A Blustery Midwinter Saturday Afternoon

So it’s gotten to the point where it has become quite evident that I am one of the very last of the Mohicans. Friends I thought would run the streets with me even after the Beast had emerged from the sea, have one-by-one  bowed out of the game: some gracefully, others not-so-gracefully, and a few disgracefully; kicking & screaming, as they were sternly summoned away from the Happy hour circuit… by their baby mamas.

And while I do have more than 2 single friends, because these two are about the same biological age, live in the same city, & and are seemingly as far away from trotting down the aisle as I am, I have chosen to use two of my good friends as a barometer; a measuring stick that I trust will act as a timely & effective outward signal, alerting me when it’s time to hang up my cleats and make my triumphant exit from the game.

These two friends are 1 & 2 years my junior, respectively… I am 32. Or as I prefer to call it, “Magic Johnson Number”

Now I’m not one of those “Magic Johnson Numbers” who is oblivious to my situation. Life presents few instances more decidedly pathetic than witnessing firsthand the excruciating decline of an aging narcissist careening toward a dismal future. And because I absolutely refuse to be that guy, I’m sort of like Shaq. I know with great certainty that I’m in the twilight of my career. I acknowledge this truth. I do not fight this truth. I embrace this truth with every fiber of my being.

However, unlike Shaq, while my playing days will likely not yield a Hall of Fame induction, I’ve certainly had a productive career. After laboring for a few seasons in the Minor Leagues, I was finally called up to the “bigs”. Once I arrived, I maintained a solid .300 batting average, garnered two All Star selections, and was once awarded the “Most Improved player of the year” honors. In other words, my game improved, drastically!

Still, in spite of decorated resume, I know that not unlike this past Season of Real Housewives of Atlanta, all good things must eventually come to an end. And for me, the end is near. And while I may still be waiting for my Fortune-teller license to arrive in the mail, mine is an ending not hard to predict. How do I know? Well, there is always a smoking gun.  My smoking gun in my metabolism, for it has begun to take that inevitable turn for the worse. What once was clocked as a 4.5 second forty-yard-dash is now just barely sub 6.0 (seconds). A 50 inch vertical leap has gone south, to just north of 35 inches. Like all of humans, my physical tools are visibly diminishing.

My physical fitness goals are now pathetic. I'm the guy I used to laugh and point at. My aim, simply to keep my midsection in respectable order. That’ basically it. The way I see it, in my 15 years in the league, I have never once successfully wooed a young lady into my confines, only to lose her to a lack of muscle tone. Thus I have come to the pragmatic declaration that the amount of work that it would take for me to attain washboard abs would no doubt be considerably more trouble than it's worth; so as long as I maintain my stature to the unimpressive yet acceptable measure where my belly doesn’t visibly poke out of my fitted polo, I’m pretty much set.

I say all of this to say that I am “Magic Johnson Number. I live alone, and for the most part, I really enjoy it.

I sleep on both sides of the bed. I eat pizza at least twice per week. And when I come in the door in the evening, unlike a married man, I have the option to go back out if such a whim overcomes my being.

I particularly enjoy my lifestyle on Thursdays and Fridays around 5pm. You know, Happy Hour. That’s when the drinks are flowing; the music is at a tasteful, non-blaring, volume, and the well-heeled single women, fresh off work, show up to Happy hour in their sophisticated, form fitting business casual attire, fully prepared to meet & greet. Oh so much possibility exists on Thursday afternoon at 5pm.

But 5pm is fleeting. As quickly as it comes, so does it go. And with that, seemingly just as the not-yet-metabolized shots of vodka intoxicate my brain, rendering me impaired, thus liquidly triggering my courage’s steady ascend towards its zenith, the Happy Hour crowd begins to disperse, and I am left with nothing but the too oft undesirable, lingering clientele, who garner their kicks by milling about the bar, hoping to snag a fellow loiterer during the transitional period between the post-work & late-night crowds. And just like that my night comes abruptly to an end, my next bout of coherent consciousness still 8 hours away, on Saturday morning; inevitably followed by another blustery Midwinter Saturday afternoon.

