The Godfather x 3

I was lucky enough to have been given two Godparents who loved me dearly and I in turn loved them.  They were kind enough to come to my piano recitals and baseball games while also taking me along on their travels, allowing me to set foot on 6 different continents and roughly 40 states.  They also took me to Disney World 28 times.  Not bad.  

But the only way they put the "God" in "Godparents" was to drag me to about 100 cathedrals on our travels and just as many statues of Budda.  We rarely spoke of this "God" fellow and when we did, it was when Don said cryptic things like "You know where God is Michael?  He doesn't exist" while simultaneously cursing the Catholic church for destroying itself with Vatican II.  He was a mixed bag, that Don McCarron.  

My Godmother, Janice, was the far more consistent Catholic; she went to mass every Sunday and would complain incessantly between glasses of wine when she was unable to find a Catholic mass on a Sunday in, say, Hiroshima. 

To their credit, they never pushed religion on me despite being my Godparents.  Depending on your point of view, this made them either the best Godparents in the world or the worst.  I prefer to think of them as the former.

I miss them terribly.  

Why do I bring this up now?  Well,this past weekend Krishni and I were present at the baptism of Sheila Grace Harris--my Sister Peggy's kid--as we stood as her newly minted Godparents.  For those counting, this now makes me a 3 time All-Star Godfather.

"But wait, Mike," you interrupt, "Why do you even want to be a Godparent when, you know, you sorta don't believe in God?"  

Well, it's not that I don't believe in God.  While I don't necessarily believe in him, I also don't not believe.  Some people would say that I am agnostic but that implies that I've given God some serious thought.  The reality is that I haven't; I never think of God at all.  In fact, I'm going to stop capitalizing "God" from here on out.  Religion is only a blip on my radar anymore because I seem to enjoy mocking it. 

However, despite my treatment of the Catholic church in this blog, I'm not really anti-religion.  Religion seems to have done some amazing things for folks over the last couple of thousand years.  Who am I to argue?  Conversely, it's also been the source of many of the worlds bloodiest atrocities, a fact my beloved Godfather liked to point out (Don was awesome.  As such, while I may not be capitalizing "god" from here on out, I will be capitalizing "Godfather" because--even from the grave--I'm pretty sure he can kick our asses.  The man deserves our respect).

What bugs me is the hypocrisy of the self-righteous.  Isn't that a sin?  Well, it should be.  I hate it when people quote Leviticus as an excuse to hate on gays while ignoring all the other crazy stuff Leviticus spits out*.

Like how tattoos are forbidden by god

*Quick side note:  You know how people often put a meaningful bible quote on their wedding invitations?  One of my better ideas for our wedding was to put the chapter and verse from Leviticus specifically forbidding the consumption of shellfish and then serve scallops during the cocktail hour at our reception.  Sure, most people wouldn't have bothered to look up--or even notice--"Leviticus 11:10" at the bottom of our invite but I would have been telling the story for years.  Sigh.  Lost opportunities. 

I also hate it when politicians talk about god while spouting about family values...then get caught blowing a dude in an airport bathroom.  I hate it when priests live in lavish homes while they ask a homeless family if they are catholic/baptist/methodist before allowing them to spend the night in a gymnasium.  Also, I am firmly against child-rape. Biblical hypocrisy bothers me to no end. 

There was this guy that I hated in my fraternity back in college.  He claimed to be religious and would spout about god and how he was a better person than those that didn't believe...and then turn around and drink a dozen beers, grind on four or five girls on the dance floor at a party, bang one of them and then call his girlfriend when he got home to tell her how much he loved her.  All while wearing a little golden Jesus chain.  Man, even today, thinking about that little self-righteous prick gets my blood boiling. 

