Thursday, August 26, 2010

Cabeza De Vaca can Suck my Cock-a

Monday was somewhat of a milestone for me. For the first time in nearly three years, I packed up my backpack and took my ass back to class. Yes, I am a officially a college boy again. Somewhere, my mother is smiling.

Waking up at the crack of dawn (8 am) I traveled a great distance ( 15 minute drive time) to get to my first ever class at WSU-V (Washington State University Vancouver). Jokes aside I was nervous as shit about my first day. After all I was making a pretty big commitment here.

I was jumping back into the pool with out testing the waters. Full time student, full time employee, AND full time boyfriend. If you look at available time as a full pie, after all that I get left with crumbs. The way I originally had my schedule organized barely left me enough time to shit, let alone any video game, gym or beer time. I knew heading into my first day that this was going to be intense, and I may grow to regret it.

My class schedule was History 40-something. English 402. Philosophy and a Humanities class focusing on "Hip Hop and Film in Society". Now I know it's almost been 3 years since I turned in my last final, but I can still sniff out the classes that are going to have a ton of homework. And all four of those classes reaked of it.

I showed up to my first class a little early. The people who were the before me were scattered through out the room. The lights were still off in the room and no one was really talking. A couple of whispers here and there. Mostly just dark and quiet. Already not enjoying the vibe.

Class was about two minutes away from starting and the professor hadn't showed up yet. I was the only one sitting at my table. I kept thinking about how I wish I knew someone in this class. Literally seconds later the door swung open, and in walked my buddy Turd from High School. Thank you God, I thought. Maybe this won't be so bad.

The professor came in a few moments later. He was a tall, string bean looking nerd of a man. I would never question that this guy was a history professor. Lets just say that if this dude was an actor, the only time he'd get work is if the scene needed a history professor.

He made it clear from the begining this was not going to be the class for me.

"I'm (I honestly forgot his name already, so you can fill in the blank). Hopefully, you are all in the right class. This is History 406 (I think that was the number). " Yes, yes I am. His introduction was typical. It had a bit of smugness that comes with every dude who spent their entire twenties in college and sober. Nothing I haven't encountered before. So far so good. He then add's this fun little ice breaker. "We will be studying Coloniol America. It's an important time period for all of you, since I imagine you are all History majors."Uh... I'm an English major.

" Or whatever you are. Hopefully not a pointless a major like English." HEY! FUCK YOU DUDE.

Now he did go on to say that he was joking but the comment had me questioning everything. Doubt had crept into my mind and the syllabus hadn't even come out yet.

They syllabus came and only solidified my doubt. The class was requiring me to read multiple read books, on top of two text books (5 all together). A book report along with Weekly essays. Two research essays. By-weekly Tests, and a partridge in a pair tree! Welcome back to school, I thought. This is my first quarter back? Really!? What dumbass picked these classes?!

I mean this is my first quarter back. I haven't studied dick other then box scores in three years. Any essay I had written has either been about my itchy penis, black outs, or sports. Then keep in mind that I work full time. That means I go to class at nine in the morning, and I leave work at eight at night. Saturday is the only day where I don't have class or work. Or how about the girlfriend!? I'm no miss Cleo, but I saw into the future at that moment: I was locked in a padded room, wearing a straight jacket, and drooling everywhere while some old lady came in and read my Dr. Suess books once a week.

SCREW THIS! The message was clear from the professors joke and the syllabis :this class is not going to be for you!

After I left class that day I went home (I had a few minutes before work), confirmed that dropping that class wasn't going to screw up my financial aid (it wasn't), then promptly told class 'thanks, but no thanks'.

I guess it's better to check the temperature before jumping into the deep end.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Goldberg, Revenge and a Stick Horse named Pepe

I've always found it funny what my brain chooses to remember and what it forgets. How does the subconscious decide what's too important to disregard, and what is useless? Good example : why am I able to remember things like the starting lineup for the 1999 Portland Trail Blazers, but not the ionic number for Uranium?

I have a hard time remembering specific events from High School. But I can tell you the whole plot of a random short story I wrote during that time. I can tell you the shirt I wore three years ago on a date, but not be able to tell you what the name was of the girl I was on the date with.

