lady is good looking. Otherwise, the obvious answer is no. Who wants a dance from an ugly girl when there are a bunch of good looking naked ladies all competing for your attention? (And money) The only situation where I would say “No, don’t get the dance” is if your buddy was still in contact with her and he was trying to get back together with her. Otherwise, dance away! I don’t think it matter if he dumped her or if she dumped him. If he dumped her then what does he care if you get a dance? He was done with her and wants nothing to do with her. If she dumped him, then in a way you are avenging your buddy by getting the dance. Now, the real question is do you just get a table dance or do you take her into the back room for the full 3 song dance experience?

“If you were in trouble, would you rather have Knight Rider or the A-Team help?”
This is a tough one. On one hand, KITT is one of the coolest cars around. Bullet proof, turbo booster, sweet steering wheel, talks, and beats people up with its doors. But what if I was having problems with my job? I work on the 29th floor. KITT can’t come up here. Granted, he could talk me through a situation with that walkie talkie watch they use, but that it pretty much it. And KITT is not very street smart. He is more like Spock on Star Trek and Michael Knight is more of the risk taker light Captain Kirk. So I think that I am going to have to go with the A-Team. They are a more complete team that I could utilize in all kinds of situations. Plus, they would work a wacky complex scheme into the solution to my problem that would probably be very entertaining. And they have a nice ride too. That black van with the red stripe was pretty sweet.

“I was on a second date with a guy and at the end of the evening he drove me home. After some making out and heavy petting, he unzipped his pants with the intention of me going down on him. When I did not comply, he took it upon himself to “finish the job manually” and then we ended the evening. That was the last date we went on. Am I wrong to think this was weird or is that a normal guy reaction?”
It’s kinda funny, because this is the third version that I have heard of this scenario so this must happen more than you would think it does. While this is a bold move on the fella’s part (and you have to give him credit for that!) it is still kinda creepy and you are justified in ending the relationship. Personally, while I have done the deed “manually”, I have never done that in front of the lady that I was with at the time (or any other lady for that matter) and would not dream of busting that move out on date number two. (At least not without giving the lady at least two bottles of wine first.) Just think about this for a minute. He was pretty comfortable doing that in front of you on date two, what would he have introduced to you on date ten? You probably would have found yourself hanging upside down in a closet with a ball gag in your mouth getting the ole phone book treatment. So consider yourself lucky.

“I am an unhappily married woman (to a decent guy, but just no spark anymore) with a kid who just got back in touch with my first love via MySpace.Com. We got to talking and he reminded me that I still have a copy of a tape of the two of us in bed together. I found the tape and watched it the other evening and now I am even more confused. What should I do?”
I gotta say that those damn sex tapes are nothing but trouble. And to be honest, I do see the appeal of them. The last thing I want to have on tape is my ass bouncing around in the air. What good id that going to do anyone? There has never been a day where I was sitting around in my couch and was thinking, “Man, I wish I could see me in action.” And there has never been a time where I was hanging out with all my buddies and said, “Man, I wish you all could have seen me banging away on this girl.” Now, I have no issues of my recording or taking photos of the young lady that I am with. That is cool stuff! But nothing with me in all my glory.

As for the original question, get a divorce and have sex with the ex. You’re not happy. You are lusting after the ex. You kept and are currently watching old sex tapes. Move on. Yeah, I feel bad for the kid, but I would rather have the kid see you both separate and be civil to each other and happy again doing your own thing than miserable in your marriage and cheating on each other. Put a fork in it, your marriage is done. (Please send me a copy of this tape.)

“Have you tried the new KFC mashed potato/corn/chicken/cheese/gravy in a bowl meal? It looks delicious, but I am a little scared to try it myself.”
No I have not, but I am making it my goal for the weekend. How could it be bad? It’s like a Thanksgiving Day version of a Peanut Buster Parfait from Dairy Queen! I am a fan of mixing my food together...as long as it is a good combination.

Potato + Chicken = Good Times
Chocolate + Bean Dip = Bad Times (I learned that lesson the hard way)

I’ll let you know my thoughts after I try it.

“My dream movie bar would have Brian from Cocktail behind the bar, Jack Dolton from Roadhouse as my cooler, and the “Good Ole’ Blues Brothers Boys Band as my house band. Who should my waitress be?”
I like all your other choices here so I am just going to concentrate on the waitress. There are quite a few choices in this one:

Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby
Drew Barrymore in Wedding Singer
Brooke Lanton in The Replacements
J-Lo in Enough
Sarah Michelle Gellar in Simply Irresistible
Bridget Fonda in It Could Happen To You

But I can’t say that any of these characters stand out amazingly well for their waitressing abilities, so I am going to have to go on just plain hotness and style. I’m gonna take Jennifer Aniston from Office Space. Not only was she a waitress in Along Came Polly, but she is hot and refuses to wear flare!

Chicks Do Love The Shaggin’ Wagon!

2006-06-12T12:30:00.000-05:00

What the hell is going on here! Today started out like any normal day. I woke up, tired as anything. Dragged my butt out of bed and over to the claims factory for another fun filled day at the office and I get an email from Bosk telling me that we have Jeff Daniels lined up to be a guest on our radio show next week.
Huh?

Apparently, Jeff Daniels has a new album out (check it out at www.jeffdaniels.com) and it has been getting some playing time on Bosk’s radio station. Daniels’ publicist somehow got word of this and sent Bosk a thank you note for putting it on the air. Bosk followed up and ask if he would be interested in doing an interview and they said yes.

Wha?

That’s right! Jeff Daniels of such movies as Arachnophobia, Terms of Endearment, Speed, 101 Dalmatians, Pleasantville, Cheaters, Super Sucker, and of course…Dumb & Dumber will be fielding questions…and maybe asking Fig one or two himself. After all, this is my show and he is still the guest. But what a guest he will make and this show is sure to be something special.

So, in honor of Mr. Daniels, here are my top 10 Harry quotes from Dumb & Dumber. (In no particular order!)

*Just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!
*Check out the funbags on that hosehound.
*Skis, huh? Great! They yours? Both of 'em?
*Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.
*One time, we successfully mated a bulldog with a Shih-Tzu…Yeah, we called it a bullshit.
*Nice set of hooters you got there!
*No, you can't do that... you can't triple stamp a double stamp, you can't triple stamp a double stamp! Lloyd!
*Don't deny it, Lloyd. Fraida told me the whole sleazy story, Mr. French Tickler!
*No, it's a cardigan but thanks for noticing.
*It gets worse. My parakeet, Petey…He's dead…His head fell off…Yeah. He was pretty old.

If you have anything you’d like me to ask, please let me know. (Use the ASK FIG link)

Thank Goodness He Did Not Breed Cows

2006-06-09T12:30:00.000-05:00

America’s Team Speaker City played its second softball game last night and lost a heart breaking game against Team Rope. We had such high hopes and were winning until the fifth inning when the wheels just fell off our wagon for some reason. If you’d like to get a recap of the game, you can click onto the Speaker City Softball link to get the full scoop. I really don’t feel like discussing it anymore.

After the game, we sat around and drank a few beers at the field and then made our way over to Cody’s bar for a few more beverages. This was probably at around 9pm. I believe we left the bar at 2am and I finally went to sleep at around 3am.

Waking up this morning was pretty hard. And, for the first time this week, I skipped my morning treadmill routine and stumbled into the shower to get the stink of beer and softball off of me. I actually made it into the office on time this morning, but I was pretty much worthless for the first few hours of the day. But I am now in a groove after my mid morning Diet Mt. Dew/Snickers break and a chicken burrito for lunch.

While I am happy that I am almost back to normal, I don’t think I am going out tonight. I have a date with my couch and my Tivo. (A threesome…sweet!)

I was reading the paper a little this morning and I came across this article in the Chicago Sun Times:

Dog owner allegedly hits breeder with dead pup
June 9, 2006
ST. PETERS, Mo. -- A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.
The 33-year-old woman told police she had taken the puppy to a veterinarian, who said it was only 4 weeks old and needed to be returned to its mother. But before she could return the puppy, it died.

Early Wednesday, the woman went to the breeder's home, pushed her way inside and began fighting with the breeder as she tried to make her way to the basement to get another puppy, police said.

The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.

Police said they are considering felony burglary charges and misdemeanor assault charges.

AP

I can’t figure out if this is very funny or very disturbing. On one hand, you have this crazy lady beating someone over the head with a dead animal. On the other hand, you have this crazy lady beating someone over the head with a dead animal. Both are compelling arguments for both sides. I am too tired to make this call. I will choose funny and move on with my day, which I hope will be filled with no one talking to me at the office and an eventual nap at 5pm.

A Comedy Of Errors

2006-06-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

My buddy Jon sent me a list compiled by A&E listing the 100 funniest moves. I’ll let you take a look at the list before I start making any comments.

100 Anchorman
99 The Birdcage
98 School of Rock
97 Happy Gilmore
96 Four Weddings and a Funeral
95 Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
94 Waiting for Guffman
93 The Aristocrats
92 Father of the Bride
91 Revenge of the Nerds
90 Clueless
89 Slapshot
88 Team America
87 The Kentucky Fried Movie
86 Zoolander
85 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
84 Silver Streak
83 Sister Act
82 Tootsie
81 Half Baked
80 Lost in America
79 Three Amigos
78 Bananas
77 Flirting with Disaster
76 Ghostbusters
75 Dumb and Dumber
74 Trading Places
73 City Slickers
72 Moonstruck
71 Roxanne
70 The Nutty Professor (Eddie Murphy)
69 The Blues Brothers
68 Broadcast News
67 Kingpin
66 Dazed and Confused
65 Office Space
64 This is Spinal Tap
63 Manhattan
62 The Pink Panther
61 Election
60 When Harry Met Sally
59 Police Academy Series
58 Private Benjamin
57 Swingers
56 Young Frankenstein
55 Bull Durham
54 Ferris Bueller's Day Off
53 Dr. Strangelove
52 Meet the Parents
51 National Lampoon's Vacation
50 The Princess Bride
49 American Pie
48 American Graffiti
47 9 to 5
46 The Incredibles
45 Raising Arizona
44 Sixteen Candles
43 What About Bob?
42 Harold and Maude
41 Austin Powers
40 Monty Python and the Holy Grail
39 Mrs. Doubtfire
38 Best In Show
37 Dodgeball
36 Good Morning Vietnam
35 Beetlejuice
34 Rushmore
33 Clerks
32 Groundhog Day
31 The Big Lebowski
30 The 40 Year Old Virgin
29 Legally Blonde
28 Annie Hall
27 A Fish Called Wanda
26 Wayne's World
25 Meet the Fockers
24 Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
23 Big
22 Beverly Hills Cop
21 Shampoo
20 The Jerk
19 Wedding Crashers
18 Stripes
17 M*A*S*H
16 Old School
15 Fast Times At Ridgemont High
14 Napoleon Dynamite
13 Naked Gun Series
12 The Producers
11 Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
10 Arthur
9 Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
8 Blazing Saddles
7 The Wedding Singer
6 Airplane
5 South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
4 There's Something About Mary
3 Shrek
2 Caddyshack
1 Animal House

Now I know that everyone’s tastes vary and one man’s treasure is another man’s trash. But I was completely blown away by some of these choices. “Shrek” is the 3rd funniest movie of all time? “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” was funnier than “Stripes”? “Meet the Fockers” cracked the top 25? “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” was funnier than “Ferris Bueller's Day Off”? “Anchorman” barely made the list? Where is “Fletch”?

Terrible. Just terrible.

Using the choices given, I did my top 10. Here’s what I came up with:

10 National Lampoon's Vacation
9 Groundhog Day
8 The Jerk
7 Dumb and Dumber
6 Old School
5 Animal House
4 Anchorman
3 Stripes
2 Airplane
1 Caddyshack

Feel free to give me your top 10 or to tear mine apart.

I've Been White Glove Smacked!

2006-06-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or if the devil has overcome me on this evil 6-6-6 Tuesday. But I do know that I am one pissed off little monkey. I really don’t have a reason to be mad. I woke up a little early and hit the treadmill this morning (day one of a new morning routine because I am a fat ass) and made it into the claims factory on time with no drama so far. But I can not get over the urge to just explode all over anyone and everyone today. This is pretty out of the norm for me, I am normally a pretty easy going fella. But there is a chance that the next person to walk into my office with a question will be greeted with a DDT or a suplex.

So, I was just sitting here stewing in anger and claims when I receive an email from Timortal challenging me to revive the blog lifestyle. I have been thinking about doing this for a while, but to be quite honest, I did not think I had the juice to make a come back. But as he put it, it is the same mentality as hitting the gym and you just gotta force yourself to do it in the beginning. It will get better as time goes on. Plus, there is no way I am backing down from a challange. I'm kinda like Marty McFly today. No one...but no one...calls me out!

So, there you go. I’m back in.

Bears or Mexicans?

2006-05-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

I was not sure what to write about today. It was a toss up between the Million Mexican March going on downtown today or my anger towards the Bears regarding this weekend’s draft.

Screw it. Bears today, Mexicans tomorrow.

Last season, we had the second ranked defense in the NFL. We were ranked #1 for most of the season, but lost that title in the last two weeks because we made the playoffs and really did not have a lot to play for. We are stacked with lots of young talent on this team and only getting better. Only 2 of our 11 defensive starters were not drafted by the Bears in recent years. (Ogunleye and Hillenmeyer) All 11 of these starters are coming back this season. The only two losses that we had on defense was Mike Green (OK back-up but does not really hurt us) and Jerry Azumah (Another back-up, but I am really gonna miss that kid!).

On the other side of the ball, we have the 29th ranked offense out of 32 teams in the NFL. Here are some other stats:

31st in the league in passing.
31st in the league in receiving.
8th in the league in rushing.
26th in the league in scoring.

Now, with the crappy ass passing game that we had last year, it is really a testament on how skilled our offense line and running backs were last season. I am happy to say that all 8 of our linemen have returned this year…including all 5 starters. Also, I am assuming that all of that Thomas Jones trade talk was nonsense, all three of our running backs will be returning as well.

So, looking at all of this information, what do you think we need to fix?

Well, if you ask the Bears front office, it’s the defense. Here is what we did:

Danieal Manning – S, Abilene Christen College
Devin Hester – CB, Miami
Dusty Dvoracek – DT, Oklahoma
Jamar Williams – LB, Arizona State
Mark Anderson – DE, Alabama
J.D. Runnels – FB, Oklahoma
Tyler Reed – G, Penn State

If you ask me, you had a defense that was able to rank in the top 2 all year long with no offensive support. If you were able to add to the offense and help them to be able to not only score more points but to have possession of the football longer, that would keep the other team’s offense off the field and allow our defense to be more well rested, faster, and not taking as many hits thus preventing injury. If you ask the Bears, they said, “Well, if our defense is getting tired because they are on the field for so long, let’s get more defensive guys to rotate in there!”

Fantastic.

Everyone is also saying that the reason that we went so heavy on the defense…especially the secondary is because of what Steve Smith did to us in our last playoff game. I don’t blame our defense on that, I blame the coaches. Last time we played Carolina (which was earlier that same season) we doubled up on Steve Smith and he did not hurt us. For some reason, we decided not to go with the plan that worked last time and defended the most productive WR in the NFL with single coverage. Plus, 3 of our starting 4 DB’s were injured and we still decided to stay in single coverage using our 4th cornerback. Bad planning, bad scheming, bad coaching in my eyes.

Now, I am not going to criticize the Bears for who they pick. I am not a scout and do not watch enough college football in order to say if these guys can play at the NFL level or not. I hope they are wonderful. But we have addressed the wrong positions in this draft. We should have been focused on TE and WR first and then LB and DE second. Then you can do whatever you need to do with the remaining picks. There were talented players for all of those needs at the spots where the Bears were supposed to draft. We just chose not to.

Here’s what GM Jerry Angelo had to say about it:

“Don’t get so fixed on this tight end because you’re looking for holes. Every team has holes. Every team has an area which they need to address and get better at. We’ve done as well as you can possibly do at doing that. But we will address tight end. I mean, we haven’t seen a tight end here since (Mike) Ditka, so I don’t want to say we haven’t been able to play without one. Somehow, some way, we still line up and we’re going to have to find ways to win ballgames. So let’s not make that the bull’s-eye.”

Every team has holes and needed to address them. OK, let’s look at our addressing position by position.

S – We have Pro-Bowler Mike Brown and 2nd year man Chris Harris.
CB – We have Pro-Bowler Nathan Vasher and Charles Tillman.
DT – We have Pro-Bowler Tommie Harris, Ian Scott, and Tank Johnson.
LB – We have Pro-Bowlers Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs and returning starter Hunter Hillenmeyer.
DE – We have Pro-Bowl alternates Adewale Ogunleye and Alex Brown.

I really don’t see any holes here.

And almost like a smack in the face, Jerry states that he understands that we do not have any decent TE on the team and that we should just ignore that because we have not had one for the past 25 years…so we should just get over it. Why? Why can’t we have one too? It’s like saying you don’t need a computer to work on because you still have your typewriter…and you have somehow managed on that in the past so why should we change or upgrade? Now, granted, we did go and pick up Brian Griese to add a little bit of depth to the QB position, which was well needed and appreciated. But who is he going to throw the ball to?

I am so mad right now.

I really hope that all of these kids we drafted are good and step up and contribute to our team. We are going to need them because that defense is going to have their work cut out for them and they will not be able to rely on the offense again this year. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that Desmond Clark has a break out year and Mark Bradley steps into the #2 WR role and excels like we hoped he would last year before his injury.

But there is a lot of hoping going on, and not a lot to be very excited about.

Make Mine Mike's!

2006-04-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

I watched Dateline NBC last night and they had the 4th edition of this sex sting that they have been doing. Apparently, they team up with a non profit group that spends all day on internet chat rooms pretending to be 13 year old girls and trying to lure in creepy old men to meet them for sex. Then, when the creepy old men show up to the meeting spot, they are invited into the house by the girl (who is an adult cop or actress pretending to be a kid) and then out pops the NBC reporter to interview Mr. Creepy. After the interview, they ask the creep to leave and then he is arrested outside of the home by local police and brought to jail.

Fantastic TV! I could not stop watching it. I learned a lot about the world of creepy guys trying to make love with children.

First off, they had printed out copies of the chat room discussions and they read them out loud to the creep and got his comments. They also, for the benefit of the viewers at home, had male and female rein actors reading the print out like it was some kind of a lame porno. They were not putting any passion of feeling into the readings at all! I don’t want to just hear about someone fondling a breast, I want to feel it. I want to be there!

Secondly, these guys spent a lot of time trying to hook up with these kids and after they finally convince a kid to have sex with them, find a night where the parents will be out of town, and make the drive…sometime over 100 miles to get there, you’d think the fella would dress up a little. All of these guys looked like they just got off of work at the maintenance yard. That poor 13 year old girl! She is ready to meet her dream 45 year old and have a magical evening and the dude is wearing an old baseball cap and did not take a shower. Is this what her prom is going to be like too?

And finally, if you ever want to woo a young young women buy her some Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Apparently, they all love it! About half of the fellas they busted were carrying a 12 pack of Mike’s on the way into the house. I’ll admit, it is a tasty treat and I even enjoy one from time to time. Does that mean that I drink like a 13 year old girl? Does this mean if I have too many of them I could be taken advantage by a male 45 year old blue collar worker?

All kidding aside, it was a good show and I’m glad to see all of those bastards locked up now.

Now, excuse me while I enjoy a delicious Mike’s Iced Tea!

Nothing New But 24

2006-04-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Wow. It’s amazing that I really have nothing to say. Here I am, a grown man! An adult male living in the city of Chicago with all of the big city happenings zipping around me and I really don’t have anything to talk about other than watching “24” last night…which was pretty good.

Didn’t the governor just get found guilty in his trial? I really could not tell you what phase that whole mess is at. What I can tell you is that I am glad Audrey’s dad drove his car off the cliff and killed himself so that the terrorists could not use him as leverage to make Jake Bauer give his old boss back the recording of the President’s telephone conversation implicating him in the assassination of former President Palmer.

And I understand that gasoline prices are sky rocketing out of control. But to be honest, I am a little more concerned on what really happened to Aaron the Secret Service guy who had to go and meet that whiney first lady out in the court yard. There is no way he was just reassigned somewhere! The first lady found his cell phone in the spot they were going to meet at! Something must have happened!

And who really cares about all of that new Al-Qaida crap when the former crazy doctor from ER is apparently calling the shots on this whole terrorist movement! He is even putting the President in his place! Who is he? What is his agenda? What’s he going to do next?

Well, I guess that’s it for me. At least until Lost comes on. I heard that it is a new episode this week.

Lady In Red (Wine)

2006-04-17T12:01:00.000-05:00

First let me give you a little background on this story. If you listen to my radio show, you know this woman as “#2” and know most of the history leading up to this story. I met and started dating this young lady several weeks ago. She was a nice girl and we had a fun time together. There was not a whole lot of a spark there physically between us, but again, she was a fun girl so we kept going out to see if anything would develop.

On date #6, we had dinner and watched a movie at my place. We also proceeded to have 3 bottles of wine during the course of the evening which led into our first “baby-making” session between us. Now, it was fun I think because of the wine buzz that I had going on. I’m not really a wine drinker and there is a whole different kind of buzz associated with it. But if I remember correctly, I was kinda indifferent to her involvement in the baby-making session. So, when I woke up that next morning, being a man of science, I was determined to figure out if the wine made it fun or if the young lady had something to do with it.

It was the wine. All the wine.

If I had to rank it, I would say that the baby-making session was slightly below average. She just did not put any effort into it. It was all me in there, putting my heart on the line, doing all sorts of exciting and sick things to her in order to make sure she was having a good time. And without that wine buzz going on, it was not really that good of a time.

So after the second session, we took out time getting up and I drove her home and told reminded her that I was leaving for vacation in a few days and then said we should meet up after I got back. She said fine and that was that. My thoughts were that even though the sex was slightly below average, since she was a fun girl, I am not dating anyone else, and wine only costs about $7.00 a bottle, I would continue to see her when I got back. So I go on vacation (which lasted 6 days) and then shot her an email when I got back into town. This was the response that I got back:

“I don't know exactly how to do this, so I'm just going to be straight forward. I don't think we should date anymore. I'm going to briefly sound like one those girls that I can't stand - the ones who seem to find fault with and over-analyze everything a guy does. Ugh. Well, anyways...I spent the night with you and then you didn't call or e-mail or anything before you went on vacation. I was left hanging for a week and a half not knowing if I was going to ever hear from you again. Believe it or not, I was fine with that...until you got back from vacation and didn't even bother to call then. I'm sorry, but an e-mail just doesn't cut it. I know you're a busy person, and I'm busy too, but it seems pretty obvious that you don't really like me that much. So instead of stringing this along, I think it's better to just end it now. I've had enough of dating people who don't seem to like me very much. Every one of us deserves better than that. Good luck to you in everything you do. I hope you find what you're looking for.”

Now, I’ve told this story to a few different people and I realize that I should have called her before I went on vacation just to reassure her that she is not a whore or anything. But other than that, I really don’t think I did anything wrong here. But, obviously, that call meant a lot (lack of call I guess I should say) and we are done. I did send her another email (Yes, another email. I don’t like to talk on the phone.) to apologize for making her feel bad and letting her know that that was not my intention. I did not get a response from her.

And that is that. I am not going to chase this girl down or anything because to be honest, there are a lot of other ladies out there that I can get crazy drunk off of wine with and have bad sex with only me putting all of the effort into it. It’s simple supply vs. demand.

Why I Love My SUV

2006-04-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

I was driving home from work yesterday and got a reminder of why owning an SUV is a wonderful thing. I was going south on Franklin with is a one way road headed south. It was 2 lanes and I was in the right hand lane. As I approached the intersection at Van Buren (which is a one way road headed west) there were people crossing my street…even though I still had the green light. So I stopped right before these people and noticed that the light turned yellow. So I thought to myself, as soon as these people get out of my way, I am going through this intersection.

So the people clear my path and the light is still yellow so I hit the gas. As soon as I hit the gas I notice a car fly along my left side and try to make a right hand turn in front of me. So this jackass turns right in front of me and since I just hit the gas I hit him hard in his rear quarter panel. I stopped my car and the jack ass speed off.

A few notes from this experience:

1) Since my car was higher up than his, my plastic bumper made contact with his quarter panel. There was no damage what so ever to my car and I know that he has a huge dent in the side of his. Good! She (It was a female driver with a really bad perm) was driving like an idiot and then left the accident scene. If I had a normal car at a normal height there probably would have been damage to my ride as well. Justice was served.

2) I had my windows rolled down at the time (I was rocking out to Bon Jovi earlier) and when I made contact with this lady, not only did I hit the horn, but I let out a string of obscene words directed at this lady that I did not know I was capable of. And it is not that interesting that I swore, but the words I chose were so odd that I actually had a few people laughing and or staring at me after the fact. To be honest, I did not know what I said when I was saying it. But after I checked out my car and heard the people joining me in insulting her, I recalled a few of the words I selected. (I know the words “F@#K’in C#m Dumpster Wh@r#” was used…but there were others mixed in there as well.)

Again, these are not words that I use in every day conversation. But apparently, in the heat of battle, that’s how I roll.

And after all that excitement and after I somehow managed to avoid damaging my car or injuring myself, I did manage to drop and break a handle of Captain Morgan in the garage. I would rather be injured with a full bottle of rum than to be healthy and rumless.

Electric Dreams

2006-04-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

I went to the gym yesterday and had a really good workout. I’ll tell ya, I am so happy that I am back in a workout groove. But, unfortunately, I am only loving the weight lifting side of it when I really need to be loving the cardio crap. But I just can’t get back into it.

I was never a runner or jogger (the j is silent by the way) but I used to be able to run 3 miles on the tread mill and it kept my beer gut somewhat in check. But I fell off the wagon (and onto the couch) for many months and just can not get back into it. I know it’s the same thing as lifting and I just gotta tough it out for a month, but I hate running!

I can remember a few years ago my buddy E and I tried to take the lazy man’s way out of staying in shape and we spit the cost of one of those abdominal belts that sends electric pulses to your muscles and builds them up WHILE YOU SIT ON THE COUCH AND RELAX! What could be better! So we ordered the deluxe version and 1 week later (we express ordered it because we really wanted abs!) and were ready to begin out “workout”.

The first creepy part of this whole experience was that you had to rub this lube all over you belly before you put the put on in order to help the electricity go through you body. Not only was lubing up your belly creepy to do in front of another man, but since we only had one belt the second guy had to use the belt with lube already all over it. (We were working out together. I think part of it to do as a team effort and the other was in case one of us was getting electrocuted the other one could save him…or laugh at him…either way.)

So, 4 times a week for about 3 weeks we used this belt. I gotta tell you, this thing hurt! It wasn't crazy pain, but it had the sting similar to you stick your tounge on one of those D batteries. So next time you find one of those, do that once every other second for 15 minutes. It does not feel good! And after all that pain, the only real changes that occurred were the electrical burn marks that were left on our flesh from where the shocks were sent. Needless to say, we retired the belt and never achieved our dream. So I guess until they find another miracle to believe in, I’m just gonna have to get my fat ass back on the treadmill and tough it out like everyone else.

Guess Who’s Back?

2006-04-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Hello people! It’s been a long time!

I’m sorry that I’ve been gone so long but the blog was starting to suck all of the life out of me. There would be days where I would sit in front of the ole laptop and try and force myself to write an entry and it would either really suck and be lame (the Sandra Bullock entry was the final straw) or it would take me forever and would just be torture to create.

So, I took a few months off to recharge the batteries and get my mojo back in line. Over the past few months there have been quite a few new and fun events that have happened. I’m not going to sit here are give a recap (if you listened to the ASK FIG radio show on Thursdays you would know about most of them!), but I knew it was time to come back into the blogging game when over the past few weeks things were happening to me and I started thinking about how this would make a funny blog entry.

So, I’m looking forward to putting out about 2-3 entries a week (in order to avoid burnout again) and I hope to recapture some of my old flavor.

Talk to you all soon!

Hang In There!

2006-04-04T22:30:00.000-05:00

Still waiting for another blog entry?

Patience my pet...good things come to those who wait!

Fig Equals…Gone???

2006-02-21T20:09:00.000-06:00

Rumors are flying all over the place about the status of my blogsite and to be honest with you, I am not sure what to tell you. The last few weeks have been pretty busy both socially and in the claims factory. Not only have I had less free time with work, fun, and the radio show, but I have a couple of other projects that I have been working on that has needed the focus of all of my creative juices.

Everyone loves trilogies and I wanted to finally bring the world some closure on one of America’s favorite movie characters. That’s why I signed on to film “Weekend at Bernie’s 3”. I teamed up with Robert Klan to write this script and have really created something that is not only going to build off the momentum of the first two movies but to add some excitement and new twists to the franchise. In WAB3, Larry and Richard (still played by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) are still working for the man and need to impress a potential new client and a couple of good looking ladies. What better way to do so then at Bernie’s? The new twist is that Bernie had a twin brother that no one knew about that is also dead and gets into just as many crazy situations as his brother. Terry Kiser passed on the role of Bernie (something about a drug/alpaca scandal) so I will be playing the role of both Bernie and his twin brother Archie. There is going to be a lot special effects used to make the action and drama look legitimately like there were two twin brothers instead of just me. But we have a top notch crew and I am sure that this movie is not only going to make you laugh until you cry, but this will be known as the best film that Jonathan Silverman has ever been associated with.

There is science fiction movie that I am working on that takes place at the Mos Eisley Cantina from the first Star Wars movie. I will be playing the role of Mugs Dalton, the great great great grandson of Jack Dalton from the movie Roadhouse. Apparently, the cantina is trying to clean up their business and bring in a more upscale and less rowdy cliental and the need the best cooler in the business’s help. There will be a lot of drinking, music, fighting, and drama in this movie with of course a love interest to keep the ladies entertained. All of the characters from the Star Wars movie will be involved I this flick as well as the supporting role and Mug’s sidekick being played by everyone’s favorite wookie. How can this movie not win Oscars?