One night, he and I got into an argument about the benefits of religion and he dropped down something to the effect of "Fuck you, Jacklich.  At least I believe in something."  That set me off.  I ripped him down to the studs.  Not only did I give him a list of everything I did, in fact, believe in (myself, my friends, my family, pie) but I also called him out on his collegiate infidelity--he loved that--and asked how one can get so many different blow jobs from so many different sorority girls while wearing Christ's cross around his neck.  I followed that up by giving him a little one-two punch on the history of Jesus and Catholicism and how maybe, just maybe, Jesus wasn't the son of god.  Trust me, if there is one thing that I know about, it's history.  He walked back to his room in a huff, swearing the whole way.  I'm pretty sure I ruined his sodomy that night. 

Not gonna lie: it was a fun evening.  

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Ok, so certain religious people bug me.  You know how homophobes are always saying that they don't hate gay people, they just wish gay folks would "stop shoving it" in their faces?  As if holding hands is in any way "shoving it"?  That's sort of how I feel about religious people.  I'll respect your religion as long as you respect me for not giving a fuck**.

**Side note II:  You know who is an awesome religious person?  My old roommate Mel.  She went to church, volunteered to help the less fortunate, sang in her choir and truly believed in the "Do unto others" stuff.  In addition, she had the patience to quote "John 3:16" whenever I demanded it.  She also never brought up this stuff at home unless it was Christmas and even then, it only took the form of a nativity set or "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" playing on a constant loop.  In short, she is an honest, good religious person.  Sure, she is no saint but then again, she never claimed to be.  Which is sorta my point.  Every religious person can only hope to be like Mel.  

I wish we could talk about politics or touchdowns without mentioning god or Jesus or the bible.  But again, I'm not anti-religion.  Religion just happens to not be for me.  I would much rather believe in my wife than believe in god. 

So why do I continue to say "yes" when asked to be a Godparent?  It's an honor, I suppose.  Again, this all goes back to how devastatingly awesome my own Godparents were.  The two of them enriched my life and made more of an impression on me than I think they ever knew.  I don't think I could ever influence one of my Godkids lives the way my Godparents influenced mine.  But I will sure as hell try. 

So the question isn't why I keep saying "yes" when asked to be a Godparent.  Really, the question should be "Why on earth do these parents want me influencing their children in any way?"

It probably has more to do with Krishni. 

At long last: The Doritos Locos Taco

This will not come as a shock to you, loyal reader, but this Taco Bell item made our dedicated group a little crazy.  Kalena and I texted back and forth on a daily basis--often two or three times a day--on the week leading up to our taco date and I sent a text to Mel in France bemoaning that she couldn't be with us.  She replied with "I'm not kidding when I say that missing this taco makes me as sad as missing the birth of my friend's child."  I'm not even a big Doritos fan but the sheer novelty of the thing gave me a Taco Bell Fire sauce boner (note:  do not attempt to use Taco Bell Fire sauce as a lube.  Trust me on this).

Honestly, I can't believe it took us a full week after the taco premeired in Chicago to make our way to Wrigleyville to sample the damn thing.  I'm truly, truly sorry about the delay, Taco Bell.

Speaking of delays, I'm also sorry it took me as long as it did to pound out this post.  My kick-ass wife was the official photographer of the trip and took all the pictures on her iPhone.  However, a few days ago, she and I made the switch to the iPhone 4S and she had some trouble moving the photos from one phone to the next.  The good news is that if you own an iPhone 4S as well, we can call each other and use the "Face Time" video chat.  Because we all know, when you want to talk to me, you want to be able to see me shirtless, pantsless and unshowered.

Anyhow, Kalena, Marc (her Marc, not my Marc), Brad, Krishni and I made our way to Addison and Clark last Monday for cheesey glory.  We all ordered different variations of the thing: Brad got the "Dinner Box", I got mine without sour cream, Marc bought 4 of the damn things, etc and we sat down at an abnormally busy Bell to sample the glorious fare.  Now, I may be saying this as a Taco Bell geek so you may want to take this with a shit-ton of sodium but it was awesome.  Like, fantastically super-charged "I want seven right now" awesome.  Some photos (we did have a few action shots of me eating the tacos but sadly they were lost when we swapped phones.  However, since you likely didn't need to see me with orange-dust covered fingers and Taco Bell "beef" stuck between my teeth, I'm not sure this is for the best anyway):

Yes, this was my favorite new Taco Bell item in many moons.  While we ate the hell out of it, we discussed what the future of Taco Bell might hold for us.  They might as well double-down on theme and get a Frito shell ASAP.  Kalena wants them to do other Doritos flavors, specifically the old-school "Taco Flavored" chips...remember those?

