Mailbag

Inspired by Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, on ESPN.com, I have dedicated my piece today to the fans who write, email, call, or shout at me on the street. The life of a blogger can be overbearing and downright burdensome at times with the amount of fan mail received, but I try to get through each piece of correspondence, remain impartial and open to suggestion, and systematically ignore the ones I don't like.

Here is a random sampling from my mailbag this weekend. My responses are in bold.

Where do you get the ideas for your hilarious, yet brilliantly poignant blog entries? I am floored by the sheer greatness of everything that is YOU.

forever a fan.
~Kimberly, Sandusky, OH

This is clearly a real person writing a very sincere, heartfelt memo to her hero. I applaud you, Kimberly, for speaking so frankly, and for also being an actual reader who wrote in. In response to your question, the ideas for my entries are in fact a random splattering of a caffeine induced, ennui battling, writing binge. Or plagiarism.

I read somewhere that you are a big New England sports fan. Did you happen to see the Superbowl this year? 18-1, 18-1, 18-1. [S]ucker.

~Dickhead, NY, NY

No I didn't Dickhead, but thanks for the recap. I'm sure that you and your gap-toothed Strahan loving buddies aren't just embittered Yankees fans jumping on the bandwagon of Boston beating sports teams.

cLick HErE foR PeN1Le enLArgeMen!! CLik H@re,

~Anon.

I'm not sure how you got my contact information, or what exactly you are insinuating, but please stop sending me these emails.

Honey, your brother won't answer my phone calls. would you please call him and tell him to call me? I think I'm coming down with a cold, and the stress of those freakin' kids at school is wearing me down. Love you,

~Mom, Boxborough, MA

P.S. - I'll send out a care package this week, and throw in some more ointment for that pesky rash !

Haha, what rash!? Good one mom! Anyway, yeah fine, I'll call him. Jeez already. Could you also put some Oreos in the package? Not double stuff - that's just too much frosting. Thanks.

Keep writing people, you are the coal to my engine, the audience to my performance, and a great excuse to not write a legitimate entry.

Hmmm...

I just wrote, and then deleted, an entire paragraph about my morning routine of opening up this bank every morning. But I deleted it. For two very good reasons.

1) It compromises not only my safety, but the security of the bank.

2) As Tank so tactfully stated in The Matrix, it was some major boring shiaaat.

But, as I sit here on my $100 leather teller stool, book in hand, coffee next to me, sun peaking up over the horizon, with my ipod plugged into my personal stereo, I can't help but think that this gig aint so bad. I do have only one tiny, little, nagging beef with this whole setup.

It has to do with this ten foot long window that separates me from customers/weather/gun-weilding-bankrobbers. When the securities equipment installer was setting up our vault a few months ago, I asked him about the 'bullet resisting' capabilities of my little fishbowl.
"Well that glass there is level two protection" he said very matter of factly. I asked if it went any higher and he told me that level three was the highest. And it could block pretty much anything aside from armor piercing bullets.
Hmm, I though.
"So what does my level two glass do?"
Apparently, I learned, it will stop the bullets from weaker firearms, but anything heavy duty would go right through.
"It will slow the bullet down of course" he said reassuringly.
"So ducking is still the best policy?"
"Yes."
Hmm. I thought again. And then I tried, because I am very empathetic by nature, to understand the thought process behind buying 'level two' glass. I was picturing the bank president standing there talking to the general contractor.

Contractor: Have you made a choice on the armored glass for the teller window?
Prez: Well, do you have a level one?
C: That would just be straight glass, which we don't recommend.
P: And level two blocks most bullets?
C: Yes, but we recommend level three, its what most of our clien....
P (interrupting): And how much is this level three?
C: $100 more.
P: Hmmmm.
C: That could save someone's life.
P: Hmmm. (followed by an awkward pause)

At least that's how I play it out in my head. The same head that now ducks when a customer reaches for their glove box.

