Ballin' Is a Habit Part Two

If you haven't read the first post on this topic, well honestly you're not missing too much. If you want to though, you can read up on the background athletic information. Quick recap: my room mate and I are decent at sports, and have played a lot of them. Hence, we've got a lot of stories about winning and/or losing horribly. Here come some more.

Sorry, this image was supposed to be for the post on cooking.

I'll start this post off with a brief tale of one of my more em'bare-ass'ing moments in sports. That's right, good for you! That not so subtle spelling alteration to the word embarrassing cued you in! This story is about pantsing!

For those of you who don't know what the term "pantsing" entails, it's a pretty simple concept. All you need is somebody with loose fitting pants/shorts and somebody else to pull those pants down. Now you can go pants somebody yourself! Let the merriment begin!

Huzzah!

For anyone who's ever played a sport against, played around with or simply been stuck in crowded elevator with a member of the opposite sex, you know that sometimes inadverdent contact is made.

Some times it's painful, like an elbow in the spleen. Some times it's awkward, like an elbow in the boob. Some times it's downright embarrassing, like pulling the shorts off a girl and exposing her rainbow colored panties to the entire intramural fields.

"Boy, I'm glad I wore underwear today."

That my friends is what happened to me, during one of my soul crushing defeats while playing flag football for Teaching Fellows during my undergrad years. For anyone who, for reasons possibly related to illiteracy (why are you pretending to read a blog?) or just poor imagination, the image below is an artist's recreation of the event I just described. In order to protect the identities of everyone involved, the rainbow panties wearing blond girl has been replaced with a cornrows wearing black man.

Also, the football was replaced with a rugby ball.

In my defense, those flag belts are actually more difficult for me to grab than it would be for me to actually tackle somebody. I have to repress a lot of training and frustration to just go for the flag. That's one of the reasons I dislike flag football. It makes me look like an impotent fool who can't even grab a silly piece of fabric dangling from a smaller man's waist. Outrageous, I know. Moving on.

It's not just sports that involve raquets, bats, wheels, frisbees, food or greased pigs that my room mate and I have played. He used to be quite the paint ball player. I've played like twice, one of those times with him. We were on a trip sponsored by NCSU's Cru or something and were playing some paintball. It was mostly rental style equipment, so nothing too pricey.

Not that cheap. Is that even a real paintball gun?

There about 14 or so people on the trip, so we had decent teams. We played in some nice woods, full of trees, creeks and underbrush. Now I had heard my room mate was good, but it was all from him and I sort of assumed that he was just bragging a bit.

The first game of capture the flag we played was over in like three minutes. I didn't see anybody. My room mate just walked back with their flag and said he got six of them. No big deal.

Artist's simulation of my room mate playing paintball.

This continued for the rest of the day. One time he had expended his 20-30 shots gunning down half the opposing team, turned to one he had just taken out of the game and politely asked the dude for some ammo.

The guy gave it to him.

To this day I'm not sure if the other guy did that because he was a genuinely nice guy or if the blood lust in my room mate's eyes terrified him that much.

He did say "please".

If you ever play basketball with my room mate and me, you'll know that there are few things we appreciate more than blocked shots. If you can pack somebody's jumpshot right back down to the ground, that's almost as good as dunking in our opinion. And since neither of us can dunk, looks like you're about to have your shot denied a time or two.

Don't forget the subsequent trash talking.

While neither of us are spectacular basketball players, we both believe in playing close, aggressive defense. Which doesn't work out well if we're on opposing teams and have to guard each other. Passes get stolen, shots get blocked, people get hurt. Mostly my room mate. He jokes that he has to call fair catch before going for a rebound against me.

What can I say? Football is my first love.

But even we draw the line when it comes to blocking the shots of people who obviously shouldn't be blocked in an aggressive manner. Like six year olds. Unless you are also of a single digit age, you should never think that it's cool to block a little kid's shot. Especially to the point where you knock him to the ground. I'm not going to go into detail about this, but let it be known that we know a girl that we call "Lebron" in memory of her rage blackout style play against a little kid.

