People that are loudly social on the street outside my apartment on weekend nights that I decide to stay in, reminding me that I’m being a loser, and ruining everything.
Everyone at the Superbowl party who doesn’t care about the game.
People Who Suck
People that are loudly social on the street outside my apartment on weekend nights that I decide to stay in, reminding me that I’m being a loser, and ruining everything.
Everyone at the Superbowl party who doesn’t care about the game.
9 Things That Make My Life Worse
1) Kids that bang on the piano while I'm playing.
And yes, I'm very proud of that piano drawing.
2) My iPhone deciding to start playing random songs at random times. In the old days, the thing that sucked was when you'd open a website and it would automatically start playing a loud video and embarrass you in public:
And yes, I'm very proud of that piano drawing.
2) My iPhone deciding to start playing random songs at random times. In the old days, the thing that sucked was when you'd open a website and it would automatically start playing a loud video and embarrass you in public:
Some Thoughts on a Tuesday
There is no extra space in New York apartments. A fact I seemed to forget recently when I bought a 12-pack of paper towels. I took one out and put it on the counter. Then I walked around the apartment with the rest of the 12-pack for like six full minutes, looking for a place to put them, before I gave up and just sat on the couch with 11 paper towel rolls in my lap. "I guess I'll just hold them," I thought, resigned. Eventually I got a second wind and walked around the apartment a second time, opening the same cabinets, before remembering that there was nowhere that came close to fitting them the first time. I ended up leaving my apartment with them and brought them back to the store.
_______
According to the internet, 106.5 billion humans have lived in the history of human existence. I find this fact boggling. Part of me is boggled that 100 billion people have lived and died on this earth so far. But a bigger part of me is boggled that 6.7 billion of those 106.5 billion are currently alive, which means that 1 out of 16 humans that have ever existed is alive today.
While we're here, a friend pointed out to me today that by being 28 years old, I've been alive for 1/8 of US history. Odd.
_______
I didn't used to like grapefruits or dark chocolate but both have grown on me over the years. I still don't like milk.
_______
It's pretty weird that there are still feather pillows. It seems like one of those things you'd hear they used in the 1700's. But in 2010? Really? The best we can do for a pillow filling is actual bird feathers? We haven't figured out some synthetic substitute yet?
_______
I see very few movies, but in the last week, I've seen Despicable Me and Inception, both of which were deeply enjoyable. My two favorite movie genres are probably animated movies and sci-fi thrillers.
_______
A friend sent me this yesterday. It may have been better than both of the above movies.
_______
When I was a camp counselor in 2000, I asked one of my campers what his father's job was, and he said, "He's a boss." What a dick.
_______
I feel like a d-bag writing "yup," and if I write "yep" then I look like an idiot because it's wrong, so I just avoid it in writing altogether, and only use it verbally.
_______
I was waiting for a friend on a street corner the other day and ended up watching this group of pigeons interact for like 10 full minutes, during which I noticed all of this social dynamic I had never noticed before when looking at pigeons. There are blatant alpha males in the group who alternate between being intimidating dicks to the other dudes and trying to get laid by thrusting their bosom at the chicks. The girls are totally uninterested and act very standoffish and bitchy.
Then some kid walked by and ran at the whole group to scare them and they all flew away and I came incredibly close to hitting him.
_______
I have an iPhone 4 and all the critics are dumb. It's a wonderful device.
_______
The one Mandarin phrase I retained from my time in China is "duo chao chiennnnnnn," or "how much does it cost?" The problem is that if I don't pronounce it right, Chinese people have no idea what I'm saying. But I like trying when I'm in a Chinatown Chinese restaurant, because it surprises the waiter that I know how to say anything at all. It's a big gamble though—if it clicks with the waiter, he looks surprised, laughs, and says something back to me in Chinese. I laugh, as if I understand what he said, and everyone I'm with thinks I'm funny and charming and worldly. But if it doesn't click with the waiter, he looks at me like, "What's this dude's angle?" and everyone I'm with thinks I'm really embarrassing to be in public with, offensive, and dumb. The stakes are high.
Further, I was in Chinatown with my 88-year-old grandfather for lunch the other day, and at the end of the meal he asked the waiter where the pineapple cubes were. The waiter had no idea what he was talking about since they only serve pineapple cubes in made-for-Americans Chinese restaurants, which this certainly was not. My grandfather had a minor tantrum, but he was partially appeased by the fortune cookie.
_______
I was bored in the airport recently, and to entertain myself, I decided to imagine that the little kids around me weren't actually kids, but rather miniature retarded adults. I highly recommend trying it.
_______
I recently slipped into one of my trademark Wikipedia procrastination death spirals (the cousin of the YouTube procrastination death spiral), during which I read the full Wikipedia page of every one of the random presidents that no one knows anything about (Tyler, Arthur, etc.). One thing that they have on each of the pages is the president's last words before his death. I took note of these as I went along:
William Henry Harrison: "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more."
John Tyler: "I am going now, perhaps it is for the best."
James Polk: "I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you."
Zachary Taylor: "I have always done my duty, I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me."
Millard Fillmore: "The nourishment is palatable."
I stopped. The nourishment is palatable? For god's sake, Fillmore. And this is what he looked like:
Not impressed.
I also noted that at the very end of James Buchanan's life, he proclaimed, "History will vindicate my memory" (referring to people thinking he sucked for failing to prevent the Civil War). He was deeply wrong, as 150 years later, he's considered to be one of the three worst presidents ever.
_______
According to the internet, 106.5 billion humans have lived in the history of human existence. I find this fact boggling. Part of me is boggled that 100 billion people have lived and died on this earth so far. But a bigger part of me is boggled that 6.7 billion of those 106.5 billion are currently alive, which means that 1 out of 16 humans that have ever existed is alive today.
While we're here, a friend pointed out to me today that by being 28 years old, I've been alive for 1/8 of US history. Odd.
_______
I didn't used to like grapefruits or dark chocolate but both have grown on me over the years. I still don't like milk.
_______
It's pretty weird that there are still feather pillows. It seems like one of those things you'd hear they used in the 1700's. But in 2010? Really? The best we can do for a pillow filling is actual bird feathers? We haven't figured out some synthetic substitute yet?
_______
I see very few movies, but in the last week, I've seen Despicable Me and Inception, both of which were deeply enjoyable. My two favorite movie genres are probably animated movies and sci-fi thrillers.
_______
A friend sent me this yesterday. It may have been better than both of the above movies.
_______
When I was a camp counselor in 2000, I asked one of my campers what his father's job was, and he said, "He's a boss." What a dick.
_______
I feel like a d-bag writing "yup," and if I write "yep" then I look like an idiot because it's wrong, so I just avoid it in writing altogether, and only use it verbally.
_______
I was waiting for a friend on a street corner the other day and ended up watching this group of pigeons interact for like 10 full minutes, during which I noticed all of this social dynamic I had never noticed before when looking at pigeons. There are blatant alpha males in the group who alternate between being intimidating dicks to the other dudes and trying to get laid by thrusting their bosom at the chicks. The girls are totally uninterested and act very standoffish and bitchy.
Then some kid walked by and ran at the whole group to scare them and they all flew away and I came incredibly close to hitting him.
_______
I have an iPhone 4 and all the critics are dumb. It's a wonderful device.
_______
The one Mandarin phrase I retained from my time in China is "duo chao chiennnnnnn," or "how much does it cost?" The problem is that if I don't pronounce it right, Chinese people have no idea what I'm saying. But I like trying when I'm in a Chinatown Chinese restaurant, because it surprises the waiter that I know how to say anything at all. It's a big gamble though—if it clicks with the waiter, he looks surprised, laughs, and says something back to me in Chinese. I laugh, as if I understand what he said, and everyone I'm with thinks I'm funny and charming and worldly. But if it doesn't click with the waiter, he looks at me like, "What's this dude's angle?" and everyone I'm with thinks I'm really embarrassing to be in public with, offensive, and dumb. The stakes are high.
Further, I was in Chinatown with my 88-year-old grandfather for lunch the other day, and at the end of the meal he asked the waiter where the pineapple cubes were. The waiter had no idea what he was talking about since they only serve pineapple cubes in made-for-Americans Chinese restaurants, which this certainly was not. My grandfather had a minor tantrum, but he was partially appeased by the fortune cookie.
_______
I was bored in the airport recently, and to entertain myself, I decided to imagine that the little kids around me weren't actually kids, but rather miniature retarded adults. I highly recommend trying it.
_______
I recently slipped into one of my trademark Wikipedia procrastination death spirals (the cousin of the YouTube procrastination death spiral), during which I read the full Wikipedia page of every one of the random presidents that no one knows anything about (Tyler, Arthur, etc.). One thing that they have on each of the pages is the president's last words before his death. I took note of these as I went along:
William Henry Harrison: "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more."
John Tyler: "I am going now, perhaps it is for the best."
James Polk: "I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you."
Zachary Taylor: "I have always done my duty, I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me."
Millard Fillmore: "The nourishment is palatable."
I stopped. The nourishment is palatable? For god's sake, Fillmore. And this is what he looked like:
Not impressed.
I also noted that at the very end of James Buchanan's life, he proclaimed, "History will vindicate my memory" (referring to people thinking he sucked for failing to prevent the Civil War). He was deeply wrong, as 150 years later, he's considered to be one of the three worst presidents ever.
19 Things I Don't Understand, Volume 6
You know I've been in an especially dark pit of procrastination whenever this blog has a new look. Yes, I was an very bad place yesterday when I decided to spend a significant amount of time in Blogger's settings, giving my little pixel of the internet a makeover. We tried on all sorts of outfits, and this is where we ended up.
And what better way to commemorate things than yet another list of things that I don't get.
1) What the arctic tern's problem is. So I've always wondered what birds' issue is and why they need to migrate like 10,000 miles twice a year. It's ridiculous. If it's a matter of going from one climate to another, there's no reason to go that far—the North Pole is 6,000 miles away from the equator. Every climate possible exists in between. There's no explanation for going farther than that. It would be like me commuting from New York to Richmond every day for work because I found a good deal on an office there.
And then I read this:
Arctic terns are the champions of long distance migration. They fly about 11,000 miles from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to their winter home in Antarctica.
Champions? Champions of what—horrible decision-making? They're not even changing their climate. This would be like finding an office in downtown Manhattan for $1,300/month, but then deciding to commute every day to San Francisco, where I found an office on an identical-looking street for $1,300/month.
Maybe there's more food on one of the poles. Okay, great—then just stay at that pole. Maybe it's better to breed at the other pole. Really? It's that important which pole you breed on? I'm sure you can find a place on the eating pole to rear your young. If you stop the 22,000 miles of commuting each year, you'll have plenty of time to suss out all the best locations. Maybe each pole gets too cold in the winter. Then go 1,000 miles of latitude away and you'll be fine. Either way, going from pole to pole each year is not the answer.
And what better way to commemorate things than yet another list of things that I don't get.
1) What the arctic tern's problem is. So I've always wondered what birds' issue is and why they need to migrate like 10,000 miles twice a year. It's ridiculous. If it's a matter of going from one climate to another, there's no reason to go that far—the North Pole is 6,000 miles away from the equator. Every climate possible exists in between. There's no explanation for going farther than that. It would be like me commuting from New York to Richmond every day for work because I found a good deal on an office there.
And then I read this:
Arctic terns are the champions of long distance migration. They fly about 11,000 miles from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to their winter home in Antarctica.
Champions? Champions of what—horrible decision-making? They're not even changing their climate. This would be like finding an office in downtown Manhattan for $1,300/month, but then deciding to commute every day to San Francisco, where I found an office on an identical-looking street for $1,300/month.
An atrocious decision-maker
Maybe there's more food on one of the poles. Okay, great—then just stay at that pole. Maybe it's better to breed at the other pole. Really? It's that important which pole you breed on? I'm sure you can find a place on the eating pole to rear your young. If you stop the 22,000 miles of commuting each year, you'll have plenty of time to suss out all the best locations. Maybe each pole gets too cold in the winter. Then go 1,000 miles of latitude away and you'll be fine. Either way, going from pole to pole each year is not the answer.
The Best Links
There are only two reasons I go to YouTube:
1) Someone sent me a YouTube link so I click on it
2) I want to search for a specific video
I never just "head to YouTube" to click around and procrastinate. Does anyone do that? I don't think so, right?
For this reason, other than the occasional YouTube Death Spiral (when I watch a YouTube video and then click on one of the "related videos" and so on and so on until I despise myself), internet videos have never really caused me to procrastinate.
At least they never used to.
Recently, several treacherous "link sites" have invaded my life and taken away my freedom.
First, a commenter on this blog told me about wimp.com, a site that lists five videos a day. They range from short to long, science-y to silly, and I am now forced to watch every video they publish.
I don't go to Wimp every day. But when I do go there, I have a lot of trouble not clicking on video after video until I've seen all the new ones since I was there last. Like, a lot of trouble.
Then, with no consideration for my personal weaknesses and shortcomings, a friend of mine started a site called linksoftheweek.com. Links of the Week publishes 12 links every Tuesday, each from one of their "categories," and forces me to view every link they post, whether I like it or not.
And then there are the links people send me over email, which are showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
So I've been kept busy.
And knowing that I have this blog that I write things in, I figured that whenever I came across a particularly interesting or entertaining video or photo, I'd copy it to a list which would one day allow me to take away some of your freedom. Today is that day.
And so, I present to you the very best links I've come across:
Pets
There are more pet videos out there than grains of sand in the Earth. And most of them are mediocre. But the great ones are delightful.
Pet 1 - Excellent.
Pet 2 - Along the same lines.
Pet 3 - He's like, "Try as I might, I can't seem to exit this place." 20 seconds is enough.
Pet 4 - Dogs being dumb is funny for everyone.
Pet 5 - This looped at least six times before I stopped watching it.
Pet 6 - Eight times.
Pet 7 - This is someone trying to make a funny video and succeeding. Where have I heard that music before?
Pet 8 - Someone else trying to make a funny video. Someone else succeeding.
Astronomy
1) Someone sent me a YouTube link so I click on it
2) I want to search for a specific video
I never just "head to YouTube" to click around and procrastinate. Does anyone do that? I don't think so, right?
For this reason, other than the occasional YouTube Death Spiral (when I watch a YouTube video and then click on one of the "related videos" and so on and so on until I despise myself), internet videos have never really caused me to procrastinate.
