Special 'Best-Of' Two-fer: March 2007

I've been looking for this article for a while - it ran back in March of 2007, and was titled "So Gay." I found it, so give it a once over. It's not very deep or thought provoking, but I enjoyed writing it and I got a lot of positive feedback from a lot of readers. So anyway.... go:

So gay that even gay guys are like "wow, that's really gay."

Lately I've been tivo-ing alot of Reno 911 because, well... that shit is hilarious. It's hilarious, because as a former law enforcement officer, I've encountered in real life a lot of what the beleagured deputies of the Reno Sheriff's Department seem to come face to face with on a daily basis.

Shit's hilarious.

So, as I'm enjoying a chicken pot pie, fresh from my oven, from a box, from my freezer, I have the tivo'd episode of Reno 911 playing in the background. And since I have it on my DVR I can skip over the commercials, and I usually do. But the timer on my microwave went off so my attention was on my delicious chicken pot pie, and not on the fact that the episode was lapsing into a commercial coma.

So imagine to my surprise, when I came from the furnace-like oven with my oven mits on and a cookie sheet in my hands, I see this commercial for the gayest shit ever....

"Guys Gone Wild" is the obvious spin off of the softcore porn DVD franchise of "Girls Gone Wild." The commercials for "Guys" seems to only play after midnight (using my detective-like skills, and my Tivo, I observed that the episodes that featured these commercials were recorded around 0100-0300) and feature hard bodied young, "college aged boys" strutting around shirtless, wet, laughing, embracing, wrestling, pushing each other into pools.... strangley, I was quick to notice, there isn't a chick anywhere around.

As "Girls Gone Wild" panders to lonely, horny men (whom obviously can't navigate the internet well enough to find actual hardcore porn, for free... ahem, AL4A.com... ahem.....) who are with a twenty dollar bill burning a hole in their pocket, who want to watch ditzy drunk chicks expose themselves, kiss each other, fondle themselves and act like good ol' American College Girls in the eyes of Al Qaeda. "Guys" it seems, is the same idea, but just supplementing the girls with Turbo Jocks with enough shit in their hair to make an oil tanker spill look only slightly more dangerous to the collective enviroment.

I watched three of these commercials for the "Guys" DVD (before my critics wittingly accuse me of being gay myself, I will quickly point out...) to get a sense of what the ad was exactly stating and where to send my money order to... I mean, uh, to ... uh... fuck it, next paragraph.

I wanted to compare, honestly. We've all seen the ad for "Girls Gone Wild" and we're all very much aware that we can expect roughly 90 minutes of conventionally hot chicks stripping down, playing with themselves, moaning for the camera, biting their lips, etc, all to Heavy Metal guitars and Hip-Hop beats. I wanted to see what "Guys" had to offer.

I mean, when you think of it, it seems like a pretty obvious idea: You take the standard formula of attractive people, attractive in the sense that we all agree on that they're hot, and have them parade around in skimpy clothes for our private enjoyment. We had girls doing it for close to a decade (if not more, ...my fact checker is out this week) so filming guys doing this would be the logical step.

I don't see the DVD sales comparing though. Those who buy "Girls Gone Wild" are lonely/frat boys who want to stare at tits, constantly stating in a monotone "dude she's so fuckin' hot." over and over again. The typical buyer of "Guys Gone Wild" will be a lonely gay guy.

After the third viewing (I didn't rewind, I just happened to sit through the ad thricely) I had gone from embarrassed, to ashamed, to amused. I was embarrassed at first because it was something overtly homosexual, and I can freely admit that I myself am not comfortable with such an... god the gay jokes forming in my head as I sit here thinking of the next line.... In Your Face (HA!) presentation of the homosexual lifestyle.

I then became ashamed because I suddenly thought to myself, what kind of stigma would be attached to these young men once these commercials air? With the girls in "Girls Gone Wild" they're kind of dismissed as either "drunk sluts" or they simply get a free pass because it's college. And then that made me think about the double standards attached to homosexual behavior. Girls can be "bisexual" to an extent and it's largely acceptable to society. Almost on the verge of encouraged I'd say. If a guy makes out with another dude at the bar after alot of drinks, even if it's one time! ...he's a fag for life.

Think about it. I'm not making this claim based on my personal feelings in this matter, gentle readers... think to yourself, how you'd react in this situation: You're at a bar, and it's a crowded friday night. It's a college crowd. You look to your right and you see two hot blondes full blown making out. There's a crowd around them, mostly guys, and their cheering them on. What're you thinking? At worst, you're thinking that they're attention whores. At best, you shrug it off. So What?

Now look to your left, and you see two attractive guys face-locked. What're your reaction? At best you're like "wow, that's ... not ... usual..." and you sip your drink and look back towards the hot blondes. At worst you pick up a bit of kindling and go to blow out one of those fag's teeth in a fit of repressed homophobic rage.