"And give me your juice box while you're at it."

Life With One Channel, Part Three

My room mate and I have been complaining about only having one television channel for quite some time. If you've read either of the two previous posts about living with only one channel of television, you know that the local NBC affiliate: WITN is quite possibly the worst television channel known to man (and quite possibly women, but the jury is out on the NFL Network).

Soap operas for men.

Recently though, we've noticed a disturbing trend in the morning programing that has somehow escaped our notice until just now. No, it is not the trend that morning television is terrible. Everybody already knows that. What we've noticed is that everyone, and I mean everyone, involved in morning shows on NBC is a fucking alcoholic.

The only coffee they drink is from Dublin.

Seriously though. Every day on the Today Show and whatever show Kathy Lee and Hoda Kotb are on, the hosts get their drink on. By hook or by crook. Here are some choice pieces of alcohol related shenanigans that we've seen in the past month or two.

The most common way that NBC television hosts get their drink on involves the cooking portion of the Today Show. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Surely the cook doesn't provide alcoholic beverages with every meal that they cook." Well they don't.

Well, maybe this guy. How many glasses of wine do you need?

They cook nearly every single meal with some sort of alcohol based marinade, sauce, or just as a main flavor ingredient. One day it's Bananas Foster with dark rum, the next day it's Porter Steak Bits Stew cooked with a couple of beers as the the broth portion. Then it's Chicken Marsala with actual wine. Do you see a pattern here?

But it's not just that the guest chefs love to cook with booze, I'm pretty sure that the hosts encourage it. And they make a big deal about the fact that the recipes use wine or beer, joking (not really) about drinking while cooking. Honestly, I think that they pick the recipes, and if you want to cook on the Today Show you better bring your breathalyzer.

"Welcome back to NBC Studios. You know the drill."

Here are some lines that we've overheard from the various talking heads regarding their all but admitted alcoholism. How NBC hasn't fired Matt Lauer for bonging a beer while interviewing Obama is beyond me. (Disclaimer: Matt Lauer has not to our knowledge ever actually consumed a beer in that fashion while interviewing the president.)

When cooking that Chicken Marsala, Ann Curry asked the chef if he was using real Marsala wine, to which he replied "Of course". She proceeded to grab the entire bottle from him and I quote, say "Well, it's 12:00 somewhere." Ha, ha. Al Roker chuckles in the corner.

Must have been a really rough day. Already.

12:00 somewhere? What the hell is wrong with you lady? You don't even have the decency to say that it's 5:00 somewhere? (Small aside: unless it is actually on the hour, it is not 5:00 somewhere, it is 5:23 somewhere, etc. Thanks time zones.)

Unless you live in Arizona or Indiana, heathens.

Then, when Kathy Lee and Hoda show up for the start of their program, they usually have some sort of beverage sitting on the table that they sip on during their airtime. Every once in a while it's even something that you would consider drinking early in the morning. Like coffee, or orange juice. But most of the time it's a glass of red wine or a bottle of Guinness.

Really? I don't care if you have been up since 3:00 in the morning for hair and make-up, it's still 7:00 in the real world. You might as well brush your teeth with some whiskey or something, get that morning started right.

And who doesn't want this role model?

Well, that morning there was nothing in their coffee mugs/beer steins, and the Today Show had just gotten done cooking some sort of alcohol laden dish and the ladies must have been feeling a little bit left out.

So Kathy turns to Hoda and says, "Nothing to drink this morning, but hope springs eternal." Now, I'm all in favor of poetic expression, and am not a teetotaler, but these people really should at least keep their demons in the closet to be exposed at a later date, preferably on the national stage, much to their embarrassment.

Oh yeah, we went there.

But seriously, NBC really should sit down with Kathy, Hoda, Al and the other people and have a serious discussion about the appropriate decorum for the workplace. A nationally televised workplace at that.

The only kind of intervention that could stop them.

*Update*

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News apparently recently called out Kathy Lee and Hoda while on air around mid-day. His quote was something along these lines: "If you've watched the morning programing, you know by this point that Kathy Lee and Hoda are usually hammered by now." To which the girls responded that they "haven't even had anything to drink today, yet."

