The concept for the following blog is something I've been wanting to do for a few months now, and is semi-inspired by SI.com's Hot Clicks (http://extramustard.si.com/category/hot-clicks/)...minus the hot women part. I'm sure you will all be satisfied by a hot song instead... The idea is to post a handful of good links I found over the course of the week during my copious amounts of free time spent wandering the internet, then hopefully not ruin them with pieces of insight/feedback here and there. These links are obviously going to be a bit oriented to my own interests (click bias), but I'll try not to do over 50% sports...On to the first week... Gonna start with a shameless attention grabber for the ADHD-inclined, 60 very interesting photos from 2013: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/60-surprising-photos-2013
A less surprising photo:
Now, I want to just say a couple of things about Richard Sherman. My intention was to write a blog about it, but with all the attention he is getting there are already a few writers that have crushed this one. What I will say is that love him or hate him, I want Richard Sherman playing on my team. I WANT my teammates thinking they're the best. Hell there have been times in college flag football games where the opposing QB targeted my WR and I thought "oh hell no what do you think you're doing throwing at me" when I knocked the pass away. It's a mentality of the game, and while his digs on Crabtree might seem a bit sharp, I really don't think I can blame him. Looks a bit different with some miced-up context: http://www.nfl.com/videos/san-francisco-49ers/0ap2000000316744/Sound-FX-Sherman-and-Crabtree-clash http://www.forbes.com/sites/tommytomlinson/2014/01/19/22-brief-thoughts-about-that-richard-sherman-interview/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/isaac-saul/what-richard-sherman-taught-us_b_4631980.html And my personal favorite, Sherman ripping Skip Bayless an absolute new one on Bayless's own show last year. For some this might bring into question his character (touch arrogant) but Skip Bayless is a douche.
I am here today, and in the future, to propose an alternate view, free of the confines of someone looking over my shoulder. Free because I do not have a real job, I do not have a boss, and I find myself wholly unaccountable to anyone else, and certainly not the U.S. government (what up Panama).
It is an easy argument to make that I am doing this, in no small part, for myself. I want weed legalized in the U.S., that's a no-brainer. I want to move to a town in Colorado somewhere between Denver and the west end of the Rocky Mountains, open up a coffee shop (the version you would find in Amsterdam), and live happily ever after. I have had a name picked out for 3 years. Sociabowl. If you steal it I have proof RIGHT HERE.
It is not an easy argument to say that I am doing this for the benefit of the U.S. government. The same guys who took my job away from me overnight on April 15, 2011 and temporarily froze 2/3 of my liquid assets for no real reason. The same guys who treat NATIONAL FINANCIAL DEADLINES just like I did most papers junior year of college: "IT'S COOL, YOU DON'T NEED TO DO IT! YOU'RE IN DENIAL! AN 'F' REALLY ISN'T THAT BAD!" That said, deep down I obviously do want my hometown government to succeed. That I feel like drug legalization would help them is a nice side-effect, and at the very least a powerful argument I hope to land with others that don't want weed legalized for the same reasons I do.
But I choose to raise the banner on this side of the war right now just because simply, I think that it is right. I think people should be allowed the choice to smoke marijuana, because who gives a fuck. I hope to write a series of blogs that explore drug use from a variety of perspectives, that not only reflect my personal experiences and beliefs regarding drugs, but also an informed analytical perspective as well (I did squeeze out an Economics major after all). We will consider this my basic hypothesis: "Weed should be nationally legalized and overall drug use has an irrationally bad reputation." By taking what I currently have a lot of - personal experience, either in taking or being around - and combining that with some research, I hope to show what support for this hypothesis there really is.
My ideas on drugs differ greatly from the national government's stance on drugs, and that is in no small part due to the fact that my views aren't based on information from the 1930s.
Here is a good way to start.
Acid? Not really at all what you thought it was
Ecstasy? On the right stuff, you are 100x more coherent than when drunk
Weed? Pretty much the best drug in the world
Mushrooms? Actually the best drug in the world
I imagine a LOT of you reading this will have a similar, adverse reaction to hearing these drug names, but why IS that? Is it really anything beyond social stigma in most cases? How much have you even heard about these drugs since DARE scared the crap out of us (myself included) from the 1st-5th grades (ages 6-10 for you foreigners). Who doesn't remember the slogan "DARE to keep kids off drugs?" Were any of those times you've heard about it since then not been in the negative spotlight of media?
I didn't smoke weed until I was 21 years old. Among stoner standards, I am one hell of a late bloomer. Why did I wait so long?
Growing up in a family of two parents that didn't drink aside from my dad's once-annual-glass-of-merlot-on-a-family-trip, I had little to no exposure to the world of alcohol, the one, true gateway drug. My dad ordered a gin and tonic once when I was 20 and I nearly shit myself. Oblivious to the simplest of "vices," drugs were easily conceived to be a terrible, terrible thing in the mind of young, impressionable Brandon, an image reinforced and molded by a fairly rigorous DARE program in elementary school. In middle school I was swearing my best friend to pacts that we would never drink (Sorry Graham, I may have broken that…). Even in high school I looked at the groups that went out and drank with quiet disdain, although that was mostly because they were primarily popular douchebags. Drug use? That was on a whole different level.
But things started to change when I was finally exposed to a more open-minded and accepting view of drinking, aka college. Admittedly many people at least dabble with drinking in high school, but outside of a couple of brief escapades with Sangria in Europe, I was an alcohol noob.