So then upon my third and final viewing of the ad, I felt amused. Why? Because these kids in this video are doing it for the money, that's why. I consider myself somewhat attractive, and if some chick (and I imagine it's a chick) approached me in a bar, and I had just too much to drink and she whispered in my ear a proposition to video tape me jacking off in some musk-smelling motel room up the road (where presumably three or four of my fellow frat brothers have previously jerked off) and was willing to pay my tab, plus give me a hundred bucks, fuck it, why not? Who's going to see this video anyway? Knowing in the back of my head that I don't even know anyone who's gay.....

The fast forward. My father... Charles W. Nason, never sleeps. He'll sleep maybe two hours at a time, and then be up for another two hours with his acid reflux. He tends to watch a lot of Comedy Central and Adult Swim (I take pride in introducing him to Family Guy and Aqua Teen Hunger Force). What made me so amused was taking the previous "for instance" and applying this bit of information at the end... my dad, up with severe heartburn, sitting on the couch, with his bowl balanced on his expanded beer gut, and then suddenly....

"What? What was that?"

And BLOOPBLOOPBLOOP goes the tivo...

And cut to a scene of me, in the aforementioned musky motel room, beating off shirtless to the encouragement of a young lady who's paying my tab plus another C note to spunk into a sock for her.

Hey, at least it beats spunking into a sock for nothing....

Best Of: August 2007

Another myspace.com throw-back. Not "throw-back" in the sense that it wasn't well written and I threw it back like an undersized Carp, but "throw-back" like an reproduced Magic Johnson jersey a black guy would wear.

Anyway, this originally ran August 18th, 2007. I hope you enjoy my laziness.

I can't lie for shit.

And while many of you reading this might think that's perfectly fine; a trait no one should be proud of having, I must tell you that it sucks not being able to be a good liar.

I've come across instances where lying would've either saved my butt, or furthered me in some sort of career. It would've at least made my life easier by being able to look some one directly into their eyes and not told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me god.

I just can't do it! And by it, I mean really lying, not just telling a slight "mistruth" or "inaccuracy" or "white lie." And example of one of these would be not telling your sister that her new boyfriend is a total dickhead because you went to high school with him, or that .... see, I can't even come up with another example of a little lie! That's how bad I have it.

But before I go any further, I'd like to create a distinction between "lying" and just not giving enough information. A lie is telling something completely false, whereas not giving any or enough information is technically not lying. If someone asks you directly if you ate the last slice of pizza and drank the last beer too, and you certainly did, but tell them you didn't, that's a lie. Same scenario, but they ask "do you know who..." blah blah blah pizza and beer, and you say "I do not know" I don't think that's technically a lie. You're just withholding information that would incriminate yourself. There's an actual aspect of the Bill of Rights that protects you from doing that very thing! ...So if our fore fathers thought that was ok, then it must be fine to do.

But back to actual lying and the fact that I can't do it. This has plagued me most of my adult life. I can't look someone in the face and tell them a falsehood and I don't know why. When I do, or try to, I feel very transparent; I feel as if they know they're being lied to, and I feel like a snake for doing it. I feel like I'm insulting their intelligence, and they know it. It's like if you ask me something directly, I can't avoid telling you the truth of the matter. And I don't mean that I'm brutally honest with people:

"Does this dress make me look fat?"

"No, your face makes you look fat."

That's not the case at all. I just feel compelled to tell the truth.

This has followed me since I was with NYPD and that whole mess, it's haunting me where ever I go. I've blown polygraphs because of it, because I was too afraid of the truth, so I denied it and failed. I was so anxious at MEPS earlier in the week because I was afraid of some falsehood surfacing in my paper work that when they took my blood pressure I was 165/90. The tech taking it had to take it twice more because he thought his equipment was malfunctioning.

"Holy shit, is your BP normally that high?" he says to me.

"No... I don't know what's up..." I say.

"Must be white coat syndrome," and it takes me a good two minutes to get the joke, but I chuckled anyway.

And that brings to mind something else when it comes to people and lying: Most people out there want to be lied to. Whether it's in their jobs, or just the simple aspects of life, people do not want to know the awful truths that are out there.

A woman does not want to know her boyfriend is cheating on her, she'd rather go on suspecting for the rest of the relationship, than to know the truth.

People love to live in little safe bubbles where everything is ok. Take for example these military personnel that work at the MEPS. They do not care if you lie on your paper work. It's actually encouraged! ...But they won't tell you that. They actually make you watch this long Powerpoint presentation about how if you lie on your paper work and are caught you'll go to jail and be dishonorably discharged, etc. But if you read between the lines, their lives, your life, the recruiters, etc, are a lot easier if you just "forget" to mention some things in your paper work.