Free Fallin'

I know it's still winter and there is a thick,crusty dirty layer of snow burmed up against the sidewalks and street corners, and it may very well drop below zero on several occasions before it gets warmer, but I am already thinking about spring. Actually I think the promise of spring enters everyone's minds right after the first snowfall. There is a palpable excitement as the first flakes dance and twirl to the ground, and children watch as it amasses to wondrous heights in the lawn, blanketing everything with an innocent and pure coat of simplicity, covering the ugly scars of fall. That first wintery night, everyone cozies up in bed, reminiscing of those days that they were once children and couldn't wait to get outside and build snow forts and go sledding at murderous speeds down a hill.

The next morning you go outside to start your car staring numbly at the four solid inches of inconvenience that covers your entire vehicle and the entire road all the way to work, and think sh*t, this is going to be a long f-ing winter. From that point on, you stare straight ahead to April and don't look back.

Allow me to boomerang back from that digression to complete my train of thought. I am looking forward to spring for a specific reason: I want to skydive.

I am not sure I want to do this yet, but the idea has crossed my mind on numerous occasions. Now, being one who routinely sharts themselves during heavy turbulence on commercial flights, you might not think I am a prime candidate for death jumping (my new nickname). Actually during those times of turbulence I am commonly found gripping the hand rests with sweaty hands, trying to look like I am sleeping or reading as calm as Cool Hand Luke, when inside my too-f*ing-creative-for-my-own-good brain I am flipping out like a germaphobe on the subway who just realized he forgot his hand sanitizer. As each bump and jostle hits me, I just casually look out the window and think that wing is bending like a freaking diving board at fat camp.

The reason I am entertaining the idea of death jum...sky diving, is because you are strapped to a parachute. In my eyes, that is safer that any commercial flight. For example, if I'm flying Delta and the captain says "We're going down!" they tell you to buckle up. Buckle up! Sure, I'll strap myself right in here, you say we're going to hit mountains? I don't want to mss this one!

If I am skydiving and the captain says "We're going down" I'll say OK, peace out brotha! And hop out the back door.

So I’m pretty sure I'll do this. I'm almost committed to it. Let's just say that there is a good chance I will commit to the idea of checking this out.

Mr. Obama

I was lost in my own little world of embarrassing forgetfulness. The gentleman behind the plastic fold-out table gave me an impatient look and then glanced back at the line I was holding up. It wrapped all the way through the atrium, which was bustling with other fellow caucuser's. This was the biggest caucus he had ever seen, and there was some dumb-ass in the front gumming up the works.

I was starting to slightly panic now. I quickly glanced around, looking at people's pins and t-shirts. No help. I had no idea how to spell Obama's first name.

See, they give you a little blank slip of paper and tell you to write your candidates name on it. I now know that if I wrote 'Obama', it probably would have been sufficient, but for some reason I was haunted by the idea that Obama himself might actually read this ballot and be mortally insulted. After I finally snapped out of my twilight-zone funk and realized that 'the only black candidate' would probably work, I scribbled out Barack Obama.
Whew. Lucky guess.

What this caucus has taught me, besides spelling, is the love of the word 'caucus' in verb form. It's fine when used as a noun (e.g the DFL party caucus will be held in the auditorium of the middle school). But as a verb, it's incredibly fun to use. It's like that little dog Sam who is so disfigured that he's, in effect, spellbinding. It's hard to look away... (http://samugliestdog.com/). Caucus is the bastard child of the words 'mucus' and 'cock', which for me, adds a little flavor to it's sentences (e.g. People all over the state were caucusing all at once, and in record numbers tonight).

So I hope that everyone caucused last night (unless you voted in a primary...boooooring), and also that this word becomes a regular in the American vernacular, like 'sweet', or 'dude'. That's just one man's dream though. Caucus.

Los Diablos Part I

I just bought tickets to go out and visit The Angels, or as they say it in Mexico, Los Angeles. I haven’t been to LA since middleschool when I visited my aunt on Long Beach. Times were simple back then when a plane crash was my most troublesome thought. I couldn't have told you what the Crips or the Bloods were, or that Dr. Dre, that very year, was coming straight out of Compton. I did meet a very nice man on the plane who claimed to be an emerging musical talent. I wished him good luck as we parted ways in the terminal and he replied 'for shizzle, keep it rizzle'. I wonder what happened to that nice man.