I feel that would be a bit redundant but why not do a shell in the "Spicy Nacho" genre? 

As long as they stay away from the whole "Cool Ranch" thing, I'll be a happy guy.  Because that is one Taco Bell item that I will NOT be sampling.  Ever.

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I feel that in a day and age where a company like Whole Foods can exist and thrive--an age where freshness is important to consumers and ingredients matter--it has become "cool" to rip down Taco Bell because Taco Bell does not care about such things.  The Bell wants to use a "mostly beef" mixture and churn out as many tacos as possible to it's drunken fan base. 

You know what?  I'm ok with that.  Taco Bell is what it is and it's not pretending to be any different.  You want to get on your high horse and make fun of the Bell?  You can do so without me because fuck you. 

This taco was not only fun but really, really good.  The only thing I did not like about the experience was the girl behind the counter refused to make me a double-decker Doritos Locos taco.  I was even going to ask her to put on that "Volcano Sauce" that they like to use but figured it would have further confused her. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel this should be noted.  This may have resulted because of the Taco Bell experience or the eight Jack n' Cokes I had after at Sluggers but the next day I felt like I was shitting fire.  I'd like to think it was a combination of the liquor and coming down from the natural high of watching the Bulls beat the Knicks but I'm willing to admit it might have been, say, 10% Taco Bell's fault. 

Please don't let that stop you from trying the sheer awesomeness that is the Doritos Locos Taco.  But, you know, consider yourself warned. 

Blog Traffic

Like any mildly narcissistic dude, I occasionally crave a little attention.  I say "mildly" because I'm definitely not an attention seeker.  In fact, when the focus of an event is entirely on me, I get a little uncomfortable.  That is why I loved sharing birthday parties with my old roommate Mel, but have not hosted such an event since she and I parted ways.  Turtle Races will do just fine for my birthday, thank you very much.  I do still love receiving gifts, however.  **cough, cough--October 23rd--cough cough**

Being mildly narcissistic is also why I don't have a Facebook page, so you can stop asking.  When I first started my MySpace page as a means to keep in touch with my old Steppenwolf pals, I became obsessed--as many people do--with gaining "friends".  A few months in, I looked over my "friends" list and found dozens of folks--sorority girls from Tulsa who didn't like me even then, guys from my dorm freshman year I hadn't spoken to since freshman year, acquaintances from the theatre world I had shared beers with once--and realized I didn't actually like any of these people on any level.  So I sheared my friends list from triple digits to something like 60.  I didn't care if these folks read the latest dick joke on my totally inappropriate MySpace blog.  I didn't need them.  I'm uncomplicated like that.  Coincidentally, shortly after I met my future wife, I stopped going to MySpace altogether. 

However, I found I did miss blogging and that I craved the digital attention that came along with it from the people I did care about.  On this blogger, you can track how many people view a certain post and from what section of the world they viewed the content from.  It's kind of cool to see someone in Germany access the blog.  Conversely, it terrifies me when someone from India looks at the blog...I just know it's some disapproving relative of Krishni's that is making a list of all the many things wrong with me to present to my Father-in-law upon my first visit to his home town.

I have to come to realize, though, that visitors to my blog are not always arriving at my blog intentionally.  Sometimes it's just a misfired Google search.  I do use a lot of random photos pulled off the internet that I'm sure folks are now pulling off my blog to use.  This can skew the results of the "pageviews today" section of my stat sheet. 

There have been 4 posts where I saw a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of page views, and the last one troubles me:

1)  My very first blog post.  This makes sense since I sent a link to just about everyone with whom I'm still in touch. 