This was the case with me. I had very minor surgery when I was 15, got hit by a car when I was 22-23 and went to the ER for observations, and saw a shrink one time when I was 23-24 ish. I put all this information down on the sheet provided to me at MEPS and now I'm on hold. My recruiter was slightly pissed, because it's extra paper work for him to sift through, the techs at MEPS left me with the impression that I was wasting their time, and if I had just checked "no" on those above boxes, no one would've bothered to look into it and I'd be cleared to start basic or OCS. Instead, I'm on hold til the 27th. But with the lie hanging over my head, that's how my blood pressure got so high.

As my father put it when I told him I was on hold "Jim, its the federal government...you think they have time to go looking into 'no' answers? They see 'no' checked off, they leave it alone. Jesus Christ you're dumb." And this was largely confirmed by my service member friends who I asked.

So I decided to do some research on lying, and to see if there's some way I can learn to be better at. At least for the sake of my poker game. Because honestly, if I get a good hand, I act like a retard on a farris wheel.

I type "how to lie" into the Google and I get 91 and a half million responses.

The site WikiHow.com had the best tagline disclaimer out of all the other sites listed (most were really sketchy, like "so you wanna learn how to lie, huh" or "make'em believe you anytime, anywhere" I think it's the fact that I read those lines like some shady business men or used car sales man, or ... men hanging around in a back alley waiting their turns for a gummer from a used whore. Basically I felt raped while reading...) which read "by taking this advice you are putting into jeopardy relationships, friendships, and you're good word. Proceed at your own risk." My kinda place it would seem like.

The site gives pointers about how to act and psychologically how to feel. "Believe in the lie, make it the truth to you" it says. It even quotes George Costanza from "Seinfeld" "It's not a lie if you believe it!" Great, I'm totally not feeling like a scumbag right now.

The site goes on to give me tips about my physical appearance, how to smile, to try standing in front of a mirror and lie so I see how I look when I tell the lie, etc. I try this out for a few minutes, with something simple: I make up a lie that I went fly fishing yesterday, simple and painless enough. I stand in front of a bathroom mirror and recite over and over again that I spent my day fly fishing yesterday, making it into a little story.

But I notice something, and it's very subtle. The more I tell of the story, the less I can actually look at my face, I seem to keep focusing on my shoulder. It's as if I'm ashamed at myself even for telling something as innocent as falsely fly fishing friday. Ugh, I'm getting no where with this.

I guess in sumation I'm a horrible liar. Though this should come as shocking news to some of my readers, who have questioned the authenticity of some of my non-fiction articles in the past. I've in fact lead myself on some pretty outlandish adventures and written about them.

...Or have I? Because would you honestly believe someone who told you they were a horrible liar?

I Can't Figure Out If This Gets Filed Under "Kharma" or "Revenge."

Unless you live under a rock and don't receive cable or maybe you're capable of reading, you'd be wholly unaware of the abominal manifestation of materialism and greed that is Mtv's "My Super Sweet 16."

My readers will note that this is not the first time I've made mention of this show in one of my articles. But today I'm writing because of an article in the New York Times which I feel is worthy enough to be brought to the attention of my fans - who I presume find MSS16 the most unholy of televised programmes.

In said article (you'll find it below) the featured teenager gushes (no pun intended) that her daddy is an oil baron in the middle of WhoCares, Ky, and with all the oil he pumps out of the ground, he uses to buy her Louis Vuitton hand bags and BMW coups.

Well, when all of this was going down, someone from the Securities and Exchange Commission took notice and realized that this darling brat's father was scamming people on fake-ass oil company stocks or whatever. You'll read it in the article.

Savor it.

Danica Patrick

It's been three years since Danica Patrick broke the "gender barrier" in Indy Car racing. For those of you - like me - who don't really care, I guess it's something like breaking the "color barrier" in NASCAR? ...Something like that?

So after three years of racing, she's yet to win a single race. Yet, every time there's a commercial on ESPN or ABC for an Indy race, she's got top billing. In essence, she's become the Anna Kornikova of left hand turns.

Honestly, I don't care about Danica Patrick, and probably most of America would concur with that sentiment. So I think, after three winless years, we can probably allow Ms. Patrick to slowly fade into mediocricy, a sports figure-also ran (literally and figuratively), a gimmicky flash in pan to revitalize a sport no one in this country cares about.

Other members of the "Who Cares" All-Star Team include:

Previously mentioned Anna Kornikova
David Beckham
Barbaro the horse/roast beef sandwich
Bam Margera

Maybe they can all sit around watching highlight reels that don't feature them.

My Roommate's Date!

So right now in the living room the sound of female giggles is floating into my room, through my closed door, and to my ears. The giggles belong to this goth-lite shoe store employee named Jenelle who's a giggling idiot for my usually shy roommate. Meanwhile, my roommate is actually keeping his shit together and sounding pretty confident out there.

Not that I'm eavesdropping or anything....