For me the most inconvenient time to be single is Saturday Afternoons in the winter. Saturday afternoons in the spring yield NBA playoff basketball. In the summer are cookouts, rooftop affairs, and poolside lounging. In the fall, I can watch college football from dusk till dawn.  To be quite honest, I’d actually prefer not to be bothered during college football.  Go to brunch with your girls. I’ll be right here in this same position on the couch when return. Trust me, I will not have budged one inch. But lately, as I do little more than channel surf & tweet on Saturday afternoons in the winter, I seem to demonstrate the ongoing propensity to become somewhat introspective. 

Today, while reluctantly complying with my recently adopted Saturday regiment, I decided to take on the arduous task of clearing my voicemail.  Clearly I despise the act of clearing my voicemail, as was evidenced by the fact that I had a message still lingering in my inbox from May circa 2009. I listened to it. My once-zirconium-studded-lobes were met with the sweetest voice this side of 1990’s Mariah Carey Ballad. Granted this voice was a bit nasal, but sweet nonetheless; each word took me back to time not so long ago. I hadn’t heard this voice since probably one month after the caller had left this particular voicemail. It was the voice of a young lady I used to date.

As I listened I thought about just how much I once cared for that young lady. I couldn’t help but wonder if I could have done something more to preserve our once precious relationship. And while it’s true that she did possess her fair share of quirkiness, of which the least was her incessant desire to give ongoing life to one outlandish conspiracy theory after another; all in all, I would have to say she was a quality breezy.  But I had carelessly botched this relationship forever. I had one day, really just seeking answers to my then-befuddlement, anonymously, yet foolishly posted a questionable reference to her spending habits on Facebook. And although we were no longer dating or Facebook friends when I executed said act, I guess she, staying true to her conspiracy theorist roots, was passive-aggressively lurking in the background, monitoring my page from the shadows, because wind of this post mysteriously got back to her. And with that, trust was violated, and needless to say, without even knowing it, I had hammered the nail in the proverbial coffin. Luckily for me, God takes care of babies and fools.

But was she the anomaly or the norm? Who was to blame for this healthy string of unhealthy relationships? I quickly filed through my mental inventory. What I discovered were numerous 6 to 12 month relationships. For each instance I asked myself “who was to blame?”

There was “Exhibit A”. She was a nice girl, marriage material by any definition. I just wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. I had recently relocated to DC, and as much as I enjoyed our banter, I was just a young lad of 26. My inquisitive male nature all but commanded me to step out and explore all of what our Nation’s Capital had to offer. It was really just that simple.

“Exhibit B”, again a case of bad timing. I had recently discovered Facebook and all of its empty possibility. Still, back then, I didn’t realize it was empty. Back then I had mindlessly mistaken "empty" for "endless". The explorer in me just couldn’t keep my hands out of the internet cookie jar. I spent countless hours on Facebook misguidedly soliciting this possibility. I’ve never been the cheating type, so I left all of my dealings online until we parted ways, only to find out that indeed the grass is not always greener.

Exhibit C”, you guessed it. More bad timing. This particular relationship inconveniently overlapped with the summer; and while I would no longer postpone a relationship because it just so happens to fall between the Summer Solstice & the Autumnal Equinox, there was a time when my dating life was affected by the earth’s revolutionary orbit around the sun... Back then I had places to go, people to see, rooftop soirees to conquer. And I wasn’t going to let a frivolous little impediment like “true love” get in my way.

“Exhibit D”, despite her academic prowess, lived in the hood and possessed an unspeakably dreadful personal style. I could let the hood thing slide, but a questionable wardrobe selection is non-negotiable.  I’m talking outfit choices of the most egregious nature. And being that I’m spectacularly shallow, there was really nothing I could do with that.

But alongside these 4 were another group of women. I most affectionately refer to them as “The Kirk-out crew”, because of their shared proclivity to just kirk the f*ck out for any old damn reason. At one point or another in our relationship, all of these women had demonstrated the ability to flip out with an impressive dexterity comparable to that of former Olympic Gymnast, Dominique Dawes.

