Cautiously Pessimistic

So first I think I owe an apology to Will, who insisted that I rub Kelly’s stomach at my earliest convenience. Well I saw Kelly twice this weekend but didn’t remember to molest her midsection. To be fair I knew I was supposed to do something creepy to her, but I figure I accomplished that through the normal course of conversation. So to make up for that I said I would write about my weekend and specifically about my time at my second home* with someone who looked decidedly unlike the Emperor**.

Friday night I went out to People’s – which reminds me, their website needs more bells and whistles… maybe a blog? – where I sat in the corner like the alcoholic trainee that I am and watched the Celtics lose to the Phoenix Suns with some dude named Chris from Arizona. I was there early drinking up some confidence while I waited for Amy to show up. You remember Amy, right? Cute blonde girl. Like’s metal. Somehow got me to dance like an asshole and (even more baffling) answered my phone calls afterwards. Well I finally manned up and asked her out for a drink. Creative and imaginative bastard that I am, we settled on going back to the scene of the crime.

Brief tangent: it was brought to my attention that despite spending an incredible amount of time in Cambridge, I rarely (if ever) leave the Republik. Never been to Plough and Stars, never been to Phoenix Landing, or River Gods. I’ve been to both versions of the Middle East (I prefer Upstairs because they have Tullamore Dew and they hide it from the feebs that don’t know about it), and TT & the Bear’s to see Kay Hanley, who is probably my biggest MILF crush. I gave someone directions to Phoenix Landing and when they asked about how it is, I said I’d never been which confused them but I’m not in the business of enlightenment; just directions, sugar.

So I’m watching the C’s and drinking my Bud Heavy when Kelly shows up. Kelly – who was formerly perfect in every way until we discovered she’s a Yankees fan – gets a lot of credit in my book for recognizing me, because I’m a kind of generic-looking kinda guy and if I’m not with the Emperor I can blend in with a crowd. Granted, she’s been tacitly tolerating my existence for a long enough time that I feel comfortable using the F-word*** with her, but I also have a rotating system of hats and facial hair that makes me the man of 1,000 (generic) faces. So anyway, Kelly comes up gives me a hug and asks to talk about the universe with her. Normally I’d spend my night buying her beers, leering, and arguing string theory but normally I’m not gonna run into ANOTHER blonde girl who is willing to spend her time in my presence. So I says to Kelly: “Listen, baby, I ain’t no master conversationalist and this girl expects me pretend I’m charming and interesting for hours, literally hours, and I don’t have enough in the tank to satisfy both of you intellectually.” At least that’s how it went in my mind, in reality I talked to Kelly until Amy showed up which makes me look like a dink, but hey let’s keep their expectations low, right?

Luckily they both have better memories than I do and recognized each other, said their hellos, and only in my mind was there a cat-fight for my company. So I pretend to be charming and intelligent with moderate success while Amy tolerated my presence and amused herself by pouring Corona into my Bud and watching me struggle to force it down, because dogs gotta eat and boys gotta drink. It went as well as these things are supposed to go – I think. I didn’t get my kiss goodnight, but as Kelly would say later you don’t want a girl who kisses that quickly. Obviously she doesn’t know me very well; I’m out of shape and even when I wasn’t, I was never good at the chase. So I walked her to her car, made plans for Saturday (which got nixed) and went back inside to talk shop with McFee.

Of course, while I’m talking to The Big Guy some chick with one of those 80s off-the-shoulder shirts comes right the fuck up with her entourage in tow and just hands McFee her number. Just. Like. That. The chicks leave and he looks over at me and catches my “Motherfucker, what the fuck?!” look and goes “That does not happen.” To which I respond, “Shut up, you Lou Ferrigno-looking motherfucker with that ‘this doesn’t happen’ bullshit.” It’s a good thing he’s got a good sense of humor and is a gentle giant, because he could easily rip my sternum off.

Long story short: I’m cautiously pessimistic about this whole Chasing Amy situation, so we’ll see what happens. Kelly at least seemed impressed so if worse comes to worst at least I’ll have a shoulder to cry on. And a stomach to rub.

Peace,
{VM}

PS. Saw Porter, Evelyn, Bonnie and Kentes (and the People’s People) on Saturday. I’ll write about that tomorrow.

* My first home being a hotel in Connecticut and my third home being the place where I sleep alone and they mail my bills.
** Feel better, homie.
*** Friend. I say ‘fuck’ in front of my own mother (but not grandma, she’d whoop my ass).

Fine. This One Is About Cougars

Some of you got all pissy because I didn’t talk enough about cougars. And Bonnie said I was the only person that could make a cougar attack sound boring (I think she’s confused as to what type of cougar I’m talking about it), so here’s the explanation of the cougar story…

But first – and this is my real reason for writing this besides the fact that, fuck me, its 9:23 in the morning and I’m stuck in this goddamn cubicle AGAIN – does anyone else get the ads on Facebook to meet Christian singles? Facebook, I’m pretty sure, uses Google to generate their ads so they’re supposed to be tailored to you specifically. Obviously I’m listed on Facebook as single because 1. I am single and 2. I don’t care. So I get a lot of ads like “23 and Single?” or “Hey, Desperate Lonely Fat-Ass, here’s a picture of a chick you’ll never meet” or “Seek Help: Alcohol Addiction” and those are understandable given my age, physical appearance and vices. But my religious affiliation is not listed on The Facebook, so I have to just assume that either 1. Mark Zuckerberg is stalking me or the less likely 2. Facebook is taking a shot in the dark since 90%+ of Americans consider themselves Christian.

Anyways, like most of my generation I consciously ignore the ads and let them subconsciously mold every manner of my existence until I am the perfect consumer. And I’d be happy continuing to ignore them until she appeared…

"Boyfriend Wanted"? Sign me up, coach.

Let’s ignore the fact that she’s probably a Bible-thumping Jesus-freak, and also ignore the fact that there’s something vaguely hypocritical about a good Christian girl showing more cleavage than a Dolly Parton tribute and focus on someone finding out who in the blue Buddhist hell this girl is, tout fucking suite. Long story short, the things I would do to this girl on top of a stack of Bibles would make Sodom and Gomorrah look like Vatican City. Go, my minions. Search through the Intertubes and find me my future ex-wife.

Oh yeah, cougars.

So I went out to dinner with some people from work and spilled beer on my pants, which caused my co-workers to laugh until the point of guilt wherein they bought me a Jack and Coke. Now I don’t usually drink Jack and Coke, but I also don’t usually sit in a puddle of Miller Lite either so when in Rome… I get back to the hotel and change into some clean clothes and head to the hotel bar and have a few drinks with some other people from work. Our project is so large at this point, you can’t go anywhere in CT without running into someone from the team. Anyway, so there’s always a motley crue of barflies of a generally older variety there but on this specific night the resident cougar (Betty) was being outclassed in Cougarocity by the upstart rookie (Tammy). Tammy had a gaggle of balding dudes in sports coats hanging around and her, leading them on. But what was really weird was that she’d keep looking back and staring at me*. So I point it out to my buddy Dave and wouldn’t you know it, Tammy comes waltzing (see: stumbling) over to talk to us. A few drinks and a lot of personal space invasion later, last call at the hotel bar has come and gone. But last call at the Marriott is at midnight, so no one is quite ready to call it a night.

How or why we decided to go to the other bar is irrelevant (probably because it was my idea), but we get in the Malibu and drive over there with Tammy in the backseat. Dave told her she should sit back and buckle in, but if she did that she couldn’t be nibbling on my ear. She should’ve listened to Dave’s advice because I took a hard left and sent her flying across the backseat in a moment that will live in hilarity to quote FDR. We get to the other bar and like all drunk older women, she transforms into a petulant five year old: “I wanna play darts.” Good idea. Because really what I want to do right now is arm you with sharp metal projectiles; what am I retarded? Well yes, I’m retarded. So we played a round of darts which became increasingly difficult for Dave as he was being molested while trying to throw.

So I won the darts game – naturally – and we ended up at the bar and who shows up but Betty with the hotel bar staff in tow. And who gets the seat between the two cougars? Yep… Captain Vin. I forget how their little argument got started but I just remember being caught in the middle of a leopard print and silicon sandwich praying to the God of Christian Singles to get the hell out of there. Eventually it subsided with Tammy focusing her attention back on Dave and Betty (and the glock she keeps in her purse) between me and the cute Eastern European girl that works the Marriott bar. So I look over toward Dave for the cue to leave and Tammy catches my “let’s get the fuck out of this Tim Burton-level-of-fucked-up nightmare” look and hiccups her way through some snide mumbling about me wanting to leave or being jealous or something. To which I respond in my best Clark Gable: “Frankly, my dear, I couldn’t give a fuck.”

So she tried to turn her attention back to Dave but he was too busy laughing his ass off to really care, and I turned my attention back to the bartender who looked like Caity the Red Bull Girl with the same smile that made me fall for the original Caity. Connecticut Caity’s name is Sam, and she might be only the chick in the whole state that is tolerable for more than five minutes. Of course, I didn’t get to test that theory because last call there was at 1am. So I bid adieu to the Red Bull and Jager Girl, put the cougar in the cage and drove back to the hotel. Dave managed to escape with his life and only a few claw scratches and I passed out in the handicap room that they gave me this week because they lost my Platinum status number.

Now let’s never speak of this again.

Cougar bait,
{VM}

*To be fair she was probably so drunk she was probably like “Hey, why are those triplets all dressed the same? Oh, the middle one is kinda cute.”

Even A Broken Clock

I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life today. I ate lunch at 11:30 in the morning. I’m not a breakfast guy. Most of you feebs can’t deal with life without some coffee and eggs or some such nonsense, but for me I don’t even want to think of anything remotely solid to eat before noon. It’s probably part of the reason my metabolism has essentially shut down and I’ve become a fat slob but this isn’t about my fat ass or the fact that your mom likes being spanked; this is about my shitty lunch and how it ruined my day.

Right now its 8:30 at night, which is to say it’s 3:30 in the afternoon. I ate lunch 4 hours ago, which roughly how many hours it screwed up my internal clock. Apparently a fifteen minute deviation from my “routine” results in a one hour drag in my brain. I feel like I’ve been here 5 hours longer than I actually have and this has been going on ever since I got back from lunch (around noon, because I get a shitty short lunch). I realize this is interesting to no one. It’s not even interesting to me, but I’m trying to kill some time until the real world catches up with my brain and I got nothing else to talk about. Sure, I could talk about being  cougar bait at the hotel bar last night and the two women that were yelling and fighting over me and my buddy Dave, but who wants to hear saggy tits and leopard print?

I could talk about how I only packed one pair of dress pants this week – because I’m only here for two days and Friday morning and brown’s a versatile color so fuck it, right? – and then spilled beer all over them at the Japanese restaurant and had a twenty minute discussion over whether or not I should wear them tomorrow or just cut out my own larynx with the chopsticks.

Truth is, none of it is particularly interesting. My hope was that by starting to write about uninteresting things, something interesting would pop into my brain pan, but no such luck.

Detoxification Station

Working from home has two distinct benefits:

1. I’m not in Connecticut
2. I get to listen to “Those Monday Blues” on WWPV in Vermont via webcast.

“Those Monday Blues” are hosted by avid reader and sometimes-commenter, John “One Chord” Connors who offered up several shout-outs to yours truly and one to the Dead Pool on the show tonight. That means very little to everyone else but for me it means a lot because I thought the only mention of The Dead Pool in other media would be on the TV news when I snapped and killed an office full of people with a Bates stapler. But I suppose that’s neither here nor there… time for a weekend recap.

Friday
Friday started with the trip home from Connecticut around noon, and the reminder from Kentes that Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was opening that night. So Kenny and I and Kenny’s buddy Mike went to the Loews theater on the Common. If you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re expect the same movie as the first, you may or may not be disappointed. I did, and I wasn’t disappointed but it wasn’t what I expected. All Saints Day has a little more trouble than the first with deciding whether it wants to be an action movie or a comedy movie and ends up meandering somewhere in the middle as a pseudo-manifesto on the state of masculinity with Rocco making appearances to speak as of the voice of “men past”.  All in all, if you don’t expect an art-house movie and are in it for the jokes and the gunplay and the stone-cold fox by the name of Julie Benz (who remains hot despite her horrible and unnecessary Southern accent), you will enjoy this movie. Since Duffy actually spent some time learning about film-making between this film and the last, its a little steadier to watch and comes off less as Tarrantino and more as John Woo (early Woo, not like Mission Impossible 2-Woo) without the doves.

Anyways, after the movie we went to Bonnie’s friend Holly’s Halloween party. Yeah, it was a day earlier than Halloween, but whatever an excuse to drink is an excuse to drink. I had been all amped up for Halloween, because I had actually put a modicum (no more) into my costume this year, purchasing a Comedian costume. That was supposed to save me from having to scramble at the last minute for a costume. Yeah well, guess what didn’t fit? So fuck that time to scramble for a last minute costume. Goodbye, Comedian. Hello, The Spirit. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these characters, I switched from a murderous, rapist anti-hero to a sex-obsessed superhero. All told, probably a good call. Furthermore, it continued my pattern of Halloween costumes rotating between either my red flannel shirt or my black suit. I’m now on a five year run going suit-flannel-suit-flannel-suit. So ideas for next years flannel-based costume are welcome.

We got to Forest Hills and changed in the parking lot – always a bold decision at night – and entered Holly’s house to find Bonnie shitplastertrashfaced. She spent most of the night either clinging to my arm so as not to fall down – and then when she fell down, to my leg to ease the spinning – or vomiting. Not exactly the most eventful of parties for myself, but there were a weird group of fire-throwers there. Let me tell you, that is one sub-culture that just goes over the edge on the fucking crazy scale. Now I enjoy playing with dangerous things as much as the next hombre, but the weird secret-name, pseudo-bisexual, quasi-polygamist swerve they added to playing with fire was not up my alley. So I drank Miller Lites with the boys, wished there were prettier girls there, and crashed in on to kids trying to bump uglies because I was trying to check on Bonnie before I left. That was about it. Also, got some texts from the blonde girl that has been mentioned in at least three blogs (The Pool only being one) which was weird because I’d texted and called her earlier in the week to no avail, so I’d given up. Then outta the blue I get the “Hey” text*, which if you’re an overly analytical cat like me can mean a million different things. But there was nothing I could do because there was a drunk girl clinging to my leg and another one trying to molest me and I didn’t feel like driving into Back Bay.

Saturday
Saturday was Moosh’s Halloween party. I got there early, because fuck it why not? I had more than my $5 worth of beer and Jello-shots and probably got roofied a couple times so that was a blasty-blast. I went as The Spirit again, but decided I didn’t want to wear the mask so I didn’t. So I was basically a guy in a suit and a fedora and everyone seemed strangely comfortable with that. I made some new acquaintances by guessing costumes and being overly-friendly like I’m from the Midwest and don’t bleed from the ears I hear anyone say “Yummers!”. Wendy, Kelley and Catt ended up showing up at some point which meant I’d be driving them home in all likelihood. Works fine for me. I’d rather leave with people I’m not gonna sleep with than leave alone. At least I can give people the impression I’m taking three girls home with me and I’m some super-pimp. Speaking of being a super-pimp, I actually met another gorgeous girl at that party. She has a bad-ass name and apparently poses nude while people take pictures of her. Part-time, though. I instantly became regretful that I possessed no camera and had not spent my whole night talking to this girl, since I had found her attractive/interesting when we were both sober and I thought she was “just” an insurance broker. I ended up taking her home. By which I mean her roommate abandoned her and I offered to drive her home. I’m assuming she was initially like “No thanks. I don’t feel like being violated and/or lowering my standards THAT far tonight.” To which I probably responded, “Look, sugar, you’re wearing a four inch skirt, five-inch heels and have been walking up and down this staircase all night; you’re practically dating half the party at this point.” To which I’m sure she responded, “You’re funny and gorgeous. Take me home, stud.”

That or she gave me her number in the hopes of scoring a free ride and then blowing me off when she’s sober. Either way I dropped her off, went back, picked up the other girls and dropped them off before crashing at home.

Sunday
Went and saw Boondock Saints II for a second time. Enjoyed it much more. Watched the Bruins game and was thankful there wasn’t a football game I had to give a fuck about this week, so I could catch up on some reading, movies and detox.

I’ll be in Boston Monday night, driving down to CT for the rest of the week Tuesday after jury duty. Looking forward to that. And to the cube. And to getting blown off by two chicks this week instead of one.

Stay positive,
{VM}

* Technically it was “Yo”, which may be the first time I’ve ever been texted “yo” and it hasn’t been followed with “-yo out of my ass” and preceded by “Come help me get the”.

Dear Vinny

Update me, you lazy cad. I mean seriously. Boondock Saints II comes out and you meet a model at a Halloween party and no updates? Lame.

Love,
- Vinny

PS. Everyone else, read A Day In The Life. Because I know you didn’t the first time.

 

EDIT – Apparently Brea read it and thought it was funny, so that tells me two things: 1. It’s funny and 2. I really should marry that girl.

A Day In The Life

A morning just isn’t a morning in Corporate Amerika without at least one fight with an office supply. Today’s particularly inhibitive inanimate: that super-stapler that staples more than the usual stapler but not quite as much as the heavy-duty, industrial strength stapler. Have you ever/seen one of those things? They can staple anything. John Woo used them to staple closed the plot holes in Mission Impossible 2, and if they can hold that piece of garbage together into something that vaguely resembles a drunken rambling of an incoherent Sandskrit-speaking hobo then they can hold anything together. If you’ve never used or seen one of these bad boys; they are the only thing in an average office that could qualify as “heavy machinery”. Legitimately, you should not operate one of these staplers while intoxicated. Theoretically you shouldn’t be at work drunk, and you shouldn’t use any stapler drunk but hey, coffee ain’t coffee without a little Irish in it and the hole in my jeans isn’t gonna staple itself closed.

Milton from Office Space

Anyway, it wasn’t one of those bad mother-shutyourmouth’s, and it wasn’t one of the Milton staplers either. On a side note, my desk has a Bates stapler that could possibly be older than I am. It weighs at least three pounds, which isn’t heavy until you consider that the average modern stapler probably weighs less than a pound. This stapler is the sort of thing that would survive a nuclear apocalypse. Nothing but Twinkies, cockroaches and 1980s Bates staplers. I could bludgeon someone to death with it. Easily. In fact, several of my office daydreams/revenge fantasies involve the Steel Stapler of Justice in a co-starring role opposite my unquenchable rage.

Sorry, side-tracked again. My morning nemesis (again, a great band name), while not a Milton-variety stapler, was in fact made by Swingline. Here’s the inanimate object that almost claimed two of my fingers and all of my (remaining) sanity:

Evil, Thy Name is "Stapler"!

This is the Swingline® Optima® 70 Reduced Effort Stapler (only $59.49. Supplies limited! Call now!). Reduced effort, my ass. How do I even load extra staples into this piece of extraterrestrial technology? I feel like Jeff Goldblum trying to hack the aliens’ computer signal only to discover a countdown to the extinction of humanity. You seriously need a PhD in staplerology to figure out there’s a button on the back that shoots out the staple-holder dohickey. Of course, you can only load so many staples in at a time, and you have to do it a specific way. Well, being only a mere mortal I screwed that up. So after three to four hours of fiddling with the beast, I managed to load the staples into it and escape with my life (barely).

After the ordeal I had forgotten why I was loading the staples in the first place, until I noticed the suspiciously unstapled software manual sitting beside my vanquished foe. 44 pages of technological mumbo-jumbo just begging to bound together with a tiny metal thingamabob. So I stuck the manual in the stapler grove and BAM! It certainly felt like it fired a staple… but where was the staple? Sure as I’m sure the cubicle walls are closing in, my papers were stuck together but lo and behold there was no staple in the traditional upper left quadrant where they’re known to congregate. The Swingline had fired a phantom staple.

It was then I realized I was dealing with black magic.

So I fired another staple into the manual but it came out warped. You know the kind of failed staple attempt that looks like what a car crash would look like if we drove staples instead of Chevy Malibu’s with cracks in the fender and a giant dent in the side because your younger brother gets confused with the workings of the brake and the accelerator? Yeah, well that’s exactly what this one came out as, piercing maybe the first 15-20 of my 44 pages. Wizard of the office that I am, I flipped the manual over and fired another staple into it. This one came out cleaner. Not perfect, but close enough. So it only took 3 staples – 1 phantom, 1 mally and 1 legit – and five minutes of my life I’ll never get back to bind 44 pages that I don’t actually want to read.

Now the paper clips are eyeing my suspiciously. I think they sense weakness.

{VM}

PS. This entire post was about staplers. Yeah, staplers. Thought I’d point that out.

Hitchhiker’s Guide To A Hangover

Apparently the answer is 42, which for me actually works out quite well because my question was “exactly how much did I drink this weekend?” I don’t know if that’s 42 glasses, bottles or gallons but having a rough approximation makes me feel slightly better about myself until I remember there was a Jager Bomb involved. How do I excuse such reckless liver endangerment? Well, for one I’m not a condescending, judgmental prick so get off my case. And for two, it was done in celebration.

No, not Halloween. I’m not so bad that my internal calendar is a full week off (though I can’t say the same for the kid at People’s Friday that was dressed like a rabbi*). The celebration was the short-lived, albeit triumphant, return of everyone’s favorite, non-cartoon alcoholic. I went out early Friday, and met up with Porter and his girl, neither of which I’d seen in a long time but will probably see more frequently do to their fortunate (for me, unfortunate for them) proximity to my favorite Cambridge watering hole. We shot the shit for a while, which mostly consisted of one of saying “Remember that time when…” followed by laughing, followed by an obligatory attempt to explain the context to Evelyn. She’s a good kid for putting up with that bullshit for at least two hours, but let’s be honest; once you leave school your life because infinitely less interesting. This becomes especially true if you’re a cube jockey like Porter or myself. Anyhoo… I described Will to Porter as “the guy that will probably come in already shitfaced with a black eye.” Wouldn’t you know who strolls in but the man of the hour sporting some face-ink and a Sully’s “Shitfaced” T-shirt.

So Friday was spent drinking, reminiscing, drinking some more, sleeping in my car and eventually crashing until two in the afternoon, which is where Saturday picked up with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. the Boston College Eagles. I’m morally obliged to give a shit about this game being both Irish and Catholic (well, I was Catholic, its the one “-holic”  where I’m “recovering”), so I put it on but didn’t pay too much attention. I’m supposed to root for the Irish because that’s what you do if you’re raised Irish-Catholic and your nickname in High School football was “Rudy”**. But when you remember that Charlie Weiss is the coach and that if the Eagles win, he might get fired… you don’t feel as much shame rooting for the Chestnut Hill sweater-vest brigade. I still went Irish, though. And they won, which dooms them to at least another season of mediocrity under Weiss. Anyways, back to People’s…

You thought I was kidding? Nope, I went straight back to People’s (for the second night in a row without any food in my gut) and proceeded to have the aforementioned Jager Bomb (kept it down, too. BAM!) and a Jackie Gleason number of Buds with Will and the rest of the People’s crew. Brief aside, it has no reached the point where at any given moment I know at least 5-7 people in People’s. It’s like that bar where everybody knows your name, but without Kirstie Alley so that’s a bonus***. After several beers, twice as many racial slurs, and a impromptu game of musical stools I ended up three seats down from where I was originally, sitting next to some blonde girl. My memory of what follows is fuzzy, as are the majority of my memories, but I remember something about metal (the heavy variety, not the structural) that sparked a conversation between me and this chick – big ups to the Green Bastard for apparently playing the metal that inspired said conversation – and, as I learned later, a side bet as to how long it would take before this girl’s man-friend put his fist in my eye.

Luckily for me, he resisted what had to be the overwhelming urge to do so long enough for me to get the girl’s number. Texted her a bit on Sunday and tried to make plans. Still haven’t firmed anything up, but I’m going to hang onto the two remaining shreds of optimism and dignity that I have,  because I’m stilling riding the weekend high through most of today. The text exchange with Will helped:

Will: Where did I go wrong in life that I find myself jealous of Vinny?
Me: At least you’re a better writer.
Will: That’s a lie I’ll warm myself with while Amy is demanding you pull her hair.
Me: Oh good, you remember her name. I thought I had forgot it.

Yeah, that last line was just to be a dick (okay it was 90% to be a dick, and 10% relief because I suck at remember names). Saturday night came and went and I strolled into the folks’ place as the family was getting ready for mass. My dad asked if I wanted to come with him, and I resisted the urge to tell him I’d probably burst into flames upon entry and took a nap, took a shower and went back to People’s (again without having eaten) for the Patriots’ game. I managed to keep the beers to under a hand’s worth before heading home for a nap, dinner and then hockey.

As I was waiting to PTFO I realized that my body hates me for attempting to live my life at speeds that would make a meth-head panic and fueled entirely on cheap beer and red meat. All in all, a great weekend. Lost the hockey game though.

Peace,
{VM}

PS. I almost forgot, and I’m too lazy to go back and insert this in the proper spot, but I ended up dancing with the blonde girl (Amy) in the middle of People’s. If you’ve ever been to the Republik you realize how awkward that is… or if you’ve ever seen me dance you realize how awkward that is. If you’re one of the people who has experienced neither, I leave you with this: the first time I brought the Emperor to People’s we spent twenty minutes making fun of a hipster couple for dancing… There does that last shred of dignity.

* Sidenote: The kid asked Nils if the slow service was because he was Jewish. Nils abruptly answered “Yes” and proceed to glare at the kid. I laughed, and didn’t feel the slightest bit anti-semitic.
** Rudy got approximately 1/3 less playing time than I did. Jerks.
*** The bonus, however, is negated by its lack of Woody Harrelson.

Political Endorsements

The vast majority of people who read this blog do not live in the city of Boston, which is a real shame because it is unquestionably better than where ever the hell you are living. Those of you from outside Boston can opt to ignore this post, but I recommend you don’t. Trust me it will be worth it.

I don’t like to endorse political candidates, mostly because at some level they are all exactly the same, its just a matter of who they’re pandering to this week. On top of that, I have as much political sway as a tree frog, but – hey – I’ve got a blog. Occasionally people read it, and they seem to like what I have to say and even occasionally agree with it; so why not leverage that?

First, for mayor of the city of Boston: Mayor Tom Menino.

Mayor of Boston Tom Menino, pictured here posing seducively for Mayor's Quarterly

Full disclosure: Mayor Menino is a friend of my family’s, I’ve known him for a while and make no qualms about being completely biased for him. He’s a stand-up guy and a gentleman if ever there was one. Take it from a guy who is neither.

I’m not gonna give you one of those “voice on the streets” slogans like “he’s cleaned up the city” or some other nonsense, and I’m not going to rattle off the various statistics that prove (if you believe metrics prove anything) that he’s unquestionably the finest mayor in Boston’s history, if not in the country. The simple reason you should vote for Mayor Menino is his opponents’ platform: CHANGE. Michael Flaherty is hardly Barack Obama, but that doesn’t stop him from using the same tired old slogan as ever other single non-incumbent candidate in every election in every city and town in the entire country. Change for the sake of change is a textbook definition of idiocy. Does Flaherty want to change the fact that Boston’s crime rate has steadily decreased to the lowest its been in three decades? Menino’s record speaks for itself. People harp on the “Mayor for Life” nickname. I say make him mayor for life. Why not? Apparently, if you believe the people that didn’t vote for McCain because he was too old, people just start dropping dead at 70 so he wouldn’t even make it to the end of this term (he’s 66). The fact of the matter is he’s earned his spot as mayor and has shown it more and more with each passing year. And people who vote for politicians because they’re flashy speakers or hide behind flashy slogans reap what they sow. Mayor Menino has dedicated himself ENDLESSLY to the improvement of Boston, and the only criticism people can come up with is that he mumbles a bit. Really? He’s been mayor since 1993… and that’s the best you’ve got? That speaks for itself.

City Councillor: Tito Jackson.

Ignore what I just said about flashy slogans. Tito Jackson rocks a Run DMC style “Vote Tito” logo and the best campaign song of all time. That’s right, Kanye, ALL TIME.

Speaks for itself

If you don’t with Tito, you got no soul. Not like church-soul, but R&B-soul. Seriously. Really, the rhymes are just about as hot as napalm.

He’s a man of action,
{VM}

A is for Apologies

Sorry.

I’ve been the drizzling shits at updating The Dead Pool recently. It’s partially because my hours in hell just got upped, and partially because the client in aforementioned hell has outlawed Internet use by the consultants. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? It also has to do with the time I’m devoting to my super-lame, quasi-secret OTHER writing hobby, but that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve got a bunch of shit I want write/bitch about, so I’ll be back writing here soon (maybe even over the weekend if I’ve done gone crazy). In the meantime, entertain yourself with Same As We Ever Was and this picture:

For the last time, I don’t give a flying fuck how fucking cute you think I am, because that’s not the fucking point. The point is to put the motherfucking food in the motherfucking bowl. So fucking do it, and then fuck off.

{VM}

Google Annouces Plans for Dystopian Future

http://gizmodo.com/5381615/google-wave-is-going-to-create-a-horrifying-dystopian-future

I called it.

SERGEI IS WATCHING,
{VM}