Anyway, this all starts roughly 24 hours ago when me, the roommate and our neighbor were pulled over by undercover police officers and being questioned about our activities that night. You see, we walked over from the apartments to a little cafe to get dinner, but upon finding the prices at the cafe to be too steep (18 dollars for aps?! Crazy!) we walked back to the apts. well, instead of walking ALL THE WAY around the fence that separates our property from .... the Mongols? I dunno, but we decided to hop this fence. Shortly after getting into the car to try someplace else for dinner, blue lights appear behind us.

Sweatshirt-clad UCs approached the vehicle, and while keeping my hands flat to the dashboard, wearing my Ray-Ban "Stunnas" at 9 at night, we answered questions relating to why we decided to be lazy and hop and fence, and what we were doing tonight and where we were going and where we lived and who we were, and so on.

Then they found out we were Coasties, and their attitudes completely changed. Seriously.

"Ok guys, well, if I see you guys out there this summer, I'll be sure to wave!" Said the overly friendly sergeant as he handed back our IDs and wished us a good evening. We would observe no less than four or five separate police incidents throughout the evening from there forward.

Anyway, we end up at this Mexican joint: Sam Diegos, which, aside from it's unappetizing name, is the shit. The girls working there are retardedly hot, the food is amazing, I could go on and gush about this place for the rest of the article but it would be doing a disservice to my roommate and his date in the other room.

So we're sitting around the dinner table and our friend John wants me to give his number to the waitress while he goes and gets the car. I have no problem with this, so as we pay our bill, I take the waitress aside and say "what'd you think of my friend sitting right there?"

"He was cute,"

"I know right? Listen, he wanted me to give you this," and in her hand I press this folded napkin with his number on it. She looks at it and smiles and says that she'll hold on to it.

As we're walking away, my roommate says "You're like the godfather and the Terminator rolled into one person," awestruck. And then it was my turn to be awestruck.

"So uh, I met this girl..." he drops on me. I stop in midstep.

"Really? Where? When?"

"Today," he says, "on myspace." I smile a little and shake my head.

"Ok, you're gonna have to show me her page when we get home..." And he does, and she wasn't that bad.

So fast forward to today. He says he's going to meet her at the mall, and for this article and my journalistic integrity, I tagged along. We went to the GAP, Best Buy, Banana Republic, etc, and the whole time he's text messaging her, getting more and more worked up and nervous. Twice he nearly called the thing off. It was so bad I had to take his cell phone from him and keep talking to her through text messaging.

"You need to slap me," he says.

"Slap you?"

"Yeah, like in the movies, when you slap someone to calm them down!"

"You want me to hit you?" And we stop in the middle of the walkway in the mall, looking at each other. My hand slowly forms into a fist at my side, my eyebrow coming up over my sunglasses.

"No," he says after a second, realizing I wasn't going to blow off his suggestion. He fidgets a lot and I can see him going more and more pale.

"Listen to me Ryan, you gotta relax and breathe here, ok? Slow down, she's just as nervous as you are and you're in a more advantageous position here. You're a good looking guy, she doesn't know you're nervous and don't know what you're doing. Worse case scenario, if she's totally busted, be polite, carry-on for a minute, and then say "hey, we gotta thing, I'll call you" and don't call her. You'll feel like shit for a day or two, and then you'll move on.... plus, you got me flying wingman for you."

"I dunno bro, I think I..."

"Shut up. You need to expand your comfort zone and the only way you can do that is by taking risks and stepping out of your tiny-ass comfort zone you have now. It's the only way you'll expand it and be comfortable doing these things. Be an adult, be a man, suck it up. You know what's considered a decent batting average in baseball? If you can hit .300 in a season, you're considered an All-Star. You know what that means? It means that for every three times you get up to hit, you strike out twice. And that's considered a success! The important thing is that you try, that you swing. You might hit it out of the park, but likely you'll take a big chop and land on your ass, and no one will care. Understand me?"

"Yeah," and the color returns to his face a little.

"Now who's in control here?" I ask him.

"Uh, you are." He looks at me uncomfortably.

"NO! ...well, yeah, but, no, you're in control here, with her. You need to make her realize that, that you're confident and in control. If you give her the idea that you're flying blind, she's going to fucking panic, you understand me?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, now get over there and be a man," and he looks over my shoulder and walks over towards the shop she works at. I hang back, watching everything from the pet store, making it look like I'm looking at puppies, but watching everything through the plate glass window outside of the pet store.

The two stand awkwardly in the middle of the mall, talking. The roommate's body language was closed and inward, where as the female was clearly physically smitten. I couldn't hide my smile. It was all very endearing.

So he ends up taking her to dinner, Sam Diego's ... again. And now, if I'm not mistaken, I just heard both of them crash into his bedroom.

Go get'em kid.

On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles

Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to be so important as to have a super villian... An arch nemesis, etc - someone who was spending all their time thinking of ways of doing me harm and trying to best me....

Now that I have one I find that its not as great as I thought it would be...

Be careful for what you wish for kids.

On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles

Today I learned what its like to shoot yourself in the foot after you've stuck it in your mouth.