“Exhibit A”, a southern gal: Perhaps the sharpest woman I’ve ever dated; but sadly her razor-sharp intellect was accompanied by an equally penetrating tongue. Not to mention that she was crazy. And not your pedestrian crazy. I’m talking bat sh*t, wrapped in grandeurs of delusion, tucked inside of clinical psychosis crazy. I’m talking illegitimate lovechild offspring of Libyan dictator Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi & Sara Bachman crazy. And while ours was the most fun-filled relationship I’ve experienced to date, it was also the most volatile. We were either having the time of our lives, or totally at each other’s throats. Needless to say this relationship ended bad. Real bad. Michael Jackson.

Then there was Exhibit B: Any old thing could set her off; tardiness, runny eggs, Tuesday. You name it.  You never really knew what you were going to get with her, and although she was a nice girl at the core, and I was probably more physically attracted to her than any other woman I have dated to this point, the prospect of getting told off and potentially having hands laid on me because the moon was full & the tides were high, was just too precarious a burden to bear.

Sadly, I still feel like things with these 2 women could have potentially worked out had I possessed the foresight to steal a sheet of RX paper from my sister’s medical pad, forge a prescription for Adderall, fill it at CVS, pulverize said Adderall, and stealthy disperse the powder form into their respective cups of morning coffee on a daily basis.

But still, collectively, was it them or was it me? Just who is to blame for this restless Saturday afternoon blog entry?  The aforementioned women of this blog? Perhaps even God? Surely it cannot be me. For aside from my intermittently sub-oceanic moral code & sporadically-ill temperament, I’m pretty much the owner of first right of refusal, to cast the first stone.

So I guess for now my question shall remain unanswered. With that I will face my inevitable fate of waiting for this upcoming Thursday, 5pm. Till then it’s back to nonstop channel surfing and tweeting, at least until the moon & the stars align and destiny presents me with the woman whom I will spend the remainder of my days with. Or until one of the aforementioned women miraculously reenters my life, as I don’t think that any of the issues I experienced with any of these women is insurmountably irreconcilable. Well maybe the one girl I accidently denigrated on Facebook. It’s difficult to regain trust when someone publically slanders your good name, albeit accidentally. But hey, we all make mistakes.  I can say with certainty that I’ve learned from mine.

We’d always call each other “goodfellas”. Like you’d say, “you’re gonna like this guy. He’s alright. Hes a goodfella. He’s one of us. You understand?”

My fastfood fixation

My Fast Food Fixation

In the Bible, God, in all of His infinite wisdom & glory, determined certain meats to be “clean” & others “unclean” thus selecting what foods are appropriate for human consumption.  Some fast food chains adhere to ultimate authority, others prefer to go a different route.

For example, Taco Hell. The fast food giant is currently running a commercial that just cracks me up. In the 30 second spot, a performer at a Piano bar passionately serenades the upscale clientele who are visibly displaying great disappointment with their rather miniscule orders of steak… Like most ad jingles, the ode to the beloved “Quad Steak Burrito” is simple, and hangs it hat on its exceptionally catchy chorus; “Four times the steak!” belted out at the top of the lounge singers lungs. The whole production is pure genius!

Still, I’m almost positive that the original lyrics to the aforementioned jingle were altered. The original lyrics were probably, “Four kinds of steak.” Yep, four totally different kinds of “steak”.

1 part beef,

1 part German Shepard,

1 part orangutan

 1 part the hyper-aggressive mutant being from Hollywood’s “I Am Legend”. You know the ones that lived in the dark, beat down Will Smith’s door, and effectively destroyed mankind. Yup, that kind of steak.

And of course I say all of that in jest, (well most of it), nevertheless, none of what I half-believe about Taco Hell’s meat quality or lack thereof  is going to keep me away from that Quad Steak Burrito.

Just as the idea that Chicken Nuggets are made from the most “unsavory” part of the chicken won’t stop me from eating nuggets from McDonalds.

