Blow up the Sox

Warning:  Only readers with a passion for the White Sox or baseball in general will give a flip about this post.  

Brad and I renewed our "Ozzie Plan" today; 14 trips down to Comiskey Park for the 2012 season.  Wo-hoo!  Now, I can't imagine the Sox will continue to call the package the "Ozzie Plan" seeing how its namesake, Ozzie Guillen, has been shown the door and now manages the Miami Marlins.  What matters is that Brad and I will be able to smell the grilled hotdogs and onions 14 times in the 2012 season, while we watch an underwhelming Sox effort on days John Danks doesn't pitch.

It will be interesting, however, to see what kind of team we'll be seeing on those trips.  You see, last year, the Sox badly, badly underachieved.  The 2011 Sox had the 5th highest payroll in the major leagues and finished with the 18th "best" record...or 13th worst record if you're a glass half-empty guy.  They started out the season poorly, made a run in the middle of the season that got me believing again and then knocked the legs out from under their fan base with a 0-42 September record (citation needed).  It was a bad season highlighted by our free agent acquisition, 6'6" 285 pound Adam Dunn who was supposed to smash 50 home runs on the South Side but instead got out-homered by all 185 pounds of Opie here:

Basically, we payed Mr. Dunn $12,000,000 to secure the lowest batting average in major league history by a guy with 500 or more plate appearances (.159) while striking out 177 times...against only 66 hits.  12 million dollars! 

Now, I don't think Adam Dunn is that bad.  The dude did hit 38 home runs in 2010.  I personally feel that he started out on a terrible streak and just couldn't shake out of it.  You don't go from a 38 home run campaign to the worst batting average in major league history in just one season, even if he did switch to the tougher league.  This has to be mental, more than anything else.  Hopefully, an off season of floating in swimming pools and sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies will help wipe his memory of his utterly terrible year. 

But it wasn't all Adam Dunn's fault.  3 other regulars struggled to hit above the Mendoza Line, Ozzie's temper, contract situation and feud with Kenny Williams was a constant distraction, our pitching was mediocre at best and we had zero help from the minor leagues early on.

It is that last point that causes me to think it's time to blow up the team.

Next year, we are slated to again have a payroll in the upper-third of the league, only it's becoming abundantly clear that we are going to lose our most consistent pitcher to free agency this off-season.  In addition, we've already been informed that our payroll is maxed-out; fans shouldn't hold their breath for any game-changing free agents.

The long-term problem?  Our minor league system is completely barren.  I'm not sure if it is Kenny Williams' lack of creativity when it comes to the draft or Jerry Reinsdorf's constant draft-time penny pinching--or both--but the Sox, for whatever reason, refuse to invest in the draft.  As such, the truly talented kids fall to teams that are willing to spend money on signing bonuses and we draft "signable" kids over and over and over and over again.

While the new collective bargaining agreement will help the Sox going forward, the immediate damage has been done.  As a result of their penny-pinching(and Kenny Williams penchant for trading minor league talent for Major League players), the Sox have been left with what Baseball America calls the 4th worst minor league system in Major League Baseball.   Keith Law, the ESPN amateur scout and catty humorist, thinks the Sox are the 3rd worst.  Ouch. 

While it is always possible that the cheaper teams can find a hidden gem here and there, most teams that are willing to spend on the draft continue to churn out major league players that are 100% homegrown.  The Boston Red Sox excel at this, god damn it.  Even with larger signing bonuses, this is the single cheapest way to get high-end talent into an organization.

The Sox are in a tough spot.  They will have a fairly high payroll next year but do not have any realistic chance to win a World Series unless we have some serious rebound seasons from our highly paid "talent".  Combine that with the likely-loss of our beloved lefty Mark Buehrle...

Don't you just want to hug him?

...and that leads me to believe we won't be hoisting the Commissioner's Trophy next October. 