At least they never used to.
Recently, several treacherous "link sites" have invaded my life and taken away my freedom.
First, a commenter on this blog told me about wimp.com, a site that lists five videos a day. They range from short to long, science-y to silly, and I am now forced to watch every video they publish.
I don't go to Wimp every day. But when I do go there, I have a lot of trouble not clicking on video after video until I've seen all the new ones since I was there last. Like, a lot of trouble.
Then, with no consideration for my personal weaknesses and shortcomings, a friend of mine started a site called linksoftheweek.com. Links of the Week publishes 12 links every Tuesday, each from one of their "categories," and forces me to view every link they post, whether I like it or not.
And then there are the links people send me over email, which are showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
So I've been kept busy.
And knowing that I have this blog that I write things in, I figured that whenever I came across a particularly interesting or entertaining video or photo, I'd copy it to a list which would one day allow me to take away some of your freedom. Today is that day.
And so, I present to you the very best links I've come across:
Pets
There are more pet videos out there than grains of sand in the Earth. And most of them are mediocre. But the great ones are delightful.
Pet 1 - Excellent.
Pet 2 - Along the same lines.
Pet 3 - He's like, "Try as I might, I can't seem to exit this place." 20 seconds is enough.
Pet 4 - Dogs being dumb is funny for everyone.
Pet 5 - This looped at least six times before I stopped watching it.
Pet 6 - Eight times.
Pet 7 - This is someone trying to make a funny video and succeeding. Where have I heard that music before?
Pet 8 - Someone else trying to make a funny video. Someone else succeeding.
Astronomy
Company Grades
We all interact with a lot of companies. And companies that become a part of your continual existence usually fall into one of three categories:
1) Good companies that you like interacting with
2) Less-than-good companies, but good enough that out of laziness and inertia, you'll continue to interact with them
3) Companies that you hate, but that you're forced to interact with because they're the best/only option for a product or service that you need
In discussing some common companies, let's start on a positive note. Then we can end on a really negative note, which is always nice.
Category 1: Good companies that I like interacting with
Company: Google
Personality: Smart; logical
Intelligence: Incredibly high
Dickishness: Low
Creepiness: Low
My general mood when interacting with them: Varies; that's like asking, what's your general mood when breathing oxygen?
Grade: A
Comments: Google is as good as it gets. Every product they put out is innovative, user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and utterly practical. Everything they do makes sense. They're always a step ahead of my thinking, always surprising me. If they buy a company, they're going to make it much better (the site you're on, Blogger, is an example). 4/5 people are on Gmail now, and that's for one reason only—it's much better than all the existing options (same reason everyone ditched their default web browser for Google a decade ago). Google is just run by smarter people than the other companies.
Company: Apple
Personality: Delicious
Intelligence: Incredibly high
Dickishness: Low
Creepiness: Moderate-Low
My general mood when interacting with them: Wide-eyed; happy
Grade: A
1) Good companies that you like interacting with
2) Less-than-good companies, but good enough that out of laziness and inertia, you'll continue to interact with them
3) Companies that you hate, but that you're forced to interact with because they're the best/only option for a product or service that you need
In discussing some common companies, let's start on a positive note. Then we can end on a really negative note, which is always nice.
Category 1: Good companies that I like interacting with
Personality: Smart; logical
Intelligence: Incredibly high
Dickishness: Low
Creepiness: Low
My general mood when interacting with them: Varies; that's like asking, what's your general mood when breathing oxygen?
Grade: A
Comments: Google is as good as it gets. Every product they put out is innovative, user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and utterly practical. Everything they do makes sense. They're always a step ahead of my thinking, always surprising me. If they buy a company, they're going to make it much better (the site you're on, Blogger, is an example). 4/5 people are on Gmail now, and that's for one reason only—it's much better than all the existing options (same reason everyone ditched their default web browser for Google a decade ago). Google is just run by smarter people than the other companies.
Personality: Delicious
Intelligence: Incredibly high
Dickishness: Low
Creepiness: Moderate-Low
My general mood when interacting with them: Wide-eyed; happy
Grade: A
Wearing Yellow in Winter
My sister Lindsay* was in town recently. Whenever she visits, she does her best to help me—to save me from myself—during her brief stay. This time, the most dire situation was in my closet, so we headed clothes shopping to beef up my stale wardrobe. Though she's five years my junior, upon entering the clothing stores, we seamlessly assumed our familiar shopping roles as mature adult woman and bitchy eight-year-old boy. We embarked upon our journey through Tim's personal hell, buying some shirts and a pair of jeans, and overall, everything went smoothly. All set for the next 12 months.
But after the whole ordeal, she said something that threw me for a loop. One of the shirts we bought is a yellow button-down shirt. As I was hanging it up back in my apartment, she mentioned, "You know you can only wear that in the summer, right?"
Wait, what?
"That's a summer shirt—it's yellow—you can only wear that in the warm months."
Oh for god's sake. The world of clothing is already mind-boggling enough, and now I have to think about which shirts are in season??
A few days later, I mentioned this new disturbing fact to my friend Eve, and she was extremely mean to me about it.
"Yeah, obviously—you don't know that you can't wear a yellow shirt in the winter?"
She rolled her eyes.
This is totally new information for me. I have never heard of this before. So I started asking her more questions about which colors are ripe when, and she continued to be abusive.
I defended myself, suggesting that most guys probably weren't aware of this, and she was all like, "No, everyone knows this."
So there we have it. Apparently there are "seasonal" "colors." (Those are air quotes.)
In any case, the good news for me was that I was about to head to LA for the week, where it's always summer.
And indeed, that's where I spent my last 10 days—my first time returning to LA since leaving six months ago.
It's really funny getting used to New York for awhile and then heading back to LA. Once you accept New York as the real world, LA seems like some absurdly calm, pleasant little island in the sky. It was pretty jarring. The best thing I can compare the transition to is that scene in Roger Rabbit when that grumpy main character guy is in his car and driving in his mean, cold city, and then goes through that tunnel and suddenly he's in cartoon land and all the trees are singing and the sun is smiling and shit. That's what going from New York to LA feels like to me.
Anyway, it was good to see LA. The breakup was mutual six months ago, we've both moved on, and it was nice to see that we can be pleasant friends moving forward. And though I have no regrets about my decision—I'm happy with my new chick (that cold, witty little bitch)—it was a little painful to be reminded of how hot LA is. I don't think she dipped below 80 degrees the whole week. I wasn't outside much, but even minimal exposure to the sun after six months in the dark has left me with a slight tan. Like, 15% of a tan. But everyone is so incredibly pale in New York by late March that now, back in New York, everyone's looking at me like I'm Fabio.
Speaking of whom, I have no idea who Fabio is. Like, who the hell is Fabio? And what does he do? The only thing I know about him is that he has long hair. I think he also has a large penis. Right? Is that a real rumor, or is that just something that I assumed is a rumor? But like, is he a model? A porn star? A lion tamer? I'm unclear about Fabio.
And now I forget where I was heading with the first part of this post. The Fabio thing has completely thrown me off.
I'll try to gather myself and continue.
Okay so anyway, I rode JetBlue (obv) on the way back from LA, and I watched delicious basketball on the plane. The lowlight of the flight occurred when I was flipping around during commercials and came across what I think was Pirates of the Caribbean. So there's Orlando Bloom, and he's walking cautiously through some old shack—and then suddenly this goblin or something jumps out at him—which caused me to jolt in my seat like an idiot.
You know when you're startled in a movie and you jolt? It's not that big a deal because other people are jolting, and even if they're not, they understand why you did (some people are more susceptible to jolting than others—my father jumps six feet every time his phone vibrates in his pocket). But on a JetBlue flight, jolting is very, very embarrassing. As soon as it happened, I had that moment like, "Did...did anyone notice?" And out of the corner of my eye, it was clear that both of the people sitting in my row were looking at me. "Play it cool," I thought to myself, and I did an intentional smaller jolt as if I had to straighten my pants out and the only way to do that would be to do a second jolt like the first jolt I had just done a second ago when I was beginning the process of straightening my pants out.
And it just got worse from there. Normally, Winston picks me up at the airport, but he had an art class that afternoon, so I was on my own upon arrival. And after checking my bank statements recently and seeing a hideous $700 worth of cab rides in the last six months, I placed a spending freeze on cab use. So I spent 45 minutes heading from the gate to the terminal to the airtrain, took the airtrain to the subway, and waited for the subway to arrive before realizing I had forgotten to get my checked luggage at the airport. It nearly broke me. It's quite a moment, standing there, as it soaks in that in 90 minutes you'll be standing back at that exact spot after having gone back to get the bag.
The one solace was that clearly you were gonna end up hearing about it.
Incidentally, this is one of those posts where I'm not really sure what's happening. Like, was that one long intro into one of my lists? Or is that the whole post? I'm not really sure. I keep looking around for someone to ask, but the only people nearby seem to be having sex in the apartment above mine, and it would be pretty weird if I went up there, knocked on the door until they finally stopped having sex and came to the door, only so I could ask them what the hell was going on in the blog post I was writing in the apartment below theirs. No, that's not a good plan at all.
And you're all useless, as usual. The whole above paragraph was a cry for help and all of you are just sitting there silently. All the shit I do for you, and in a moment when I really need help—silence.
So what I think is gonna happen now is what often happens when I have some more stuff to say but I'm not really sure what's going on in the post I'm writing. When all else fails, there are always "thoughts."
Some thoughts:
- I was talking to my father the other day, and we got talking about an old friend of mine who lives in Boston, which caused my dad to say, "When you're back in town, you should look him up." This warranted abuse. What is this, the seventies? I should look him up? I made him feel very bad about himself for saying this.
- I asked for directions a few days ago on the street, except the person I asked seemed very unsure of herself and she was pretty icky and untrustworthy-seeming, and while she was telling me where she thought I should go, I decided that whatever she was saying, it was likely to be wrong. So I walked away in a different direction than she had pointed me. It was uncomfortable for both of us. It's a special and unique awkwardness—ignoring the directions someone just gave you because you're pretty sure they're wrong. It's like when you ask the waiter for a suggestion and he makes a suggestion and then you order something else, which is basically saying, "I don't trust your judgment."
- I watched the second season of Lost. It was pretty addictive, kind of scary, and I enjoyed it. Then I stopped watching it—and have had to endure like seven years of people talking about Lost since. Nothing is more annoying than hearing continuously about a show you don't watch. This is half the reason I watch American Idol (the other half is to watch my identity die a slow, slow death). I can't even imagine how irritating the Jersey Shore phenomenon must have been for everyone who didn't watch it. Back to Lost—didn't the show end already? Or am I making that up? I really thought the show ended like four times already. Is this the last season? Please?
- A show I most certainly will watch is Life.
- Why is it okay to type a four-paragraph email to someone but weird to leave someone a four minute voicemail? If you want to catch up with someone you haven't spoken to in awhile, it's totally okay to send them a long email. But this is annoying—typing a long email takes a long time. Who wants to type out all their thoughts? On the other hand, a long voicemail is easy, it can be done while on the go (and listened to on the go), and it's much more personable. But other than a few select people in my life who have accepted that long voicemails from me are going to be a part of their existence, if I leave a four-minute voicemail for someone, they're going to think it's weird. You should be able to dial a number that is just for a friend's voicemail and leave them as long a message as you want. Why is this not something that happens?
- Watching March Madness, one thing always strikes me—a lot of college basketball coaches seem like very bad, bad men. Like Bo Ryan (Wisconsin). And Frank Martin (Kansas State).
- While we're here, filling out brackets and entering a pool is stupid and pointless. You follow all your first round and second round games and you're all happy when things are going well—and none of it matters. All that matters is getting the Final Four right or close to right and picking the winner. It's a bad format. Two much better ways to do it are drafts (2-4 people pick teams in a snake draft and wins in each round are worth more points as you go; person with the most points wins), and auctions (everyone starts with 100 fake dollars and you go through all 64 teams one at a time and people bid for each of them—at the end everyone has a 3-10 team squad and the squad with the most total wins takes it).
- Further, what's with the round two TV schedule? There are eight games Saturday and eight Sunday—but instead of putting two on at a time for eight straight hours of games each day, they start with one game, then they put four on at once, then three on at once. This happens every year in the second round. What could be the reasoning behind this?
- Who knew that the Big Ten logo had a huge 11 right in the middle of it? (Because there are 11 teams in the Big Ten.)
- And then there are commercials. I never watch commercials anymore because of DVR—the one exception is big sporting events. So during the Olympics, or the MLB playoffs, or March Madness, I'll suddenly become upsettingly familiar with the same 12 ads that appear the whole time. (This has to apply to a lot of people, which would make me think that commercials during sports must be way more expensive than commercials during TV shows—right?) A few comments on March Madness commercials:
*It's funny bringing Lindsay into my posts. Because I know that somewhere out there, in the next few days, Lindsay will end up reading this post, and upon seeing her name in the first sentence, will gasp and read on, petrified about what's to come. The good news is that me embarrassing her in this blog is kind of her problem and not mine.
But after the whole ordeal, she said something that threw me for a loop. One of the shirts we bought is a yellow button-down shirt. As I was hanging it up back in my apartment, she mentioned, "You know you can only wear that in the summer, right?"
Wait, what?
"That's a summer shirt—it's yellow—you can only wear that in the warm months."
Oh for god's sake. The world of clothing is already mind-boggling enough, and now I have to think about which shirts are in season??
A few days later, I mentioned this new disturbing fact to my friend Eve, and she was extremely mean to me about it.
"Yeah, obviously—you don't know that you can't wear a yellow shirt in the winter?"
She rolled her eyes.
This is totally new information for me. I have never heard of this before. So I started asking her more questions about which colors are ripe when, and she continued to be abusive.
I defended myself, suggesting that most guys probably weren't aware of this, and she was all like, "No, everyone knows this."
So there we have it. Apparently there are "seasonal" "colors." (Those are air quotes.)
In any case, the good news for me was that I was about to head to LA for the week, where it's always summer.
And indeed, that's where I spent my last 10 days—my first time returning to LA since leaving six months ago.