What I saw in college was something completely different. People I RESPECTED were drinking, and having a good fucking time. Not only that, nothing bad was happening. I mean, people were puking, some were making out with people they wouldn't have been two hours ago, and I found a sport that I was truly fucking terrible at for a while (beer pong) but nothing TERRIBLE was happening. I was bound to get better at beer pong eventually.
For the first time in my life I saw alcohol as something that could actually just be a good thing, and not the life-crushing monster I had somehow built it up to be. For the first year of college I drank probably around 5 times (I did still go to William and Mary so it wasn't that hard to avoid) but this was a huge change from the previous 18 years of my life. Once sophomore year started, it was all uphill from there. Drinking became a very normal - and very awesome - part of my social life.
With this barrier knocked down, the logical one to follow was marijuana.
The summer after freshman year of college one of my best friends and I went golfing one afternoon. In the car ride over he tentatively went about telling me that he had started smoking weed.
I just about slapped him in the face.
18 years old, and this was my honest reaction to a friend of mine telling me that he'd started - very, VERY recreationally* - smoking weed. I was honestly fuming at him for the rest of the car ride but during golf we were able to have a semi-open discussion about it. To say the least I hadn't exactly been converted. But he was a friend and I wasn't quite a big enough pussy at the time to drop a friend because he liked weed, just really, really close (ask my friend Sam about when he started smoking cigarettes sometime).
The one thing this did accomplish, however, was that he was the first good friend of mine that I truly RESPECTED, that smoked weed. At the very least, I had been willing to accept it, and when I listened to him talk I found myself armed with shockingly little logic to contend his arguments. All of a sudden I felt like I was just spewing out the same shit I'd heard from 3rd grade and never once questioned whether or not it was true. Drugs are bad, mmkay?
Obviously found South Park a little too late too...
A year later virtually all of my resistance to weed had been broken down. Turned out, LOTS of people I respected smoked weed. Who knew? (Again, LOTS of people). So when a conversation with my parents rolled around in which they tried to convince me to drink "responsibly" (they probably wouldn't have appreciated my DIS-interest** listed on Facebook: "drinking in moderation") I steered it in a different direction: "Why shouldn't I smoke weed?"
Momentarily ignoring my dad's request to have mom answer the question, I was laid out a number of reasons (read: theories, most notably "it could be laced with things") that I had essentially debunked over the last year at school while quietly observing. My mom's final attempts to dissuade me from using weed had, ironically, convinced me that I was comfortable trying it, when the moment arose.
A few weeks later a conversation with my Dad led to the suggestion that I try it, to which I assured him, "don't worry, I will."
It took nearly a full year for me to "deem the time right," or rather, to attempt to take my aforementioned junior year academic self-destruction to the social realms. "Fuck it, its been a weird night, let's just fucking get it over with and try it." Ironically, I could now argue that the botched attempt at "self-destruction" that fateful 4/21 (yes, the day after) turned out to be the first major step in the right direction...
*For the purposes of this blog post, "recreationally" is a word. For the purposes of the rest of my life, I will be an avid supporter of making it one.
**Dis-interests were a subset of Interests on Facebook, created by Evan Elsaesser*** and Jeff Clark****, but regrettably never officially sanctioned by Facebook.
***Dis-interested in Nick Cannon's Wildn' Out.
****Dis-interested in all drinks other than Mountain Dew
Other Infamous Disinterests
Tyra Banks' personality
Subway commercials
Small Car Fake-Me-Outs (an open parking space that turns out to be not so open at all...)
Spencer from The Hills
While idly browsing (read: scanning 1 by 1, clicking through additional pictures) Maxim's recently releasedHot 100 of 2013, I became unnerved by an apparent trend in Maxim's following: it is now principally comprised of 14-year old girls.
The evidence is condemning. A top 100 list voted on "by the people" came to the conclusion that Miley Cyrus is the hottest woman in the world. The girl that can't even decide what she looks like for more than 14 and a half minutes, perhaps stuck in the multi-personality universe of her former Disney character, Hannah Montana.
In response to being bestowed with this honor, Miley was quoted saying, "It feels amazing to be the No.1 especially because it was voted on by the fans. I have the best fans in the world!" What are Miley Cyrus's fans doing voting in a Maxim poll? They certainly shouldn't be Maxim readers.
Last I checked, Maxim readers were loosely defined as "men who want to have sex with women." I have prepared a Venn Diagram for you.
As you can see, there is virtually no overlap between the fans of Miley Cyrus and those who want to bang her (i.e. read Maxim).
Now, there was a brief disruption in this relationship back in 2010/2011 with the release of "Party in the USA" that actually permitted me to use shading:
But without another insanely catchy song to continue this trend, we have quickly reverted to the original diagram.
Other Disney Stars in the top 10*:
2) Selena Gomez**
7) Ashley Tisdale
9) Vanessa Hudgens
Then Demi Lovato sneaks it in at #26, who I was sure until just now was only famous for her singing and had never gotten hot. Turns out I might be a little wrong on this one but still.
You may argue, "But there aren't any other Disney stars in the top 100." That's because their chaotic-pack-of-teenage-girls fanbase threw everything they had at all they got. They sapped the Disney hotness pool dry.
This is like when MLB opened up All-Star voting internationally and all of a sudden Kosuke Fukudome was an All-Star. He of the CAREER line of 42 HR and 192 RBI, a decent season for Miguel Cabrera if you ignore the inflated RBI numbers and .258 career batting average. It is wrong, and should not be stood for.
