You're Invited to the Pants Party

I’ve been wearing pants for a long time, and as long as I can remember they have always been worn at or around the same area. I like to keep them a few inches below the belly button, sitting right on the hips. I don’t think I’m alone in wearing my pants in this general area. Sure there are different trends; some people (myself included) have a pair or two of lower rising jeans, some people have some pants that fit a little higher up on the waist, but it never really very varies more than an inch or two. So here’s my question, why does this all change when you reach a certain? A man got on the elevator today as I was leaving work, a conservative estimate of his age would be around 78ish, and his pants were resting snuggly around the lower nipple. I say resting snuggly but really there was no resting at all, his belt was cinched pretty darn tight to get them to stay up this high. This is a good 13 to 15 inches from were my pants like to hang out. I don’t get it. Unless he was Ed Grimly or Lou Diamond Phillips from Stand and Deliver there is no way that he always rocked that style. So what made him change? Am I being insensitive about some old person’s issue that I don’t even know about? Maybe he had arthritic hips and having pants hanging from them cause undue may. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that you tend to lose all discernable shape and get doughy at a certain age which means you have to make a choice, over the paunch or under, and he chose over. I don’t know, and I want to, can anyone help me with this issue? Am I going to be dressing like this in 50 years? If I do it’s going to be because I’ll be getting a kick out of people thinking about how crazy I look, and I’ll probably pull them extra high and snug so that people will accidentally see my balls and I’ll laugh at them thinking I don’t know and trying not to look but not being able to look away.

Maybe I'm Just the Outdoorsy Type

I like to think I would be more resourceful than the usual lot if I were a homeless person. I lived in a city long enough to see how they are treated by the general public, not very well. I think most people are fairly cynical when it comes to a homeless dude, not that we’re all evil heartless people who are completely unsympathetic to the plight of our fellow man, but pretty much everyone just assumes that they’re going to use your money for something rather unsavory (see: Crack) that you’d rather not be a part of. Not to mention that multiple times I’ve had food with me that I offered and had that turned down by someone. It’s hard to feel bad for someone who says they’re hungry and then turns down food. Beggars can’t be choosers, literally. So experiences like this lead to the majority of people to be not very trusting of anyone who asks for money on the street, which sucks because there are probably many people who are genuinely having a rough go of it and could use all the help they can get. That’s why you gotta have a gimmick. I would treat like I was an actor trying to make it Hollywood or something; have a stunt to grab people’s attention. One time I was walking in Georgetown, as I crossed a bridge there was a man leaning over the side of the bridge holding a pole like he was fishing. When someone walked by he swung the pole around and at the end was a big cardboard arrow hanging over a bucket that said “Gimme a dollar.” It was hilarious and guess what, I gave him a dollar for making me laugh. I hear there is a guy in New York who hangs a sign over his neck telling people they can cuss him out for a dollar. Now that’s the kind of ingenuity and imagination I’m talking about. I bet that guy makes more money than I do. You’ve got to have some pizzazz, a little added flavor, just getting in someone’s face tend to scare them and turns them off.

I think another important thing would be to never turn down any opportunities. I mean, when somebody offers you some food take the food. Then you also have to be aware of your surroundings. For example, a new 7-11 just opened a block from my office building (which by the way also seems to be a hotbed for homeless people in Baltimore). On opening day a person was outside handing out coupons for free sandwiches. If I was in the unfortunate situation of being homeless you better believe I’d have figured way to get my hands on about 40 of those coupons, I’d be eating like a king for weeks.

The reason I bring this all up is because of something that happened this morning that I found very strange. Brian and I were walking to our office this morning and there was a homeless guy a few feet in front of us. As I’m walking I look down a see ahead of me a sandwich all wrapped up in plastic wrap just sitting on the ground, someone must have dropped their lunch at some point. It actually looked pretty good and perfectly clean, hell I considered picking it up myself. So what did the guy do? HE WALKED RIGHT BY. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t see it but damn man, keep your eyes peeled. When you don’t know when your next meal is coming you may want to be on the lookout for sandwiches falling from the sky.