So what's team to do?  I think it's time to dismantle the Sox.  Trade any guy that has value to any taker and try to restock our minor league coffers.  Kenny Williams has said that he will only take back major league ready players but he's fooling himself; once we start trading our guys, we should not stop.  He wants to trade his guys but remain competitive.  In other words, he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

My plan is different:  get rid of everyone.  Gavin Floyd, John Danks, Phil Humber, Matt Thorton, Sergio Santos, Jessie Crain, A.J. (if he'll accept a trade), Carlos Quentin, everybody.  See if you can get 30 cents on the dollar for Dunn and Alex Rios...and if we can't get rid of these guys--and let's be honest here, we probably can't--just let them play out their contracts and by the time they are done, the new acquisitions will likely be ready.  Let the kids play.  Pitch Chris Sale and Zach Stewart.  Turn Dayan Viciedo loose in right and see if he doesn't embarrass himself.  Let Tyler Flowers catch all season.

Let's see what the kids can do while we simultaneously add some talent in the minor leagues. 

Today Brad and I spent $400 on Sox tickets for the 2012 season.  I would much rather watch a team that I can see some hope in the future than a team that I want to bury as dead from the very start.

Thanksgiving 2011

I LOVE Thanksgiving.  It is--by every calculation--my favorite holiday of the year.  Sure, I'm filled with childish glee come Christmas...who isn't?  Except for our friends of other faiths, of course.  Also, as discussed previously on this blog, Halloween is a truly special time to go barhopping.  And while it is not a government sanctioned holiday, the NBA draft absolutely should be, in my humble opinion.

However, none of these holidays holds a special place in my heart quite like Thanksgiving.  Why do I love Thanksgiving?  Because it is all about food.  No presents, no pressure; just eating and drinking.  And napping.  And football.  And family.

This Thanksgiving was a little bittersweet as it was the first major holiday without our beloved mother and her wonderful stuffing.  To lessen the pressure of the occasion, we all chipped in this year and it became sort of a Thanksgiving Potluck:  Dad made a Turducken, his famous gravy and the mashed potatoes, my brothers-in-law chipped in with stuffing and green bean casserole, Peggy made a spot-on Red Velvet Cake from my Mother's recipe, I brought the pies and Krishni made a truly bad-for-you batch of southern-style dinner rolls.

Of course, we all brought champagne. 

And god did we eat.  Over the 36 hours I was at my Father's house, I had probably 5 slices of pie and 2 slices of cake, two full meals of stuffing and gravy and, for ceremonial purposes and nothing more, a chunk of turkey. Clearly, I'm carb conscious. 

We also celebrated my adorable Godson's 2nd birthday with remote controlled cars and trucks, played with a bunch of toys at Toys R' Us, watched a ton of (bad) football, buried the kids in leaves in the unraked back-yard, saw the new Muppet movie--it was awesome--and drank a considerable amount of wine.

Considering this was the first major holiday without Mom, I consider it a smashing success.

Now, about the extra 10 pounds I am carrying around after the weekend...

Things I don't hate

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time bitching about the things I hate.  Like mayonnaise and Julia Roberts.  It's sort of who I am.  But today on the bus--where I overheard two dudes loudly going on and on and on about how much they hate Justin Bieber--I realized that that can be exhausting.  Who can hate Justin Bieber so much that they must angrily bitch and moan at 7:13 AM on a Friday when everyone else is patiently counting down the minutes until 5pm? 

As such, in celebration of it being Friday, I thought I would make a list of things that my stunningly sexy readership of 9 may think that I hate, but in actuality, don't bother me in the least:

1)  Bieber

Might as well start here.  I can't name or hum a single song by this kid.  I have no idea if he sucks musically or not.  All I'm going on here is what I hear people complaining about the guy.  Ok, so he has kind of douchey hair.  I'll give you that.  And he has more money than god.  But hell, he's just a kid that was thrust into a spectacularly successfully money making machine.

