May 2009 Archives

A catfight is always better than a bro-down.  Transformers star Megan Fox taking a swing at Scarlett Johansson out of nowhere. Nice.  Megan obviously missed our podcast on the day that Pete taught us not to use the word 'retard'. 

"I don't want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson — who I have nothing against," Megan Fox tells June's Esquire, "but I don't want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single SAT word I've ever learned to prove, like, 'Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.' I don't want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I'm not a retard — but I do. And part of it is my own fault."

It has been a while since I’ve written but I’ve been busy being unemployed and waiting in line for my free KFC grilled chicken meal. I also thought I might have had the swine flu, but as it turns out, it was just a case of playoff fever since my only symptom was singing “Chelsea Dagger” by the Fratellis.

 
My parents are from Germany so they weren’t fans of baseball or football (the real kind) until I started playing those sports when I was a kid. I remember asking my dad to play catch when I was young and I noticed that he couldn’t really throw the ball. I was somewhat embarrassed by this considering most of the other dads in the neighborhood could really play the sport. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the reason my dad couldn’t throw that well is because he never played baseball as a kid. Heck, the first time he played catch with me was probably one of only a handful of times that he picked up a baseball. After about 10 minutes of errant throws he would say, “Do you want to work on catching some ground balls?” We would then spend the rest of the time on infield practice. Of course, I was a catcher and really didn’t need to work on catching ground balls, but I enjoyed the time we spent together playing baseball. I practiced fielding grounders so often that I should have been Derek Jeter considering how much time I allotted to the practice, but I never saw much improvement with my fielding prowess. I appreciated the time my dad spent with me on a sport that he had little interest in, and quite frankly, sucked at playing. My dad did play soccer when he was younger and occasionally he would try to get me to kick the ball around but I had no interest in playing. I used to say, “I’m an American Boy (Take me on a trip I’d like to go someday. Take me to New York I’d love to see L.A.)!” Yes, I was a brat. So my father put up with my disdain for playing a sport that he enjoyed and continued to encourage me to keep playing sports that he never played.  That was, until one winter I expressed an interest in learning how to ice skate. My dad knew how to skate so he seized on this opportunity and immediately took me to the store to get me a brand new pair of ice skates. Every few days we would walk up to the park where there was a skating rink and he’d teach me how to skate and at the end of that winter I became a decent enough skater to go by myself.  The following winter, I took my skates and went to the rink alone and proceeded to get made fun of because I had figure skates and not hockey skates. I went home yelling angrily, “How could you send me out there with these figure skates? I look like a girl!” That same afternoon we went to Don’s World of Sports and my mom bought me my first pair of hockey skates. I also coerced her into buying me a stick, tape, and a few pucks. I was no longer a Figure Skater and officially a Hockey Player. My dad would then take me out skating and when he felt like I had progressed enough, he took me to one of the local ponds to play some pick up hockey with a group of other children. Sometimes my dad would stay and watch, but most times he would just drop me off and come back to pick me up a couple of hours later. One year, we were playing on the pond in the late winter and one of the kids fell into the not completely frozen ice. Of course, nobody was twittering yet so this guy had to walk home completely wet in the 30 degree weather. I never did see that kid again, but I trust that he survived. Later, when I told my mom about what happened, she had visions of me being a young George Bailey and going deaf in one ear after falling through the ice. (Now she probably wishes her son was deaf in one year but had a Savings and Loan business instead of 2 good ears and a struggling podcasting career) The next year, with visions of arms flailing in the freezing water still fresh in our minds, my neighbor and I convinced our parents to build a hockey rink in between our houses. And even though it was a ton of work for our parents, I think my dad enjoyed it because playing hockey on the rink was something he was good at doing and something we could do together. Unfortunately, the rink stood at the bottom of a little hill, so whenever the ice melted, our basement would invariably get flooded. But this was a small price to pay (until they try to sell that house) for the bonding experience of being out on that rink together. So growing up I always played hockey and enjoyed watching it on TV. That was until sometime in the early 90’s. As I got older, the time I spent on the ice decreased quite a bit, but I still enjoyed watching the sport on TV. But, by then, the Hawks started putting out teams that never made the playoffs and my interest in watching the sport also waned. I remember one year reading the paper and saying to myself, “When did Columbus get a team?” So when the Hawks started playing well again last year my natural instinct was to become interested in the team again.  I’ve been hesitant to write about the Hawks playoff run this year for fear of jinxing them. I’m not one of those guys who you really want to hitch your wagon to in the luck department. For example, just yesterday I bought a new pair of running shoes and today I stepped in a pile of dog poop. But I will forge on and publicly express my interest in rooting for the Hawks. I’m such a knowledgeable fan now that I can recognize most of the core players (Kane, Toews, Sharp, Havlat, Keith, Campbell) and when pressed, might even be able to tell the difference between a Bolland and a Brouwer. Yesterday's game was about

as an exciting finish as you could imagine and I’m looking forward to watching game 5 on Saturday night. 

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and I was thinking about heading over to my parent's house on Saturday night to watch the game with my dad.  I’m going to bring my baseball mitt too, so on Sunday I can ask, “Hey, Dad, do wanna throw some grounders?”