It's really funny getting used to New York for awhile and then heading back to LA. Once you accept New York as the real world, LA seems like some absurdly calm, pleasant little island in the sky. It was pretty jarring. The best thing I can compare the transition to is that scene in Roger Rabbit when that grumpy main character guy is in his car and driving in his mean, cold city, and then goes through that tunnel and suddenly he's in cartoon land and all the trees are singing and the sun is smiling and shit. That's what going from New York to LA feels like to me.
Anyway, it was good to see LA. The breakup was mutual six months ago, we've both moved on, and it was nice to see that we can be pleasant friends moving forward. And though I have no regrets about my decision—I'm happy with my new chick (that cold, witty little bitch)—it was a little painful to be reminded of how hot LA is. I don't think she dipped below 80 degrees the whole week. I wasn't outside much, but even minimal exposure to the sun after six months in the dark has left me with a slight tan. Like, 15% of a tan. But everyone is so incredibly pale in New York by late March that now, back in New York, everyone's looking at me like I'm Fabio.
Speaking of whom, I have no idea who Fabio is. Like, who the hell is Fabio? And what does he do? The only thing I know about him is that he has long hair. I think he also has a large penis. Right? Is that a real rumor, or is that just something that I assumed is a rumor? But like, is he a model? A porn star? A lion tamer? I'm unclear about Fabio.
And now I forget where I was heading with the first part of this post. The Fabio thing has completely thrown me off.
I'll try to gather myself and continue.
Okay so anyway, I rode JetBlue (obv) on the way back from LA, and I watched delicious basketball on the plane. The lowlight of the flight occurred when I was flipping around during commercials and came across what I think was Pirates of the Caribbean. So there's Orlando Bloom, and he's walking cautiously through some old shack—and then suddenly this goblin or something jumps out at him—which caused me to jolt in my seat like an idiot.
You know when you're startled in a movie and you jolt? It's not that big a deal because other people are jolting, and even if they're not, they understand why you did (some people are more susceptible to jolting than others—my father jumps six feet every time his phone vibrates in his pocket). But on a JetBlue flight, jolting is very, very embarrassing. As soon as it happened, I had that moment like, "Did...did anyone notice?" And out of the corner of my eye, it was clear that both of the people sitting in my row were looking at me. "Play it cool," I thought to myself, and I did an intentional smaller jolt as if I had to straighten my pants out and the only way to do that would be to do a second jolt like the first jolt I had just done a second ago when I was beginning the process of straightening my pants out.
And it just got worse from there. Normally, Winston picks me up at the airport, but he had an art class that afternoon, so I was on my own upon arrival. And after checking my bank statements recently and seeing a hideous $700 worth of cab rides in the last six months, I placed a spending freeze on cab use. So I spent 45 minutes heading from the gate to the terminal to the airtrain, took the airtrain to the subway, and waited for the subway to arrive before realizing I had forgotten to get my checked luggage at the airport. It nearly broke me. It's quite a moment, standing there, as it soaks in that in 90 minutes you'll be standing back at that exact spot after having gone back to get the bag.
The one solace was that clearly you were gonna end up hearing about it.
Incidentally, this is one of those posts where I'm not really sure what's happening. Like, was that one long intro into one of my lists? Or is that the whole post? I'm not really sure. I keep looking around for someone to ask, but the only people nearby seem to be having sex in the apartment above mine, and it would be pretty weird if I went up there, knocked on the door until they finally stopped having sex and came to the door, only so I could ask them what the hell was going on in the blog post I was writing in the apartment below theirs. No, that's not a good plan at all.
And you're all useless, as usual. The whole above paragraph was a cry for help and all of you are just sitting there silently. All the shit I do for you, and in a moment when I really need help—silence.
So what I think is gonna happen now is what often happens when I have some more stuff to say but I'm not really sure what's going on in the post I'm writing. When all else fails, there are always "thoughts."
Some thoughts:
- I was talking to my father the other day, and we got talking about an old friend of mine who lives in Boston, which caused my dad to say, "When you're back in town, you should look him up." This warranted abuse. What is this, the seventies? I should look him up? I made him feel very bad about himself for saying this.
- I asked for directions a few days ago on the street, except the person I asked seemed very unsure of herself and she was pretty icky and untrustworthy-seeming, and while she was telling me where she thought I should go, I decided that whatever she was saying, it was likely to be wrong. So I walked away in a different direction than she had pointed me. It was uncomfortable for both of us. It's a special and unique awkwardness—ignoring the directions someone just gave you because you're pretty sure they're wrong. It's like when you ask the waiter for a suggestion and he makes a suggestion and then you order something else, which is basically saying, "I don't trust your judgment."
- I watched the second season of Lost. It was pretty addictive, kind of scary, and I enjoyed it. Then I stopped watching it—and have had to endure like seven years of people talking about Lost since. Nothing is more annoying than hearing continuously about a show you don't watch. This is half the reason I watch American Idol (the other half is to watch my identity die a slow, slow death). I can't even imagine how irritating the Jersey Shore phenomenon must have been for everyone who didn't watch it. Back to Lost—didn't the show end already? Or am I making that up? I really thought the show ended like four times already. Is this the last season? Please?
- A show I most certainly will watch is Life.
- Why is it okay to type a four-paragraph email to someone but weird to leave someone a four minute voicemail? If you want to catch up with someone you haven't spoken to in awhile, it's totally okay to send them a long email. But this is annoying—typing a long email takes a long time. Who wants to type out all their thoughts? On the other hand, a long voicemail is easy, it can be done while on the go (and listened to on the go), and it's much more personable. But other than a few select people in my life who have accepted that long voicemails from me are going to be a part of their existence, if I leave a four-minute voicemail for someone, they're going to think it's weird. You should be able to dial a number that is just for a friend's voicemail and leave them as long a message as you want. Why is this not something that happens?
- Watching March Madness, one thing always strikes me—a lot of college basketball coaches seem like very bad, bad men. Like Bo Ryan (Wisconsin). And Frank Martin (Kansas State).
- While we're here, filling out brackets and entering a pool is stupid and pointless. You follow all your first round and second round games and you're all happy when things are going well—and none of it matters. All that matters is getting the Final Four right or close to right and picking the winner. It's a bad format. Two much better ways to do it are drafts (2-4 people pick teams in a snake draft and wins in each round are worth more points as you go; person with the most points wins), and auctions (everyone starts with 100 fake dollars and you go through all 64 teams one at a time and people bid for each of them—at the end everyone has a 3-10 team squad and the squad with the most total wins takes it).
- Further, what's with the round two TV schedule? There are eight games Saturday and eight Sunday—but instead of putting two on at a time for eight straight hours of games each day, they start with one game, then they put four on at once, then three on at once. This happens every year in the second round. What could be the reasoning behind this?
- Who knew that the Big Ten logo had a huge 11 right in the middle of it? (Because there are 11 teams in the Big Ten.)
- And then there are commercials. I never watch commercials anymore because of DVR—the one exception is big sporting events. So during the Olympics, or the MLB playoffs, or March Madness, I'll suddenly become upsettingly familiar with the same 12 ads that appear the whole time. (This has to apply to a lot of people, which would make me think that commercials during sports must be way more expensive than commercials during TV shows—right?) A few comments on March Madness commercials:
- As usual, the UPS Whiteboard commercials are intensely clever and aesthetically pleasing, and the guy is as rad as ever. I stop whatever I'm doing when one comes on.
- Old Spice has managed to accomplish a rare feat—hiring an ad team that's actually funny.
- The Lexus hybrid commercial about their "head start" kind of gives me the chills.
- That horrid Stephen Baldwin airplane commercial makes me furious, because it means that he's making money. I really hate that guy.
- The phone commercial with all the autotuned voices is the most annoying commercial that has ever been made.
- Ad agencies are locked in some pretty tight social boxes. If there are 10 commercials about planning for retirement involving a white guy and a black guy, in 10 out of 10 the black guy will be the one with his shit together and the white guy will be the bozo who hasn't planned ahead.
*It's funny bringing Lindsay into my posts. Because I know that somewhere out there, in the next few days, Lindsay will end up reading this post, and upon seeing her name in the first sentence, will gasp and read on, petrified about what's to come. The good news is that me embarrassing her in this blog is kind of her problem and not mine.
11 Thursday Items
Emerging for a moment from the flood of adoring Tweets and Facebook messages from infatuated girls who seem to think that I'm on a singing show, I'd like to discuss 11 items I feel you should know about:
1) I enjoyed the Olympics. I just like the concept of people working their whole lives for this one all-important moment, all so I can sit on the couch in sweatpants, eating Wheat Thins, and half paying attention to them. Sitting around lazily is always a little more fun when someone on the TV is undergoing severe stress and strenuous physical activity. The fact that they're also outside in the freezing cold is icing on the cake. This is the same exact reason watching football on Thanksgiving and New Years Day is fun. Some further Olympic thoughts:
3) When the cashier hands me change that includes pennies, I usually leave the pennies on the counter. If I'm feeling ballsy I'll throw them in the trash. Both options are better than the two alternatives: insulting the cashier by putting pennies in the tip jar or putting them in your pocket and having to deal with pennies later.
4) A couple more things that people say are gross that really aren't:
5) When I got off the subway the other day, this old lady in front of me took 200 years to exit. As a result, when I finally got out the doors were closing. I managed to slip out, but I was holding my laptop bag in my hand and the doors closed on the handle of my bag with most of the bag still inside. So I'm outside the subway, my laptop's inside, and my hand is clutching the bag's handle. A chaotic scene ensued, during which a guy inside the subway joined me in frantically trying the wrest the doors open. On my outside, I was furiously trying to open the subway doors. On my inside, I was sighing, amused by my life. Eventually, the doors opened.
6) When it comes to shopping for groceries and cooking them, I'm one of the laziest people that exist. The process that starts with me thinking, "I need to go to the grocery store," and ends with all the groceries bought and put away in my apartment is incredibly long and arduous. And while things like junk food and pasta are pretty easy to cook, healthy food like vegetables and meat are confusing and difficult. Like, vegetables in bags in the fridge are very far away from being on a plate ready to eat. You have to do hard, complicated things like steaming them and sauteing them and cutting them. So what normally happens is I buy all of this d-bag produce at the grocery store, and then every time I'm hungry, I elect to make pasta or eat junk food or order out over trying to conquer the healthy food, and then after a few days I start to worry that the healthy food may have begun to perish, and without knowing whether it actually did or didn't, I'll throw it away.
But two things have happened recently that have changed everything.
First, I began using FreshDirect.com, the greatest service in the world, so now I don't have to go grocery shopping anymore. I was so excited when my first delivery arrived that I couldn't help but give the delivery guy my sexy eyes, which in turn left him with the willies.
Second, I bought a Vita-Mix, a ridiculously powerful, mannish blender, because my friend is a Vita-Mix salesman and I heard his sales pitch one too many times. Now, when I see daunting vegetables in bags in the fridge, I just pile them into the blender, throw in like 17 random condiments and spices, and three minutes later I'm eating delicious salsa and the kitchen is clean. When I see fruit, I just throw it in, stems, seeds and all, and I end up with a smoothie. If I put vegetables in and leave the blender going for a five minutes, I end up with soup (which is steaming hot at that point because the blades go so fast). Something like making hummus would normally be completely bewildering and impenetrable, but last week, I just clicked the hummus ingredients when ordering from FreshDirect, and I actually ended up making hummus.
Life changing.
But it's not all roses. I talked this machine up the other night to my friend and then brought him to the house where I made him ice cream, one of the Vita-Mix's best tricks (that's right, I brought my male friend to my apartment for a homemade ice cream party), except I got cocky and forgot multiple key ingredients and it was inedible.
Further, now that it's getting warmer, I'm starting to walk home from work, which takes me through Chinatown, which leaves me with no option but to buy Chinese food, which means that none of the above is relevant and I'm going to have a blood-MSG level of .2 until next winter when I start taking the subway again.
7) This is great news. Why only for the playoffs?
8) I decided I was smarter than everyone else at the bar the other night and instead of dealing with the coat check line, I left my coat in the corner of a booth. Yes, it was quite the trick. Then at the end of the night everyone got in line again to get their coats and mine was stolen. Earlier that day, someone stole my sandwich from the office fridge.
9) My friend Melissa told me a couple years ago that she and a friend were writing and starring in a web series called Let's Get Laid about two girls in their early twenties and their various dating debacles. Sounded like a good idea. She said they were basing the stories on their real-life dating debacles—which was upsetting because she was dating me at the time. In any case, they actually made it happen—the most recent episode is here. It's very funny and I hope it ends up as a TV series at some point soon. (Note to struggling actors -- this is the way to get your career going. Create and produce something yourself, cast yourself as the lead, and broadcast it on the internet. It's way more effective than clawing for parts in auditions.)
10) My grandparents just had their 67th anniversary. They started dating 69 years ago. Someone who was in the womb when they first started seeing each other is now beginning preparations for their 70th birthday bash. Marriage is a pretty important thing to get right, huh?
11) When so many things that are supposed to be funny aren't, it's nice that The Onion always delivers.
1) I enjoyed the Olympics. I just like the concept of people working their whole lives for this one all-important moment, all so I can sit on the couch in sweatpants, eating Wheat Thins, and half paying attention to them. Sitting around lazily is always a little more fun when someone on the TV is undergoing severe stress and strenuous physical activity. The fact that they're also outside in the freezing cold is icing on the cake. This is the same exact reason watching football on Thanksgiving and New Years Day is fun. Some further Olympic thoughts:
- Watching figure skaters fall lands me in a classic dilemma. On one hand, theatrical and sassy skaters wiping out and ruining their dreams is very funny. On the other hand, part of me feels bad for them, and watching post-fall skaters finish their program is depressing. It's a tough one to figure out. The only easy one is Evgeni Plushenko, who's a pure joy to root against.
- My favorite event to watch is short-track speed skating. I find it completely captivating. And Apolo Ohno is one of my favorite athletes. (He should have nine.)
- The snowboarding half-pipe event is really fun to watch. Shaun White and I have a complicated relationship. Every time I lay eyes on him, I have immediate disdain for him, and then I listen to him in an interview and like him, and then he snowboards and completely wins me over. Then I forget all that and see him on a magazine cover a few days later and have total disdain for him.
- There are few activities that seem more miserable than partaking in a 30k cross-country ski race.