Can we blame him for that?  He's sort of like the next generation's version of Macaulay Culkin.  Sure, we may all remember Mac fondly now, but that's revisionist history.  There was a swift and brutal backlash against Macaulay Culkin back in the day that abruptly pushed him into an early retirement.  It's very easy to forget how much people hated that kid for a while.  So, Mac relaxed for a couple years, divorced his parents, slept with Michael Jackson, got married, got divorced, laid low and then eventually came back as an indie-movie darling and I think we can all agree, he's sort of awesome now:

God, I hope that picture isn't photoshopped

Point is, yes, Bieber is over-exposed and has that hair but it wouldn't surprise me if he either went the Mac route or the Timberlake route and remade his career on down the road.  I hated Justin Timberlake for a while...c'mon, the dude was in 'NSYNCH (did I get that right? I refuse to google it) but through a series of SNL appearances, that fun Pepsi commercial where he was killed by a big screen TV, "Tit-Gate" at the Superbowl, and some pretty good roles in the occasional movie, he's made my short list of dudes I'd probably have to set aside my heterosexuality and bang given the opportunity.  I can "not hate" Bieber and at the same time hope to god he never makes that list too, right?  I better move on.

2)  Rebecca Black

This is one that I don't get at all.  Sure, her song "Friday" was not very good.  Let's get that out of the way right now.  But is it the worst song every released?  Hell no.  I mean, the Black Eyed Peas shit out a worse song 8 or 9 times on their average album.  Bob Dylan recorded entire albums on auto-pilot that were worse than "Friday".  I can even think of a few Beatles songs that are worse: "Birthday", "The Long and Winding Road", "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" and "Michelle", just to name a few.  

I really don't understand what the spite and fury is all about.  What we have here is a 14 year old girl whose parents paid for a music video to be made of a song the girl didn't even write.  The lyrics speak about the average, every-day "problems" of a teenage girl, not about Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner having a dirty three-way with the Declaration of Independence.  Where is the controversy?  "Friday" is the definition of innocuous. 

And yet, because of this song, the girl--a freaking teenage girl--received death threats.  What?  Why?  I don't get it.  I hope she makes a shitload of money, does Bieber and writes a hilarious book someday.  The ridicule she received was not at all equal to the annoying qualities of the song. 


3)  Mondays

For just about forever, Sunday has been my favorite day of the week.  See, on Friday and Saturday, we're supposed to act and behave as functional human beings.  We go out, have drinks, mix in a dinner, run errands, visit people and generally better ourselves.  Sunday?  I consider it a loss if I change my underwear.  Sundays are all about sitting on the couch, watching football and movies, playing Nintendo and not showering.  Sunday is the perfect bridge to Monday.

If you can't deal with a Monday, then you didn't do Sunday right.  

While I don't hate Mondays, I do think that these days they are rather sad and bittersweet.  One one hand, I have to drag my fat ass out of bed, take the bus-to-the-train-to-the-bus in 40 degree weather all to help grown men masturbate.  On the other hand, I won't have to worry about that commute much longer.

Sigh.

4)  Jesus Christ

Despite what you may believe after a few of my posts these last few days, I gots nothing against the King of Kings.  Honestly?  Jesus seemed like a cool dude.  While I may not believe that he was the son of God, I do think he was a prophet of sorts and pushed a message of love that people these days really, really seem to ignore.  It's hardly his fault that millions of people have been killed in his name.  And if he's watching us today, he's probably cursing Republicans right now, saying things like "WTF?  I never said word-fucking-one about gays." or "Help the poor!  Help them!  Remember?  Love!?  I healed lepers!  You can't help a cancer-ridden single mother of 3 with her hospital bills!  Christ!"

What did Gandhi say?  "I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians."  That seems about right.

************

Thus concludes the only blog you will likely ever read where JC, Beiber and Rebecca Black have something in common.  Happy Friday!

I just hope he didn't call during dinner

Jesus Starfish

Warning: You will never, ever be able to un-see the following image

I've never been one for scatological humor.  It's just not to my, uh, tastes.  For me, fart jokes stopped being funny in about the 8th grade.  I find that because of this, I am unlike most dudes.  To the average guy, farting is one of the joys of being a man.  Entire symphonies have been tooted in rooms full of dudes on New Years Day after several bowls of chili during the Rose Bowl. 

Bathroom humor just isn't my thing anymore.  It's part of the reason why I stopped watching Family Guy.

Pictured:  Humor

However, sometimes something so spectacular within this genre comes along--something so wonderful, sent down as a gift from God--that we just have to share it with the world.  Something like, oh, I don't know...Jesus appearing on a dog's butthole:

Praise the lord!

