June 2010

It's one for the Dagger and another for the one you believe...


I have to admit, I've been putting this off.  I don't really know why.  I've just not really been in the spirit for it, I guess.  I get that way about writing sometimes.  I just lose all my juice and then I'm all bleh about writing.  Either that or I was spending so much time working on this pointless Request for Proposal response at work that it sapped the wordy part of my brain dry.  Who knows?  Nevertheless, like the mail, Ten Happy Things must be delivered!  Have fun kids...

10.  Lookie here:

That's Graeme McDowell.  He's an Irish golfer I'm rather fond of.  He's the one in the pink.  The other dude is his caddy.  Anyway, that's Graeme celebrating his first PGA Tour win....which just so happened to be the US Open.  The final round of the US Open was on Father's Day.  Graeme's father was there at Pebble Beach all the way from Northern Ireland to watch his son play.  When he won, his little dad came sprinting out across the green with glee to hug and kiss his son.  He was kind of running and leaping for joy simultaneously.  It was AWESOME.  I love that shit.  I love watching parents freak out when their kids win sporting events.  I always end up crying along with them.  I actually have dreams of doing that one day....of getting to respond with overwhelming joy at my child winning some kind of sporting thing.  It could be the Olympics.  It could be Wimbledon.  It could be the Masters.  It could be a Little League game.  I don't care.  I just want to do it one day. 

9.  Wimbledon is underway.  So far, it's shaping up to be a weird one.  Players have won that should have lost and players have lost that should have won.  That kind of thing.  Lots of freakish circumstances.  That being said, there was some history recorded at Wimbledon this week....something we'll probably never see the likes of again.  John Isner, a top-30 ranked US player, and this Mahut guy from France engaged in an epic tennis battle that will go down as one of the most incredible displays of tennis ever seen.  At Wimbledon, you can't win with a tiebreaker.  If it gets to the fifth set (or third set for the women), you have to win by two and you just keep playing and playing until someone wins by two.  Case in point, Federer beat my Andy Roddick in the finals last year 16 to 14 in the fifth set.  After 11 hours and 5 minutes spanned across three days, John Isner finally beat Mahut with a score of 70 to 68 in the final set.  It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen on a tennis court.  By the time the match was called on account of darkness on day two of the match, both players looked like they were ready to die.  John Isner is 6'9" and 245 pounds.  That's a lot of man to be lugging around a tennis court all that time.  They even had to change the ball kids out a couple of times because the poor kids were ready to drop.  When the match finally ended and Isner won, the officials at Wimbledon made a big thing of it.  There were speeches and photographs and special gifts given to the players and the judges and whatnot.  It was incredible.  It was pure, raw competition.  Both players were ready to drop.  Both knew full well that they most likely would not be advancing much further beyond that match.....yet neither would back down.  It was truly, truly epic.  People ask me why I love tennis.  Stuff like that is why I love tennis.

8.  I'm not all into soccer/football/kickball.  I mean, I'm an American.  We just don't do soccer here.  I mean, we do but not really.  However, I do tend to watch the World Cup when it comes around.  The World Cup is interesting to me.  This year, watching the American team was kind of exciting.  They ended up getting eliminated in the knock out round by Ghana but considering that the American team had never gotten to the knock-out round before, it was a pretty damn good showing.  This, however, was the best part (and I apologize for the poor quality of this video but FIFA seems to have taken down all the of videos that don't suck):







That goal, scored in extra minutes, got them through to the round of 16.  They could not tie and they could not lose.  They had to win that match and they did with a clutch goal scored in overtime.  There was a small group of us watching it on my computer in my office and when Landon Donovan scored that goal, we all kind of ran around in a little circle.  It was really exciting.  I don't know why our men don't fare so well with soccer.  Our ladies kick ass at it.  The men, not so much.  I bet if we sent our women's team to the World Cup, they'd do better than the men.  This year, though, our boys did pretty good.  It was fun to watch......even if everyone in the whole world knows that Brazil is totally going to win.
7.  You ever have one of those moments where you're set up perfectly to use a quote from a movie and it's like you've waited your whole life for such a moment and then it's handed to you on a silver platter?  For example, a number of years back I was out with a friend for dinner at La Rosetta.  We were attempting to order when my date looked questioningly at the menu and then up at me asking "what's arugula?"  Like it was planned, I instantaneously plugged in that awesome line from My Blue Heaven - "Arugula.  It's a veg-e-table."  The waiter and I both nearly cheered with the gloriousness of the moment.  My date, unfortunately, didn't get it.  That was, I think, a decade or so ago.  By the grace of God, I was gifted with such a moment the other day.  My esteemed friend, Kung Fu Jonny, put this up as his Facebook status: "Does anyone know someone with a lathe?  I need to make arms for my wing chun dummy."  I couldn't believe my luck.  I mean, how often does the word "lathe" come up in conversation if you're not a furniture maker or Amish or something?  I was instantly reminded of one of my favorite movie quote moments of all time.  Observe:







That bit with Sam Rockwell...the part where he's all jazzed about the advice to construct a weapon and then comes up with "rudimentary lathe."  I always thought that was funny and then I found out what a lathe actually is and it got even funnier.  I could have kissed Jonny for leaving me such a gem to respond to.  It was a highlight.  It's the little things...

6.  My Sergio is not giving me many things to be gleeful about lately.  He's in a horrible slumpy rut, the poor kid.  It's beyond the point where he's just playing badly.  He looks like a lost soul just wandering around on the golf course.  I could probably beat him with the way he's been playing.  It's like he got his heart broken by that damn Morgan-Leigh Norman and he just can't bounce back.  I want to grab him and hug him and tell him it's all going to be okay.  Then I want to give him a glass of milk and a slice of chocolate cake and put him to bed.  That's how bad it is.  Most of the time, I want to rip his clothes off and bathe him with my tongue.  Now, I just want to mother him.  Let him lay with his head in my lap and have a good cry.  He looks like he needs it.  Poor shmoo.  Nevertheless, Twitter gave me this little bit and it tickled me to death.  Here, look:







I think that bit was filmed as part of an advertisement for the Adidas golf shoes Sergio wears.  I don't care what it was for.  It was great.  It brought me back to that place where I want to bathe him with my tongue.  It's the hat on backwards.  Holy shit.  I could devour that man.  I could be like "come over here and take every stitch of clothing off but your hat but turn the hat around backwards.  Now take a deep breath because this is going to take awhile."  Maybe he should quit with the golf and move on to football....or soccer....or kickball.  Whatever you call it.  Maybe he should do that.  He was actually going to back in 2003.  He owns a team in Spain and he was going to quit golf and go play with his team.  His mother talked him out of it.  Back then, I was relieved.  Maybe he had the right idea though.  He's pretty good at that keepy uppy thing.  Better than he is at golf.....at least lately.  Sigh.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Ryder Cup later this year will be like hitting a reset button for him.  He needs a reset.  Stupid Morgan.

5.  As many of you know, I have a Beagle.  Most of the time, I just refer to him as "The Beagle."  His name is Sammy but, like all the pets in my house, he answers to many names.  Being a Beagle, Sammy is gross.  It's just part of his breed.  Beagles like to find the grossest things in the world and either eat them or roll in them or both.  Sammy is famous for finding exquisitely awful smells in the yard and then rolling in them.  It's just his thing.  He'll sniff around and then find something and he's like "what's this!?!?  Is it dead???!!!  Did it fall out of some living creature's ass???!!!!!  YES!!!!!"  Every time he comes in from outside, we have to do the smell check on him to make sure he's not coated in something foul smelling and, often, gooey.  On the occasions that he is coated, he has to have a bath.  This is where the Happy Thing comes in.  There are few things in the world funnier than a post-bath Sammy.  During-bath Sammy is pretty funny in its own right.  He sits in the tub and I put the shower massage on him and he grunts and groans and revels in the glory of dog shampoo.  It's pretty comical.  When he gets out of the tub though.....look out!  I have to coat the bathroom floor with towels before he disembarks because he has the undeniable urge to dry his forward half on my bathroom rugs.  It's like some kind of a palsy he has.  He immediately starts rubbing his head and shoulders all over the floor.  I have to tackle him and towel him off.  Then I let him loose on the house.  He sprints all over the place like some sort of deranged maniac.  Being that Sammy is 12 years old and very fat, he doesn't often sprint.  When he's recently out of the tub though, he runs through the house like Usain Bolt.  It's friggin' hilarious.

4.  Go see A-Team.  Even if you didn't watch the show in the 80s, go see A-Team.  It.  Is.  AWESOME.  It's worth it just for Sharlto Copley.  He's that South African dude who was nominated for an Oscar for District Nine.  He plays Murdoch.  He's better than the original Murdoch.  Yeah, it's that good.  Go.  Go right now.  I'll wait here.

3.  People!!!!






HOLY SHIT!!!!!

2.  My lovers, it has returned!

The guiltiest of all the guilty pleasures has returned to us with season three.  My new favorite mantra is "conscious off, dick on."  And because God is a good and gracious Lord, the season premiere gave us a full-length shot of Eric naked from behind.  When his delectable naked ass graced the screen, I said "oh, thank you GOD!"  Alexander Skarsgard is proof that there is a God, he loves women, and he created Sweden by hand.  There should be international holidays dedicated to the celebration of Alexander Skarsgard's being.  As Sookie said in book four, "if there were an international butt competition, Eric would win hands down - or cheeks up!"

1.  You all should totally know what number one is.  I mean, come on.  Granted, I am a Penguins fan first and I will always be a Penguins fan first.  Like the Mets are my baseball wife and the Red Sox are my baseball mistress, the Penguins are my hockey wife and the Blackhawks are my hockey mistress.  In case you live under a rock and you haven't heard, the hockey mistress put out in a big, big way.  The Stanley Cup is in Chicago, folks!  There are two main reasons why this is awesome, at least for me.  One, the Hawks beat the Flyers to win the cup.  As a Penguins fan, there is nothing in the world that annoys me more than the damn Flyers.  Okay, I take that back.  Alexander Ovechkin annoys us Pens fans more.....but not by much.  I could stand the Pens not retaining the cup but there is no way in hell that the City of Pittsburgh was sending that Cup over to Philadelphia.  No way.  No how.  Chicago?  That's fine.  Philadelphia?  No effing WAY.  Two, I got to celebrate.  Let me explain.  All the teams that I root for the hardest are from cities I don't live in.  New York, Boston, Pittsburgh...  I love the Bears but they suck more than they win.  I'll root for the Cubs if they make the World Series but that's about as far as my Chicago baseball interest goes.  I don't watch basketball anymore so I don't care what the Bulls do, whether they get LeBron or not.  That being said, when my team wins it all, I never get to participate in the citywide celebrations that take place.  I watch on TV but it's not the same.  This time, it was different.  Blackhawks fever has totally encompassed all of Chicagoland and I get to revel in it.  I went to the victory parade.  I bought commemorative merchandise.  I celebrated with the masses.  I've never gotten to do that before.....and let me tell you, it's a sweet experience.  :o) 

Aside from the win itself, there were two particular things that stuck out for me.  One was courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.  All throughout the playoffs, the refereeing was really bad.  Blown calls left and right.  Just bad stuff.  Chicago watched in horror as the Flyers got away with murder game after game, especially on the part of Chris Pronger who fouled everyone in the arena without getting a call against him until the fourth game.  In response, the Chicago Tribune printed this gem:

Okay, that's the best thing EVER.  The Chicago Tribune is a nationally-recognized, reputable newspaper.....and they printed this on a full page.  It was GLORIOUS.  The second highlight was Jeremy Roenick.  Roenick is a hockey commentator now but he played for the Blackhawks back in 1992 when they lost in the Stanley Cup finals to Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins.  It was a devastating loss to the city.  Honestly, I feel bad being a Pens fan every time someone brings it up.  When the Hawks won this year, Roenick was visibly moved.  He was on national television in tears, simply overcome with emotion.  He actually said "for that kid that I saw crying as I left the ice after game four in 1992, I hope this makes up for it."  The other idiot with him was like "wow, this is really affecting you.  Why are so you so emotional?"  Really, dude?  Really?  Oh, I don't know, maybe because HE USED TO PLAY FOR THE BLACKHAWKS????  Ass.  I like my commentators to be unbiased while play is happening.....but when the game is over and a team has won that has a special tie to one of the commentators, I like to see the loyalty.  Roenick showed the loyalty.  You could tell that he still felt like a part of the team and that the ghosts of that loss back in 1992 were finally leaving him.  It was a great sports moment.  :o)  Since winning, the stupid Blackhawks have traded away half the damn team but that moment will prevail.  The image of Antti Niemi hoisting the Stanley Cup over his head will prevail.  Watching grown men who have been Hawks fans all their lives weep with glee will prevail.  God, I love sports.

So, there's that.  Sorry that it's a couple of days late.  I've been busy.  I'll do better next time, I promise.  Now, I must go vacuum.  Until next time, "conscious off, dick on!"