That being said, I'm not confused over the fact that I can distinctly remember the first time I witnessed people excited over Professional wrestling. I just think it's odd. Not because it was almost 15 years ago. Mainly because I wasn't even in the room watching wrestling when it happened.

Here is what happened: It was June 6 1998. I know this date is factual because I was at my buddy Seans house with him, my brother Jesse, his brother Ty and we were watching the MLB Home Run Derby that night at Coors Field (Griffey won, suck it).

Later that night, after Griffey had accepted his trophy, we were down stairs doing the childhood thing and getting ready for bed. Then out of know where, Seans crazy dad came into the room yelling, "Goldberg is fighting Hogan. Goldberg is fighting Hogan!" Jesse and Tyler freaked out and followed the dad back up stairs. I was too cool for that. Hulk Hogan? Seriously? I mean wrestling was gay. Also, what the fuck was a Goldberg?

Apparently Sean could tell by my facial expression I had no knowledge of this 'Goldberg'. "Dude, Goldberg is undefeated." Sean said quietyly. I remember him vividly being quiet as we sat in his room playing with his action figures. I'm sure he wanted to run up there with our brothers, but didn't want to risk looking un cool in front of me. I never ended up going up there, despite the yelps of extacy that came from atop the stairs. I believe Sean ended up doing it. To this day I regret this decision.

In fact, 24 year old me wishes he could beat the piss out of 11 year old me. Believe that. What I missed was a watershed moment in the history of wrestling. I missed Goldberg stomping his inflated undefeated record into a sold out Georgia Dome for his first World Title match. I missed Hollywood Hogan actually putting somebody over (Hogan gets alot of shit for using his backstage power, and not putting people over. But you gotta give him credit here). I missed Tony Schiavone losing his shit calling the match. I missed the Jack Hammer that shocked the Wrestling World and gave Goldberg his first World Championship.

What a stupid little kid I was.

Why? Well because no more then 4 months later, right before Goldbers first title run ended to Kevin Nash (and Scott Hall's Tazer) at Starcade, I became hooked on pro wrestling.
My love affair with the SPORT of professional wrestling started from simple beginings. It was all because I was a self concious 7th graded who just wanted to be cool. The 8th graders liked wrestling. I wanted to hang out with the 8th graders. My mission became simple: I had to figured out what was so cool about wrestling.
So I checked out an episode of WCW programing. It was an episode of WCW Saturday Night. I remember four things. Norman Smiley, and his taunt, 'the big wiggle'. Disco Inferno, a homo with permed hair who wore gay bell bottoms. A loud mouthed Jackass with big blonde hair named Chris Jericho, and lastely, Chavo Guerrero, a card carrying member of the LWO (Latino World Order) and a guy who came to the ring on a stick horse named Pepe. A STICK HORSE! Oh, how I loved Pepe.

Despite my mothers objections (and they were many), I quickly became a wrestling junkie. It wasn't my fault, wrestling simply offered an addictive formula for me as 13 year old. Violence, video games and skanky chicks. That right there is the holy trinity of developing early teenaged male followers.
By 14 (staying true to the form of a junkie), I had upgraded to a harder drug-The WWF. I had grown tired of what WCW was offering and when my mom wasn't looking, I would flip from Nitro over to Raw. My mom had since given into the fact that we were watching wrestling. She still wasn't cool with it, more like she just accepted it. Because of that acceptance, we had a somewhat unspoken agreement that it was cool because WCW didn't garnish the type of negative attention that WWF did back then.
WWF was where X Pac would tell people to 'suck it' 127 times an episode. WWF was where Vince McMahon exposed his bare ass for people to kiss. WWF is where Miss Kitty came out in a bikini made of bubble wrap. WWF was where the tv got changed to. And it didn't leave.
Still to this day I am an avid watcher of professional wrestling. Not so much the WWE (earlier in this decade they got sued and lost to the World Wildlife Foundation and were told to "get the 'f' out") because they have moved to more family friendly programing.
It's not that I don't like it, it's just hard to watch Raw now and not compare it to what it used to be (they have since took away the skanky women, blood and bad language). Ok, I lied. I fucking hate it. I mean who watches wrestling to not see blood? It's not the same. Case and point: What would the "Die Hard" movies have been like if John McClain didn't end up wearing blood soaked T-Shirts in each one of them? Boring as balls, thats what.

