necessary evil

Talking about the hit show The Hills as a man will not get you anything from other guys aside from extreme looks of disapproval and maybe even a stern talking to, but this is because they don’t realize that men need The Hills.

More specifically, men need Spencer Pratt.

No one in recent memory has done as much to make other men look good as Spencer Pratt.

Every time a girlfriend demands to watch The Hills, and Pratt is featured in the episode, two things happen immediately after the show is over: 1) She will exclaim, “God I hate that Spencer!” and 2) She will look at her man, even though he still hasn’t done the dishes, and smile.

When Pratt vacations with his plastic-girl-with-questionable-musical-skills Heidi and stages an unofficial wedding after getting wasted, this makes all other men – no matter what they do – look great.

A man leaves his dirty socks on the dinner table?  No worries – Pratt has done worse.

A man stumbles home at 3:47 AM while drunkenly singing “You Get What You Give” (which happens to be one of the worst songs ever made)? No worries – Pratt has got him beat in next week’s episode.

Pratt is perhaps the worst man to ever walk the Earth – narrowly beating out Andy Dick – and that is the reason men should not be so opposed to The Hills.

A world without Pratt means that men would have to Be Romantic and Talk About Feelings, while a world with Pratt means that men simply get to be themselves.

yes he can

Ari and I are starting to put together some rough plans for the wedding, which mostly involves her doing everything and me watching Sportscenter, but there is one point that we both are stuck on – it’s just going to be a bunch of white people.

That’s all.

No black, no red, no blue, no nothing.  Just a big sea of whites, talking about stock options and comparing loafers.

It’s a dilemma because we don’t want people to think we don’t love minorities, because we do!  I mean, sometimes I even think Al Sharpton makes some good points!

But the truth is that we just don’t have any friends that aren’t white. Well, a couple of my friends are Greek and one is Colombian, but they’ve lived here so long they’re as white as golfing on a Sunday morning.

Faced with this Dire Situation Ari and I have started frantically trying to figure out who can fill that minority void.

The first one we thought of was this guy who always says hi to us when we walk Jack.  The guy is black and we like him, so we thought he’d like to come.  But then we remembered we don’t actually know his name and he doesn’t know ours, so he’s out.

Then we thought our upstairs neighbor would work because he’s black too, but I had to remind Ari that he probably doesn’t like us too much because whenever we come home wasted and I stand on the coffee table singing November Rain at the top of my lungs, he hears it.

Our final idea was to invite one of our landladies, who is black and a lesbian, but we thought she wouldn’t feel like driving to West Virginia to watch two people who call her at 6:45 in the morning to let them back in the apartment get married.

I had some minority friends in high school, but I can’t seem to track them down on Facebook by typing, “Not white friend” so they’re out too.

And really, that’s about it.

So here’s what we’ve decided.  Any of you who are a minority and want to come to our wedding, you’re invited.  

Of course you have to provide some kind of photographic proof, because I swear if you show up and you’re as white as me you’re getting kicked to the curb along with my alcoholic father.

If we can’t get any minorities, I guess we’ll go ahead with the wedding anyway, but it won’t be nearly as fun.  It’ll just be a bunch of white people standing around in their pleated khakis, googling each other on their iPhones and talking about how much they love our new president Barack Obama.

Wait.

Maybe he’ll come!

that’s what friends are for

I’m a lucky man.

I’m lucky because I have several really close friends whom I can depend on to tell me when I’m doing Something Stupid, or just my everyday normal Chris, You’re Being An Asshole kind of stuff.

But I realize that a lot of people aren’t lucky like I am.  A lot of people don’t have friends who will tell them that despite what they think, telling the large man with biceps the size of a child that his shirt is terrible is actually not a good idea.

One of these unlucky souls was this priest in Brazil.

The story goes, because I know you’re too damn lazy to click on that link, that the priest attached hundreds of balloons to a chair and floated away in order to raise money for a good cause.

I’m not going to get into the fact that the cause was to build a church for truckers, because that’s an entire other post for another day.