- I was really happy that that fat American frat-dude led his team to the bobsledding gold, but this is one of many events that's boring to watch. Why? Because all the sleds look the same when they're going, and you just sit there and wait to see their final time. Long-track speed skating and skiing present the same problem for me. That's why I love short-track so much—they're all battling each other simultaneously.
- I was ridiculously excited about the men's hockey gold medal final, but I was out and couldn't see it live. I Tivo'd (Tivoed?) it and was incredibly careful not to talk to anyone who had watched it. I didn't get near ESPN.com. I told my friends not to text me about it. Then, minutes before getting back to my apartment and watching it, my CNN iPhone app sent me a "breaking news alert" text message telling me the final score. Thanks CNN!
- One nice thing about the Winter Olympics is that it fills the Superbowl-to-March Madness sports void really nicely. The gap is only two weeks long this year.
3) When the cashier hands me change that includes pennies, I usually leave the pennies on the counter. If I'm feeling ballsy I'll throw them in the trash. Both options are better than the two alternatives: insulting the cashier by putting pennies in the tip jar or putting them in your pocket and having to deal with pennies later.
4) A couple more things that people say are gross that really aren't:
- Going to a public bathroom barefoot. Bear with me here. So in Case 1, you get someone's urine on your foot. Granted, this isn't optimal. But when do you ever touch the soles of your feet? And when you take a shower, it's gone—right? In Case 2, you get urine on your shoe. You touch your shoe a lot, every time you put it on and take it off. And you never wash your shoes. So the urine is now a part of your life. So I guess I'm not really saying that it's not gross to go to the bathroom barefoot—I'm saying it's less gross than going with shoes on.
- The other day, I took a tea bag out of my tea cup and threw it in the trash. Then I drank my tea. Then I wanted more tea. But I had used the last bag. So I reached in the trash and reused the tea bag. People gasped. But what the hell? What's so gross about the trash? Did someone poop in the trash? No. Were there used needles in the trash? No. All that was in the trash was some paper that I had thrown in there myself (recycling is hard). So I took the bag off of a piece of paper. Not gross.
5) When I got off the subway the other day, this old lady in front of me took 200 years to exit. As a result, when I finally got out the doors were closing. I managed to slip out, but I was holding my laptop bag in my hand and the doors closed on the handle of my bag with most of the bag still inside. So I'm outside the subway, my laptop's inside, and my hand is clutching the bag's handle. A chaotic scene ensued, during which a guy inside the subway joined me in frantically trying the wrest the doors open. On my outside, I was furiously trying to open the subway doors. On my inside, I was sighing, amused by my life. Eventually, the doors opened.
6) When it comes to shopping for groceries and cooking them, I'm one of the laziest people that exist. The process that starts with me thinking, "I need to go to the grocery store," and ends with all the groceries bought and put away in my apartment is incredibly long and arduous. And while things like junk food and pasta are pretty easy to cook, healthy food like vegetables and meat are confusing and difficult. Like, vegetables in bags in the fridge are very far away from being on a plate ready to eat. You have to do hard, complicated things like steaming them and sauteing them and cutting them. So what normally happens is I buy all of this d-bag produce at the grocery store, and then every time I'm hungry, I elect to make pasta or eat junk food or order out over trying to conquer the healthy food, and then after a few days I start to worry that the healthy food may have begun to perish, and without knowing whether it actually did or didn't, I'll throw it away.
But two things have happened recently that have changed everything.
First, I began using FreshDirect.com, the greatest service in the world, so now I don't have to go grocery shopping anymore. I was so excited when my first delivery arrived that I couldn't help but give the delivery guy my sexy eyes, which in turn left him with the willies.
Second, I bought a Vita-Mix, a ridiculously powerful, mannish blender, because my friend is a Vita-Mix salesman and I heard his sales pitch one too many times. Now, when I see daunting vegetables in bags in the fridge, I just pile them into the blender, throw in like 17 random condiments and spices, and three minutes later I'm eating delicious salsa and the kitchen is clean. When I see fruit, I just throw it in, stems, seeds and all, and I end up with a smoothie. If I put vegetables in and leave the blender going for a five minutes, I end up with soup (which is steaming hot at that point because the blades go so fast). Something like making hummus would normally be completely bewildering and impenetrable, but last week, I just clicked the hummus ingredients when ordering from FreshDirect, and I actually ended up making hummus.
Life changing.
But it's not all roses. I talked this machine up the other night to my friend and then brought him to the house where I made him ice cream, one of the Vita-Mix's best tricks (that's right, I brought my male friend to my apartment for a homemade ice cream party), except I got cocky and forgot multiple key ingredients and it was inedible.
Further, now that it's getting warmer, I'm starting to walk home from work, which takes me through Chinatown, which leaves me with no option but to buy Chinese food, which means that none of the above is relevant and I'm going to have a blood-MSG level of .2 until next winter when I start taking the subway again.
7) This is great news. Why only for the playoffs?
8) I decided I was smarter than everyone else at the bar the other night and instead of dealing with the coat check line, I left my coat in the corner of a booth. Yes, it was quite the trick. Then at the end of the night everyone got in line again to get their coats and mine was stolen. Earlier that day, someone stole my sandwich from the office fridge.
9) My friend Melissa told me a couple years ago that she and a friend were writing and starring in a web series called Let's Get Laid about two girls in their early twenties and their various dating debacles. Sounded like a good idea. She said they were basing the stories on their real-life dating debacles—which was upsetting because she was dating me at the time. In any case, they actually made it happen—the most recent episode is here. It's very funny and I hope it ends up as a TV series at some point soon. (Note to struggling actors -- this is the way to get your career going. Create and produce something yourself, cast yourself as the lead, and broadcast it on the internet. It's way more effective than clawing for parts in auditions.)
10) My grandparents just had their 67th anniversary. They started dating 69 years ago. Someone who was in the womb when they first started seeing each other is now beginning preparations for their 70th birthday bash. Marriage is a pretty important thing to get right, huh?
11) When so many things that are supposed to be funny aren't, it's nice that The Onion always delivers.
A Dark Week
Two weeks ago, I wrote about a potential personal catastrophe that was lurking on the set of American Idol.
Then, this past Wednesday afternoon, a reader of this blog emailed me this link, commenting, “You’re safe!”
I clicked the link. 24 names. No Tim Urban.
YES.
I had done it. I had thwarted the coup. I would not be “The Other Tim Urban” for the rest of my life. The hordes of middle school girls would disappear from my inbox. It was the greatest threat to my name yet and I had survived.
I was safe.
I scanned over the list a few times to make absolutely sure there was no “Tim Urban” on it, leaned back and released a deep sigh of relief.
Suddenly, it all seemed silly. Only 12 guys make it – so really, what were the chances? I had gotten my panties all up in a bunch over mere speculation. I chuckled to myself, satisfied. “You’ve still got it, Tim. You’re still the best Tim Urban around.”
That night, I flipped on the TV. Suddenly, American Idol would be fun to watch again. In fact, I was looking forward to watching Tim Urban be told by the judges that he didn’t make it. “Sorry, Tim,” they’d say, “there’s only room for one Tim Urban in the F-list celebrity world. Sorry, but you’re not going through.” And he’d get up, dejected, having been put squarely back in his place. He’d walk that long walk—away from the judges, out of the building, and back into anonymity. Yes, this was gonna be fun.
So the episode began, and they started filling up those final Top 24 slots. We hit the halfway point. No Tim yet. The 45-minute mark. Tim’s fate was yet to be announced. “I guess they’re saving him for the end,” I thought, calmly.
And then something happened.
They showed one of those quick montages of 3 or 4 people getting the “You’ve made it” from the judges—
I froze. Tim Urban’s face had appeared in this montage, smiling.
I rewound the Tivo. Again, there he was in the “You’ve made it” montage.
Smiling.
I spit out my drink.
I raced to my laptop and googled “Idol Top 24 2010” and I found this. I stared at the screen in horror.
I closed my laptop. I stood completely still. I took a deep, slow breath in. I puffed out my chest, tilted my head back, reached my arms out, palms up to the sky, and let out a long, slow, tortured bellow.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”
For your reference, it was the identical reaction to the one Jafar had when the Cave of Wonders swallowed up Aladdin and Abu and he suddenly realized that Abu had stolen the lamp.
The next phase was one of “freaking out.” I raced through options in my head. You can move. You can move to Western China. No one watches American Idol in Western China. Or—or, you can kill him. You can find a hit man and it’ll be an anonymous job. You can find a hit man on Craigslist maybe. Or you—or you can change your name. You were Timmy when you were seven. Maybe you can be Timmy again. Or you can force him to be Timmy. Through blackmail. And kidnapping. You can jump off this balcony. That’ll make headlines, right?
This went on for about 10 minutes.
The third phase involved a personal pep talk. Tim, relaxxxx. It’s just a TV show. And so what if the ratings have consistently hit 30,000,000 a week for the first eight seasons? Who says the ratings won’t suddenly be dismal this year? Maybe they’ll be so dismal that the show will be pulled by Fox mid-season. See? There’s nothing to worry about. The show won’t last all of five episodes before they cancel it for its dismal, pathetic ratings.
In Phase Four, I bathed in a deep well of “panicking about the worst case scenario.” I envisioned Tim Urban not only winning the show, but becoming a Kelly Clarkson / Carrie Underwood-level megastar. This phase quickly ended up back in Western China, and migrated from there to the Stans, where I began rehashing through old memories, trying to envision what kind of life I could carve out for myself after my inevitable move there. I thought wistfully about my future as a Kyrgysh shepherd and wondered if it would be hard for me to slaughter my sheep after spending much time with them out on the hills.
I was in a dark place.
Nice work, Chris Golightly.
Finally, I reached Phase Five: Acceptance.
You win, Tim Urban.
You have defeated me. Broken me.
Just let me beg of you this—please, please, do not become a household name. You won the Google war (it’s currently a hostile takeover, and I will be vanquished entirely in a few days time). You’re younger. You have thick, flowing hair. You sing like a little angel. Your show gets four times the ratings that mine did. You’re current, I’m a has-been.
You win.
Just please be merciful. Don’t become a household name.
Look at me, Tim Urban. I’m not fighting anymore. I’m washed up. I’m an F-list celebrity. Even my mom doesn’t recognize me on the street anymore. I’m not going to hurt you.
So just please be merciful.
Then, this past Wednesday afternoon, a reader of this blog emailed me this link, commenting, “You’re safe!”
I clicked the link. 24 names. No Tim Urban.
YES.
I had done it. I had thwarted the coup. I would not be “The Other Tim Urban” for the rest of my life. The hordes of middle school girls would disappear from my inbox. It was the greatest threat to my name yet and I had survived.
I was safe.
I scanned over the list a few times to make absolutely sure there was no “Tim Urban” on it, leaned back and released a deep sigh of relief.
Suddenly, it all seemed silly. Only 12 guys make it – so really, what were the chances? I had gotten my panties all up in a bunch over mere speculation. I chuckled to myself, satisfied. “You’ve still got it, Tim. You’re still the best Tim Urban around.”
That night, I flipped on the TV. Suddenly, American Idol would be fun to watch again. In fact, I was looking forward to watching Tim Urban be told by the judges that he didn’t make it. “Sorry, Tim,” they’d say, “there’s only room for one Tim Urban in the F-list celebrity world. Sorry, but you’re not going through.” And he’d get up, dejected, having been put squarely back in his place. He’d walk that long walk—away from the judges, out of the building, and back into anonymity. Yes, this was gonna be fun.
So the episode began, and they started filling up those final Top 24 slots. We hit the halfway point. No Tim yet. The 45-minute mark. Tim’s fate was yet to be announced. “I guess they’re saving him for the end,” I thought, calmly.
And then something happened.
They showed one of those quick montages of 3 or 4 people getting the “You’ve made it” from the judges—
I froze. Tim Urban’s face had appeared in this montage, smiling.
I rewound the Tivo. Again, there he was in the “You’ve made it” montage.
Smiling.
I spit out my drink.
I raced to my laptop and googled “Idol Top 24 2010” and I found this. I stared at the screen in horror.
I closed my laptop. I stood completely still. I took a deep, slow breath in. I puffed out my chest, tilted my head back, reached my arms out, palms up to the sky, and let out a long, slow, tortured bellow.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”
For your reference, it was the identical reaction to the one Jafar had when the Cave of Wonders swallowed up Aladdin and Abu and he suddenly realized that Abu had stolen the lamp.
The next phase was one of “freaking out.” I raced through options in my head. You can move. You can move to Western China. No one watches American Idol in Western China. Or—or, you can kill him. You can find a hit man and it’ll be an anonymous job. You can find a hit man on Craigslist maybe. Or you—or you can change your name. You were Timmy when you were seven. Maybe you can be Timmy again. Or you can force him to be Timmy. Through blackmail. And kidnapping. You can jump off this balcony. That’ll make headlines, right?
This went on for about 10 minutes.
The third phase involved a personal pep talk. Tim, relaxxxx. It’s just a TV show. And so what if the ratings have consistently hit 30,000,000 a week for the first eight seasons? Who says the ratings won’t suddenly be dismal this year? Maybe they’ll be so dismal that the show will be pulled by Fox mid-season. See? There’s nothing to worry about. The show won’t last all of five episodes before they cancel it for its dismal, pathetic ratings.
In Phase Four, I bathed in a deep well of “panicking about the worst case scenario.” I envisioned Tim Urban not only winning the show, but becoming a Kelly Clarkson / Carrie Underwood-level megastar. This phase quickly ended up back in Western China, and migrated from there to the Stans, where I began rehashing through old memories, trying to envision what kind of life I could carve out for myself after my inevitable move there. I thought wistfully about my future as a Kyrgysh shepherd and wondered if it would be hard for me to slaughter my sheep after spending much time with them out on the hills.
I was in a dark place.
Nice work, Chris Golightly.
Finally, I reached Phase Five: Acceptance.
You win, Tim Urban.
You have defeated me. Broken me.
Just let me beg of you this—please, please, do not become a household name. You won the Google war (it’s currently a hostile takeover, and I will be vanquished entirely in a few days time). You’re younger. You have thick, flowing hair. You sing like a little angel. Your show gets four times the ratings that mine did. You’re current, I’m a has-been.
You win.
Just please be merciful. Don’t become a household name.