On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles

So I'm in P-Town at the local house of pizza waiting on a pork sandwhich listening to awful euro-techno and the Greek guy yell into a cell phone and I'm reminded that no matter where I go I still experience NYC on a daily basis.

Best Of: September 2007.

Yes I'm fully aware that it's... pretentious (and perhaps lazy) to post some of your own work and call it a "best of". It's also compounded that it's only a few months old. But when I was re-reading this, I thought to myself "Jesus, this is good. I wish I could write an article like this every time..." So here, now, is a re-issue if you will, of an article called "Sunday Morning Thunder" off my old myspace.com blog. It originally ran on September 23, 2007, shortly before I would leave for boot camp.

I hope you enjoy.


I'm woken up from a strange dream this morning by the buzzing of my cell phone on my desk. The dream I was having involved a family trip to Washington DC where I was sitting in on some White House Tour and President George W. Bush showed up and spoke to us. He was wearing super casual clothes, but nothing that I would be too surprised in seeing him in. Not like he was wearing a mustard stained SPAM t shirt and little blue running shorts with flip-flops.

Anyway, in the dream I confront G-Dub about the shitty condition our country is in, and when I look into his eyes, I see that he's got the mind of a child. He has this unknowing innocence behind his eyes, and instantly takes on a "I know you are, but what am I" disposition when I bring up how I've been unemployed for two months and how for every tank of gas I buy, two soldiers die in Iraq.

Then I wake up, to the sound of my phone buzzing.

I crawl out of bed, grab my phone and flip it open. I yawn and say hello.

"Hey Jim, it's your dad!" Says a muffeled version of my father's unmistakable voice backed by what sounds like highway traffic. I figure he's broken down someplace.

"No kidding..." I say back and sit myself down in my computer chair, turning on my laptop, wishing it were a coffee machine.

"You wanna see something pretty fuckin' cool?" He yells. I pause, wondering in my mind what could be so "fuckin' cool" this early on a Sunday. At that point too I look at my cable box and see it's 9 am. I think to myself it'd better be a dead body.

"I guess..." I say instead.

"I'm on the South Street Bridge over the turnpike, get down here, bring your camera too!" And he disconnects. So I pull on a pair of jeans, a t shirt, grab my keys, sunglasses, gun, camera, and throw my M67 field jacket on and ride down. My father's parked his motorcycle along the side of the bridge and is standing looking down at the turnpike in his black leather jacket and sunglasses.

I jog up to him and look over the edge at the rushing cars. I look up at him he smiles at me.

"What the hell am I doing here?"

"Any minute now, there's going to be roughly two thousand motorcycles heading towards Augusta for the Vietnam Memorial Ride, it's going to be awesome!" He says, excitably. I nod along, and scratch my head. I rushed down here for this?

Dad goes on to report to me that he watched about fifty bikes head south just a few minutes after he called me and got some video on his camera. He tries to show it to me, but the batteries are dead and he curses. He tells me he's going to run down to the corner store and buy some batteries and he'll be right back.

I'm left alone on the bridge looking down at the passing cars early on a Sunday morning, crap still in my eyes, etc. I let out a yawn and wonder how long it'll be before some one passing over the bridge calls the cops because they think there's a jumper about to off himself. A visit from the local gestapos of Biddeford would pretty much fuck up my morning, and I look around nervously, feeling very conspicuous. A glance to my right and I see a guy about my dad's age approaching with a coffee cup and an American flag over his shoulder.

It turns out his name is Curt and he lives in one of the houses on the other side of the bridge. He hangs his flag over the side of the bridge and then goes on to explain to me that he wanted to hang a rather large banner that said "The Maine Turnpike Authority Has No Class" in reference to the MTA making the bikers pay the toll to ride up to Augusta today and not giving them a free pass. We chat idly about the volume of bikes and motorists passing by are already honking at the Stars and Stripes hanging off the bridge.

Soon my dad returns and he shows both Curt and I the video of the bikes. He's right when he says it's impressive. An endless caravan of motorcycles traveling southbound pass under him. There's no sound on his camera, so there's no throaty rumble, but none-the-less we're stunned.

So the waiting begins.

We three stand by the flag and wave to supportive patriotic motorists who flick their lights and honk their horns at us. A few good natured truckers blast their air horns. This fills me with a strange sense of pride I'm unfamiliar with. Maybe three out of every five cars toots their horn, gives a peace sign or some how acknowledges our presence on the bridge with the flag. It probably helps the situation that I'm adorned in an OD-Green jacket, which people seem to more freely associate with a protester than a military member. I stop and think about the sense of irony the whole idea envokes.

It's not the politics or the war or even the troops people are supporting, I come to think as I stand on the over pass. It's the idea of America; the American Dream is still strong in most people despite the black eye lady liberty has been sporting the past few years. People see the colors and don't think about our international status or a wayward and corrupt administration. They don't think about how our freedoms are slowly being witteled away by the closest thing to a totalitarian regime our nation has ever had. They see red white and blue and instantly stand behind those colors. I don't think they're thinking of Ground Zero or 9/11 or the war on terror. I think they're thinking about how we as Americans are all brothers and sisters under one flag, one idea.