2)  The post about my Mother's memorial service.  Again, I forwarded this one to many people, and quite a few folks from the Benet community passed it along the network.

3)  My recent post about the check I sent to Mary Kate's Dad for the Notre Dame tickets.  This one baffled me.  Within an hour, my stat sheet blew up with about 20 pageviews.  And that number kept ticking up.  This is still my most "popular" posting.  I liked that post very much so the results pleased me to no end until my much-smarter-than-me wife pointed out that people were likely just doing desperate google searches for "Notre Dame Tickets".  Damn it.  They must have been crushed when their searches took them to a blog that can best be described as "Meh". 

Which brings us to what troubles me:

4)  Last week's post about the obnoxious "child porn" caller I kept getting here at the Rabbit. 

This troubles me for many reasons.  First off, the level of the spike was kind of insane.  I posted that story shortly before I left work (about 4pm CST) and when I checked in later that night, there were something like 30 pageviews.  Again, I initially said "Huzzah!"  Posts about the insanity of my work--even dating back to my totally inappropriate blog on MySpace--always seemed to generate traffic.  People loved passing those types of posts onto their friends with email subject lines like "See?  Your shit job could be worse!" and "I told you 29 months of unemployment wasn't so bad!" 

But the more I thought about it--and the more I stared at the "viewed countries" on the audience map section of the stats sheet--the more I kept coming back to one thought:  "What if people were just googling "child porn" and it brought them to my blog?" 

Even now I'm thinking about what kind of sickos are in Russia

Of course, this then conjures the next thought:  "Huh.  If pedophiles are finding their way to my blog, so is the FBI."

Krishni will tell you this:  when I got home that night after talking to that sicko, I had trouble with it.  I rarely carry my work home with me--in my "profession" you have to be able to laugh heartily at this type of stuff--but something about that caller really got to me.  Maybe it's because I have 9 nieces and nephews or that I am Godfather to two of them or that all of my friends are pushing out babies at a frightening pace...I dunno.  But I spent that evening trying to work it out in my brain why that caller disturbed me so.  Eventually, I just drank a bunch of vodka, killed things on a civilization game on my computer and hugged it out with my wife. 

Of course, maybe--just maybe--I was bothered by the fact that somewhere in the back of my mind I knew the FBI was at that very moment parking a surveillance van outside my condo.  If so, they are going to be bored to tears for however long they have to maintain their vigil.

 "Dear God.  How may episodes of Tosh.0 can they possibly watch?"

Fat

I wouldn't say I'm on a diet.  That would require effort.  No, what I'm on is sort of a gradual (ok, minimal) change in lifestyle that has happened to result in me dropping a few pounds.  My wife sneaks vegetables into my dinners, I'm eating less crap and the only thing I typically eat before dinner is a couple of bowls of cereal at work.  It has actually been quite painless.

However...

I went a bit off the rails this week.  Anyone who knows anything about me knows I dig novelty.  Pretty much whenever a fast food restaurant comes out with a new item, I really, really need to eat it.  I'm stupid like that.  As a matter of fact, I have a standing date with my friend Kalena to go and get the new Taco Bell item whenever it comes out.  We haven't yet named our awesome club but over the years we've picked up a few intrepid members:  Krishni, Mel, Brad, Marc...that's Kalena's Marc, not my buddy Marc.  Although he did join us once which resulted in a pretty wicked case of food poisoning after the XXL Double Beef Chalupa experience; but we all ate the same thing and none of us got sick.  Funny, that.  I think he just didn't want join us anymore.  I really don't blame him; the Chalupa itself was pretty gross.  I mean, look at this thing!  Gross, right?:

Where was I?  Ah, yes, fast food novelty.  Last night we all convened at the Wrigleyville Taco Bell (motto: "20% more expensive than any other Taco Bell") for the new item:  The Cheesy Double Decker Taco.