So, as you can see, I have been pretty busy with several projects. I am also writing a series of children’s books based off some characters that my father had created featuring two rats and a duck. All of this and the fact that People magazine has written an article about me being romantically linked to Maria Sharapova, I just do not have the energy or the creative juices to dedicate to the blog like I used to.

I’m not shutting her down. Just taking a break for a while. Kinda like what Dave Chappelle did without going to Africa to smoke a lot of weed. The radio show will still go on every Thursday night and once my plate is a little cleaner and the fire is back burning in my loins…the blog will return.

Jack Bauer Quote of the Week

2006-02-09T20:44:00.000-06:00

“The only reason you are still conscious is because I don’t want to carry you.”

He is such a bad ass. I love that show.

The Magic Bulluck Theory

2006-02-06T22:32:00.000-06:00

How come the authorities never suspected Sandra Bulluck in the second Speed movie? What are the odds that a bus and a boat that you are on happen to get taken over by terrorists? That does not just happen to everyone. There has to be a connection there somewhere.

It’s not like in Die Hard where Bruce Willis is a cop and is around that element for a living. Bulluck, in theory, is just a normal person who “happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time” all the time. If I were involved in this investigation, I would look into the matter a little closer.

Random Thoughts During Super Bowl Sunday

2006-02-05T22:25:00.000-06:00

I love the Puppy Bowl. The Animal Planet channel did their second puppy bowl along with a Kitty Cat Half Time Show and I watched it for about 2 hours today. Awesome.

Did anyone check to see if either Aaron Nevel or Aretha Franklin could sing anymore? That had to of been the worst Star Spangled Banner ever.

Tom Brady just could not stand not being at the Super Bowl. First her ruins the Family Guy episode this week and now he worms his way into the coin toss. Get over it. Your team lost!

Is Jerome Bettis from Detroit? I have not heard about that this week. That's amazing.

This is the first Super Bowl in history where both head coaches have mustaches. Maybe they are going to make a come back.

I hate the fact that I am going to have to listen to John Madden for the next 4 hours.

I wonder how mad colleges get when NFL players say their high school and not college during their introductions.

Does anyone like/respect Puff Daddy anymore? I can’t even think of a song that he wrote that was any good. How did he get this famous? It can’t be just because of J-Lo because what about Chris Judd and Ben Affleck? Everyone knows that they suck. So does P Diddy. Is it the name thing? If I change my name to J Figgy will Diet Pepsi pay me a crap load of money to make lame commercials too?

Damn, I had 0-0 in my Super Bowl Squares and Seattle just scored with 22 seconds left in the first quarter. So long $50.00.

So far, I am pretty unimpressed by both the game and the commercials. Something better happen soon or else I am going to put in my “Stewie Griffin, the Untold Story” DVD I just received from Net Flicks. That little guy really cracks me up. And I am starting to stab myself in the ears with a pen because I can’t stand listening to John Madden anymore. Or maybe I’ll just turn down the volume. Either way, something has got to give.

First good commercial! Nextel’s “crime deterrent” feature on the phone when the one guy throws his phone and hits that other guy in the face. That’s the first on that made me laugh so far.

Is it just me? Am I the only one that can’t believe that the Rolling Stones are still alive and have no business performing anymore? I understand that they were great 60 years ago, but there are about 600 other things I think they could do during the halftime show that would be more entertaining and would cost about 20 million less. Here are my top 5 halftime entertainment choices that I have seen:

5) Punt/Pass/Kick competitions. Have 5 people start on the 20 yard line and they have to punt the ball first, then pass the ball from where the punt landed. Then, they have to try and kick a field goal from where the pass landed. Always fun.
4) Punt Catch competition. Have 5 people try to catch punts from 40 yards away. If they catch it, they back them up 5 yards and go again until there is only 1 left.
3) Jesse White Tumblers. Those crazy little urban kids jumping around all over the place doing crazy stunts is always fun stuff.
2) Pee Wee Football game. They do this at Bears Games and it is always fun. They either have 4 teams on the field and have 2 separate games going on at the same time or they have had a pee wee team against all of the NFL mascots. It was awesome watching a pee wee kid lay out the Minnesota Viking guy.
1) Frisbee Dogs. Those dogs are fantastic.

Speaking of Mick Jager, does anyone like or think Joan Cusak is entertaining? How did she ever become a spokesman? That poor executive had to of gotten fired. Screw You Mick Jager, I’m watching the Puppy Bowl.

The SUV-Biker Litter Debate

2006-02-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

Finally, a topic!

Now this is an actual situation that might spark a little bit of debate! I normally stay away from discussing anything too serious on this blog, but since I have been in a dry spot (unlike sleeping in a wet spot which is no fun at all either) for a while and this is a kinda funny topic if you do not take it too seriously.

So, before we begin, please read this article.

Let’s summarize the stages of this altercation:

1) Man in SUV on a public street throws his leftover lunch out of his car onto the road.
2) Woman bike rider picks up the leftover lunch liter, opens the man’s car door, yells at him about littering in her neighborhood, and throws the garbage back into his car.
3) The man gets out of the car and throws two cups of coffee on the woman
4) (On purpose or on accident) The woman keys the man’s car.
5) The man stomps on the woman’s bicycle. (While she is on it.)
6) The woman tries to push the man off her bike.
7) The man and the woman lock up (wrestling style) and start fighting. (No punches are thrown.)
8) The crowd separates the two.

What is even better is that there was a photographer on the scene who was already taking pictures of something else when this all went down. Here are just some of the photos that are posted on the internet.

Now, if you read the article, you might have noticed the link to the discussion board where there are over 100,000 comments on this issue. People are taking all different sides and arguments about this incident. Let me weigh in on this point by point.

1) Man in SUV on a public street throws his leftover lunch out of his car onto the road.

Obviously, it’s wrong to litter. I know everyone from time to time has thrown a gum wrapper or scrap of paper out the window. I do not consider this to be the end of the world even though I know it’s not the best thing to do. Now, this guy threw out a bag of his leftover lunch that contained food in it. And it did not do it in a very nonchalant manner either. (Not that that would make it any more right.) This guy just opened the car door and spiked it down like a football in a manner that there were witnesses that could verify he did it for the police and press. Not very bright on his part and not very smooth either.

2) Woman bike rider picks up the leftover lunch liter, opens the man’s car door, yells at him about littering in her neighborhood, and throws the garbage back into his car.

What was this chick thinking? Forget about the fact that the guy littered. She opened some strange man’s car, yelled at him, and then threw food at him. She could have been shot! What an idiot! I agree that littering is wrong and if I was in her shoes I probably would of shook my head at the guy. But this lady has got some anger issues of her own. It was not like the guy threw the litter at her. If she was so upset about the incident, she should have taken down the guy’s license plate number, called the authorities, and then picked up the litter and thrown it away in the garbage. The article stated that she makes her son pick up 10 pieces of litter whenever they go to the park before he can play, (which makes me feel sorry for that poor little kid. “Mom, can I go on the swings?” “Not yet son, you still have to pick up that half empty 40 ounce bottle and condom wrapper.”) so why couldn’t she do the same? While I do not agree with the guy for littering, this is what truly started the incident.

3) The man gets out of the car and throws two cups of coffee on the woman.

Let me start off by saying that “YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER HIT A GIRL.” The only exception to that rule is if she is personally and directly about to kill or seriously physically injure you and the only way to prevent this is with physical retaliation. But what do you do as a man when a girl is being an idiot?

There was this one time many years ago when I was at a club with my friends and this song game on that was not the Electric Slide song (which I hate) but apparently you are supposed to do the Electric Slide to it. I refused and continued to dance on the side of the dance floor with my friends in my normal cool good looking fashion. This girl got so upset that I was that I was not doing the Slide that after yelling at me for several minutes, she then started to bump into kick, and shove me off the dance floor. Now, none of it hurt that much but who the hell is this girl to do this to me? If this was a guy I would of punched him square in the face. But since it was a girl I had not retaliation. Luckily, one of the girls I was with jumped her (It was a fantastic move by Shilpa!) and the problem was solved. But if Shilpa did not unleash her tiny little fists of fury, I would of either had to of gotten off the dance floor (which would have been a crime because I got moves), try to reason with the drunk chick, go tell a bouncer that a girl beat me up, or continue to take the beating.

So what did this guy do? He threw 2 cups of coffee at her. Was this the best move to make? It was better than going up to him and slugging her in the face like what would have normally happened if the biker was a man. And this definitely called for some kind of retaliation. I like the move. I’m on the guy’s side on this one. (Try to make me line dance…I should of threw my beer on the girl.) He could have called the police, just like the girl should have done when he saw him letter. But this is a little different. When he littered, he did not commit that act directly on the girl. (Even if she felt it was directed at her as a member of the community.) When she retaliated, it was directly at him.

4) (On purpose or on accident) The woman keys the man’s car.

She says it was on accident, but really, who has ever accidentally keyed a car to the degree of it making a scratch worth mentioning? This had to be intentional. In her mind, she was being a super hero and sticking up for all those hippies who battle against those damn gas guzzling upper class bozos that use the planet Earth as their own personal toilet. And after she sets him straight and scores a point for Mother Nature this Nazi dares to throw coffee on her and soil her favorite Indigo Girl’s concert t-shirt and brand new hemp hat? She’s out of ammo, unless she throws the empty cups back at him. And she knows that she can not physically take this guy on, so she takes it out on his car. If she was in the right, and even though I agree with the Vincent/Lance from Pulp Fiction philosophy about messing with a man’s car, it was the only non verbal reaction she could counter with if she wanted to stay in this battle.

But again, how smart is this on her part. She has to know by now that the guy is mad and is not going to let her actions slide. He already got out of the car and threw coffee at her, does she think that he is going to let her damage his car and not take any more action? Does she think that this will not elevate his anger into possibly causing her physical harm? Does she think, “I know, after I key his car he will then realize my views about the environment, apologize for his actions, and then we will hold hands and sing “Closer I am To Fine” with me”?

5) The man stomps on the woman’s bicycle. (While she is on it.)

Damage my car, huh? I would totally love this move if she was not on the bike still and could possibly get injured. But if she was off the bike, it would have been a fantastic move for the guy. She threw food at him, he threw coffee. She damaged his ride, he damaged hers. But unfortunately, she was on the bike still and probably did get kicked a little bit so I am going to start turning on my boy here. T’s kinda like that Michael Douglas movie “Fallen” where he was a good guy in the beginning of the movie when he was dealing with traffic and just wanted to get to his daughter’s house for her birthday (notice that during this portion of the movie he is wearing a white shirt) and then eventually gets caught up in all of these crimes and turns bad by the end of the movie (and is then wearing a black shirt). My boy’s shirt is now turning grey.

6) The woman tries to push the man off her bike.
7) The man and the woman lock up (wrestling style) and start fighting. (No punches are thrown.)
8) The crowd separates the two.

The shirt turns black. Again, unless your life is in danger, never hit a girl. Not only is it plain wrong, but he really looks stupid fighting with a girl. It’s a GIRL! It’s like trying to look cool riding in the back of a pick up truck. Not possible. The guy is now offically a tool.

Well, these are my thoughts on the issue. I am very interested in hearing what anyone else has to say about it.

What's Up? Nothing At All

2006-02-01T22:09:00.000-06:00

I gotta be honest; I really don’t have anything new to say. Nothing crazy exciting has happened to me in the last few days. Nothing sad, tragic, dramatic, crazy, unusually interesting or anything worthy of being written down.

For a few days I just kind of floated over the blog. Normally, something will strike me as blog-worthy and I’ll make a mental note to write something about it. After a few days with nothing kicking me in the kicking me in the head, I started searching for something to write about. Whenever I listened to someone telling me a story, I’d try and search for something that was unique and were I could put a funny spin on.

Nothing.

It’s not like I’m not doing anything. I’ve been going to work, seeing friends, hitting the bars, going bowling, talking to family, and working on my guns on a pretty regular basis. I’ve had good conversations, laughed, chuckled, got angry, been busy, and bored. Yet, nothing blog worthy.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe this is what they call writer’s block. Or maybe, even though I have been busy, it’s busy doing the same stuff over and over again so that there is nothing else to say about it. Or, maybe it’s nothing that dramatic. Maybe a weekend of relaxing and a beverage or two might jolt things back to normal.

I won’t be able to make the ASK FIG show this week but will return next week.

Random Thoughts and ASK FIG!

2006-01-26T08:00:00.000-06:00

If I had a limp or a leg injury of some kind, I would definitely use a cane. I think they look pretty cool.

I came into work today carrying a big Yellow Pages phone book. You would be amazed at how many comments total strangers made to me during a 2 block walk.

I was standing about 2 feet away and a little off to the side from the elevator door and a woman squeezed her way in between me and the door so that she could go first. Now, I normally am polite and let the ladies in ahead of me, but this chick had some nerve to not only expect me to do it but to wedge herself in front of me to do so.

ASK FIG!

Fig, I need help. I know you'll never print my question but I thought I'd try anyway. At lunch yesterday some co-workers were talking about Smallville. I, not knowing too much about the show asked if that was the show about Superman. The reply I received was that he was not Superman yet. This set off a lengthy discussion of just when Superman became Super. Some argued that he was always Superman, but just didn't know it. Others argued that he was super in a "super-hero" sense. A third group (we'll call them "Brick") argued that Spiderman wasn't "spider" before the bite, and that Batman wasn't "bat" before...well he wasn't "bat" (?!?). The final group argued that he couldn't fly, hence not super. Please enlighten us.

Seeking Understanding, Purpose, & Excellence, Really

First off, what’s with all the hate? Have I received a question from you before and not addressed it? I believe I have posted and answered all issues that have been forwarded to me. So have a little faith S.U.P.E.R. guy, I’m on your team! Working with you never against you.

Now, while I would gather that your co-workers are all gigantic nerds for having a lengthy conversation about this when they could be discussing “The OC” like I do at lunch (We had a debate about who is hotter between Marissa and Summer and who would you rather date), I will set the record straight so that you can march into the office tomorrow and smash those geeks.

Kal-El (aka Clark Kent) has always been super. He was born on the planet Krypton and was sent to Earth via rocket ship because his planet was going to explode. While opinions vary on the degree of their powers, it is understood that all people from Kal-El’s planet had the same abilities/powers that Superman processes. However, the exposure to the Earth’s yellow sun (not the blue one that gives me my powers) either kicked them in earlier (forced puberty) or made them more intense.

Comparing Superman to Batman or Spiderman is like comparing a romantic candle-lit dinner to being butt-raped in the county jail. Superman is not a human being but an alien who looks a lot like a human being but has advanced abilities and powers. Batman is a normal human who can kick ass and has a lot of gadgets. Spiderman is what nerds call an “Altered Human” because he was a normal human but got his abilities through some sort of crazy incident.

Now, Dweeb #1 is correct, the guy in Smallville is not Superman. He is Superboy. Kal-El does not become Superman until he moves to Metropolis and gets the job at the Daily Planet.

I hope you take this information back to your focus group and smash it into their taped-together glasses. I am kinda happy that you did not know these answers (I had to do a little research myself) so that you could not be lumped in with this group. Can I suggest after you end this discussion that you start another group discussion with one of the following topics:

1) After they make styrofoam, what do they ship it in?
2) Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
3) If God dropped acid, would he see people?
4) If the number 2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still number 2?
5) If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
6) If you're born again, do you have two belly buttons?
7) Could it be that all those trick-or-treaters wearing sheets are dressing up as mattresses?
8) If you choke a Smurf, what color will it turn?
9) Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
10) If vampires have no reflection, how come they have such neat hair?
11) If you throw a kitten out of a moving car, would it be considered kitty litter?
12) Could God make a burrito so hot he couldn't eat it?
13) Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
14) Who was the first to see a cow and think "I wonder what will happen if i squeeze these dangly things and drink whatever comes out?"
15) If a schizophrenic threatens suicide, is it declared a hostage situation?
16) How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges?
17) Do fish get thirsty?
18) How do blind people know when they are done wiping?

I believe my work is done here. Be sure to tune into the ASK FIG show tonight on Boskey Radio West!

I'm Not Sure What To Think

2006-01-23T21:07:00.000-06:00

I am a little nervous right now. I was eating dinner and flopping around on the internet and the next thing I know I am watching “13 Going On 30”…and loving every minute of it! It does not hurt that Jennifer Garner is hot as hell, but I am really laughing at this movie. It is such a rip off from that Tom Hanks movie “Big”, but I can’t help it. Right now she just saved a party by dancing to Thriller on the dance floor.

Is this wrong? This movie has been done before, but it is a kick ass formula. I might have to go down onto the street corner and beat up someone in order to reclaim my manliness. Or maybe watch some porn…

I’m OK Now…Bearly.

2006-01-18T13:02:00.000-06:00

I’ve finally somewhat calmed down from Sunday’s game enough to talk about it. I’ve come off of that ledge and I am getting ready to take the first steps towards recovery.

Step 1) Admit that I am powerless over the Bear’s loss and that this game has made my life become unmanageable.

After the game on Sunday, I had nothing left in the tank. I could not talk about it, I could not watch the highlights, and I definitely did not want to discuss it with anyone. On Monday, I slept all day long. I did not watch the TV or read the newspapers. On Tuesday, if anyone came up to me to discuss the game I normally replied with a rude comment or just by giving them the finger. I am still mad today, but I do need to move forward.

Step 2) Come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I’m not sure if this power is God who will give me the strength to tolerate this team, GM Jerry Angelo who will fix the personnel problems, Coach Lovie Smith who will destroy whoever was responsible for the lack of preparation and game planning that took place, or my personal hero former Chicago Bear Tom Waddle who covers the Bears on Fox and has also been very critical of this team when appropriate. I hope one of them will step forward and assist me in my time of need.

Step 3) Made a decision to turn our faith and our football lives over to the care of that higher power.

For years, I have been emailing and faxing the coaching and management offices of the Bears with my recommendations and criticisms. (Also, with funny jokes and song/scoreboard ideas during the game.) I will take a backseat to this “higher power” and allow fate to happen naturally.

Step 4) Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of our issues.

Here’s why I am so pissed off. With no QB whatsoever, we were able to win the division by playing a ball control offense focusing on running the ball (with the occasional deep pass to keep defenses honest), aggressive play from our defense linemen, and smart coverage from out speedy linebackers and secondary. For whatever reason, we did the exact opposite on Sunday. Were we trying to throw the other team off? Were we just so cocky that we thought we could do no wrong? Who knows and who cares! Play the game that got you there! The playoffs are not the time to try things out. You have the number one defense in the league and the number 7 running back in the NFL and neither of them was used properly. JERKS!

Step 5) Admitted to the higher power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

What did I do wrong? I paid $2,000.00 for regular season tickets and built up my hopes for a team that I thought was going to be a serious playoff threat and another paid another $160.00 for tickets to a playoff game where the entire Chicago Bears organization were jerking each other off instead of focusing on the game. Fellas, a lap dance at the nudey bars only costs $20.00. I know that there are more of you out there, but I don’t want to pay money to see a bunch of fellas giving each other reach-arounds.

I know this to be true. I have expressed it not only to myself, but to Tommy Waddle (former Bear via E-Mail), and Christine at my work.

Step 6) Be entirely ready to have higher power remove all these defects of character.

Please do! I am so sick of losing! I am so sick of people around the NFL not respecting and fearing the Bears!

Step 7) Humbly ask higher power to remove our shortcomings.

I have already E-Mailed Tom Waddle on this. I am ready for him to help me.

Step 8) Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

I don’t know if “harmed” is the right word. Like I said, I have made several flip remarks to several people who took enjoyment at the Bears loss. But I don’t know if I actually “harmed” them in any way. I still see myself as the victim here, but I guess that really is not the right attitude to take during this time of needed recovery. So I will apologize to these people for making those retarded comments at my expense. (Jerks.)

Step 9) Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

There. I apologized to the 2 people that I gave the finger to. The other people are not here at work today so I will make amends when I see them. I promise.

Step 10) Continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it.

Fine. IF I am ever wrong again I will.

Step 11) Sought through whatever means necessary, knowledge through the higher power to improve our conscious knowledge of the situation and the power to carry out the proper actions.

I am waiting for guidance.

Step 12) Have had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, understand and regain faith in the Bears, and to practice these principles in all our affairs so that this never happens again.

I want to believe. I need to believe. Help me to believe.

Bear Down. All Day Long.

2006-01-15T10:25:00.000-06:00

That’s right bitches…IT’S GAME TIME!

Seattle won their game so it’s time for Da Bears to step it up and take care of business against the Carolina Panthers. I’m rolling out for the tailgate party in a few minutes.

Let’s bring it home fellas. I’m with you all day long.

My Game Is Strong

2006-01-15T00:11:00.000-06:00

Look at me. It’s before midnight on a Saturday and I am already home and ready to go to bed. I swore to myself that even though I am going to be hanging out with a bunch of my buddies and playing a lot of poker and watching a lot of NFL playoff action that I would keep my over all beer consumption to a reasonable level and not have more that 5 Jager Bombs and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

I got a big day ahead of me tomorrow. I have to be awake and healthy and ready to consume beverages with the best of them tomorrow. IT’S PLAYOFF TIME BABY!

And what could possibly be the best pre tailgating move ever made was ordering 2 Pete’s pizzas tonight and saving them for the tailgate tomorrow. We’ll just throw those bad boys on the grill as appetizers to our steak sandwiches and feast like kings before our beloved Bears destroy those silly Carolina bastards.

In almost 15 hours it will be game on.

Could Of Been So Beautiful

2006-01-13T12:33:00.000-06:00

In case you missed the radio show last night, there was a very interesting question that was given to me that made me have to dig deep down into my soul in order to answer.

Would I choose attending a Chicago Bears Super Bowl or a one night stand with Tiffany?

Wow. Talk about your brain busters!

Now, this would mean that the Bears were guaranteed a trip to the Super Bowl (not a win mind you) and that it was otherwise impossible for me to get tickets for this game through any other means. Also, my “date” with Tiffany would be from 7pm until sunrise and it would be Thunder Dome. Anything I want I get. No rules. However, when sunrise hits there is no more contact with her for the rest of my life.

Both the Bears and Tiffany are childhood loves/obsessions of mine. One day I could have been wearing a Bear’s hat and the next day walking around in my Tiffany concert t-shirt. (I saw her twice and it was glorious!) Both VH1 did an update show on her and Playboy did a spread on her about 2 years ago and she still looks fantastic. She even got a boob job! Do you people know how I feel about big boobs? (I love them!)

Surprisingly, I went with the Bears. It’s been 20 years since we have been to a Super Bowl and to go back would be fantastic. While “making a baby” with Tiff would be fun, there would be no guarantees that her heart would be in it and I just love her too much to put her in an uncomfortable situation like that. But I still hope those damn Bears appreciate what I am giving up for them.

Now, when asked to choose between a Bears Super Bowl Win and a mutually happy marriage to Tiffany…Hands down I’m running to the alter as fast as I can!

Go Bears...Trivia!

2006-01-12T13:05:00.000-06:00

I know that I don’t really write too much about sports, but it is not because I do not love them with all of my heart! My beloved Bears are in the playoffs and a lot of my Christmas gifts this year used them as a theme. One of them, was a desktop daily calendar that features either a piece of trivia or a fact. As sad as this sounds, one of the highlights of my workday is coming into work and answering that day’s trivia question. (You have to look for sunshine wherever you can when you are trapped at the bottom of a hole.)

So, in the spirit of sharing some of my little sunshine, On my sidebar, I am going to share these little bits of fun with you. Enjoy! (If you care. This might be just for your entertainmnet Jon.)

Mad Dog

2006-01-11T12:11:00.000-06:00

I took the day off of work on Monday so that I could go to the doctor’s office. I got there for a 10:45am appointment and everything got so screwed up that I did not get out of there until about 3pm. I had to sit in that waiting room for a little over 3 hours because of those goofy bastards. And the kicker to this is that I was feeling fine before the appointment but now I have the beginnings of a cold because I had to sit around all of the other diseased monkeys for so long.
So I woke up this morning feeling a little under the weather and I really do not want to catch a cold because I have tickets to see the Bears in the playoffs this weekend. (I’ll catch my cold there thank you very much!) So I went to Walgreen’s this morning to pick up some of that Airborne cold prevention stuff that I’ve heard so many wonderful things about. I’ve never taken it before but a lot of people live by this stuff.

So I walk in the claims factory, turn on the computer, and right away I get a call from a client who needs to report an accident. So as I am taking his loss info, I open up the Airborne and pop one in my mouth. They look like a flatter version of a Tums so I really did not think too much about it. But after that thing was in my mouth for about 3 seconds there was a flavor and activity explosion!

Apparently, the proper way to take this drug is to drop it in a cup of water and let it dissolve before you drink it. But I have nothing to spit this thing out into at my desk (looking back I could of used the garbage can) and I had to take this over the phone report so I toughed it out. It was crazy! It took everything I had to take that report, not spit that thing out onto my computer, and not foam all over my desk.

On the plus side, I do feel a little better and that whole thing really did wake me up!

I Will Survive!

2006-01-10T20:19:00.000-06:00

What a crazy weekend! It started off with Friday night bowling. The evening begun just like every other bowling night with all of us meeting over at E’s house for pre bowling drinks and then making our way over to the Timber Lanes. The first game I rolled like a 140 something and then I rolled a 150 something for the second game. Then, something lit a fire in me. It could have been the many beers and several Jager Bombs that I was enjoying or it could have been that I selected the music that was playing on the jukebox at that time. But I felt like something special was going to happen. I bowled 6 strikes in a row to start the third game and felt like I was on top of the world! However, I choked on the next 3 frames and was unable to pick up a mark. I striked and spared to finish off the game and wound up with a 207. Not a bad number…anything over 200 in my eyes is pretty good. But I rolled 6 strikes in a row to start off with! It should have been higher.

After bowling we went off to the bar for some dinner and post game beers, but nothing too crazy that evening because I had to go home at a reasonable time because I was meeting my parents at 9am to start our trip to Toledo, OH. That’s right, Toledo is the spot where everything happens!

In reality, that is where my friends Rick and Karen live and they were hosting a Survivor party. (I’ll try to explain as quickly as possible.) I started a pool about 5 years ago based on the Survivor television show. It really took off and I had at it’s height about 130 people playing. (And if you are a long time blog reader, you will remember that the original reason I start to blog was to get out my pool updates.) Well, then all of the Survivor cheater web sites came up and it made it impossible to hold an honest pool so I had to give it up. But Rick kept that torch burning by being very selective about whom he allowed in and managed to have pretty successful pool this past season. So since he came over to my parent’s house twice to celebrate the pool, we decided to return the favor.

It’s hard to put into words what takes place at one of these parties. It mirrors the show where the guests are divided into different tribes and then compete in challenges until there is only one tribe left. Then that tribe has individual challenges until there is only one survivor. So kinda like the show, but with a shit load of booze on top of it. So with Rick acting as our host, the party held in the city’s police chief’s home, and the local mayor serving as a judge, the night begun!

That’s right, the night ended the only way that it could of…with me on top! Not only did I walk away with the party’s top honor but I received the world’s best looking white Member’s Only jacket on the planet! This jacket is going into my regular rotation. Add my white shoes to this look and my newly developed “guns” and I believe I’ll be unstoppable!

On Sunday we went to the pride and the joy of Toledo, OH. Tony Packos Hot Dogs. This place was made famous by Jamie Farr (Klinger) on the MASH show and is a staple in the community. I highly recommend if you are in the area you stop by. I bought a shirt!

We made it home late Sunday and I passed out. This seems to be the way that most of my weekends have been ending.

Woke Up To The Sound Of Pouring Rain

2006-01-06T11:58:00.000-06:00

Did you ever just wake up and know it was going to be a good day? I normally equate those feelings within the first 5 minutes of my day. How well rested was I? Was I hung over or not? And more importantly, what woke me up? This morning I woke up to my radio and heard the entire song “I Remember You” by Skid Row. Fantastic! I laid in bed and listened with a smile on my face…actually, that is a lie. There were some parts that I sung along with and I did play a little air guitar during the solo.

After my mini concert was over, I popped out of bed, jumped into the shower and since it is casual Friday here at the Claims Factory, got to put on a pair of jeans and a Chicago Bears hooded sweatshirt. Very comfortable for me! Then it was off too work. Now I am very disappointed and borderline angry with my morning talk radio situation in 2006, but I would not let it get to me today! I brought along my I-Pod and my I-Pod/car radio connector that I got for Christmas and was jamming to Motley Crue for the ride in.

So, pretty much today I think I am invincible. I got to knock out a day of work, and then it is off to E’s house for some pre bowling beers and then head over to the lanes for bowling night with Candi and Kathy. Tomorrow, my parents and I are headed out to Toledo, OH to visit a couple of friends who are having a Survivor themed party. (Those things usually get pretty crazy!)

My apologies to anyone that tuned into the radio show last night at 9pm CST, but apparently there was an Illini basketball game on that took precedence. So the show went on at about 10:30pm or so once the game was over. (The Illini won by the way.)

