The One Where I Say Too Much About Dating
Oct/090
In the past few months I have become INCREDIBLY anti-relationship. I think there are a lot of reasons for this. For one almost every one of my friends that is in a relationship is not around as much as they used to be. This is sort of a necessary evil to the relationship process. I understand it and I can appreciate it, but I don’t have to like it. What really bothers me though is the way that they change the way that they are after getting into a relationship. You like football? Get a girlfriend and all the sudden you prefer spending your Sundays at Michaels. Your favorite movie is 300? Get a girlfriend and your favorite movie suddenly stars Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson or, in other words, it sucks. You are probably reading this and thinking I am a moron for saying these things, but there is no way in hell my buddy watches Jon and Kate Plus 8 without a girlfriend. Carpenters don’t watch that sort of thing unless there is a girl making them watch that. It’s just a fact of life. So, yeah, not the biggest fan of the whole girlfriend experience.
Now, this isn’t to say that everyone in the world has a bad relationship or that I don’t think a good relationship exists. It’s just that they are very few and far between. I think that for it to work someone would need to inherently “get” me. For it to work in my situation we’d definitely have to be friends and you definitely wouldn’t judge me. To date, I don’t believe that this has ever actually happened. Well, except for that one time that it did.
Aloha Mahalo Da Kine
Sep/091
I found this book that I haven’t read in a long time and I was leafing through the pages and I found the one way plane ticket to Hawaii that I bought way back when. Looking back it’s been three years since that flight and it’s crazy how much has changed. In some ways I don’t even feel like I’m the same person, in other ways I feel like I am finally doing what I was trying to do way back then.
When I moved back to Wisconsin in 2005, the plan was to stay at my dad’s for awhile and make some money. Once I saved up some money I was going to move to either Seattle or LA. The idea being that I was going to start my screenwriting career. I thought Wisconsin would be a great place to go because the winters fucking suck and I could just sit home in the cold all the time and just do some writing. This, of course, never happened. You start hanging out with some dudes and you just end up drinking way too much like always. I think that I’ve always had some really good ideas and if I ever sat down and wrote them that I could be a screenwriter, but I am a master procrastinator and if I get the chance to go and get drunk instead I usually take it. Anyways, time goes by and I don’t write a thing. I don’t save a thing and I really have no idea what I am doing.
Then I meet this girl.
Work
Sep/092
The other night I was listening to the Adam Carolla podcast as I always do (I honestly can’t recommend it enough) and his guest was Greg Fitzsimmons who is a comedian. It was one of the best podcasts he’s ever done as they clicked great and really had an engaging conversation. A part of their conversation turned to the subject of work and how some people think that Adam wouldn’t be anything without Jimmy Kimmel or how people think that success is more of a result of “right place, right time” than any sort of work or drive. The basic gist of the conversation was that if you really want to do something and you really work at it that you can do it. Being in the right place at the right time doesn’t exist because the only reason you are even considered is because you are dedicated to what you are doing and you are actually good at it.
Now, at the same time I have been thinking about work a lot lately. I don’t really like being a twenty-eight year old waiter, but it is what is. The thing about working is that I used to try and do the whole hard work thing. I worked in warehouses, I worked construction (VERY briefly), I worked at awful factories where they made carpet and another one where they made roofing tar (only time I’ve ever been fired) and all these shit jobs I had didn’t pay shit. I was a manager at a furniture store and I didn’t make shit. Then when I started serving I started making more money than I have ever made and working less than I ever had. Beyond that I was good at it. So now I am at this point where I should probably find something better to do, but there isn’t something better for me to do. I can get another job, but the odds are it will pay less or if it pays the same I will work a lot more hours. It’s not a real good situation. I should do that whole “find something you love” thing.
I have a couple of buddies who I actually believe love what they do. You can tell when they talk about what they are doing, that the words that are coming out of their mouth are describing something they are proud of. I’ve never really talked to them about it, but I don’t think that I really have to. It’s like if someone is eating a meatball sandwich and you say to them “Hey, do you like meatballs?” I mean, what the fuck? In my intense thinking about this topic I realize that every so often I get that same tone in my voice when I talk about Miller Park Drunk. Now, I don’t think I can do that for a living. Even writing for Decider I only ended up making about $100/an article and that’s not enough to support myself either. Especially when I’ve only done it twice (well, twice as of next week) in two months and baseball season is ending. I will never sell that site or join a blog network. Advertising has made me maybe $50 bucks for the whole season. Miller Park Drunk as a career is never going to happen, but what I realized is that doesn’t really matter.
When Carolla talks about making it on the podcast the so-called right time, right place “break” was becoming a guest star on a morning talk show in LA. His big break wasn’t even really a paying job. What I realize is that Miller Park Drunk is MY right place, right time break. I started a funny Brewers blog coming off the biggest season in the team’s history and I gained a pretty decent sized audience in a hurry. What I want to do hasn’t changed (entertainment in some form of movies/TV/books/internet), but now I have created my own “break” and gained myself a little bit of notice. Miller Park Drunk isn’t what makes me successful, but it’s a start and that’s more than I’ve ever had before.
