100 Pipers on the Bandwagon

...and that's why you don't cut the line!

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:06:34 -0400

Some fool was trying to cut the line at Artichoke last night, and was politely rebuffed in his douchery and made to wait in line like everyone else. When you’re a douche, this is probably the best scenario you could hope for without getting what you want: Make your douche move in front of everybody, see how it works, and if you’re rebuffed, and everybody thinks you’re a douche, what do you care? Let the little people think not so highly of you.

However, this scenario doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, people don’t take well to being surrounded by douchery, and they may respond with violence. I don’t condone violence, of course. But know that as a douche, this is a possible risk you take.

In our current example, the attempted line-cutter was later waiting for the same L train I was. Being a douche, he did some douche things, and two gentlemen did not take so kindly to it. So they started slapping him around and beat him up a little. Police were called, patrons were horrified, and I had mixed feelings about actually trying to do something. But not really, since his earlier douchery had led me to believe, based on no hard evidence, that he deserved a bit of slapping.

So I was basically reduced to yelling, “Hey guys, they’ve callled the cops, is this worth it?” or some variation thereof. Some other riders took a little more in the way of action. After all, he hadn’t tried to cut them in line.

It wasn’t a severe beating, there was no blood spilled, just an ugly shirt ripped. I talked to the conductor in the car, he said help was on the way, and that was that. I went about my business. Did I think some kind of douche karma was visted upon the linecutter? No, not really, the other two guys were probably just assholes who like to fight. But I will admit to having a rather awful twinge of satisfaction. So maybe I’m the douche.

Or more likely, if you don’t want to wait in line for pizza, just take your ass to Hot and Crusty on 1st Avenue!

(Relatively) Moderate Drinking Week: A Recap

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:37:00 -0400

Recent events made me decide to try and change up my habits a little, namely, instead of decimating myself and then subsequently hiding out for two days, take it slow and steady. Only have a few drinks, and get to bed every night at a reasonable-ish hour. This wasn’t so much of a plan as the way the week worked out, and yes, some of that did involve a conscious decision to stay away from the usual group and their shenanigans.

Well, the week’s over, so let’s see how I did:

Sunday:Watched the Yankees game at Turkey’s Nest and enjoyed the victory. The lone bad move was accepting the free shot of Jameson. I hate to admit this, but I think I have to cut out whiskey shots on school nights. The only shot that doesn’t seem to wreck me nowadays physically is the stupendously juvenile Jagermeister; I may have to start requesting that (of course at the risk of coming down with a case of the douchebagitis). Luckily, I ate tons of food at my mother’s earlier that day and supplemented it with some San Loco.

Monday: Went to Mug’s Ale House to watch the Jets discover they are not all that and a bag of Doritos just yet. Drank moderately to the point where I had to calm a slightly drunker friend down about the fact that the Jets could not stop the run.

Tuesday: A trip to an undisclosed location for a birthday celebration of sorts. I kept the drinking in check and used the money I would have boozed to excess with for other fun items. Let’s just say that I learned that I may have been underestimating skinny girls over the years.

Wednesday:The taxman put a beatdown on another friend of mine, so I decided to drink with him instead of attending the usual dinner party/karaoke. Which is good, since it’s terribly hard to extract yourself from that scene in good shape at a reasonable time. Instead, I watched regular-season hockey for the first time ever, had 50-cent wings, and was in bed by 12:30.

Thursday:Decided to meet my brother halfway between the Bronx and Brooklyn, since one of them educates America’s youth and had to be up early in the morning. I had no idea there were various other activities going on Thursday; maybe I would have lured them further downtown. But, being somewhat considerate of people other than myself, I compromised and had a fine time on the Upper West Side. Drinks were reasonable, the food was good, and my brothers and I got a handle on just how shady everyone in the family is when it comes to love and romance. I don’t know what was better: The story about my maternal grandfather’s gambling buddy marrying one of his daughters or my paternal grandfather leaving my dad’s mom…for her sister. Good work by my younger brother getting the dirt.