So, I’ll quickly cover my New Years for everyone:

*Went up to Milwaukee.
*Had a competition with Candi about naming characters in the Never Ending Story movie. (She won.)
*Tailed a Jimmy John’s delivery guy in order to find the restaurant so we could order sandwiches.
*Went bowling in the afternoon.
*E smashed his fingers in the ball return.
*Played shuffle board at a bar called Champions and it got its name because the owners bought the place with money they won on the Family Feud.
I introduced Gabriel the Unicorn to the world.
*Candi discovered where my erogenous zones were.
*Pre partied at LJ’s house.
*Saw some naked people through his window across the street in their condo making love.
*We gave Steve his Christmas gift which was an apron with a photo of his ass on the front of it.
*Ate a nice steak dinner.
*Went to a bar.
*Drank a lot of rum and Irish Car Bombs.
*Made New Years resolution to make 3 babies in 2006.
*Steve hit on me…a lot.
*Jamie revealed to me that Mexican waiters pee in the lobster bisque that I had for dinner and the steak house.
*LJ’s new nickname is “Scooter”.
*We all sang “Sweet Caroline” to the room.
*Drank a lot more rum and Miller Lite.
*A half hour before New Years E tried to get into a fight with some guy by calling him a “dip-shit”.
*Steve got me with the ole “Look at my horse bite trick while I really grab your balls” trick.
*Jamie took pictures of all of the ladies nipples.
*Rang in the New Year.
*Candy beat me up because I did not have any peanut butter to cure her hiccups.
*Left the pub to go back to the Steak House.
*Found out that Kat would rally enjoy a 3rd nipple.
*Broke up an almost fight between Steve and some drunk guy.
*Drank at the Steak House.
*Jumped in a cab back to LJ’s house.
*Ate a Jimmy John sandwich.
*Passed out on the couch.

Pretty detailed account, huh? Well, I owe all of it to my new wonderful little Sony sound recorder that I am now taking out with me every time a drink because I am so sick of forgetting all of the little funny jokes that happen when I am out on the town. Now, I just record everything that I find humorous and I can play it back the next day. Fantastic!

Well, have a great weekend!

Let's Be BFFs Again!

2006-01-05T12:01:00.000-06:00

Happy New Years to everyone!

I am so sorry that I have not posted anything yet in 2006, but between all of the holiday parties, eating, boozing, work, and time spent sculpting my guns I just have either been too busy or tired to put any effort into it.

But we can get all caught up tonight if you tune into the “ASK FIG” show on BOSKEY RADIO WEST tonight at 9pm CST. Just click on the link on the right side of my blog page and guide your way through the LIVE365 site and we will become best friends again!

Once Bitten Twice Shy

2005-12-30T00:26:00.000-06:00

Wednesday night was the last night that my brother was in town from LA and we decided to spend it as a sibling’s night. He and my sister came up to my place and we had an all night boozing session with just the brothers and sisters in the house. A case of beer and a handle of Captain Morgan later and we had a blast until about 2am. We also watched part of my brother’s gift to me this Christmas. The movie “Break’in” on DVD. Ozone, Turbo, and Special K battling Electric Rock and the rest of the corporate world that really does not appreciate good honest street dancing…that movie rules!

While those two got to crash on my couch that night, my dumb ass had to wake up 4 hours later and hit the office. While I had a very productive day, I wanted to shoot myself in the face with a gun the entire time. I had plans to work out with Timortal after work (gotta work on the guns) and then hit that bar after that to celebrate the holidays with my friends that I did not see yet for Christmas and will not get to see for New Years. After the work whistle blew, I was done. I told Timortal that I was skipping the workout today and went home and went to sleep. I woke up about 20 minutes before I was supposed to be out at the bar and forced myself to get dressed and out of the condo. Friday is going to be a big day at the office so I figured that I would be out for an hour or two, get home in time to do my radio show with Boskey, and then hit the pillow relatively early. That sounded like a good plan. Until Zaner stepped in.

We had a nice little crew of people out at the tavern and all seemed to be going relatively according to plan until I told my plan to Zaner and he threw in this curve ball. “Well, what if I decide to order some Jager Bombs?” To which I replied “I don’t know, but I will never turn one down.” 4 rounds of Jager Bombs later and many many beers and I am pretty well off and feeling good again. DAMN YOU JAGER BOMBS! (I did not really mean it, I love you!)

We did get a lot accomplished that evening. We discussed all of our porn preferences, DVD burning/Tivo experiences and tips, and most importantly was my revelation. I no longer live with E and I miss that little guy. Granted, I see him for bowling every other Friday night and we normally see each other on the other non-bowling weekend, but it is a definite reduction in what I am used to. And living with E, I got to see Zaner, Ilya, and the rest of their crew a lot more than what I do now. So we are going to bring back our former weekly tradition of “Wing Night” again. We did Wing Night several years ago and it was a guy’s night out where we would meet out weekly, eat chicken wings, and drink a lot of beer. Everyone agreed to the idea and we are gonna get it started sometime after the holidays. I can’t wait. This is gonna be good.

However, I know tomorrow is going to suck again at the office. And I missed my Radio show with Boskey this week. I am so pissed at myself for doing that. Not that anyone really listens to us every Thursday night, but it is still fun to do. Sorry Bosk!

On the plus side, as we were winding up the evening at the bar, they started playing the movie “Break’in” on all of the TVs. What are the odds of that happening? Does this mean anything? Am I going to get into a break dancing fight with someone this weekend? I really hope I do, because I am going to pop and lock all over someone’s ass if they decide to cross that line.

Well, if all goes according to plan tomorrow, I will kick ass at the J-O-B, got to bed at 5pm tomorrow, and then wake up to start my New Years Eve celebration in Milwaukee. I am going up there with E and Candi to meet out LJ, Jamie, Steve, Kat, Tony, and Lisa. With Steve March on board and a whole lot of booze I can only imagine what is in store for the 2005 finale. The only thing that I am sure of is that I will probably see a “Baby Bird” or a “Hamburger” at some point in the evening.

I hope everyone has a fantastic New Years Eve and I’ll see you all in 2006!

Have Yourself A Pukey Little Christmas

2005-12-29T01:41:00.000-06:00

What a weekend. What a merry fun filled weekend! I’ll try to keep this weekend’s recap short because there is a topic or two that I need to discuss.

Friday my family came up after work for a few beverages and then left my brother Dan, who is visiting from LA, with me for a night on the town. What would any 25 year old man want to do on a Friday night? Go to my bowling league of course! I exposed my brother to my nutty league and got completely trashed. I bowled pretty decently that night, never below a 150 in all of my games and did a lot of Jager Bombs in the process. There was a little bit of drama when one of our new bowling friends decided to hit on my friend Kathy in front of his live in girlfriend who bowls in the same league with 5 of her family members. And each one of those family members decided to take it upon themselves to confront us about it. It was just like high school again! Except we are all over the age of 30! If was fantastic. We got everything resolved at the bar after the games, but it was a pretty funny hour of trash talking and back stabbing.

My bro and I got to bed at around 5am after lots and lots of booze. We woke up, watched a little TV, and then shot out to the burbs to meet out with my family for our Christmas Eve tradition. When I say tradition, that consists of going to church, then my father drinking a bottle of Goldschlager, and playing the card game Asshole. Not only did we uphold all aspects of the tradition (including the addition to dice drinking in Asshole. I’m not sure what the rules were, but it was added and enjoyed.) but we added a new tradition this year…karaoke. My nephews always put on a Christmas show (which was a rendition of “My Hump” with Christmas lyrics and the oldest nephew on a recorder and my brother on his guitar) but after the show and my brother kept playing random songs a karaoke party broke out! FANTASTIC. I gotta think my sister and her husband won the competition that night. I think I sung better but he had a lot better moves than I did. I’ll get you next year Bart! I also found out that I am disabled. I can not tell the difference between blue and green. I am not so upset about that, but rather the fact that my Mom knew about this for the past 25 years. Merry Christmas me!

I woke up sicker than I have been in a long time Christmas morning. I have had 2 day benders before, but I think that my father and all of his “Goldschlager Pushing” put me over the top. We opened gifts and I had to go to the washroom for a little Christmas puking and then I was back on my game. It was a fun low key Christmas day that ended with the Chicago Bears beating the Green Bay Packers and lock up the 2nd playoff spot. GO BEARS!

Monday was dedicated to my post boozing coma on the couch. A&E was doing a 24 season marathon, so that’s what I watched for about 13 of the hours. That show rules. Jack gets so much more done than I do in an hour. I think I need my own “24” show. I mean, when does he go to the bathroom? Does he ever spend 15 minutes at a drive thru window at the local Wendy’s? And then does he spend the next 25 minutes eating his tasty burger and fries while listening to sports talk radio? Granted, there are normally 4 different plots going on at the same time, so I will need 3 other people to volunteer their 24 hours to tie into my day. Any volunteers?

OK, now that we are all caught up, I can talk about my two issues. At my bowling alley, there is a poster from a movie called D.E.B.S. that features these 4 hot 18 year old chicks in catholic school girl outfits and guns. How can this movie be bad? So I Tivo’ed the movie and watched it last night. I still can’t figure out if it was the worst movie ever on the planet or if it was the best campy movie that I have ever seen. Let me lay the plot down for you:

When you take the S.A.T.s, there is a secret set of questions that decides if you can be a female secret agent. If so, then you go to this spy school and go on missions that are handed out my Michael Duncan Clark. So these girls get assigned to capture a secret spy who is also an 18 year old hot chick and she falls in love with one of the spies. So the remained of the movie is the D.E.B.S agent torn between her loyalty to her spy job and her new found lesbian lover. Again, I don’t know how to feel about this movie.

My other issue comes from an incident that occurred in the men’s washroom today. I was already peeing at the urinal when this other guy came in. I do not know who he was and we did not speak. He walked up to the other urinal, unzipped, and as he started to pee he put his right arm up on the wall and leaned his head into his arm. He did not appear to be out of breath like he walked up the stairs or something. What was he doing? Was that his bathroom move? Was he worried that I was going to try and sneak a peak? I mean, leaning forward would mean that you would have to be pretty much pressed up against the urinal and facing a lot of possible splash back, so your reason for doing that move has got to be pretty strong.

As a man of science, I will crack this code. Kind of like I cracked the code of if female ass crack is sexy or not. (After looking at all of the angles, it still is as long as the girl is hot and does not have a hairy ass.)

Have A Figtastic Christmas!

2005-12-23T14:42:00.000-06:00

Everyone please have a very happy, safe, and booze-filled holiday weekend! I know I am! I am very excited for the holidays. So much, I even did a little Christmas treat cooking last night. Look at these tasty Turtle Treats! I can't wait to dive into those bad boys!

I hope to hear some good stories next week and I hope that the Bears are victorious Sunday!

ASK FIG!

2005-12-22T20:19:00.000-06:00

Wow! 2 posts in one day! I Know! Well, I kinda felt that I have been neglecting my blog and my ASK FIG section. So I pulled out a few of them and am ready to dispense all of the wisdom I have. Enjoy!

Oh great one. Please tell me all you know about Tivo. Cost? Value? Ease of use?

Oh yes, I am glad you asked me this questions. If you are having any doubts whatsoever about getting this piece of equipment, you should ask yourself this question: Do I enjoy watching more than 3 different television series? If the answer is Yes, the get yourself a Tivo. Personally, I enjoy watching a few more shows than that. They have a feature called the Season Pass that lets you record either and or new/reruned episodes of any series on at the time. I have mine programmed for the show 24 last season and it recorded every single new episode of it last season. I also did not take off the Season Pass so I do not even have to worry about when the new season is going to start! Tivo is going to do all of the work for me.

Again, there is probably a show out there a night that I would enjoy watching, but I do not want to have to structure my social life/drinking problem around my television viewing if I do not have to. To be honest, I do not even know what night anything is on anymore. Whenever I have the time, I go to my Tivo and ask what has been recorded and catch up with all of my favorite shows.

Also, once you watch stuff on Tivo, you will have a hard time going back to regular TV. When you watch it on Tivo, you can fast forward past all of those annoying commercials. If I happen to notice a how is on that I want to watch and I see that my Tivo is capturing it, I’ll go do something else for 15 minutes and then start watching it so I can still edit out the commercials.

So, to answer your question…It is wonderful. The cost of the box is anywhere between $80-150.00. I think it runs around $400.00 for the box if you have HDTV. If you have the gold package on your DirecTV, there is no monthly cost. (Which I do!) If you like your TV shows then the value is not measurable. And any monkey can work one of these things.

Dear Fig,
I love math (who doesn't), and I was wondering if you had any recommendations for some fun activities to keep my skills sharp? Sometimes I get bored with just bowling and Jager Bombs! (If that's possible)

Bored with Jager Bombs? That’s like getting bored with big hooters! If you gave me a young lady with some big ole boobies and a fridge full of Jager Bombs I think I would be set for life. Oh, I might want to throw in a Tivo as well as long as we are in dreamland.

I know the latest rage is that Suduku game that everyone is playing and I have yet to be able to solve. But personally, I like to kick it old school. There is a book that my father tried to get published called Calcu-Fun that had all kinds of crazy math games that you could play along with your calculator. He busted it out this past Thanksgiving and had a blast with it. Actually, it is the 30th anniversary of its creation! (Happy Anniversary Calcu-Fun!)

I’ll give you an example of a game in it. The game is called Calcu-Thon and the goal of the game is to try and punch in a long math problem in a certain time limit and come up with the correct answer. Let’s try one! See if you can correctly input this problem in less than 30 seconds:

12+9875-689+95472-66-3548-51056/50+364*16+76-21700=200

Can you do that in 30 seconds and come up with the right answer? I dare ya!

This book, along with one Lucky Egg Vending Machine is my inheritance. Some punks get a couple hundred thousand dollars. I get the egg machine, the calculator book, and a coffee and end table set that my Dad built out of 2X4’s that are indestructible. I mean, you could hit these with a car and they would not break.

Dear Mr. Fig - I have a question for you that I hope you would be able to answer on your next live radio broadcast. Could you please explain to me how the NFL playoffs work? I know the NFL groups all the teams into little 4-team chunks in 2 Conferences, but can you explain how The Powers That Be determine:
1) If a team makes the playoffs
2) If a team has home field advantage in the playoffs.
I'm thinking it has something to do with the win-loss record, but I cannot say with any confidence what may lie beyond that. Also, what is this "Wild Card Weekend" of which they speak? I guess I can just wait to watch it unfold as the Bears march to the Super Bowl (like I did with the White Sox in the baseball playoffs). However I have an important decision to make regarding the purchase of playoff home field tickets, so I'm very curious how this is all going to work. Thank you for your consideration of my question. Please guide me, Oh Wise Bald One, so we can party together before a Bears playoff game! :)
Signed,
A confused but optimistic football fan

This is a serious question! I’m gonna give it a serious answer. The NFL is divided into 2 conferences: The NFC and the AFC. In each of those conferences there are 4 divisions: North, South, East, and West. In each of those divisions there are 4 NFL teams.

It’s easier to talk about this one division at a time. So let’s talk about the NFC. (Go Bears!) The winner of each division gets to go to the playoffs. After that, they combine all of the remaining teams in the conference and the two with the best records get to go to the playoffs as well as “wildcards”. Now, remember the division winners? Out of the 4 division winners, the 2 with the best records get the first week of the playoffs off as a “bye” and the bottom 2 division winner have to play the wildcard teams during the first week. Then the winners of the “wildcard” games go on to meet the 2 teams that got the bye. Then the final 2 teams play for the conference championship. Then each of the conference champions go onto the Super Bowl.

Now if I only knew how they selected the teams for the Bud Bowl…

Why do men have nipples???

Are you kidding me? These things are fantastic! My parents sometimes read this blog so I am not going to go into all of the fantastic details and things you can do with these things and the woman that you have strong emotional feeling with at that particular time in the day. But believe me, they are good.

If I have to get all sciencey with you, and remember, I am a man of science, fine. The real reason is that in the early stages of life there is no difference in the male or female body. After about the 14th week the male fetus starts producing his male hormones which develops his “twig and berries”. Unfortunately for you but fortunately for me, these hormones do not take anything away from the rest of the body and our love buttons remain intact.

Fig-
Before someone concocted the Jager bomb, you were once a young Tom “cocktail” Cruise, a man on a mission to create a beverage. Do your remember how to make a flaming fig? Do you remember what happened that took the flaming fig out of the drinking line-up? Do you think that the poor fellow whose lips caught fire, was ever able to do a shot again with out flash backs of that day?
Thirsty for something new or retro in Wisconsin.

You are correct sir! I was...and still am a strong believer in Coughlin’s Laws:

"A star never passes out in public...however falling down the stairs is allowed"
"The luck is gone, the brain is shot, but the liquor we still got."
"Never show surprise, never lose your cool."
"Anything else is always something better."
"A man will always be judged by how much alcohol he can consume, and a woman will be impressed whether she likes it or not."
"Never tell tales about a woman, she'll hear you no matter how far away she is."
"Bury the dead, they stink up the joint."

So back in the day when I was a young lad and I thought I knew everything there was to know about everything, I set out to make the ultimate drink. What do you need in a drink? Well, you need a lot of booze because anyone that drinks obviously wants to get blind stinking drunk. (Remember, this is 1991 Fig’s thought process…which is not all that far from 2005 Fig’s thought process.) People also really like fire so this drink must be flammable. So I created the Flaming Fig! (Named and modeled after the Flaming Moe from the Simpsons.)

While I can not share the exact portions of the ingredients because this recipe will be my son’s inheritance along with a coffee table set and a calculator book, (I am assuming that the chicken machine will be dead by then) I can tell you that more than half of the drink was made with everclear. The rest of the ingredients were vodka, grape Maddog, and a splash of fruit punch. (For the ladies!)

Seeing how those were my main staples back in college (mixed in with a few beers from time to time) this was a fantastic drink. But very dangerous at the same time. There were several times when party-goers in my and LJ’s dorm room when people almost were burned alive while trying to drink these shots. Now I would only almost be killed while trying to lit these things, but others would almost be killed because they either forgot to blow the flame out before they did the shot or they let the shot burn so long that the rim of the shot glass would get unbelievably hot and they would burn themselves while doing the shot.

Maybe we were ahead of our time playing with forces that should not be meddled with. Kinda like Doc and Marty in Back to the Future 1-3. That’s why I put the flux capacitor away and the Flaming Fig has not made a return to society since.

But maybe, just maybe, there will be a Christmas Miracle!

Let's Go Bowling!

2005-12-22T18:43:00.000-06:00

First off I would like to congratulate the Chicago Bears and getting 6 players voted into the Pro Bowl this season. I can’t remember the last time that happened. (Actually, I think I read in the paper today that the last time that happened was 1985.) They are playing the Green Bay Packers on Christmas Day and I hope to God that Santa is good to me!

Now can someone tell me where I can buy a dreidel? I found out how to play that game and (even though I am not Jewish) I thought it would be kinda festive to bust it out this holiday season. But I can’t find one of things anywhere. Do I have to go to temple? Is there a secret Jewish place to go to if I need one? HELP!

Baby Its Cold Outside

2005-12-20T21:30:00.000-06:00

I was not able to write anything yesterday because I needed to take the day off again. What does that mean? That’s right! I went to the Bears game again on Sunday and needed not only a chance to detox but also to thaw myself out from the game.

I met my buddy KW out at a bar for the 3pm games on Sunday and then we walked over to Soldier Field at around 6:30pm to the Sunday night game against the Atlanta Falcons. At kickoff time, the announcers informed everyone in the crowd that it was -7 degrees. I gotta tell ya, that is pretty damn cold.

I tried to layer up for the game but it was still chilly out there. I don’t think I could have put more clothes on my body. I kinda felt like Randy from “A Christmas Story” with all of the layers that I was wearing. It was a good thing that we had some warm up Jager-Bombs before we went to the game. (Great idea KW)

One of the funnier things of the night occurred right when we go to the bar. Since we were both wearing a crazy amount of clothes because we were going to the game right after the bar, we had to take off a few layers of clothes or die of heat in the bar. So, as KW in unlayering, we noticed some of his wife’s pantyhose stuck to the inside of one of his shirts. I was waiting for a bra to fall out of there as well, but it never happened.

Since they do not serve hard alcohol at the games, we had to drink beers. This is the first time ever I had a beer freeze on me. I mean, its beer. There is booze in it and that is not supposed to freeze. And I was not drinking them slow. The people who were sitting in front of us left the game early and left a half beer behind and I was able to turn it upside down without a drop spilling. And even if you drank the beer fast, you still developed this weird ice ring around the upper edges of the glass. I felt trapped! Just like Luke Skywalker in the Empire Stikes Back when he got captured by that ice monster and hung up in the cave. I was in a race against time to beat my environment!

But more importantly than my buzz, the Bears beat the Falcons and all but locked up a spot in the playoffs. Go BEARS!

I went home after the game, and probably the most impressive feat of the evening, I was able to take of my t-shirt, 4 long sleeve t-shirts, hooded sweatshirt, wind jacket, jersey, and fleece all at once. That’s right, nine articles of clothing all in one swoop. It was truly a night of victories for us all.

After that victory, I went to bed, woke up at noon half way thawed, and watched the Goonies. Man, I love that movie. I was on sale at Target for $9.99! How could I not by that movie?

Peaks and Valleys

2005-12-15T23:03:00.000-06:00

That’s the theme of today. Peaks and valleys my friends. I woke up this morning in a terrible mood. I could not go to sleep last night for some reason. I was pretty tired because for some reason I could not fall asleep last night. I was lying there all night listening to the movie Goodfellas which probably was not the smartest move on the planet and what probably set my mood for today. There is something to be said for listening to subliminal messages while you sleep. My messages were all about killing and cheating people. That apparently is what sent the tone for today.

Work went aright I guess to day even though I was not in the best of moods. I dealt with a lot of crap and solved a lot of issues. And on top of that the building held a nice little holiday party today and served munchies and egg nog. Man, I love egg nog. The only 2 reasons I go to McDonalds now a days is for a Shamrock or an Egg Nog shake. Egg nog is fantastic and I got my first taste of it today and now I got the fever. Kinda like a wild animal that has not eaten for a few days and smells the wonderful smell of fresh blood. I gotta have it and I gotta have it soon! Grrraaarrrgh! (That’s my hungry wolf sound!)

But that moment was short lived because as soon as I got back up to my office I saw that I got 20 new claims that needed to be addressed right away. We got a big new account that is kinda specialized so instead of giving it to one of our regular adjuster I gotta handle the losses. So I am getting a crash course in what I used to do 5 years ago. It is kinda nice because I (without tooting my own horn) am a pretty good adjuster and I like doing this stuff. But balancing the load of a half adjuster along with my normal management responsibilities is going to be a little bit of a challenge.

Which leads me right into my next valley. I had a pretty good workout yesterday and was looking forward to today’s lifting session with Timortal but I had some claims to take care of and had to skip my workout for today. I know I know, how can I make this body look any better than the temple that I already sculpted it to be? I’m sorry to disappoint the rest of the crowd, but there are areas that can be improved and I am so on the train to do so. I think I am finally over that “workout hump” to where it is not fun to where you enjoy hitting the gym. Welcome to the gun show people! These biceps are going to kill people!

So after I finished my claim work and feeling bad because I did not get a chance to sculpt my gun today, I decided to try to do something useful and finish my Christmas shopping today. I did a lot of internet shopping yesterday and thought maybe I could get all of this crap done today. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the holiday season and I love the whole act of exchanging gifts with my loved one. But I hate to shop. I hate being in the store and dealing with the crowds and crap. There is something crazy about people in stores. As much as I a sure they are all nice people in their normal lives, when it comes to holiday shopping something unleashes the jungle in everyone and it takes on a kill or be killed attitude. And since I am not used to the normal shopping world, I only know the kill attitude. I know it’s wrong, and I m able to control it for about 20 minutes, but after that, I turn into the Hulk. HULK WANT TO SMASH. HULK SMASH PUNY PEOPLE.

Fortunately, I made my buys and got out of there before anyone got yelled at. But it was close.
I got home watched and ate some dinner and the OC. The show was kinda OK tonight. I have been a little disappointed recently in the show and was really looking forward to a nice one tonight and I think they delivered. I was expecting a cheesy holiday show and while I did predict a lot of the crap that came up, I still did laugh and yell at the TV a few times. That’s how I gauge a show, in a half hour, if they can get a genuine reaction (either a yell or a laugh) 3 times per every half hour, then it is a show worth watching. And the OC delivered on that line tonight. Then a started to watch the Jim Carey movie “Liar Liar“. That right there is some funny shit.

As soon as I got home, I started in with he Captain Morgan’s and lime flavored diet coke in preparation for my weekly radio show. But here comes another valley because Bosk could not figure out the computer tonight and we could not broadcast the show. So here I am, all boozed up and full of wit and humor and no one to project it at. I gotta get a live in girlfriend or a pet or something because I was coming up with some good shit and I had no one to appreciate it. (So depressing…my life.)

But just when I was sunk in another valley my cell phone lit up. It was my buddy Pete and he just called because his wife just had a baby boy. Alexander David Grubbs came into this planet after 26 hours of child birth a little premature at 4lbs 6 ozs. The little guy is going to be in the hospital with his mommy until Sunday, but everyone is healthy and is looking good for the holidays.

Now I’m watching White Men Can’t Jump. Is there a better movie than this? Woody and Wesley at their finest. I just watched the scene when they won the $5,000.00 at the tournament and that is some fantastic shit. I dare you to find a better buddy sports movie that this. “You know I understand drymouthedness and I’ll bring you water instead.” Who could think of better lines that that?

I think I am going to end tonight on that note, and a handful of salted peanuts, and go to bed. GOOD NIGHT PLANET EARTH!

Slanty 54

2005-12-14T12:17:00.000-06:00

Here is a shot of the new orange Urlacher jersey that I bought from JC Penny’s for $40.00. I thought I was getting fantastic bargin until E pointed out to me that the number and name on the back were completely off center. Keep in mind, this picture is a straight on shot.

Well, I guess you get what you pay for. Here are a couple of shots of Pauly and Leigh’s kid Jackson from that same night.

He came dressed in the appropriate blue and orange colors and even stole my Bears hat for a little while. (Good move kid!) One day I’ll teach you the Bear’s Fight Song. And then after that, maybe I’ll teach you how to do the “Baby Bird”!

Another Wave of March Madness

2005-12-12T23:24:00.000-06:00

Warning! This blog entry contains both partial female and male nudity and a lot of cuddling, making out, and love. If you are easily offended by the more hidden parts of the human body and the way people choose to express them then please skip this blog entry and go to church or something.

I had a pretty wild weekend…again. Thursday I met out with a bunch of old work friends and did a lot of boozing and karaoke. On Friday I had my office work party and we did it up there pretty good as well. Each of those nights could be separate entries in themselves but I do not have the time or the memory to recap them. So I am going to focus on the big night out. SATURDAY!

But before I go into the night’s activities, I would not do the story justice without a little background info on our main character for the evening. His name…is Steve March. I met Steve about 4 years ago when he was bartending at a tavern/steak house that LJ used to go to at least 5 nights a week in Milwaukee. Although he no longer works there, we still get to see him every time we trek up to Wisconsin and share a few beverages with him and his wife Kat.

If you had ever seen Steve walking down the street, you would think he is just your average God fearing American male. If you ever met Steve at the supermarket and struck up a conversation with him you would find him to be a wonderful caring man that has a great sense of humor. If you ever met Steve at a bar after a few drinks, you might discover the one unique aspect that sets him apart from most. He loves to show people his penis.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been at a bar, just minding my own business, and have Steve come up to me with a straight face and very quickly motion for me to look down. If someone motions for me to look somewhere, habit just makes me do it and I normally get a look at some new creation that he has discovered that he could bend his penis into. Before I have even heard of that Puppetry of the Penis show, I already knew what the “Baby Bird”, “Wristwatch”, and the “Hamburger” were all about. And what makes it even funnier is that Steve is not a “large” man by any means. He is just a normal fella who is really proud of his penis and wants to share it with the world.

That being said, a few weeks ago, Steve’s wife Kat surprised him with tickets to the Puppetry of the Penis show and they invited the rest of us up to Milwaukee for the event. So E, Candi, and I all said good bye to Snoop Dogg for the evening and met Steve, Kat, and their friends Tony and Lisa over and LJ and Jamie’s place for a few pre show beverages. All of the males with the exception of Steve were a little hesitant to be going to this performance sober. Steve was as excited as puppy in a pound when a little kid comes to pick out a dog.

We all hopped in a cab and all went over to the theater and Steve was able to get us third row center seats for the big show. After sitting through a painful opening comedic act, it was time for the show.

Two gay looking men in capes came out. The one who was obviously flaming gay looked a lot like Tom Green. (It could have been him; does anyone know what he is up to these days?) The other one looked just like Cuba Gooding Jr. Unfortunately, not the one from Boyz in the Hood. He looked like the one from that gay cruise line movie that he made that I don’t think anyone in America saw. After a little witty dialogue and a lot of penis jokes, the capes came off and the show began.

Now these guys did not look all that impressive just standing there, but they were able to pull and twist that thing into…I don’t even know. I can not even describe it. But is wasn’t just their penis they did things with. They were working their testies and sacks and doing things that I don’t even want to think about anymore. I thought I was fully prepared for the show after knowing Steve for a few years. It was like making the switch from watching college football and then the NFL. Even Steve was impressed because he could not stop yelling his appreciation for every new trick that he saw and made a mental note of for future shows.

Steve was so excited and yelled so much, he got to go up on stage two different times during the show. The first time he got to assist in a trick. I don’t know how to really describe it, and the performers did take a Polaroid of the trick that I do have in my possession. However, I do not have a scanner and I refuse to use the one at work because the last thing I need in my career is to get caught scanning a bunch of photos of naked men. But in the photo you can clearly see Steve in the back with his clothes assisting Tom Green in doing a hand stand completely nude. I think they thought that they would embarrass Steve to the degree that he would stop yelling during the show. But they don’t know Steve. And when phase one of their plan backfired, they decided to launch phase two and pull him and another poor soul on stage for a lesson in how to do this puppetry.