Knocking Down Walls

Tonight I did something unprecedented in my world. I’m sure to most people it is a fairly common occurrence and not weird at all but for some reason it is totally foreign to me. Not only have I never done this before but the possibility of ever doing it never crossed my mind. That’s right folks; I used the grocery store bathroom. I have absolutely no idea why the thought of peeing in the supermarket seems so strange to me but it always has. I can remember many an instance where I was bursting at the seams, I think you could see my bladder through my shirt, and yet the thought never arose that I could just use the restroom there. Well no more, I’m breaking down barriers in my life, and I started tonight by urinating in at Giant. In case you were wonder the muzak playing during this momentous event was Sting, Desert Rose. Sting from now on always have a special place in my heart.

Like Anyone Cares About My Opinion

I ride to work each morning with my roommate and usually his girlfriend (actually I guess it’s just my roommates now that she has moved in). I’m eternally grateful for the free ride since I’ve been having a little car trouble for the last say 2 years, but there is one downside to this. Occasionally I am subjected to music that some might say is questionable, and I might say sucks. I don’t complain because what kind of douche bag gets a free ride then complains about the music the driver is listening to, also I don’t really care, I’m not a music snob so whatever people are into is fine with me, I listen to a lot of music that a lot of other people would hate so who am I to talk. This morning I got to check out something extra special though, so with out further ado here is my very short, very unintelligent review of Clay Aiken’s new album A Thousand Different Ways:

It sucked. I don’t know how many songs were on the album but it breaks down to about half new songs and half covers. The new songs were all just really cheesy, dreadful ballads. Clay Aiken makes Nick Lachey seem like Elton John. Then there are the covers. He covers the likes of Richard Marx, Mr. Mister, Bryan Adams and more. At least these are a little better because they weren’t written by whoever writes Clay Aiken’s music. They aren’t exactly classics but I think a lot of people enjoy these songs. It sort of comes off as if he is taking some 80’s pop songs and gaying them up a little bit for the Clayniacs. And by a little bit I mean a lot. I’m not suggesting the he is or isn’t gay, and it doesn’t matter to me either way, but there is something wispy and ethereal about Aiken’s voice along with a forced power and the production so overly perfect, clean and obsessive compulsive that the whole thing just comes off as incredibly gay. Basically Clay is a male Celine Dion, only Dion is way more manly than Aiken and could probably kick his ass.

All in all I highly recommend purchasing this album. But not to listen to, I think you should buy it so that you can throw it away and prevent someone else from having to hear it.

p.s. this is just my opinion, if you like Clay Aiken more power to you, clearly, I don’t. I wanted Carmen Rasmusen to win.

p.p.s. Wendy, even though it’s almost next weekend I’ll still put up a summary of last weekend for since I know how badly you want to read it.

This Racism is Killing Me Inside

· Survivor: Racist started last night and I’m pretty excited about it. This is shaping up to be a great season. I love Survivor, and I love stereotypes so this is right up my alley. Every season a few characters emerge and become the “main characters” or stars of the show. This season is being no exception so far. The teams are broken up into 4 different ethnic groups and it seems as though one person surfaced from each group. What cracks me up is that it doesn’t seem like any of these people represent the majority of there culture in anyway. First off the dominating personality in the Hispanic tribe is a big fat, heavy metal musician. Not exactly what I first think of when I think Latino. Then there’s the hippy Asian guy, he even said himself that he’s not really accepted by other Asian folk. The lead black got bounced already so a new personality will have to emerge from that group. Then there are my people. They actually seem to perpetuate stereotypes. I’m just a little disappointed that the one who seemed to take the leadership role and got the most camera time was such a douche. He stole a chicken from the other tribe and he kind of just came of like an overall ahole. He probably wouldn’t have been my first choice if I were in charge of picking people to represent my race is all I’m saying.