*Full poll results actually showed Miley Cyrus got 2nd in the voting but Zach Efron was deemed ineligible after considerable deliberation (thus simultaneously bumping Justin Beiber from his spot at #3).
**Selena Gomez was the rightful #1 and we all know it.
The Hot 100 provided several other unusual results. Some of them led me to believe they weren't really voted on at all.
The Democratic Plant.
#54: Kamala Harris.
Who?
"The current Attorney General of California."
Oh.
What?
...
What?
Full Bio: "The current Attorney General of California cracks down on hate and financial crime like a bawss and created the Environmental Justice Unit in San Francisco. She makes following the law super sexy!"
And is popular enough to be FAN-voted into Maxim's Hot 100? Are 14 year-old girls suddenly extremely politically savvy? Did I just use 4 words in a row ending with a 'y'? Are you allowed to make entire paragraphs of questions?
I think the Democrats bought her a spot. Look for her on the 2016 ballots, you heard it hear first.
"Is it 1998?"
- Ryan Martin
#23: Heather Graham
#10: Elisha Cuthbert
#6: Jennifer Love-Hewitt
Don't get me wrong, Heather Graham is still pretty hot, but its 2013. Where is this coming from? Is she playing a mom on a new Disney show?
I think this list is best paired with the movie in which each of their careers peaked.
#23: Heather Graham - Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
#10: Elisha Cuthbert - The Girl Next Door (2004)
#6: Jennifer Love-Hewitt - The Tuxedo (2002)
I have a really hard time saying anything bad about Jennifer Love-Hewitt, who recently stated the value of her boobs is greater than $5 million. However, she has arguably never been in a good movie. She is still absurdly hot though.
Then we have the ultimate blast from the 90's past, Danielle Fishel, #27, who you may better know as Topanga Lawrence from the long-retired "Boy Meets World." Evidently she is re-launching her career in, wait for it, "Girl Meets World," the long-awaited spin-off.
Yes folks, they have managed to pull both Topanga and Ben Savage away from their booming post-BMW careers to star in the new show, which is expected to be picked up by, you guessed it, THE DISNEY CHANNEL.
Someone Is Trying To Get Free Double-Doubles For Life.
#93: Lynsi Torres.
I clicked on Lynsi Torres because it looked like her picture was of a staff at In-N-Out, and that intrigued me, because I love In-N-Out. Double double animal style with fries and a strawberry milkshake. All. Day. Long.
It turns out she is the youngest American female billionaire as the owner/heiress of the In-N-Out franchise, and not at all hot.
I don't blame whoever did this as his motivation clearly lies in the right place, but the fans surely couldn't have expected any sort of mass executive treatment for voting her in.
Fuck The Two Broke Girls.
#83: Kat Dennings.
No. No. No. No. Noooooooooo. I fucking hate you and your goddamn face. I even hate your enormous boobs. You've brought disgrace to the acronym "DSL."
They haven't come up with a word yet that aptly describes my hatred for your horrendous atrocity of a TV show. If you could turn "even worse than Two and a Half Men" into a word that would be how I would describe it.
The New Girl Is Old News?
#95: Zooey Deschanel
Last I checked, Zooey Deschanel was everyone's favorite weirdo to fiend for this side of Aubrey Plaza.*** I'm not one of those people that go apeshit for Zooey Deschanel, but I do recognize her mass popularity and the crazy number of people that would put her #1. She's also a legitimately funny actress, which is more than I can say for most of the "comic" actresses on this list. I'm looking at you Kat Dennings. And my eyes are burning.
***The "this side of Aubrey Plaza" was only added after viewing these
poll results and seeing Aubrey Plaza at #85, which I applaud. She is
very weird, and very weirdly attractive (although not more attractive
than Zooey, although weirder).
I take issue with a couple other things on the list, but in the interest of broaching positivity, I will instead give my top 10 within the list, and my top 5 absentees.
Honorable mentions go to Rachel Bilson (74), Eva Mendes (57), Blake Lively (24), Sara Underwood (71), and Sarah Hyland (44), who wasn't included because I felt skeezy enough with one 20-year-old on the list already. The bottom two can really be replaced with any of these qutie as easily. Also a lot of others.
Top 5 absentees off the top of my head:
5) Anna Kendrick (have to include my background girl)
4) Bar Rafaeli (for Ryan)
3) Kate Mara
2) Minka Kelly (how do you put her doppleganger at #36 and not include the original?)
1) Natalie Portman
In all fairness, I do have to tip my hat to Maxim's inclusion of Manti Te'o's girlfriend at the albeit-conspicuous ranking of #69. Well played Maxim. And while the combination of arbitrariness and Disney-influence leaves me wondering if the voting panel was about as real as Te'o's girlfriend, I always appreciate the entertainment value of a good top 100 list.
Over the last week and a half I have had what I would very much consider a life-changing experience. For the first time in my adult life I acted in a play, an experience that opened me up to far more than just a creative side of me, but also to a different world within Boquete, Panama where I currently live.
At the same time as my play was taking place, our Panamanian maid, Fani, who we have come to view as much as a mother as our maid, was visiting the doctors concerned that some pain in her chest and arm may be related to some sort of cancerous growth. While I spent Wednesday performing our first show, two of my housemates were driving her down to David to do whatever they could to help her expedite the process. Fani is a single-mother of 3 children, one of which now lives in Panama City pursuing a career, the other two of which are 14 and 8, and very much in need of her financial and motherly support. She is also 39 years old but looks like she has lived the life of any 3 of us in this house combined.
