My Friday Night Lights Conundrum

Summer TV is awful. There’s no way around it. Every once in a while you’ll find a show that’s worth your time, but for the most part I use the summer to catch up on shows that I’ve been wanting to see for one reason or another. This summer I started watching Friday Night Lights and I just finished Season 1.

Friday Night Lights is a show that, frankly, I’ve avoided for a while. It’s one of those shows where people have set expectations so high that I didn’t see how it could possibly live up to them all. But everybody who has seen the show raves about it. Bloggers, co-workers, family, TV critics… really anybody whose opinion I respect enjoys Friday Night Lights.

So why do I hate it?

Hate may be a strong word, but I was really, really disappointed in it. I was lead to believe that this was a solid show, one that was very well done, but almost everything in it felt like a guilty pleasure show. One that you watch even though it’s just ridiculous. And I’m really confused how I’m the odd man out here.

Now, of course this is predicated on my assumption that the rest of the show is a lot like Season 1. That’s probably wrong. I’m sure it gets better, at least I’d like to think so. But I can’t see how people would love it so much after the first season.

Let’s just jump right into the problems I had with the show. The first is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show with SO MANY unlikable and irredeemable characters. I can group everyone in the show so far into three different groups.

Characters I really liked:

Coach Taylor
Tami Taylor
Tim Riggins
Tyra Collette

Characters that I didn’t like the majority of the time, but had a few good moments:

Landry Clarke
Matt Saracen
Buddy Garrity
Herc

Characters that annoyed the shit out of me all the time:

Lyla Garrity
Julie Taylor
Smash Williams
Jason Street
Waverly

The top group was outstanding and was pretty much responsible for the only parts about the show I enjoyed. But there was only four of them out of 13 that I just named. .308 may be good for baseball, but for a show it’s piss poor.

There’s so many other parts of the show that I hated that it’s impossible for me to get them all down in a coherent manner, so I’m just going to list them in the order they come in to my head.

Every football scene: Particularly the game where the other team is taking “The Longest Yard” type cheap shots at the Panthers and there are no penalties being called. Are you kidding me? But that was just the worst offender. Every second of football action was painful to watch, even up to the reaction shots after the Panthers win the state championship at the last second after overcoming a 0-26 deficit. When that happens, I don’t care who you are, you lose your mind. Completely. Way too many shots of people smiling happily in the stands after that one.

Lyla destroyed her dad’s auto dealership: This was never addressed later. Ever. She smashes something like 5 different cars and wrecks the actual building, but there were no repercussions whatsoever. In fact, she goes back to her dad’s dealership to return the car he gave her, and there’s no mention of it and the place looks fine. There’s a scene later where she drives up behind her boyfriend to see him kissing another girl. I was rooting for her to just slam into his truck and have that just be the thing she starts doing.

The cheating: Lyla cheats on her newly paralyzed boyfriend with his best friend almost IMMEDIATELY, which is like the shittiest thing in the world, but then when other people around her cheat, she acts like it’s the most unforgivable thing ever and immediately cuts those people out of her life. Also, after people find out about Lyla and Tim hooking up, Lyla is immediately shunned as a harlot by all the cheerleaders before their big cheerleading competition and Tim gets his ass kicked and his car beaten in by his teammates. Yes, you read that right. The offensive line beat the crap out of one of their best players during the season because they heard a rumor that he slept with their ex-quarterback’s girl. Who does that? Actually, don’t get me started on the state championship-winning offensive line led by some red-headed chubby kid. Not gonna happen.

High Schoolers: Look, I get that it’s a show about high schoolers and they can’t actually have everyone act like high schoolers, because then everyone would be an idiot instead of just 90% of everyone. But the things they have high schoolers do and say are ridiculous. There’s a scene where Smash, his girlfriend, and their friends sit around a diner talking about what poets they like and reciting poetry. Seriously.

I didn’t hate everything. I loved all interactions between the big four, as I call them. I loved the inspirational moments pertaining to football, like when Coach Taylor takes his team out in the middle of the night to run them and bring them together. But there was so much bad that it overran the good.

I actually forgot that Minka Kelly was attractive, because everything about her, from her voice to the faces she makes are too annoying to see past. Do you understand how difficult that is? So many of these characters just suck. I liked Landry okay, but there was a part where he gets mad at Saracen because he treats him like a punchline, even though everything he had done up to that point was be a punchline. There was no actual depth to him for the first 20 episodes.

Even after all this, I’ll still probably keep watching. I really have to see why everyone loves this show so much. I can’t possibly be the one person I know that thinks Friday Night Lights is stupid. Maybe if I keep watching it will all make sense.

Or maybe you can just tell me why. I seriously want to know why you love this show and why I should love it too.

Somebody please just explain this to me.

Caltrain

I don’t like other people.

Don’t get me wrong, I probably like you. If you’re reading this, there’s a 95% chance that I know you, so you’re already on the right track. But I really hate strangers.

You know on movies where people ride the train know each other and start conversations at random? Yeah, that doesn’t happen. In real life, my ultimate goal is to carve out as much personal space as possible and guard that with my life. You stay out of my way, we can be cool. You infringe on my space, we got issues.

I deal with this every day when I commute one hour from San Jose to San Francisco on Caltrain. Thankfully it’s not BART. BART is an anarchy ruled mostly by the homeless. I’m talking about Caltrain, Smokey, this isn’t Nam. There are rules.

There are two levels on Caltrain.

The first level, I don’t bother with. Everything looks like this:

The seats are extremely close together so that my knees are pushed up against the back of the chair in front of me. I’m a tall guy. These things were not made for me. Which is why I work to get around these restraints.

Oh, and as you can see, there’s the option for somebody to sit next to me. No thank you. Space = invaded. Actually, since I’m most likely the bigger person in each scenario, I’m automatically encroaching on their space. Either way, no fun for anybody.

The second level is exactly like that, only there are single seats. So my knees are still jammed, but at the very least I don’t have to share that discomfort with anybody pushed up against my side.

However, and this is a giant however, there are two seats that offer a reprieve from the harsh white person problems I face on a daily basis.

The first is at the front of the second level:

If you can’t tell, those are two seats directly across from one another. Now, this may not seem ideal, but the seats are so close, SO CLOSE TOGETHER, that it is understood that this is one seat. One glorious seat where you can stretch your legs out (when the conductor isn’t looking, they really hate that feet on the seat thing) or at the very rest your knees against the cushion of the other seat.

This one is risky, though, because some people don’t always follow that unspoken rule. Sometimes a woman (always a woman, sorry ladies) will say “hey, there’s an open seat!”

Listen bitch, I know it LOOKS like there are two seats here, but you best take a closer look. Sitting across from me requires that I angle my legs as much as humanly possible so that you can do the same and we can both coexist miserably. Thanks for that. You’re lucky that I’m only an asshole in the privacy of my own home and don’t stand my ground, forcing you to sit on in your seat in the fetal position.

The other option, the one I prefer, looks like this:

Do you SEE that gloriousness? A double row, nestled in the back, with a seat that has NOTHING in front of it. Can you imagine the stretched-out glory that results from sitting in that seat? It’s like my own day spa for one hour. Reclining like a king, propping my foot up against the railing, working on my computer without it bumping up against the seat in front of me, even away from the glare of the window seat. It’s AMAZING.

Now, there are two instances where this is taken away and I am nearly driven to commit a crime.

1) There is a tiny-ass woman sitting in that seat.

This almost never happens. 99% of the time, it’s another guy sitting there, and 99% of those times it’s a guy big enough not to incur my wrath. In those cases, you got there before me, kudos to you. But if it’s someone just chilling there who CLEARLY does not need that God-given extra leg space…

2) Somebody is sitting in the seat next to the window.

This drives me nuts more than anything else. Say the second level is sparsly occupied, there are plenty of single seats available, but somebody has decided to go all the way to the back AND NOT USE THE SEAT WITH THE LEGROOM! So I can’t be the asshole that plops down next to them when there are dozens of single seats available. I have to go cram into one of those while the most coveted seat on the train gets occupied by some asshole’s bag.

All I want is to get on the train, not have anybody get close to me, be comfortable and not have anybody get in the way of my comfort while they’re staying out of my way.

Is that too much to ask?

New Batteries

I bought new batteries this weekend.

That may seem like a simple statement to you. It’s not. That’s because I’m a man.

Men don’t buy batteries. You know why? Because we JUST bought batteries last year, and there’s no way we used up the entire pack already. They’re around here somewhere. I’m not going to go out and buy a whole new pack of batteries when there are perfectly good ones around here somewhere.

So I’ll continue to use my electric shaver that’s so close to dead that it’s basically sawing the whiskers off my chin one by one. And my electric toothbrush magically becomes a regular toothbrush. Kind of like how an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs.

And if I’m lucky enough to ever find a battery lying around somewhere, it’s never a new battery. It’s always just an old battery that when I replaced it I kept it around just in case. What that just in case actually was, I have no idea. But maybe there’s .01% more juice in it, so I feel like I accomplished something in helping keep whatever electronic tool I have functioning for just a little bit longer.

The same goes for razor blades. Do you know how expensive those shits are? To get an idea of how men use razor blades, please consult this 100% accurate graph:

And just like with the batteries, we might change that last blade to another one that we have rattling around in our drawer. That will of course end up being one of the first 3 blades that we kept, subconsciously knowing that the time would come when that last blade would actually be worse than one of the blades we discarded for it. Of course we won’t throw that last one away. We’ll keep it. Just in case.

Do you see what I’m getting at? We never get new things because the old things are just good enough to get by. And even if they’re not good enough, we make do anyway.

Which is why it was such a drastic move to get new batteries. And you know what?

IT WAS AMAZING.

My chin hairs don’t feel like they are being pulled individually. Everything is even. The left side doesn’t look better because the razor basically ran out of juice by the time I got to the right side.

And my toothbrush? Holy shit. It’s like I’m power blasting the plaque off my teeth. I hardly need to move it myself. It’s kind of got a mind of its own. My head tingles after I use it. IT TINGLES I TELL YOU!

Emboldened by this new turn of events, I got some new razor blades. Now it hardly feels like I’m shaving. I finally understand those commercials when they say it glides. Oh, how long it has been since a razor glided down my neck and didn’t feel like a rusty push lawnmower on my skin.

This is when it starts to get dangerous, though. What other parts of my life have suffered because of my lack of new things? Now I need new lightbulbs. Brighter ones! Deodorant that’s not at the end of its life. Underwear with no holes. Knives that are actually sharp! BARBECUE SAUCE WHERE I DON’T HAVE TO SHAKE THE BOTTLE UPSIDE DOWN FOR 20 MINUTES JUST TO GET A LITTLE FART OF BARBECUE SAUCE ON MY DAMN BURGER! THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

Then I see how much a two-pack of underwear costs. You’re kidding me. That much?

Screw it. If it still has a waistband, it stays in the rotation.

New batteries were a nice change of pace, I’ll admit it, but let’s not get too crazy here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if I can get a little more toothpaste out of this.

Why “Save Me San Francisco” Is the Worst Song Ever Written

I don’t know if everyone in America has had the pleasure of listening to Train’s new single “Save Me San Francisco,” or if I’m just especially fortunate because I happen to live in the bay area. All I know is that every time it comes on the radio, I want to turn my car into oncoming traffic or at least find Pat Monohan wherever he is and run him down. It’s the most shameless attempt to create an anthem for a city that I’ve ever heard.

It’s like Monohan thought to himself, “Hey, Jay-Z is raking it in with his Empire State of Mind song, and Randy Newman has been cashing in on We Love L.A. for years. I should write a song for San Francisco and live the rest of my life off royalties whenever they inevitably play the hell out it there.”

So maybe my problem isn’t so much that Train’s song is shitty, it’s that the radio stations around my area have fallen for it. “OMG, you guys, it’s a song that says our city by name! How exciting is that??” Actually, no, my problem is with the song. I love Empire State of Mind. Jay-Z knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote that song, but at least he had the decency to make it good. Fucking Train has somehow made San Francisco even more unbearable now because this song has started to catch on. They’ve already started playing it at Giants games. It’s becoming a damn epidemic.

Let’s take a look at what makes this song so damn awful in the first place.

I used to love the Tenderloin
Until I made some tender coin
And then I met some ladies from Marin

Thank goodness we get to the name dropping right off the bat. At first I thought he was talking about meat in that first line, but oh no, he’s talking about the neighborhood in San Francisco. It’s basically the slums. He used to love it, but then he made some money and got the hell out of there to Marin, the county which just so happens to have the fifth highest per-capita income in the nation. So you’re saying you got rich and hightailed it out of that shit hole to yuppie central. Way to speak to the common man.

And can we talk about that first rhyme? “Hey, what’s something that rhymes with Tenderloin? Um… tender… COIN! Tender coin! Now we’re cookin’ with gas!” I’d call that lazy, but that’s just an insult to my people.

We took the highway to The One
Up the coast to catch some sun
That left me with these blisters on my skin

Oh, snap! He said “The One!” He’s one of us. Let’s buy this immediately because Train’s just like us! The insider name-dropping is already too pretentious to bear. And now it sounds like he’s pro skin cancer.

Don’t know what I was on
But I think it grows in Oregon,
So I kept on goin’ going on right through

Ooh, nice sly reference to smoking weed there, Pat. Now you can catch the stoner crowd from San Francisco, too. Doesn’t matter that most of them are too busy with their drum circle to actually listen to Train. As long as you make sure you’ve got the yuppie Marin pot-smoking demographic, you’re still good to go.

I drove into Seattle rain
Fell in love then missed the train
That could have took me right back home to you

Isn’t this supposed to be a song about San Francisco? Quick, let’s get back there, I think you’re starting to lose people. Just do some non-sensical rhymes and throw the city’s name in there.

CHORUS:
I’ve been high, I’ve been low
I’ve been yes and I’ve been oh, hell no!
I’ve been rock ‘n roll and disco
Won’t you save me San Francisco?

I know it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to thoroughly analyze the lyrics of the same guy who wrote Drops of Jupiter, but seriously, what the fuck does this mean? There’s no other explanation than he just started with “San Francisco” and worked backwards. “What goes with disco? Rock ‘n roll and disco? Well, looks like I’m working with opposites here. I’ve been high, I’ve been low…”

Why stop there? Come on, this is easy.

I’ve been hot, I’ve been cold
I’ve been bought and I’ve been sold

I’ve been black, I’ve been white
I’ve been wrong and I’ve been oh so right
(as if he wouldn’t rip of Michael Jackson)

I’ve been big, I’ve been small
I’ve been short and I’ve been tall
(wouldn’t put this past them either)

Basically, the shit isn’t hard to do. So he does some opposites and asks San Francisco to save him. From what? From polar opposites? Is this saying that San Francisco is just right in the middle. Come to San Francisco and be mediocre!

Every day so caffienated
I wish they were Golden Gated
Fillmore couldn’t feel more miles away

Durr, people in San Francisco drink a lot of coffee. Way to go on that one. And you wish your days were more Golden Gated? What the fuck does that even mean? How is that different from caffeinated? You just need to cram Golden Gate in there somehow. Admit it, Pat.

And gotta get The Fillmore in there. Excellent job with the word play. Fillmore and feel more? Genius. Just genius.

So wrap me up return to sender
Let’s forget this five-year bender
Take me to my city by the bay!

Talking about your city by the bay just makes me remember Journey’s Lights, and how they already did what you did, only without sucking.

I never knew all that i had
Now Alcatraz don’t sound so bad
At least they have a hella fine merlot

What? You love Alcatraz so much that being locked up in Alcatraz doesn’t sound so bad? And I really hate to break it to you, Pat, but Alcatraz wouldn’t have a Merlot. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be “hella” fine, because Merlot just sucks. Shut up.

If I could wish upon a star
I would hitch a cable car
To the place that I can always call my own!

Let’s see, Golden Gate Bridge, check. The Fillmore, check. Alcatraz, check. Cable cars…ooh, I need to get cable cars in there!

I’ve been high, I’ve been low
I’ve been yes and I’ve been oh, hell no!
I been rock ‘n roll and disco
Won’t you save me San Francisco?
I’ve been up, I’ve been down
I’ve been so damn lost since you’re not around
I been reggae and calypso
Won’t you save me San Francisco?

More additions to the chorus. How did I not think of that up and down one myself? Maybe Pat Monohan deserves a little more credit. Either him or his seven-year-old niece that he called up to help him write this song.

To tell you the truth
I miss everything, everything
It’s a wild, wild beautiful world
But there’s a wide eyed girl back there
And she means everything, everything

The one part of the song that doesn’t actually namedrop shit about San Francisco, and somehow manages to be the least terrible thing about the song. Imagine that.

I’ve been stop
I’ve been go
I’ve been yes and I’ve been oh, hell no!
I’ve been rock ‘n roll and disco
Won’t you save me San Francisco?
I’ve been up, I’ve been down
I’ve been so damn lost since you’re not around
I’ve been reggae and calypso
Won’t you save me San Francisco?

And with repetition of the last chorus, the song mercifully ends. I have to say that writing this is the first time I ever truly got to the end of the song without changing the radio station. It was not easy.

I don’t know what this accomplished. Nothing, I guess. It was just something that needed to be said. I’m all for writing an anthem that a city can stand behind, but hack work like this just makes me sick. It’s a half-hearted attempt from Train to overtake Journey as San Francisco’s band of choice and the fact that it’s getting airplay for whatever reason is beyond me.

I feel like I need to go listen to Rebecca Black’s “Friday” just to cleanse my palet of this awful song.

Ugh.

Hiatus

Hey everyone,

I would like to apologize to anyone who has checked into my blog in the past two months or so.  Ever since I got my internship writing for Bleacher Report, I haven’t had the time to write in my blog.  My internship is coming to a close and, while I’m looking to get a writing job elsewhere, I’m hopeful to return to my blog in the near future with a renewed sense of direction and dedication to writing daily.

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog and supported me.  Please check out my articles over at Bleacher Report and I will see you back here very soon.

Matt

Registering

Getting married is a lot like graduating from college.  Everything leading it up to it was supposed to have prepared you for it, but when the time comes you start to wonder if maybe you should have studied more and not gone out drinking so many Tuesday nights.  Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but there’s also gifts!  That’s right, another time in your life where people get the news in the mail and think “Wow, that’s so great for him,” then immediately think, “Crap, I have to give them money don’t I?”

Registering was, in my mind, a magical thing.  Gone were the days of getting a present like a dictionary (coughDadcough) for such an occasion.  Now I would get to go to the stores and tell people what I want.  It’s brilliant!  I would go to sleep at night with visions of HD TV’s and Blu Ray players dancing in my head (hey, people could go in on gifts together, it happens).  However, those dreams were dashed when I was presented with The Checklist.

Yes, there was an actual checklist with suggestions on what you might need and how many you might need, which I had to go over with Abby a few times.  Not an HD TV in sight.  Instead I got to spend some time figuring out how many vases we would need to register for, find out the difference between a euro sham and a standard sham, and decide if we even needed some of the things on the list (Ice bucket – no, broiling pan – yes, deep fryer – …maybe).  And deciding how many of something we needed wasn’t enough, we had to figure out what color it had to be.  And when I say “we,” I mean “we.”  To Abby’s credit, my opinion is actually important to her.  That’s nice, but sometimes it can be problematic when I don’t actually have an opinion.

Here’s a big difference between men and women.  When men answer a question with “whatever makes you happy,” we honestly believe that is a valid response.  It doesn’t really matter to me what color our blender is, so when I tell her to get whatever makes her happy, I see that as being a nice thing to say, and that I care about her happiness.  However, Abby hears “I don’t care, I’m bored, I will be absolutely no help and this is all your responsibility.  Have fun, I’m going to go watch sports and drink beer.  If we ever have kids I won’t help with them either.  Also I’m cheating on you.”  Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the fact of the matter is, it’s important to women that we have at least some opinion on these sorts of things, even if we don’t.

After we had decided on what we needed, how many we needed, and what color we needed (P.S. – the answer to the latter was mostly “something fun!”) we headed off to the actual stores to get started.  I was looking forward to using the little scan gun because, let’s face it, anything is more fun for guys if we get to shoot something, even if it is a harmless little bar code.

We started at Target where we decided to jump on the kitchen aisles.  I knew it was going to be a long afternoon/evening when it took us half an hour just to get through a single aisle.  Seriously.  I have learned certain things out in California, such as how you can’t just get wine glasses; you need to get white wine glasses and red wine glasses.  Abby liked the stemless ones, but she also liked the ones with stems.  Bear in mind, this is the first thing we came to and I’m already being presented with such a quandary.  We ended up with a mixed bag of stemless and stemmed (later we came to the conclusion that the stemless ones could also double for champagne to go along with the couple of champagne flutes we registered for.  And there is the most thought I have ever put into what I will drink wine or champagne out of).  One highlight though was that I got to register for some sweet pilsner glasses.  Guys, if you are reading this and you’re coming to my wedding, get me those.

Remember that part I mentioned just a bit ago about my opinion mattering?  Well, I found out that my opinion really should be limited to the kind of item, not if the item is necessary.  After about the fifth time of saying, “I don’t know, do we need it?” Abby went “Is that all you’re going to say?”  Lesson learned, men: we need everything in the kitchen section of Target, just get used to that fact.

I’m not saying that I didn’t get into it.  I got excited about some things and had actual opinions about certain things such as towels (I like soft towels, but sometimes the softest ones don’t actually retain water, they just kind of disperse it around your body instead of absorbing).  There were also various other gadgets that I was highly in favor of (Panini press? Yes please).

Finally, we were finished… with the first store.  Four hours in Target was just Phase I.  It was on to Macy’s after some much needed dinner and sitting.  Fortunately Unfortunately Macy’s was closing in an hour, so we only had a short period of time to get started.  Considering the circumstances, we went straight to the most vital thing that a young couple could possibly need: china.  Yes, China.  Nothing like shelling out a grand for some plates that you’ll use twice, maybe three times a year.  Obviously I see things a little differently than Abby.  Now, Abby is fiercely patriotic and will only register for China that was made in America, so that thank you Lord narrowed our options a bit.

I promise that by this point, I really was trying to give my opinion on things as much as possible.  I would tell her which patterns I liked and which ones I didn’t.  Obviously it didn’t matter to me much, but there were opinions buried deep down inside me that I just had to find and let out.  Abby liked one of the patterns I liked, but she liked another one more.  After a little while it seemed like that would be the one we were going to register for, but at that moment I pictured having friends and family over for Thanksgiving or Christmas and eating on those plates for the rest of my life and almost without realizing it was happening I found myself blurting out, “But they’re so girly!”

Again, to Abby’s credit, she cares what I think, so we decided to come back to the china the next day.  With time winding down, we quickly moved through other parts of the store when I saw Abby’s eyes light up and heard her gasp.  She brought her hands together under her chin, squealed, and ran towards the most beautiful thing her eyes had ever laid eyes on.  It was a display of about 20 Kitchenaid Stand-Mixers, all in different colors.  She ran up and hugged them going, “Matt, isn’t this the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?!?!”  I swear to you folks, I don’t know if I’ve seen another human being that happy.  I wish everyone could have seen that reaction.  Of course we registered for one, settling on the apple green color from the link.

We went back for a couple of hours the next day and we’re still not done.  We can’t register for linens until the summer when the new line comes in.  It’s madness I tell you.  I hope I can survive all of this until the wedding.  If nothing else I can just focus on the badass cheese grater I might be getting.

My DVD Player is a Bitch

Me: Alright, time to relax and enjoy a little afternoon movie.  Let’s just skip over the FBI warning…

DVD Player: No.

Me: What do you mean no?  I just want to watch the movie.

DVD Player: No, that command is not allowed.

Me: How is it not allowed?

DVD Player: It’s just not because I said so.

Me: Jeez, fine.  Seriously though, how long has the FBI warning been up there?  Five minutes?

DVD Player: You want to push me?  See how you like it when I freeze and you have to start all over again.

Me: Okay, okay, sorry.  Let’s not get crazy here.

(Movie finally starts)

Me: Hey, who turned on the director commentary?

DVD Player: I did.

Me: How? I’ve never even gone near the commentary menu.

DVD Player: So, I can do what I want.

Me: I bought you.  I own you.  You do what I say.

DVD Player: …

Me: Oh come on, I didn’t mean that, don’t freeze up!  Damn.  Do something!  Eject.

DVD Player: …

Me: Fine, I don’t need you.  I have the same movie on VHS.

VCR: PLAY!

Me: Oops, it’s the middle of the movie.  Back to the start…

VCR: REWIND!

Me: Man, I forgot how long this takes.  DVD Player does it in a couple seconds.  Whoa, too far, back it up.

VCR: FAST FORWARD!

Me: Is there any way I can turn surround sound on?

VCR: REWIND?

Me: No, not rewind… you know, never mind.

VCR: PLAY!

Me: Ugh, the quality is horrible.  I can’t do this anymore.  DVD Player, I’m sorry, will you take me back?

DVD Player: Say it.

Me: I don’t want to.

DVD Player: Say it.

Me: You’re the boss of me.

DVD Player: That’s more like it.  Now, for your punishment, you will watch the rest of the movie in Spanish.  With subtitles.  No widescreen.

Me: I’m going outside.

DVD Player: You’ll be back.  You know you want to see the special features.  You need me!

VCR: PAUSE!

Ask A Man – April 17, 2009

It seems that there are quite a few women out there with very deep and philosophical inquiries about the male mind.  Many of these questions were related in one way or another and some did not exactly come in the form of a question, but in bullet-point form, so I’m going to start off by addressing certain items before moving onto the actual questions.

Spitting

Men, as you may well know, are competitive.  But our competitions don’t end with other men, sometimes they are with ourselves.  Spitting is a reoccurring opportunity to compete with ourselves in distance, trajectory, accuracy, and overall mass.  As my esteemed colleague Patrick Hughes pointed out, in addition to the overall thesis of this answer, “who needs all that spit anyway?”  It is estimated that a cumulative total of 1.5 gallons of saliva enters your mouth during the day.  Okay, I just made that up, but you believed me for a second, didn’t you?  Who knows, it might even be more!  The point is that we as a species were blessed with the ability to shoot things out of our mouths and it just so happens that objects (loogies, if you will) show up in our mouths from time to time and we want to take that opportunity to use that ability instead of just swallowing it, where it will inevitably be replaced by more flem.  We are cleansing our system in this way, instead of adding to the never ending cycle of saliva that we endure.

Also, we as kids are encouraged to spit in many different ways.  Eating a watermelon?  Don’t swallow the seeds or a watermelon will grow in your stomach.  Spit that shit out!  And while you’re at it, see who can spit their seeds the furthest!  Need practice when you don’t have seeds to spit?  Hmm, I wonder what you’ll do.  And we are subjected to hundreds of images of baseball players spitting tobacco.  Want to imitate your favorite star?  Better get that swing down, and don’t forget to spit before stepping up to the plate.  Better get a good crotch grab in there too to make sure you’re all adjusted.  Yeah, that happens too.  Spitting is ingrained into our psyche, and in turn we will ingrain it into our kids.  It’s the circle of life in its most pure form.

Video Games

Have you ever noticed that men have a compulsive need to fix things?  That is just a watered down version of our real desire: to save things.  To be a hero, to conquer something, to rise above what we thought we were capable of and be extraordinary.  However, most of us don’t get that opportunity in our daily lives.  That is where video games come in.  They allow us to live out the dreams we had as kids (or continue to have as adults), and we’re the ones doing it.  I can watch someone else play basketball in the NBA and enjoy it, but a part of me will always wish that I could be doing that.  However, I’m too slow, short, and pale to even sniff a chance at playing in the NBA.  But with video games, I can!  All of a sudden I have the physical attributes (albeit digitized) to compete, and I’m the one controlling the motions, it’s my skill that is scoring those baskets.  The same can be said for any sort of shooting game or fantasy game.  We want to blow stuff up without actually being  in danger of being blown up ourselves.  Video games.  We want to save a princess from a monster and ride off on a white horse, but we have no idea where to find a princess or a monster, and do you have any idea how much a horse costs?  Video games!

Sometimes you just need a release too.  Some people go running, some people go boxing, some people do aerobics.  Well, some people don’t want to get off the couch for the release.  One time in college I just got done with about 12 straight hours of studying for an exam that would determine whether or not I graduated.  I was stressed out to the max.  So I jumped on my buddy’s game console, popped in Grand Theft Auto III and just started blowing things to hell.  It’s not something I usually do, I’m not even really big into games, but man that felt good. Sometimes we just want to do things that we could never do in real life and that’s why we need video games.

Poop/Farting

Women desperately want to understand men’s fascination with this.  It’s gross and crass and somehow we find it all hilarious.  It’s actually difficult for men to explain, because to be honest, even we don’t really understand it all that much, but that’s what I’m here for, so here goes.  Physical humor is funny.  When you see someone fall down, most of the time you laugh.  That’s just kind of how we’re wired.  Well poop is funny because of that same kind of reasoning.  Everything about it is disgusting, from the smell to how it comes into this world.  Well, sometimes the worse things are the funnier they are.  And don’t think for a second that you don’t have something to do with how funny it is.  We love to get reactions.  If you reacted to every poop or fart joke with a “meh” then we would probably just leave it alone around you, but the fact that you think it’s gross just makes it that much funnier to us.

Men are just kind of gross.  We smell worse than women, we sweat more, we do more physical things, and we just care less about our overall hygiene than women do.  So naturally, we’re interested in those kinds of things.  The sound a fart makes accompanied by the smell… it’s just perfect comedy to us.  We just think differently.  We think farts are funny the way that you think Bridget Jones’ Diary is funny, and vice versa, which explains why we make the same face you make when you smell a fart when we watch that movie.

Actually, explaining why poop and farts are funny is not funny at all.  Explain a joke too much and it loses it’s humor.  They are just funny because they are.  Sorry.

Cars

Just like with video games, I’m not a huge car guy, but I get it.  In order to understand why men love cars, I would like to refer you to the entire body of work called “Home Improvement” by a Dr. Timothy Taylor (insert grunt here).  Men look at anything and think “more power.”  Cars are some of the most powerful things that we are privy to.  Hell, the thing works because of a series of explosions going on.  That’s awesome.  And if there is anything more awesome than power, it’s power and speed.

Sometimes, although it may not seem like it to you ladies, men can be rational to a fault.  We desperately want to understand things.  That is why “just because” is not an acceptable answer to us.  We need reasons for why things are the way they are.  And cars are perfect for that because they are a giant puzzle that can ultimately be solved.  Everything in a car happens for a reason.

And to merge another question with this, we love driving stick shifts because it allows us more control over the car.  You can go faster quicker with a stick shift, and we feel like we are driving the car more than the other way around.  And we want to teach you how to drive a stick shift because we love showing off our extensive knowledge of things that confuse you.  And men like strong women.  So if there is a woman that shows that she can handle a stick shift… well that’s just hot.

Okay, on to some direct questions:

Dear Matt,

Do men like it when a woman asks them out on a date (instead of waiting for them to get their shit together and ask us)? Or, does that kill any mystery/joy of “the chase”? Please advise.

Sincerely, A.B.

The answer to this really depends on the guy.  There are some guys out there who would absolutely say that they do not want to be asked out.  But that’s just because of the machismo way that we have been made to think.  If there is a guy that is totally adverse to being asked out, he’s probably kind of a jerk anyway.  We like to be desired too.  If a woman asks us out, that makes us feel pretty damn good.  The chase is for middle school.  If a guy wants “the chase,” then you’re probably not looking at a legitimate relationship in the first place.  In my mind, any guy that is worth having, would not mind being asked out.  It will probably boost his ego a little bit, which might be good for a guy that had trouble pulling the trigger in the first place.

Dear Matt,

I’ve always wondered this one b/c I get different answers…are guys put off by women who swear???

Sincerely, B.K.

Again, it depends on the guy, but it also tells you what you need to know about the guy.  If he is put off by you swearing, then he’s probably a little goody-two-shoes and if you actually like to swear or do it every once in a while, I doubt the two of you are compatible.  There’s nothing wrong with a woman who swears.  It’s actually kind of nice at times.  It reminds us that we can be ourselves around you and that we don’t have to suppress our swearing and be a different person around you.  Of course, it can be overdone.  If every other word out of a woman’s mouth is the f-bomb, that may get a little hard to handle, especially at your little cousin’s third grade play.  I understand that the tree had difficulty remembering his lines a few times, but I’m not sure that merited a “come the f*** on!” from you.

Dear Matt,

Why don’t boys like to hear girls pee? I mean you can watch each other do it… and yet… you can’t listen through the wall to me pee and not get bugged… really?

Sincerely, C.H.

First of all, let me first correct your misguided view on men watching each other pee.  In fact, we have very strict guidelines on bathroom conduct which is basically “eyes forward, no matter if you hear a grizzly bear enter and fear for your life.”  Not only do we not watch each other pee, we take great pains to make sure that we never, ever do.  As far as not liking to hear girls pee, that is absolutely true.  We see women as beautiful, delicate flowers.  Imagine a rose… now imagine that rose taking a wizz.  Unsettling, isn’t it?  We don’t like to think about you doing any sort of bodily function.  It’s more of a compliment to you than anything.  We don’t want to see you like we see guys, you’re better than that in our minds, and we don’t want that mindset shattered.  I refer back to my paragraph in my Living with Women post about farting to explain how we think about this sort of thing:

Let’s say I’m on an elevator and it’s just me and an attractive woman.  No one else.  And it’s a long ride up to the top.  Let’s say that halfway up I smell something that wasn’t there when this elevator ride started.  My first reaction, and quite possibly my only reaction, would be “Oh my gosh, I hope she doesn’t think that was me.”

Okay, that’s enough for today, I’ll try to come back next week and answer the remaining questions.  Of course, if you have any new questions, please leave them in the comments and I’ll try to get to them next time as well.

Ask A Man

For those of you who have read my writing before, you’ve no doubt been amazed at my newfound insights into the fairer sex.  However, that is not all the wisdom that I posses.  I am, in fact, a man, and one well versed on the intricate inner workings of the male brain.

This has come to my attention lately as many of the women around my area have all taken to reading a book called “Keys to the Kingdom” which apparently is life changing in helping women understand women.  To which I say, “bah!”  I’m sure that it is helpful in some respects, at the very least to make women understand that we don’t think like that, but I have a hard time believing that the woman (woman!) who wrote this book has figured out men.  Chances are she has vastly over-thought us, which makes sense as to why women around here are eating that stuff up.  They want to over-think us.  They want to believe that we are as complicated human beings as they are.  But the fact of the matter is… we’re not.

That is why I’m here.  I’m inviting all women to ask me questions that confuse you about men.  Maybe they are questions you have long harbored, but have lacked the courage to ask.  Maybe your significant other confuses you in a certain way, but you don’t want to ask them about it.  Or maybe you saw this and were so confused as to how a man could actually contemplate buying one of those, that you didn’t know where to turn to get your answers.  Now you do.  I’m serious, bring it on, serious or joking, I’m here to be the voice of my gender.  Men will be heard.

Redundant Vanity Plates and Bumper Stickers

Can we put an end to redundant vanity plates?  I can’t be the only one who thinks this is the dumbest thing ever.  Like in the picture above: “Oh, it’s a blue mini cooper, and the license plate says BLUCOOP, how quaint.”  No.  It’s redundant.  It’s on par with labeling your label maker.  We know what it is, we can see it, why do you feel the need to remind us?  It cost $90 for you to tell us what we already knew.

I’m not saying vanity plates are bad.  I’ve seen some really clever ones.  I even had one in high school.  It said BIGCNTRY, because everyone knew me as Big Country in high school.  Hell, some people didn’t even know my real name.  That’s all well and good, because it’s saying something about who I was.  Funny plates tell you that the person is clever.  All that redundant plates tell you is that the person is not blind, which is nice, since they are behind the wheel of a vehicle.

A well done vanity plate can give a quick snapshot of a person.  It’s simple.  On the other side of the spectrum, we have bumper stickers.  I don’t care what they say, if you have more than three on your car they collectively scream “I’M A DOUCHEBAG!”

Take this guy for instance.  Douche.  I’m not making a statement about his politics.  Somebody could have a bunch of bumper stickers saying the exact opposite and the same would be equally true for him too.

If you feel strongly enough about something, is the best thing to do really to put it on your car in catchphrase form? Can we all agree that bumper stickers just set you up to look like an idiot?

Ugh.  I give up.