This time around the wheel of fortune, I am worried. Not of any gang hailing from Inglewood, Compton or Long beach. But a much more dangerous, more powerful gang, straight out of Hollywood. A gang of sociopathic, morally corrupt, murderous movie stars. Ok, maybe they aren't murderous... yet.

Legend has it that if you turn off all the lights in your house, lock yourself alone in the bathroom and say 'Tom Cruise' into the mirror three times, he will 'apparate' right behind you like Dumbledore and turn you into a scientologist. I don't believe the urban legend myself, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to try to prove it wrong. The consequences are far too dire*.

The power of Hollyweird is so strong that it pulls people on from all over the country. A poor little girl named Britney was abducted at a young age, thrown into the LA combine and spit out into an insane asylum, sans underpants, a few years later. It's brutal. I'm packing extra undies.

Supposedly the gangs roam the treacherous streets of Hollywood boulevard and Rodeo drive. Women so eye-spinningly beautiful, trot down the marlble walks, like a rapala dancing in the light near the watery face of a north woods walleye. Once caught in the Siren's gaze, only a strong man can break free and live normally once again. The unlucky majority become obsessed and blinded, falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole until they reach the soul-sucking, bottomless pit of the Siren's inner ugly, and by that time it's too late. Far too late. You're doing lines of coke, spending each night clubbing, and find yourself on a pseudo-vegan diet. If I've seen it once, I've seen it a million times.

This is the stuff of nightmares.


* To reach level OT VIII (the highest level, like getting all the power-ups in video games), the total costs are estimated around $277,010.00. Says wikipedia.

Super Choke

Being a New England sports fan is awesome. When you live in New England.

Living in Minnesota, cheering for the powerhouse Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics is feeling more and more like being a New Yorker cheering for the Bronx Bombers in a Harvard Square bar.

After last night's game of rooting for the Pats in THE most historically significant super bowl in the past 20 years, and getting booed down by 'underdog-fever' friends, I am spent. I expect people to root for their home team, and I also appreciate people who choose a team to support before a game just for the value of entertainment, but being the only Patriots supporter, it was a lonely battle.

What I didn't expect though, was the unanimous intolerance of success that seems to be the growing motif. The Pats did not deserve the win last night. They did not play even close to their potential; blame it on Brady's ankle, on the aging front line, or whatever, but they didn't do what it takes to win a game. And the Giant's played like a possessed team, relentless in their blitzes and coverage.

But I would have been happy to see the Patriots win for the good of the sport, for a team that has the best coaching staff in the game, for the players that have dedicated their time and life to this game to be the best, for the discipline and professionalism unrivaled by any team possibly ever, and the chance for an undefeated season (when the field is so even and the margins of advantage so small). But, the underdog, for whatever reason, is now the new favorite and I have to accept that.

But don't feel bad for me, I'm a New England sports fan.

Working on it

I have eighteen minutes left in my window of freedom. The one hour glimpse of sunlight each day where they open the internet firewall like the gates of Mordor. Scratch that. Eight. Today is Friday so we all 'voluntarily' traipse around in these god-awful 'desert beige' sweaters. They somehow got selected by our Ricky Gervaise-esque office committee. It looks like someone on a strict oatmeal diet just vomited on my torso. (I picked a sweater vest. Just to make it look worse.)

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock. Five minutes. I use every ounce of my resourcefulness to get though each painstakingly boring day here. We have no customers. And I don't mean very few when i say no, I mean like stranded in the Gobi desert in the hot midday sun with nothing but dunes surrounding you and then you see something in the distance, something that could be... is it? It cant be! It's a person! Then you get super excited and giddy at the prospect as you scramble over dunes in the hot sand, only to find out the 'person' is the skeleton of a dead camel. You're screwed. That's how slow it is here.