· Why do people feel the need to run and jump on an elevator when the doors are closing? This really pisses me off. Our building is only 19 floors, we have 9 elevators. Do you really have to jam yourself through a 13” gap in the doors to get on my elevator? This is annoying in a couple of ways. The first being that I work on one of the top floors so it’s another floor I have to at stop at which sucks. The second being that the doors have sensors on them so when you do your little superhero act and dive in, the doors sit open for another minute so 50 more people can get on. Mainly though it’s just the principle of how infuriating it is. What’s even worse are the people already the elevator who freak out and jam there arm in between the closing doors trying to save the world because they thought they might have heard someone coming a mile away. Let them get the next elevator so I don’t have to murder you for sucking at life.

· The defense of our BSSC football championship starts tomorrow and I couldn’t be more pumped.

· Hitting up NYC this weekend, the highlight of the trip being a Yankees-Red Sox game Sunday night. It would be pretty cool if the standings were a little tighter and the game meant more, but it’s still awesome. Plus if everything works out the Yankees might be able to clinch Sunday and I can’t think of anything better than doing against the Sox in New York.

Sounds like a personal problem

Am I only the only one who has this problem? It seems like everytime I have to wake up earlier than my normal routine I can't sleep the night before. It never fails and the following day is subsequently ruined as a result.

I usually wake up around 7:30 and roll into work around 8:30. This morning I had some lame training session to attend meaning I had to be at work at 7:30. The training was pretty much a complete waste of time in case you were wondering, but there were donuts and it's never wrong to pretend like you care about advancing your career when you know the boss will be there. Anyway, waking up earlier enough to make it in at 7:30 is not a big deal to me. Due to my poor diet, lack of fitness, and just overall malaise I find that I'm tired all the time. This sounds like a bad thing, and it probably is with one exception, I can fall asleep whenever I want. So if I have to go to bed at 10:30 because I have to get up early it's never really an issue. Then Eric Syndrome comes into play.

I talked extensively about Eric Syndrome in an earlier post but I haven't figured out how to link to individual posts on my own blog yet because I'm dumb. Eric Syndrome, briefly, is my innate ability to mess things up, not on a catastrophic level, just enough to make my life more annoying than it has to be. So how did it come into play yesterday? I'll tell you. My roommate/coworker plays on a softball team with another coworker. Occassionally when they're going to be missing a few players they ask me to play because they know it will be easy for me to just catch a ride with my roommate (also I like to think it's because I'm money at softball, but I doubt that's the case.) Yesterday he asked me if I could play. The correct answer would have been, sorry Mitch, I can't tonight, Monday Night Football is on and the Redskins are playing and I've been super excited about this game for the last 8 months. Naturally I said I would play. Why? Because Eric Syndrome kicked in right at that moment and I turned into and absent minded tard and forgot that I love football and rarely, if ever, miss a Redskins game, much less a Monday night game, much less the first game of the year. Lucky for me I have mans greatest achievement of the last half century to save me, Tivo. I can still watch the game but my plan of going to bed at 10:30 is shot.

So I get home and watch the game, finally get to bed around 12:30 or 1:00 which gives me about five and a half hours of sleep if I'm lucky, not bad. Of course now I'm kind of pissed because the Redskins lost and I don't fall asleep right away. Once I can't fall asleep immediately it usually means I'm not going to fall asleep for a while. I think that I start concentrating really hard on getting to sleep because I know I only have a few hours and the act of intense concentration actually keeps me awake longer. Then the bed starts getting hot, so I get uncomfortable and start squirming around trying to find a cool spot on the bed. Then I have to turn the pillow over, then switch pillows altogether, then the the blankets off, it just an endless cycle of uncomfortableness. It really just turns into an abject sleep disaster. I'm actually a very sound sleeper, I usually fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and sleep straight through the night and wake up ready to go in the morning. Last night I tossed and turned eventually falling asleep sometime around 4 a.m. for a little under 3 fitful hours of sleep. Which is probably why I'm about to stab myself in the ear with a pencil just so I can leave work and take a nap.