We sit and talk, we three, for the next two and a half hours. We're all wondering if maybe the bikers took Rt 1 instead. I call my mom to see if she can use the computer to find anything out, and flirt with the idea of sending her out to bring us Dunkin' Donuts while we wait.

By now a few other people have arrived on the bridge, each has a different story to tell. Collectively we all stand by the flag and wave to honking cars. Mom calls me back and says she has a webcam feed from the Kennebunk exit and it shows what she says as "thousands" of motorcycles heading up the road. I pass the word to everyone and we all wait.

By noon, we can see them coming over the southern horizon, two powder blue Crown Victorias with blue lights flashing leading a tightly formed group of about ten police motorcycles from different departments with lights and sirens, leading a never ending cavalcade of iron horses booming, gut shaking exhaust sounds on parade. Chrome and black paint, a real-life manifestation of Eric Burden lyrics in two-by-two formation, pumping their fists towards us, saluting their flag, honking their horns. Leather-clad modern day nomadic barbarians in search of the next village to raze.

We all stand silently, maybe passing a comment between the person next to us, but mostly rigid with the awesome sight of so much machinery in formation. A classless idea showing much more than solidarity and confederation. Total unification for the common good, not protesting or revolting against any establishment, but just simply saying "here we are, and this is why we're here."

Their messages gets across to us on the bridge loud and clear.

I spend most of the time getting pictures and videos (if not up by the time you're reading this, they will be shortly. The video will be in my "my video" section, pics in the "random things..." folder. After about fifteen minutes the stragglers have passed and we all depart silently. I climb on to the back of my dad's bike and he gives me a lift down to the other side of the bridge, some 200 feet where I parked my truck. Curt breaks down the flag, but I still feel the surge under my skin regardless.

What's Pissed Me Off This Weekend

I dunno man, for some reason or another, there's been this avalanche of collective societal behavior that's really gotten under my skin over the last few days. So I figured I'd run it down for you, the readers, in somewhat of a list-and-explain-type article. Sit down, open up that pack of crackers and enjoy, bitch.

What: Screaming, crying children.
The Scene: The mall.
How it went down: So I'm in Olympia Sports trying on new running shoes when from about ten miles away I hear this blood-curdling, back of the lungs screaming that could only be produced by one of two creatures: A wounded animal or a small attention-starved child. I've never liked children, and though maybe one day I might have a hand in one's production, I'm sure as hell not going to be one of these despondent parents that simply drag their screaming hell spawn by the wrist through public as if it's a wayward police siren.

So back to me sitting on this bench and trying on shoes... this family of overweight McDonald's-for-dinner-everynight, egg-shaped simians herd their screaming 6 year old into the store, and not only just stand at the entrance way so that everyone's attention is drawn to them, they then drag the little bastard over to where I'm sitting and sit his ass down right next to me.

Um, hello-o-o-o? Excuse me, apparently you didn't really earn that holey, stained and stretched "mom of the year" t shirt, huh? When the hell do you think it's appropriate to plant a fucking... screaming sound bomb next to someone? And I mean, this kid was fucking loud, man.

Now granted, it wasn't like I was at the Four Seasons or anything where that type of behavior would've been unheard of. No, I was in Olympia Sports trying to buy sneakers on the cheap. But still, the lack of consideration for everyone else in the world drove me to the point of near murder. I mean, the thing that really gets me is that these parents weren't even lifting a finger to silence this kid. And the dad! The dad, how spineless can one get? Fucking take charge of that little runt man! Grab him by the throat and say something like "listen here you little piece of shit: I made you and I can break you and no one will ever know what happened, you understand me? So shut the fuck up."

But here's the rub, America, what's lead to the degeneration of good parenting has been the trigger-happiness of organizations such as the Department of Human/Health Services, where with a simple phone call placed by the child, a SWAT team of care takers swam in on the house and shut down the whole operation. The parents get taken to court, custody of the children is awarded to the state, so on. And kids know this from talking to other kids at school.

Johnny: Jeez guys, my dad is a real ball breaker about me mowing the lawn this weekend...
Billy: Yeah, well if he gives you a hard time, call this number and tell whoever picks up that your dad hits you and gets drunk and makes you slave around the house. You'll be in Disney World by Friday.

And it's true! ...Well all but the Disney World part. It happened to friends of my parents a few years ago. They have a rebellious daughter with a love of drugs, booze and black guys. So one day, her dad, my dad's friend, decided he'd had enough with all the bullshit from his 16 year old, and told her that there were going to be some changes. She was going to get her car taken away, she was going to have a curfew, and she wasn't going out on school nights anymore. To this, the daughter called DHS, and in 24 hours she was getting put up in a motel room, free to do whatever she wanted, unattended by any adults, while her parents were looking down the barrel of insurmountable fines and possibly jail time for being "abusive."