Look at me, Tim Urban. I’m not fighting anymore. I’m washed up. I’m an F-list celebrity. Even my mom doesn’t recognize me on the street anymore. I’m not going to hurt you.
So just please be merciful.
16 Superbowl Sunday Irrelevancies
The problem with your team being the best is that for a bunch of years after that you can’t really enjoy things anymore. Up until 1996, Superbowls were incredibly exciting. What could be more fun than watching two titans clash in the biggest game of the year? My silly Patriots were never a factor of course, so for me, the playoffs were the time of year when all the good teams battled it out. Fun, right?
It was like the World Cup. This summer, the US might get out of their group, and maybe even win a game to make the quarter finals! But make the finals or win the whole thing? Not a chance. Sure, there will be some faint, secret little hope for a magical run while they’re still in, but when they inevitably get eliminated, it’ll be upsetting for a few hours and then it’ll be really exciting to watch all the real teams battle it out for the trophy. That was what the NFL used to be like.
But then came the ’96 Pats. They made a Cinderella run to the Superbowl, and they were within fighting distance of a victory until the third quarter, when Desmond Howard stabbed my eyeballs with a knife, or his penis, or something horrible—I forget the details.
And what followed that was something new for me as a football fan. Suddenly, in ’97, I didn’t just watch the Packers-Broncos Superbowl in boyish awe—I felt a little jealousy instead, like, “Whatever, I bet the Patriots could beat these teams if everyone was healthy.” This wasn’t overwhelming—the Pats were still kind of a silly team—but it was different than all the previous Superbowls.
Then the Pats became silly again and soon enough I was enjoying Superbowls once more.
But then came 2001. And 2003. And 2004. There was nothing silly about these Patriots. Forget being in awe of other Superbowl teams—after 2004, I got annoyed when people talked about any great team in history. The ’85 Bears? Whatever. The ’72 Dolphins? All I’d think was that the Belichick-Brady Pats would beat them. Talk of Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, and Johnny Unitas (let alone Peyton Manning) annoyed me, because I would take Brady over any of them.
After 2004, it was always personal. There was no awe whatsoever. Watching other good NFL teams play after the Patriots were eliminated was stupid and dumb and effing stupid.
So yeah. Superbowl Sunday!! Yay!!! [eye roll]
Anyway, the good news for you is that this will be the last time I bitch about sports until the Red Sox slowly peel my skin off in October.
And since I refuse to watch any pregame specials about Peyton Manning’s bullshit rise to bullshit stardom,* let’s get random now and discuss 16 irrelevant things I’ve been thinking about:
1) The last time I did laundry, I came up with the bright idea to put both loads from the wash into the same drier and just put the over-stuffed drier on for 65 minutes instead of 45. Now you can see my nipples through all of my t-shirts. This isn’t funny. It’s a huge disaster. I don’t just “buy t-shirts.” I collect t-shirts here and there over the years, and no matter what I’m wearing, winter or summer, there’s usually a t-shirt at the bottom of it. It’s not just that they all look ridiculous now—it’s also that I constantly feel claustrophobic. It’s like being used to boxers and then switching to briefs—not a fun transition. I immediately went back to the drier to press the Undo button, but I couldn't find it anywhere.
2) My thoughts on the iPad:
It’s succulent, of course, and I want one badly. But I’m trying to figure out exactly when I’ll use it. When I’m walking down the street or sitting in a waiting room or driving, the iPhone is ideal. When I’m in my office or apartment, my laptop is ideal. So what does that leave? There are two times I can think of in which the iPad will be perfect, where the iPhone and laptop have always been imperfect:
So what it really is is a phenomenal reading machine and travel laptop. Not bad. I can justify $650 for that. I think.
But here’s why it probably won’t be a breakthrough device—because I need to talk through a justification to buy it. Steve Jobs could take a shit and wrap the shit in smooth multi-touch glass and call it the iShit and charge $199 for it and I would buy it. When the iPhone came out, there was not even a question that I was gonna ditch Verizon, my family’s shared plan, and my current phone and get one.
So if I’m debating whether to get an iPad, that might not be a good sign.
(But I’m clearly getting one.)
3) I recently got a laser pointer. It’s wonderful. Nothing gives me a sense of power and self-importance quite like sitting back in my chair, kicking my feet up on the table, and demonstrating things with my laser pointer. Our director that has to sit in a room with me for 40 hours a week has already reached the sighing phase when she sees me lean back, kick my feet up, and begin a laser-pointing session. Since there’s usually nothing to point at of relevance, I’ve taken to writing stuff on the whiteboards purely so that I can then kick back and discuss what I’ve written using the laser pointer.
4) A woman has come to my attention that I need to tell you about immediately. So the mayor of Providence in the 80’s and 90’s was named Buddy Cianci. Why is this important? Because at one point he married a woman named Nancy Ann.
Think about that.
Nancy Ann Cianci.
Nancy Ann Cianci.
Say it.
This has become a pretty big part of my life.
5) I’ve been seeing previews for Alice in Wonderland. Shocker—Johnny Depp will be playing the part of the creepy weirdo.
6) Historically, I’ve enjoyed being the underdressed idiot on cold winter days. It’s a great tradition of mine. Growing up in Boston, I prided myself on never really wearing a hat or gloves or scarf or anything like that. I often would wait until late December to break out the coat for the first time.
Why did putting myself through pain to spite no one in particular bring me pride? It’s unclear. What was cool or at all beneficial in any way about this practice? I’m not really sure.
And yet, moving back to the East Coast after five warm years in LA, I find myself gravitating toward being the smug cold idiot once again.
But as a recent gift, my dad and stepmom sent me a pair of gloves. So I’ve been wearing gloves. And it turns out that wearing gloves when it’s freezing outside is delicious and heavenly.
There’s just one problem. I have to take a glove off every time I want to use my iPhone. I need someone to invent a glove where the tip of the index finger is attached by Velcro and can come off and on.
7) I really like it when the first of the month is a Monday, because it makes it easy to know the date all month. It’s an extra treat when that month is February, because that means that March will also be one of those months. These are the things that I think about.
8) I was in Starbucks the other day and the woman working there walked around and gave everyone a free cupcake because it was near closing time. Cupcakes might be the best-tasting food.
9) Illy coffee might be the best coffee.
10) Have Superbowl commercials gotten less funny or were they always unfunny and I was just younger then?
11) I was informed recently that the word “criminy” is pronounced “krim-iny,” not “crime-iny.” I was furious that someone had the nerve to even argue this, and then we looked it up, and apparently I’ve been wrong this whole time.
12)
13) I came back from Brazil incredibly tan. I’d go so far as to say I was bronzed. It was great. For a brief stretch of time, everyone was nice to me, girls were smiling bashfully at me, and indeed, the world was my oyster. And we all know that tans fade away, but what happened this time was weird. I woke up one day recently, and just like that—it was gone. One day, bronzed, the next day, sickly and pale. I’m telling you, it was weird. It coincided exactly with me catching a cold, so that might be the explanation.
14) Winston has a Twitter page. It would have taken me 10 minutes to set up a Twitter account. Took him three and a half hours.
15) I know I’m not the only person out there having serious trouble not writing a zero right after the second slash when I write the date. Like 2/7/0_. So I’ve been doing a lot of catching myself after writing the zero and then slipping the “one” in before it. Whatever—what do people expect? It’s hard enough every January getting used to the new year when writing the date—and usually it’s just undoing a year-long habit. But we’ve been writing this zero for ten years. This shit’s gonna take time. I’ve also said “Oh ten” a couple times when referring to the year, which is embarrassing.
16) Talking about the weather is what you do when you have nothing whatsoever to say to the person you’re talking to. It is the smallest of small-talk. I’ll say, “Man, it’s cold out” or “Nice day” to anyone—but anytime it extends beyond that, it means I cannot think of anything whatsoever to discuss with that person. And the depth that the weather conversation goes to has an inverse correlation with the depth of our relationship. If we get to a full minute of weather talk, it means our relationship is paper-thin. We do not connect on any level at all. I found myself last night talking to someone with whom I never have anything to talk about—and we were literally talking about how February was a cold month and how March would probably be a warmer month and how it would be nice when it was April because April would be a much warmer month than February. Small-talk is a huge waste of time and energy in the name of the phony social blanket.
More awkward than the weather conversation from last night will be if that person reads this blog entry. I’m guessing that they won’t. But if they do, the next time we talk will be incredibly awkward. There have been a couple times that writing about a specific person has come back to bite me. One time it bit me hard, providing one of the most awkward interactions of my life. No I will not expand upon that further. This blog is in an unfortunate no-man’s land—not private enough that I can rail on specific people in my life, but not nearly widely-read enough that I can trash a company or person I hate and have it carry any significant weight or consequences.
That would be really fun—to have enough readers that I could get pissed about something and trash them here and it would actually be damaging. I could walk around just daring everyone to wrong me, and then as soon as they did I could quietly walk home and ruin them. Okay, so all that has to happen is this—everyone who reads this needs to force 10 people they know to start reading this, whether those people want to or not, and then all of those people have to force 100 people they know to read this. Deal?
_______
*I wrote all that before the game. I will say—if I have to watch a non-Patriots Superbowl, watching Peyton Manning ruin his legacy and forever end the “Is Manning the greatest quarterback of all time?” talk is a pretty good consolation.
It was like the World Cup. This summer, the US might get out of their group, and maybe even win a game to make the quarter finals! But make the finals or win the whole thing? Not a chance. Sure, there will be some faint, secret little hope for a magical run while they’re still in, but when they inevitably get eliminated, it’ll be upsetting for a few hours and then it’ll be really exciting to watch all the real teams battle it out for the trophy. That was what the NFL used to be like.
But then came the ’96 Pats. They made a Cinderella run to the Superbowl, and they were within fighting distance of a victory until the third quarter, when Desmond Howard stabbed my eyeballs with a knife, or his penis, or something horrible—I forget the details.
And what followed that was something new for me as a football fan. Suddenly, in ’97, I didn’t just watch the Packers-Broncos Superbowl in boyish awe—I felt a little jealousy instead, like, “Whatever, I bet the Patriots could beat these teams if everyone was healthy.” This wasn’t overwhelming—the Pats were still kind of a silly team—but it was different than all the previous Superbowls.
Then the Pats became silly again and soon enough I was enjoying Superbowls once more.
But then came 2001. And 2003. And 2004. There was nothing silly about these Patriots. Forget being in awe of other Superbowl teams—after 2004, I got annoyed when people talked about any great team in history. The ’85 Bears? Whatever. The ’72 Dolphins? All I’d think was that the Belichick-Brady Pats would beat them. Talk of Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, and Johnny Unitas (let alone Peyton Manning) annoyed me, because I would take Brady over any of them.
After 2004, it was always personal. There was no awe whatsoever. Watching other good NFL teams play after the Patriots were eliminated was stupid and dumb and effing stupid.
So yeah. Superbowl Sunday!! Yay!!! [eye roll]
Anyway, the good news for you is that this will be the last time I bitch about sports until the Red Sox slowly peel my skin off in October.
And since I refuse to watch any pregame specials about Peyton Manning’s bullshit rise to bullshit stardom,* let’s get random now and discuss 16 irrelevant things I’ve been thinking about:
1) The last time I did laundry, I came up with the bright idea to put both loads from the wash into the same drier and just put the over-stuffed drier on for 65 minutes instead of 45. Now you can see my nipples through all of my t-shirts. This isn’t funny. It’s a huge disaster. I don’t just “buy t-shirts.” I collect t-shirts here and there over the years, and no matter what I’m wearing, winter or summer, there’s usually a t-shirt at the bottom of it. It’s not just that they all look ridiculous now—it’s also that I constantly feel claustrophobic. It’s like being used to boxers and then switching to briefs—not a fun transition. I immediately went back to the drier to press the Undo button, but I couldn't find it anywhere.
2) My thoughts on the iPad:
It’s succulent, of course, and I want one badly. But I’m trying to figure out exactly when I’ll use it. When I’m walking down the street or sitting in a waiting room or driving, the iPhone is ideal. When I’m in my office or apartment, my laptop is ideal. So what does that leave? There are two times I can think of in which the iPad will be perfect, where the iPhone and laptop have always been imperfect:
- When what you primarily need to do is read. This includes reading books, articles, documents for work, studying for an exam, etc. It’s better than a laptop or an iPhone for pure reading.
- When you’re traveling. For me, most of the “work” I do on my laptop is done and stored and dealt with online, so I rarely need my big laptop hard drive anymore. And I can type on an iPad just fine because I would always have the external keyboard accessory in hand. Secondly, you can access the internet without dealing with a Wi-Fi hotspot, which is huge. For traveling, the pros of the iPad largely outweigh the pros of the laptop.
So what it really is is a phenomenal reading machine and travel laptop. Not bad. I can justify $650 for that. I think.
But here’s why it probably won’t be a breakthrough device—because I need to talk through a justification to buy it. Steve Jobs could take a shit and wrap the shit in smooth multi-touch glass and call it the iShit and charge $199 for it and I would buy it. When the iPhone came out, there was not even a question that I was gonna ditch Verizon, my family’s shared plan, and my current phone and get one.
So if I’m debating whether to get an iPad, that might not be a good sign.
(But I’m clearly getting one.)
3) I recently got a laser pointer. It’s wonderful. Nothing gives me a sense of power and self-importance quite like sitting back in my chair, kicking my feet up on the table, and demonstrating things with my laser pointer. Our director that has to sit in a room with me for 40 hours a week has already reached the sighing phase when she sees me lean back, kick my feet up, and begin a laser-pointing session. Since there’s usually nothing to point at of relevance, I’ve taken to writing stuff on the whiteboards purely so that I can then kick back and discuss what I’ve written using the laser pointer.
4) A woman has come to my attention that I need to tell you about immediately. So the mayor of Providence in the 80’s and 90’s was named Buddy Cianci. Why is this important? Because at one point he married a woman named Nancy Ann.
Think about that.
Nancy Ann Cianci.
Nancy Ann Cianci.
Say it.
This has become a pretty big part of my life.
5) I’ve been seeing previews for Alice in Wonderland. Shocker—Johnny Depp will be playing the part of the creepy weirdo.
6) Historically, I’ve enjoyed being the underdressed idiot on cold winter days. It’s a great tradition of mine. Growing up in Boston, I prided myself on never really wearing a hat or gloves or scarf or anything like that. I often would wait until late December to break out the coat for the first time.