As you can guess, this Brilliant Idea did not end well.

The priest’s body was found a day later in a river.

This guy had no close friends.

There is no way he could have, because one of them would have told him that maybe, just maybe, floating away attached to hundreds of balloons was not the best idea.

He had no Jimmy to explain, “Why not a bake sale? They’re pretty fun, and people love chocolate!  Why don’t we do that?  You know, instead of your suicide mission?”

There was no one to stop him.  Not even people who barely knew the dude.

I can’t imagine the priest presenting the idea, “So yes, I just float away!” and no one shaking the shit out of him and telling him that it was fucking stupid.

I can imagine that once the guy got a couple hundred feet in the air, he might have started to have some regrets.  Perhaps starting with his apparent love for truckers.

But this is what happens when people lack Good Friends.

They do Stupid Things and no one tells them, “Hey dude, I think you might die if you do that.”

Now all those truckers will just have to pray in their trucks, and really, that’s the saddest part of this story.

he and i

There are not many things that I hate more than doing laundry, which is why I drop it off and have some slender Asian man do it for me.

Every time the pile of clothes in the apartment approaches a size large enough to scare me in the middle of the night because the sock dangling from the jeans looks like a Strange Man’s hand about to strangle me, I undertake the task of bringing it to the laundromat.

While I don’t actually have to do anything other than bring the man my dirty crap, it is always more dramatic than I ever want it to be.

I understand that the two of us – the man washing, drying and folding my laundry and I – enter into a relationship that requires certain degrees of humility and respect.

Me, being the Bringer Of Smelly Objects, must at all times act with extreme modesty when presenting my items to the man.

I know that he knows that somewhere buried in that white sack is Something Unfortunate, and it is better for both of us if I keep my head low when I hand off my laundry, because there is certainly nothing to be proud of in that bag.

The man sees that I am going about my business in a humble way, so he displays the amount of respect I deserve for not caring that another man touches my boxer briefs more than I would like him to.

The dance goes like this:

I go into the laundromat, place the bag on the floor, and step back slowly – keeping my eyes to the ground in a manner that says, “Yes, these are mine, and I am sorry.”

He gives me a nod and a grunt that I think means “Your undershirts should be burned” and places the bag on the scale.

I wait.

I watch.

He calculates the cost and I give him the money.  I let him keep the change out of fear that if I don’t, he’ll “accidentally” bleach my t-shirts.  Again.

I turn and leave knowing that I must return several hours later to pick the clothes up.

This is how our relationship works.

There can be no detouring from this path, because I know that one mistake by me and suddenly my favorite Larry David t-shirt won’t be mine anymore.

It’ll be his.

 

(New links are up on the Okay Playa! page, so go check them out and show those bloggers some love.)

not right

Because I like to punish myself, I was watching the new season of Project Runway last night.  I was barely paying attention when a new contestant introduced himself as “Suede.”

Yes.

Like the leather.

No last name.  No “Suede Smith.”  Just fucking Suede.

I cannot tolerate people who go by just one name.  Of course Prince had to take it one step farther and name himself a fucking symbol, but let’s not even get me started on how much I think Prince is overrated and how I can’t fucking stand him and how one of his friends should have punched him in the neck for thinking it was okay to call himself a damn symbol.

If I’m ever lucky enough to have a healthy kid and he/she grows up and becomes famous or whatever and decides to change his/her name to just one odd name – I am not going to be a Proud Papa.

I can see him ready to discuss it, and me not exactly agreeing with the decision.

My Once Awesome Creation: [With confidence] “Dad. I’ve decided since my solo career is really taking off, I’m going to just call myself Tunes.  So from now on, just refer to me that way, okay?”

Me: [Looking up from my beer which is upset with me for leaving it] “What?  No. Your name is Jason.  Shut up.”

My Once Awesome Creation: [Confused and frustrated now] “But Dad – I’m 25 years old – I can do whatever I want!  I am going by Tunes!”