Well, I’m not saying I learned anything or that I am changing my ways, but this was a different style of drinking for me, and with different people. In other words, I’ve just rearranged the deck chairs on this sinking ship. Still doesn’t make it any less fun.

I'm throwing the brown flag...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:32:51 -0400

…on the leaders in ESPN Pigskin Pick ‘Em!

For the uninitiated, the brown flag is an homage to the red flag thrown by coaches in the NFL to challenge referee calls. But instead of challenging the spot of the ball hoping for a correction, the brown flag simply is a civilized way of calling “bullshit!” on that pass inteference that’s not reviewable. So I’m calling bullshit on the leaders in Pigskin Pick ‘Em at ESPN.com. I happen to have joined the BS Report group. (So I guess it’s appropriate.)

Basically, you pick football games against the spread. Anybody who has tried this knows it is a very difficult endeavor and you’re doing really, really well if you’re hitting your picks at say, sixty percent.

So who the fuck are these savants hitting on 64 out of 76 of their picks!!!!!????? Why are they wasting their ridiculous handicapping skills on some crappy ESPN game seeing if they can beat the likes of Cousin Sal, JackO, and, as Deadspin calls him, the Sports Fella? Really? Shouldn’t you be at a sports book in a pink jacket smoking a cigar and hiding your money from a drug-addicted Sharon Stone?

Honestly! Who the fuck are these people and why are they playing Pigskin Fucking Pick ‘Em!?

Oh wait, my bad. I was looking at the leaderboard where you pick the games straight up. I thought that was rather insane of me. Let’s take a look…

So who the fuck are these savants hitting on 56 out of 76 of their picks!!!!!????? Why are they wasting their ridiculous handicapping skills on some crappy ESPN game seeing if they can beat the likes of Joe House, Ric Bucher, and, as Deadspin calls him, the Sports Fella? Really? Shouldn’t you be banned from every legal and illegal sports book operation IN THE WORLD, using local kids and their stripper moms, paying them in cocaine and expensive shoes, to place your bets for you? Not to mention that you should have a short, hotheaded Italian-American friend and “enforcer”? Honestly! Who the fuck are these people and why are they playing Pigskin Fucking Pick ‘Em!?

I am 41 out of 76, by the way. Just like JackO.

In any case, I throw the brown flag and call bullshit!

I'm not dead.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:54:58 -0400

Of course, when I mean “I”, I mean my tumblr, because let’s face it, I am not going anywhere. But I just wanted to drop by and say hello, since I had some time. I’ve become deadly boring, and thus, have not had much to write.

I was in the midst of what I thought was some sort of career crisis, namely, do I want the one I have now? Taking a better job means more of a serious commitment to the balls-out excitement that is accounting and taxes. Not that I’ve made that commitment, but I have, in kind, made less of a commitment to writing. Not writing as a career, even, but as something I do to express myself, enjoy, and identify myself as even, if I make money by saving legal partnerships a few bucks.

I have no answer really, but I guess that’s what I’ve been up to, in terms of a Big Theme.

Does this mean I’m back? I’ve had a lot of false starts recently, so I’m not going to announce any such thing. I will let something called “output” or “lack of output” make that announcement.

Ok , another mishap there. I just wanted to say I haven’t been following you all as much as I...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:25:30 -0400

Ok , another mishap there. I just wanted to say I haven’t been following you all as much as I should and I intend to get back on the ball! Although I have to admit I’ve said that before on many an abandoned blog.

As long as you know my heart is in the right place.

Hi!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:21:40 -0400

My name is Well Whiskey Friday, and I used to tumble. Then i got an iPhone and a Twitter app and started sending my phone based atupid thoughts and one-liners to Twitter?