Now, the other guy reacted like 99.999% of the people on this planet and was extremely nervous and scared to do anything. Steve immediately dropped his pants and launched into his own routine in front of the entire crowd. He spun around and yelled “HAMBURGER!” to the crowd who all cheered him on and then countered with the “EIFFEL TOWER!” and then moved right into the “LOCK NESS MONSTER!” Steve had everyone on the floor! He stole the show away from Tom Green and Cuba and did a speed 6 move routine before they pushed him off the stage to a standing ovation from the crowd.

After the show, Steve got to sign a lot of autographs and a lot of boobs from new fans in the crowd. To counter everything, Kat got her boobs signed by the “pros” and make them feel good about themselves. It was a nice gesture seeing how her husband just punked their sorry asses!

Ahh, so where do you go from there? Well, if you are Steve and just showed off your balls to several hundred strangers, you take your 8 drunken goofball friends to your office holiday party and continue to booze for free! So we arrive at this really nice looking bar and there are about 150 people all dressed up and looking nice and did not see any of our sorry asses coming. Actually, that is not the most accurate statement because we were all pretty well behaved. But I think Steve was still high from his debut that he could not let the show stop for the evening. He decided that the work party needed a little taste of his newly discovered tricks. Now, I don’t really know his work people and if they know and experience Steve to the degree that I get to, but I have to imagine there was a few people who did not fully appreciate the “Sailboat” that they were forced to look at.

The rest of us hung back in the lounge area and drank lots of rum and lots of shots of everything except Jager-Bombs. I just don’t understand how in this day and age a tavern does not carry Red Bull or Jager any more. But we somehow made due with what they had and managed to have a good time until the bar closed down and they kicked us out.

So we moved the party back over to LJ’s place for a few more beverages. Even though he had been performing all night long, Steve still had a little in him and we all got one more performance that evening. I know I am missing a lot of little jokes and funny stuff that happened throughout the night, but Steve definitely stole the show. I am hoping that the rest of my group will write in with their own highlights of the evening.

Entry Under Construction

2005-12-12T12:50:00.000-06:00

I had a pretty memorable weekend...particularly my Saturday night in Milwaukee. I started to write about it, but I want to make sure that I am able to capture the moment properly. I should be able to put the finishing touches on it for tomorrow.

Sharp Dressed Man

2005-12-09T13:29:00.000-06:00

I had a pretty late night last night so I am not feeling very creative today in my blogging. So instead of trying to come up with something interesting to write, I thought I would just post a photo or two from the past.

I met this man at about 3am in Milwaukee walking through a park on my way back to my buddy’s house after a night on the town. How could you miss this guy? That suit is fantastic! I mean, I have had a few nice suits of my own…

First there was the Duct Tape Suit.

And then there was the Orange Tuxedo. (Please note the white shoes!)

But this guy blows me away. There is no beating this suit. And, of course, you can’t walk around the park at 3am in a suit like this without your ladies with you.

They were all very nice to take some time out to their “peak earning hours” and pose for a shot with me. Now I do not remember doing this, but from the look of the blonde girl and the expression on her face, I might have my hand on her butt.

Mad-Hatters

2005-12-07T21:20:00.000-06:00

Finally…Victory is mine! I finally got to download some of the photos from my post Thanksgiving Day Asshole marathon at E’s place. As you could see, someone made a rule that after every 2 was played we had to put on a new funny looking piece of headgear. (Or in some cases, the headgear only enhanced our own beauty. Beauty that can only be experienced after 2 cases of beer and a half bottle of rum.)

God I love that game! I hope to have some more photos developed in the next few days. I can’t get enough of these.

I’m sorry that I have not been writing too much this week, but work has been pretty bust with all the end of the year stuff happening and me deciding to schedule lots of 4 day weekends to use up all of my remaining “un-carry-overable” vacation time. If you’d like to hear some good insurance stories, I’d be happy to write for days! But until then, I’ll try and do better.

Huh. Right as I was about to post this message, I got a call from JC Penny. Timortal has been giving me some crap about this and convinced me that I should at least go out on a date with this lady, but after this call I think I have got to take a pass. For one, I beleive she is in her 40's and may or may not live in a half-way house. She was a one time bus-washer before she got laid off and took a temp/holiday job at the mall. After I pried this info out of her she got very evasive and would not answer most of my questions directly and I think this could only lead to drama that I do not need.

I gotta get out and meet some more "quality" ladies.

Happy Tuesday

2005-12-06T07:17:00.000-06:00

Ahh, it’s good to be back among the living today.

I took Friday off and met my parents out in Orland Park to do some shopping and have some lunch. While we were at the mall buying myself an Orange Brian Urlacher jersey for Saturday (I’ll get into that later), a salesperson approached me and my father and started talking to me. My dad assumed that I knew who she was and to be honest, I thought I might have met her before and just did not remember her because she was all smiles and talking to me very confidently. So I talked to her for a few minutes, decided that I did not know her, and then walked back to my parents. As I was walking, this girl caught up and started talking with me again. So I talked with her for a few more minutes and then said my good byes and she left. A few minutes later, after I explained to my Dad that I had no idea who she was, she came up to me a third time and asked me to follow her. Apparently, me dressed up in my Bears swishy pants, winter hat and a long sleeve t-shirt real got her juices going and she wanted to go out on a date. Stunned, I gave her my number and we already talked once.

I’m not really too sure I want to go out with this young lady. She was alright looking but she really did give off a kinda creepy vibe. Not because she asked me out, but there was something about her that I really can not put my finger on.

After I got home, I started to work on my Christmas tree. I am doing a Bears theme this year so only Blue, Orange, and White lights and ornaments are going up. Unfortunately, I could not find any orange lights so it looks like I have a Jewish Christmas tree. Does that still count?

On Saturday I headed over to E and Candi’s along with Pauly to meet up with the crew, including Mike and Cori, to have some pre game beverages before attending the U of I college basketball game against Xavier at the United Center. It was a pretty good time. The game was fun but I do not think that the Illini are going to go to far this year. And that might be just as well because E noticed that my Urlacher jersey was completely off center. No wonder the damn thing only cost me $40.00! Those JC Penny Bastards!

After the game we went back to E’s place and met up with Leigh (along with baby Jackson), KW, and Sarah for a few hours and then dove into another game of asshole. This game is becoming a regular part of our drinking routine! Not that I’m complaining about that, but I had better get into a little better drinking shape!

Sunday I met out with E, Steve, and Mike to go and tailgate for the Bears/Packers game. Needless to say, it was pretty damn cold. I believe it hit about 14 degrees, but we toughed it out. Well, they toughed it out and I left them to go and sit in my normal seats while I joined some work friends who got me a skybox ticket on the 25 yard line. Talk about high society. Granted, I am not going to bitch about having those kick ass seats, the view, the free food and booze, or the temperature…but it still was not the same as sitting in my normal seats with the fans and screaming your heads off. Again, never going to bitch about it…

After the game, the plan was to eat some dinner and then hit the town but I was one tired little monkey. I think I passed out on the couch twice before the pizza arrived and then admitted defeat.

Today (Monday) I slept. I woke up at around 11am, had a slice of pizza, and watched the Real World Reunion that I have Tivo’d last week. Man those roommates really hated each other. Normally these reunion shows are pretty lame but I saw a promo where the black guy started ripping on the guy who got beat up and called him out because he thought he was a huge celebrity now. So I watched it and they all just yelled at each other and genuinely do not like each other. I can’t wait until they meet up again on the Real World/Road Rule Challenge…which is coming up soon. I love that show too.

Then I went back to bed. Got up at 5pm and watched the last half of that Lindsey Lohan movie “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” (surprisingly a somewhat entertaining little flick that did not require me to use a lot of brain power) and took a quick nap. Than I got up again and hit the gym. The only productive thing that was accomplished today.

There are a lot of photos to go along with the past few days, but I still have E’s camera therefore he can not download them. I’ll post them hopefully later this week. I’m going to bed. Good night!

I Love Beer

2005-12-02T08:17:00.000-06:00

(This post was written last night but is being posted this morning due to the fact that I passed out before I could get it onto my blog.)

Oh man, I’m pretty drunk right now. I spent most of my day giving year end reviews to people so work pretty much sucked today. I hit the gym with Timortal after work and that bastard work my biceps so much I can not fully straighten my arms. (Pretty soon I am going to have to change my blog photo to one of me in a muscle shirt just like him and the newly engaged Rico) So I really needed a few beverages tonight.

I just got done with my Thursday radio show on the Boskey Radio West Network and now I am watching the end of Freddy vs. Jason with my 10th Icehouse Lite beverage. ( I gotta say, that main chick from this movie, Monica Keena, is pretty dam hot too! I wouldn’t mind grabbing her boob as I walked out of an elevator!) Strangely enough, this movie also has romantic memories for me as well. I can remember being in a hotel with a young lady and we decided to watch a movie on pay per view before we “tried to make a baby” for the first time and she choose this move. Nothing like a little Jason and Freddy to get those juices flowing! (All kidding aside, it was a good night!)

I’m taking tomorrow off in an effort to use all of my “un-savable” vacation time. (I will never understand that policy. Why not just give us 50% of a regular days pay instead of forcing me to take time off that I really do not need? I love claims! I don’t wanna be apart from them! Just kidding!)

Any who, since I will not be at the office tomorrow and will more than likely sleeping in, I thought I had better give out the answers to my Lyrics Quiz. I would like to say that I am very disappointed in E for not getting at least half of these songs. 7 out of 16 is under 50% my friend. You have heard at least 13 of these songs at least 10 times in my company. You might have to repeat this year and not graduate with the rest of your friends Donna Martin.

1) Living On The Edge – Aerosmith
2) The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful – Jimmy Buffett
3) When Will They Shoot? – Ice Cube
4) 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer – George Thorogood
5) Cold Beverage – G-Love and Special Sauce
6) Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen
7) On Holiday – Green Day
8) Love Song – Tesla
9) It’s Tricky – Run DMC
10) Lose Control – Missy Elliott
11) Gold Digger – Kanye West
12) F.I.N.E. – Aerosmith
13) 18 and Life – Skid Row
14) Livin’ On A Prayer – Bon Jovi
15) Hurt – Johnny Cash
16) Tiny Dancer – Elton John

Have a good weekend all!

Mr. Fahrenheit Rules!

2005-12-01T08:09:00.000-06:00

I was listening to some songs that I downloaded onto my work computer yesterday as I was doing some monkey-work and someone came into my office and made fun of me because I was smiling and kinda swaying along to my tunes. After flicking her off, I rationalized me looking like a retard because it was a kick ass rotation of tunes.

But instead of telling you the songs that I was jamming to, I thought I would throw out a quick little Lyrics Quiz. This will be no where as organized or as tricky as one of Boskey’s Lyrics Quizzes, but it was the best I could do while I was doing my monkey work. (I really need an office monkey so that I don’t have to do this crap myself.) And I don’t want it to be hard anyways. I just want to share my good times with the rest of you people.

So, let’s see if you can name the song and the artist from these lyrics of their songs:

1) If Chicken Little tells you that the sky is falling, even if it was would you still come crawling back again? I bet you would my friend.

2) And if it doesn’t work out there’ll never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain.

3) And if you can’t deal with my kill at will, here’s a new gift to get – try my Death Certificate.

4) He said “I don’t know man, ah she kinda funny, you know.” I said “I know, everybody funny, now you funny too.”

5) When I’m fishing let’s keep one thing clear. The baits over there, the brews right here.

6) I'm burning through the skies Yeah! Two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit. I'm traveling at the speed of light.

7) I beg to dream and differ from the hollow times. This is the dawning of the rest of our lives.

8) But don’t you even worry pretty darling, cause I know you’ll find love again.

9) I aint’t lyin’n girls be cryin’ cause I’m on TV. They even bother my poor father cause he’s down with me.

10) I’ve got a cute face, chubby waist, thick legs in shape. Rump shakin both wayz make you do a double take.

11) She was supposed to buy your shorty Tyco with your money. She went to the doctor got lypo with your money. She walking around looking like Michael with you money. Should of got that insured got Geico for your money.

12) I know these hookers down on 42nd street, but ill-gotten booty’s not my style. I’ll take a rain check ‘til I get back on my feet, honey.

13) Tequila in his heartbeat, his veins burn gasoline. It kept his motor running but it never kept him clean.

14) Gina dreams of running away. When she cries in the night Tommy whispers, “Baby it’s okay, someday.”

15) The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything.

16) Piano man, he makes a stand, in the auditorium. Looking on, she sings the songs. The words she knows the tune she hums.

Good luck. (You’re only hints are that these songs are all over the board. A lot are from my high school days, some are from current rap stuff, and I even got some of my karaoke favorites sprinkled in there. Oh, your final hint is that they all ROCK!)

Mr. Manners

2005-11-30T08:52:00.000-06:00

I’m a fan of good manners when it comes to the ladies. Among other gestures of gentleman-hood, I am always one to open doors for them when coming in or out of places and also letting ladies enter and leave the elevators before me.

Now this morning after I parked my car and made my way to the elevator there was this young lady with a box of lord knows what already waiting at the elevator. She had already hit the button to go down and when the doors opened up she got in and even beat me to press the first floor button. As we were going down, I started to think about the door leading out to the street right when you get off the elevator and how to handle that situation. Do I let her get off the elevator first and then let her fend for herself to open the outside door or do I beat her out of the elevator so that I can open the outside door for her?

Next thing you know, the first floor arrives and I make my decision to open the outside door. The elevator doors open and we both make the first step and she gives me a look like I just grabbed one of her boobs. I looked back at her and said something like, “Let me get that door for you” and then made my way to open the outside door. But I did not get a thanks or a smile in return. Not that I was doing this gesture for a reward, but I think she thought that I was a jerk and then trying to make up for it with the second door instead of working on her behalf for the greater good.
Next time, I think I’ll just grab the boob.

Waxing That Big Car In The Sky

2005-11-29T13:00:00.000-06:00

Over the holiday weekend, Pat Morita passed away. Better known as Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid series or the original owner/head cook or Arnold’s on the TV show Happy Days, I was quite shocked to re-learn of this today. (When I did stumble across this info during lunch, I remembered the E and Candi told me about this over the weekend and apparently I was either too drunk or too hung over to retain the knowledge.)

That being said, I wanted to pay tribute to the greatest Sensei of all times with a blog entry. However, The Sports Guy (one of my favorite writers) already beat me to it and did a tribute to him and the Karate Kid trilogy. After reading this, I decided that I could do no better and would let the Sports Guy do the talking for me.

Press release on Morita’s passing:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051125/ap_on_en_mo/obit_morita

The Sports Guy’s Tribute:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/movies/karatekid

Thanks for the memories Pat. I will always “look eye” because of you.

Yes, I'm An Asshole

2005-11-28T08:00:00.000-06:00

Oh man, I have got to start being nicer to my body. Over the past 5 days I have pumped some much food and booze into me I could have supported 15 homeless people for a full month! I have never eaten so much stuffing and turkey and drank so much rum in my life. Well, that’s a dirty lie but it has been quite a while.

My family has a holiday tradition of start the Thanksgiving holiday celebration on Wednesday night. We all grab a few beverages and help my Mom out with the food preparation. That always somehow leads into a marathon card game of Asshole. (For those of you who never went to college or do not participate in card/beverage games, it is one of the best card games in order to get drunk.) We played from about 11pm to 5am the first day before we all collapsed.

I woke up to the sound of food preparation on Thursday and begged my mother for a breakfast beer and turkey leg. I got the beer, but the damn she-devil refused to give out any of the holiday food before its proper time. We then watched a lot of football and even played a little in the back yard before the feast began. And oh what a feast it was!

After dinner, I collapsed on the floor and could not move for about an hour or so while my body battled the expanding mashed potatoes in my belly. Then my uncle called me a Nancy-Boy because I did not have a beer in my hand while I was in my coma. So it was back on! We played Asshole until about 1am and then I crawled into a hole and died.

On Friday I gave my body the first half of the day off. We all watched college football and ate leftovers. Really, the only thing better than the Thanksgiving feast are the leftovers on Friday. And I am a big believer in not reheating anything. So I was really enjoying those cold turkey sandwiches and cold stuffing. (Cold stuffing, but cooked stuffing. One year I made the mistake on Friday and pulled out a pan of uncooked stuffing and took a few bites before I figured out my mistake.)

I left that afternoon still in somewhat bad shape and went over to E’s place for bowling night. For some reason, the league thought that no one had anything better to do that weekend and did not cancel the game. I got to E’s and it looked like everyone was dragging a little bit. So we used a play from the Fig Family playbook, busted out a deck of cards and played about 2 hours of Asshole. After that, we were primed for the game…which we were crushed at. But we got to go home and play another few hours of Asshole before we all passed out.

I woke up on Saturday at around 11am just in time to watch the final 7 episodes of Lost from Season 1 on DVD with E and Candi. It was fantastic. Candi made me breakfast (Egg sandwich, bacon, and tater tots) and I lay on the couch with Snoop Dogg and did not have to drink beer or rum all day long! After the DVDs, I went home and pretty much went to bed.

Yesterday, it was all about the Bears. We won again, but we did not win pretty. After the Bears, it was all about sleeping again. Today I am going to try and get back into this “work” thing and treat my body a little nicer.

Remember the Titans

2005-11-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

Last night was the first night of our playoffs. (Yes, amazingly the Ohmadans were good enough to make the playoffs this season!) We had a 7pm game against the dreaded team Perfect Strangers. They beat us during week 2 of the season by one point and this was also the team that put Timortal out of commission for the season with a broken collar bone. So it was payback time!

We came out firing like gang busters and by the half we were up 14 -0. They had a bunch of big guys pass rushing against us, but out offensive line just dominated the game. I think I had about 7 pancake blocks during the game and we did not give up a sack. We gave up a garbage TD on the last play of the game, but still advanced to the next round.

(That game was for you TIMORTAL!)

Since we won, we had to play in the 8pm slot right after our game against the first place Sickness Atrocious. I did not play against these guys before because I went to a Chicago White Sox playoff game instead (The only playoff game that they lost mind you!) so I did not know what to expect. I was told that we lost 39-12 in our first meeting and that their QB had a scholarship to play QB at Northern, 2 of their WR played WR in college, and 2 of their lineman were college wrestlers. (GULP!)

But this Ohmadan team was either to proud to back away, still high from the first playoff win, or too dumb to know what we were up against because we played the game of our lives. You should have seen our QB Matt. He is average height, white, average speed, with fiery red hair and looked like Michael Vick running the ball out there. Every once in a while I would be blocking and then just see a flash of red zip by me.

At one point in the game the other team was pass rushing with four people and the line could not block everyone. Matt comes up to me and says, "Let your guy through this play. Do not block him." After I asked him if he was serious I remembered this happening in that movie Remember the Titans. Their starting QB was getting punished by the defense so the back up QB, Sunshine, came into the game, told the line not to block because he wanted to take a shot at these guys, and proceded to knock one of the defensive linemen stupid during the play. So when the ball was snapped, I assumed that Matt had a similar plan and I did not block. About a second after the defender ran past me I heard a woman scream. When I turned and looked behind me, the woman was actually Matt running for his life and then sky-hooking the ball about 15 yards on the run right to our WR Vince who made a nice little gain. Not quite as remarkable of a play as they did in the movies, but still pretty damn impressive.

However, even the Ohmadans best effort could not prevail against those bastards and they won the game 21-6. Too bad we lost, but we played great against a great team so we still had our heads high as we ran of to our sponsor tavern.

The victory party involved many a beverage and I did not make it to bed until 2:30 this morning. Thank God I get out at noon for the holiday today. I plan on taking a nap and then partying it up later tonight in the burbs. Then tomorrow is all about turkey, stuffing, and other people playing football.

Have a great holiday!

A Few Good Lunches

2005-11-21T13:42:00.000-06:00

Check out the sandwich I just made myself for lunch. It has turkey, salami, chicken, and cheese with a spattering of spicy mustard. And to top it off, a roasted red pepper! Delicious.

While eating my sandwich along with an Icehouse Lite beverage and some shoestring potato chips, I watched the end of “A Few Good Men”.

There was one thing that always bothered me about that movie. In the big court room scene when Jack Nicholson gives his speech to Tom Cruise he says, “Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg?” Now, he is saying this to Tom Cruise aka Daniel Kaffee who is totaling egging him on. But then he brings Kevin Pollak aka Weinburg into it out of the blue. I’d be like “What the hell did I do?” if I was Pollak. The poor guy was just sitting at the table handing Tom Cruise papers and whispering jokes to Demi Moore whenever he got the chance. Why does Jack have to insult him? That’s not very nice at all.

Oh well, I am going to put in my “Perfect Storm” DVD and try to take a nap.

Have a nice rest of the workday!

It's Monday...And I'm Still At Home!

2005-11-21T09:52:00.000-06:00

Man, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to the office! Oh wait, it was Thursday, but that was the only day! I had to go to a 3 day management seminar last week so I was out of the office Monday thru Wednesday. I went back to the office on Thursday and returned voicemails and emails all day just so that I could take Friday and today off.

I gotta say I really do not miss work at all. Too bad my lotto dreams did not pan out because I really could get used to not working anymore. I can not wait until I get to retire. I think I only have another 30 something years left to go!

Thursday was the second installment of the “Ask Fig” radio show on the Boskey Radio West network and we actually went on for an hour. There were a lot of submitted questions this week and one of them required me calling my parents to get some answers. The show is canceled for this week due to Thanksgiving, but it will be back the following week.

Friday was errand and clean up the condo day. I did not get everything that I wanted to get done, but I made a huge dent in the list and rediscovered something about myself. I hate shopping. I can not stand going to a store and just looking around for stuff. Even if I’m shopping for something that I consider to be cool. I just can’t take it. I think I’d rather have someone punch me in the balls a few times then shop.

I took it easy Friday night because I knew that Saturday was going to be a big night out. I met E and Candi out at Fado’s for dinner and pre-party beverages and then met out the rest of the crew at Lucky Strike for Zaner’s birthday. It was a good time and lots of beverages were consumed. We then went out to some kind of a wine bar that opened up a few weeks ago and ended the evening there. I grabbed a quick post night burrito, jumped in a cab, and then called it a night. No wacky stories that I can recall or any real craziness, just an all around good fun drunken night out.

On only weird thing I guess that came out of Friday night was that every time I go to Fado’s I keep thinking it is going to be this different bar that I used to go to about 4 years ago before I was thrown out by the bouncers for “impersonating a waiter”. There was a table full of girls and (keep in mind I was really drunk) and decided that I really wanted to hit on these girls. But it is really hard to break into a large group of young ladies. So I decided to be their waiter and took their drink orders, went to the bar, got their drinks, delivered them to the table, took their money (because we do not run tabs), and then paid the bar. Now the ladies thought that I worked there and I would work my magic with them for 5-10 minutes every order. And it was working wonderfully if I remember correctly. But the “real staff” got concerned because I think they thought I was keeping the tips and threw my ass out on the street before I could make my move on the ladies. But for the life of me, I can not remember the name of that bar.

On Sunday, my brother-in-law Bart came over to my place to pick up right where I left off for the Bears game. After a few pre-game beverages we made our way over to the game and watched the Chicago Bears man-handle the Carolina Panthers and finally earn some respect in the NFL by beating a winning team and extending our winning streak to 6 games. Obviously, I had a good time at the game and we met out with my buddy Mike afterwards for a little bit of post game tailgating. After that, I was dead. We ate a pizza and I went to bed at around 8pm.

I woke up today at around 9 (13 hours of sleep!) and really do not have too much to do. The reason I have these days off is because my work does not adopt the philosophy of either allowing you to carry over vacation days or paying you for unused days. So if I have any left over, I either have to use them or lose them. So this is the first of three 4-day weekends I have coming up for the rest of this year. I am going to be a very well rested fella for 2006.

Ribiculous

2005-11-16T07:35:00.000-06:00

Yesterday sucked. I had to drive out to the burbs to attend a class, battle traffic, listen to a bunch of people who love to talk just for the sake of talking, battle traffic to get back to the city and find out that my football game was canceled.

The only good things were that I ate a McRib sandwich for lunch and I got to watch “The Office” last night.

Let’s hope today is better.

Amazing Grace

2005-11-14T21:03:00.000-06:00

Well, I did not win the stupid lottery. Crap. Crap. Double Crap.

This weekend was pretty fun. I left work and headed over to E’s place for some pre-bowling beverages. We talked about a local story where the victim has turned into the idiot. There was a woman here in the Chicago land area that was a victim of a mugging. The mugger was trying to steal this woman’s ring and in the process completely tore off the woman’s left pinky finger. (And no, it is pure coincidence that this week’s survey question talked about exchanging pinky fingers for money.) So after the thug was caught and processed for his criminal actions she filed a suit against him in civil court because her injury prevents her from working and living a normal life.

On one hand, I don’t have a problem against her going overboard and try and make that goon pay for as much as she can possibly get. But the insurance adjuster in me is so sick of people making these wild accusations about minor injuries. Not only does it make it that much harder to people with legitimate injuries to collect a fair settlement but it inflates the premiums for everyone that needs insurance. (Sorry, I’ll get off my claims soap box.)

But since I am a man of science, I decided to test this theory. So, as you can see from the artsy black and white photo below, for the rest of the night I taped my left pinky finger to the palm of my hand and would not use it for the rest of the night. Let’s see if this truly prohibited me from functioning in my normal day to day life.

My beer consumption abilities or speed was not affected by the use of only nine fingers. However, my abilities to rock out in the car to Aerosmith tunes was affected because I could not make the “devil’s horns” sign without the use of my pinky. And while it did not occur that night, I am supposing I would be negatively affected if I ever wanted to make a “Hook’em Horns” sign at a Texas football game or signal “Hang Loose” to any Hawaiians. But other than that, there were no other negatives to only having 9 fingers.

I wish I could blame this experiment on my bowling performance, but I can not. I have to blame Grace. Grace was on the other team Friday night and got into my skull from the first minute. Besides that fact that she bowled about a 135 every game, she messed with my head every minute she got. There were several times that she pinched my butt (I’m not kidding), she lifted her shirt and flashed me (I wish I was kidding), and explained in great detail the art of the “69”. I even found out that there is a way to utilize a second woman in the 69 situation, although we both agreed that it officially would not be a 69 anymore. I guess it would be more along the lines of a 696. Whatever the name, you can see how my brain was not on bowling anymore.
It took many Jager Bombs to get back to normal and then the night proceeded as usual. We all got back to E’s place and apparently we thought it was a good idea to bust out the champaign at 2am. I think this is what killed me the next day because I wok up on the couch and my stomach was in knots. Apparently…

Miller Lite + Captain Morgan + Jager + Red Bull + Champaign = Pain.

So I got up at around 8am in great pain and drove myself back to my place and proceeded to sleep and drink juice and nap and eat and nap and drink lemonade and then go to bed. I wanted to watch the rest of season 1 of Lost, but the Lovejoy brothers gave me the royal screw job and it looks like I have to wait another week before I can move onto season 2. Thanks a lot guys! I thought we were friends!

The next day Jon came over and we went to the Bears game. During the few minutes I was awake on Saturday; we discussed and decided against tailgating before the game. The best decision ever! Especially since there were winds going as hard as 45mph. When I got up on Sunday, my poor gas grill, smoker, chairs, and cooler were blown over and into the east corner of my balcony. Thankfully, the propane tank did not explode in my sleep because I don’t know if I would have gotten up to battle the blaze or flee for my life. I was very tired.

The game was in general pretty boring because of the wind. Both of the QBs combined passed for under 100 yards and it was pretty much a running /defensive game. The best part of the game, besides the win, was that Nathan Vasher set an NFL record by returning a missed field goal attempt 108 yards for a TD. Go Bears!

After that win, I went home, ate some dinner, and went to bed again. I woke up this morning and checked my calendar. Thank goodness I did because I saw that I had another management training class in the suburbs today. No work for me until Thursday! And then I took Friday off just for the hell of it so this is a 1 day work week for me! I just hope I do not meet another girl that likes to throw up at this seminar.

Lotto Fever

2005-11-12T21:52:00.000-06:00

Its lotto fever over here as the Mega Millions jackpot has reached $262 million this week. My entire office has chipped in to go into some tickets together and I have also purchased a few tickets for myself in hopes of winning the prize and not having to share with anyone.

The main reason that I always contribute to the office lotto fund is because I am so afraid the one time that I do not contribute they will win. I don’t think I could bear the sight of my entire office quitting and becoming financially independent and leaving me here alone in the office to work by myself. I honestly think I would have to break the window in my office and jump from the 29th floor.

But that does not matter, because my individual ticket is going to win it all alone and the entire prize will be mine. I have already got all of the money spoken for. Here is my game plan.

First of all, when you win $262 million dollars in the lottery, you really do not win that much. First you have the option of collecting the money in one lump sum or getting installments of it paid to you annually over a period of time. If you get it lump sum, they actually only pay you 51% of the prize. (What a jip!) Even though it is less money, I plan on taking all of mine up front. There is no telling what those damn greedy bastards would be doing with my money if I let them hold it for me. And of course, Uncle Sam has got to get paid too! So take out another 28% for federal and state taxes and the final take home amount comes to $96.2 million.

Not too shabby, but still, a far cry from $262 million!

So, after I collect my check and deposit it into the bank I start my plan. The first thing I do is send out invitations to my family and closest friends for a Bill Paying Party that will be held at some local bar that I will rent out one week after I collect my winnings. During this party, which will have an open bar and be catered, my guests will be allowed to present and bill or debt that they have incurred that is dated before the lottery drawing and I will pay it in full. Mortgages, car loans, student loans, electric bills, cell phone bills. I don’t care how big or small it is as long as it has their name on it and the debt predates my winning. (If I don’t say that, then I know Jon is going to run out and buy something huge and expect me to pay for it.) That is my gift to all of the people that are close to me. We all get a fresh financial start and owe no one anything.