I know, I know.  Gross, right?  But isn't that an amazing likeness?  I have to admit, it kills me when people see Jesus or Mary or God in or on an inanimate object.  Remember that guy that found a Cheeto that vaguely resembled Jesus on the cross?:

Or the dude that found the Cheeto of Jesus praying?:

 

Or the woman who found the Cheeto of baby Jesus?:

Or the person who thankfully didn't eat the Cheeto of Mary holding baby Jesus aloft?:

Clearly, any bag of Cheetos could be blessed with a divine, delicious image.  However, Jesus and Mary don't exclusively appear in Cheetos brand snax.  My fellow Chicagoans might remember when the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared on the Kennedy Expressway's overpass at Fullerton Ave.  Dubbed--hilariously, so--"Our Lady of Fullerton", people came from all over the country to pray beneath the blessed image; probably just before donating a dollar to the unwashed homeless guy playing the bucket on the other side of the street.

 

Now, I'm not here to make fun of someones faith.  Just because I don't necessarily share the same beliefs, I would never, ever question your belief in God.  I do think that all bets are off, however, when you willingly worship a water stain that honestly looks more like a Gelgamek vagina than anything else.  

What is amazing about the Canine Jesus Starfish is that, to my knowledge, this is Jesus' first appearance on a totally animate object...on a living, breathing organism.

Though if I was a Christian, I'd feel awfully conflicted about taking that dog for a walk.

Today in Sheer Internet Joy

As you might imagine, I participated in many drinking games in college.  We played all the traditional ones:  Asshole, Oblivious Pursuit, 99 Bust-a-Rhyme (known at other Universities as "Kings Cup"), Beer Pong, the Star Wars drinking game, Quarters, Circle of Death, etc.  When we didn't have any other options, sometimes we created the games; left with only a nickle, an empty cup and all the beer we can drink, Marc, Shannon and I created a game called "Pump Factory" that got us obscenely drunk one night at The Hut, the fast food joint at the student union run by an awesome chick named Carmen that really liked us...we purchased beer for 20 cents on the dollar for all 5.1 years I was in school. 

One night, about 5 of us had a ton of beer but nothing to do and we had a conversation about who--currently, historically or in fiction--we thought it would be awesome to have a beer with.  What started as a simple, philosophical discussion became a full, knock-down drag-out argument that had us rushing around our house looking for people to break ties on who you'd rather have a beer with: Bill Clinton or Freddy Krueger.  Since it was March when we were having this argument and college hoops had been on our TV for the last 72 hours, we set up a full, 64 person bracket, expanded our voting pool to about a dozen people and whittled it down for a final four.  The final four of the "People we'd most want to have many beers with" was:  William Wallace (we were obsessed with Braveheart at the time), Han Solo, Jesus Christ and Indiana Jones.  If memory serves--it at really doesn't--Han Solo won in a close final over Jesus Christ. 

I miss college.

Considering we had a fraternity house full of engineering students who could create a bong out of just about anything, I'm shocked and disappointed that none of us ever came up with this AMAZING idea:

"You sunk my battleship and I seem to have pissed my pants."

Hell with Rabbit Ears

I'll bet most of you think life working for the Rabbit looks an awful lot like this:

"May we get you a Rob Roy for that spreadsheet?"

When in reality, the sad, soul-crushing face of my job looks like this:

"But Mike," you might say, "What happened between today and that hilarious Halloween party two weeks ago where your department cleverly celebrated your impending lay-offs by having an Irish wake for the staff around your work stations complete with a coffin, whiskey and girls that were painted to look like they were wearing lingerie but were, in fact, wearing nothing but panties that look like they really, really hurt?"

Well, I'll tell you what happened.  As many of you know,  Playboy is going through a bit of a change.  By "a bit of a change", I mean "closing the Chicago office that has been the headquarters of the company since 1953".  Everyone here is either losing their job--likely within the next 6 months--or being moved out to California to work at Playboy West.  Our department will be lucky to survive through Christmas.  It kind of sucks around here.