I was going to write 1,000 words about the steak I had tonight and the quiet high you get from...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:23:00 -0400

I was going to write 1,000 words about the steak I had tonight and the quiet high you get from eating a really well-made and prepared steak. Plus, I was going to go on about the joys of digesting, and having a conversation with your drinking buddies when you’re actually sober. To call it a potentially groundbreaking moment in the insignificant history of this blog would have made a mockery of the word “understatement”.

But someone just texted me to meet them at Redd’s for a couple of beers. So much for that.

Fifteen! If you had the over, you can now reedem your tickets at the window. Please ask our...

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:57:41 -0400

Fifteen! If you had the over, you can now reedem your tickets at the window. Please ask our concierge about this casino’s fine dining options.

Letting no one know I still care.

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:43:44 -0400

The boss is out and the office mate’s gone for the day now as well. And I am done with actual work for the day. I was going to spend the next hour or so looking for crappy pitchers to stream into my fantasy baseball lineup (it is the playoffs, after all) but then I thought, “No, let me use some of this downtime to pay attention to my neglected Tumblr dashboard!”

I know, contain yourselves. The over under on me saying, “Well, good to see not a damn thing has changed.” and going back to ESPN.com to deliberate on whether or not to bench Jay Cutler for some waiver-wire schmuck is seven pages.

Completely random note

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:44:32 -0400

I haven’t eaten today. I am fairly sure that and the fact I can’t get “High Enough” by Damn Yankees out of my head are somewhat related.

Now, why I need to buy an actual radio

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:05:43 -0400

I have long preferred to have some sort of talk radio playing in the background when I sleep. I have no idea where this came from, but not having anything to listen to in the background is a problem that’s getting worse in my old age. I generally listen to internet radio, but my home broadband internet, as you all know, is often sketchy at best. And during the silences that’s when the odd nightmares come. I had two of them last night.

In the first one I was on a raft, except I didn’t know I was, because I was in disguise in some sort of fat suit. I guess I was undercover as an overweight rafter trying to bust some other rafters in a town where you get around by raft. I realized it was me when I fell out of the boat and started getting punched in the chest, presumably I had been sold out and caught. I was in the midst of my beatdown when I woke up to make sure I actually wasn’t getting beat down.

In the second one, I was in some quaint movie that felt like it was based on a John Irving novel starring Morgan Freeman as a benevolent old guy who had taken in orphans of all races in a small New England town, of which I was one. He imparted life lessons and all that good stuff, helped us bond as a family and showed us the way of tolerance, and all that. I guess I was visiting him and the rest of my “family”, when he inexplicably starts yelling at me and going crazy because I blew the Showcase Showdown on “The Price Is Right” by only bidding a dollar because I was confident the other contestant had overbid, which of course, she did not. Morgan was about to get really violent when I woke up.

All because of the silence while the radio player was “buffering”. Not cool.

Back with one of my favorites.

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:30:20 -0400

So, now, as a rule, if you make a long-awaited sequel to a movie franchise, you must cast Shia LeBoeuf to represent the new generation? Yes, my lazy ass got around to reading the New York Times story on “Wall Street 2: Tokyo Drift” last night and I just realized this. I nearly spit up the cocktail shrimp and Gatorade I was eating as a pathetic substitute for a real, well-balanced dinner.

Is nothing sacred? If he’s the lead in any of the following, there might be violence: “Teen Wolf 3G”, “Back to the Future IV: Looking For Mr. Fusion”, “Hoosiers 2: White Men Can Jump”, “Weekend at Bernie Madoff’s”, and of course, “Aliens in Connecticut”.

That's right, Doritos for breakfast.

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:10:38 -0400

With my coffee. This has led to three separate shocked and appalled women in the break room. You know it’s going to be a good day when you can do that before 10:30 am without getting arrested.

Bad news for baxterp and brianvan.

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:54:20 -0400

So, because I got hammered Saturday night and completely forgot about my live fantasy football draft on Sunday morning, Buddy’s Kids was left at the mercy of the ESPN.com rankings, guess who I got as my two starting quarterbacks? (Don’t ask why the hell we start two quarterbacks.) That’s right, Jay Cutler and Eli Manning!