Up to some of my old tricks

So you've probably been thinking to yourself, Eric has done anything really stupid and written a blog post about it in a while. Well I took care of that for you. While playing poker this afternoon I couldn't help but notice that I was starving. I was right in the middle of a tournament, and doing fairly well I might add, so it's not like I could just stop playing. But I was really hungry. Then I remembered that it was situations like this that led me to buy a laptop. So I carried the laptop over to the kitchen to make myself a turkey sandwich. I finish making the sandwich, but I don't want to eat in the kitchen, there's college football on TV. So I grab everything (the sandwich, my laptop, a glass of delicious V8 Splash and a box of Taco Fiesta Cheez Its) and take it over to the living room. Now I know what you're thinking, Eric that's what to much to carry, you're asking for trouble, make two trips. You're right, but I'm both lazy and an idiot, so I'm carrying everything at once, leave me alone. I should've listened. As I'm walking the laptop starts to teeter. Everything is going in slow motion and there's nothing I can do, I have a plate and a glass in one hand and a box of damn Cheez Its tucked under my right arm (it's the Cheez Its fault too, if they weren't so f'ing tasty I wouldn't have had them shoved under my arm thus comprimising the integrity of the whole system). Needless to say, the laptop fell and I no longer have a laptop. The thing that pisses me off the most is that its just the screen that's broken, everything else works fine, if I could see what I was doing. To add insult to injury I couldn't get back into the poker tournament in time therefore losing my $50 buy-in. This has pretty much ruined my weekend. I think there are 13 or 14 stray beers in the refrigerator, I'm going to try and drink them all in the next hour or two and hopefully forget everything that happened today.

Sports Are Frustrating

But more to the point, sports fans are frustrating. Everyone loves to argue about sports, that's one of the fun parts of watching grown men play childrens games. What bothers me is that no one knows as much as they think they do (myself included) yet everyone expresses their opinion as if it's absolute fact, when most of the time theyre wrong. And the people who argue the loudest are usual the most clueless. A few weeks ago I was in Atlantic City and a guy from New York railed for a solid twenty minutes telling us why Derek Jeter was by far the best player in baseball. This is a ridiculous statement, and I'm a Yankees fan, I love Derek Jeter. There was no convincing this man otherwise. It never ceases to amazing how otherwise rational people let their biases take over when it comes to sports. I understand being passionate, I almost threw a chair at a friend once when we got into an argument over whether or not Koy Detmer was an asshole (I say yes by the way). I guess what I'm saying is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but a lot of fans seem to lack objectivity and if that's the case keep your opinion to yourself, you're probably wrong. Also if you can't express without being douche bag about it just don't say anything.

Here is another sports fan phenomenon that gets to me, bandwagon jumping. I don't mean in the traditional sense of changing your allegiance to a team based on their success or lack thereof. Although that is annoying too, I've never seen more Red Sox fans than right around the beginning of spring training in 2005. Then again, like I said earlier, I'm a Yankee fan so it's not like I haven't been accussed of this a million times over. The sense that I mean bandwagon jumping is when people jump onto someone else ideas and run with them, and try to pass of these idea as there own. Oh Notre Dame is overrated cause there defense is bad huh, USC won't be good this year because they lost to many players to the NFL. Guess what, it's college football and USC is a football factory, you don't think they've reloaded again already. You're sick of the media talking about T.O.? Well I'm sick of people saying how their sick of hearing about T.O., and the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry be covered all the time, and whining about East Coast bias, and Barry Bonds, and steriods, and all the other stories that are covered to death. I don't want to hear about these stories either, they're vapid and redundant, but so is everyone in America expressing that fact. ESPN's main goal is ratings I think, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how the stay in business. I would guess that they cater to what people want to see, not try to force feed us stories that they think are interesting. When I see a story about T.O. you know what I do? Change the channel. And when i see an article online, I just don't read it. The problem is that while people have had enough of these stories they continue to watch in order to have something to complain about. If everyone stopped talking about T.O. we'd probably stop hearing about him. Also the Tigers are not going to win the World Series, get over it. They're 28-30 against teams currently in playoff contention, and that's only because they're 10-5 against the Twins, who waited until late June to start playing well. By comparison, the White Sox are 29-24, the Yankess are the same. The Tigers are 26-4 against the Royals and the national league. They have an excellent pitching staff, but you don't get to face the Royals in the playoffs. The Tigers don't walk, don't have a high on base percentage, and strike out a lot. Which means they don't work the opposing starter and don't get into the bullpen early. Which is absolutely crucial to playoff success. The also have a closer with an ERA pushing 5. That's a scary propositon in those tight playoff games. All this leads me to believe, in my opinion, that the Tigers, if they do make the playoffs, won't have a lot of success. And Arod is very good at baseball.