Bullshit.

And the case is still pending, I think.

So yeah, anyway, don't bring your screaming kid around me. I'll break it's fucking neck like I would that of a small bird.


What: Bouncers/Doormen
The Scene: The British Brewing Company, Hyannis
How it went down: So me and a few of my shipmates wanted to go out the other night. We hit pretty much every bar in town. And we were doing it the right way, with a DD, which came in the form of my 19 year old roommate.

So we bop on over to the BBC (I now refer to it as the Big Black Cock) and go in to have some more drinks. The only problem is the fat fuck sitting on a stool by the door.

He's barely checking IDs, putting bracelets on people, basically marinating in his own fat juices. We all present our military IDs and he starts putting the bracelets on everyone, when he takes a second look at my roommate's ID.

"Hey, you're not 21," he says.

"Yeah, I know, I'm 19..." my roommate says truthfully. And I gotta give it up to my roomie, he easily could've just said nothing and gotten in and drank, but he's a stand up guy and knows the rules.

"Well, you can't come in then," and mind you, the BBC is a restaurant/BAR. And the fact that they're putting bracelets on people 21 and over... he didn't have to put a bracelet on my roommate, he could've just been like "ok well, you can go in, but you're not getting a bracelet for the bar."

"But he's our designated driver, you have to let him in," says another member of our party.

"No I don't," and now a crowd is starting to form behind us from the log jam we're creating.

"This is bullshit," I start. "You're going to turn away four paying customers because he's 19? He's getting us home safe tonight. Wow, I guess I know where the BBC stands on drunk driving..."

"Hey, don't give me a hard time, the door's over there," he says and points his fat finger backwards.

"There isn't even a sign here that says '21 plus tonight' so what the fuck dude?" The other member of our party says. Ryan just stands there, the obvious pawn in this chess game of inebriation.

"Listen, do I gotta call the cops here or what?" The fat pricks says through his sweat.

"No, no, we wouldn't want you to exert yourself anymore than you have to, tubs," I say and we leave. My roommate got really bummed out and it kinda killed our night altogether.

But what is it about doorman feeling like their god? Like would it have killed this guy (like the supposed blood clot he's bound to suffer) to let our driver in? I mean, me and my fellow of-age members were clearly shit faced, whereas our under aged driver was sober, polite and above all else, honest. So that's what you get for being a stand up guy? It's like getting AIDS from Abstinence.

So since then, we've decided that we're no longer going to be patrons of the BBC, because they're pricks, but also because they obviously want to see their customer's die in a fiery auto wreck because they don't believe in enslaving an under-aged person to chauffeur drunken hooligans.

Fuck'em.


(Editor's Note: Jim wanted to let everyone know that you should always designate a driver when you go out drinking, even if it's you and just one buddy. Although it's cool to drive drunk with a loaded firearm, and feel like 50 Cent, you probably can't afford a roomful of lawyers to handle your court case as Fiddy could. Designate a driver, because at best, you get pulled over and pay fines out the ass, at worst, you kill yourself or someone else. ....Hopefully a family with uncontrollable screaming children.)

My Dad And Text Messaging

(The Scene: In my kitchen at my parents' house, drinking a beer with my dad on a Monday afternoon)

Dad: Hey, show me how to send you text messages on my phone to your phone!
Me: No.
Dad: Come on, we can text!
Me: No.
Dad: Why not!
Me: Because.... your phone doesn't... get texts.
Dad: Yes it does, Gillis sent me a text yesterday, but I didn't know how to text back!
Me: You're not texting me.
Dad: You have that fancy-ass blueberry [sic] phone, and I see you texting all the time, I want to text too!
Me: No.
Dad: You suck as a son.

Jock-less Radio

One of these days I'm going to break down and get satellite radio, although that wouldn't solve my problem with what some could consider to be the "on-air talent" found on most radio stations, terrestrial and otherwise.

I'm talking about the radio disc jockey, the "jock", the... whatever the hell other word you can come up with the typically boorish and "shocking" personality that drones on endlessly between "80 minutes of 80s" rock-blocks, or whatever your local radio station provides for your listening enjoyment.

Radio jocks fall into four basic categories, which I've taken the pleasure of breaking down for you:

The Jockette: Typically does the mid-day stuff. She tries to come off as part of the scene, but her trying too hard comes across flakey. Also, these females of radio will have some-what hot voices, but in all reality, they're 400 lbs of slob.

The Shock-Jock: You can find these assholes on most mornings or afternoons. They typically work the commute listenership. They coincide with the "Morning Zoo (see below)" and when not sucking up all the air time between Foreigner B-Sides and Clash classics, they're pulling off "ridiculous" on-air pranks and gags, or getting listeners to promote the station whilsts engaged in some sort of gelastic contest for concert "tix."