The good news is, as your friend, I have a rooting interest with you. The bad news is, historically, many fantasy football teams I have owned suffered a cataclysmic injury (or two), meaning those two are officially in as much danger as a member of the 2009 Mets. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope they don’t join other historic disasters like Vinny Testaverde ‘99 (though that did lead to my enterprising pickup of some dude named Kurt Warner), Brian Griese ‘01, Edgerrin James ‘01, Steve Smith ‘04, Javon Walker ‘05, Daunte Culpepper ‘05, and Marc Bulger ‘08.

Let this be a lesson to you, kids: don’t schedule things for a weekend morning!

Would this make me douche of the year?

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:44:57 -0400

So my office is putting a pool together for the $325 Mega Millions. They’ve bought, like, 200 tickets. When the prize was a mere $210 million or whatever, I decided not to do it, mostly because I was feeling kinda blah at the time, didn’t want to infect the rest of my group with my negativity, I don’t believe in playing the lottery regularly, and I WILL NEVER, EVER WIN.

They didn’t bother to ask me this time. But how funny would it be if I got one ticket for myself after work and I won? And it was all mine! Mine, mine, mine! And, of course, they would all see it in the paper or on the news because I would never go into work again. And then the media would hear of my asshole move, and I think I’d be in the lead.

And if there was any doubt that I was douche of the year, I’d just lock it down when the media, curious to find out about what kind of man cuts his coworkers out of a $325 million (pre-tax) fortune, finds the tweet I made fifteen minutes after the death of Ted Kennedy. Then I would have it locked up! Outta the way, Jon and Kate!

“A man without dreams is merely a captive animal of the society.” I’m pretty sure that was philosopher Jeremy Bentham, or a line by Steven Seagal in “Under Siege 3: Bus to Hell.”

What's in a name? (NFL edition)

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:01:11 -0400

At first, I was going to go with a Mark Sanchez-themed name for my fantasy team, but nothing clicked, so I went with Buddy’s Kid, since new Jet coach Rex Ryan is the son of Buddy Ryan, longtime NFL defensive coordinator and head coach. Kinda weak, but I had to get back to work. Then I thought about it, and while a guy with a name as short as Rex Ryan doesn’t really need a nickname, I feel like he could be referred to as The Rumpshaker. (Rex in effect….get it? And, if I could be real for a second, dude is fat. This nickname doesn’t work with skinny guys named Rex.) Anyway, I haven’t had a ton of time to read the sports blogs lately, so I don’t know if I’m starting the movement. But I like the idea of saying “I can’t believe the Rumpshaker went for it on fourth-and-two from his own 36!”

A font-related rant. Exciting.

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:40:33 -0400

I know people like to be different, but Lavender 14-point Courier New is ridiculous. I thought I was having a stroke when I opened that email. Once I refocused my eyes, it was merely ugly. No. Just, no.

I wasn't here more than five minutes...

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:41:11 -0400

…when I was so annoyed by the way this place operates that I had to get up and take a break. I’m pretty sure that’s a new record.

Yes, I'm a grown man.

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:16:48 -0400

But still, the best thing about the camping was the Capri Sun, which one of my fellow campers purchased in bulk. Nothing says the great outdoors like “sweet juice-type product that comes in a silver plastic bag.” Sadly, I just had a hankering for one.

baxterp: I don’t think that article would bother me so much if I hadn’t heard the same men turn...

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:04:43 -0400

baxterp:

I don’t think that article would bother me so much if I hadn’t heard the same men turn their noses up at women who they have deemed to be too chubby (and who often are maybe a size six). It would be laughable if it weren’t so damn sad and indictive of a real problem.

Well, this article does bother me. For entirely selfish reasons, of course. I finally, after all these years, figure out how to lose that slight paunch and now it’s “in style”? Oh hell no! I’m not going to back to potential lower back pain….you hipsters can go suck it!