Pardon The Interruption, Dude

I've gotta take a break from my day to tell you, we have some painters who have been working right outside my window today, and they have been providing me with free entertainment ALL DAY. They are basically the white trash, non-sports version of Wilbon and Kornheiser. They disagree on EVERYTHING, and as each argument runs its course, it finally boils down to each guy just yelling "Dude!" over and over again at each other, just like that scene in BASEketball, until finally they start trailing off, mumble "dude" one more time each and then fall silent until the next round starts up again about 3 minutes later. If I knew they were coming I would've brought a tape recorder. Here is a small sampling of their topics this afternoon:

Which is the best Family Guy episode of all time?

What is the best flavor of girl scout cookie?

If Spinal Tap had been a real band and sold cds and gone on tour after the movie, would they have been successful?

Finally, for 45 minutes STRAIGHT, they argued about a bunch of obscure bands I had never heard of, and whether or not they were considered bluegrass, hippie music, or a jam band. This one almost got violent, until finally cooler heads prevailed (i.e. I poked my head out the window and said, "Dudes, c'mon. Everyone knows that Slip Fire Light is totally bluegrass" and they busted out laughing.)

Now I'm no court stenographer or anything, but I started typing out some of their girl scout cookie argument as best as I could, it's pretty accurate:


Dude, caramel deelites are for pussies. Thin mints are where it's at.

Dude, thin mints? You can eat like 400 of them before you're full!

So what? Maybe I want 400 of them!

Dude, that's how you get so fat!

Fuck you, dude, I'll race you right now.

Race me to where, the girl scout cookie factory to get some more thin mints, fatass?

Oh, like you're better than me because you eat caramel deelites. That is the gayest name for a cookie I've ever heard. Deeeeeelite. You pussy.

They're awesome, dude! You eat one and tell me it's not awesome!

Dude, that's my point, dude. I don't want to eat just one...I'm not counting calories like you are, you little bitch.

Dude! Harsh.

Dude!

DUDE!

DUDE!

Dude.

Dude. Thin mints. For real.

Dude, I can't even reason with you anymore. Fuck this, I'm done.

Dude....

Dude.

So Long, Curtis

After flip-flopping on the decision more often than Bergman when he was choosing his favorite college basketball team growing up, I finally decided to pull the trigger and get rid of the Altima and get a new car.

It was a good run with Curtis and I, he always ran beautifully for me, and he accompanied me to 24 different states over the last 5 1/2 years. However, he has a flaw that I could not ignore anymore: He gets randomly beat up by strangers for no good reason more often than Daniel LaRusso. He was broken into twice; dinged by other car doors multiple times; got banged up by a coyote who tried to take a charge on the interstate in Wyoming; was the victim of some Altima-on-Altima crime, courtesy of Schne one drunken evening at Culligan Manor; and most recently, was the victim of one of the drunkest guys I've ever met in my life. My car was the nerdy kid on the playground who had to give up his lunch money to the bully every day, then went home from school starving and his parents wondered why he always ate so much food at dinner when he was a really skinny kid.

I hadn't cleaned out my car for a really really long time, and was surprised at what came out:

keg tap (no idea where this came from...I suppose probably a keg)

can of Axe bodyspray with a sell date of October 2002

Beastie Boys Anthology CD booklet

Crown Royal velvet pouch

2 souvenir golf balls, one from The Masters in 2005, the other from the 2006 PGA Championship at Medinah

3 pairs of sunglasses

softball jersey from 2005-2006 that smelled like the inside of a wooden leg, filled with microwaved diapers

My golf clubs

3-wood and 5-wood, banished from my bag because I can't hit them worth shit

Golf spikes

Softball spikes

Baseball glove, is it weird that I have only used glove my entire life? Seriously, the glove I used for fucking tee-ball, I still use today for softball.

Tennis racket

Old wooden baseball bat used for bouncy-ball home run derby

Frisbee golf discs

Box of 15 Titleist golf balls, unopened

6 tennis balls

Roughly 15 baseballs, from when I used to be an umpire and I would get back to my car and realize I still had the game balls in my pockets (sorry, CJ.)

In other words, I was basically driving around with a used sporting goods store in my trunk. I should've named my car Play-It-Again.

There were requests for me to put up pictures of the new Element on here, but I can't in good conscience do that. I would feel like one of those kids who sits in the K-mart parking lot and revs his engine and talks about how sweet his car is, along with 12 other losers who can't find anything better to do on a Friday night. Go do something productive and jerk off to 'The Fast and the Furious' or something. Also, it's an Element. It's blue and gray and looks like a box. If you haven't seen one yet, then you have been living in a cave for 4 years, and I'm not sure how you have internet access in there.

"I'd Rather Throw It On The Floor Than Give It To You"

Here is the story behind probably the most influential 12 words of my sophomore year of high school.

We're sitting at lunch, all of us crammed around the table in the sectors, wings, and outer rim (this could be another post about high school lunch in itself. People practically fought to the death to get a sector spot. Ridiculous.) Haley finishes his lunch, pushes his tray forward, puts his silverware on top, scoots his chair back and relaxes. Clearly finished with his meal. Somebody (my money is on somebody like Delisle or Brun-sack, I can't really remember) starts to reach for his unfinished french fries, stops, and asks, "Hey, you're done right? Can I have these?"

Haley, for whatever reason (what reason did Haley ever have for doing anything back then?) looks at him, slowly grabs a fistful of fries, and asks him, very slowly and deliberately (think De Niro in Goodfellas) "These fries? These fries right here?" And then threw them full force into the ground at his feet. "No. You can't have them. I would rather throw them on the floor than give them to you."

Ohhhh boy that's all it took. A phenomenom was born right then and there. For the next three or four months, you couldn't ask anyone for anything without it getting dumped on the floor. People would purposely not finish their lunch, just in the hopes that someone would ask for something, then you could whip it at the ground, crushing their hopes for your leftover breakfast bagel or garlic breadstick in the process. Virginia, the lunch lady, was NOT impressed, but this led to one of our favorite catchphrases of the year, when one day she was picking up our collection of smashed food off the ground and we heard her mutter (in a British accent, for some reason) "Damn sticky-fingered children."

So one day, months later, I was tiring of this whole game. It was getting out of control. I mean obviously I've never claimed to be mature by any means, but c'mon. We were throwing food around like it was kindergarten again. Daily. So I figure if I can get Haley to call it off, everyone else will follow suit.

So Haley and I are in the locker room before basketball practice. I'm munching on one of those giant boxes of Goldfish, like the milk-carton style box that had probably 7.5 pounds of Goldfish in it. Pretty typical pre-basketball 'snack' for me.

Haley looks over and innocently asks if he can have some. I stop and ponder in my head. This thing was completely full. Oh well, fuck it. And I look at him, and I smile, and he knows what's coming next. I pour out the ENTIRE carton of Goldfish on the locker room floor and tell him, "I would rather dump out this entire box than give one single Goldfish to you."

As Haley was rolling around on the disgusting locker room floor, desparately trying to salvage whatever Goldfish were stacked on top of other ones, he repented over and over again for starting such a vicious and unnecessary game. And I smile and say, "Worth it." And that was the end of that.

P.S. Bergman has started a blog, his shit has been linked. As long as this doesn't turn into a replay of when we were 14 years old and he copied everything I said and passed it off as his own, to the point where people would dismissively shake their heads at me and tell me "you sound just like Bergman" then we'll be cool.