So let’s say I invite 30 people to this and have to clear up 30 sets of debts. Let’s assume that they have a mortgage ($250-$500K), car loan ($15-30K), student loan (I never had one but I’ll guess it being somewhere between $20-50K), misc. living expenses like utilities ($500-$2K), credit cards ($2-20K), and then God knows what else ($20K). So you figure that every guest is going to present anywhere between $300-$625K. And that is assuming that all of these people own a home, car, and have all of these other associated debts. So let’s use the number $500K person. My gift to my closest friends and family will cost me $15 million.

In addition to this, I will give each of my parents, my sister, and my brother $2 million each. I will also give a few of my closest friends $1 million each. (Let’s guess and say that 5 people fall into this category) This gift will cost me $13 million.

I still have a little over $68 million left over and did something wonderful for my loved ones. I’m still in pretty good shape!

Now let’s talk about me. The first thing I am going to do after I take care of the above portion of the plan is to quit the J-O-B. Nothing crazy or dramatic, but walking into work and giving my resignation without having to worry about another job or how I am going to make ends meet will be a fantastic experience. Hell, I’ll even give 2 weeks notice just so that I can interact with all of the people and clients as a person who really does not give a crap anymore.

After that, then I am out of here for a while. I am going to buy a kick ass laptop, kick ass camera, kick ass cell phone and then jump on a plane and do some traveling. Other than that I am only going to bring 1 bag of stuff with me and I’ll keep it nice and relaxed and just fly wherever I want every week and do whatever I want to do. If I want to go to a fancy restaurant I’ll by a nice suit and go. If I want to fly a buddy over to Rome to do whatever the hell is out there in Rome, then that’s what I’ll do. With airfare, hotels, meals, supplies, food, booze, and whatever else I can find I think I could have a pretty good 6 month adventure for under $3 million.

Now that I got all that out of my system, it’s back to Chicago and time to buy a new place. God bless the condo that I own right now, but I’ll need to do a little bit of an upgrade. (I’ll still hang onto the old pad. I’ll find a use for her!) I’ll get a little nutty in furnishing the new pad and also have to buy some new clothes and a few new cars. Let’s guess and say I can get all of this done for $10 million.

The last luxury that I would indulge in would be to buy a skybox at Soldier Field. I have no idea what this will cost. I called Halas Hall today and they would not connect me to anyone that could give me a straight answer. But after looking online it looks like it will run me about $100K a season. A small price to pay to ensure that I, along with my loved ones, will get to see the Chicago Bears play at least 10 times a season.

So, after all of this, I still have $55 million left over. If I take 5 million and have that as my “mad money” then I can put the other $50 million in the bank earning 2.7% interest. This comes to $1.35 million a year for just letting it sit in the bank. I’m sure that I could find something a little more profitable but not risky at all such as a CD that would yield 3.9% making me $1.95 million a year or even an I-bond that would yield 5.7% making $2.85 million a year. E said that there are some very safe mutual funds that would earn 10%/$5 million, but that would be the theme, very safe investing.

And there you go. I would have to figure out a way to live on $5 million a year doing whatever I got to do to entertain myself for the rest of my life. I’m pretty sure I could make that work. Now, all I have to do is win!

Sex Panthers Unite!

2005-11-11T12:00:00.000-06:00

ARRRRGH! I have filled up my first pirate boat! Check out this glorious crew:

Myself aka Cap’n Quincy Halkbill
Jon aka Straight Forty Sippa (View From The Middle)
Richie aka 1st Mate Scuttlebutt Rhinoballs (El Case Del Rico)
Klem aka Pablo Bloodbucket
Tiffany aka Shakira Cannonballs (What Am I Thinking)
Bea aka Jean Leadfoot (Bea)

Our pirate gang will be called the “Sex Panthers”, our boat will be christened “The Murder’s Whore” (That sounds so cool!), and since Tiffany already has it our official mark will a red pirate flag tattoo. And most importantly, our monkey’s name will be Brutus. I’ll get our cool personalized windbreaker jackets made up soon and hand them out at the first scheduled meeting. All members of the dreaded Sex Panther organization should attend this meeting and bring some kind of snack to share. (I am going to bring pigs in a blanket. It’s very tastey!) Topics that we will need to discuss will include our practice schedule, getting our tattoos, funds for getting another boat to expand our gang (I suggest we hold a car wash), and monkey care/training/sensitivity classes.

Well, last night was the premiere of the “ASK FIG” radio show on Boskey Radio West. If you happened to be one of the few who missed it or if you loved it so much that you want to hear it over and over again, I am attaching the link of the program.

www.boskey.net/radio/askfig/askfig.htm

It was pretty funny, we had almost 10 people tune into the show and we actually had a caller with a question! I love helping people. We will have another show on Thursday at 9pm CST.

I am so happy that it is the end of the week. I am going bowling tonight and I am sure there will be another all night booze-a-thon until the break of dawn. I’ll probably wake up at E’s place in the morning and will head my way back home and do nothing for the rest of the day. I am so excited about that! I am going to the Bears game on Sunday so Saturday is marked as my relaxation day.

Have a good weekend.

I Got The Monkey Covered!

2005-11-10T08:02:00.000-06:00

So you wanna be a pirate. There are a few things that we’ll have to get squared away:

First we need to name the pirate gang. I have no idea about this, but it needs to be tough and old school. Once we get that straight, then we can work on individual names. For our gang, everyone must generate their name from http://www.gangstaname.com/. It appears that my name will be Cap’n Quincy Hawkbill. These names are very necessary so that the government can not track us down and use our family and assets against us. (Right now my assets consist of 4/5 of a 2002 Ford Explorer, about 1/130th of a condo, and a very comfortable leather couch and loveseat.)

The next step will be to rename Jon’s boat. For some reason, “Bubbleworld” is not a name that will strike fear into the hearts of others. (“Look out! It’s Bubbleworld!” See, its no good.) The website http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ gave several good suggestions. Here are a few of the ones that I liked:

Murderer’s Whore (I like this one!)
The Cursed Deceit
The Disgraceful Doom of the North
The Fallen Serpent
Satan’s Insanity (I like this one too!)
The Lustful Devil
The Damned Damnation
The Deceitful Strumpet

The next step will be to decide on our colors. E has already done a lot or research on pirate flags and he stated that a red skull and cross bones flag was for the toughest pirates that showed no mercy. No, our pirate gang is not going to kill anyone…we just want to take their stuff so that we don’t have to work anymore. But we should advertise tough so that we will be feared and not meet a lot of resistance. Kind of like those people that but those home security stickers on the windows of their homes when they don’t really have kind of security in place. But we still need some kind of colors to be able to identify ourselves once we grow big. Or we can do tattoos! I’ve always wanted a cool tattoo! I’ll leave that up to the gang. We’ll vote!

Finally, we need a mascot. I am voting for a monkey instead of a parrot. They are a lot more fun and can actually do stuff except for talk. And that really is not a big deal because we can teach the monkey how to do sign language just like Virgil the Monkey did in that one Mathew Broderick movie. And we can still get a little monkey so that it can sit on our shoulders when we are trying to scare people. That would be sweet. Also, that that Mathew Broderick movie the monkeys were being trained to fly airplanes for the air force. Maybe we could train our monkey to drive the boat so that we can have another human to work a grenade launcher! Or maybe we can have the monkey work the machine gun or something! The possibilities are endless. So now we need to figure out a name for the monkey.

(Argh, I think I might have already purchased the monkey last night. I went out with some clients for dinner and drinks and there were a lot of beverages and cigars consumed. I must have purchased the monkey because when I woke up this morning I believe it pooped in my mouth as I was sleeping. Cigars are a wonderful thing as you are smoking them but the worst the next day.)

So, if you would like to apply for membership into my pirate gang, please submit the following:

1) Your pirate name.
2) Suggestion for name of the gang.
3) Suggestion for name of the boat.
4) Suggested colors/tattoo.
5) Suggested name for the monkey.
6) Dates available for pirating/looting.

I hope there is a large response to this. I really do not want to go through my end of year review at my job. I’d love to march in to my office one day in the not too distant future, with the monkey, and declare my independence to the world!

Wishing for the Starboard Bow

2005-11-09T07:00:00.000-06:00

Argh! What a game last night! My flag football team The Ohmadans went into our game last night riding an amazing 1 game winning streak and the offense came out firing! We scored on 2 of our 3 first drives and going into the half it looked like we were unstoppable. But the other team rallied and actually managed to tie the score late in the 4th quarter. Despite a fantastic final drive, we were not able to put any more points on the board and the game resulted in a tie. Well, at least a tie is not a loss and we will have a little momentum going into the playoffs next week.

Earlier this week, both E and Dasi (from Harried but not Hopeless) forwarded me links concerning a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia on Saturday. Apparently, Somalia does not have a navy and is asking other countries to help them protect their coast. However, other governments have stated they will provide protection up into 150 miles of the coast. Everything from that spot in is Thunder Dome.

So why not attack? There have been about 2 dozen pirate related attacks in this area since March of this year. This most recent one made the most headlines because it was the first attempt on a large commercial cruise liner. Most of the other attacks were on vessels that mainly carried cargo as opposed to tourists.

Now before anyone gets upset with me let me say that I am against killing people and I am against terrorist activities. However, as I sit here at my desk at work answering hundreds of phone calls from slack-jawed idiots about their insurance claims and ramming my head into the wall coping with “normal” day to day office politics, there is something romantic and fascinating about the pirate way of life.

Live to have fun. Take what you need to survive. Drink lots of rum.

That sounds like the life for me. (Yo ho!)

I think Bodie from the movie Point Break might have said it best when he was telling the rest of the Ex-Presidents “We stand for something to those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins.” Corporate America does have us all by the balls and if you want any kind of “quality” life style you have to play by their rules.

Or do you?

I am always talking to my friends about our way out. Right now it is to open a bar or restaurant together, but maybe these modern day pirates have shown us another option. I did quite a bit of looking online to see if these pirates had a website or contact number so I could find out how to submit my resume to join them. But I could not find anything. The more I think about it, maybe we should take my buddy Jon’s (View From the Middle) boat that he is trying to sell and form our own pirate gang. (Is it a gang?) We’ll have to start practicing on Lake Michigan and accumulate some weapons. But once we get good, we’ll set off for the Indian Ocean (I’m not sure what the best route would be. I’ll Mapquest it later) and we’ll try to snag our own piece of the black market.

Does anyone else out there want to join my Pirate gang? I’ll get into the specifics tomorrow.

A Love Line of My Own!

2005-11-08T00:15:00.000-06:00

I might be either the smartest or the luckiest man alive! First of all, my fantasy football team “The Sex Panthers” was up 3 points going into last night’s football game. The 3rd place team had Adam Vinatieri from New England still playing for him and I was pretty much resolved to losing this week. But both my team and the Indianapolis Colts held strong and I wound up tying the game. I know it is not a win, but I’ll take a tie when it should have been a loss any day of the week.

Also, I’ve had a pretty positive response to the advice I have been giving out on my blog. So much that I have been asked to host a half hour internet talk show! So this Thursday night at 9pm CST, “ASK FIG” will make it’s premiere on Boskey Radio West (please see the link on my blog) and will have a half hour every week to help America tackle any issue from politics to football, fashion to celebrity gossip, and from decorating to dirty dirty sex! (I love that stuff!) If you would like to listen click on the link and if you would like to call in the number is 708-231-0872.

I’ve been trying to think of some good theme music for the show, but I could not come up with anything good. I know I have asked people before in a sporting event setting (like going up to bat or entering a boxing ring) what would you like your theme music to be. I think I would have to go with either “Jump Around” by the House of Pain or “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. But for a radio talk show, I did not think that either of those would be appropriate. Any suggestions?

Oh, and by the way! I am almost done with the first season of “Lost” and DAMN that show is good. I saw the first 16 episodes and I am waiting from my buddy LJ to send me the final 8 on DVD. Once I see those, then I can finally move onto season two and then clean up the backlog on my Tivo. I really am digging this show but I am getting a little pissed off because they moved away from that monster/T-Rex thing that was freaking everyone out in the first few episodes. I don’t know if Scooby and Shaggy had already solved this mystery on the episodes that I have not seen yet, but I really hope they get back to that…and I hope that it is not something stupid.

Tonight is also the last night of National Fig Week. To celebrate, I am going to go and play flag football and hopefully our team will be able to go on its first 2 game winning steak ever. Who an I kidding? If we win tonight it will be our second win ever! And last time we won, there were a whole lot of free whiskey shots given out by our sponsor tavern. Although I hate whiskey, it would be a fitting way to end the week.

GO OHMADANS!

The Phone Book

2005-11-07T12:15:00.000-06:00

From the last poll that I took, I had a few people question me about the “phone book” reference that was made.

A few years ago, E, Candi, and I...along with a several other people that I can not remember at the moment, were down at the University of Illinois for the weekend. (This is back when the Chicago Bears had to play all of their home games at U of I when they were building our new stadium. We rented a furnished apartment on campus to use as our home for that semester and were down there almost every weekend watching either the Bears or the Illini.) We were at a bar sipping on some beverages and somehow the phone book came up.

I was listening to the radio sometime before that and I heard that if you are a cop or anyone else who would like to beat the crap out of someone and not leave any marks that you should use a phone book. You place the phone book on the body of the person you are trying to beat the crap out of and then punch the phone book. In theory, the target should still feel the pain from the strike but they will not bruise up from it.

Even several years ago, E and I were still men of science. So this theory needed to be tested. The next time the waitress came around I said, “Can we get another pitcher of beer, 5 Irish Car Bombs, and a phone book please?” (Please keep in mind that this was before we knew anything about Jager-Bombs so we had to do the Irish Car Bombs.) After a lot of convincing to the waitress that we were not kidding around and really wanted a phone book she brought us our order. After the round of Car Bombs, E and I got up from the table and the experiment began.

E placed the phone book on my right shoulder blade and punched me as hard as he could. BLAM-O! Then I got to put the phone book on his left shoulder blade and socked him. KA-POW! (Wow, just like a Batman show!) Both of us acknowledged taking a good hit (and they must have been because pretty much the whole bar stopped what they were doing to watch the two drunk idiots punching each other with the aide of the Yellow Pages.) and feeling the pain and the next day there were no bruises to be found.

(I just emailed E and he is going to look for those photos.)

So keep that in mind the next time you are sitting around the house and someone says that they need to “look up a telephone number”…you might be close to getting an ass-kicking!

TGIF

2005-11-04T11:19:00.000-06:00

To celebrate day 3 of National Fig Week, I took out a young lady that I met on Friday night. As you can see here in this photograph that appears to be of Candi, it you look over to the right of her you can see me working on a young blonde woman off in the distance. (That E and Candi are so tricky!)
All went well…and when I say that I mean that there was no vomit involved and she actually stuck around for the duration of the date. All positive signs. It was a good time and we are going to see each other again this weekend.

Only one glaring problem…she hates football with a passion. Hmmm, this might cause some problems.

Oh well, on to day 4 of the Fig Week Celebration. Friday could not of come any sooner. This week, although it has been a good one, has been dragging on forever and I could really use this weekend. It looks like E, Candi and I are hitting the pool halls tonight and might enjoy a couple of beverages. I'm sure there might be a few more opportunities for beverages at other points in the weekend as well!

You all have a good weekend and keep rocking!

Happy Fig Week

2005-11-03T08:00:00.000-06:00

Its day 3 of NATIONAL FIG WEEK!

Keep on rocking!

GO OHMADANS!

2005-11-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

Ah, yesterday was a fantastic day. Woke up feeling refreshed, went to the J-O-B and got a lot done without a lot of hassles throughout the day. Went home and took a quick little nap and then talked to a young lady that I met over the weekend and set up a date for Thursday. (Not Pukey Brewster, I have not heard from her since…the incident.)

Then later that night I went to football. While we were warming up we were sizing up the other team and it looked like our losing streak (going on 2 years now) was going to be safe. But for some reason, every member of Team Ohmadans (Gallic for “Idiots”) played the game of their lives and we brought home our first victory ever! GO OHMADANS!

What could have possibly inspired us to play like that? I was not sure until this morning when my friend Kim sent me an email letting me know that yesterday was the first day of National Fig Week! She remembered how mad I got when no one told me about National Talk Like A Pirate Day and wanted to make sure that I did not miss out on my own special week. Here is what the website she found said:

“A congressionally proclaimed holiday consisting of wild, drunken, street parties where women are implored to display their breasts in exchange for shiny, plastic beads. This holiday is a week long event and is typically the first week in November.
National Fig Week is observed by bank closures, abnormally low atmospheric pressures, and unprecedented fig consumption (approximately 80% of the world fig production is consumed during the orgiastic week.
There has been much conflict, bordering on armed insurrection, that Figs get an entire week of commemoration (with breasts) compared to a mere day for sweet potatoes. Pro-Figgists argue that if National Candy Corn Day is merely the day before Halloween then the sweet potato lobby should be satisfied with that. Anti-Figgists argue similarly that as figs and potatoes are both grown (whereas candy corn is a manufactured confection and not a variant of the maize plant) that figs and sweet potatoes ought be on more equal footing.”

So I am chalking up our victory last night to Fig Week and I encourage everyone to celebrate properly. We did last night. Apparently, our QB is a huge whiskey fan and had a lot of fun buying rounds for everyone. Personally, I hate the stuff. But how can you turn down a beverage? After a few Jim Beams and a few Jamesons…I feel like garbage. I can tell that today I am going to be absolutely worthless. If I can keep my head up and not lean it on the desk, I am declaring today a victory as well.

Happy Fig Week everyone!

ASK FIG!

2005-11-01T12:03:00.000-06:00

Dear Fig,

I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life and I’m trying to stop the madness, but there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. Will your head blow up if you eat pop rocks and drink a coke? I think it’s time for an ask Fig experiment. What do you think? Maybe Flat Stanley should go too. Best regards,
Finally Confused About Something Other Than Sexuality

I have heard of this Urban Legend but I wanted to make sure that we had all of the facts straight. So I pulled the following from WiseGeek.Com:

“Other famous urban legends include the demise of John Gilchrist, better known as Mikey from the Life cereal commercials. He was said to have died from swallowing a bag of Pop Rocks candy, followed with a soda, causing his stomach to explode. Variations on the story attributed the death-by-Pop-Rocks urban legend to random kids far and wide. Pop Rocks, made by General Foods at the time, contained carbonation so that when placed on the tongue they produced a sizzling effect. Unfortunately, General Foods was no match for the powerful urban legend that had housewives, and even schools in an uproar over safety, even though the company sent a representative on the road to explain the candy was safe. General Foods eventually took Pop Rocks off the market for no other reason than the myths that had fueled public discontent about nonexistent dangers. (The candy was later made available by another company under a new name, and is now available again as Pop Rocks by Chupa Chups, however, unfounded concerns persist in the public to this day.)”

So, do we trust “The Man” and believe everything that he tells us? Or should we find out ourselves? Myself, being a man of science, think we should give it a test.

The first step was to get a control group in order to conduct the experiment on. My control group consisted of 3 Lovejoys: E, LJ, and Candi. All 3 were supplied with a bag of Pop Rocks and their choice of either regular or diet Coke. We all apparently decided to dress in jeans and a grey shirt as well.

Lovejoy Test #1: Project E

Everything started out alright during this test, but I believe he tried to consume the mixture to quickly as he had to run over to the sink for fear that he would spew the experiment all over his newly purchased kitchen. He did manage to keep it all in and eventually was able to swallow it. After several minutes of monitoring, nothing exploded. However, he did note an increased intensity of explosions in his mouth and against his teeth apparently due to the addition of the diet Coke. Not enough to kill a man, but an elevation none the less.

Lovejoy Test #2: Project Candi

Candi was able to contain the mixture a lot better than the first subject, but I believe this containment increased the intensity of the popping because her facial expressions showed that she was in a lot more discomfort. She was able to ingest the mixture and also experienced no internal organ damage. (Other than her liver which is already ruined…but not from this experiment.)

Lovejoy Test #3: Project LJ

LJ seemed to savor this experiment because he by far took the longest to complete the task and had an almost sensual look on his face as he was completing this task. Very reminiscent to Bill Murray going to see the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. (I do not know what this sick bastard does when he is up in Milwaukee alone and I do not want to know.) After savoring every minute possible, he was able to consume the mixture and held it down with no abnormal affects.

Bonus Lovejoy Test: Project Snoop Dogg

In all of the excitement in our pursuit of science and knowledge, no one noticed that we spilled some of the Pop Rocks on the floor and Snoop Dogg dove on them and ate them. While he did not have any Coke to go along with it, the popping sensation was enough to throw Snoop into a panic and he had to be held and calmed until the Pop Rocks wore off. There were no permanent side effects noted to Snoop Dogg and his napping abilities are still at a high level.

So after 3 humans and a dog, we were able to dispel the urban legend and give our stamp of approval and safety concerning the mixture of these two wonderful treats. Now, what happens if we step it up a notch?

Bonus Test: Project Fig

Coke my ass! What good is a coke product if you can not add a little rum with it? I also threw in another twist to the experiment and decided to ingest the mixture “Jager-Bomb” style instead of separately pouring them into my mouth. The Pop Rocks clumped together when mixed in the drink and I had to spoon them out of the glass, but once inside my mouth I did experience the sensation that everyone else had. Since I finished the entire original beverage trying to get the Pop Rocks in my mouth, I had to swallow everything down with a little help from my friends at the Miller Lite company. Everything stayed down and there were no negative side effects.

Well, I believe we have disproved that myth. Any more Brain-Busters?

Keep On Keeping On

2005-10-27T23:03:00.000-05:00

I love naps. I got home from work today, did a couple of chores, ate dinner, and then sat down on the couch with a rum and cream soda beverage all ready to watch Survivor. But as the opening credits came on I closed my eyes and it felt fantastic. Since I was Tivoing the show anyways, I decided to shut my eyes for a few minutes and the next thing I knew it was 30 minutes later. So I shut them again with a smile and a sip from my beverage and another hour slipped by. Now I am refreshed for my show and the rest of my evening.

I’ve been a little off this week with all of the Chicago White Sox activities going on and all of the accompanying boozing that goes with it. God bless those kids, but I am glad it is over. I’m not sure how much more my liver could have taken.

Speaking of livers, mine is going to probably going to fail after this weekend. LJ is coming down from Milwaukee this weekend and we are going to take him on his first bowling league experience with E and Candi which will lead to a long night of boozing. Then I promised KW that I would play football on his team Saturday morning and he is actually going to come and pick me up so there is no way that I can not show up. After football, of course, will be beverages with the team. Then on Sunday I will be off to Jon’s place for a football/his daughter’s 4th birthday party…which of course will have booze. (What good 4 year old B-Day party does not have an Irish Car Bomb or two mixed in?)

By the way, what do you get for a 3 year old girl? I have all nephews and have no problems in getting them gifts, but I have no real idea what a girl would want. Any suggestions? Last year I got her some of the Disney Princess Dolls which were just like Barbie dolls but were of the Little Mermaid and Jasmine. Those went over pretty well but I am at a loss for this year.

I had a lot of reaction from my Pukey Brewster entry earlier this week and I want to thank everyone for their input. As an update, I have not called her and have not heard from her as well. I think I am going to let sleeping dogs lie and let this be the end of another chapter in my dating life. Recently, this book is looking more like a comic book than any form of best selling novel but I’m sure there will be a happy ending. It might take a few more chapters, but hey…that’s all part of the fun. I think. And to answer a few of your concerns:

Yes Bea, I did pay for most of the drinks. I think she paid for 2 rounds of beer but I took care of the rest.

Yes EJ, there were a few Jager Bombs consumed that evening. Since it was a first date I really tried to behave myself and I believe we only did like 3 rounds. That’s like getting ready to go to church drinking!

She was alright looking Rico. Worth taking out on a date but also no one that I am going to slam my head into a wall for if there is not a connection.

Anonymous…yes I did eat the food. The problem was that I had to wait until I got the call from her before I could start eating. I did not want to be rude and eat half of the dinner if she was coming back. Once I got the word that she bailed…it was Thunder Dome. The pizza was just OK but the spinach dip was fantastic. The interesting part to this is that I can not remember if I paid for the dinner portion or not. She was the one that ordered the food but I’m pretty sure that she did not pay. We were not running a tab at that bar, so I know that I paid for all of the drinks, but I honestly can not remember paying for the food. It looks like Pukey Brewster claims another victim…other than my heart. (That was pretty lame…but it sounds kinda cool!)

I’m going to finish up tonight by watching Halloween II on cable. I know I have seen the first one a long time ago but I do not remember this one. It’s not too bad. I’m not sure if it is because we are so close to the actual Halloween or if it because I have already seen a few boobs since I have turned it on in the last 20 minutes. (That’s 1 set of boobs every 10 minutes. Not a bad return on my investment.) Oh crap, I got to go. Jamie Lee Curtis just woke up from her coma in the hospital and Michael Myers is not chasing her. Run Jamie Lee, Run!

Have a good weekend and a happy Halloween!

Pukey Brewster

2005-10-24T12:09:00.000-05:00

Another memorable weekend marked off the calendar. On Friday I met out with E and Candi for some dinner and beverages and came home with Snoop Dogg. (Snoop Dogg is their fat beagle. They were going to the U of I game on Saturday and I got to dog sit.) On Saturday, Snoop and I hung out during the afternoon and then I went out on a date that evening. (More on that in a second.) And then Sunday I met Jon out to tailgate for the Bears game. As predicted, the Bears won. And the White Sox won their second game taking a 2 to nothing lead in the World Series!

I’m not going to go into a ton of details on my date Saturday, but I do have to give you a little bit of background and then ask a question. I met this lady out at a tavern and we were enjoying some beverages. We were having a good time, but she was drinking at a pretty good pace throughout the evening. We went to two other bars that evening and right before our food arrived at the final bar she said she was going to go to the washroom. Twenty minutes later I get a call from her saying that she got sick and went home. So, I ate my dinner and left.

So, how do I judge that evening?

Is it a good thing that she felt so comfortable around me that she could drink herself sick or is she just a raging alcoholic? Was she just embarrassed to get sick (maybe got a little puke on her) and did not want me to see her in that condition or was it a brilliant escape on her part?

I need some help here people!

ASK FIG

2005-10-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Wow! The letters are starting to fly in! I tried to write a normal blog entry over the past 2 days but the creative juices were just not flowing. I had to give G back to my parents and work has been a little hectic. I also had to attend a two day seminar on how to become a better salesperson. Only problem is…I’m not in sales! Ahh, the magical corporate world and the things they make me do.

Well, you don’t want to hear my problems, I’m hear to listen to yours! These are actual emails from God knows who:

Dear Fig:
While watching the Karate Kid for the umpteenth time, I always find myself secretly rooting for the Kobra Kai to beat Daniel. I don't view the Kobra Kai as a gang of bullies, but just as the cool kids that everyone wants to be like. Is it wrong to cheer for the kids in black, and hope they make a sequel revolving around the inner workings of the Kobra Kai Dojo, and their rise to dominance. After all, they had to be the underdogs at some point as well? Does this make me twisted???
Down with LaRusso

Well, I’m not sure if you are twisted or not, but it is a theory that I have been exploring for some time. Let’s take a look at the facts.

In the first movie, Danielson moved from New Jersey of to LA with his mother. If you noticed in the opening credits while they were driving away from his NJ home, all of the people who were running behind his Mom’s killer station wagon were either adults or little kids. No one that appeared to be Danielson’s age was seeing him off. This suggests that he had a had no friends his own age on the east coast either and had to be the “cool kid” to a bunch of 5th graders.

He gets to his new LA apartment complex and meets Freddie and lies to him that he is some sort of karate expert in order to hang out with the kid. So Freddie invites him to a beach party where Daniel first runs into Johnny and the rest of the Kobra Kai. Daniel tries to fight Johnny and gets his ass kicked. Granted, Daniel was trying to stick up for Ali when Johnny took and destroyed her sweet boom box. But what business was it of Daniel’s anyway? Johnny asked Ali several times to turn off the boom box while they talked and she refused to do it. No one really knows what happened while they were dating and what caused their break up. Maybe she cheated on him. Maybe she took everyone at school that he has a little penis. The point is that we don’t know…and neither did Danielson. Johnny was not beating her up or anything, so he should backed off.

So Daniel gets his ass kicked a few times and becomes the school’s punching bag/joke. No one wants to be his friend so he goes and hangs out with his apartment complex’s janitor. What happens to Danielson if Miyagi does not know karate? They would be hanging out in that janitor’s closet all day fixing chairs and changing light bulbs.
But, Miyagi does know karate and teaches Danielson to fight and they win the under 18 All Valley Tournament. Does this help Danielson? Nope. In the second movie Ali dumps him, none of the Kobra Kai hangs out with him, and no one from his school becomes his friend. Instead he wrecks his ugly yellow car and then travels with Miyagi to Okinawa for his summer vacation. Is this what you were thinking during your senior year of high school?

And does he have a blast over there? No. He pisses off every person his age, goes to a sock hop, and then gets into another fight. In part three he comes back home and pisses off a whole new crew of people. (Some argue that the third movie does not exist.)
The point is is that at some point you have got to start pointing the finger at everyone else and take a good hard look at yourself. If 98% of the people that you meet either do not want to hang out with you or want to fight you all the time, it’s probably something that you are doing wrong. So go ahead and cheer for Johnny, Bobby, Dutch, and the rest of the gang. They appear to be good kids to me…they were just forced to deal with a retard.

Dear Fig,
It’s no big secret that there is a lot of butt smacking going on in the world of men’s sports, but I have a question. If you score a touchdown in an intramural football game and the quarterback comes up to you and gives you the “right on” butt smack followed immediately by a soft rub, how is one to take that? Is this just a way to show that he’s sincerely proud of you for making the touchdown or is he trying to tell you something more, something that might involve a table for two and a glass of Merlot?
Sincerely,
A little perturbed…

Actually, the reason that ass slapping became prominent in the sports world was a way for coaches to tell how tense a player was. (This is all according to my old high school coach after I saw him leaving a MAMBLA meeting recently.) A coach would give his player a smack on the ass and if it was tight then he was very tense…or really worked out a lot and had a great ass. This action carried over to the players and other homosexuals as a way of congratulating each other in the sporting world.