Me: “Oh you can do whatever you want alright.  You can go ahead with your plan of having everyone think you’re a fucking idiot or you can just go by your real name.  I’m sure everyone will love you Tunes.  They won’t think you’re a fucking moron at all.”

My Once Awesome Creation: [Storming off] “You just don’t understand my art!”

Me: [To myself] “You’re right, but I do understand my beer, because it never acts like a fuck-up.”

There’s no reason for the one word name.  None.

You either have talent or you don’t.  No gimmicks and one name crap is going to change that.

If my kid tries to pull this stunt on me, you better believe he will be disowned faster than he can say, “But Dad I love you!”

You love me?

No you don’t son.

No you don’t.

esp and me

If I had my way I’d hang out with Miss Cleo at least once a month.

We’d be good friends, the kind that get together and talk and talk.

She’d come and visit and she’d read my fortune and maybe tell me about why Christian Bale won’t reply to my emails.  I mean, all I ask is that he sends me one damn email for all the hundreds I’ve sent saying how awesome he is.  He can forget about me sending more chocolates to his house until he does, that’s for sure.

Big C (we’d be tight, so I could totally call her that) and I would talk trash about other psychics and drink whiskey and then I’d get her to do my favorite line from one of her ads, where a man has called in asking if his wife’s baby is really his or some other dudes, and she cuts him off mid-sentence by proclaiming, “That is not your baby!”

Fucking awesome.

After that I’d get her to give me the scoop on everything I’ve ever wondered about, like why my feet are always so hot and whether NASA is really Doing Things In Space or just wasting a bunch of money on cool looking toys like I suspect.

Then I’d get her to guess what number I was thinking about for at least an hour and a half because how fun would that be?

And when it was time for her to leave, I’d walk her to the train, and we’d exchange pleasantries along the way.

I wouldn’t have to say much because she’d already be answering my questions before I asked them:

“5:45.”

“No, but sometimes I forget to wash behind my knees.”

“More green.”

“Because they thought spelling it ‘Cap’n’ instead of ‘Captain’ is more fun.”

It’d be a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Just Big C and I, kicking it like only we can.

Her using her mystical abilities to shine light on the World’s Mysteries and me silently stewing over the newly discovered notion that somehow Christian Bale does not like my blog.

 

(Okay everybody – new links are up on the Okay Playa! page, so please go check them out and show those bloggers some love – they all deserve it.  Also, thanks again to Crissy for guest posting on Friday and providing a picture that both disturbed me and made me want to make out with myself.)

cupid can go to hell

Everyone falls in love, right?

At one point in your life, you’re going to feel all squishy inside for someone and then want to show everyone how you feel about that person.

So you buy them flowers.

Or you hold hands. But hopefully not for too long because holding hands is just so un-fucking-natural that it doesn’t make sense to do it for more than a block or two.

I can take seeing couples Being Sweet to each other and all that crap, but I can’t take Extreme Public Displays Of Affection.

This morning on the way to the office, there were two couples who crossed this line.

One woman was hugging her boyfriend the entire time. I was on the c for fifteen minutes. She hugged this dude for fifteen fucking minutes.

It almost drove me insane.

I was this close to blurting out, “Okay! We get it! You love each other! Now just stop it, please? Grab hold of the rail like everyone else and stop being such a fucking idiot.”

Then there was the couple sitting down in front of me.

They were making out.

I could see their fucking tongues go into each other’s mouths and it almost made me choke them to death.

And I think I really might have if choking someone to death wasn’t Frowned Upon by the police. Because then they’d arrest me and I’d have to go to jail and I’d probably join a gang and then become Leader Of The Gang because I’m good at coming up with nicknames and gangs always have nicknames for the members.

The worst part about these two couples was that they were both in their late twenties.

They weren’t teens with Raging Hormones and zits.

C’mon.

I don’t need to see that you’re In Love.

Because while things are great and you can’t keep your tongue off his cheek now, half of all people who get married get divorced.

Snuggle Bear doesn’t like hearing that does he?

No, Snuggle Bear doesn’t.