The entirety of the online Playboy footprint was purchased by a Canadian porn company who has also snapped up a bunch of other naked lady sites.  However, since they work with an entirely different billing system then we do, over the course of the last few days we've been attempting to integrate our system into theirs.  This has caused many, many login problems.  Serious login problems.

What kind of problems?  Well, apparently the entire world is completely unable to masturbate.  This sucks for us for a number of reasons.  1)  Electronically jerking people off is what we do.  2)  Many of our subscribers are super old and hard of hearing and don't know how to use a computer to begin with.  3)  Many of the subscribers affected are foreign since this integration also messed with the billing system exclusively used by our international subscribers. 

This means our frustrated subscriber base--who just want to relax before the wife gets home from work, goddamn it--are calling in with their pants at their ankles and giving us what-for, often with a tremendous language barrier.

Sigh.

Thank god I have the best wife in the world.  And that bottle of Jim Beam in my freezer.

I'm old, Part 2

Back on January 30th, 2008, I posted an entry at my totally inappropriate MySpace blog entitled, "I'm Old".  Within, it had the following passage:

"It all started at work.  My back had been feeling a little out of sorts for the better part of the day.  Lower back pain is never pleasant, I would imagine, but I had never really experienced it before.  The spasms started small and only happened when I stood up from my desk area.  Any time I turned or, uh, moved, a tiny little pain would shoot through my spine and hammer my brain.  Ouch.  But it was manageable.  

I left work, made my way to the train and started thinking about the delicious, delicious burrito I was going to buy across the street from my bus stop. I knew something was wrong when I ordered something like 'a chorizo burrito with no sour-GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !'  It snuck up on me and attacked with such vengeance that I didn't know what the hell had happened. It felt like to opposite of an orgasm.  I stammered through my order and immediately went next door to the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka."

The rest of the post goes on to describe how useless I was for the next 48 hours.  It was the most pain I had ever randomly encountered, and this comes from a guy who just had his neck assaulted by a crazy homeless dude.  

Anyhow, I figured that the source of my back pain was from a weird chair I had been using at work.  They had just moved us from one end of the office to the other and in the move, they had lost my desk chair.  The new one was super uncomfortable and over the course of the next few weeks, I experienced some back soreness that eventually erupted into the fateful burrito order above.   I switched chairs shortly thereafter and, like magic, my back pain slowly went away.  I haven't experienced anything like that godawful week since.  

Cut to this past week.  It happened again but this time, there is no "office chair" explanation for my spasms.  I can only come to one conclusion:

I am--for realz, this time--really god damned old.

You see, normally when folks throw out their back, it's because of a lingering issue from long ago--my dad's back pain can be traced to when he played football in college--or otherwise they were doing something moderately active: whether it be playing with their kids, or falling off a ladder or making a sudden, jerky movement to prevent someone or something from falling.   All of these are fantastic excuses for back pain.  You know what I did to cause my back pain?  

I sat down on my bed to put on my socks.  

Ask Krishni about it sometime.  She was laying on the bed when I sat down and immediately shot directly up screaming something like "JESUSF'INGGAAAAAAOWOWOWOWOWCHRIST!"  I begged her to move over--likely not in a polite fashion--so I could lie down and whimper and swear and pretty much not move.   It was terrible.  And I have no idea what I did to cause the back gods to be angry with me.

Now, it's been well documented that I don't exercise enough.  And I eat a lot.  And probably drink more than I should.  And I just turned 33.  My sudden and fierce back attack was probably a direct result of all of the above.   Or maybe it's because I've already peaked as a human being--sad as it is to say, since I help grown men masturbate for a living--and it's all downhill from here.  

Christ.  Krishni married an old man.  Here's photographic proof:

Hooray for old man pants!

Blog headers...harder than it looks

Like any sane person whose adolescence occurred in the '90s, I watched an awful lot of The Simpsons growing up.  Because of this, I am not-so-uniquely qualified to definitively say that the "Clown College" episode was their finest moment. 