First of all, a review:  It was goooooood.  You see, what makes this different from a standard Double Decker Taco is instead of a layer of beans fusing the soft shell to the hard shell, there is now an added layer of nacho cheese oozing out the sides.  That's the only difference.  I mean, what do you want?  There's only so many ways you can combine the same 8 ingredients.  Until they introduce chorizo--Please Taco Bell!  Bring us chorizo!--we're working with a limited color pallet. 

Now onto the problem:  Sure, I could have had just one of these things.  But instead, I had two.  And a shrimp taco.  As the ad says up top, "Get twice the taco".  Does that mean I had a taco to the 5th power?  I dunno but it felt good.  For a while.

So a scant 5 days after the White Sox/Bulls bender, I had a little Taco Bell extravaganza.  Big deal, right?  Well, that would be the case if only I hadn't eaten one of these over the previous 36 hours:

Yes; for those of you concerned about my heart, that is sausage, pepperoni and bacon stuffed and baked with a shitload of cheese into the crust of this Pizza Hut monstrosity.  Let's ignore for a moment that is was pretty good.  This pizza is the definition of American excess.  This pizza is one of the main reasons folks in the Middle East hate us.  This pizza is the reason my lungs almost exploded when I had to run 2 blocks at a full sprint to catch my bus this morning. 

I think it's best that I lay off the crap for a while.  My body deserves it.

Pacific Scrimps

Last May, after our ridiculously fantastic wedding, my wife and I went on a Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon.  For 10 days we ate, drank and soaked up the sun.  It was glorious. 

Holland America Line, for those who haven't cruised, caters to an older crowd.  We're talkin' like "blue haired ladies" older.  However, the Godparents had cruised on HAL since the 50's and, as a result, I've built up a little bit of standing with the company.  Kids, you're looking at a HAL Bronze Medallion holder.  Bam!  Anyhow, I have my own personal "Cruise Coordinator", I get nice discounts on future trips and invitations to champagne toasts with the captain and such. 

My cruise coordinator, knowing that I didn't have a foot in the grave, set up my new wife and I at a dinner table with two other younger couples.  One was a pair of Denver cops a few years older than us who loved to drink and had some truly fantastic law enforcement stories.  The other couple was another set of newlyweds from Lawrence, Kansas whose names, jobs and faces escape me at the moment.  Seriously; I ate dinner with these people for 9 straight nights and I don't remember a thing about them.  Guess which couple we enjoyed more? 

The couple from Kansas was actually so forgettable that I couldn't remember their names while we were still on the cruise.  I took to calling them--both to Krishni and the super cops--"Jasmine and Steve" because those were names I could remember.

Anyhow, Jasmine and Steve were, shall I say, "large" in nature.  They, like me, loved to eat.  As a matter of fact, Jasmine was a "food blogger".  Each night, she would awkwardly take photos of her food with the arrival of each new course, provided she remembered to do so.  She lost more than one shot on the cruise because she started tearing into her meal before she remembered to take a photo of it.  I laughed internally because "The fat girl forgot to take a picture before she ate her plate!  Har!"

And I'm a dick.

Why do I bring up a boring story from 10 months ago?  Because last night I had the pleasure of experiencing the new Pacific Shrimp Burrito from Taco Bell.  And I forgot to take a picture before I ate the hell out of that thing.  So this will have to do:

I have news for you:  it was good.  Damn good.  So good, everyone thought, it should not have been from Taco Bell.  A few reviews:

Marc:  "It was light years beyond what I expected."
Krishni:  "I liked the taco better than the burrito." 
Kalena:  "I can't believe that the shrimp are so shrimpy."
Mel:  "It's like they used real shrimp."

Ok, ringing endorsements they are not.  All of the above just suggest shock and awe over the quality of the Taco Bell experience.  What cannot be argued is that this group of seasoned Taco Bell veterans really enjoyed their meal.

The shrimp were juicy and tangy, the crispy strips were, um, crispy and the burrito accoutrement worked just as those rich guys from the commercial said it would.  Seriously, I cannot recommend it enough. 

I have to believe that even Jasmine would approve.