He's not buying it.

And apparently some of the awesome products that they endorse on the show are also centered around getting your drink on. My room mate and I must have missed the first airing of the TV remote equipped with a beer opener.

Combines two of my favorite things: copious buttons and unlabeled beverages.

Guess what? It doesn't stop there. What happens if perhaps you're somewhere where you don't have access to your booze-remote and still need to open a tasty beverage? Bring along the Beer-Bot T-shirt. Now all you need to do is always wear this shirt instead of simply having a bottle opener on your key chain.

Beer-Bot obviously a Bender rip-off. Oh well.

Ballin' is a Habit Part 1

Most people who know my room mate and me know that from time to time we've dabbled in a sport or two. The purpose of this blog post is to share a few amusing stories from our time on the court/field. Sometimes we're playing well, sometimes...not so much.

As a bit of background information, in high school I played football while my room mate played tennis, and we each look like somebody who would play those sports. But over the years we've spent in college and just being guys who like sports, we've played soccer, rugby, lacrosse, frisbee, golf, basketball, racket-ball, softball, bad-mitten, volleyball, shuffleboard, boce ball, bowling, competitive eating, darts, running, swimming, paintball, martial arts...you get the point.

Ironically, this may be the only sport we've never played.

The point is that we're both pretty athletic and willing to try new sports, but certainly not professional grade athletes. We can hold our own in the average pick up game. I'm going to try and mix up the stories so that there aren't two basketball stories back to back, or two tales of woe in a row, etc.

I'm going to start off chronicling the most extreme sports challenge that we've both accepted: the Krispy Kreme Challenge. Now, for anyone reading this who doesn't know what the KKC is, or perhaps thinks they know what it is but are actually mistaken, I'll give you the run down on what might be both one of the most difficult and most unique sporting events known to man.

Outside of base-jumping/ironing that is.

Begun in 2004 at that illustrious bastion of academic and athletic prowess that is North Carolina State University, the Krispy Kreme Challenge is two parts race and one part competitive eating. Competitors begin at the Bell Tower, run two miles to the local Krispy Kreme, consume a dozen glazed doughnuts, and then run back to the start. Proceeds go to the North Carolina Children's Hospital and the event grows in size every year. Last year had a limit of 6,000 participants and received television coverage from local news, ESPN and newspapers around the nation. Over the years it has spawned several imitators, none of which stack up to the original.

Just to summarize, that is roughly 2,400 calories (what the FDA lists as a full day's eating) and four miles of running. All in under an hour. Not too bad you say? The record is 24 minutes and 31 seconds, held by Auburn Staples. That equals two sub six minute miles, twelve rings of dough and sugar in a few minutes and then two more sub six minute miles on a very full stomach. Not to mention if you're not a front runner, you have to dodge piles of displaced stomach contents.

All too often competitors end up like this on the way back.

My room mate has completed it once and I've finished it twice, but barely failed to cross the finish line in under an hour the first time. There are many different methods of training and competing that people utilize, but the most important part is to be sure you can pound down a dozen doughnuts and then waddle back to campus. Trust me.

This athlete uses the Michael Phelps Diet.

The first time I tried it I was just coming off a run conditioning class and had run a 10k the month before, and thought I was good at eating but the doughnuts really stumped me. The next time I competed I wasn't in running shape, but I was definitely ready for the eating. I finished twenty minutes faster and didn't even have to run too fast on the way back, even cockily accepting another doughnut from a bystander halfway back.

How I felt on the way back.

While I was in my undergrad, I played a lot of intramural sports. One of those was flag football. I have a love hate relationship with flag football. On the one hand, it is football and a competitive sport, both of which I love more than Hitler hates that Hannah Montana was canceled after only three seasons.

"How will I find out if Hannah and Oliver ever hook up?"

On the other hand, it is flag football which means there are silly rules, lack of contact and the ubiquitous shitty intramural referees.

The role model of choice for intramural referees.