I play a good number of sports and I have shared many a moment of accomplishment with another male. Never once did I give out a slap on the ass to one of them. (Only on 2 occasions did we celebrate with an open mouth kiss. Both of them were with Steve March. But we are not talking about me.)

Now, the soft rub you make reference to I am assuming is on the butt. Man, I don’t know what to tell you. Were you two looking at each other at the time? Were you holding each other? Did he call you by your name or did he call you “Cuddles”? Did he ask to give you a ride home after the game? Did the coach have a mustache?

I don’t really know what else to say. This is only my 5th letter and apparently I have a huge “struggling with being gay” audience reading this blog. Do you want the slap to mean something or don’t you?

Well, since this is an advice column and you are looking for guidance, I’ll just say to stay out of the competive sports world, buy some leather pants, and just love. All you can do is love. Everything else will just happen. And when you decide to love, make sure to bring your insurance card in case you need to get a shot.

Dear Fig,
Will there be an offensive touchdown in this weeks Bear/Ravens game?

I am amazed by the lack of respect this Chicago Bear Offense is receiving! Right now we are averaging 2.4 offensive TDs a game. That is 16th in the NFL! That’s right baby! The Bears are in the middle of the pack with a 4th round rookie QB leading the offense! A lot of that credit has to go to the offensive line and to Thomas Jones. The Bears offense is 5th in the NFL for rushing TDs and Thomas Jones is 5th in the NFL for average yards rushed per game.

Now if we could only get our passing game on track we’d be burying people on the field. I have faith in Kyle Orton. Not only because he is a scrappy ball player but because the man loves to booze. He is a booze hound! Give him a few more games and he’ll be smelling that end zone like he can smell out a bottle of Jack Daniels.

As for the Ravens, they are screwed. Their once dominate defense (some retards stated it was better than the 1985 Chicago Bears) is now compared to a spaghetti strainer and the offense is terrible. The Bears are going to cross the goal line 3 times win this game 24 to 10. It’s my SHOE IN OF THE WEEK!

If you have any questions or need any form of guidance, don’t be afraid to ASK FIG! Have a good weekend.

ASK FIG!

2005-10-17T22:15:00.000-05:00

Wow, here it is! I finally had a few responses to my “ASK FIG” section of the blog and can issue my first edition. Just so you know, you can submit a question to me about anything at all and I will answer it on my blog. I will not change any portion of your question (unless it uses real names when it probably shouldn’t) and will not identify the questioner unless they sign it at the end of the question.

Let’s do it!

Dear Fig:
Are you a Magic 8-Ball type oracle or simply a sage?

This is a good first question for this segment; just so that everyone can know what they are getting into here. Of the two choices given, I would lean more to the sage-like reference. An oracle is more suggestive of someone with Roman or biblical type abilities to not only share wisdom but also predict the future. (Very similar to the Magic 8-Ball so I will have to give a shout out to our write for making this comparison.) But it should be known that while I do consider myself religious, I only go to church on Christmas Eve and Easter, so I doubt that the good Lord has blessed me with any of his abilities. Also, keep in mind that the Magic 8-Ball is a fraud. (Please refer to http://8ball.ofb.net/procedure.html for support for this statement.)

A Sage, on the other hand, is defined as somebody who is regarded as knowledgeable, wise, and experienced, especially a man of advanced years revered for his wisdom and good judgment. This is me all day long.

Now, depending on how many beverages that I have while answer these emails (right now I am at 4 beers) I might claim to be able to predict the future. And who knows? After a night of Jager-Bombs I am known to get into some pretty deep discussions with E, Candi, and Kathy and I am pretty sure that I have been able to not only solve all of their problems, but the rest of the worlds as well.

I guess we’ll just have to find this out together.

Dear Fig:
If you are in threesome with a girl and another guy, assuming this was the only way you were going to be able to have sex with her, and you “crossed swords” with your friend, how long is the appropriate amount of time to let pass before you can look each other in the eye again and go back to being friends? Please help…
Confused in Chicago

I am assuming that you are a fella and not another lady with any kind of special apparatuses strapped onto your body. I am also assuming that this mishap took place while you fellas were occupying both her front and back door leaving her mouth available for singing or talking on the phone. If my assumptions are correct, then you should be able to give your friend a call right away because you are a gay. I can not understand a fella thinking that he would be able to take part in that position to perform that activity and not think that your balls were going to become one with the other fella.

Don’t get me wrong…I am not dissing the threesome activities at all. But you have to protect yourself from making any type of physical contact with the other male member of the experience. I have heard stories of this from other friends I have had over the years and I even had questioned them talking to each other or “High Fiving” each other after the event. Too creepy for me.

Also please don’t think that I have anything against the homosexual community. God bless them. But I believe in calling a duck a duck. So stop using that poor young lady as your “macho man buffer” and give your buddy call today. Ask him out for a drink and don’t forget to bring him flowers so that he will forgive you for ignoring him after your special night. Hopefully after a lot of meaningful conversation you two will be happy together again, watching musicals and pecker-slapping each other for many years to come.

You might want to send that poor woman an “I’m Sorry” card also. Have fun Nathan Lane!

Dear Fig:
I really like your website. How did you get your photos in your “Ask Fig” section to rotate?

To be honest, I have no idea. I am new to this HTML coding crap and I understand it like a 2 year old understands math. My friend Christine forwarded me some code so that I could try to figure it out myself and after about 3 hours of goofing around with it I gave up and went to the man. Not only is he an IT genius, not only is he my softball coach, not only is he the brother of Dasi and a soon to be father…KW is a man among boys and I can not thank him enough for tweaking my blog site as much as he has. He is also the only guy that can really pull of a full beard and look good doing it. He can work all day long, cook up a nice keesh for the fellas, and then beat you silly in a game of bean bags.

You are the man KW!

Go Go White Sox

2005-10-16T22:37:00.000-05:00

Congratulations Chicago White Sox for winning the ALCS.

4 more wins to go.

All "Fig Equals Good Movie" Team

2005-10-16T13:32:00.000-05:00

Alright, it is pretty sad that I not only had but took the time to research and think about this project over the past few days. But after watching a ton of both real NFL football (the Bears do not count as a real NFL team right now…GO BEARS!) and football movies, I decided to try to put together an all movie starting line up for a football squad.

Here was the only rule that I went by: The movie/character could not have been about a real life football player. So I can not use Gayle Sayers from Brian’s Song or anyone else along those lines.

Now, obviously, some positions are going to have a lot of choices and some are not. There were an endless supply of QBs and RBs but I really had to scramble to find my secondary. Surprisingly, the LB spot was the hardest for me to choose from because there were so many good candidates.

Here is the starting offense:

QB Willie Beamen - Any Given Sunday
There were a lot to choose from in this category, but I did not have to think too hard about who my started was going to be. Very young but had matured through the course of the movie. Has a cannon of an arm, move like Michael Vick, and the team’s respect. He can carry a team by himself if needed but had evolved into a team player. In no way does this show any disrespect to Joe Cain, Johnny Moxin, or the Mean Machine himself. But I’ll go with Steam’in Willie Beamen and his invisible juice.

RB Darnell Jefferson - The Program
RB Julian Washington - Any Given Sunday
These players complement each other fantastically. Darnell has that fantastic combination of hands and moves and also has the ability to real in Halle Berry. Julian is a more experienced back that can power through in between the tackles. With both size and speed in this back field, there is no stopping us.

WR Rod Tidwell - Jerry Maguire
WR Charlie Tweeder - Varsity Blues
Surprisingly, there were not a whole lot of options on this pick. Rod is not the fastest guy out there, but he is prepared to sacrifice his body for the team. (Now if he only could of warned the rest of the world about Renee Zelwiger!) Tweeder, there was no question that I wanted him on my team. Not only can he dominate the field, but you need an emotional leader on offense and he is my man. Anyone who will hit an older guy in the nuts with a whiffle ball bat one minute and then steal a cop car and pick up 3 naked high school girls the next has a place on my team (and in my heart) forever.

TE Brian Murphy - The Replacements
They say he would have been a first round pick in the NFL if it was not because he was deaf. I’ll gladly take him on my team. He is a gamer, wants the ball at the end of the game, and is now very popular with the strippers.

T Bud-Lite Kaminski - The Program
T Patrick "Madman" Kelly - Any Given Sunday
G Billy Bob - Varsity Blues
G Phillip Finch - Wildcats
C Manumana - Necessary Roughness
Going into this project, I thought this was going to be the hardest positions to fill. But it was not at all. I was even able to stay true to everyone’s position and I feel that we have a very solid line. One common thread among these guys (except for Madman) is that they truly cared for their QB and coach. They were all seen off the field sticking up for their QB and helping them with what ever they needed. Bud picked up Joe Kane from Rehab, Billy Bob gave Lance I ride to school every day, Finch body slammed an opposing coach for yelling at Goldie Hawn, and Manumana got into a bar fight when Paul Blake got slugged. All good hearts that play very well. As for Madman? Well, he is so bad ass that he through an alligator in his own team’s shower when they would not let him dance to rap music after a win. God bless that little messed up guy.

Here is the starting Defense:
(Please note I am using a 3-4 defense)

DT Steve Lattimer - The Program
DE Ivory Christian - Friday Night Lights
DE Julius Campbell - Remember The Titans
Again, I did not think I was going to have a hard time with this position either. While there were not a lot of choices out there, I am very happy with our line. Lattimer is insane and I am not going to judge him for his “recreational” drug use. Just like his coach said, the NCAA has a steroid testing system in place and I suggest we let them handle it. Both Christian and Campbell were no nonsense forces to be reckoned with on the outside.

LB Alvin Mack - The Program
LB Bobby Buche - The Waterboy
LB Daniel Bateman - The Replacements
LB Juther "Shark" Lavay - Any Given Sunday
This one was hard. There are so many good choices out there. I feel bad that I was not able to include Charles Jefferson, Gerry Bertier, and Sidney “The Doberman” Harris on this list. But I could not ask for a better linebacking core. Alvin Mack, one of the best college linebackers of all time hit like a train and intimidated QBs like a scared 5 year old boy on his first day of school. Bobby Buche was able to channel his inner rage about his momma and plow through anyone that stood in his way. Daniel Bateman was just insane, but you have to love a player that gets you the ball when the coach tells him to get the ball. And the Shark, just like LT, redefined the way a line backer should play the game. His experience is invaluable.

CB Dr. Death - The Best Of Times
CB Alan Bosley - Remember The Titans
S Brian Chavez - Friday Night Lights
S Petey Jones - Remember The Titans
The secondary is my weak spot. There was not really a lot to choose from here. Dr. Death is the leader of this unit and by far the best in this unit. Recently paroled from jail, he was able to intimidate Robin Williams with threats of “Death, humiliation, and pain” for the entire game. Brian Chavez is another great player who has great hands and loves to hit people hard. Petey is a converted running back who showed flashes of being a good safety, but he has a fragile mind and can become rattled if you hurt his feelings. And Alan…I don’t know what to say about him. He is the only other corner I could find. According to his Dad, he was voted player of the week 5 times during his junior year of high school, but he got burned in all of the games that I saw him play in.

Here are my special team players:

P Johnny Walker - Johnny Be Good
K Nigel Gruff - The Replacements
Johnny was recruited heavily out of high school as a QB, but on my team we will use him for his punting skills. Anyone who has a 5 second hang time on his kicks can kick for me. And I am catching a lot of heat for not going with Lucy (Kathy Ireland) from Necessary Roughness as my kicker. But Nigel can kick a 60 yard field goal while smoking a cigarette. That has to mean something. He is also not afraid to tear off his shirt and expose his 90 pound body to anyone who wants to fight him or his QB. If Kathy would do that, maybe I would reconsider.

Here is my coaching staff:

Coach Tony D'Amato - Any Given Sunday
O Coach Lance Harbor - Varsity Blues
D Coach Wally Rigs – Necessary Roughness
Tony is an old school coach and that is the right kind of attitude for this team. He loves his players, but still gets in their face if they screw up. There is no worrying about feelings, just get your job done. And if he is able to give half time speeches like he did in his final game with the Sharks all the time, we will be in good shape. Offensive coordinator goes to Lance. With only 1 half off football coaching experience, he was able to engineer a comeback using a 5 wide receiver set and the hook and ladder play to Billy Bob. Pure Genius. Wally is what you want as a defensive coordinator. He hates to wear suits and ties; he just wants to scream at people. He doesn’t need a playbook. He dose not want to hear any excuses. Just hit someone hard!

There’s my team. I would like to offer congratulation to actor Andrew Bryniarski who was the only actor to portray two separate characters at two separate positions and have them both make my starting line up. (Offensive Tackle Madman and Defensive Tackle Lattimer) Good job there buddy!

Leaving On A Jet Plane (Wicked!)

2005-10-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a busy busy man these past few days.

On Tuesday after work I went to Game 1 of the Sox/Angels series. It was insane! I had only been to 2 other Chicago playoff games in my entire life and it is an entirely new experience. Unfortunelty the Sox lost. But, fortunately, I got to drink a lot of beer and it was a great night out.

Unfortunately for me, I got back to my place at around 11:30 that night and had to leave my place at 5am the next morning to catch a flight out to Boston for 2 different sets of meetings with 2 of our biggest clients. I made it to the airport on time and passed out in my seat as soon as we took off. Now I am not going to go into a huge amount of detail here, but I would like to list the thing that bug the hell out of me when flying that happened to me during this trip.

1) Some stranger asking me to switch seats because he/she wants the aisle.
2) Constant talking to me when I am trying to read or sleep.
3) Making me move out of my seat so that you can take more than 1 trip to the washroom during the trip. (And that’s being nice; you should really go before you get on the plane. Are you a first grader?)
4) Someone standing in the aisle just for the hell of it from more than 5 minutes. (They are just pissed off because they got the middle seat. I don’t care, get away from me! These aisles are not that big and I do not want your ass to keep bumping my shoulder.)
5) Asking me to hold stuff of yours while you get situated.
6) People leaning over the seats to hang out with others sitting next to me.

My biggest problem though is after the plane lands. I understand and have come to accept the fact that people are idiots. Even though they make the announcement not to take your seatbelt off and to remain seated until that little light goes off, you always get a knucklehead that is going to stand up early and start going through the overhead compartment. Although that bugs the hell out of me, I have learned to deal with it. What really gets me, and this is the second time that this has happened to me, is after the plane stops and everyone is standing in the aisle waiting for the door to open and everyone to take their turn leaving someone trying to maneuver their way around you to get to the front of the line. Some knuckle head who was sitting 5 or 6 rows behind me got his bag and started doing the “Excuse me” to everyone and work his way up the line. Where does he think he is going? What does he think everyone else is waiting for? Why does he think he should be at the front of the line? I saw him coming and made a point of blocking the entire aisle. And when he got to me and gave me the “Excuse me” I told him no. He kinda looked at me weird and tried to nudge his way around me but I stood firm and said, “Hey, we are all waiting to get off the plane. You need to stay where you are at.” He tried to nudge move one more time and when I would not let him pass I got this big sigh and roll of the eyes from him. Hey buddy, the jerk store called…

Both of the meetings went fine and we had a fantastic lunch and dinner meeting. I got back to my hotel room at like 11pm and for some reason was not too tired. So I watched that Fantastic Four movie in my room and it was not too bad. Not too good either, but hey! It’s on the company so why not?

My boss scheduled another early flight back to Chicago the next day so I had to get up and leave the hotel by 6am and had to battle through another flight with the same issues as before. My boss went back to the office but I told him that I was done for the day. I picked up my dog from my sister’s place, went back home, cleared out my work emails, took a nap, watched Survivor, and went to bed. Tonight is bowling night so I need my strength!

I’ll tell you this; I can not wait for the baseball playoffs to be over with because I am really missing the OC right now. I might have to go and buy the first season on DVD just to make it through the next few weeks.

It's A Puppy Paradise!

2005-10-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

I was going to do the second part to my football thang today, but my uncle just forwarded me pictures of the puppies I get to choose from if I want one. (Or two?) Notice that some of the puppies are different looking than the others. I learned that a litter of puppies can have multiple fathers. Apparently, the mom was a whore (Or maybe just experimenting! She might be in college or something!) and participated in a gang-bang with a bunch of other male dogs who did not appreciate her for her mind and personality. (Well, they did appreciate her personality and the fact that she participated in all of this.)

But who am I to judge anyone. I should not insult this poor dog and the decisions that she made. If she did not give into that crazy orgy then these puppies would not exist. Let that be a lesson to all of you ladies out there.

They are all so cute, how can I not get one? (Or two!)

Happy Columbus Day

2005-10-10T12:53:00.000-05:00

Happy Columbus Day to all! Apparently, my J-O-B either hates Italians or the fact that we live in American because here I am at the office. It is a pretty laid back day because the rest of society has the day off and I am sure the last thing on their mind is the status of their claim.

This weekend was pretty good. Very laid back and full of football related fun. On Friday I met out with E and Candi for some dinner and beverages. The grub was good and they had a fantastic rum beverage that was about as big as my head. Ahh, it reminded my of the days back when I first moved to the city. Myself, E, Z, and Ill would meet up once a week for Wing Night at Brother Jimmy’s. They had the best wings there for 15 cents and $6.00 pitchers of Miller Lite. They also had this drink called the Trash Can Punch though cost around 60 dollars but was so fantastic. They took this huge glass jug and filled it with ice. Then they dumped a fifth of rum and then 2 containers of Hawaiian Punch over it and serve it to the entire table. It’s killing me that I do not have a photo of the TCP, but I do have one of its little brothers, the Fish Bowl. Not quite the same thing but just imagine that times 6. The bonus was if you were the one to finish the drink you got to hold it over your head like the Stanley Cup and run around the bar with it. (This was our own rule; we always got dirty looks from the bar and other guests when we did this.) A great time.

We met KW out at a bar afterwards and caught up with him. Today is his first day at work and we are all very excited for him after his “extended vacation”. He also has been playing with my blog code for me and fixing a few things up. Thanks KW! YOU RULE!

While we stayed away from the shots, we were hitting the Captain Morgan pretty good and it was pretty hard to wake up the next day. Apparently I told KW that I was going to play on his flag football team Saturday morning and I slept right through it. He called me about 10 minutes before the game was going to start to see where I was. Oops! I was still in bed. Sleeping. Wonderful sleep.

So after I got up I had a pretty nice productive little Saturday going. I did a lot of bills, laundry, cleaning, and shopping crap that really needed to be done. Then I settled down and started watching stuff that I had Tivo’d a while ago but never got around to watching yet. I saw almost an entire season of that “Weeds” show which was really funny. I also watched 2 football movies; The Program and Any Given Sunday. Then, since it cost only $5.00 at Target, I watched “Point Break”. Keanu Reeves at his best. I would saw the same for Patrick Swayze but I think I liked him better in Roadhouse. They have a good football scene in that movie as well where Johnny Utah wins the respect of the surfers by playing beach football with them.

That got me thinking. (Scary) There are a good number of movies out there where football is not the central theme but that have good football themes to them. Here is the list that I came up with:

Point Break (Beach football scene)
Lucas (Where he forces his way into the game and almost gets killed but wins the respect o the school.)
Wedding Crashers (A “Friendly” family game.)
The Last Boy Scout (The first 5 minutes of the movie when the player while running with the ball takes out a gun and shoots everyone…and then himself.)
Flash Gordon (He can’t fight, but he’ll kick some Mongo butt playing football.)
Lockout (Sly Stallone playing ball in “the yard” against the other inmates.)
Sleepers (The little kids got a chance to dish out some payback to the guards for all the sexual abuse they endured.)

That’s what I came up with. If anyone has any others I’d love to hear them.

On Sunday, I went over to E’s to watch the crappy Bears play the crappy Browns and we got the crap kicked out of us. I hate our team so much. (Go Bears!) I don’t know if we will ever win another game this year. (Go Bears!) On the plus side, I got to hang out with E, drink some beer, and have a lot of make up couch time with Snoop Dogg. Candi got home towards the end of my visit and announced that her younger sister Cindy just got engaged. Congratulations Cindy! She is the last of 4 sisters to be married/engaged.

I got home and started another football project which I will probably report on tomorrow. Since I can not enjoy the Bears this season, I guess I’ll have to invent my own fun. (Go Bears!)

My New BFF

2005-10-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, look at that little guy. My new Best Friend Forever…or the next 3 weeks.

This is my parent’s dog Gizmo. They are both retired and now like to take the Land Cruiser (Winnebago) out on month long trips and for some reason do not want to bring the dog. So G (Gizmo…in case you are mentally handicapped) normally stays at my sister’s place who has a backyard, another dog, and three kids to play with. However, one of the kid’s allergies is acting up and they are due to the dogs. So I inherited G for the next 3 weeks.

Now I am not dog ignorant by any means. I have always had at least one dog throughout my childhood and for the past 5 years lived in a house. However, I have always had someone else to share the responsibilities with and I had never lived in a condo without a backyard in my dog-caring career.

When I moved into the SOUTH SIIIIDE, I was thinking about getting a little pooch because I did miss Snoop Dogg. Hey, for the past 5 years he has been my constant couch buddy and napping partner! But I was always a little nervous about the condo issues and if I wanted to take on the responsibility. See, last week. If I wanted to leave work and go to the zoo to feed the polar bears all night long…I could do that. Or what if I wanted to sleep until 3pm on a Saturday and then spend the rest of my time making and eating snow cones? I can’t do that now. Now I have to worry about the dog.

So far everything has gone alright. G has not had any accidents in my new place (although he was so freaked out about riding the elevator for the first time ever that he did pee in the hallway.) and we are getting along very well. We go on a walk every morning at 6am before I go to work, after work, and then at 10pm. However, it is very early in our relationship. So we’ll see what I’m thinking after another few weeks.

If all goes well, I’ll probably wind up getting a pup of my own. I spoke to my uncle today and my aunt (who is an animal junkie) took in another stray animal last week. This dog brought the total up to 9 animals. (4 dogs and 5 cats) However, this stray labrador turned out to be pregnant and yesterday gave birth to 15 puppies. (If you do the math, this means they now have 24 animals. You could loose 2 animals a month and still have at least 1 pet for a whole year! They are going to hang on to the little guys until G’s stay is over. So if this all works out, I’ll get one of those.

By the way, I love Rum. Rum Rum Rum. I am enjoying a couple of beverages with my new BFF as we are watching Survivor and Apprentice. Both fantastic shows that I am really enjoying quite a bit. But what the hell happened with the OC tonight? It’s on tonight and my Tivo did not record it. I have a season pass set up for it…was it a rerun this week? Was something else on in its place? What the hell happened to Ryan and Marissa? Did Summer work out some wacky scheme to trick that mean old dean into letting Seth off the hook? Has Jerri Ryan tried to make put with Kirsten yet? I had better not of missed anything yet or else I might have to start dishing out the “People’s Forearm” on some poor unsuspecting chumps tomorrow.

I think this weekend is going to be pretty laid back. I’ll probably meet E and Candi out for some grub and some booze, but nothing too crazy. E also asked me to help him do a little construction work in his new place. We have to frame, stud, and drywall a storage area in his living room. Now, this might not seem like a big job to most people, but for us two retards it will be a huge challenge. Especially since the Captain Morgan will probably be assisting us as well in the project. E wants to use folding doors on the closet but I thought that those old cowboy saloon doors would be pretty sweet. We’ll see what happens. But I’d bet my new BFF that whatever we build is going to look like something on the set of Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

OK, I gotta take G for a walk. As the once non-broken Timortal would say…Holla!

The Weekend Part Two - March Madness

2005-10-05T17:42:00.000-05:00

Before is get into the second part of my weekend, I have a confession to make. I may have indirectly accidentally broken Timortal.

I had invited him to come out and play flag football with me last night. He got to play defensive line and was doing really well at it…especially it being his first time playing organized football. At the half, I taught him a move called “The Hump Daddy” that is fantastic for shedding your blocker. The second half started and on 3rd and short Timortal did the move. He did the move perfectly and shed his blocker. The QB saw this and started rolling out to the opposite side of the field with Timortal in pursuit. The QB had no where else to go and cocked his arm back to make the throw when Timortal dove for his flag to make the sack. When he dove, he was completely horizontal and landed smack down on his collarbone.

SNAP!

Timortal got up, walked off the field like nothing happened and said, “I need a sub.” Then a few minutes later we were on the road to the local hospital where they determined it was a break. I really feel bad now that he is going to have to wear one of those upside down lampshades around his neck for the next 6 weeks. Get well soon Timortal!

(If you are wondering if he made the sack, you’ll have to check out his blog to find out. It’s the Shady Dreams link.)

OK, the conclusion to my weekend.

I somehow made my way up to Milwaukee with several pit stops along the way to take care of several problems that I was having because of the long night before. Part of it was hunger, part was for caffeine, and I do not think that one McDonalds washroom will ever be the same again.

I got up to LJ’s at around 7pm (only 1 hour late) and already he and Jamie had a beverage in hand and quickly put one in mind. Our friends March and Kat were already at Lucile’s waiting for us and we were just waiting for a few of Jamie’s friends to show up before we left. (HA HA! I was not the last one to show! That happened to me at E’s rehearsal for his wedding. I was about 10 minutes late and everyone was waiting for me. I felt like such a dumb ass.) But everyone arrived and we jumped in cabs to get to the bar.

When we walk into the bar, I could tell that I was going to get along with Jamie’s friend Jessica right off the bat. She had no idea who I was or who March and Kat were. But she walked right up to them and introduced herself as my girlfriend of 3 months. I, of course, played along but let them off the hook after a few good minutes of good improve on Jamie’s part and confused expressions from Kat and March. We all have a good laugh and buy a round of Jager-Bombs to start the night off. Correction, Kat has been turned onto a new drink called the Vanilla-Bomb which is vanilla vodka and Red Bull. If you like vodka and cream soda, you’ll love this drink. It is a very tasty beverage, but I still prefer the classics and mainly stuck to the Jager-Bomb. But hey, nothing ventured nothing gained…right?

So we are all laughing and having a good time and I notice that March is completely trashed…which is not a bad thing by any means. However it was only 9pm and we had a long night ahead of us. No if you talk to March, he will tell you that he only had 2 drinks while at a BBQ before they met us out for the evening. If you talk to his wife Kat, she told me that she was 4 Jager-Bombs ahead of me when we got there and I had a lot of catching up to do. So, catch up we did.

We left Lucile’s to head over to this comedy club and everyone was feeling good and having a good time. March tipped the piano guy $20 bucks to sing “The Gambler” and then almost got thrown out of the bar for going up on the stage for a sing-a-long. Then he entertained everyone by taking his shirt off and pressing his belly and chest on the opposite side of a window. I had never laughed so hard in all my life. (God Bless You March!) And poor Kat! She was trying her best to keep March going and upright for the entire night because she knew he would be upset if he passed out early. She snuck him a sprite at one point and you would of thought that it was battery acid. March took a swing, his eyes lit up, and he spit the drink out and yelled, “What is this, poison?”

We got to the Comedy Cafe and the bouncers immediately approached us and gave us all our “warning” before the show even started. If we got out of line, we were out of there. Now LJ got us free tickets for this so I really would not of minded if March made a scene and got us all kicked out of there, as long as he did something funny again. Maybe something with his belly! Apparently March wanted to see some comedy, but that did not stop someone else in our group to step it up. Jamie, who is the cutest sweetest little girl on the planet, started heckling this only somewhat funny warm up comedian. She showed him no mercy! The bouncers apparently changed their mind about tossing up out when they saw the amount of booze we were buying, so they tried to calm down the mini-storm. But she would not be stopped. She even went so far as to complain to the manager about her rights against un-funny people. GOOD FOR YOU JAMIE!

As soon as we left the club, March jumped back into form. I guess he thought that the crowd was leaving the show unsatisfied and needed to be further entertained. And if you know March, there is only one show that he knows. Puppetry of the Penis. On the first day that I met March I also met the “Baby Bird”. At first he was very casual about it and would walk up to people in the bar and just kinda glance down. As a natural reflex, people would always glance down as well only to see the “Baby Bird” or the “Hamburger”. He has further expanded his act to include “The Turtle”, “Sailboat”, “Wrist Watch” and…my personal favorite…”The Loch Ness Monster”. So March marched out into the middle of the street and gave the crowd a quick 10 minute show.

Ok, to the next bar. LJ knew of a place called Joey’s that he thought would be a perfect on the way stop off point to our final destination. We had to walk, because there are only 3 cabs in all of Milwaukee and I believe all of them would not pick us up because they all saw the Loch Ness Monster recently. So we all stumbled through an alley singing Bon Jovi songs and quoting lines from Anchorman until we got to Joey’s…which was completely closed down. It was like someone shot LJ’s puppy. Very upsetting, that is until he saw another bar right next to a Pick & Save. YES! Victory is ours! I quick shot and a beer and we were ready for our final destination of the evening. Taylor’s.

We all walked straight to the shot bar and started in on the Jager-Bombs. Jessica and I snuck over to Flannery's for a quick beverage and to check out the scene over there. I do not really remember too much from either of those bars but I know we closed them, which I believe is at 2am and then went back to LJ's for a nightcap and I believe a pizza. We also watched “Arrested Development” before bed. I had never seen that show and LJ just got the first season on DVD. Pretty funny stuff! I added it to my Tivo rotation when I got home on Sunday.

There you have it. 48 hours of booze, good friends, and crazy fun followed by 48 hours of recovery. I guess everything balances out in the end.