Weeds
Jul/090
I decided to give the show Weeds a try and thanks to the magic of Netflix online and the internet, I have watched the first three seasons and part of the fourth in the past week. (Yes, I am aware that I have watched over 24 hours of this show alone in under 7 days. I know I have a problem.) Overall, I have to say that I really, really like the show. Despite being a drug dealer Mary Louise Parker’s character comes off as one of the most realistic moms on television. She really does an amazing job with her character and it’s obvious that she deserves any awards that she has won for this show. Surprisingly she is outshined in the acting department by Elizabeth Perkins’ Celia Hodes character who may be one of the biggest bitches in the history of television. She does the most unbelievable bitchy, selfish things (starting with shipping her daughter off to boarding school in Mexico) that make you want to kill her, but you somehow never end up hating her and kind of miss her when she’s not around. Really a great job by the girlfriend from Big. Who thought you would have ever seen her again? There are some really well drawn characters on this show and some good acting performances. The writing is sharp, witty and more often than not laugh out loud funny.
That being said, this show has it’s flaws. The first two seasons are excellent and you can tell the story was mapped out very clearly. In season three and beyond this isn’t always the case. Some things are started and not re-visited without rhyme or reason. Nancy will do things that sometimes feel more like fanwank (Nancy in a thong! Nancy swimming in bra and panties! Nancy having random meaningless sex!) than a part of any overlying story. The show is still good, but it’s missing a lot of what made it the nice, quirky drama that it was in the first two seasons. Nancy crosses a line at some point and there is no going back. It’s no longer about providing for her kids, she’s in it for different reasons. (The picture I used is when I think this came to be.) It makes sense character-wise for this progression, but it’s kind of sad to see the moral gray line she was walking disappear. She still won’t mess with other drugs, only marijuana, but she’s also a lot more okay with some of the things that go along with being a drug dealer and that shouldn’t be okay. The show was recently renewed for a sixth season and I hope that the producer’s have a plan to get her back to being a good person by the time this thing is all said and done. I haven’t even made it to the fifth season yet and I’m already wondering where her breaking point is.
Regardless I highly recommend this show to anyone. It’s not a show about drug dealing or drugs, it’s a show about a family who happen to deal drugs. You don’t have to approve of what they do. It might actually be more enjoyable if you don’t because they don’t glorify drugs at all. It’s immediately shot to the top 5 of my active television show list (along with Lost, How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights). Which shouldn’t be surprising considering I watch True Blood every week despite the fact that it’s a vampire show 1/50th as good as Buffy or Angel (and that’s being generous). Check it out. If you have Netflix online the first two seasons are online or I am sure if you search the internet you can find them for free somewhere.
The End of Fantasy Baseball
Jul/090
*DO NOT READ THIS IS ONLY INTERESTING TO ME AND ME ONLY
I hate to do it, but I am officially throwing in the towel on my 2009 fantasy baseball season. In the league I joined with my buddies from Philly (which I absolutely hate the rules of) I am just getting destroyed. Part of this is because I don’t like setting lineups day-to-day and part of this is because I have gotten injuries to my top 3 picks (Reyes, Beltran and Quentin as well as Volquez one of my top pitchers). That league has been done for awhile, but I wasn’t ready to quit on my keeper rotisserie league. We have been hanging around in 12th for most of the season, but have been right near the middle in most categories. Our pitching was starting to come around and we were climbing in most of the categories. The only thing that was hurting me was my offense. We were last in batting average which affected us right down the line in all the other hitting categories. I threw in the towel this week after Johnny Cueto gave up 9 runs in 0.2 innings thus ruining all the upward momentum I had in pitching and I just didn’t see a way to dig myself out of this even deeper hole. So, it’s over and I am having a firesale for next year. I’ve traded Felix Hernandez (*tear*) and am going to trade a few of my other good pitchers for next year’s offensive core.
The only question I have to ask myself is: why did this happen? Did I draft bad? Did I misevaluate talent? I think I did a pretty good job really. I just blame these guys.
JJ Hardy: Projection 270/24/75 On Pace 220/17/62
Chris Davis: Projection 265/31/100 On pace 200/29/64 (demoted to AAA)
Corey Hart: Projection 21 steals/21 HRs/85 RBIs On pace 9 steals/19 HRs/66 RBIs
Jeff Clement: Projection 274/329/424 Actual 0 games played
I really don’t have answers for the JJ Hardy situation and the Corey Hart thing, that’s just a deal with a new manager. I get it. Tough breaks, these things happen. Beyond that I might put a little too much faith in young people. Davis was hot at the end of last year, but he couldn’t make the necessary adjustments to pitchers and I was relying on him for some serious power numbers. Clement can hit, but he can’t catch so they don’t know what to do with him. I get it.
I just wish I had drafted Russell Branyan like I wanted to.