I often played with other people in my scholarship program, which was a mixed bag. I liked most of them, but every time I played on a team with them a small piece of my soul died, so I was always sure to play on a dorm team in an attempt to salvage my love of the game. Crushing defeats, lack of practice, crushing defeats, not living up to potential and sometimes even forfeiting due to lack of team mates was a regular occurrence with them. Did I mention the crushing defeats?

Each year we won our first game handily, usually like 30-0, boosting our hopes and dreams for a successful season. And then we promptly proceeded to free fall down into the depths of defeat. Once, we lost a flag football game 74-0.

No, that's not a typo. We lost 74-0.

We were down 52-0 at half time, and so we asked the referee when he was going to call it on the mercy rule. He said that he couldn't call it until the third quarter was over because, and I quote "You guys could make a comeback."

Maybe if we had T-Mac on our team making it rain.

And the sport was basketball. And we were only down by four scores instead of seven. And if the referee would call any fouls.

Seriously? Who the fuck thinks that we could make a comeback from being down by more points at halftime than an average team scores in an entire game? And the other team was getting the ball first in the second half.

Icebox is not impressed with the odds.

Alright, enough failure. Back to winning. And winning big. And winning without class, style or grace. Which is the best way to win. Or is the only way to win? I'm often confused about what constitutes sportsmanship. So I just look to my role model.

Pictured: one step above the taunting we've dished out.

Although my room mate and I aren't the best at basketball, we aren't terrible. We have some games where we're just on. And sometimes we're just physically better than our opponents, like that time we played 2v2 against these two random 7th graders. If you think I'm just saying that, feel free to corroborate my story. Not only did we play them, but we beat them.

This was one of those times. It was a 2v2 half court game against two sophomores who both weighed in at an impressive 5'4" and 140 lbs or so. I'm 6'1", 230 lbs, give or take a half an inch and a few pounds. My room mate is 5'12" and about 165 lbs. Needless to say we were their physical superiors in a game where size (height especially) is important.

Not that big of a difference, but it certainly helps.

We played them once, and it was a fairly close game despite our height advantage. I think that the final score was like 10-7 or something. Since it was a close game, and not particularly physical, we decided to run it back. This time it wasn't so close. Final score was 10-4. Convincingly.

I might have mentioned in a previous post that my room mate dreams of being able to dunk a basketball. During our rout of the wee folk, I got down on one knee and placed my hands in the classic "boost up" position, calling out "Come on, dunk it!".

The wee folk were not amused.

Now one of the kids was a bit pissed. I guess he fancied himself a bit of a baller, and didn't exactly enjoy my room mate and myself not only beating him and his friend, but mocking them as well. He demands a rematch, which of course we give him since we've been mopping the court with them. He starts to play hard, setting picks, driving to the basket, really hustling out there. To no avail. Final score was 10-6.

Update:

Months later we were at the gym, playing some pick up basketball and one of the people on the other team was the angry little guy. We weren't sure if he remembered us or not. But he certainly did. I had the ball and was about to go up for a layup when my room mate yells "Look out!". Angry wee man packs the shit out of my shot. He remembered that day, and it had obviously been rankling in his heart.

"Vengeance shall be mine!"

Cat Noises

For anyone who might know my room mate, you probably also know that he is that not so rare combination of a good looking guy and a shameless flirt. However, I'm using the word "flirt" in a rather vague sense of the term. Normal flirting involves things like smiling, making eye contact, physical touch and humor.

Pictured: typical flirting.

My room mate incorporates those things into his game, but his favorite method is the ridiculously over the top flirt. So flirty it's almost not sexy.

Pictured: my room mate flirting.

Cat noised included. Hence the title of this post.

In all seriousness though, his patent pending signature seal of approval is a combination of a growl and a claw hands motion thing. I really can't describe it, but it is quite possibly the most ridiculous expression of interest ever to grace a member of the opposite sex. I'm not going to include any pictures because a google search consisting of any combination of "meow", "growl", "sexy", "claws" or "flirt" came back with retina scarring things that nobody who isn't either Japanese or a complete weirdo would enjoy. Let's just leave it at that.