There are a lot of people who have an amazing knowledge of sports and it's intricacies. I'm probably not one of them. But there are a lot more people who have no idea what they're talking and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is when some jackass who thinks he's Peter Gammons, John Clayton, and Chad Ford all rolled into one. I don't have a problem having an opinion, it's not be open to someone possibly changing you're mind thats the problem.

Basically here is what I would like to happen, because everyone loves to ride these opinions, and I like to go the opposite route. I want the Tigers to miss the playoffs, even though it really is a good story and they have a likeable team. I want to the Red Sox to make a miraculous comeback to win the wildcard, just so we can here a lot of great stories about the best rivalry in sports. But I want them to lose to the Yankees in the ALCS because everyone still hates the Yankees more. Then I want to see a subway series with the Mets so we get bombarded with stories about how great New York is. I want T.O. to have 2,000 yds recieving all the while talking about how he is underpaid and hates Bill Parcells and the rest of the team, except for Mike Vanderjagt. I want the Packers to go 11-5 and Brett Favre to play for 3 mores years. But then the Redskins have to play the Colts in the Super Bowl. But only if Peyton Manning throws for 500 yds and 12 touchdowns in the NFC Championship game against the Patriots. Notre Dame wins the BCS title game 17-6, only winning because of a stellar defensive effort. Also J.J. Redick should score 15 ppg his rookie year and Duke should win it all. It would be fun if Micheal Vick had an amazing pro bowl caliber year while spreading herpes in every city he visits. I still don't want Barry Bonds to break the home run record though. That guys a dick.

I realize that I just wrote an entire posts doing the very thing I complain about in the post. You, my reader, probably think I'm an asshole. Whatever, shut up, I hate you. Just kidding, I love you, you know I can't stay mad.

What A Beardo

I think I might grow a beard. There are, by my count, zero bad reason to do this. There are several great reasons. Here they are:

1. Summer is almost over, the temperature is dropping quickly, the leaves are changing color, and my face is getting colder. A beard solves that problem.

2. My look becomes very adaptable. I can go from ruggedly handsome, to sexy, to distinguished, to badass, to crazy in a matter of days.

3. If I'm lucky I can be considered a Man Beard.

4. November is National Beard Month. I celebrate all holidays (including this one), and it's going to take a while to grow a beard worthy of National Beard Month.

5. I didn't shave whilst at the beach this weekend therefore my beard blocked the bottom half of my face resulting I a some unattractive two-toned action.

I'm not sure how long this whole beard thing will last, but I'm guessing it will be until my face is all the same color.

I grew up at the beach. Until I went to college I had never lived more than ten miles from the beach (with the exception of the year or two I lived in Fayetteville, NC but I was to young to remember that.) One summer after college I went to the beach literally everyday for almost 4 months straight. I'm not trying to brag or imply anything by this, I'm merely try to point out that I have spent a considerable amount of time at the beach, much more than most people I would think. So that would lead you to believe that I've got this whole sunblock thing down right? Wrong. I forgot to very important rules while visiting Virginia Beach this weekend. Those being:

1. When at the beach for over 9 hours, reapply sunscreen multiple times.
2. Don't fall asleep, you're just asking for trouble.