Hell I don’t care if the Food & Drug Administration releases a report  stating that Chicken nuggets are made from pigeon extract & thus no longer deemed “fit for human consumption”, and I hear said report being broadcast on the radio as I’m pulling up to the McDonalds drive thru. And the cashier at the drive thru window makes me sign a waiver releasing McDonalds from any & all legal responsibility should I consume said nuggets, keel over & die. I’d still eat them!

Because while it’s true that Pigeon extract in and of itself, doesn’t sound exceedingly appetizing, there’s no denying once a deep fryer and honey mustard dipping sauce are applied, it becomes a delightful treat!

Hell, I’d even eat nuggets from McDowell’s, McDonald’s fictitious competitor in the movie “Coming to America”! If it’s good enough for the Prince of Zamunda, it’s good enough for me!

And as long as we’re on the topic of fictitious, we might as well address the synthetic nature of the cheese on those Arby’s Roast Beef & Cheddar Sandwiches. I dunno WTH that stuff is. For the sake of my rant, let’s label it “Over processed yellow goo”.  Be that as it may, I would cut my arm off for a heaping portion of that over processed yellow goo smothered over ½ lbs. of thinly sliced roast beef, served between the top & bottom portion of an Onion Roll.

And I’d probably cut your arm off for a juicy “Quarter White” portion of Boston Market chicken, with a side of creamed spinach, &  a side of Sweet potato casserole.

Now, at a glance, there’s seemingly nothing overwhelmingly unhealthy about Boston Market.  But if you delve only slightly deeper, you discover that Boston Market uses controlled substances like Heroin, & crack-cocaine in their recipes. Seriously, there’s no other explanation. Nothing can taste that consistently delectable. I mean have you ever in your life had a bad experience at Boston Market? Apart from having to witness sloth personified as the lethargic employees sluggishly take their sweet time to wrangle up all that goodness onto one plate to fill your order.

And how else do you explain the Sweet potato casserole. I don’t like sweet potato. I don’t even like casserole.  Yet I begin to exhibit symptoms such as anxiety, night sweats & dementia if I go too long without sweet potato casserole from Boston Market. You say conspiracy. I say potato… Sweet potato... Casserole.

Now if Boston Market Rotisserie Chicken is the benchmark for consistency, then your fried chicken restaurants, KFC & Popeye’s are the world’s most accurate yardsticks when seeking to measure spottiness. Their chicken is like Eli Manning’s passing efficiency. It drastically varies from one moment to the next.

However, seeing as I’m a savvy consumer, I’ve effectively managed to crack the code on how to ensure that I receive the “good” chicken. It’s quite simple actually. I just go to the locations in affluent neighborhoods. Well, there are no KFC or Popeye’s in affluent neighborhoods. So I go to the ones in middle or working class neighborhoods.  I just don’t go to the locations in the hood.

My 100% unproven hypothesis that I just concocted  at this very moment in my head is that many years ago, the original boards of directors of KFC & Popeye’s instituted corporate policy mandating that the good working white folks of America never come face to beak with an excessively poor quality bird.

Now while my theory may seem baseless on the surface, just think about it for a moment. The Board of Directors at KFC obviously consisted of “the Colonel” and his slave owning colleagues, who in all likelihood were white supremacists, so they desired white folk to have the good chicken.

And the original Board of Directors at Popeye’s was likely in the ancestry of the current Louisiana Popeye’s lady. Well she’s a coon in 2011. So can you imagine the measure of coonery & bafoonery her great granddaddy probably exhibited? Geez. He probably danced a jig for his “Massa Sir” as he served his chicken in the house for his slave owner’s family’s on Sunday Afternoons. So you know that was some quality chicken!

But if my vividly sad depictions aren’t enough to convince you, then just go try it for yourself. Go to a Popeye’s in the hood. If you think the Boston Market workers are unmotivated, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The world has never witnessed a look of more destitution, exhaustion, befuddlement, & sometimes, pure anger than that of a Popeye’s employee working at a location in the hood. A Popeye’s employee could actually hire the Boston Market employee to serve as his life coach, and actually reap some sort of emotional benefit & life skills from what he learns. A Popeye’s employee in the hood is as disenfranchised as the day is long.