On Thursday I had a group of 15 friends of mine going to the play (a group which I was supposed to be a part of up until Sunday) and Fani requested a ticket. In spite of the fact that she understood virtually no English at all she wanted to come and see me perform in my absurd Australian accent that I had been walking around the backyard for three days practicing.
After the play I got to do something I had been wanting to do for a long time but didn't know how to approach: give Fani a hug. I thanked her for coming and gave her a hug that was equally disproportionate (the other way around) to what I actually meant by those words. I wanted to tell her that I loved her. I wanted to tell her that I hoped with all of my heart that she would come out of this okay. I wanted to thank her for calling me "el nino" because I'm the youngest in our house, for always giggling and calling my Anna Kendrick background "tu inspiracion," for always having a smile on her face while she wandered around our house attending to our daily messes. I wanted to thank her for becoming a part of our family while still being very much a doting employee. I hoped that she understood in the big hug that I gave her that I wasn't just saying "gracias para venir."
On Monday, the day after I finished the five performances for our play, I was out with a few friends and received the news that tests had come back showing that whatever issues she was having weren't cancerous. I smiled for at least 10 minutes straight.
After a week of having to worry that she might die and leave her kids behind for an uncertain future, a week plagued by sleeplessness to the extent that she asked a housemate if we had any sleeping pills that are completely foreign to her (yay for my ambien being useful), her heavy burdens had been laid to rest. She had been given new life.
---------------------------------------------------
The day before I had been hanging out smoking a joint with a few cast mates and one of the older ones, a musician in his 60's, said to us something so simply profound that I immediately wrote it down, "You know what brings me happiness in life: appreciation." The remark was partially inspired by how much he was enjoying the experience of acting for the first time in his life but far moreso how after several shows we went out as a cast to hang out, a cast ranging from age 18 to 65, with a wide variety of backgrounds (aside from that we were all American but one).
Life doesn't require a drastic experience like finding out you don't actually have cancer to stop and appreciate it but for so many it often does. I have found new life out of horrible circumstances, most significantly when I emerged from my first ever bout with horrible depression about a year ago and realized life was something worth living. But I have also found new life out of incredibly amazing experiences, like acting in a play, or going to Coachella and discovering my love for sharing music as a community. It shouldn't have taken Fani potentially having cancer for me to stop to appreciate her role in my life, but to some extent it did.
I want to write about my incredible experience that I had last week in participating in my first ever play but I wanted to make sure this blog showed what I truly appreciate: the love I feel for my family and friends, the love I feel for Fani. I am so thankful that you have found new life, and I am just as thankful that you will be able to continue to share it with us, your gringo family.
This blog is rated S for un-Saintly material. You can read it Grandma and Grandpa, but you (and I) might prefer you didn't.
This has to start with a guilty admission: I follow McKayla Maroney on Twitter. Because I'm interested in gymnastics. That apparently makes it better.
In browsing Twitter today I clicked on her profile and scrolled through to see what sort of pics, I mean nonsense, she had recently posted. Included was a re-tweet of atop-25 list that pegged her as the 24th best actress of 2012. I at first questioned the list before noting that Selena Gomez was rightly placed at #1, therefore giving credence to everything else the author had to say. Plus, the site has 213,000 followers which means they flat out know their shit. I began to wonder about the absence of other esteemed actresses such as Alex Morgan and Carly Rae Jepsen, but Jared knows best.
It seems as though "actress" is also being loosely defined these days by our world-ordained actor-definer, IMDB.com. While browsing the IMDB list of "IMDb: Hottest Pics of the actresses on IMDB" (I swear this was not a normal day for me, although not altogether atypical) I decided to actually click the actress profiles of all the girls I was looking at, spurned on by my lack of knowledge of virtually everyone on the list, and the desire to be the only male in the world to do so. In doing so I stumbled across Jayden Cole, best known (according to IMDB) for her roles in the stellar films, "Bikini Frankenstein" (subtitled "She'll love you to pieces), "Life On Top" (surely no connotations), "Bikini Royale 2" (I was so worried they wouldn't make a second), and "Dark Secrets" (this ones just a blatant euphemism for the dark recesses). This led me to seek further information on her heretofore stunning acting credentials. Not only was she the star of these critically acclaimed films, she had also received an award nomination. I clicked. "Best All Girls Couples Sex Scene" for her unforgettable role in the gut-wrenching classic "Pin-Up Girls 5" which she of course shared with Victoria White. I assume its one of the Oscars they just breeze through real quickly in the middle because no-one really cares about them.
Her profile on IMDB described her, in the very first sentence, as a "buxom and shapely redhead stunner" which I quickly understood as the best way of describing her acting. I went on to learn that she had a background in horseback riding, in case I was looking to fill that niche role of the happily bouncing horseback rider. Then came the boomshot..."Jayden not only began her career in the adult entertainment by appearing in the pictorial 'Girls of the OC' in the August, 2006 issue of 'Playboy,' but also was featured on such adult websites as Danni's Hard Drive, Wicked Pictures, and Digital Playground. Cole started performing in girl/girl hardcore films at age 23 in July 2009."
...
What the what? Since when did online pornography qualify as IMDB material, or better yet, acting experience? Next thing you know I'm going to see profiles of girls from Red Tube:
Name: Monica...something
Born: At least a year before McKayla Maroney
Height: 5' 7" (when standing)
Known for: "Threesome Sex with Horny Chick", "Teen Needs Sex Treatment", "Just Hit It"
Description: Blonde, fake-breasted, and down for just about anything, Monica hails from Eastern Europe...
