The G-Chat Diaries, Vol. 9

Chatter X: Fun fact: I just had to correct the spelling of “Boyz II Men” in someone's essay.

WWW: Awesome. Did you have to correct it because they spelled it...correctly?

Chatter X: Hee, you guessed it!

WWW: I hope they even used the word "to" instead of II.

Chatter X: They did! "Boys To Men".

WWW: That makes it even better.

Chatter X: It's fun to be the 30-something teacher correcting the whacked-out spelling of an R&B artist's name.

WWW: Oh, the irony. I think you just made it into the G-Chat Diaries.

Chatter X: w00t!

Counterfactual Football

It is a well-established fact that Blogland is deserted on the weekends, so I am going to take this opportunity to slip a football-related post under the radar. Not only a football-related post, but a post that requires you to be insanely into football to appreciate. In other words, I should have just emailed it to MJenks.

I was talking with a friend about the recent signing of Michael Crabtree by the San Francisco 49ers. Crabtree was the last draft pick to sign, waiting until four games into the season to realize that he can't make any money until he signs a contract. I said that I thought Crabtree's attitude and long holdout would make him a bust. My friend, who is a Raider fan (poor guy) agreed and hilariously added that the Raiders would find a way to give the New England Patriots their first round pick for him. I decided to try to figure out a way that this could be possible, despite the fact that the Patriots are not involved in these events at all. This is what I came up with:

1. Crabtree is a bust and the 49ers cut him after the 2011 season because they can't find a trade partner.

2. Several teams show mild interest, but a humbled Crabtree chooses the Patriots and their offer of the league minimum for the chance to be Bill Belichick's next reclamation project and to catch passes from Tom Brady in the twilight of his career.

3. The Patriots showcase Crabtree in several preseason games, forcing him the ball in the second half against soon-to-be-unemployed defenders. "Unnamed sources" whisper that the team is high on him and he is expected to start.

4. Hearing the rumor, the Raiders offer their first round pick in 2013 and undrafted rookie wide receiver Alan Smithee for Crabtree. The Patriots "grudgingly" accept.

5. The cryogenically frozen head of Al Davis declares a new age of vertical offense in Oakland, built around the talents of Crabtree and rookie QB Ken Stabler, Jr. Davis' head refers to the Raiders as "an elite NFL franchise" six times in the four-minute press conference.

6. The Raiders start the 2012 season 0-6. Crabtree and offensive coordinator Art Shell (on his fourth tour of duty) get into a shoving match on the sideline during a 37-6 loss to the Chiefs.

7. The Raiders collapse and finish 3-13, securing the first pick in the 2013 draft...for the Patriots. Meanwhile, in New England, Alan Smithee catches 89 passes and wins the Offensive Rookie Of The Year award.

8. The Patriots make 17 trades on draft day, eventually parlaying the #1 pick and some spare parts into the entire third round of the draft.

Go on, tell me it's that unreasonable.

Rocking For The Weekend: Bobby Patterson

Bobby Patterson will kick your ass. I'm a big soul fan, and "T.C.B. Or T.Y.A." is one of my favorite soul songs of all time. Listen to this song and you'll be ready to mix it up on Friday night. You also won't take any guff from your man or woman, as the case may be. Have a great weekend!

Fun With Camera Phones, Vol. 2

After ten years of using, watching and dodging golf carts at work, I finally encountered the Holy Grail of cart-related buffoonery - a car vs. golf cart accident!

Someone I work with was pulling into their parking spot on the lot when a golf cart screamed around a corner like it was 11:58 and they were trying to return a movie to Blockbuster.¹ The path of the cart was perpendicular to the car, so the cart had to swerve to avoid T-boning it. Swerve it did...right into a concrete wall. We heard it immediately from our office, and rushed out expecting to see two crumpled cars. Instead we saw a golf cart against the wall with the windshield in pieces on the ground and the driver looking spooked and sheepish, which is a really difficult combination of looks to pull off. Curiously, he didn't drive off in the cart. He put the broken pieces of windshield in the bed and wandered off without it. I hope he didn't think he was going to get away with it, because eventually someone was going to wonder where the golf cart went.

The silver car in the foreground is the car that almost got hit.
In the bed you can see the broken windshield, and in the
back you can see building 732, where I work.

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen this before. Golf carts at movie studios are used about 50% for legitimate work and 50% for tomfoolery. Kind of like the cop car in Superbad. People take corners on two wheels, people race them², and if you happen to work at Universal people drive up to the road used for the studio tour and buzz trams full of tourists. It's pretty fun - if you wave at one of the trams, everyone will whisper, point and take photos while trying to figure out if you're famous. Unless you crash while they're watching. Then they probably just point and laugh.