The Weekend Part One

2005-10-04T07:45:00.000-05:00

Man, I have got to quit punishing my body with all of these good times. I know that sounds weird, but I do not know how much longer this body can keep taking the abuse that I am dishing out to it. But I like to have a good time.

I have been saying for a few years that I might need a new hobby of something outside of the world of booze, but I can not think of anything out there that I could do and still have as much fun as I did this past weekend. Quilting? Probably not. Heroin? Probably a good time, but I think that has a few more negative side affects than Jager. Maybe I’ll give that Motocross thing a try. I really enjoyed watching those X-Games a few months ago. How hard can that stuff be?

I also find it quite funny that I am not the only one that has this problem. I checked out several blog pages on Monday and about half of you either took the day off of blogging due to lack of energy/brain power or blogged about the fact that you were so happy to be back at work and not in a bar. Maybe we could form a club or something? I get to work on the secret handshake today.

I left the J-O-B as soon as the Flintstone/teradactile whistle blew and slid down my dinosaur to meet E at my car. We went back to his place to meet up with the rest of the bowling team…or excuse me…TEAM BARKER’S BEAUTIES. Candi and Kathy came and we started warming up/pre partying for the game. Which by the way we dominated. I could already tell that it was going to be a long night out because I was pretty loaded by the second game. I believe that was at 7:30pm. I did not bowl that terrible, but I could not hit the pocket or pick up the 10 pin to save my life. I think I bowled around a 130 for all three games, which is about 30 pins lower than what I should be rolling at. Oh well, we still took 5 points out of 7 and won the match thanks to Candi’s award winning 180 game. (I think it was 180 something, remember, I was pretty drunk. It might not have really happened. This information could have been planted in my skull knowing that I would be really impressed when I “remembered” it. Stay out of my skull Candi!)

We also met out the league at our bowling bar afterwards for a few more beverages. Well, almost everyone. We were bowling against this one couple that was really nice, but the husband apparently got mad at her and did not allow her to go to the bars after the game. Apparently, since she could not bowl her average that night because she was too tired from the night before when he made her carry in a load of drywall all by herself, she did not deserve to have any fun that night. If she is too tired to bowl, she apparently is too tired for boozing and should go to bed. Now that’s old school.

For some reason, we had to leave in a hurry. I’m not sure if it was my team trying to save me from talking to this “older” lady with a few kids who lived in Michigan and was visiting that night. (I do not know who she was visiting. Maybe it was me!) Or it could have been something else that was going on that I was completely unaware of. But we left and went back to E’s place and watched his wedding video. Now that might sound kinda boring to everyone else, but it was like 2pm and we were all in the wedding and all had some really weird stories from that night that we were hoping to have see some proof to prove to everyone that it actually happened. (I will not tell my story, but it was pretty funny and I was not able to see it on video. I don’t ever remember it happening but 4 different people have told me the same story so I believe it happened…and I am very surprised and proud of myself.)

I will say that E is quite a singer. For the last hour of the wedding, the DJ gave him the microphone and let him cut loose on the dance floor. I have never seen anyone sing with such passion before in my life. You would think he wrote those songs and emotionally went through those experiences and wrote those songs about himself. Come to think of it, I do think that he has experienced “The Gambler” and “Tiny Dancer”.

We then went to his rooftop to kill a handle of Captain Morgan and argue about anything we could think of and solve all of the world’s problems until about 6:30 in the morning. (1 half hour later than when Snoop Dogg called his party quits in “Gin and Juice” Take that Shizzle sissy-pants!) I believe that we woke up at like 9:30 for some un-Godly reason and went out for some breakfast. I left there at around 11:30 and drove out to Romeoville to watch my nephew play Pop-Warner Football and then made it back to my place at 4pm. Just enough time to take a half hour nap, a quick shower, and to jump into the car to head up to Milwaukee for phase two of the weekend.

Monday Morning Coma

2005-10-03T13:39:00.000-05:00

I have nothing in the tank today. I am still recovering from my bender from the past few days. It was a blast, but it has just rendered me worthless today. (Yes, even more worthless than usual!)

I’ll get something going tomorrow. I just need to find a corner of my office to curl up in and die.

I will post a photo of Chewbacca that E forwarded to me on Friday. I’ll dedicate this to our playoff bound Chicago White Sox and hope that they ream those damn Red Sox bastards a new one tomorrow.

I'm Just A Giver

2005-09-30T07:30:00.000-05:00

Today at the J-O-B, our building along with the Red Cross held a blood drive. I am a firm believer in donating blood at least once a year. (You can donate every 56 days if you want, but let’s not get carried away.) I try to go twice a year but I have been slacking off a bit the past few years. So I might donate again in the next few months to try and get my average back up a little.

Not only is it good to donate blood for the obvious reasons, but I think that it is a good think to get some fresh new blood in my own system every once in a while. With the amount of alcohol that has been through this body, it’s good to get some fresh new blood cells generated in there. It’s kinda like the Red Cross is my own personal MASH unit in the war that is my body. The old blood is helicoptered out after a few tours of duty against Run and Jager and it makes way for the new recruits. After a few years, those soldiers will be replaced as well…if they survive.

I remember the first time that I donated blood was back during my senior year of high school. Me and my buddy Jon got consent from our parents to participate in a blood drive that was being done at school. After we gave we both faked getting dizzy and got to go home sick before noon. (Go home sick meant go back to his place and play all of the Nintendo games that he stole from his job at the video store the weekend before.)

But my selflessness and need to give did not stop at the high school level. When I got to college, my buddy LJ and I formed the Blood Club. We Future-Rocket-Scientists figured that with less blood in our systems, the less alcohol it would take to get us drunk. So we would go and give blood in the afternoon and then immediately head over to the Panther Lounge for $1.00 pitchers of Natural Lite beer. In less then $5.00 total and we had a fantastic night out on the town. Probably not the smartest move we have ever made, but we were contributing to society and learning how to properly budget our money and still entertain ourselves.

I was talking to LJ the other day and we were discussing the devastation caused down in New Orleans and how it affected people all over the world. But I think we stumbled upon one major affect this travesty inflected on use that no one has really realized yet but will soon feel. More than 50% of the Girls Gone Wild DVDs are filmed down in New Orleans during Marti Gras. Sure, our supply and variations of the quality series are fine now, but what happens in the next 12 months when they are unable to gather enough quality footage to put together a decent 60 minutes of entertainment?

And what about the ladies that appear on these films? Where are they going to find the media outlet to express themselves now? Where are they going to be able to barter their God–given talents and assets for beads and t-shirts?

It’s gonna be chaos.

Next thing you know fellas are going to be forced to watch The Lingerie Bowl and that Pamela Anderson sitcom in order to hopefully sneak a peek at a boob. And young ladies are going to be exposing their beautiful bodies in places like Delaware and Rhode Island for glow sticks and bubble gum instead of in the Big Easy for safe, quality, beaded necklaces.

So please, donate whatever you can in order to help out the cause. This storm has and will deeply affect us all.

I am bracing myself for the long haul. I am going to go donate a lot of money bowling tonight in my crazy league on wacky bets and Jager-Bombs and then up to Milwaukee to see if I can get some boobs of my very own to look at. At least until this crisis is over and New Orleans gets back on its feet.

Call Me Turd...It's A Funny Name

2005-09-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

It all started a few years ago back when I was living on School Street. E and I were watching MTV’s “I Want A Famous Face”…have you ever seen this show? They take some goofball who is obsessed with some actor or actress to the degree where they get cosmetic surgery so that they can look more like their hero. We were watching twin brothers who wanted to be Brad Pitt and I made the joke that I was going to sign up for that show.

E: “Who are you going to look like?”
Me: “Burt Reynolds.”

So started the long running joke whenever we went anywhere and met someone new I was introduced as Burt Reynolds. When we went to Vegas for E’s bachelor party we played in a Texas Hold’em card tournament. I made it to the final table and E and LJ were shouting and cheering from the gallery to the degree that even the dealer would address me as Mr. Reynolds.

So E comes over last weekend for the Bears game and apparently had a conversation with my security guards. I get home from football last night and walk by Charles the Security Guard and he says, “Hello Burt.” I turned around and looked at him and he shot me a smile. I asked him if this name was going to stick and he just started to laugh. As he buzzed me in, a member of the janitorial staff passed me in the door way and said “Good night Mr. Reynolds.”

And the legend of Burt Reynolds continues. So lives Turd Ferguson in the South Loop. Thanks E.

And for those of you who don’t get the “Turd” reference I urge you to watch the video that’s on this link.

www.smithappens.com/video_celebrityjeopardy7.php

I Got "Jacked"!

2005-09-28T07:10:00.000-05:00

What a day for me. First of all I took the day off yesterday to recover from the Bears game. Granted, I did some tailgating before the game but nothing too crazy. Maybe I had 6-8 beers before kickoff and then another 5 at the game. Close to a 12 pack, not too shabby, but not too crazy either. I’m not going to get into the specifics of the game, but needless to say, I did not feel like partying afterwards. Plus the fact that it rained from 9am until I got home at like 4pm and I was standing out in it without a jacket on. So I decided to take the game off and sleep off what I thought could have developed into a cold. (Plus I have a lot of time that I have to use before the end of the year and yesterday was as good as any other day to sleep in.)

However, I guess my boss assumed that I was hung over and proceeded to tell everyone in our office weekly meeting that I was probably drunk and hung over in bed that day. Fantastic. That really does a lot for my credibility when trying to manage on office.

So yesterday was spent sleeping, working out, and grooming my new facial hair. I have always wanted to grow chin straps but never really had the nerve to do it. But I did not shave at all last week and decided to get them going. I’m on the one week trial plan and so far it is going pretty good. I got a lot of compliments from work and one of my buddy’s KW told me that I was looking pretty “badass”. Fantastic. Just the look I was going for.

I do not have a picture of them yet, but I’m sure I will by Monday. I’m heading up to Milwaukee to tear up that town with LJ, Steve, and their crew of Jager-bombers. God bless those people. They are the only group of people that I know who truly appreciates the Jager-bomb to the degree that I do. Kat keeps throwing out the challenge to match me bomb for bomb and I don’t think we have done it yet. (We might of once, but I was way too loaded to remember.) Hopefully we will throw down this weekend. I wish E and Candi could have made it up for this trip, it’s not a Milwaukee trip with my singing partners, but they have plans already. (BOO!)

So I have a pretty decent day at the J-O-B and headed home at a decent time to prepare for my first flag football game of the season. That’s right people. You are looking at a three sport jock. Softball, bowling, and flag football. I played with this group of guys that I know through a work buddy and had a pretty good time playing with them last year. This year, however, we lost half our team somehow. Who knows where they went…free agency, hurricane-related, turned homo, whatever. They were not there. So I get to the game and we have 7 people on our team. We are playing 7 on 7 football so we are forced to play iron-man football, just like in that Sinbad movie “Necessary Roughness”. (Damn I loved that movie. Kathy Ireland was the kicker on that movie and really won my heart. Her performance in that movie alone is the reason why I bought my Kathy Ireland 8X10 rug for my living room. It is glorious!) We probably could of used her last night. Also keep in mind that none of us are in really good shape so we already know that we are going to get our asses handed to us.

And what team do we wind up playing against? Of course it had to be the 104.3 Jack FM radio team. As predicted, they stomped us. So make sure to listen to the station tomorrow because I am sure they are going to be talking about their pure domination. It was still a great time though. I got to hit a lot of people and they got to hit me. But it would have been nice to score once during the game. Hell, a first down would have been a victory. Kinda felt like the Bears this week…but we are not going to talk about that, remember?

I spoke to Timortal today and he got a kick out of the Flat Stanley photos from last week. I showed him the rest and there were a couple that he said I had to put out there. So here are a few bonus shots from that same Tampa trip.

Legend

2005-09-27T07:30:00.000-05:00

I was speaking to one of my friends yesterday about work stuff and we started talking about a crazy story that happened at her place of business. She got a report that one of her workers had snuck into the men’s washroom, somehow opened the door to the stall where another man was busy “dropping the kids off at the pool”, and took a picture of the man with his camera phone! Then, before the man could get up or report it to anyone, the camera guy went around and showed it to about 20 of his coworkers.

Now, as horrible as this story is and as inappropriate as it is…it is still pretty damn funny. I mean, this guy was good! Who thinks of that and decides that this is a fantastic idea to do at work and then has the nerve to go through with it? I believe that this makes him a legend in the world of office pranks because I have never heard a first hand account of anything that even come close to this guy.

I mean, there are a lot of little things that have happened in the various places that I have worked as an adult, but nothing that rivals that story. Not that I am looking to do anything like that (Or am I? Watch out Timortal! I have a camera phone and we work on the same floor!), but I love to heat those types of stories.

Does anyone have any good stories to contribute?

My Man Stanley

2005-09-23T12:15:00.000-05:00

Several people have been commenting on my new blog photo with my “paper doll” friend. That’s no paper doll people…that is Flat Stanley!

Flat Stanley is a children’s book turn elementary school project about a boy who is squashed flat by a falling bulletin board. (This is all according to www.flatstanley.com.) One of the many advantages is that Flat Stanley can now visit his friends by traveling in an envelope. So little kids make these dolls and send them to friends and relatives so that they can go and learn about new places. Then the adults will take pictures of Flat Stanley at the new place and send them to the kids along with some interesting facts. Then the kid has to give a report back to the class about where their Stanley has been and what they learned.

One of my friends Yurske's niece had to do this project, so I have been taking him on some of my trips to help out. The one on my blog photo was from a few weeks ago at E’s bachelor party in Las Vegas. But here are some photos of me and Stanley’s first trip together at Marty’s bachelor party in Tampa.

Not bad for a first trip out into the real world after you are crushed by a bulletin board and really should be either dead or at least hospitalized. I hope Yurske’s niece got a good grade on her report.

Who's The Boss Now?

2005-09-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

I had a crazy dream last night. I dreamt that I was back in high school, but it was not my old high school (GO RICH CENTRAL!) it was some small school in Any Town USA. And none of my old high school friends were there (I did have one or two) except for my old high school girlfriend. There were a bunch us in a bar (even though we were in high school) and this kid freaked out, took out and started waving a gun, and started talking a lot of trash to everyone. Everyone kinda sat back and watched this kid threaten everyone as he slowly made his way to the bar door. (Crazy Kid making his way to the door took about half of the dream.) When he finally left, we all ran outside just in time to see this kid blow up an electrical tower. This, of course, started a flood and everyone had to scatter for safe ground. I, of course, climbed into my kick ass 4 wheel pick up truck and tried to navigate a very muddy road home. I don’t know what happened to my girlfriend at this time but I do remember being very concerned about this frog that I found on the way. That trip took me to the end of my dream…I never did make it back home.

Now I am not one for crazy dream interpretations. I believe that dreams are images, memories, and emotions that very occurred that made a big impression on you subconscious and this is your subconscious’s way of expressing itself. So the high school thing and the old girlfriend were probably in the dream because I did unpack and go through my high school yearbooks the other day. The flood was probably due to the whole New Orleans thing. So that leaves the Crazy Kid and the Frog as the remaining key symbols in my dream.

It was bothering me all morning as I was getting ready for work because I knew that Crazy Kid from somewhere. Then I remembered that he was screaming his name a lot while he was going through his rant in the bar. “Danny Pintauro! I’m Danny Pintauro!” Who the hell is that? I racked my brain all morning at work trying to place this kid. I was about to start calling my high school buddies at lunch when I decided to Google the name.

That punk crazy kid with a gun was that sissy from “Who’s The Boss”!

Where the hell did that come from?

I couldn’t figure out how he got into my head. If you asked me who played that character on the show yesterday I would not have been able to tell you. The only thing I can figure out is that Tony Danza was one of the celebrities helping out on the Monday Night Football fund raiser for Hurricane Relief. Tony must of triggered some old sitcom memories in my noodle and for some reason my noodle churned our a psychotic little sissy with a gun.

Very odd, but really, not that hard to believe. If you remember that show, Tony was a real guy’s guy (Except for the part of being a maid.); Angela was a big shot corporate executive, Sam was the pretty girl who could still kick his ass, and Mona was always armed with a quick witty comment and a random man pining for her affection. Jonathan was surrounded and suppressed by all of the successful family members and constantly ridiculed for being little, weak, and having not value to the family let alone society. I can totally see him growing up to be a total psycho and flipping out at my new high school friends at a bar and blowing up an electrical tower to flood the town. I’m surprised that it never made it onto the show. I would have watched that. Oh well, maybe on the reunion show.

This got me thinking, were there any other TV youngsters characters that would not be surprising to see shooting people with a rifle from a bell tower some day. Here are my top picks:

Natalie from “The Facts of Life” aka Mindy Cohn
Blair was the rich beautiful one, Joe was the street tough beautiful one, and Tootie was the young cute comical one of the bunch. Natalie was just the fat punching bag for the rest of the group. I can’t remember one storyline where she was the focus that did not deal with her being over weight or her not being able to get a boyfriend. Everyone else was the center and she just took their crap and ate their scraps.

Sam from “Different Strokes” aka Danny Cooksey
That poor little red haired kid never stood a chance. There was such an age gap between him Arnold and Willis, no matter how hard he tried he just could not fit in. Not to mention the whole black vs. country backgrounds and likes/dislikes. So he is forced to hang out with the maid and that dominating mother of his that made him sing country songs every thirty minutes. I’d buy a gun too.

Freddy from “Silver Spoons” aka Corky Pigeon
This kid worshipped Rick and Derrick and would anything to be by their side. He even took the blame when they went on that triple date and then they tried to impress the ladies by doing the old “Dine and Dash” move. (He of course was the dumb ass that left his Velcro wallet behind so he kinda deserved it.) But no amount of loyalty could stop the jokes and ridicule aimed that this poor kid. And add the fact that his Mom made him take tap dancing lessons and this fella never stood a chance.

Skippy from “Family Ties” aka Marc Price
This guy is a time bomb waiting to go off and I entirely blame the Keaton family. You see, Skippy had very loving and supportive parents throughout the show. They were very nerdy, but that does not mean that they were not there for him. But the Keaton family used their humor and wit to pull Skippy into their clan with one had while using the other to always keep him at just enough of a distance away to be an outsider. And it was not like they were all that cool to begin with. The parents were a couple of tree huggers, Jennifer was a goon, and Alex was a nerd. (With the exception of those sweater vests and knitted ties…those ruled!) The only cool ones were the last kid Andy who was like 5 years old and came in at the last part of the series and Mallory. Ahhh, beautiful Mallory. Her beautiful eyes combined with constant insults and rejection would drive anyone to their breaking point. Every man has one.

Let me know if you have any other candidates for this club or if you figure out who or what that frog was. I really “wart” to know!

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

I'm "Lost"

2005-09-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Am I missing something by not watching “Lost”? Every time I turn on the TV or look through a magazine I am seeing all these promotions about how wonderful this show is and how I’d have to be a moron to not watch it this season.

Now, the problem is that I have never seen an episode of this show. The only thing I know is that a plane crashes on an island, Tom Hanks is not on the plane, the island has a T-Rex or a T-Rex like force that scares the crap out of everyone, and Charlie from the “Party of Five” show is one of the leaders.

Now, if that is all there is to it and only a few other facts that might be helpful for me to know then I’m OK. For example, they crashed on Candy Apple Island. That’s good to know because then food really would not be that big of a deal but their teeth have got to be in such bad shape. I would also imagine that all of the sugar would really create highs and lows for everyone in the day. For like 15 minutes after dinner they would all probably be bouncing off the walls on a sugar high. (This would be a good time to gather wood and water and stuff like that) But then a half hour later no one would have any pep left in their step and it would probably be nap time.

If that is all there is to it, fine. But if there is a lot of complicated stuff going on then I might have to go buy the Season 1 DVD set at Target and get caught up. I have plenty of time because I could always Tivo the second season until I am current. I would just hate to have all this stuff going on and it meaning something and I would have really appreciated it if I saw the other shows. Kinda like when I tried to watch General Hospital with my sister when we were both at the same college. Some girl would give a guy a weird look and I’d be like “What’s her deal?” Well, not only did he sleep with her, but he also slept with her dad and killed her pony. Well, alright then! That makes perfect sense.

But this show better be worth it because I really like Charlie from “Party of Five” and if the show sucks or if he has a terrible character then I am going to be so pissed off. Charlie already took a hit towards the end of the season when his character got cancer and had to go through treatments. He never had another plot line about him for the remainder of the series.

Now, before you start yelling at me, I am not being insensitive to people with cancer. My mom has both breast and lung cancer and had been dealing with it at various levels since 1989. She’s been through the battles and I been with her and fully appreciate the entire process and the kind of character and strength it takes to make it through. And I appreciate the fact that while these type of 90210/Melrose Place shows are there to entertain, they can teach a lot of people facts about certain subjects to not only entertain but to educate. And I also can appreciate the fact that there is nothing cheesier then a character on a show dealing with an issue in one episode and then you never hear about it again. (Look! Timmy had sex, got HIV, went to the doctor, told his parents, ran away from home, came to terms with it, went back home, and hugged Dad all in 45 minutes. Next week, Timmy goes to the Prom!)

And again while I see the benefits of a popular television show tackling these issues, I like to escape reality when I watch TV, not be brought back into it. I want to see these people doing crazy things that I have not done before and having wacky adventures. It’s kinda the same reason that I hate that Sims video game. I have a buddy who loves that game and always talks about how fun it is. So I bought one and tried it out. All I did was wake up, go to work, go home and fix up my house, talk to a neighbor and try to get her to like me, eat dinner, clean up the place, and then go to bed on time so that I could get up and go to work the next day. HELLO?!?! That’s my routine now! Maybe that game would be fun for a homeless guy who sleeps in a refrigerator box or for Oprah who has no idea what it is like to be human.

Man, I really miss Party of Five. Remember when Bailey got drunk and dressed up as a clown for Owen’s birthday party? Julia and Justin’s miscarriage? Remember Bailey’s really hot college roommate Callie? (Callie was a girl.) Speaking of hot, Charlie’s lady Kirsten was a knock out! Owen only eating white food? How bad ass Griffin could be when he wanted to? Bailey’s Intervention? Claudia getting boobs? Julia experimenting with “forbidden love”? JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT before she was lame?

Good times.

Forget Lost, I am going to have to see if they have The Party on DVD yet. (Ahhh, I am still going to watch Lost.)

Talk Like A Pirate Day

2005-09-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

I can’t believe that no one told me about this! I was randomly looking around Blogland last night and I stumbled across 2 or 3 sites where they were all talking like pirates. Then I came across another that actually explained that 9/19 is “Talk Like A Pirate Day”! What the hell?!? This is the coolest thing ever and I almost missed it.

So quickly I called E and Candi up, but I got their voice mail. (They were probably trying to make a baby. Or they might have been making love on the most wonderful rainbow ever. Or maybe they were both in the bathroom. They have 2 you know.)

So, I was forced to go out into my condo’s elevator and ride it a few times until someone got it. It was a nice young lady with a dog. Here was the conversation (Please keep in mind that I did have to prepare some phrases from the pirate website. There was no way I could have this conversation without some assistance):

Me: “Ahoy, me hearty, what floor ye be need’in?”
Poor Lady: “Um, 12 please.”
Me: "Arrrghh, there be a storm a brewin tonight"
Poor Lady: “OK…”

Silence until we get to the 12th floor.

Me: "Weigh anchor, young land lubber. Ye'll ne'er get me buried booty!"
Poor Lady: No response.

Which brings about a whole non-pirate releated point. No one in my building really talks to anyone unless you are in the elevator I have come to notice. Hallways…silence. Lobby…silence. But if you are in the elevator you can normally chat it up with anyone. Well, unless you speak pirate.

In honor of “Talk Like A Pirate Day”, they posted a top 25 pirate things to say at the office. Here it is:

25 "No cover sheet on your expense report? Prepare yerself to be walking the plank, matey."
24 "Hop to it, dogs: Thar be leftover catering booty in the break room for plunderin'."
23 "Sixteen men an' a copier mess -- yo, ho, ho and a bottle of toner."
22 "Avast, men! Get a telescope full of the doubloons on *that* vessel."
21 "I'll be keelhaulin' the next one of ye what leaves ye filthy Tupperware in the break room sink!"
20 "Arrr, matey, have your parrot call my parrot and we'll one day partake of noontime grub together."
19 "No, Bob Dess, I will not 'shiver your timbers.' I will, however, call my attorney."
18 "To arms, me lads! The spoils of the snack machine shall be ours, to each in a fortieth share!"
17 "Me cell phone fell deep into Davy Jones' locker Nobody flush... I'll go get me hook."
16 "Save that last donut for me, unless ya care to feel the cold steel of my hook hand up yer arse, matey."
15 "Be that a peg leg, or arrr ye just happy to cast yer eyes upon me?"
14 "Fax ahoy, mateys!"
13 "Avast! A Team Builders meeting off our schedule's port bow! Scuttle yer productivity, mateys, and prepare to be bored-ed!"
12 "No increase in me pay? Arrr, boss, let me tell ye where ye can store that hook!"
11 "Hold that elevator, ye whoreson bilge rat!"
10 "Ye bent my ear with yer lubberly questions WITHOUT tryin a reboot first? Arrr! It's the plank for you, ye mangy cur... and thank ye for calling Microsoft Tech Support!"
9 "Arrr, load the Canon, wench, and collate me copies!"
8 "Avast, ya scurvy knave! Brave be ye, for certain, but arrr ye willin' ta die fer that parking spot?"
7 "Twenty paces past the Magic Fountain of Water... bear ye left past the Chamber of Meetings... and a minute's voyage down the Great Carpeted Hallway... the unisex bathroom'll be on yer port side."
6 "Aye, if it's a large treasure chest and amazin' booty ye seek, fix yer gaze upon the receptionist."
5 "Boss, I'll be borrowin' a coupla doubloons from petty cash fer some Ho Ho's and a bottle of rum."
4 "Aaaarrrrrghhh! Who among us floated the air mead?"
3 "Arrr! I've arrr!anged for Arrr!lene in arrr!chives to send up that arrr!ticle on arrr!bitration."
2 "Avast, ye demon copy machine! Taste the wrath of my arse!"
1 "Arrr, I have made note of yer demands and I have but one question for ye: Will ye be wantin' slivers o' potato fried in the popular French style with that?"

What a Weekend!

2005-09-19T07:19:00.000-05:00

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had a pretty fun and recharging weekend. Let’s start it off on Thursday when I get home from work and I get my copy of Stuff magazine with Paris Hilton on the cover. Now, I understand that she is worthless. She serves no value to this planet other than eye candy. But DAMN! What fantastically hot eye candy she is! But I would have to put her in the ranking of Madonna as “Ladies that are so used that I would be afraid to have sex with them”. She might even make the rankings of people who could probably transfer a STD from just being in the same swimming pool with.

Thursday was also the season premiere of Survivor! Now, I am not going to get into a big recap thing because I am not longer running my Survivor pool. But there are a few things that I do have to mention. First off, they have brought Stephanie and Bobby J back from the last season. Why other than the fact that Steph is (again) fantastically hot? I don’t know. I understand why they brought back Bobby J, cause he is nuts! This episode started out with the two tribes having to go on an 11 mile jungle hike that took them about 24 hours to complete. Bobby J pushed himself so hard that he was getting full body cramps and kept almost passing out due to dehydration. They kept showing a nurse (who is on this team) trying to keep him conscious. Now I like good drama on TV, but it was getting to the point where I was wondering when the people at CBS were going to step in a helicopter that guy out of there or at least give him some actual medical attention.

Now I love this show and I actually tried out for it once. But I don’t think that I would be able to handle being on this show anymore. First off, the challenges are getting to crazy. 11 miles! I would have to quit my job and start training now in order to handle that. Not only is it 11 miles, but it is 11 miles through the jungle, with very little water, and carrying about 50 pounds of supplies. I helped E and Candi move into their place and we carried furniture and boxes up 3 flights of stairs for 3 hours and that kicked my butt. At least I got to eat some Pete’s Pizza afterwards and then drink about 15 beers. The other issue is that they are mostly recruiting models or model wanna bees to be on the show. There are 3 professional models this season and most all of the rest are all pretty guys/gals. Now, I love it that there are a bunch of hot chicks again this year. But I keep trying to picture myself hanging out with the tribes and I have a hard time doing it. Guess I better start working on my abs. (My guns are fine. Wanna buy a ticket to the gun show? Look out, they’ll get ya!)

Friday at work was really laid back because we had a young lady’s last day after like 5 years and we pretty much spent it by not working too hard and then going out to a bar to celebrate. We hit the Cactus Bar for a few hours and had a few beverages as well. I like that bar. It’s a little bit pricey for the type of place that it is, but it also has a bit more of a laid back atmosphere which I like. Just don’t try to do a jagerbombs there because they cost like $8.50 a pop.

I only stayed there for a few hours because it was the first night of our new bowling season at the Timberlanes. We were told that this league was somewhat competitive and after about 3 weeks of calling the guy who runs it were able to talk him into letting us in. When I got there on Friday I saw the team that we were bowling against. 2 of the men were over 70 years old, the lady was about 40 and is a former professional wrestler, and the final guy wore a walkman the entire night. This team was fair representation of the rest of the league. Needless to say, our team “Barker’s Beauties” fit right in. After bowling (we won our game 5-2) most of the league went out to another bar and we partied it up pretty good. Then, I believe I must have traveled through time because the next thing I remember is drinking rum on E’s deck with Candi and Kathy. Then I jumped back into the time machine and it was morning and I woke up on the couch with a fat beagle lying on my head. I am told that we were boozing until about 4 am and put a good dent in a handle of Captain Morgan and vodka.