Come on people. We are defiling the sanctity that is the Internet Movie Database. I get that it has "internet movie" in the title, but that was supposed to be because it is LOCATED on the internet, not because it incorporates any and all internet material. If you're going to make a list of the hottest actresses on IMDB I think a prerequisite should be that they are actually goddamn actresses. Being able to keep a straight face while he unveils his enormous thundercock doesn't count (ok they usually smile, which I guess is pretty good acting, because I'd be trembling in fear). If I wanted the list of the hottest actresses on IMDB along with a bunch of slutty adult performers I would've clicked on that list instead, but I couldn't find it. The idea of a hottest actress list is to engage the reader by giving them people they may have actually heard of and thus inspire interest.
But for those of you who are interested in reading through such a grossly smut-inspired list, here it is in all its glory...I'll be re-joining you tomorrow. But be forewarned, the author's primary and pretty much only requirement seems to be incredibly large breasts. For redheads, that seems to be his absolute only requirement. Oh, and how in the world is that first chick the same Alexa Vega from Spy Kids? How old am I?
Jailbait...Failbait. A little Deadmau5 and Cypress Hill collaboration.
In late May of this year I began my annual pilgrimage to poker's Mecca, the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Nevada. I made the cross country trip alone, per usual, disappointed in my lack of a companion but enjoying the time on the road.
I wouldn't be so disappointed on the ride home.
We rented a house a couple miles East of the strip, a group of five (Dan, Nelson, Noah, Dave, and myself) that would soon add a sixth.
A couple weeks into the summer we awoke one morning to find a tiny, emaciated little dog cowering in the corner next to our front door. When I opened the door it backed away timidly, clearly skittish at any attempts to be pet or touched. I wandered to the kitchen and grabbed a bowl of water which was empty within seconds of touching the ground outside. Vegas isn't the easiest place to stay hydrated. I returned to the kitchen for another bowl, which was again rapidly Hoovered. Figuring the dog would likely be hungry, I searched for anything that could be possibly deemed appropriate as dog-food substitute and came up with a couple of slices of bread. Dropping them to the ground outside they vanished in a matter of seconds.
I had to get ready for a day of live poker so I took a quick shower and as I got ready to leave placed another bowl of water and a couple slices of bread outside the door and watched our new friend creep back out from behind the corner of the house and get back down to business.
When I returned from a little bit of poker I found that our friend was still hanging out around our front door but we were all loth to bring her inside a rental house that strictly forbade pets, especially considering we had no idea where our pal had come from. For reasons unbeknownst to me the name Sparky had popped into my head and it instantly stuck. I made the common assumption that our dog was a male, not having taken a close look at the nether-regions as we still had a hard time getting close to the dog. A week later, I held Sparky up to the camera on Skype chat and Hannah readily identified Sparky's genitalia as a vagina, and asked how in the world we hadn't figured that out yet.
We expected Sparky to casually go her way at some point or another, but each morning when we woke up we found her asleep on our doorstep, sometimes curled up in a ball in the corner, sometimes sprawling across the mat on her back, flashing the world. And each day she got more and more accustomed to our contact and we got more accustomed to having a new house guest. After a couple of days I decided to experiment and let her inside. She took to the new playground quickly and we soon realized that we had an incredible athlete on our hands. If Sparky wanted to go outside, she indicated it by jumping vertically at the door, but with a running start and a push off the door itself so that she could launch her one-and-a-half foot body about three feet in the air, landing on her feet and then bouncing back up to do it again. A visitor aptly described her as a pogo stick. Our living room suddenly became an obstacle course. She jumped up on one side of the couch, veered right, jumped down, took off around living room table and around the other side of the couch, flew around the poker table, and lept back onto the couch to do it again. All of this in about 3 seconds. She'd do about 10 laps in rapid succession until she got bored, always holding to her exact line and then barrel off to do something else.
In addition to that, she didn't defecate inside, a huge plus.
My major concerns alleviated we began to invite her inside each day as long as there was someone there to watch her, normally myself or Noah, as we were both head over heals in love. Knowing little to nothing about 24-7 dog-care I consulted Hannah for more information...like when do dogs poop and pee, arguing that Sparky was not a Chihuahua (she's very fox-like imo), and other important things. I vowed that if she had actually been a chihuahua she would've been deposited far away from the house, likely in a Taco Bell parking lot.
Not a chihuahua.
Informed that many dogs have microchips we took her to PetSmart to get her checked for one and have a general health checkup. Her first time on a leash and collar (which they kindly gave to me at PetSmart after I explained to them her story - their compassion for animals is truly touching), we had to carry her into the PetSmart as she was terrified being this out in the open away from the house. We set her down on the ground by the vet's office and she stood there visibly trembling, backing away in fear of another dog who friendly approached her. Noah sat on the ground with her and pet her while I filled out the paperwork to get her inside. When she got into the office she barked at the vet a couple of times before beginning to relax a bit. Once comfortable the checkup went down without a hitch and she was provided with a clean bill of health. Additionally, she had no microchip so she was all ours if we wanted her. While our vet took care of our laundry list of questions about how the fuck to take care of a dog, Sparky's curiosity overcame her and she walked around the counter, timidly sniffing at everything, much to our vet's amusement (sidenote: if you ever want to pickup a cute PetSmart vet, rescue a street dog (this is not to imply I did)). With a new understanding of dogcare, we took her to pick out a toy and a bed. Noah suggested we let her pick out a bed she likes. It turned out the answer was all of them as she scampered from bed to bed in obvious bliss.