Horrible, horrible things that can't be unseen.

Seriously. Don't google those terms together unless you're willing to gouge your eyeballs out with the nearest sharpened implement that you can get a hold of.

Now, as a small disclaimer, allow me to once again mention that he can flirt like a normal human being, sometimes he just chooses not to. He's attractive, intelligent, funny, has life experience, and is kind of jerk. All things that ladies go for. In fact, there are only three things that he feels his game really lacks. All of which are summed up by Taylor Lautner.

Really tan skin, tattoos and lots of muscles.

But I don't think he's going to become part Native American any time soon, or even get a tattoo, so the muscles is really all he's going to work on. But those will help him out when he hits on girls whose boyfriends have muscles too. That sentence can be interpreted either as it will make him more attractive or that it will help him avoid an ass kicking. Take it how you want.

Two factors contribute to his ridiculous flirting: his ability to shrug off shame and his natural chemistry with nearly any girl that meets him.

Come on. I quite clearly said "nearly any".

Any time that you're with him and there are girls either nearby or even being discussed, the odds that he will make some sort of unsubtle flirtation range from certainty to inevitability. And no, I don't really know which term means it happens more often. It's just that if the sun rose that morning, he will embarrass you by occasionally not even bothering to do a double take. He might just pause and watch somebody walk by. Then act like nothing happened.

It's almost to the point where I think it could very well be reflexive, like a frog catching a fly.

Or the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.

I can't count the number of times that we've been walking or driving somewhere and his attention is diverted by a girl. He usually makes a comment along the lines of "I want to go to there." And unfortunately for him, fortunately for your amusement, I like to ride with the window down a lot, like a dog. So that means a lot of these girls overhear his comments.

As do their fathers.

If you take him to the mall, or Sam's Club, or wherever you go to find attractive women, be prepared to be embarrassed. He won't be. And you'll laugh nervously as the rest of the store watches him do the cat hands at some hot middle aged woman, then continue shopping for his biscotti like it's no big deal.

*Disclaimer*
The entire store does not actually witness the cat hands, but it feels like they should. Perhaps that's just my natural paranoia/self absorbtion thinking that the entire world is constantly watching me and the people I'm with.

And yes, I wear snappy blazers.

However, much like your average guy, he is naturally intimidated by attractive girls that are complete strangers. So he normally doesn't go up to the girl in the mini skirt and tell her that she can call him Fred Flintstone.

He used to drive a clunker. What did you think I was going to say?

When this happens he points out to whoever is with him that the object of his attraction is indeed a pretty girl, and then he quiets down for a bit as he constructs a first impression and fantasy future based around said girl. Sometimes he'll share fantasy mode with you, but usually only if it's a humorous, over the top vareity.

Frequently involving him dunking.

Recently we were in the student center eating lunch with some friends, and at a table about six feet away there was a very attractive girl sitting across from some guy. The entire table agrees that the girl is disparately more attractive than the guy she was with. Naturally my room mate is intrigued by the girl, and goes into fantasy mode. Since there were three other people at the table, he narrated his over the top ridiculous introduction strategy.

He would just walk up to the table, face-palm the boy into the window and say "What up girl? You can call me T-Woww. That's right, with three W's." The boy starts to say something, so my room mate would turn to him and say, "Don't make me defenestrate you right here and right now." Turns back to the girl and says "Back to you."

Smelly pirate hooker comments optional.

There's no way that strategy could fail... Okay, there's a lot of ways that it could fail, but that's neither here nor there.

Obviously he didn't do that, but it was funny. So we sat there well within ear shot of the two complete strangers alternately debating how old the girl was, if the guy was attractive, if they were dating or not, and making up back story for these two random people. I'm pretty sure that they heard all of what we said, because there were several times the girl looked right at us with a mixture of disbelief and bemusement.

Luckily for those of you who are confused by what the word bemused means, that's exactly what it means.

Congrats!

Don't get the idea that I don't notice or approve of the vast numbers of attractive young women that come along with living in a college town. I notice. I approve. Since I'm not as bold as my room mate I just make use of my peripheral vision and an excellent memory slash imagination.