Now, my only regret was that I was supposed to make it out to Lockport to watch my nephew ply his 3rd Pop Warner football game on Saturday. But all of that time traveling really takes a lot out of a person. So I called my sister and told her that I was not going to be able to make it and went home and to bed. I believe I woke up at 5pm and ate lunch and went back to bed. Then I woke up a 9pm and ate dinner and went back to bed. I slept through the night then and woke up at 8am on Sunday for the game.

What game you ask? The BEARS game of course! It was the home opener and Pauly and I have tickets for the game. This was also the first game since I moved to the SOUTH SIIIIIDE and can now walk to Soldier Field. So Pauly got over here at around 10am and we had some pre game warm up beverages and brats and then left my place at around 11:30. We walked in the stadium and sat down at our seats right at the start of the game.

And what a game. The Bears came out with all guns blazing! The defense was solid and the offense actually moved the ball up and down the field! We looked like an actual football team! We put a 38-6 hurting on the Detroit Lions, won our first home game of the season, and are tied for first place in our division. I walked home after the game and took a nice nap on my nice, finally delivered leather couch, watched the Sunday night football game and then went to bed with a smile on my face.

Yes, it was a great weekend.

"Bunch of Crap" Killed the Radio Star

2005-09-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

I usually drive to and from work everyday. While I do not consider myself to be a “Non-Morning Person”, I do enjoy not speaking or using my brain too much until I am forced to be fully awake and a function member of society. So, I enjoy listening to talk radio on the way to work. When I lived on the North side, I had about a 30 minutes of car time and I would mainly listen to Howard Stern on 105.9 FM. Most of the time he is pretty funny. But there are times that he gets a little to preachy and lame…like when he bad mouths the FCC and goes on his little rant about how the government is out to get him and I make the switch to Sports Talk Radio on the AM dial. Now the only problem there is once you get close to the city you can not get the signal because it is blocked by the buildings and overpasses. (This is called “Line of Sight”, which is a theory that we all learned from the movie Independence Day. Damn you aliens! Will Smith sure showed you a thing or two!) Apparently, the scientists on the FM side refuse to share their top secret discoveries with their AM sisters.

Now that I moved to the South Side, (SOUTH SIIIIIIDE!), I can’t pick up an AM signal to save my life. So I am stuck to the FM side of the dial. Now, for those of you who don’t listen to Howard, he is moving to Satellite Radio at the end of the year…which I do not have and do not have any intentions of getting. So I need to find a new radio show. And I have discovered that there is a lot of crap out there on the airwaves.

Mancow on 103.5 FM
This guy is the biggest wanna be I have ever seen. When he first came to Chicago about 8 years ago, I gave him a shot. Everyone said he was a younger Howard. The problem was that he mirrored everything that Howard did and somehow (probably because of his lack of talent) made it unfunny and lame. I think his theory was that if he yelled loud enough then he would be entertaining. As soon as I heard that he did a bit at the Planet Hollywood where he froze himself in a block of ice for a week (which really was a big plastic dome) I gave up. On a rare occasion, I give a quick listen to see if he has improved. Nope.

Eric & Cathy on 101.9 FM
I imagine after I meet a nice young lady, get married, have a few kids, and move out to the burbs I would find these guys pretty funny. (Note that those last 4 steps is my plan…but not necessarily in that order.) But right now I think they are pretty tame. Eric’s idea of comedy is having a “wacky” caller on and rephrasing whatever they say. Here is an example:

Female Caller: “I think he likes me because I have large breasts.”
Eric: “He like you big hooters!”
(Everyone in the studio laughs and laughs and laughs.)

Actually, this is a bad example, because I probably would get a kick out of a lot of boob/hooter stories and jokes. But Eric, who was brought in to be the man of the show, is not really a man. He is kinda like a feminine guy who gets along better with women because all of the guys would kick the crap out of him because he is such a pansy. So in his group of ladies, he is somewhat considered macho and gets a kick out of the girls giggling at him and telling him that he is “such a guy”. Man, someone really needs to kick his ass.

Drex on 103.5 FM
This show is kinda funny but for all the wrong reasons. Drex thinks he is tackling all of the issues that America has. But in reality, they are like more of the issues that might plague the playground at a junior high school. Today’s topic on the way to work was “My Boyfriend is to F’ing Nice” and took calls from both the ladies and the fellas to try to tackle this issue that has been plaguing our minds and lives for centuries. On a crazy day, Drex might pick up a topic from the Jerry Springer show for shock value. And you know, I don’t even really mind the topics that much because I still really enjoy the simple types of entertainment like COPS and all those damn judge shows on Fox you see when you stay home from work. But Drex is a retard. I can’t listen to his logic and I can’t stand that chick and other goofball that he has working with him. I wish they would all just explode one of these days.

I believe those are all of my talk show options. I might have to make the switch to 97.9 or 104.3 and listen to music on the ride to work. The ride home is fine, because I like the music at the end of the day and on 103.5 on the Nikki show they have a segment called “Blow This” which I love. Basically, callers phone in and record a message to someone that has wronged them in the past and stick it to them on the radio. Here is a typical example:

“Hi, my name is Rhonda from Chicago Heights and I want to tell Charley to BLOW THIS! I have been dating Charley for 4 years and I have two babies with him and I found out that he has been sleeping with my sister for the past month. I can’t believe he would to that to me with my own family, even after I took him back last year after he slept with my best friend Tina! Well Charley, the jokes on you because Tina has the clap and now both you and my sister have it too! And you both can take your cheating selves to the clinic and BLOW THIS!”

Now that's good radio!

Burning Bridges...or couches.

2005-09-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

Screw part two, I have some other things to get off my chest. Mainly, my battle with the furniture industry this past 2 weeks. I recently moved out of my apartment and into a condo. Since I lived with 2 other fellas, we split up a bunch of the stuff that we used. So when I moved out on my own I needed to get all new furniture.

So about a month and a half ago I started the hunt for a new couch and loveseat. Now, I am not a shopper by any stretch of the imagination. If I want a new pair of jeans I will go to Old Navy, find the right size, buy the jeans, and leave. There is no 45 minutes of looking around, trying on new stuff, or getting distracted by a cute pair of boxers that would look very fantastic and slimming on me so I must have them! Shopping actually pains me. I would rather stick a screwdriver in my eye then spend an hour in the mall. (Unless I was in high school and my and my buddy Jon were trying to pick up chicks. That’s entertainment. For everyone involved I would imagine because I can only imagine our moves when we were 16.)

So I go to all of these places and narrow it down to 2 different couches. The first set is from Darvin’s and I think looks pretty nice. The second set was from John M. Smith Homemakers and also looks pretty nice. The first one was a little more comfortable while the second one was a little more stylish. Well, I’m the kinda man who really enjoys lying on the couch and watching a little television so I went with the comfortable model from Darvin’s.

So I speak to the sales person on the phone and he tells me these are in stock and come in whenever to make the transaction. (The store is in Orland Park about 40 minutes away) So I drive out there about 2 weeks before I move and the sales guy tells me that they have sold out. (Bastards) But Rick the sales-chump says not to worry, they have a load of these coming in on the 26th and will be able to make my delivery on the 31st.

So I said to myself, “Self, that’s not too bad. I move in on 24th, I got E wedding stuff all that weekend so that is only like 5 days of no couch. I can handle that!” So I make the deal. Rick gets a fat commission and everyone is happy.

So the 31st rolls around and I can not be more unhappy with life. Have you ever tried sitting on a lawn chair for 5 days? It is not a good experience. I felt like John Candy in Planes Trains and automobiles after he drives around in that car that was burnt up and he said he has permanent waffle lines on his ass. That’s my ass too now. My and John Candy share the same ass! (I just hope that my ass is never confused for the one that was mistaken for 2 pillows!) I can’t wait for this damn couch to come in. So I call up the store that morning to confirm the delivery time so I can make sure to meet the truck at my building and I get a new sales person telling me that my order did not come in yet.

Say what?

I go nuts and talk to every manager on the planet. Finally some one tells me that the loveseat will be in on Friday and they can deliver that on Saturday. But the couch will not be in for another 4 weeks. So I tell the boss, “Look, I have been sitting in a lawn chair for 5 days now. I will have a couch and a loveseat on Saturday. If it’s from you guys, great. If not, no problem either. But one way or another I will have a couch and loveseat by Saturday. You figure it out and let me know.”

So I get a call on Friday from Rick and he tells me that he will deliver the loveseat on Saturday but the couch will just not work out. I told Rick to keep his loveseat and I will be at his store on Sunday morning looking for a refund.

So Saturday rolls around and I get up and ready to go and purchase option #2 couch and loveseat when my front desk calls me and tells me I have a delivery. The nerve of that Darvins bastard! He sent the loveseat over anyways! So, now me trying to be a jerk, I tell them to come right up and once the poor delivery guys get to my front door with the loveseat I tell them that I cancelled the order and they need to bring it back. Now, I know that the delivery guys did nothing wrong and I should not of made them suffer like that. But they were wearing the Darvin name and I was hoping that they would either feel each other’s pain or the delivery guy would get so mad that he would punch Rick in the face for me.

So I go to John M. Smith Homemakers to get option #2 and wouldn’t you know but they were going out of business and having a huge sale. So I ran in there and wouldn’t you know it but they sold out of option #2. Now what am I gonna do? I am defeated! I thought I was going to have to eat crow and make up with Rick in order to get my stupid loveseat back!

Luckily, there was a Harlem furniture right across the street and I went over there like a man whose dog just died and they hooked me up with a couch, loveseat, coffee table and end tables from the Thunder Bird series. (So tough!) In theory, they will be delivered tomorrow. In theory, communism works.

So one more day of John Candy life, then it is on to bigger and better things.

I Remember You

2005-09-01T21:02:00.000-05:00

Man, I suck. My blogging has really taken a nose dive. I read all of the other links I have on my site and see them putting something out close to every day. Then I look at my sad site and I have maybe put out 3 entries this month. But I have plenty of excuses! I’ve been a very busy man these past few weeks. Let’s do a quick recap:

8/17 – The big day is here and I finally close on my condo. There was a lot of drama leading up to it with my mortgage guy, my attorney and his negotiating with the world, and anything else you could think of. But as everyone else has told me, there is always drama at closing time and I don’t think that I have any stories that have not happened to everyone else who has ever bought a place. So I’ll stop my whining and move on with my life. Thanks Leigh! (My realtor and friend since God knows how long…she has pictures of me in my Cub Scouts uniform. Very cute!)

8/18 – Final packing day at the School Street residence. Since there is a very crazy schedule for all coming up this is really the big day and final push to get packed up and all of our crap out of our place. Three notes on the final “Recycling Project”, the first items taken this day were a stack of old Playboy’s, I caught a guy taking a coffee maker, and someone actually took my old duct tape suit. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that damn thing. I took me a few days to make and the pin striping on it was wonderful. I could have worked at the Men Warehouse after that display. But who would take someone else’s used duct tape suit? And when would they use it? Job interview? Wedding? Handing radioactive material?

8/19 – E and Candi close on their condo and after work I go and help them move. They decided not to rent a moving truck because Candi’s parents have a fleet of cargo vans. She also brought a small army of people to help her move, which turned out to be her most of her family. I got to meet her sister Cathy who I have heard lots of stories about (all good…yet interesting). I think I met her once before when she left her purse over at our place and came to get it at like 7am after a long night of boozing. I let her in, but my eyes were never open and I don’t think we spoke. (I have a problem where I let tall blonde girls into my place without asking any questions. I’m funny like that.) Everyone worked really hard and trudged a ton of stuff up the 3 flights of stairs to their new condo. I have no problems picking up heavy items, but my cardio sucks balls. Man, I have got to start the hitting the gym again. (Which I also stopped due to my busy schedule. Blogging and Lifting…here I come again.)

8/20 – With E and Candi moved in, it was time to start sprucing up my place. So my parents and sister met me at my new place and we taped up and gave the new pad a new paint job. The main room is “Toasted Almond” with the kitchen area “Chianti” and the bedroom “Blue Fox”. It took a lot of color samples, Pottery Barn catalogs, and HGTV viewing to come up with that scheme. And it is marvelous!

8/21 – After running a few errands for the new place, I had to get on a plane and fly out to Tampa for work. The trip out there was pretty disappointing. I had a lot of stuff to do for the new place and a trip was the last thing that I needed. Correction, a flight delay on the way out was the last thing that I needed. At least the airlines tried to sooth my anger with a “quality” Ashton Kucher movie called “A Thing Called Love”. Everything that man touched turns to gold! If there nothing he can’t do? Also, I was excited to make a return trip to my favorite restaurant in the world during this trip. We went to Moses White & Son’s BBQ restaurant during Marty the Mexican’s bachelor party and during a four day trip I believe we ate there 6 times. But for some reason it closed down. Very disappointing.

To be continued…

The Holy War

2005-08-19T12:55:00.000-05:00

I recently spent a few days in Vegas for E’s bachelor party. There were about 12 of us who made the trip out there and needless to say there were a lot of shenanigans and fun had through out the entire trip. (I can not tell most of these stories since I am sworn to follow guy code.) But just as a teaser, here is a picture of Stevey passed out in E’s bed (you can see E’s feet from under the covers) with an iron up his butt. I’ll let you use you imagination on what happened to get to that photo.

A good number of our friends are Jewish and, as fellas do, we often heckle each other about anything and everything we can think of. Religion is not an off limits topic and has been a somewhat comical choice for the past few months.

So we are hanging out in the pool in Vegas on Friday afternoon having several beverages, ogling the ladies, and telling gambling war stories from the night before. (By the way, we entered a No Limit Texas Hold’em poker tournament and I actually took 5th place! I attribute my success to my superior card playing abilities and the fact that I forced everyone at the table to call me Burt Reynolds for the entire night. You can’t beat Burt Reynolds! I got into their heads!) I’m not sure how it evolved, but next thing I knew we were having a Christians vs. Jews swimming relay race.

In the pool, which was full sized, there were two lanes roped off perfect for a competition. It would be myself (Christian) in lane 1 against Zanermania (Jew) in lane 2. I would tag off to E (Christian) who would then do battle with Lee (Jew). The odds were with the Jews in this competition. Zanermania and I were pretty equally matched but Lee looks like a young A.C. Slater from Saved By The Bell and E admittedly is not ready to try out for the Olympic swimming team any time soon.

So we get into our lanes and pretty much the entire pool stops what they are doing and starts paying attention to the race. Before the lifeguard gives us the green light there is still a bit of trash talking between myself and Zanermania. (I kept telling him I was gonna kick his ass New Testament style.) Then the whistle blows and we both take off like baby seals into the water.

Now I’m swimming as hard as I can and when I get about half way across the pool I sneak a peak over into the next lane and see my Jewish combatant right next to me. So I summon all of the power of Christmas and Easter and turned my underwater jets on! I get to the end and tag E to finish them off. Now some people say that Zanermania and I tied and others say that I beat him by a split second. (GO JESUS!)

So both E and Lee take off and Lee is like a submarine missile just shooting through the water at Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman in the Crimson Tide. (Well, probably just after Denzel since Gene is of the Jewish persuasion and this is a holy race.) E tries with all of his might to keep up, but despite the insane amount of splashing that he was generating he was not building up any type of speed.

The Jewish team won the race and for the day they had the superior religion. Apparently, the reason Jesus walked on water was because he was not the best swimmer out there. But have faith Christians…this is only one battle in the war and I’m pretty sure that we will even up the score at the Holy War Hotdog eating contest.

Alley Recycling Project – THE SMOKER

2005-08-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

Going into this experiment, this item was the odds on favorite to have the quickest turnaround time. To be honest, I did not want to give it away like this. This baby has produced a lot of happy memories for the residents and party-goers on School Street. There were many Saturday and Sunday mornings where I would wake up at 6am (after going to sleep at around 3am) to start up the smoker so that I could throw on a nice brisket at 7am so that we could have a fantastic treat at around 5pm that evening.

So first after both E and I decided that we could not take it with us to our new homes, I tried to talk my parents or sister to take it figuring that I would still be able to enjoy it on holidays. But neither of them had any interest in it. Next was asking all of our friends if they had any interest, but while they enjoyed eating from it they had no desire to house the poor little guy.

Could we just throw it out into the alley like the couch or the 1999 NHL Playstation game? I mean, look at the photo of the brisket that we made on it with our own homemade Cajun dry rub? (And a Coors Lite to wash it down!) This machine was a soldier! It fought hard for us and needs to be treated with more respect then the metal computer desk.

I wanted to show the smoker the same respect that we had shown Big Red. (This was out tailgating grill that was on its last legs after the 2004 Chicago Bears season. We took it to one more outing at the annual Double JJ Golf outing and then after many beers we snuck out onto the golf course at 4am and gave it a Viking funeral. We lit it on fire and floated it out in the pond on the 7th hole. It was beautiful. When I die, that’s what I want to happen to me.) Big Red was a fighter was well and was retired like a champion.

So my idea was to enter the smoker and myself into the next Red Bull Flugtag. For those of you that are not familiar with this event, it is very simple. Contestants create some kind of a vessel that they ride over the side of a pier or boat into a large body of water and they are judged by creativity, hang time, and style. I think the smoker and I would have wonderfully in this event. But alas, there was no scheduled in our area any time soon.

So, we put the smoker out at 5pm and it was gone by 6:05pm. Just a tad over an hour. Someone must of really been excited to get that fella into their home. And I hope he went to a good home where someone will love him, nurture him, and feed him brisket on a regular basis. He will return that love, this I know.

Alley Recycling Project – Sectional and Art

2005-08-06T15:53:00.000-05:00

I can’t wait to go to a house party in the next few months and meet the guy who has been taking all of our stuff. It’s gonna be like a Twilight Zone type thing walking into a new house but having all of the furniture that we have been using for the past 5 years.

Bum: “Hey Fig, do you guys wanna play some NHL 1999 on the Playstation?”
Me: “Sure, I’ll get it. It’s in the CD tower…right?”

Tonight experiment yields quite a reward for whoever partakes in it. We have put one half of our sofa sectional (the other half we will put out closer to when we move. We gotta sit on something!) complemented with a piece of artwork.

The artwork is a print form the collection of Scott Mutter called “Surrational Images”. Scott graduated from the University of Illinois in 1968. According to an article done in the Daily Illini News, Mutter wants his images to serve as "a way to carry information about something that is a reality, but not a physical reality. It's a reality about the way a culture does things, about the way we are, or a metaphor or analogy for these. "So I started trying to figure out what visual form it was going to take to do that, and started to do a lot of readings of the one person who was actually working in film (on montage), Sergei Eisenstein."

While the sectional is no official “piece of art”, it is quite a comfortable ride. You might have noticed how comfortable our fat dog Sierra looks on it. You might also notice the beverage that I am drinking in the photo. The good people at Miller Lite has taken a slice of heaven and made it even better. Icehouse was a beverage that I lived off of back at college, and now they have released an Icehouse Lite! All of the flavor and alchohol of an Icehouse beverage with the calories of a Miller Lite!

We put it out into the alley at 4:45pm on Friday. Our house expert predicts that the sofa will be taken at 7:00pm and the art at 8:30pm.

Expert-rexpert. This is why they still play the game. The artwork went on Fridau at 7:15pm alone. The damn couch is still out there. No love was shown whatsoever for that tough little soldier.

You Pointed To Your Boobies!

2005-08-04T20:29:00.000-05:00

For the past 3 weeks, if there was nothing else on TV, we would all pull up the movie Anchorman on Tivo and kick back and watch. I think I have probably seen it around 50 times during those past 3 weeks and could probably recite the movie by heart. I find that instead of coming up with my own jokes recently, I am just borrowing from the movie all of the time. (I love calling people “smelly pirate hookers”. Everyone should try it…it always goes down smooth.)

Now I thought I was alone in this oddity, but today I received 4 different emails relating to something Ron Burgundy-ish. So, that being said, here are my top 39 quotes from the movie:

39) Ron Burgundy: [to dog] You're so wise. You're like a miniature Buddha, covered with hair.

38) Brian Fantana: Panda Watch! The mood is tense; I have been on some serious, serious reports but nothing quite like this. I uh... Ching... King is inside right now. I tried to get an interview with him, but they said no, you can't do that he's a live bear, he will literally rip your face off. Hey, you're making me look stupid! Get out of here, Panda Jerk!

37) Ron Burgundy: I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal.

36) Ron Burgundy: You've got a dirty whorish mouth.

35) Ron Burgundy: I saw that! Brick killed a guy! Did you throw a trident?

34) Ron Burgundy: Guess what, I do. I know that one day Veronica and I are gonna to get married on top of a mountain, and there's going to be flutes playing and trombones and flowers and garlands of fresh herbs. And we will dance till the sun rises! And then our children will form a family band! And we will tour the countryside and you won't be invited!

33) Ron Burgundy: Last time I looked in the dictionary, my name's Ron Burgundy. What's your name?

32) Champ Kind: I woke up on the floor of some Japanesse family's living room, and they would NOT stop screaming!

31) Ron Burgundy: You know I don't speak Spanish.

30) News Station Employee: Smells like Bigfoot's dick!

29) Ron Burgundy: She... Sh... It's terrible! She has beautiful eyes, and her hair smells like cinnamon!

28) Ron Burgundy: You pointed to your boobies.

27) Ron Burgundy: I love scotch. Scotchy, scotch, scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly...

26) Ron Burgundy: I love poetry, and a glass of scotch, and, of course, my friend Baxter here.

25) Ron Burgundy: Why don't you go back to your home on Whore Island!

24) Brick Tamland: I ate a big, red candle.

23) Ron Burgundy: You woke up the bears! Why did you do that?

22) Ron Burgundy: I'm storming your castle on my steed, m'lady.

21) Ron Burgundy: You're a real hooker. I'm gonna slap you in public.

20) Ron Burgundy: I'm proud of you fellas. You all kept your head on a swivel, and that's what you gotta do when you find yourself in a vicious cock fight.

19) Brick Tamland: I read somewhere their periods attract bears. Bears can smell the menstruation.

18) Ron Burgundy: It's so damn hot... milk was a bad choice.

17) Ron Burgundy: [after jumping into the grizzly bear pit at the San Diego Zoo] I immediately regret this decision.

16) Brick Tamland: Where'd you get those clothes from, the toilet store?

15) Champ Kind: I will smash your face into a car windshield, and then take your mother Dorothy Mantooth out for a nice seafood dinner and never call her again.

14) Ron Burgundy: I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It's science.

13) Ron Burgundy: I wanna say something. I'm gonna put it out there; if you like it, you can take it, if you don't, send it right back. I want to be on you. Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I... I wanna be on you.

12) Ron Burgundy: I'm gonna punch you in the ovary, that's what I'm gonna do. A straight shot. Right to the babymaker.

11) Veronica Corningstone: Take me to Pleasure Town!

10) Ron Burgundy: Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you're doing and listen. Cannonball!

9) Ron Burgundy: You are a smelly pirate hooker!

8) Ron Burgundy: Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diago, which of course in German means a whale's vagina.

7) Brian Fantana: It's called Sex Panther by Odeon; it's illegal in nine countries. It's made with bits of real panther, so you know it's good.

6) Brian Fantana: They've done studies, you know. Sixty percent of the time it works every time.

5) Ron Burgundy: I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

4) Ron Burgundy: The only way to bag a classy lady is to give her two tickets to the gun show [kisses his biceps] and see if she likes the goods.

3) Ron Burgundy: What? You pooped in the refrigerator? And you ate the whole... wheel of cheese? How'd you do that? Heck, I'm not even mad; that's amazing!

2) Ron Burgundy: Bark twice if you're in Milwaukee.

1) Ron Burgundy: I'm Ron Burgundy, go fuck yourself, San Diego.

Alley Recycling Project – CD Tower

2005-08-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

This experiment not only features a quality piece of furniture, but also some added bonus prizes to the lucky person that decides to claim it.

As you can see, the CD tower stands about 3 and a half feet tall and could hold approximately 150 you’re your favorite CDs. It’s got a nice fake wood finish that gives it a warm natural look to it and would be a welcome addition to most anyone’s family room or office area.

But what good is a CD tower if you do not have anything to put in it? (None!) Well, the lucky bum that picks up this gem will get a special bonus treat. Included with this CD case are several Sony Play Station games including John Madden Football 1999, 2000, and 2002 and NHL Hockey 1999 and 2000. And for your viewing pleasure, 10 homemade VHS cassettes featuring everyone favorite movies “Benny & June”, “People vs. Larry Flynt”, “The 1996 NHL Blackhawk Season”, and “National Lampoon’s European Vacation”.

(Personally, I have not seen any of those movies with the exception on European Vacation…which had its moments. As bad as that series went, you could always count on a few good laughs by Clark W. Griswald.)

We put this little treasure out in the alley at 7:00pm on Tuesday night. At 9:45pm all of the Play Station games were claimed. At 7:30am this morning they were still here, but as E returned from work at 5pm the remaining goods were claimed. (So sad. So long little buddy! You served us well!)

Well, I'm off to buy the Benny and June DVD. Have a good one.

Alley Recycling Project - Desk

2005-07-28T00:24:00.000-05:00

I have been living at this location for the past 5 years with a couple of friends from college and as of the end of this month we will all be going our separate ways. So, the sorting and throwing out process has begun.

Now, it has always amazed whenever I walked through the back alley and noticed furniture that someone was throwing out and it being gone the next day. These items were not disposed by the good people at the sanitation department. They were scooped up by either scavengers or bums.

So we thought it would be fun to throw out one item at a time and see which item was the most popular and in demand.

Tonight, we threw out E’s old metal computer desk at 5:30pm. When we checked the alley at 10pm it was gone.

4 ½ hours sets the pace. We’ll see if it holds out against my DVD storage container!

I Love My MTV

2005-07-27T23:32:00.000-05:00

I gotta tell you, I am a fan of that Laguna Beach show on MTV. I watched the whole first season and just got done watching the premiere of the second season. First of all, as much as I have seen this show, I still can not tell the difference between any of the girls. They are all very hot and very bouncy and fun to watch, but I still can not tell who is dating who or cheating on whom or anything! Just imagine how much more dramatic the show would be for me if I could tell the difference.

Besides the hot chicks, it is so fun to watch how the lead male from last season is now a total tool. Last season, Steven was being chased by anything with a skirt and a set of hooters. But after being away at school for a semester, all of the ladies figured out that they are in demand and there were a lot of better options out there in the world.

Steven, on the other hand, went to some small geeky art school and did not really evolve since he left his parents castle. So he met up with one of the chicks as soon as he got home (I think it was the girl he used to date) and she was not playing any of his reindeer games. And it is great because he can’t understand what the hell has gone wrong! At one point, he is in a hot tub and splashing this hot chick (I do not know her name) and you can tell that she is getting pissed off and he is laughing like a 5 year old boy who is puling on a girl’s pig tails. But then he busts out the weakest move by saying, “HAHAHAHAHAHAyour’reso pretty.” No breath or pause in any of those words. And while it did not appear that she was amused with him, she did take his hand and lead him out of the hot tub at the end of the show.

Now, if you have been paying attention to the other MTV reality show The Real World, Austin, you probably have an opinion of the Danny and Mel situation. If not let me explain really quick.

Mel is a really hot blonde chick who claimed to be dating a guy for like 2 years before she came on the show and immediately fell in love with Danny on the second day and started hooking up and eventually dating. (When I say eventually, I mean 3 days.) On the second show, all of the guys on the show came out of a bar and got into a fight with some locals and Danny took a punch harder then I have ever seen anyone on real TV outside of organized fighting events has ever taken. He went to the hospital and discovered that his eye socket and skull were fractured and had to have surgery and a lot of stitches.

There, you are current.

So, the cast goes out and parties every night at a local college bar and booze like…me…and work hot chicks like…not me…all night long. Danny does not go out with him, instead he stays at home. Now I thought it was because he was on some kind of medication or something. But no! He was self conscious about his looks and did not want to be seen in public with his stitches. Personally, I would have played it up huge! Maybe wear an eye patch like a pirate and drink a lot of rum. (Maybe that has something to do with my hot chick picking up abilities…hmmm.)

So he stays home while Mel boozes up and flirts with other fellas. But then she always leaved the party early and goes home and has sex with Danny. Fantastic work Danny. I’m not very happy with the whole stay home not looking like a pirate thing, but to not spend any money and have a very hot drunk chick jump in your bed every night and do fun things to you is pretty cool. (I really enjoy playing a nice game of bloodhound with a lady. I’ll let you use your imagination on the rules of the game.)

But now, the stitches came out and Danny is all concerned about what’s going to happen. On one hand he wants to party it up and hit on lots of chicks. But on the other he has a smoking hot chick at home. The fellas are telling him to start partying it up, but you can already tell that he is a puss and is going to stay with the girl. Not a terrible decision, she is smoking hot…but I hate listening to him whine about her and how much he feels for her and how wonderful they are together and who he wants to show her his romantic side.

So the fellas get ready for a guys night out after Danny gets his stitches out and Wes calls up a girl that he met a few nights ago to meet them out with 10 Texas college cheerleaders. How sweet is that! They go out, get boozed up, and this chick throws herself at Danny and wants to hook up. If Mel is a 10, this girl was probably an 8. (Still pretty good!) Danny wants nothing to do with it.

So they leave the bar and Wes can not believe how wonderful the night has gone. He goes up to Danny to celebrate with his boy and Danny says, “I hate those girls. I wanna go home and see Mel.” The look of disappointment on poor Wes’s face confirms the same feelings that I had.

I mean, come on. These people have been together for a total of 7 days and they are already practically married. Maybe if they knew each other for a few years…like Mel claimed she was doing before she came on the show…I would totally understand. But 1 week into it and all of this drama is too chumpy for me. (Is chumpy a word?)

So Danny runs home and throws up and Mel runs into the stall to hold the sissy’s hair for him. I can’t wait until they start wearing matching panties and doing each other’s makeup. Looks like Wes is going to have to carry the show for me this season. WES RULES!