After choosing a bed, a few toys, and finding some dog food, we took her home, still unsure as to what we were going to do with her but she was quickly becoming more and more ours. When she crawled into my lap as we were hanging out outside after a night out a few days later, the decision I had wanted to make all along was finally reached: I had to keep her.
Example of her lying in my lap...she so tiny.
Sparky became the house mascot of the summer and quickly adopted additional nicknames. Sparks, Sparkster, Dan's favorite Sparkles...the baseball-adapted Sparkle Anderson. Nelson generally (and lovingly) called her a slut since she had conveniently joined a house full of dudes, also occasionally calling her a racist as the only place in the house she had pooped was Nelson's bathroom floor (twice) and Nelson happened to be the only non-white person in the house (sorry Dan, I know you're half-Colombian but you look white). She did, of course, pee on my bed two nights in a row when I came in at 4 am and took her inside just to head to sleep to find my comforter soaked through. Apparently my comforter and pile of boxers on the floor reminded her of a fresh patch of grass as I caught her peeing on each a few times just to grab her and run her outside to finish. Thankfully she clenched anytime I picked her up.
I'm gonna piss in this bed when you're drunk and exhausted.
The only problem with keeping her was that I am constantly traveling. After going home for a bit after Vegas I would be heading down to Panama for a few months. I knew a friend of mine already down in Panama had brought his dog down and I contacted him to find out the details. $1000 minimum and hours upon hours of paperwork to bring a dog in. Fuck.
Noah, equally enamored with Sparky and top candidate for co-father, suggested he may be able to take her down to Costa Rica with him (our whole house is spread out around Latin America to play online throughout the rest of the year). After several inquiries he found that he too wouldn't be able to take Sparky with him. Fuck.
I shot out messages to just about any friend that I thought could possibly take her and repeatedly came up with dead ends until early in July when I threw it out offhand to my friend Mike (taken from his blog post seeing as I obv don't have an IPhone to take such pictures):
He showed interest. Sparky wasn't exactly the type of dog he had imagined himself getting, nor had he expected to get a dog for about another year, but after telling him a bit about her we decided that I would drive her across the country and he could have a little trial period. If it wasn't meant to be we could finally bring her to a shelter, but I didn't really think it would ever happen.
But spent most of the cross-country trip napping next to me.
Some may be wondering what inspired the title of this blog and for that I will give a brief snippet as to the awesome character that is Sparky.
After dropping Sparky off at Mike's for a few days while I went home, I returned there a week later to find that he too had immediately fallen in love with her. Her name was now Sadie, which I begrudgingly accepted while admitting it was a bit more feminine, but I preferred calling her the Sadist or Sparky, or my still favorite Sparkle Anderson. Some nights when Mike was at work I took Sadie for walks around the neighborhood and noticed a new behavior she hadn't been able to exhibit on the shorter walks I took her on before. She pissed on EVERYTHING. Any tree, post, sign, hell any speed bump we walked past she would charge towards, pulling at the leash. After carefully sniffing for the scent of her own urine, if deemed unsatisfactory, she would squat down to mark her territory. This was made increasingly entertaining by two things:
First off, she would have a hard time pushing 15 pounds on a scale and has a proportionately small bladder. Exhibiting a remarkably consistent lack of foresight she would always take a long piss on the first landmark and by the time we'd reach the eighth or ninth nary a drop could be squeezed from her severely depleted stock.
Secondly, when she pees, she doesn't pee in one spot. Instead, she cocks up on her front legs with her back legs out and then somehow walks forward on them all the while maintaining a stream of urine. Thus, she manages to cover a vast amount of territory with each pee.
Amused by her antics and sheer determination to cover as much ground as possible with her limited supply of piss I began to audibly narrate our walks, dubbing her Sadie the Emperor, conquering new lands wherever she went. By my estimates Sadie has conquered the most square miles per pound of any dog in the greater Philadelphia Metropolitan area.
Please note that I am aware that she is technically an Empress, but Emperor just sounds far more badass.
I have been wanting to write a blog about Sparky/Sadie for a while and as soon as I began calling her an emperor I felt a tribute was appropriate. I know very little of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music but I happened to walk past them on my way to a different stage at Coachella and was drawn in by the unique sounds coming from their tent. I could only stay 10 minutes as I had places to go but what I did see was an unexpected pleasure. So in tribute to that 10 minute treat, I give you a song by them recommended by a friend who has actually listened to a bit of their music. Enjoy.
While watching the Olympics it occurred to me that while it is readily apparent that Usain Bolt is an absurdly fast human being (some might say the fastest ever), it is very difficult to get perspective on just how fast he is running while watching it on television. Usain Bolt's world record time is 9.58 in the 100m dash. Sweet. What the fuck does that mean?
A thought came to me. Why don't they stick a normal civilian in Lane 1 to give us a better sense of his speed?
I'm not talking about putting your average Joe American in there to lumber down the sideline (although you could and it would be pretty entertaining) but someone who is reasonably young and athletic. I consider myself a reasonably fast runner, put me out there and everyone can see me at the 60 yard marker while Usain does his patented celebration and understand how goddamn fast he is. Or better yet, put me out on the 50 yard marker to start and watch him chase me down. Hell, put a chainsaw in his hands to add a little haunted house fear element. Imagine how scared you would've been in that haunted house if you looked back and instead of a deranged killer or oddly-armed zombie chasing you down it was Usain fucking Bolt. Now that shit would be terrifying.