I really could write a book focusing on just my theories and opinions on WWE's "PG" programing, but I'll resist. Thats for another chapter on another day (if I remember).

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Ballad of King Felix

We just finished game 113: a 2-0 co-op shut out tossed by Felix and Ardsma. Another outstanding start by King Felix, handcuffed by another disapointing game for every Mariner in the batting order. The Mariners offense isn't even a joke anymore, it's just fucking depressing.

The Mariners offense has been so abismal (dead last in MLB in every major statistical category except stolen bases) that it has completely overshaddowed the teams legitiment bright spot: Felix Hernandez.

The pitching as a whole has been decent, even after the trading of Cliff Lee. Outside of King Felix and his brilliance and the two months of Cliff Lee, Jason Vargas and Doug Fister have been more then serviceable. Unfortunalty, we also had to sit through a few months of turd sandwiches delieved by Ryan Rowland-Smith and Ian Snell (both of whom have since been placed in the Whitness Protection Agency).

Those schmucks included the Mariners have a team era of 3.93, which is good for 12th in the league. Not good, but certainly not bad. You can almost call it respectable. What's bad is that we are giving up almost four runs a game and only scoring 3.2 runs ourselves.

It's simple math, really: If you score 3 runs a game while giving up 4-you're gonna lose.


This team is so bad offensivly, it often feels like we'd have a better chance at tacking runs up with a Community College team. While doing the research, here are some of the jaw dropping highlights of their offsensive incompetence (I guess it would make more sense to call them 'lowlights'):

  • Twice this season they have scored over ten runs :(
  • They have been shut out 10 times .
  • 69 games this season they have scored 3 runs or less.
  • Twice this season they have been shut out in back to back games.
  • They have scored 21 runs less then any team in baseball.
  • They are flirting with becoming the first team since 1979 to score less then 200 runs in the second half of the season (Last team, 79 Padres).
  • They have a team average of .236 while racking up an incredible total of 67 homeruns thus far.

This piece started off as a bitch session about the worst offensive team I've ever seen and a goodbye to Don Wakamatsu. After about 15 minutes of rock kicking, I was reminded of twho the bigger victim in this mess is: Felix.

For the vast majority of the season, Felix has pitched like his childrens lives depend on it. Somehow, despite being 4th in the AL(and 9th in MLB)in ERA, and 2nd in the AL in strike outs- he has posted a record of 8-9. That is the record befitting a third starter having a mediocre season, not an Ace who is pitching out of his mind. Which he is.

Felix, other then the people who pay tickets for every game other then the one he pitches, has been the biggest victim of our teams inabillity to produce anything on offense. To prove my point, lets look at the numbers:

  • Twice this season we have scored 7 or more runs in a game for him.
  • 7 of his 8 wins he has gone over 8 1/3 innings... including 5 complete games.
  • In all 8 wins he has given up 2 runs or less
  • In his 25 starts this season we have scored 5 runs or more 5 times.
  • In 14 of his 17 losses or no decisions he has given up 3 runs or less.
  • He leads ALL OF BASEBALL in quality starts.... that right there is the killer.

I'm not trying to prove that the Mariners are bad. All you need to do is pick up your daily news paper and see that they have a firm hold over the celler of the AL West Division to know that they blow goats. I just want to raise awareness of the victims from this mess. It's Don Wakamatsu, or any of the other coaches who got axed this week. It's our minor leaguers like Dustin Ackley and Justin Smoak who are waiting for thier call up, butfor some reason they are still waiting behind the shit crew we have up here right now(you can't tell me they would be any worse). It's Justin Vargas and Doug Fister who have suprised all of us with serviceable seasons.

It's the fans, who pay good money to watch this train wreck.

It's Felix, who shocked everyone by signing a long term extension a full year before he was set to test Free Agency. Now he is doing what he promised and delivers Cy Young caliber starts everytime he takes the mound.

Unfortunatly for him ( and fortunately for the Mariners organization and it's fans) the name on the front of his Jersey says the 'Mariners' and not 'Yankees', and unless he finds a way to get the other team to score negative runs.... he isn't going to win many more games this year.

Now that is depressing.