My Letter

No headbutts.

Dear New York Yankees:

Before I get around to addressing specific individuals, I'd like to thank you all for a few things. First, you have added approximately 11 years to my life this season. There are more dents in my floor than in May when I first moved in from spiking things on the ground. I enjoying watching, as always, and thank you for the AL East crown, but my life expectancy significantly decreases with every passing season.

To Derek: thank you. I now know the reason why everyone in New York loves you, and everybody else hates you. You get it. You understand the moment. I could see it when you were screaming at your teammates last year from first base in game 7, and this year in game 5. We need a run to pull close? You hit a homer. We need baserunners in the late innings? What do you know, you get on base. You do whatever needs to be done, and I thank you for it.

To Bubba: I'd rather have two guys collide than have the ball drop in. And at least you had an RBI in the series.

To Randy: thanks for blowing game 3. Quit being all pissed off and pitch.

To Robbie: you have me honestly excited. Just don't develop Steve Blass disease.

To Gary and Hideki: anybody want to get a big hit anytime soon? Maybe drive in a run? Please? You're in a contract year Hideki, leaving 8 men on base should not happen.

And finally, to Alex Rodriguez: excellent regular season. MVP type numbers, and pseudo-Gold Glove defense. But you choked at the plate. Yeah yeah yeah, your on-base numbers were close to .500, but 2 for 15 in the series? As someone once said, people don't pay money to see you walk, they pay money to see you swing the bat. And you know that RBI Bubba had? That's 1 more than you had for the series, which puts you at 0. No RBIs. None. No home runs. Nothing. This baffles me. Anyhow, I blame you for this loss. I blame you and you .133 average, your 0 RBIs, and your 0 HRs. Go work out at 6AM again this offseason, come find me when you learn to shut up and hit in the playoffs.

To George: be mad, but don't do anything stupid. Please let Brian do all the work.

To Brian: please come back. Whatever George says, he doesn't mean it. We really want you back.

And finally, to Bernie: I'm sorry this had to be your potential last game. Not really the way to go out, huh? Thanks for holding down fort for so many years. Hopefully there's a spot waiting for you in the park. We'll miss you Bernie. Bern, baby Bern.

K bye.

Shenanigans! I Call Shenanigans!

A glorious headbutt to you.

First things first: by the time the playoffs are over, I'm going to be a very old man.

And let's get this out of the way: I want whatever Turb was drinking that night.

Oh, the weekend. Once again, ours was better than yours. In fact, Saturday night ranks up there with some of the all-time great nights we've had. And Turb doesn't even know what the hell happened for most of it. A recap, if you don't mind:

Friday night (despair):
-game 3, Yankees/Angels. After being down by 5, the Yankees stage a huge comeback, only to lose in the late innings (thanks Al Leiter.) The appropriate levels of depression and despondency set in. This is not to mention that I had 4 beers during the game. I left the mess for the next morning.

Saturday (anticipation):
-look at mess from night before, suddenly feel very lazy. Don't bother cleaning.
-game 4, rained out. At least I don't have to avoid all kinds of technology for the next 12 hours.

Saturday night (exaltation):
-United game with Turb and Phil. Did I mention our tickets got us free food for the game and 3 free beers, not to mention a small plastic cup?
-number of times I flipped off Metrostars fans at the game: 4
-number of justified times I yelled at an old man, who was a Metrostars fan: 2
-number of unjustified times I yelled at an old man, who was a Metrostars fan: 3
-we ran to the Metro? Can we please stop running to the Metro now?
-meet up with Kim and her ex-boyfriend. Jump on Metro, proceed to lose ex-boyfriend. Mission accomplished.
-back to the Pour House. Remember the Pour House? We love that place.
-"I'm just going to Chicago to have sex with my ex-boyfriend."
-meet up with Kim's roommate Lauren and her friend Ashley. Yeah, there were some other people, but they left early, so they do not exist for the purposes of the night.
-lose a bet about the Saturday before Halloween. Penalty: must cook for Kim.
-Turb and I are supposed to have a dance-off? Everybody knows I can't compete with Turb in a dance-off. I don't even think I bothered trying. He's too good.
-steal away Kim for photo hunt bar game. There is nothing better than two people that have been drinking trying to play photo hunt.
-3 Guns 'N Roses songs??? Are you kidding me? Of course I belted out the lyrics to each one.
-lose a bet about this guy's name. Penalty: oh man.
-I get a lapdance, then I give a lapdance? What the hell is wrong with me?
-Ut oh, Turb went outside to the tree.
-Ut oh, Turb came back in and fell asleep at the table. Looks like it's time to go.
-bye Ashley!
-made it to the Metro. Turb doesn't make the bench in the station and is on the floor. Kim and I take pictures with him. Good times.
-bye Kim! Bye Lauren!
-Turb's asleep on the Metro, and it's our stop. I yell and curse at him. People on the train are amused.
-people cheer Turb on to get off the train.
-people applaud as Turb exits said train.
-he's going up the down escalator? This is going to take awhile...
-safely home, and I don't even bother to yell at the dwarf in the TV for the mess he made (crazy Portuguese dwarf.)