Another thought struck me today while half-reading an article about Robert Griffin III and his first-game success in the NFL. I wondered: "What would happen if you stuck me in an NFL offense and just let me play a full game, regardless of the score, regardless of my (lack of) success. How would I do?"
With the intent of hitting a larger percentage of my target audience, I will go ahead and replace Robert Griffin III in the Redskins offense in this upcoming week's game in St. Louis. This is also with the intent of giving me a chance to win the game.
A rundown of my abilities as an athlete/quarterback:
-5' 11" 170 lbs...we're going to take me from 2 months ago before I laid on a couch for weeks and food-binged, so there is actually some muscle there.
-I can run pretty fast. I've always wondered how I would stack up
against decently mobile NFL quarterbacks and would like to think I'm
faster than the Mannings but a touch slower than Aaron Rodgers.
-I
have pretty good arm strength for someone who never played quarterback
competitively. 20 yards downfield is well in my range of an accurate
ball, 30 yards on a good day, and I could maybe launch a 50-yard bomb if
I had to. I think. I honestly have no idea how far I can throw the
ball in terms of yardage.
-I have very good hands, in the event of an errant snap or the vaunted QB screen from NCAA Football ~'04 (it may still be in the game but I'm not sure).
-My athletic Achilles heel is jumping high but I like to think that I have "game ups." Fortunately jumping isn't much of a required attribute for a QB.
-Football experience: 3 seasons at WR/CB/KR for my intramural co-ed flag football team. 1 season as QB (read: running back) for a different co-ed flag football team.
-The second team lost in the championship game where I was flagged perhaps 5 times for throwing past the line of scrimmage and completed maybe 3 passes. It was also raining, I have small hands that grip wet balls poorly (heyooo), and I was benched by one of my WR's late in the second half of a blowout.
A quick rulebook for how this scenario would go down:
-We will assume that I have knowledge of the entire Redskins playbook and have replaced Griffin in all of the film-sessions for the week leading up to the game. I have not, however, taken a single snap in practice but my ability to throw miraculously translates flawlessly while wearing pads.
-The Redskins would be allowed to adjust their gameplan for having a slower (if just barely) quarterback in the game.
-Similarly, long downfield passes would not be called, unless it is an HB option where I have tossed to Evan Royster.
-We are assuming that Evan Royster has greater arm-strength than Alfred Morris and Roy Helu Jr. for no other reason than that he is from Fairfax, Virginia (I went to Fairfax High School).
-Aside from these adjustments, the offense must stick to a normal gameplan balancing the pass and the run.
-The defense must likewise call a normal gameplan as if they were playing a semi-experienced NFL quarterback such as say, Sam Bradford.
-I am assumed to be in good enough shape to play an entire NFL game.
-A spell has been cast upon me to make me game-ending-injury proof, but a sack/hit/touch will still hurt like a motherfucker.
-I am never in danger of being benched.
It's a sunny, 73 and humid day in St. Louis, but none of that matters as we're playing in a dome. I drive to the game with my father who seems to think it is just one more travel soccer game from my youth and is anxiously imparting his advice, "Stay on your feet Brandon, you're always on the ground." Thanks Dad.
I have a special treat lined up with the PA announcer to give me an entry song even though we are playing an away game. I told him I'm cheering for the Rams before the game, so I enter ready to rage:
Pre-game warmups go by in a blur and before you know it I am at the center of the field standing across Stephen Jackson and Sam Bradford for the coin toss. I have been chosen as a captain in my first and only game with the team. My locker room presence is undeniable. I call heads, we win the toss and elect to defer. Sam Bradford looks at me with his kind of Asian-looking eyes, the only part of him that at all portrays his 1/16th Cherokee-heritage, smiles, and chooses to kick. Sam Bradford once again makes my life hell.
Brandon Banks drops back to receive the kick and in a rare occurrence in the NFL gets a chance to return. With tantalizing speed and an incredible knack for finding the running lanes, Banks has a solid return to the 36-yard line where we setup offense.
The first play calls for a WR screen to Aldrick Robinson who is starting in place of Pierre Garcon, who was too much of a bitch to play through his foot pain. I slide my hands under the taint of center Will Montgomery and stare into the eyes of James Laurinaitis and wonder why I chose to look into the eyes of the hardest Ram to spell.
I handle the snap cleanly and look left quickly to throw the safety off, adjust my feet right and find Aldrick Robinson with his defender ten-yards off of him, apparently unaware that I would struggle to throw the ball to where he is already. I pull my arm back to drill a spiral into Drick's chest (my new locker-room nickname for him) and let loose.
The ball flies out of my hand end-over-end and drops lamely, 10 feet in front of Drick's feet. I forgot to put my hand on the laces. At least the ball traveled forward for an incomplete pass.
I sulk back into the huddle, embarrassed, but my locker-room presence has earned the loyalty of my teammates and I know they will fight for me every down this game, regardless of the score. No Randy Mosses here.