The Morning Zoo: Usually a compilation of shock jocks who sit around between the hours of 5am and 10am and bitch and moan about whatever. There's usually a ring leader, someone who typically takes the moral high ground, a neaderthal-like mysogynist, a token minority and a news/weather/traffic guy. In the course of 5 hours of air-time, the Morning Zoo will take approximately 400 intelligable phone calls from listeners on cell phones in tunnels, and play about four songs.

The Couple: The most unholy of all radio jock pairings is the "typical" husband-like on air personality and the "typical" wife-like on air personality. Though not married to each other, they present a show that would be similar to getting coffee with an actual married couple every morning. In other words, an annoying pairing that would make you take a nail gun to the temple of your own head and not stop pressing the trigger until the clip was empty. The male will act in such a way to be toeing line of offensive behavior, and the female will abide good naturedly with "oh yous" and "hey nows."

Again, nail gun to the temple.

So this is primarily what I find myself having to deal with when I'm traveling around on the Cape. I want an iPod with a car adaptor really bad, because I don't see myself shelling out for a Sirus subscription any time soon, only to be faced with basically the same options, only commercial free.

I didn't know what to do, honestly, until I came across Boston Radio 92.9, which is basically someone's plugged in iPod and "robojocks" doing station IDs every half hour. A pleasent sounding male or female voice simply comes on and says "hey, you're listening to Boston Radio 92.9, here's six more songs." And you get six more songs. It's that simple.

Commercial breaks are only about 65 seconds long, approx. Granted, it's the same three commercials and it gets very repetitive, but the fact that I don't have to deal with some fat prick with a microphone talking through the first twenty seconds of a Neil Pert drum solo is a fair trade.

Why aren't there more stations like this; completely automated to just play music? It's almost the exact opposite of talk radio: music radio.

As for 92.9, their playlist is mostly songs from ten to fifteen years ago (remember Bush?! How about Eve 6?), but for someone like me, who was first creating his own musical identity in middle school, I was able to sing along from Saugus through to about the other side of New Hampshire.

If this trend continues, could contests like "carry this hotdog clenched between your ass cheeks for an Xbox" be near extinction? Will comely coeds no longer bare their "Tits for Tix?" Will the unfunny Opie and Anthony have to take jobs at Subway?

I can only hope.

On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles

So I'm at the Prompto Oil in Biddeford Maine waiting to get the oil in my truck changed out. I was in maine for roughly twenty-four hours which is never enough time to do everything I want and it sucks. Given that twelve of my thirty-six hours off was spent driving... It hardly seems worth it.

On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles

What am I doing? ... Laying in my rack avoiding responsibilities and feeding myself from an immense plate of guilt.

At least "The Universe" is on The History Channel... It allows me to indulge my inner geek while I hide.

Argh... And I'm feeling fat too... Awesome.

I Want to be The "Cool" Guy at The Local Newspaper

I'm a huge fan of Justin Ellis.

If you don't know the name, or are thinking I'm talking about an up and comming Red Sox prodigy let me introduce you to young Mr. Ellis.

Here, have a bite.

Ellis writes stories for the Portland Press Herland back home in Maine, and he does an article or whatever for the Monday Magazine portion of the paper called "NXT." I imagine this is supposed to add to his legitamcy as being a "hip and cool" urbanite, because apparently being black in Maine is no longer cutting it.

Mostly what he writes is what I write (though his articles come out with greater consistency/frequency... fuck you, I'm really busy... 3am is pretty much the only time I have to write and post... when I should be studying...); topics like latest trends in pop culture, video games, television, etc, often are the subjects of his posts.

So why can't I land this kind of gig? I could easily be working for some shitty local paper, describing what fast food restaurants are worth my five dollars and how I spend my Saturdays.

Well for one, the Cape is boring, and nothing is going on here. So much in fact that the shitty local bird cage liner only comes out once a week. So what would I write about?

Often I've thought about maybe submitting my blog entries to the local paper (The Cape Cod Times, by the way) but considering the Portland Pheonix wouldn't even touch me, I doubt a stodgy Cape Codian newspaper which is probably read by old-school liberals would give me a shot.

Part of it too is getting your foot in the door with someone on the inside. Ellis interned for a few years before they would let him even write for the paper, and even then it was little gay stories no one would read.

And I really don't have much of an audience. Cape Cod is pretty much comprised of 66% old dying lumps of flesh, and 33% young people who list "The Da Vinchy [sic] Code" as their favorite book.

Thanks Myspace.com!

I just want to be a beacon to that last one percent of people, who like me, are stuck on this miserable hook-shaped island waiting to see what summer brings. What would I write about, you ask? Pretty much the same things I write about here, only a little more Cape Cod scene-oriented. I mean, of which there is little of. The Cape Cod scene is typically Boston college girls slumming it because they've exhausted all the places in Beantown and Providence and there's still three months left in the goddamn semester.