Sunday (redemption):
-clean up mess from Friday.
-YANKEES WIN, THAAAAAAAAAAAA YANKEES WIN!

All told, we had one lost plastic cup (Turb), one lost cell phone antennae (me), two lost bets (me again), and one lost memory (Turb).

K bye.

What Kind of Titlke?

Headbutt.

Let's get this out of the way: old friends give the best ideas.

So I was talking to an old friend of mine the other day (who's flipping married. Can you believe that? She's my age, and married. I'm so behind the curve on this, and you know what, I blame you), and she reminded me of something very important that I had done way back in my more youthful days.

Have I ever told you about the time I saved a manatee?

It was a really late May evening, when the sun sets at a late enough time that you can grill out on your deck, sip a well-made martini, and bask in the revelation that you invented the night. I was doing all of the above when I heard the sound of tires screeching down the road. After I put on my robe and wizard hat (to those without a weird sense of humor, you might not appreciate that link, but then again, odds are you haven't read this far before clicking on the link, so it's all a moot point anyway), I sped down the road, hoping that I wouldn't have to use my CPR skills. They were a bit rusty.

When I got to the place of the screeching tires, I realized that a small turtle had maliciously attacked a car head on, throwing it around a nearby tree. Fearing for the people in the car, I grabbed the turtle by the shell and flung it into a stream that was conveniently located asunder. The turtle floated on down the stream, never to be seen again.

Or so I thought.

It kept coming back. Day after day, night after night, the turtle kept coming back, attacking cars left and right, craving the taste of twisted steel. It's thirst would not be denied, so matter how many times I watched it float down that stream. Eventually cars would not be enough. Soon it craved other things, like poorly made skyscrapers, the city of Pittsburgh, and marbles.

Not knowing what to do and reaching my breaking point, I screamed the only thing I could at this demented turtle, "if you don't stop eating steel and my marbles, I am going to kill my pet manatee!" Not wanting to harm one of it's seafaring brethren, the turtle scampered off, and floated down the stream for the last time. It has only been seen on rare occasions off the island of Guadalaalehandro, where is quenches it's thirst for steel by eating rusty schooners.

So there you have it, the story of how I saved a manatee.

K bye.

(Editor's note: the writer of this story has, at no point in time, every had a manatee as a pet of any kind. Any similarities to any persons, events, or turtles in this story is completely bogus, and if you believe otherwise, you are insane.)

So About Those Keys...

Headbutt.

Let's get this out of the way: blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

There has been a certain amount of malaise when it comes to writing these things again. Ideas are at an all-time low. Something pops into my head, but I can never get it to pan out the way I want or it just kind of fizzles and sucks. Then I'll have a great idea, write everything out, and it will get deleted (curse you Berkley!) for no reason. Start stop start stop, it's no way to write, because the end product doesn't become what you had envisioned in your mind.

Some of you out there might think that the process is simple:
1) sit down at keyboard
2) type about any random thing, making it very weird in the process
3) find some pictures online, and insert
4) light victory cigar and wait for the praise to come rolling in

The thing is, it's not that easy. Each one of these posts is very carefully crafted. All of the dwarves, the elves, the little men that steal my ideas in the night, the Miltons (you're welcome) are well-developed, thought-out characters with backstories, feelings, emotions and such. The seeming randomness that is associated with each one is exactly the opposite; it's the product of minutes of careful thinking and plotting. You have no idea how often I think things like, "you know, [insert favorite character] walking around with a billy goat on a rope with a jug of pink lemonade around his neck just doesn't fit into his aura."

Having these characters means having continuity. I can't just mention the dwarf in my TV or his cousin, the gnome that makes the Snapple cap button sound for the blinker in my car, and then have that be it. (By the way, the dwarf in the TV has acquired a new home, but I'll tell you about that later.) Continuity means that writing becomes more and more serious, links harder to find, and everything just takes more time. The wackiness and randomness become controlled, which is both a blessing (since it allows me to claim that I am partially sane) and a curse (since it allows me to claim that I am partially sane).

In addition to all of this hardship with character development and creativity, the gags must stay sharp, stay fresh. The whole idea of this is built on being one huge inside joke, which is then broken up into lots of smaller inside jokes between multiple people. But maintaining these insiders, keeping them fresh, evolving them into the cultural phenomenons that they are becoming takes gentle nuturing. For instance, the headbutts that I always give you are only understood by maybe 4 people. You are not meant to be like my niece and headbutt everything in sight. It's a fine line between pop culture and rampaging gag gone horribly wrong.

So what does this all mean in the long run? It means that I am hiring a co-writer. With two (or more) people, ideas will flow more freely, the writings will become more frequent, and the saga will continue forever. Of course, you will get paid nothing for this job, be forced to post under an alias, and be forced to subsist on a diet of lemon meringue pie, but it could be worse.

You could be turning the color wheel in the TV.

K bye.