I feel that if a girl is attractive, and dressed to show that off, she should not be offended when people check her out. But I don't make a show of it. The subtle once over, side glance or general direction gaze ending with eye contact are my weapons of choice.

Also, sunglasses.

"She's Cool Man!"

A few months back, a friend of mine was about to have her 22nd birthday but was less than enthused about it. Now, I'm of the belief that birthdays should be at least acknowledged if not celebrated. When I mentioned that her birthday was coming up, she insisted that she didn't really want to make a big deal of it because she felt like turning 22 made her feel really old.

This woman is actually only 28 years old.

She had an almost plausible explanation, since the majority of the people she hangs out with are freshmen and sophomores in college. As graduate students, my room mate and I are both significantly older than the majority of the people in that particular group of friends, so we know how that goes. But as guys, we know that we only get more distinguished looking as the years go by, while it's normally a sharp decline for women. See evidence below.

Both these people are roughly 50. Which one doesn't look like Skeletor?

And Madonna is said to "look good for her age". That's got to suck for all you women out there.

A 25 year old realizing her looks are fleeting.

I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday, and she said she didn't want to do anything really. So naturally I told her that I would make a huge deal of her birthday. I started spouting off random ways to make a big deal of it, ranging from the mundane to the inane.

I said that I would follow her around all day bursting through the doors of her classes to yell "Happy Birthday!". Creating a bunch of graffiti around campus with her picture stating that it was her 22nd birthday. Arranging to have the dining hall staff come out with a cupcake and a candle on top, singing "Happy Birthday". Getting a skywriter's airplane to tell the whole city it was her birthday.

Have clowns follow her around, making balloon animals.

For some reason she freaked out, perhaps believing that I would actually do any of those things. So after some quick back-pedaling and promises not to make a big deal out of it on my part, we came to an agreement to just let it go.

I did not just let it go.

I decided that if I couldn't throw a surprise party, perhaps the next best thing would be a novelty style present. Now, when I say novelty, I don't mean a "can of snakes" or anything like that, I just mean a present that is more than just a regular gift.

"Surprise! It's actually filled with candy!"

I decided to create a treasure hunt sort of thing for her birthday present. I went around to local businesses and places on campus to ask it if would be cool for me to leave a clue with them for her to pick up as she worked through a series of hints and clues in order to reach the end and get her present.

After getting enough places and people to agree to help me, I started to think up some riddles and what not, and then had to find a way to leave the clues in such a way that she wouldn't be able to tell it was me right away. Given my fondness for arts and crafts (stop laughing, you don't know that I don't like those) and my knowledge of Batman villains (ie the Riddler), the solution was easy to come to.

Cut and paste letters together to make ransom note style clues.

Not sketchy... At all...

I wasn't sure what clues I was going to write, so instead of picking out the letters I need for the the notes, I just cut out letters indiscriminately. So after cutting out a bunch of letters from magazines, newspapers and fliers I had a large pile of cut out letters spread out on the kitchen table. Again, not sketch at all...

Quick side note, my room is sparsely decorated. I prefer to think of it as "spartan" or "minimalist". But some people have joked that it resembles what a serial killer's room might look like. You know, as they sit there under a naked light bulb, crocheting a cute little human skin ascot or whatever the hell serial killers do in their spare time.

Besides listen to "Huey Lewis and the News" of course!

My room mate immediately was like, "What happens if I bring some chick over here tonight, we walk in and she sees like these ransom notes? She's going to think I brought her her to kill her or something! You'll come out of your room, all big and beardy looking and what not. And I'll have to be like, "No! She's cool man!". How do you think that's going to affect my game? Poorly. That's how."

So in summary, it's inconsiderate to give out the slightest illusion that you might be a kidnapping serial killer because it adversely affects your room mate's ability to mack on some random girl he met at a bar.

Lesson learned.

On a side note, the treasure hunt went really well and I think that my friend really enjoyed her birthday present. The actual gift at the end wasn't very expensive, but I think that putting the time and effort into creating the journey was what she really appreciated.

"Very nice!"