Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Earlier this morning one of my Facebook friends posted that her father passed away last night. She kept her post short and sweet, because as is to be expected, she was full of shock and sadness. On one hand you really don't want to get online and share that type of grief before you've figured out how to reconcile it your damn self, but on the other hand--with some exceptions--the people who you Facebook with represent your circle of friends. It's a Catch-22.

Anyway, this person's friends starting posting their thoughts, prayers and condolences and then the dreaded phrase reared its incorrect head, "Sorry for your lost".

Now before I saw "sorry for your lost", I was fully prepared to post my own message which would have said something about condolences, prayers and thoughts. That's the mature side of me. But immediately upon seeing that incorrect phrase, the immature side of me took over, and I just thought of a laundry list of jokes and inappropriate things to type. I won't list them here, but the best one I came up with was, "YOU FIND THAT DEAD MAN!". Again, I know that is wrong and immature, but come on, how can full grown adults be unable to discern between "loss" and "lost"? The person who experienced the loss is probably too crestfallen to say anything, and I damn sure want to, but I won't. I tell you this much though, if I ever post about a death in my family, and someone puts "sorry for your lost" on my page, I'm pressing pause on the grief, and I am "going in on them" as the kids say. Believe that.

I ended up not leaving a comment on my friend's Facebook page, and I opted to come here and blog about it. I will get around to sending my grammatically correct condolences eventually.



Saturday, May 16, 2015

First and foremost, please read my semi-depressing article on the abrupt, heartbreaking end to the Washington Wizards' season. I was there and as a fan in attendance, it was even more agonizing than it looked on television. As a writer, it gave me a chance to capture the mood. Here it is.

So today, I took advantage of the warm weather and the wife and kid being gone, to go for a nice 5-mile run in the middle of the day. My seven year old ipod was going in and out of consciousness, so it wasn't as smooth of a run as I would have liked, but I broke a sweat and felt the burn.

Towards the end of the run, I found myself having to stop at a red light, and I just so happened to share the curb with some high school girls. They were part of larger group, but the rest of their group had made it across the street, while the remaining 10-15 girls were with me. These girls were about as annoying as you would expect 14-17 year old girls to be. They were laughing, talking jibberish, texting on their phone, and just being the very antithesis of what I wanted to see and hear on my tranquil, disjointed run. I just turned the volume up on my headphones and kept it moving.

Now it just so happens that when I turned up the volume, the song that was on my ipod was Boogie Down Production's, "Criminal Minded", which came out in 1987. The beat isn't ideal for running, but I know all the words, and it distracts me from any pain I may be experiencing while I am trying to complete my run. In this instance, I could not run because of the insanely-long red light, so I jogged in place. Well if you're familiar with the song, you know there are lyrics (which are sung, not rapped), which go:

The girls look so good, but their brain is not ready, I don't know
I'd rather talk to a woman because her mind is so steady, so here we go

Those particular two lines were also the main chorus of a Chi-Ali song back in 1991 called, "Age Ain't Nothin But A Number". Anyway, I sang that first line pretty loud, and then it occurred to me that I was loudly singing that song around underaged girls. I quickly shut up before the second line, but the damage was already done because two of the girls looked at me in that creepy way they should like at shady old men. Luckily for me, the light turned green, and I ran twice as fast as I probably should have, just to avoid being summoned by Chris Hansen.

But still, what were the odds right?

Chi-Ali:


BDP:

Monday, May 04, 2015

Here is my take on the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight. Mayweather was and still is the champion and every damn body--from casual fans to professional boxers--knows exactly what Floyd does. He fights like Uncle Miltie.

**sidebar**Uncle Miltie, aka Milton Berle, allegedly had a large phallus, and the story goes that other men would try to "challenge" Uncle Miltie by pulling out their phallus to see how they "sized up". Uncle Miltie would never take it all out, he'd take just enough out to win. **sidebar off**.

Mayweather does not always pull all of his tools out like other great fighters have done in the past (Hagler, Hearns, the Sugar Rays, Ali, Marciano, etc), because he's all about self-preservation and working smarter, not harder. It was Pacquiao's job to come up with a game plan that would force Mayweather to be taken out of his comfort zone, and he failed miserably. Yes Mayweather is boring, but he's the undefeated champion, which means the challenger has to do more than average to take that from him. End of story. Yes Mayweather is a bad person outside of the ring, and it would be nice if he used his oversized platform, temporarily checked that even larger sized ego, and actually addressed both his past domestic violence issues, and the issue as a whole. But we'll see if that happens. For now, he won a boring fight convincingly, and that's a victory that no one can take from him.

Oh and the Wizards won, read my take right here.

Saturday, May 02, 2015

So many good things have happened since I last took the time to write a blog entry. I've gotten two full-time jobs--one is a part time writing gig for a literary publication, and the other is a full-time gig writing proposals. Both jobs promise to be challenging and hopefully fulfilling, and more importantly they make me extremely happy. I made no secret in this blog and to friends and family around me, that I was not happy at my old job (I say its my old job but my last day is officially May 14th). I didn't see eye to eye with my boss, I was passed over for a promotion, and it just felt like my services were no longer appreciated or wanted. It took a while, but I'm now free.

There has also been some good news with one of my existing jobs, which is covering the Washington Wizards--something I have done for seven years now which is hard to believe. For the second year in a row, the Wizards are in the second round of the playoffs, which means more exposure, more chances to cover games with purpose, and an outside chance that the Wizards will make the NBA Finals (not bloody likely). If you have not been reading my (and everyone else too) articles over at Truth About It, please fix that ASAP.

In a bit of disappointing news, my son has decided NOT to attend Old Dominion University, but instead he's chosen to join the military. He's scheduled to attend boot camp in July. I want him to attend college and take the academic route, but he's sure that he doesn't want that right now. It's frustrating as hell, but he'll be 18 in three months, so he's the one who will have to directly live with the consequences. But I'll be worried as hell until he returns.

Oh and I'm going to lose 20-25 lbs this summer. I'm not really overweight, I just want to be leaner and tighter (that's what she said).