As for KFC, we are unable to gauge the temperament and desperation levels of KFC employees because at KFC the only employee you can actually see is the cashier. KFC keeps them other mofos in the back, on the low.  Straight up & down witness protection program. John Boehner could be in the back frying up them chicken and we’d be none the wiser. I digress.

But don’t be deceived, these discrepancies in service & quality are by no means exclusive to Popeye’s and KFC. Have you been to a Wendy’s in a middleclass neighborhood?  Wendy’s in a nice neighborhood is like Brunch at the Ritz Carlton. I would seriously consider taking a 1^st date to a Wendy’s in a nice neighborhood. And if she doesn’t like it, then perhaps it’s an indication that she’s just a bit too uppity for my taste.

On the contrary, a Wendy’s in the hood is like… a Burger King, well, anywhere. I’ve never been graced with the opportunity to dine at a decent Burger King facility in my life. So my perspective is that decent BK facilities are like authentic Rolex Watches on Sale on Ebay for 75% off their market value. They simply don’t exist. But that’s okay, because I have low expectation. I’m grabbing a Whopper & hitting the road. Make that a Whopper with cheese. And not the naturally aged milk from a cow, kind of cheese either. That artificial, born in a can, “is this really cheese”, Arby’s, kind.  

Dammit! I lost track of time. This always happens to me. I was supposed to pick up the thin crust Philly Cheesesteak Pizza I ordered from Dominos 20 minutes ago!

Real G’s move in silence like lasagna

Twitter versus Facebook

As some of you may know, I occasionally possess the not-so-often-well-received proclivity to hold my opinions up as hard facts. Facts I deem to be as inerrant as the Word of God. Thus inherently considering any and all contrasting perspectives to be nothing short of heresy; punishable by vicious, oft regrettable, ad hominem attacks launched against the offender.

But recently I was challenged with a notion so heinous, so egregious, that not even the harsh rebuke of my extentensive vocabulary could adequately serve my ego's need for what it deems as personal justice. A notion so tomfoolerous that  not only did I feel it a necessity to concoct the word tomfoolerous (and attempt to pass it off as a colloquial extension of “tomfoolery”, which it is not), I actually was compelled to launch my grievance on the World Wide Web. And with that I present to you, my inaugural blog:

“Twitter vs Facebook”

Some people wake up in the morning and praise God in gratitude for His eternal mercy & grace, thanking Him for His provisions & blessings, and allowing them to see another day.

I on the other hand wake up & check my Twitter.

Twitter is one of life’s greatest pleasures; right up there with NFL Redzone Network, a deep coma-like Sunday afternoon nap, or the annual “Never-Ending Shrimp Festival” month-long promotion at Red Lobster.

Facebook is more like a dental appointment, eating vegatables, or commuting to work. You know it serves a purpose, but ultimately there’s no real positive emotion attached to the experience.

And while it’s true that sometimes twitter can be a little bit confusing, for example, when 4 “@mentions” & 6 retweets are attached in one message, and you can’t quite figure out just who said what, most times it’s like driving 100 miles per hour up the New Jersey Turnpike (I mean Audubon), while reciting word for word, the Kanye lyrics blasting through your stereo speakers and tweeting about how reckless it is to be driving 100MPH and tweeting all at once. It’s exhilarating! Millions of People's most random thoughts being uninhibitedly cast out into the universe, 140 characters at a time....  Diddy, clogging up your timeline with a seemingly never ending stream of frivolous crap, saying little more than "take that, take that" . Russell Simmons quoting Deepak Chopkra. Deepak Chopkra quoting Russell Simmons. Kim Kardashin shamelessly hocking Sketcher Shapeups, as if they are really to be credited for her bodacious body. And in the midst of all this organized chaos is you, feeling a false sense of empowerment as you "@mention" Diddy a message notifying him that he's being removed from your "follower" list with a message that reads, "No @Diddy, you TAKE THAT!", as if he really gives a sh*t!

Facebook on the other hand is like reversing out of your driveway while simultaneously fastening your seatbelt: Not really much to speak of.