On the wall you can see the mark the tire made
when the cart slammed into it.

1. I used to be a Blockbuster manager, and I saw more reckless driving there between 11:55 and midnight than I've seen the whole rest of my life combined.

2. It's especially fun to race them at the studio I work for now. Most places put something called a "governor" on the carts to restrict their speed, but my current place of employment does not. So it's likely that the moron in this case was going upwards of 20 miles per hour.

Rocking For The Weekend: The Hold Steady

I'm going to send you off this Friday with a truly rocking song from The Hold Steady, "Constructive Summer". If you ever thought Springsteen was cool but wished he cranked it up to 11, this is the band for you. They're phenomenal live, so go see them and then buy all their records. No pressure. Enjoy the weekend!

Gonna Sigh Now

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to get fit and lose approximately six hundred pounds. Despite encouraging reports that the world’s fattest man had become engaged to be married¹, I reckoned that a fitter, thinner me would enjoy improved confidence and quality of life.

Displaying a level of both fiscal responsibility and pragmatism that most gym-belonging humans never reach, I quit the gym a year ago because I never went. Not eager to pay the exorbitant fee required to sign up yet again, I recalled that my apartment building has a fitness room. In advance of my first workout, I went down to see what kind of equipment was there.

To my dismay, I found a graveyard of broken equipment that would look very much at home in Miss Havisham’s decaying mansion. There was a Nautilus weight machine with a broken cable and a missing pull-down bar. There was a stationary bike that worked in the sense that the pedals turned, but the electronics were ripped out. There was a step machine with steps that sank straight to the floor and exhaled with a “thoooop” as soon as you stepped on them. There was a trampoline that was intact, but rather inadvisable for use in a room with an eight-foot ceiling. And there was a treadmill that sort of worked. The treadmill runs, but that’s a very generous description. The destroyed plastic overlay makes the control panel nearly impossible to read, the machine has a habit of shutting off by itself when you raise the speed past 3.5 mph, and it also arbitrarily raises the incline by as much as 15 degrees in a matter of seconds entirely on a whim.

I briefly considered living out my remaining years as a fat man, reasoning that at this rate at least there wouldn’t be many of them. I also toyed with the idea of performing an exorcism on the treadmill. But as always, we find our redemption in the movies.

I had recently watched one of the gems of American cinema, Rocky IV. As you surely recall, this is the one where Apollo Creed is beaten to death in the ring by a steroid-gobbling Russian meathead, prompting Rocky to travel to the Soviet Union to train and then avenge his fallen friend by fighting the commie cyborg in Moscow.² In an attempt to prevent Rocky from properly preparing for the fight, his Russian hosts put him up in a log cabin in the middle of Siberia with no modern amenities or training facilities. However, in a stirring montage to the strains of a Survivor song that is not “Eye Of The Tiger”³, Rocky trains with what is available to him. He chops wood, rolls logs, runs in the snow and pulls a donkey cart. The clear implication is that Rocky has been toughened by his experience and is better prepared for the bout than his Soviet counterpart, who is shown in very antiseptic environments getting shot up with needles and working out amid enough technological machinery to launch a Space Shuttle.

Of course, this leads to Rocky not only winning the fight but getting an arena full of commies, soldiers and KGB stooges to chant his name, much to the consternation of an actor portraying Mikhail Gorbachev. I decided that much like Rocky, I would use the sad state of the fitness room as motivation. No fancy chichi gym with plasma TVs and safe, operational equipment for me! I’m getting down in the muck and slugging it out with both my flabby body and that broken down crap!

It’s been three weeks. The stationary bike is somewhat usable but frustrating. I’ve managed to work around the treadmill’s quirks to a degree. I’ve even added “Gonna Fly Now” to my workout mix.

But on the whole, I’d rather pull a donkey cart.



1. Where does he even meet girls? Honestly. Unless his wang is the fattest one in the world too, I don’t get it.

2. If Rocky had only realized that this was no fearsome warrior, but merely Dolph Lundgren, I imagine a lot of this nonsense could have been avoided.

3. I didn’t know there were any others, either.

Rocking For The Weekend: Matthew Sweet

Welcome to a new feature at Words, Words, Words...Rocking For The Weekend! Every Friday I'll post a fun song I love that is perfect for flying out the door at 5pm on Friday (or 8pm if you're me) and cranking the stereo on the way home.

Well, maybe not every Friday. But at least until I am sick of it. (See "Seven Word Sunday" food posts.)

Today's song is "Girlfriend" by Matthew Sweet. It rocks. It's one of my ten favorite songs of all time, and the drum break is sick. Enjoy!