Also known as "The University of Michigan"

Of course, even the casual fan can pick out the two running jokes during the intro: Bart forever writing on the blackboard:

And the "Couch Gag":

I've seen most of these gags--at least from the first 8 or so seasons--thanks to the magic of the VHS tape that allowed a poor college kid to record the 14 daily showing of the Simpsons on Fox to be rewatched later, over many, many beers.

In the 2000's, Fox and Matt Groening--the creator of the Simpson clan--upped the ante by annually releasing The Simpson's DVDs.  I only bought the 1st season before realizing that I could never afford each season as it came out so I just borrowed each season as it was released from my buddy Brad.  It is because of these DVDs that I was introduced to the magic of the "director's commentary".  I LOVE the directors commentary (DC).  For those not in the know, the DC is an alternate audio track that plays along with the movie that features--duh--the director as well as the producer, some of the principle actors, maybe the cinematographer or the writer and they all sort of talk over the movie with interesting trivia facts and such.   I've watched most of my favorite movies with the DC turned on (Braveheart was weird because instead of the commentary being provided by any of the folks above, it was provided by Mel Gibson and Mel Gibson alone.  177 minutes of Mel Gibson rambling on and on by himself in what I imagine to be a candle-lit room full of Nazi propaganda posters.  Probably naked.) as well as the entirety of the 1st 8 seasons of The Simpsons.

Remember, I was unemployed for 6 months in 2006.

Of course, each Simpsons episode kicks off with the above two jokes.  The goal was to have two unique jokes for each episode and, for the most part, that has been the case.  You do tend to see repeats of the couch gags more often than repeats of Bart at the blackboard but they do happen.  What Groening discovered, according to the commentary, is that it is damn hard to write these two jokes week after week and keep them fresh and funny.  Even with a team of writers.  In fact, he joked--I think he was joking--that he often pushed the blackboard gag off on The Simpsons unpaid interns.

For the 5 of you that have followed my blog from the beginning, you may recall that I used to have a little witticism that appeared beneath the title of my blog that changed all the time.  The line was--for the most part--about Bonzer T and it at first changed daily, then every couple of days, then weekly, then my Mom died, then, after the last one sat there for a couple of weeks, I just pulled the joke altogether.  That's not to say that the gag will not come back...it's just really, really hard to do.

At first I thought "How difficult can it be?  Just pick a historical figure, make the person say something that he or she would never say and always make it about how awesome/offensive/manly you are.  You're super awesome and offensive and manly!  Piece of cake!"

Let me tell you, that shit is hard.  What I've found is that some days I'm not at all creative, or pissed at a masturbator that just called into work, or super hungry, or sometimes I'm sad, or disproportionally horny, or just plain tired.  Those are the days that you have to force yourself to stay clever.  It's one thing to be paid to do so and it's another thing to keep clever on a totally rad PG-13 blog in my spare time.

That said, what follows are each and every blog header that I kept for the 1st couple of months of the Home Skillet.  I think we can all agree, the work suffered as time went on:

“A safe place to bash Julia Roberts”  --Winston Churchill

“The window dressing of the Gods.”  --Jesus Christ

"Super cute!" --Madeleine Albright

"Thrusting towards mediocrity." --Millard Fillmore

“Jettisoning the philanthropic and crusty.”  --Brian of Nazareth

"Seriously, Julia Roberts sucks." --Marie Curie

"Sucking the shrimp out of life, one tail at a time." --Col. Sanders

"Eternally rolling with the homies."  --Peter Tork

“Arrrg!  ‘Tis only one rum better than mine!”  --Captain Morgan

“How'd the play end?” --Abraham Lincoln

“DAMN!  You lookin' gooooooood, sugar!”  --Bill Donohue

“On the 3rd day, Bonzer did rise again”  --God

“Oh shit”  Osama Bin Laden

“Dead on balls accurate” --LL Cool J

“Christ, this guy rambles”  --Jesus Christ

“Well, he's no Shatner”  --Bender Rodriguez

“Sniff, sniff”  --Barrack Obama

“Tougher than a pommel horse on fire.”  --Curt Thomas

“Sad Panda.” --Norman Schwarzkopf

“I dunno, dude. You're the shit.” --Yahweh

Honestly, I don't know how that "Red Meat" guy does it.