Why did putting myself through pain to spite no one in particular bring me pride? It’s unclear. What was cool or at all beneficial in any way about this practice? I’m not really sure.
And yet, moving back to the East Coast after five warm years in LA, I find myself gravitating toward being the smug cold idiot once again.
But as a recent gift, my dad and stepmom sent me a pair of gloves. So I’ve been wearing gloves. And it turns out that wearing gloves when it’s freezing outside is delicious and heavenly.
There’s just one problem. I have to take a glove off every time I want to use my iPhone. I need someone to invent a glove where the tip of the index finger is attached by Velcro and can come off and on.
7) I really like it when the first of the month is a Monday, because it makes it easy to know the date all month. It’s an extra treat when that month is February, because that means that March will also be one of those months. These are the things that I think about.
8) I was in Starbucks the other day and the woman working there walked around and gave everyone a free cupcake because it was near closing time. Cupcakes might be the best-tasting food.
9) Illy coffee might be the best coffee.
10) Have Superbowl commercials gotten less funny or were they always unfunny and I was just younger then?
11) I was informed recently that the word “criminy” is pronounced “krim-iny,” not “crime-iny.” I was furious that someone had the nerve to even argue this, and then we looked it up, and apparently I’ve been wrong this whole time.
12)
13) I came back from Brazil incredibly tan. I’d go so far as to say I was bronzed. It was great. For a brief stretch of time, everyone was nice to me, girls were smiling bashfully at me, and indeed, the world was my oyster. And we all know that tans fade away, but what happened this time was weird. I woke up one day recently, and just like that—it was gone. One day, bronzed, the next day, sickly and pale. I’m telling you, it was weird. It coincided exactly with me catching a cold, so that might be the explanation.
14) Winston has a Twitter page. It would have taken me 10 minutes to set up a Twitter account. Took him three and a half hours.
15) I know I’m not the only person out there having serious trouble not writing a zero right after the second slash when I write the date. Like 2/7/0_. So I’ve been doing a lot of catching myself after writing the zero and then slipping the “one” in before it. Whatever—what do people expect? It’s hard enough every January getting used to the new year when writing the date—and usually it’s just undoing a year-long habit. But we’ve been writing this zero for ten years. This shit’s gonna take time. I’ve also said “Oh ten” a couple times when referring to the year, which is embarrassing.
16) Talking about the weather is what you do when you have nothing whatsoever to say to the person you’re talking to. It is the smallest of small-talk. I’ll say, “Man, it’s cold out” or “Nice day” to anyone—but anytime it extends beyond that, it means I cannot think of anything whatsoever to discuss with that person. And the depth that the weather conversation goes to has an inverse correlation with the depth of our relationship. If we get to a full minute of weather talk, it means our relationship is paper-thin. We do not connect on any level at all. I found myself last night talking to someone with whom I never have anything to talk about—and we were literally talking about how February was a cold month and how March would probably be a warmer month and how it would be nice when it was April because April would be a much warmer month than February. Small-talk is a huge waste of time and energy in the name of the phony social blanket.
More awkward than the weather conversation from last night will be if that person reads this blog entry. I’m guessing that they won’t. But if they do, the next time we talk will be incredibly awkward. There have been a couple times that writing about a specific person has come back to bite me. One time it bit me hard, providing one of the most awkward interactions of my life. No I will not expand upon that further. This blog is in an unfortunate no-man’s land—not private enough that I can rail on specific people in my life, but not nearly widely-read enough that I can trash a company or person I hate and have it carry any significant weight or consequences.
That would be really fun—to have enough readers that I could get pissed about something and trash them here and it would actually be damaging. I could walk around just daring everyone to wrong me, and then as soon as they did I could quietly walk home and ruin them. Okay, so all that has to happen is this—everyone who reads this needs to force 10 people they know to start reading this, whether those people want to or not, and then all of those people have to force 100 people they know to read this. Deal?
_______
*I wrote all that before the game. I will say—if I have to watch a non-Patriots Superbowl, watching Peyton Manning ruin his legacy and forever end the “Is Manning the greatest quarterback of all time?” talk is a pretty good consolation.
28 Things That Annoy Me
The five teams I hate most in the AFC are the Colts, Chargers, Steelers, Jets, and Ravens.
So you can imagine how much I’ve enjoyed these playoffs. First, the Patriots embarrass themselves against the trash-talking Ravens. Then, I was treated to Ravens vs. Colts, Chargers vs. Jets, and Jets vs. Colts. It’s been like watching scrimmages of Yankee teammates vs. other Yankee teammates.
You know it’s bad when the only things you’re rooting for in a game are injuries, a close battle so at least the losing team will feel crushed afterwards, and earthquakes to hit the stadium. Are cracks about earthquakes distasteful? Yes. Are they particularly distasteful at this current moment? Yes. But that’s the mood these playoffs have me in. A distasteful mood. After watching three hours of Rex Ryan’s loathsome jowls battle Peyton Manning’s doofy loser face, being offensive sounds great.
To top that off, I have a cold. And a cough. One of those coughs where if you laugh too hard or take too deep a breath you will fall into a painful coughing fit that accomplishes nothing except upsetting everyone around you. And not dry coughs. Wretched, wet coughs. Sexy, huh?
But this is why having a blog is useful. When you’re feeling great about life, you can write about it. When you’re perplexed, you can write about it. And when you’re feeling pissy and in a mood to criticize a ton of shit—there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here.
So let’s get on with it. 28 things that annoy me:
1) “God bless you!” as a response to sneezing. First of all, if I’m God, the last person I feel like blessing is the gross sneezing guy. Secondly, when I’m sneezing, I’m not in a proud moment. I’m unhappy that I’m in public. And what I definitely don’t want in that moment is human interaction. But that’s what “God bless you” is—it is someone, often a stranger, forcing you to interact with them while you sneeze. It’s a reply to your sneeze, as if a) your sneeze were a question and b) you were directing that question toward that person.
It’s one thing if you sneeze once. Then the inevitable “bless you” happens, and I can throw them a “thank you” and it’s over. But I rarely sneeze just once. I sneeze twice. Or three times. Or five times. So by the fourth sneeze, they’re not just saying “bless you” anymore—they’re saying “bless you.” Maybe even “bless you, are you alright?” So now there I am, about to sneeze for the fifth time, despising myself and despising life, looking filthy and wishing to god that I was not in public—and this person is forcing me to interact with them. I have to throw in “thank you”s between every sneeze, and then when they get to the animated “bless you” stage, I have to get into this little effing song and dance with them and be like, “Yeah, this is nuts, right? I don’t know what came over me haha.” Leave sneezing people alone.
2) That the best they managed to come up with to call a piano player is a “pianist.” I first learned of this word when I was about six and I was like, “Wait, really?” How painless is it for someone to say they’re a guitarist or a violinist or a drummer? But piano players are forced to refer to themselves as pianists for their whole lives. It’s not a cool word. Like, girls like it when guys can play the piano, but does any girl want to say she’s dating a pianist? I sure don’t. Couldn’t we have at least decided to stress the second syllable and make it a pianist? It’s a piano. So why would I be a pianist. I go to great lengths to avoid saying this word. I’ve settled on using the lame-sounding “piano-player” (how much cooler is a drummer than a drum-player?).
3) Wedding gifts. So let me get this straight—the deal is, I’ll buy a plane ticket to the wedding destination, I’ll rent a tux (or get my shitty tux cleaned), I’ll dedicate a weekend of my time, I’ll pay for a hotel and a rental car, all to come celebrate you finding a girl who’s not a d-bag, and in return—I owe you a gift? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t I set up a gift registry and send the bride and groom the link? Now for the wedding of a good friend, this feels okay—you’re emotionally onboard and genuinely excited about the marriage (hopefully). So fine, let’s top things off with the high-end kitchen knives. But for weddings I’m already less-than-enthusiastic about attending, the gift seems a bit much.
4) Websites that won’t let you go back to the previous page. You know these? You get to the website, decide to make a u-turn, but when you press back it just refreshes the page and keeps you there. These sites piss me off. What’s their thought process? That I’ll be like, “Well, I guess I have to stay here now and do a bunch of page clicks and buy a bunch of their products and add this page to my favorites and forward it to a bunch of my friends—because they’ve left me with no other option”?
5) When the protruding tissue falls back down into the box and it’s really hard to get it back out and in the process of getting it back out you stretch out the plastic so that now all the tissues are gonna keep falling in. I’ve actually had meltdowns because of this before. Like, I’ll need a tissue fairly urgently, but there's not one sticking out and when I reach in I’ll get so frustrated that I’ll end up just grabbing a stack of like 15 tissues and pulling it out. And then I have to leave the stack sitting on top of the box, which is annoying. I’m also annoyed that I just typed a paragraph on this topic. This topic is not remotely worthy of a paragraph of writing.
6) Jeans with button flies. Jeans with button flies are for d-bags. It’s just another example of people dealing with idiotic inconvenience in the name of fashion. A zipper fly is 100%, objectively, easier and more practical, so it's a fact that people with button fly jeans at some point decided to inconvenience themselves every day so that their fly will be cool. Christ. No one even sees the fly. Unless you’re hooking up with someone. So is that it? Are these dudes like, “I’m gonna go with the button fly, and deal with that every day, but when I’m hooking up with a girl, she’ll appreciate that I have a fashionable fly.” Incidentally, I own several pairs of jeans with button flies. But I’m pretty sure none of them were bought by me—most of my jeans were originally “borrowed” from a friend.
7) People who don’t “reply to all” in emails when they should. This happens all the time. Is this 1997? Have people not grasped that when you email multiple people, you’re doing so because you want them all included in the conversation?
Yes, I’m being really bitchy right now. I realize that.
8) Zombie movies. Like vampire movies, zombie movies should go away forever. Zombies are incredibly uncompelling. And they’re filthy to look at. Look at this photo:
Everything about this photo is unbelievably annoying. And every time I’m sitting in a zombie movie, I’m like, “I haven’t been a nine-year-old boy in a lot of years—why am watching a movie for nine-year-old boys?” A couple years ago, I went to that hideous double-feature Grindhouse and the first two hours was a zombie movie that was the exact kind of movie that d-bags love to love. At the end I told the people I was with that I despised it and they were all mean to me.
9) When you leave a long message for someone and they call you back before listening to the message. My natural urge is to tell them to hang up, listen to the message, and then call me back so I don’t have to repeat it all again. But this rarely goes over well. They’re usually like, “Whatever we’re here now just tell me.” This is only really annoying when I was especially proud of the message I left and thought it was pretty clever, and know that now they’re never gonna listen to it.
10a) When I’m watching TV on an airplane and something interesting or important is happening on the TV and the captain comes on over the loud-speaker and talks for longer than he needs to. First of all, airplane captains have a knack for coming on to say something (which temporarily replaces the TV audio) right at the worst moment. Secondly, they talk incredibly slowly, with these obnoxiously long pauses. Thirdly, sometimes they decide they really like the audio spotlight, and go on and on. Like:
“Good afternoon, this is the captain speaking…...we’re pleased to have you all with us today……..in just a few moments we’ll be reaching cruising altitude of 35,000 feet………………..at that point we’ll be passing over the east part of the country first………..then we’ll be crossing over Kansas……….then we’ll be moving through the center of the country…….at that point we’ll progress over the Rocky Mountains………..and finish up by crossing over the western part of the country……….so please sit back and enjoy the flight…we’re happy to have you with us today…......as we make our way to Los Angeles……………where the weather is………good……….your flight attendants will be passing through the aisles shortly with the food and beverage service……..at that point you’ll be able to select a food and a beverage………….thank you.”
Meanwhile, a brawl broke out in the baseball game, breaking news was announced on CNN about some new political scandal, the narrator on Animal Planet explained how the gopher stores its food during the cold months, four hilarious things happened on Family guy, William Wallace was beheaded, and Rachel Ray explained her secret for keeping the guacamole looking fresh and green for days—and I missed it all.
10b) When the TVs are silenced again toward the end of the flight for six minutes while the flight attendant reads off every connecting flight’s gate. This nightmare should take place under only one circumstance—when there is a power outage in the arrival airport and all the screens which display arrival/departure information are out of service. Why would they ever do this when all of the connecting info is displayed clearly as soon as you exit the aircraft? And of course, they wait until I’m at my most riveted with the TV to launch into this.
11) People who overuse the concept of “gross.” I was with a friend the other day and we stopped by a street stand and I bought a package of Strawberry M&Ms. They were chocolate, but with a strawberry tang to them. My friend decided to tell me that she thought that buying Strawberry M&Ms was “gross.” Really? How about Strawberry M&Ms that had been infested and had maggots living in them? That would constitute gross. Just because it was an unusual purchase and a bit odd perhaps to mix a fruit flavor with chocolate doesn’t warrant the word “gross” entering into the discussion. And yes, this is a sensitive topic because I regularly find myself happily eating things that appall other people.
Other examples of things that might not taste normal or good to someone but that are often (unreasonably) deemed to be “gross” are: ham and pineapple pizza, taco salad, lower-end coffee (like Folgers or something), whole milk, hot pockets, kale, beef jerky, fruit or vanilla-flavored toothpaste, and weird flavored Jelly Belly beans (like buttered popcorn).
12) When my Apple products sulk when I let them run out of batteries. You know I love Apple products deeply and dearly. But even Apple gets on my nerves from time to time. When my laptop or iPhone gets down to 0% battery, it goes black. Fine. Naturally. But then I plug it in, and it should start working again, right? Because I gave it power, right? But no—if I get the plug in at 1% I’m fine, but when either of these devices hits 0%, they punish me by sulking for sometimes as long as 15 minutes before they start working again. They’ll play dead for a probationary period of time to make me think about what I did. And I have to get all effeminate and goofy and weak and make them laugh and then they’re back to normal. Oh wait, that’s with girls. But it’s basically the same thing happening here. It’s weird, too, because this never happened with my other Mac laptops, just this newest version.
On a glorious note, on Wednesday Apple is unveiling its much-anticipated (by nerds, at least) tablet computer. I’m not even sure what a tablet computer is, but I’ll be glued to the keynote as if it’s the moon landing.
13) The disproportionate amount of times black cats cross my path. I’m not superstitious. But that doesn’t mean I don’t find it a little irritating when a black cat crosses my path like a dick. It’s the world’s way of giving you the middle finger. And fine—it happens to everyone. But what really annoys me is the sheer amount that this happens to me. I think it happened four times in the last week. By the fourth time I was openly like, “Oh COME ON,” and people looked at me.
One question—if I run past the cat by cutting in front of him so that I never end up actually crossing over its path, does that take away any bad shit that would have resulted? Oh, and how about if the cat walks in front of where I’m about to walk but then makes a u-turn and walks back? Does he undo the path? These questions are actually really important since this shit happens to me so much.
14) When I’m reminded about frequent flyer miles that I’ve earned and have no idea how to cash. Frequent flyer miles and reward programs are just one of those things that I don’t understand and find incredibly icky. I do my best to pretend that they don’t exist, but then I get these upsetting emails telling me that I have all these miles that are going to expire. Clearly the rational thing to do is figure out how to cash them and get a free flight. Sounds simple. But not for me—I just can’t bring myself to learn how they work. The process of understanding what frequent flyer miles are and how they’re earned and where mine are if I wanted to find them and how I would access them, let alone redeem them for something of value—is so immensely complex and high-level that I prefer to turn my head the other way. I archive the email and quickly forget about it.
But inevitably another one comes. And reminds me about this intangible, esoteric “worth” that is supposedly mine somewhere, and it really upsets me. There are only two times I’ve braved these dark waters—JetBlue’s True Blue rewards program, which itself was deeply icky to me at first but that I eventually learned because JetBlue is actually a well-run company that made it somewhat un-icky, and I figured out how to redeem my “World Points” rewards that I get from using my credit card. I figured this out only once and received cash (1% of what I had spent)—but I don’t really remember how I did it and I might not have the courage to redeem my World Points again in the future.
15) This whole “nom nom nom” thing that is somehow connected to animals or people eating. I don’t get it, but it’s popping up a lot nowadays. I really wish it would go away. It’s not funny and intensely irritating.
16) When I ask the barber not to cut the sides of my head too short because then I'll have a dumb skinny head for the next month and he cuts the sides of my head too short anyway and leaves me with a dumb skinny head for the next month. This isn’t really a minor thing. It’s my head. For the next month. Supercuts used to do this to me constantly, but I didn’t expect it from this barbershop. But indeed, I have had a dumb-looking skinny head for the last two weeks and I’m at least a week away from regaining normal human-head proportions.
17) When Asian delivery restaurants refuse to give me chopsticks because I’m American even though I ask for them. I realize that only d-bag Americans insist on eating Asian food with chopsticks. I’m not defending myself—it’s a huge d-bag move. But whatever—I enjoy using chopsticks and Asian food just tastes worse to me with a fork. In any case, this was never a problem before I came to New York.
18) Arrogant bars. Arrogant bars completely infuriate me. And New York’s got a lot of them. A New York specialty is the bar with no sign or anything on the outside. Nothing is more arrogant than not posting any sign on the wall or door outside of a bar so you have to ask where the place is if you’ve never been there before. The same goes for bars that artificially create a line even though it’s empty inside.
Of course, bouncers are the worst. At least 88% of the times in my life that I’ve desperately wanted to punch someone in the face, it’s been a bouncer that was a huge dick to me or a friend of mine for no good reason. Bouncers are dicks for three reasons: 1) they’re often just dickish people, 2) they’re on a power trip, and 3) they’re not accountable for their actions because a bar’s popularity isn’t tied to its level of customer service (if anything, it’s a reverse correlation). If a restaurant hostess is rude to you, you could make a fuss to the manager and they’d be in some shit. So it doesn’t happen. There’s the natural Capitalist competiveness to keep everyone polite to customers. Not so in a bar—because a bar is all about being “cool” and the coolness is tied completely to its desirability as a hotspot and to the quality of the crowd inside. Once a bar has that going, rudeness just enhances its standing as a place people are dying to get into every night. Just a little taste of what every consumer-business interaction must have been like in Soviet Russia.
(For further tastes of Soviet life, head to the DMV, post office, or traffic court.)
19) When you spend a half hour picking the exact flight you want on Kayak and then click on it and it takes you to Orbitz or Expedia where you see the message, “The flight you requested is no longer available.” This happens a lot, especially with international flights. It’s unbelievably demoralizing. You thought so hard about the exact times of the flight and you found peace with the cost, and then it turns out that Kayak’s database wasn’t updated. When I booked my Brazil flight this happened again and again and I kept clawing for inner peace with each new, increased, ticket price just to get the message again. Further, why are international flights so effing expensive?
20) Professional athlete interviews.
You know, we’re just focusing on the game at hand and everyone’s trying to do their piece. I give the coaches all the credit in the world for keeping us so prepared every week. We’re just trying to go out there and give it everything we have, and just take it one game at a time.
Could anything possibly be more boring than interviews with pro athletes? Their publicists have terrified all of them into saying nothing of any substance whatsoever in any interview. I can’t sit through them anymore. I’d love to give all of them the Liar, Liar disease:
You know, I was completely terrified of choking since I’ve been a head case on and off over the years. But I’m really relieved right now that I came through. The team lost, but I’m in a great mood because I didn’t choke this time. The thing that’s on my mind most is what my agent said about finishing the year with a sub-4.00 ERA. He said if I can do that he thinks he can get me $40 million over five years as a free agent this offseason. $40 million! Think how hedonistic I can be with that much money! And hopefully I can get signed by the Braves or Angels or someone. Anything to get me the hell out of Minnesota. I have a ton of disdain for these fans and the chicks are way hotter in other cities.
21) When people ask me what kind of music I like. This is as silly a question as, “What kind of movies do you like?” or “What kind of food do you like?” Sure, there are favorite bands, but who likes just one or two genres? I can come up with an answer to the question if I need to—but the truth is that my 30 favorite things to listen to probably fall into 10 different genres. Likewise, I’m sure you could answer the movie or food questions, but they would be annoying questions, right? I don’t see the music question as any more reasonable a thing to ask.
22) When women wear deep red lipstick.
Who decided this was attractive? It’s not attractive at all. She looks like the joker. You know what it is? It’s icky. The only people who should wear deep red lipstick are mean, icky, elderly substitute teachers.
Now, I’ll admit that I may be partially swayed by the fact that Mrs. Fox, the meanest, ickiest, elderliest substitute teacher ever from my elementary school years wore deep red lipstick. Mrs. Fox may have bordered on abusive. It’s unclear.
23) Gustavo.
24) Felipe.
25) When people call espresso “expresso.”
26) When people hate famous people only because they hate their fan bases. Dave Matthews is a classic example. Dave Matthews music is pretty fantastic, right? I haven’t heard much since the first few big albums, but that stuff was pretty great, right? Like, if you were at a small music venue, and this unknown band got up there and played Ants Marching, Jimi Thing, Crush, The Best of What’s Around, etc., wouldn’t you be pretty blown away?
And yet, so many people hate the Dave Matthews Band. Why? Because they hate the fans and the incredibly annoying culture surrounding the band. But can’t we separate that annoyance from the music itself? Phish is like this too. Annoying culture—excellent music. This extends to other areas too. Like sports. When Cal Ripkin started being talked about like he was Martin Luther King after his streak and when he got selected for the All-Star game when he was batting .220 towards the end of his career, a lot of people started to hate him. But that was misplaced hatred—it was all the annoying commentators and fans that were to be hated. All Cal Ripkin did was have a ridiculously impressive streak and a great career. What did he do wrong?
27) When I tag a photo of myself and one other person in Facebook and the other person untags him or herself. Hurtful.
28) When I go to great lengths to see Avatar not only in 3D, but in the 3D IMAX theater, despite how hard it was to get tickets, and the “IMAX” isn’t a rad dome screen but rather just a normal screen that’s a little curved. This annoyed me, but mainly it was an excuse to express my opinions on the movie.
I thought it was very, very good. Look—I have seen so many terrible movies in this genre (Transformers II was a horrific life experience, for example), and Avatar really succeeded. Was the plot super original? Definitely not. In fact, it was one of the most predictable plots I can remember. Ten minutes in I could have basically laid out the whole thing just as it happened. But it didn’t need an original plot—it was a classic plot (basically Pocahontas), but with the rad spin of being in the future on a different planet, and the depiction of the planet and life there was simply genius. Both in its concepts and in the spectacular visual presentation. I was just sitting there in the theater loving it. Not bored at all—which says a lot given my thoughts on the plot’s predictability.
When I first saw the previews I had a bit of an uncanny valley repulsion to the appearance of the characters—but this was gone once I saw the actual movie.
Then there’s the whole fact that it was blatant propaganda. This didn’t bother me for one reason only—if there’s any liberal propaganda that doesn’t annoy me, it’s anti-imperialism propaganda. There aren’t two sides to the imperialism story—imperialism in the brutal genocidal fashion in which it is traditionally carried out, is pure evil. So Hitler mass-murdered to exterminate a race and imperialists mass-murdered for economic and political gain-- are they that much better?
Some critics saw the movie as anti-American or anti-Iraq War—but I really saw the major message as anti-imperialism, which applies to many countries at many points in history.
Not a masterpiece, and it of course had its irritating moments, but for a mega-budget January blockbuster, it was a homerun.
Two other times I was in a pissy mood:
33 things that annoy me
69 things that annoy me
So you can imagine how much I’ve enjoyed these playoffs. First, the Patriots embarrass themselves against the trash-talking Ravens. Then, I was treated to Ravens vs. Colts, Chargers vs. Jets, and Jets vs. Colts. It’s been like watching scrimmages of Yankee teammates vs. other Yankee teammates.
You know it’s bad when the only things you’re rooting for in a game are injuries, a close battle so at least the losing team will feel crushed afterwards, and earthquakes to hit the stadium. Are cracks about earthquakes distasteful? Yes. Are they particularly distasteful at this current moment? Yes. But that’s the mood these playoffs have me in. A distasteful mood. After watching three hours of Rex Ryan’s loathsome jowls battle Peyton Manning’s doofy loser face, being offensive sounds great.
To top that off, I have a cold. And a cough. One of those coughs where if you laugh too hard or take too deep a breath you will fall into a painful coughing fit that accomplishes nothing except upsetting everyone around you. And not dry coughs. Wretched, wet coughs. Sexy, huh?
But this is why having a blog is useful. When you’re feeling great about life, you can write about it. When you’re perplexed, you can write about it. And when you’re feeling pissy and in a mood to criticize a ton of shit—there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here.
So let’s get on with it. 28 things that annoy me:
1) “God bless you!” as a response to sneezing. First of all, if I’m God, the last person I feel like blessing is the gross sneezing guy. Secondly, when I’m sneezing, I’m not in a proud moment. I’m unhappy that I’m in public. And what I definitely don’t want in that moment is human interaction. But that’s what “God bless you” is—it is someone, often a stranger, forcing you to interact with them while you sneeze. It’s a reply to your sneeze, as if a) your sneeze were a question and b) you were directing that question toward that person.
It’s one thing if you sneeze once. Then the inevitable “bless you” happens, and I can throw them a “thank you” and it’s over. But I rarely sneeze just once. I sneeze twice. Or three times. Or five times. So by the fourth sneeze, they’re not just saying “bless you” anymore—they’re saying “bless you.” Maybe even “bless you, are you alright?” So now there I am, about to sneeze for the fifth time, despising myself and despising life, looking filthy and wishing to god that I was not in public—and this person is forcing me to interact with them. I have to throw in “thank you”s between every sneeze, and then when they get to the animated “bless you” stage, I have to get into this little effing song and dance with them and be like, “Yeah, this is nuts, right? I don’t know what came over me haha.” Leave sneezing people alone.
2) That the best they managed to come up with to call a piano player is a “pianist.” I first learned of this word when I was about six and I was like, “Wait, really?” How painless is it for someone to say they’re a guitarist or a violinist or a drummer? But piano players are forced to refer to themselves as pianists for their whole lives. It’s not a cool word. Like, girls like it when guys can play the piano, but does any girl want to say she’s dating a pianist? I sure don’t. Couldn’t we have at least decided to stress the second syllable and make it a pianist? It’s a piano. So why would I be a pianist. I go to great lengths to avoid saying this word. I’ve settled on using the lame-sounding “piano-player” (how much cooler is a drummer than a drum-player?).
3) Wedding gifts. So let me get this straight—the deal is, I’ll buy a plane ticket to the wedding destination, I’ll rent a tux (or get my shitty tux cleaned), I’ll dedicate a weekend of my time, I’ll pay for a hotel and a rental car, all to come celebrate you finding a girl who’s not a d-bag, and in return—I owe you a gift? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t I set up a gift registry and send the bride and groom the link? Now for the wedding of a good friend, this feels okay—you’re emotionally onboard and genuinely excited about the marriage (hopefully). So fine, let’s top things off with the high-end kitchen knives. But for weddings I’m already less-than-enthusiastic about attending, the gift seems a bit much.
4) Websites that won’t let you go back to the previous page. You know these? You get to the website, decide to make a u-turn, but when you press back it just refreshes the page and keeps you there. These sites piss me off. What’s their thought process? That I’ll be like, “Well, I guess I have to stay here now and do a bunch of page clicks and buy a bunch of their products and add this page to my favorites and forward it to a bunch of my friends—because they’ve left me with no other option”?
5) When the protruding tissue falls back down into the box and it’s really hard to get it back out and in the process of getting it back out you stretch out the plastic so that now all the tissues are gonna keep falling in. I’ve actually had meltdowns because of this before. Like, I’ll need a tissue fairly urgently, but there's not one sticking out and when I reach in I’ll get so frustrated that I’ll end up just grabbing a stack of like 15 tissues and pulling it out. And then I have to leave the stack sitting on top of the box, which is annoying. I’m also annoyed that I just typed a paragraph on this topic. This topic is not remotely worthy of a paragraph of writing.
6) Jeans with button flies. Jeans with button flies are for d-bags. It’s just another example of people dealing with idiotic inconvenience in the name of fashion. A zipper fly is 100%, objectively, easier and more practical, so it's a fact that people with button fly jeans at some point decided to inconvenience themselves every day so that their fly will be cool. Christ. No one even sees the fly. Unless you’re hooking up with someone. So is that it? Are these dudes like, “I’m gonna go with the button fly, and deal with that every day, but when I’m hooking up with a girl, she’ll appreciate that I have a fashionable fly.” Incidentally, I own several pairs of jeans with button flies. But I’m pretty sure none of them were bought by me—most of my jeans were originally “borrowed” from a friend.