Actual rule number two should be ammended, because I actually love falling asleep on the beach, it's extremely relaxing. It should say don't fall asleep on your stomach after coming out of the water and washing away all the sunscreen then stay asleep while all your friends go to get lunch and you stay behind because you're not hungry because when they're gone for two hours you lose track of time and get super sunburned on your back. That doesn't sound as good, I think it's a run-on sentence. Anyway, to my credit I only got sunburned on my back, and face, and I applied sunscreen twice so it isn't the worst burn ever. Not to my credit, it's easily the dumbest looking sunburn in history. Since I fell asleep with my head facing left I only have a burn on the left side of my face, it looks like someone smacked my in the face with a ham. My back is worse. When you don't use suncreen you get a horrible sunburn but at least you get full coverage so you're all the same color. I have the "you obviously attempted to protect yourself but you clearly missed a few spots so now you look like all splotchy and weird" burn. I have all the streaks and lines going everywhere. It looks like a rorshach test. Only instead of black and white it's red and pasty.

Booooooooring

Sometimes your life is exciting. Your days are filled with a plethora of fun and stimulating activities. You’re always on the go, it can be exhausting, but you don’t really care, because you’re consistently having a great time. Then you have weeks like this one, where you’re so mind numbingly bored most of the time you don’t know what to do with yourself. And this is coming from one of the biggest homebodies you’ll ever know. I never have a problem spending a night at the house watching a movie or something equally lifeless. This week though exceeded even my staggering capacity for boredom.

Here are the highlights:

Monday:
Woke up at 7, went to work from 8:30 – 6:00, and then went over a friend’s house for a Fantasy Football draft. This was probably the most exciting part of my week. Before you start thinking that this is incredibly sad and banal because fantasy sports are for nerds just wait, it gets worse. I wasn’t actually participating in this draft; I just went to watch my friends do this because I had nothing better to occupy my time.

Tuesday:
Work, home, online poker for and hour or two. Fell asleep around 10 p.m. Why? Because why not.

Wednesday:
Work, home for another fantasy football draft. This time I actual was in this one, so it’s only slightly less lame.

Thursday:
Work, home to watch the VMAs. Revise an earlier statement; this is now the most exciting part of my week. Was every celebrity appearing on the show at the bar 4 hours beforehand getting completely plastered, because this is a disaster. And how old is John Norris, seriously, can he really be the best guy to tell 14 year olds what to think is cool. MTV is losing it. Why not bring back Kurt Loder while you’re at it.

That’s my week thus far, about as boring as it get. I forget to mention I somehow managed to watch about 7 episode of Big Brother in that timeframe, and I don’t even like that show. Chilltown you are so devious.

Now I know what you’re thinking:

You: But Eric it’s the work week it’s supposed to be boring and this is a holiday weekend so I’m sure you have something super exciting on tap.
Me: Actually me and few friends are heading down to Virginia Beach.
You: Awesome, that sounds like a kick ass time.
Me: Wow you talk an awful lot like I do.
You: Well that’s because you’re projecting your voice on to a fictional character. It’s a pretty weak literally device to try and make a point and take a stab at humor.
Me: It is a bit cliché isn’t it.
You: Yep, it’s very reminiscent of a few popular authors’ styles. In fact if this weren’t a totally meaningless blog that no one reads anyways you might be accused of plagiarism.
Me: Ummmmm….
You: Anywho, Virginia Beach, that sounds fun.
Me: Oh yeah, except for one slight problem, my chosen vacation destination for Labor Day weekend is currently being pounded by a hurricane. In fact the current forecast is a 100% chance of strong thunderstorms. So unless things clear up fast it’s shaping up to be even more boring than my week. A whole lot of drinking inside and playing Jenga or something equally lame while watching the rain.
You: That sucks.
Me: Tell me about it.

Sometimes my mind wanders when I’m bored.