Second down calls for an HB toss to the right and Alfred Morris barrels through a weak-tackling Rams D for 8 yards, setting up 3rd-and-short. Evan Royster runs on to the field and calls the play in the huddle himself, a HB screen to the right. The play calls for left tackle Trent Williams to push Rams DE Chris Long upfield and then slide to block for Royster on the right. I hike the ball and he executes the block perfectly but I see Chris Long hurtling upfield and react as I would playing Madden in 2005...taking off towards my own endzone as my 5-step drop turns into about 14. I see Royster open with a pack of blockers, launch myself off my backfoot, and immediately find that it is considerably more difficult to throw off your backfoot while sprinting than it is in Madden, my pass falling feebly to the ground 10-yards short of Royster. Long reaches me as I release the ball and his light push sends me somersaulting into my own endzone, an impressive 41 yards behind the line of scrimmage.
As the Special Teams unit jogs onto the field I swear I hear Evan Royster say to one of the lineman, "I told you Fairfax sucked at football." A fair point from a former Robinson Ram, a team which routinely trounced us.
Our defense holds strong. No one is surprised. The Rams are missing 3 starters from their offensive line and their offense focuses on game management rather than scoring. Standards for a successful drive are low with Sam Bradford attempting a pass more than 15-yards downfield often drawing applause from surprised fans.
We get the ball with good field position again and this time Shanahan calls for a first down run up the middle with Morris gaining 6. I hear Shanahan in my ear calling for another WR screen to Robinson. The Rams should probably know this is coming as the Redskins ran 4 WR screens on their first 6 plays in week 1 but they are backed off Robinson again and I focus on hitting him with an accurate pass and unleash a spiral that hits him in the chest.
The pass takes so long to get there that Cortland Finnigan and the ball reach my wideout simultaneously and he is lifted off of his feet and drilled onto his back. "DRICK!!!" I shout to him in alarm as I run over to the first friend of mine I've ever seen hit so hard. But as I approach he is already getting to his feet, ready for the next play and I remember that such violent hits are par for the course in the NFL. Then I remember that Cortland Finnigan is a douchebag and I shout, "Don't make me go Andre Johnson on your ass" as he walks away. I can tell he's intimidated.
From here out I realize that each pass must not only be as accurate as possible, but I need to put everything, and I mean everything, into every throw. Seeing the NFL in game-speed makes me realize that I make Chad Pennington's arm look like John Elway throwing a nerf ball.
Third down calls for a quick slant to Josh Morgan in the slot and I hit him with a dart. I ask for the ball to be kept as a momento. I also ask how Josh Morgan landed a starting job after a very underwhelming start to his career in San Francisco.
The play is called back for an illegal shift. I still ask for the ball.
Shanahan calls in another HB screen and this time I am mentally prepared. I drop back 5 steps and stop, find Helu in the flat, hit him with a nice pass and he scampers 18 yards for the first down. I keep this ball too.
From here I begin to settle into my zone, completing passes every fourth attempt or so, and while this drive and the following seven end in punts or turnovers, we manage to scatter in a few first downs, one of them even in the air. I keep the first down marker.
Amongst the punts I also found myself lying underneath some combination of the bodies and limbs of almost a thousand pounds of men: Chris Long, Kendall Langford, and my own guard Kory Lichtensteiger, my first NFL sack. With the breath crushed from my lungs and lights sparkling in my vision, I took heed of the advice learned from Rocky movies, "look strong when you are weak, and weak when you are strong." I taunted Chris Long, a UVA alum, famous academic rivals of my own alma mater, "William and Mary is a better school than UVA. Michael Strahan provides better coverage than your dad on FOX NFL Sunday and is better looking than you too." A ref overhears the last bit and finds it so offensive he flags me for taunting. I keep the flag.
Late in the third quarter, with our team trailing 19-0 (4 FGs and a TD for the Rams, largely a product of incredible field position throughout the game), Brandon Banks takes a short kickoff back to the Rams 27-yard line and suddenly we are in business. Feeling the rush of adrenaline from the return I find Fred Davis on a seam route that gets us all the way down to the 6. Shanahan tightens up and calls two runs up the middle and the Rams defense gives but doesn't break, and we find ourselves 3rd-and-goal on the 2, when Evan Royster jogs onto the field. He wants to punch it up the gut one more time, but I've got something else in mind. The ball is hiked and I toss to Royster on the right with a legion of blockers in front of him but the Rams are stacked at the line and follow him wide. Then, abruptly, Royster stops, plants his feet, and launches a strike all the way across the field where I have sauntered alone into the left corner of the end zone. I make the reception and its time to dance. In preparation for this moment I have taught my teammates the infamous Bob N' Weave, the celebration used by the Rams during the legendary Greatest Show on Turf. A crowd gathers around me in the end zone where I lead my team in the dance and as we collectively rise from our positions we look around to see a sea of yellow around us. We are flagged for 13 unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, team celebrations were outlawed by the league in the early 2000's in large part due to the Rams' Bob N' Weave.
Sadly, this is our only moment of celebration for the game. I finish the 22-7 defeat 9/29 for 87 yards, 3 INTs, 0 TDs. Somewhere, Derek Anderson applauds my effort. The benefit of not having an NFL arm is that it makes it very hard for defenders to catch your passes, not just your receivers. My catch stands proudly as the highlight of the game and I even manage to scramble 9 times for 44 yards but my propensity to bring the ball down and try to run also leads to 11 sacks. I run out of bad things to say to Chris Long and talking hurts too badly anyway.
I can't walk after the game for 3 weeks and don't eat solids for the first 2.
The effort lands me the backup QB job in St. Louis. Rams beat writers celebrate the improvement over Kellen Clemens.