7) People who don’t “reply to all” in emails when they should. This happens all the time. Is this 1997? Have people not grasped that when you email multiple people, you’re doing so because you want them all included in the conversation?
Yes, I’m being really bitchy right now. I realize that.
8) Zombie movies. Like vampire movies, zombie movies should go away forever. Zombies are incredibly uncompelling. And they’re filthy to look at. Look at this photo:
Everything about this photo is unbelievably annoying. And every time I’m sitting in a zombie movie, I’m like, “I haven’t been a nine-year-old boy in a lot of years—why am watching a movie for nine-year-old boys?” A couple years ago, I went to that hideous double-feature Grindhouse and the first two hours was a zombie movie that was the exact kind of movie that d-bags love to love. At the end I told the people I was with that I despised it and they were all mean to me.
9) When you leave a long message for someone and they call you back before listening to the message. My natural urge is to tell them to hang up, listen to the message, and then call me back so I don’t have to repeat it all again. But this rarely goes over well. They’re usually like, “Whatever we’re here now just tell me.” This is only really annoying when I was especially proud of the message I left and thought it was pretty clever, and know that now they’re never gonna listen to it.
10a) When I’m watching TV on an airplane and something interesting or important is happening on the TV and the captain comes on over the loud-speaker and talks for longer than he needs to. First of all, airplane captains have a knack for coming on to say something (which temporarily replaces the TV audio) right at the worst moment. Secondly, they talk incredibly slowly, with these obnoxiously long pauses. Thirdly, sometimes they decide they really like the audio spotlight, and go on and on. Like:
“Good afternoon, this is the captain speaking…...we’re pleased to have you all with us today……..in just a few moments we’ll be reaching cruising altitude of 35,000 feet………………..at that point we’ll be passing over the east part of the country first………..then we’ll be crossing over Kansas……….then we’ll be moving through the center of the country…….at that point we’ll progress over the Rocky Mountains………..and finish up by crossing over the western part of the country……….so please sit back and enjoy the flight…we’re happy to have you with us today…......as we make our way to Los Angeles……………where the weather is………good……….your flight attendants will be passing through the aisles shortly with the food and beverage service……..at that point you’ll be able to select a food and a beverage………….thank you.”
Meanwhile, a brawl broke out in the baseball game, breaking news was announced on CNN about some new political scandal, the narrator on Animal Planet explained how the gopher stores its food during the cold months, four hilarious things happened on Family guy, William Wallace was beheaded, and Rachel Ray explained her secret for keeping the guacamole looking fresh and green for days—and I missed it all.
10b) When the TVs are silenced again toward the end of the flight for six minutes while the flight attendant reads off every connecting flight’s gate. This nightmare should take place under only one circumstance—when there is a power outage in the arrival airport and all the screens which display arrival/departure information are out of service. Why would they ever do this when all of the connecting info is displayed clearly as soon as you exit the aircraft? And of course, they wait until I’m at my most riveted with the TV to launch into this.
11) People who overuse the concept of “gross.” I was with a friend the other day and we stopped by a street stand and I bought a package of Strawberry M&Ms. They were chocolate, but with a strawberry tang to them. My friend decided to tell me that she thought that buying Strawberry M&Ms was “gross.” Really? How about Strawberry M&Ms that had been infested and had maggots living in them? That would constitute gross. Just because it was an unusual purchase and a bit odd perhaps to mix a fruit flavor with chocolate doesn’t warrant the word “gross” entering into the discussion. And yes, this is a sensitive topic because I regularly find myself happily eating things that appall other people.
Other examples of things that might not taste normal or good to someone but that are often (unreasonably) deemed to be “gross” are: ham and pineapple pizza, taco salad, lower-end coffee (like Folgers or something), whole milk, hot pockets, kale, beef jerky, fruit or vanilla-flavored toothpaste, and weird flavored Jelly Belly beans (like buttered popcorn).
12) When my Apple products sulk when I let them run out of batteries. You know I love Apple products deeply and dearly. But even Apple gets on my nerves from time to time. When my laptop or iPhone gets down to 0% battery, it goes black. Fine. Naturally. But then I plug it in, and it should start working again, right? Because I gave it power, right? But no—if I get the plug in at 1% I’m fine, but when either of these devices hits 0%, they punish me by sulking for sometimes as long as 15 minutes before they start working again. They’ll play dead for a probationary period of time to make me think about what I did. And I have to get all effeminate and goofy and weak and make them laugh and then they’re back to normal. Oh wait, that’s with girls. But it’s basically the same thing happening here. It’s weird, too, because this never happened with my other Mac laptops, just this newest version.
On a glorious note, on Wednesday Apple is unveiling its much-anticipated (by nerds, at least) tablet computer. I’m not even sure what a tablet computer is, but I’ll be glued to the keynote as if it’s the moon landing.
13) The disproportionate amount of times black cats cross my path. I’m not superstitious. But that doesn’t mean I don’t find it a little irritating when a black cat crosses my path like a dick. It’s the world’s way of giving you the middle finger. And fine—it happens to everyone. But what really annoys me is the sheer amount that this happens to me. I think it happened four times in the last week. By the fourth time I was openly like, “Oh COME ON,” and people looked at me.
One question—if I run past the cat by cutting in front of him so that I never end up actually crossing over its path, does that take away any bad shit that would have resulted? Oh, and how about if the cat walks in front of where I’m about to walk but then makes a u-turn and walks back? Does he undo the path? These questions are actually really important since this shit happens to me so much.
14) When I’m reminded about frequent flyer miles that I’ve earned and have no idea how to cash. Frequent flyer miles and reward programs are just one of those things that I don’t understand and find incredibly icky. I do my best to pretend that they don’t exist, but then I get these upsetting emails telling me that I have all these miles that are going to expire. Clearly the rational thing to do is figure out how to cash them and get a free flight. Sounds simple. But not for me—I just can’t bring myself to learn how they work. The process of understanding what frequent flyer miles are and how they’re earned and where mine are if I wanted to find them and how I would access them, let alone redeem them for something of value—is so immensely complex and high-level that I prefer to turn my head the other way. I archive the email and quickly forget about it.
But inevitably another one comes. And reminds me about this intangible, esoteric “worth” that is supposedly mine somewhere, and it really upsets me. There are only two times I’ve braved these dark waters—JetBlue’s True Blue rewards program, which itself was deeply icky to me at first but that I eventually learned because JetBlue is actually a well-run company that made it somewhat un-icky, and I figured out how to redeem my “World Points” rewards that I get from using my credit card. I figured this out only once and received cash (1% of what I had spent)—but I don’t really remember how I did it and I might not have the courage to redeem my World Points again in the future.
15) This whole “nom nom nom” thing that is somehow connected to animals or people eating. I don’t get it, but it’s popping up a lot nowadays. I really wish it would go away. It’s not funny and intensely irritating.
16) When I ask the barber not to cut the sides of my head too short because then I'll have a dumb skinny head for the next month and he cuts the sides of my head too short anyway and leaves me with a dumb skinny head for the next month. This isn’t really a minor thing. It’s my head. For the next month. Supercuts used to do this to me constantly, but I didn’t expect it from this barbershop. But indeed, I have had a dumb-looking skinny head for the last two weeks and I’m at least a week away from regaining normal human-head proportions.
17) When Asian delivery restaurants refuse to give me chopsticks because I’m American even though I ask for them. I realize that only d-bag Americans insist on eating Asian food with chopsticks. I’m not defending myself—it’s a huge d-bag move. But whatever—I enjoy using chopsticks and Asian food just tastes worse to me with a fork. In any case, this was never a problem before I came to New York.
18) Arrogant bars. Arrogant bars completely infuriate me. And New York’s got a lot of them. A New York specialty is the bar with no sign or anything on the outside. Nothing is more arrogant than not posting any sign on the wall or door outside of a bar so you have to ask where the place is if you’ve never been there before. The same goes for bars that artificially create a line even though it’s empty inside.
Of course, bouncers are the worst. At least 88% of the times in my life that I’ve desperately wanted to punch someone in the face, it’s been a bouncer that was a huge dick to me or a friend of mine for no good reason. Bouncers are dicks for three reasons: 1) they’re often just dickish people, 2) they’re on a power trip, and 3) they’re not accountable for their actions because a bar’s popularity isn’t tied to its level of customer service (if anything, it’s a reverse correlation). If a restaurant hostess is rude to you, you could make a fuss to the manager and they’d be in some shit. So it doesn’t happen. There’s the natural Capitalist competiveness to keep everyone polite to customers. Not so in a bar—because a bar is all about being “cool” and the coolness is tied completely to its desirability as a hotspot and to the quality of the crowd inside. Once a bar has that going, rudeness just enhances its standing as a place people are dying to get into every night. Just a little taste of what every consumer-business interaction must have been like in Soviet Russia.
(For further tastes of Soviet life, head to the DMV, post office, or traffic court.)
19) When you spend a half hour picking the exact flight you want on Kayak and then click on it and it takes you to Orbitz or Expedia where you see the message, “The flight you requested is no longer available.” This happens a lot, especially with international flights. It’s unbelievably demoralizing. You thought so hard about the exact times of the flight and you found peace with the cost, and then it turns out that Kayak’s database wasn’t updated. When I booked my Brazil flight this happened again and again and I kept clawing for inner peace with each new, increased, ticket price just to get the message again. Further, why are international flights so effing expensive?
20) Professional athlete interviews.
You know, we’re just focusing on the game at hand and everyone’s trying to do their piece. I give the coaches all the credit in the world for keeping us so prepared every week. We’re just trying to go out there and give it everything we have, and just take it one game at a time.
Could anything possibly be more boring than interviews with pro athletes? Their publicists have terrified all of them into saying nothing of any substance whatsoever in any interview. I can’t sit through them anymore. I’d love to give all of them the Liar, Liar disease:
You know, I was completely terrified of choking since I’ve been a head case on and off over the years. But I’m really relieved right now that I came through. The team lost, but I’m in a great mood because I didn’t choke this time. The thing that’s on my mind most is what my agent said about finishing the year with a sub-4.00 ERA. He said if I can do that he thinks he can get me $40 million over five years as a free agent this offseason. $40 million! Think how hedonistic I can be with that much money! And hopefully I can get signed by the Braves or Angels or someone. Anything to get me the hell out of Minnesota. I have a ton of disdain for these fans and the chicks are way hotter in other cities.
21) When people ask me what kind of music I like. This is as silly a question as, “What kind of movies do you like?” or “What kind of food do you like?” Sure, there are favorite bands, but who likes just one or two genres? I can come up with an answer to the question if I need to—but the truth is that my 30 favorite things to listen to probably fall into 10 different genres. Likewise, I’m sure you could answer the movie or food questions, but they would be annoying questions, right? I don’t see the music question as any more reasonable a thing to ask.
22) When women wear deep red lipstick.
Who decided this was attractive? It’s not attractive at all. She looks like the joker. You know what it is? It’s icky. The only people who should wear deep red lipstick are mean, icky, elderly substitute teachers.
Now, I’ll admit that I may be partially swayed by the fact that Mrs. Fox, the meanest, ickiest, elderliest substitute teacher ever from my elementary school years wore deep red lipstick. Mrs. Fox may have bordered on abusive. It’s unclear.
23) Gustavo.
24) Felipe.
25) When people call espresso “expresso.”
26) When people hate famous people only because they hate their fan bases. Dave Matthews is a classic example. Dave Matthews music is pretty fantastic, right? I haven’t heard much since the first few big albums, but that stuff was pretty great, right? Like, if you were at a small music venue, and this unknown band got up there and played Ants Marching, Jimi Thing, Crush, The Best of What’s Around, etc., wouldn’t you be pretty blown away?
And yet, so many people hate the Dave Matthews Band. Why? Because they hate the fans and the incredibly annoying culture surrounding the band. But can’t we separate that annoyance from the music itself? Phish is like this too. Annoying culture—excellent music. This extends to other areas too. Like sports. When Cal Ripkin started being talked about like he was Martin Luther King after his streak and when he got selected for the All-Star game when he was batting .220 towards the end of his career, a lot of people started to hate him. But that was misplaced hatred—it was all the annoying commentators and fans that were to be hated. All Cal Ripkin did was have a ridiculously impressive streak and a great career. What did he do wrong?
27) When I tag a photo of myself and one other person in Facebook and the other person untags him or herself. Hurtful.
28) When I go to great lengths to see Avatar not only in 3D, but in the 3D IMAX theater, despite how hard it was to get tickets, and the “IMAX” isn’t a rad dome screen but rather just a normal screen that’s a little curved. This annoyed me, but mainly it was an excuse to express my opinions on the movie.
I thought it was very, very good. Look—I have seen so many terrible movies in this genre (Transformers II was a horrific life experience, for example), and Avatar really succeeded. Was the plot super original? Definitely not. In fact, it was one of the most predictable plots I can remember. Ten minutes in I could have basically laid out the whole thing just as it happened. But it didn’t need an original plot—it was a classic plot (basically Pocahontas), but with the rad spin of being in the future on a different planet, and the depiction of the planet and life there was simply genius. Both in its concepts and in the spectacular visual presentation. I was just sitting there in the theater loving it. Not bored at all—which says a lot given my thoughts on the plot’s predictability.
When I first saw the previews I had a bit of an uncanny valley repulsion to the appearance of the characters—but this was gone once I saw the actual movie.
Then there’s the whole fact that it was blatant propaganda. This didn’t bother me for one reason only—if there’s any liberal propaganda that doesn’t annoy me, it’s anti-imperialism propaganda. There aren’t two sides to the imperialism story—imperialism in the brutal genocidal fashion in which it is traditionally carried out, is pure evil. So Hitler mass-murdered to exterminate a race and imperialists mass-murdered for economic and political gain-- are they that much better?
Some critics saw the movie as anti-American or anti-Iraq War—but I really saw the major message as anti-imperialism, which applies to many countries at many points in history.
Not a masterpiece, and it of course had its irritating moments, but for a mega-budget January blockbuster, it was a homerun.
Two other times I was in a pissy mood:
33 things that annoy me
69 things that annoy me
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