Now I’m not saying Facebook doesn’t possess its own set of virtues. It most certainly does.  For me these virtues most often include “researching” a girl I met the day before at the bar, or incessantly railing against Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and other unintelligent fringe Republicans who baselessly purport to be speaking out on behalf of the “Average American”. But for the most part, Facebook has seen its day. It’s more of something I do out of habit, like drinking. Except that Facebook doesn’t offer the same mind bending stimulation as an ice cold pour of Hennessey Pure White…

I can’t say that this was always the case. When Facebook was good, it was great. I basically lived on it for the entire winter circa 2009. Oh that was a cold harsh winter. Facebook was really my only saving grace. I don’t know what was colder and more desolate that winter; the streets or my bed. My guess would be the latter. But in retrospect, my solitude that winter may have been attributed to the fact that I spent all of my waking hours on Facebook, and not nearly enough time making acquaintance with the PYTs in the streets.  

What I love most about twitter is its lawlessness. It really is the equivalent of cyber-anarchy. Whereas on Facebook, any commentary that could even be interpreted or misinterpreted as possessing a negative connotation is sure to draw some measure of reproach from some humanitarian do-gooder whom you haven’t seen since the first grade, Twitter on the other hand is a legitimate platform to proclaim any visceral, delinquent, offensive idea that pops into your mind. And nobody bats an eye. Hypothetically, one could aggressively berate babies & puppies on twitter. Nobody would care.  On the contrary, it's difficult to escape scott-free with a mild criticism of Hitler on Facebook.  

Additionally, one can post tweet after tweet of the most frivolous nature; “I just woke up”,” I brushed my teeth”, “I’m taking a shower”, and again, no backlash (Diddy Notwithstanding). Try that on Facebook.  2 status message posts in one hour might draw some sort of “you’re going kinda hard” smart ass remark. To which I would reply something along the lines of "Fall back hater, as clearly you’re covertly spending as much time logged on as I am. Geez."

And have you ever stayed in on a Friday night, I dunno, perhaps just in the house watching “The Best Man" or "Love & basketball" on BET, or a Heat vs Lakers vs Celtics vs Magic game (as apparently those are the only 2 movies BET has decided to purchase the rights to, and the only 4 teams ESPN & TNT are under contract with the NBA to broadcast) and just kept an eye on your Twitter timeline. Follower “A” is drunk as a skunk throwing up in the bathroom at the bar (while simultaneously & miraculously tweeting about it). Follower “B” is enjoying the sweet aroma & delicate high of organic, non-tobacco, non-nicotine sheesha at the hookah spot.  Follower “C” is on a mission to bumblefuck Prince Georges County Maryland, in a desperate attempt to bang out the pretty, albeit weave-laden, over-tatted redbone he met 2 hours earlier at Happy Hour.  All the while, you rest comfortably reclined at home, swigging cabernet out of your pseudo fancy Mikasa Red Wine glass, with a front row seat, living vicariously through Subjects A, B & C, salvaging a night, that might otherwise have been chalked up as a loss, having perversely committed it to sitting at home, watching Mark Jackson & Jeff Van Gundy mindlessly slurp the Black Mamba as he unconscionably hoists up one bad shot after another, with about 30% of them trickling down to the bottom of the net.  (#lakerhater)

Finally, the last thing I love about Twitter is that although perhaps unintentionally, it has become a secondary form of text messaging. Perhaps tertiary if you have BBM. I do not. But that’s neither here nor there. My point is that if I have something pertinent to say, I’ll probably call you. If my thoughts are of lower priority, I’ll shoot you a text. If I just wanna mention something to you, and the topic is neither time sensitive, nor confidential, I can just send you an “@mention” tweet. And I know that eventually you will respond. No pressure. ..  And really, what is better than that perfect moment in time, when the fireplace is lit, the wine is poured, the overpriced Comcast cable subscription is being put to full use, and your PDA is blowing up with text messages & @mention tweets, while you play some juvenile cell phone enabled videogame that you downloaded for free from the app store, all at once.  Oh, that moment is technological bliss!

May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows.