Top 9 Ingredients That Hurt Songs

Several months ago, I created a list of the 10 best things that occur in songs. I got a lot of private comments regarding the asininity or geniusness of that list. And because I'm a big fan of mixed signals, I decided to solicite another set of crossed messages by creating it's counterpoint list.

And in the same manner I discluded obvious positive song traits like awesome drums solos and any song that has your name in it ( 'Adam Raised A Cain' by Springsteen, 'Adam & Eve' by The Hawaii Mud Bombers, 'Adam's Song' by Blink 182), I also discluded obvious song traits that might crap-up any given song like grunting into the microphone, overuse of the triangle and Tori Amos' voice.



Top 09 Things That Hurt Songs

09. Pop Songs With Swear Words Repeated Over and Over
To me, this is like seeing a beautiful supermodel with a fat red sore on the side of her mouth. I want to be able to go into any elementary school playground, walk up to a handful of small children and serenade them with my awesome singing voice and there are just certain songs that deem these actions irresponsible and wrong.
This frustrates me greatly
EXAMPLE: 'Hollaback Girl' by Gwen Stefani, 'Cold Hard B****' by Jet

08. Having to Play the "Is-the-Lead-Singer-A-Man-Or-A-Woman" Game
I always enjoyed the vocal stylings of the jazz singer Nina Simone. Nina Simone is a very feminine name, but I misread the cd case and thought it was Nina SIMON. Now look, I've never heard of a man named "Nina" before, but Simon seemed more male than Simone and so the rest just kinda went by the wayside.
What I'm sayin' is that it really threw me when I realized that Nina Simone was a woman and not a man. It was like finding out a boy-cousin you used to take baths with was a girl the whole time. It changes nothing, yet chages everything.
EXAMPLE: 'Asleep On A Sunbeam' by Belle and Sabastian, 'These Days' by Nico

07. Nationality Identity Disorder
You know what? It's time UB40 come clean and admit that they're about as Jamaican as I am (I am not Jamaican). That's a wonderful example of what I hate the most about the 1980's music, a foursome of bored white dudes from the West Midlands decided that they had nothing to say for themselves so they might as well bastardize someone else's style and misrepresent it.
The Rolling Stones did this upon occasion too, but The Rolling Stones also wrote 'Street Fighting Man' so there's only so much crap I'm willing to give them. The fact is, Jamaicans (from what I can tell) have no interest in wine: pink, white or red-red and they would like UB40 to sing in their natural voices from now on.
EXAMPLE: 'Oh Cherry' by The Rolling Stones, 'Welcome To Paradise' by Greenday, 'Needles and Pins' by The Ramones

06. Using 'Maybe' To Rhyme With 'Baby' (Or Vice-Versa)
If I am ever at a concert or an open-mic night or a concert fundraiser for blind autistics with cancer and you see me stand up suddenly and leave in a huff, it's because I just heard the word "Maybe" rhymed with the word "Baby". Rhyming "maybe" with "baby" is the song lyric equivalent of describing something as "really, really, really, really, really good". You've essentially said nothing of substance and wasted my time doing it. If you can't write a better lyric, do a cover version of a song that can.
And by the way, no one ever "means maybe". It is superfluous to tell us that you mean business here; that you don't mean maybe. What a stupid sentiment.
EXAMPLE: 'Charleston Medley' (standard), 'C'Mon' by The Rolling Stones, 'Maybe Baby' by Buddy Holly & The Crickets

05. Static Song Instrumentals
There was a time in my life between 1995 and maybe 1997 where Steppenwolf's 'Magic Carpet Ride' was one of my three favorite songs ever created. I loved it. It had everything I love. I love magic. I love rugs. And I love travel. It was a glorious fusion of my passions and Steppenwolf's.
Then one day I realized the song was 4:30 minutes long and that each and every time the vocals ceased 1:55 into the song my mind went with it. I still don't really know what goes on between 1:55 and 4:05. It's a blur, white noise. Even now, I put the song on and am currently typing this section of the blog while the instrumentation goes on and on and on.
Can one of my favorite songs really have 1/3 of it that I've never heard before? No and so it's moved quite a ways down my all-time favorite song list.
The odd thing is, without fail, my mind will go from my gorcery list or when the last time I had a haircut was and immediately click back into the song when those seven pure tones come in signifying that Steppenwolf decided to stop jamming.
EXAMPLE: 'Ironman' by Ozzy Osbourne, 'Don't Fear the Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult

04. The Name Of the Song Has Absolutely Nothing to Do With the Lyrics In the Song.
You know what The Who's best song is? It's 'Baba O'Riley'. And the only people who know this song by name are Who fans. The casual listener has no clue what a baba is nor do they know anything about it's apparent Irish ancestory. But the casual listener will be happy to pump their fist in the air and holler "Teenage Wasteland" over and over and over again (followed of course, by a sweet air-violin).
But Pete Townshend is a pompous genius who leans toward making his audience work a little and so there we are, two types of people: 'Baba' people and 'Wasteland' people.
EXAMPLE: 'Combination Of the Two' by Big Brother & Holding Company, 'Train In Vain (Stand By Me)' by The Clash, 'Burning Of the Midnight Lamp' by Jimi Hendrix

03. Too Much Repetition. Too Much Repetition. Too Much Repetition.
You know what, I like 'Message In A Bottle'. I too hope that someone gets his, hope someone gets his, hope someone gets his message in a bottle, 'cause then maybe once someone gets Sting's damn message, he can shorten his song from nearly five minutes to the 2:30 it should be if he would just stop repeating his hope for someone to find his stupid bottle message.
EXAMPLE: 'Message In A Bottle' by The Police, 'Centerfold' by The J.Geils Band

02. Child Choruses.
This creeps me out. Child are wild, unruly crazy creatures; this is natural. This is the way children must be. But in songs with child choruses, they always sound doped up and robotic, as if they haven't been fed in weeks and are threatened with sleeping in unsavory places if they do not sing like angels.
They're always British-sounding kids too; very proper. Is someone looking into this? Are the kids alright overdseas? Why do these chorus kids all sound like they know the exact date the world is going to end?
Whew. Creepy.
EXAMPLE: 'Another Brick In the Wall' by Pink Floyd, 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' by The Rolling Stones, anything by The Langley School Music Project

01. Breaking Into A Monologue Sometime During the Song.
Doo-wop is famous for two things 1) making babytalk noises sound like fluid instrumentation and 2) ruining said vocal instrumentation with over-dramatic discussion. When you're snapping your fingers to a handful of "dip-dip-dip-doo-wahs" and all of a sudden, some silky-smooth voice interrupts all that and says something like, "Baby..." (this section of songs always starts with either "Baby" or "Darling") "...I saw you from across the room. You saw me too. When our eyes met, it was like magic. And I knew, oh baby I just knew I had to walk over and say to you..."
Which inevitably leads back into a chorus of "dip-dip-dip-doo-wahs".

For as much as I love doo-wop, you people have no idea how many things I've smashed in frustration at a good song ruined by this stupid song trick.
EXAMPLE: 'Here Comes My Girl' by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, 'Who Put the Bomp' by Barry Mann, 'Crazy' by Aerosmith

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I've never been more frustrated writing a list than I was writing this one. What are people thinking sometimes? Gawd!
Also, my apologies to The Rolling Stones whom I flamed several times in this blog. Everyone knows the Rolling Stones are kickass, but let's face it, when you've been making music for 300 years, a few of the tracks are going to lack.

Moosey's Day at La Carnivale

Rollercoasters are absolutely no fun when viewed from the ground. I never knew this before because honestly, rollercoasters were never something I imagined I'd ever be viewing from the ground. At worst, rollercoasters were urine-inducing suicide machines that I'd just as soon ignore as view from the ground. At best, rollercoasters were urine-inducing brushes with death that I would happily wait in line nine hours for buttressed between a toothless mother-of-three and a shirtless fat man with shoulder hair. Growing up, theme parks and carnivals were the best of all places.

Think about it:
+ Upside-down travel going at top speeds.
+ Parlor games of useless skill garnering insanely large stuffed characters.
+ Water adventures rendering previously dry tanned high school girls into wet tanned high school girls.
+ A cavalcade of cuisine stretching around the seven continents yet all mysteriously tasting like chicken fingers.
+ Secondary rides that solicite fear of architectural fallapart.
+ Caricature artists that excell in highlighting the very physical attributes their subjects strive to keep hidden.
+ Gift shops with clothing that can be purchased (slightly worn) six months later at any Salvation Army.

And as glorious as it all is, can you believe that none of this is fun when it is being watched instead of enjoyed?

At the high school of which I am employed, it was the time of the year for our senior trip. Despite the fact that I teach special education, I nevertheless remained locked into having to chaperone the trip because two of my students were seniors. One of my students, Fred, is an extremely high-functioning autistic and might even be mistaken for a perfectly normal average teenager if he wasn't so horrific at making passes at each and every high school girl in his grade. * Watching Fred try to impress the popular girls is like watching a toddler on a tricycle honk the bike horn in an intimidating manner at a passing Harley.

It's stupidly fruitless and that's why it's funny.

Alas, I wasn't sent to chaperon this trip to critique Fred's wooing technique. Fred would end up being fine on his own, hovering around his classmates. No, I was there for Johnny, or 'Big Moosey' as I prefer to refer to him. Big Moosey is about 6'2'' and muscular. I don't know how he got this build. His parents are wee and all he does all day is sit in front of the television.

There are about 70 baseball players shooting themselves full of steroids in hopes of looking like Big Moosey.

Big Moosey, for as big as he is, is a monumental sissy. It's epic. Moose can chew a Buick in half, but he's scared to death of his own shoe coming untied. And this monumental sissitude is what has compelled me this day to the amusement park.

When you work in a special education program, you don't work for the school, you work for the parents. And the parents of our special batch of students don't believe themselves to have given birth to humans so much as they believe they've given birth to humanoid glass figurines that shatter if mishandled in any way. You can imagine having an 18-year-old teenager that is as helpless as a toddler would be pretty damn draining. This explains why Mama Moosey and Papi Moosey opted to request a chaperone to a senior destination that probably resembles Hell to someone like Moose instead of just keeping him home. His folks grabbed the brass ring: an entire day without Moose to worry about.

That job went to some other poor sucker.

From the moment I found a spot on the schoolbus, I felt like a leper. It might have been because I was sitting in the front seat of a big yellow school bus and everyone knows the people that sit there are either: a) authority figures or b) authority figure kiss-asses. And if you didn't qualify for either of these, you hated those who did. My feelings of leprecy might also have been because after fifteen minutes of listening to two science fiction nerds battle rhyme one another, I leaned over and reminded then both that they got scholarships to college and should probably save the anger of the streets for someone who knew what the hell they were babbling about.

Hard livin' - to paraphrase T.I. - whut'chu know about 'dat?

In all honesty, the leperous feelings probably had little to do with my position on the bus or the geeks sitting nearby and more to do with the realization that high school seniors are the most attractive creatures on earth. Even the ugly seniors are more attractive than most of the world's population. This is all a hard pill for me to swallow, as I am not so far removed from this period of my life. Nevertheless, I am most certainly on my "beauty downslope", some people's slopes are steeper than others, but we're all on it once we leave high school.

Anyway, if you are a senior, I feel it my duty to warn you that you are at the pinnacle of your attractiveness; you will never again look as good as you do right now.

Revel in it.

Flaunt it.

Roll around in it like a pig in slop because before you know it, you'll be on the far side of your 20s noticing some high schooler's thong and feeling kinda gross about it.

Things couldn't have been described as "improving" upon our arrival at the park; it was about 45° and overcast and Big Moosey was eminating a smell remeniscent to a pair of Huggies soaked in soured buttermilk. In the past, my first stop at the amusement park had usually been a spinny-twirly secondary attraction. Something fun, but not epic and nothing with a line more than fifteen people deep. Today however, my first stop was apparently going to be the restrooms located in Paul Bunyan's Tiny Timber Town.

From everything I've either read or witnessed first-hand, "incontinence" was never a noticed symptom of autism.

Moosey was setting a precedent.

Without getting too graphic, when a normal person's sphyncter muscle detects the need to - ahem - expunge, we feel it.

We clench.

We stop whatever we were doing to take care of the problem.

Not Big Moosey. Big Moosey skips this stage and dumps in his pants. This dump serves as his signifyer that a problem is now in need of a solution. But Moose isn't what anyone would call a "thinker". He doesn't work problems very well and so his solution to his new "loaf conundrum" is to stuff a hand down the back of his pants, root around for a bit, and inspect whatever he pulls up (just to clarify that it is indeed poop... and not anything, y'know... wierd).

So with eight hours to kill in this infernal hellhole, I was able to successfully utilize one of those hours by standing outside a bathroom stall and "coaching" Moose through the process of wiping the lion's share of fecal matter from his pants and person. **

One hour later we emerge from the bathroom, where I am positive that word had spread throughout the park about the gigantic teenager who shat himself and his helper-friend who was kind enough to talk him through it like a hostage negotiator. One hour down, I still had a long battle with Moose's sissy tendencies.

Moose hates speed.
Moose hates heights.
Moose hates crowds.
Moose hates noise.
Moose hates getting wet.

I hate Moose's parents for sending him here.

All day long I kept half-expecting Big Moosey to snap into normalcy; to suddenly apologize to me for being so useless, the way the designated driver might expect his drunk buddy he toted around the night before to call him up the next morning:

"Uh dude. I'm sorry about the way I acted last night, man. I don't know what I was thinkin'. I was out of control there for a little while. You were just trying to show me a good time and I wigged out at the bar and took a dump on that ladies lawn..."

"Uh, Mr. S. I'm sorry about the way I've been acting today. I don't know what I was thinkin'. I was kinda autistic there for a little while. You were just trying to show me a good time and I wigged out over at The Minderaser and took a dump over in Timber Town..."

This apology was never forthcoming.

We spent the next five or six hours walking laps around the park, Big Moosey never less than two steps behind me. No matter how fast or slow I walked, he made sure he always remained in my blind spot; like Seabiscuit before the final stretch. I kept having to crane my neck to make sure he wasn't preparing to stab me. How can someone who recently defecated himself and felt no inward compulsion to clean it up, be such a crackshot with transitory spacial relations?

I almost got Moosey on the mild ride named the Air Sky Tram. Essentially, this was an enclosed ski lift-type contraption that moved slowly high above the center of the amusement park. And although the view was probably nice, the only people this could have possibly entertained were the elderly and well... perhaps the frightened mentally disabled.
Bored out of my mind, I spent nearly twenty minutes convincing Moose the AirSkyTram was the most awesome thing ever. He never fell for it hook-line-sinker, but he fell for it enough to get in line. We stood in line for nearly fifteen minutes until some smartass thirtysomething looking to makeout with his girlfriend high above the park, begins telling her an urban legend about "some guy" who began rocking the ski-lift cages enough that one of them opened and sent the poor bastard plunging hundreds of feet to his death smack dab in LooneyTunes Movie Town.

Moosey didn't hear a damn word I said to him all day of course, but he hears this joker crystal clear and immediately backs out of line. Doesn't even say goodbye. He turns, he goes.

He's gone.

Another four laps around the park.

I hate my life. It was cold and gloomy and boring and I paid $26 for a hotdog and a watered down Pepsi...
Least it wasn't raining, I thought to myself.

It then began raining.

I wanted to punch things. To be honest, I wanted to punch Moose. He didn't deserve to be punched, which is why I opted to keep my hands to myself, but I imagined it in my head.

I imagined it over and over and over.

He probably wouldn't feel my punches. He's a big guy. He's challenged, but he's physically large, like Lenny from that Steinbeck novel. I could punch him and he would probably be okay.

But I bet I would have to stop being his teacher though and I need the money. And it's not his fault. Moose doesn't deserve my violence. His parents do, but not him. Can I get away with punching Moosey's dad? I bet Moosey's dad wouldn't punch back, but I also bet he would sue me and most likely I'd get fired and be back to needing money and so-on.

I need to punch something. Something needs to get smashed by me. Is there any way I can punch Moosey's dad without him knowing it was me? Sneaky-style violence so I can vent my frustration and still keep my job? No. I can't think of anything. Maybe I can just punch one of these little junior high turds with Led Zeppelin shirts on... yeah that'd make me feel much better...

It was at this point that Moose chimed in, "I can drive a car, Mr. S."

I had gotten pretty good at filtering out most of the babble that Moose spewed in his daily routine, but this wasn't babble, he noticed something. He noticed something pure and beautiful and perfect. He problem-solved and vocalized his solution (I'd like to think that I taught him that). And there it stood in the middle of CrackAxle Canyon, some hillbilly tune called "Honkeytonk Kadunkadunk" playing loudly in the background.

A tear formed at the corner of my eye.

I took off my hat in respect.

Moose and I stood there and saw the future, what the remainder of our time at the amusement park would be:

Bumper cars.

For the next hour-and-a-half Moosey and I went on the bumper cars in spurts of 120 seconds, waiting in line for three minutes and riding the bumper cars again. I rammed the piss out of my student. It was what we were supposed to do; it was the entire point. I aimed only for him. The track held forty cars, but there was only one that I recognized as my enemy. Now it was my turn to stay in his periphery.

Now I was Seabiscuit.

WHAM! That's for putting me in a position of guiltily trying to avoid the thong tops of teenage girls all day!
WHAM! That's for showing me the poop on your finger and having me identify it for you.
WHAM! That's for eating a third of my hotdog because you thought it was yours!
WHAM! That's for loudly talking all the way through the magic show, drawing attention to us and forcing me to become an impromptu assistant on one of his tricks!
WHAM! That's for hugging every Looney Tunes mascot in the park! Tweety twice!
WHAM! That didn't have a specific purpose but it felt right and it felt good!

I can't say that I left the amusment park feeling fulfilled, I didn't. It was the worst experience I've ever had at a place I never thought I'd ever have a bad experince. That being said, I bonded more with Moose that day than I had with any of my other students. We went though a battle. He didn't want to be there any more than I did. It wasn't our fault and we dealt with it as best we could. He messed himself and walked several hundred miles over the course of the day and I became a pervert who felt constant pangs of violence.

This is nomally the time I'd say that things could have been worse, but really, could they have?

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* Thinking back on myself as a senior in high school, maybe being awkward around girls isn't such a solid way to measure one's mental deficiencies.

** Before you suggest that I should have purchased a new pair of boxer shorts for the kid in a nearby merchandise shop, you should know that a) I did consider this and in fact, checked it out only to find that b) the park only sells boxer shorts c) Moose only wears briefs and d) even if I thought I could convince the big sissy to switch underthings midday, the only available sizes were much too small for him.

So poo-patrol it was.

No One Hates Women Like Women Hate Women

The following blog cannot be, in any way, proven by any concrete or statistical evidence. I am nevertheless positive that everything about to be said is undeniably correct. As it stands, if you find yourself in disagreement with the sentiments shared here you are a) lying to yourself or b) a freak unlike anything else found in nature.


So there I was standing in line at the local Wal-Mart buying Gatorade and socks when I noticed the cute check-out girl checking out the girl in front of me. She wasn't checking her out in a fantastical Lesbian sort of way though*, she was checking her items through the scanner in a very professional manner. Professional with one exception: standing behind the girl making purchases, I noted at least three seperate occasions in which the cashier gave this female customer the classic head-to-toe-to-head glance. She might have been noticing the girls track shorts, rolled at the top making the shorts incredibly scant. Possibly she was noticing the girl's nuclear-orange skin, a sure sign of a purchased tan. Perhaps, the girls shoes were untied. The thoughts going through the cute cashier's head in regards to this highschool heather remains unclear, but it nevertheless warranted the head-to-toe-to-head glance. The dreaded and damning head-to-toe-to-head glance.

Now where I come from, the most offensive non-verbal cue that one person can send to another that they do not think highly of them is to make eye contact, immediately whip their gaze from the person's eyes to the person's shoes and back again. This head-to-toe-to-head shift must be quick and pointed as the essential message being portrayed in this action is 1) yes, I am sizing you up and 2) as it did not take long for me to do so, you should deduce that I don't find you noteworthy.

That's a tough insult to take. No one wants to take a mere glance to be sized up. We want to be glanced at over and over endlessly until the glancer becomes cockeyed with intrigue and mystery.

This head-to-toe-to-head glance seems especially harsh when the interaction occurs between two women. Eyes and shoes are the only two components of this interaction and while the eyes can take a flying leap, there ain't nothin' more important to a woman than the shoes on her feet.

If you are reading this and you are a woman, you had better not try to convince me that shoes are, in no way, important to your everyday existence. I refuse to entertain the notion that if your boyfriend invited you to the Jimmy Chu boutique to check out the new arrivals that you wouldn't immediately call your mother to inform her that you were now positive that this man was the man you were meant to marry. If I get any defensive "up-with-women/ girlpower" messages claiming any of the above, you can plan on my next blog focusing on woman's natural disdain for being pigeonholed despite those pigeonholes quite often being correct.

Today's pigeonhole is that women carry an inexplicable lust for shoes (and handbags, but we'll wrestle that gator later). Girlie-girls, overly-dedicated joggers, business-classies, tomboys, Joan Jett Lesbians; it doesn't matter. Shoes are important and as a woman, you want people to notice the kickassitude of your shoe collection.
Back to the head-to-toe-to-head glance.

Imagine the outright blasphemy of one woman making a point of noticing another woman's shoes and not saying anything. There are two women here, they both know the rules. You pick something about the woman and compliment it, even if you don't actually like it.**

My grandmother always told me that if I ever found myself unable to say something nice about someone than I shouldn't say anything at all. But here at the Wal-Mart with the head-to-toe-to-head glance, that's not what's going on. Grandma never told me to purse my lips, sassily shake my head in rebellious circles and look away in a manner clearly resembling disgusted boredom at the person of whom I was not saying something unkind towards. That would defeat the purpose.

As a man, I am an innocent bystander in this wonderful war. Which isn't to say that men are not the cause of some (most?) of this animosity.

We are the oil and women are both Iraq and the U.S.

Men are religion and women are both Israel and Palestine.

And if I may speak frankly, this is an amusing place to be. Everyone likes a good jealousy fight and no one does subtlety and jealousy better than women. Little kids have cornered the market on bickering; men punch pretty well; but no one slowly grinds away at a woman better than another woman who has what she wants. It has often been said that women don't dress to impress men, but to impress women. This seems too exlusionary of men. Women dress to outdo other women in hopes of seeming more attractive to men. Saying that men are in no way part of an equation that often includes:
- choosing an outfit,
- taking a 40-minute long shower,
- allowing the new cleanlieness of the woman's body change her mind on the outfit she chose therefore causing her to choose a new outfit,
- hair drying and straightening,
- leg shave,
-becoming so proud of the newly shorn legs than another outfit change is warranted to show off said legs,
- bracelet, necklace, earring matching (this waill cause anywhere between two and seven more outfit changes),
- an additional face scrub (not including the face scrub applied at the time of 40-minute shower),
- followed by makeup application (i.e. base, eyeshadow, lipstick, eyeliner, blush, clown nose, and rainbow wig),
- followed by one final wardrobe change
- and ending with seven hours of standing in front of the shoe closet (that's right, a whole closet for shoes) figuring what pair will look best while also causing no less than five blisters over the course of the night.

If you still claim to be a heterosexual woman going through all of that not to impress heterosexual men, but to impress other women... then you, ma'am, are a homosexual woman. Take a look around, enjoy your time in their club.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go wax my chest and do a thousand stomach crunches for the benefit of all my dude buddies.

* * * * *

I went out to dinner with a group of friends recently. There were six of us, but only one of us were female; a fact that went unnoticed (or unnoted anyway) until one of the guys mentioned how attractive our waitress was.*** Soon the other guys created a chorus of agreement. Suddenly our waitress was the table's person-of-desire. But before the conversation was allowed to spiral into actual hooting, the sole girl in our perverted little group did what I've seen happen in this situation all-too-often; she began pointing out this waitress' faults.

While one of my friends lustfully likened our waitress to a Black Widow spider that would wrap her legs around him and kill him deadly, my female buddy (whom I will call "Mindy") quietly pointed out that the blackwidow's arms swung funny giving her an awkwardly funky disco walk. This walk of hers wasn't ridiculous or cartoonish and despite the fact that Mindy was correct in her assessment that our waitress had an unflattering walk; I doubt it would have gone noticed by anyone had Mindy not pointed it out.

So I ask you... why point out a slightly odd walk? Who does that?

It is beside the point that Mindy was not romantically interested in any of us around the table, what might not be beside the point is the unabashed, unmistakeable, positive attention being given in one direction (black widow) but not another (Mindy). What is humorous about this situation is that only our table was aware of the attention the blackwidow was getting; from her vantage point there was nothing unabashed or unmistakeable. For all any of us knew, our waitress was judging Mindy because of her petite size or fashionable jacket or the fact that she was surrounded by five guys.

It's humorous because all any of us really know is what is in our own thoughts. We are left to assume only the worst in regards to what lies in everybody else's.

* * * * *

I once dated a girl resembling Cameron Diaz. She wasn't the spitting image of the actress or anything, but she was close enough that it was not uncommon for the similartities to be noted. As it happened, I was a big fan of the actresses movies. At the time, I was also a fan of Katie Holmes (this was long before Mrs. Cruise was knocked up and brainwashed). Whenever either actress would come up in conversation, my ex would embrace Cameron Diaz and rail against the inexplicable popularity of Holmes.

Long after she and I broke up, we had a candid discussion about this. She admitted that every time I made a complimentary statement regarding Cameron Diaz, she took it upon herself to read my sentiments as a thinly veiled (and probably unintentional) compliment toward her as well, (as she was aware that people saw similarities between the two of them). Katie Holmes, on the other hand, looked or seemed nothing like her and in the same manner she took Cameron to be a positive comment about her, she deemed the opposite to be true with Holmes.

Oddly, this is the opposite of every other experience I've had with women disparaging other women; or anyone disparaging anyone else, to be honest. My ex embraced women who resembled her because she read their popularity as a gauge for her own acceptance. Speaking personally, it is those that I resemble that make me the most nervous. If I find myself standing next to some 5'9" weightlifter with greased-up blonde hair, I don't see him as competition. The people interested in his services won't be interested in mine. That's life. We aren't applying for the same jobs, or vying for the same concert tickets, you know?

If social competition is a given (and it always has been) and we feel the need to compete, we shouldn't be competing against the "thems" out there, we should be battling the "us'".

But this is the reason no one hates women like women hate women. Women have too many types of competition. It's coming from every direction and near impossible to defend against. I'm a guy, an outsider. I said at the onset of this blog that I cannot prove anything I've written here, but it nevertheless seems that many women knee-jerkingly find some sort of fault in whoever it may be they sense is a threat to them. Someone who might garner more attention than themselves. So... Mindy sees our waitress' arm-wagging duck-waddle and points it out in hopes of shutting the rest of us up. Our waitress also looked to be in her mid-thirties and one bad relationship away from blowing up 50 lbs heavier, but those last two observations were made by me in an attempt to play devil's advocate and align myself with Mindy. 

And the women at the Wal-Mart relied on the classic head-to-toe-to-head glance as a defensive meneuver communicating that orange skin and chiseled thighs do not impress her much and won't work in attracting men.

Both assumptions of which are, of course, laughably incorrect.

Meanwhile, I sit by happily giggling, smuggly at all the soldiers in this subtle girl war because neither our waitress or the faked baked Wal-Mart shopper could possibly hold a candle to Cameron Diaz.

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* Am I correct in capitalising the word "Lesbian"? I feel as if I've seen it capitalized before. But it's a mystery. Kinda like how being Jewish is always capitalized. You can be christian instead of being Christian, but you cannot be jewish. You must always be Jewish. Like being Jewish is the same as being Polish or German. As if Judaica was a country.

The way God is always referred to as He or Him not he or him.

How any of that is related to woman-on-woman love escapes me, but I thought it would be interesting to notate.

** Many times, I bet women compliment a hairdo or a handbag that they specifically don't like just to insure the woman will continue walking around with it, thus causing the complimented woman to go on looking stupid and leaving the complimenting woman feeling "on top".

I can't prove that this happens, but you can't disprove it does either.

*** I was not a part of that chorus. I was sitting on the toilet vowing never to eat beandip as early in the morning as I had that day, and therefore I missed the first few exchanges between our waitress and my table.

The Monday Boy

My birthday fell on a Monday this year. This seemed apropos as birthdays in general are not my favorite day. I'm not humbug about them, I just have a rough time getting as jazzed about them as everyone else around me seems to. I was focused on other things this birthday and insisted that anyone referring to my birthday need not speak it's name.

What took place were multiple "Happy Monday, dude!" followed by a wink or a nudge. I also ended up with the moniker of "The Monday Boy".

Yeah. Okay. That's about right.

I am The Monday Boy.

* * * * *

When I was younger there was an overly sensitive kid with a big fat belly in my second-grade class named Stuart White. His hair was whispy blonde, he cried quite regularly and he had three chins at the age of seven

Actually, as I realize where the remainder of this childhood anecdote is heading, I think it would be best to change Stuart White's name in hopes of protecting his sensitive nature.
So okay, we'll begin again.

When I was younger there was an overly sensitive kid with a big fat belly in my second-grade class named Stevie Grey. His hair was whispy blonde, he cried quite regularly and he had three chins at the age of seven. *

It was the weekend of my seventh birthday, and my parents thought it would be a good idea to throw a party and invite my classmates.

You'll notice I didn't use the term friends.

Birthday parties didn't get whittled down to friends until sixth or seventh grade. As long as the parents were calling all the shots, everyone got a damn invite,** even the kids I never talked to at all during the average school week because they were too busy nibbling on the contents of their nostrils got an invitation to all the birthday parties.

I won't name names as to who those nostril nibblers were, but if I were to name names, Stevie would be the first one I'd name.

So there we were, third floor of a North side apartment building in 1987 greeting the entire male population of Mrs. Ward's second grade class. At this point of the birthday party, only two things were going through my mind:

1) "Jeez, I hope I manage to snag the piece of cake with my own name written in frosting later."
2) "How soon until everyone goes home?"

So what's my problem? Why so down on birthdays?

I just never understood them. Why does everyone deserve to celebrate their birth? Doesn't that take away from the idea of celebration? Shouldn't celebrations be centered around a major accomplishment?

The guy who eventually finds the cure for cancer, he should toss off a huge blowout. He should get good and drunk and sleep with his wife or have a one-night-stand with some sort of science groupie. He just cured cancer, he deserves to have a good night.

The Wright Brothers too. After they landed that plane and called their mom, I hope they invited all their friends over for a sweet barnburner, maybe a little bbq, a game of backyard volleyball.

Something. They invented flight. They deserve a few accolaides.

But the rest of us? What did we do exactly that deserves an entire day of attention?

We didn't die. We continued to breath. We aged.

Aging is the absolute easiest thing in this world to do. It's easier than breathing. You have to work a little to breath, your body has to function somewhat properly to continue breathing. If you stop breathing, you die. But even when you die, the human body nevertheless continues aging.

The hair grows, the nails grow and so-on. Even death can't stop us from aging.

Essentially, birthdays are a celebrating a person's simple existence.

And unlike most everyone else on this earth, I'm just not that egotistical.

When I accomplish something, you can buy me a drink, but for now, simple immergence from my mother's womb is not enough to warrant calling in sick from work. Immergence from a womb is quite common. Many people have immerged from various wombs. Some of my best friends have immerged from wombs and some of my best friends are morons.

In my mid-twenties, I haven't yet made the impact on this world that I hope to one day make and I certainly didn't make any important impact at the age of seven.

My parents suggested I have a party, which is natural. I will suggest the same thing to my seven-year-old, I'm sure.*** And for all I know at the time, I wanted one. But by the time my friends arrived, I realized how uncomfortable I was with being the center of attention.

Even as a wee-guy, I didn't understand why Womb Immergence Completion (W.I.C.) was grounds for buttloads of presents. It wasn't enough that I got to choose the party decorations (Ghostbusters) and got to go first at all the games, but if you came to celebrate me, you had to come with a gift in hand. As if the toy truck your mom bought me was a lovely virgin and I was the angry volcano.

But I wasn't an angry volcano and I felt bad that my friends had to bring sacrificial gifts to play limbo and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with me.

This is how I felt when the games started. Musical chairs to be exact. My mom ran the record player, my dad took the pictures and I took it upon myself to totally throw my own game of musical chairs. I was the tallest kid in my second grade class, I made running strides like a gazelle and had home court advantage for Godssake, there was no reason I should have been the first person out of musical chairs.

But there was Stevie.

Stevie was a disgrace.

Halfway through the first lap around the chairs, Stevie got the wheezes. He was done and I feared he was going to cry. So just as the record player stopped spinning, my deer-like gracefulness failed me completely and I found myself on the ground, waiting for Stevie to take my seat. He did; flabby knees (who has flab on their knees?) swinging above me, looking pleased as punch.

The very next round, Stevie ran the wrong way around the chairs and gave up before the music even ended.

I didn't feel much better when it came time for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. As the birthday boy, I was forced to go first. As a blindfold, we used a sunbleached, worn-out bandana that belonged to my mother. I could see through it and instead of saying so, I just pretended I couldn't and missed the stupid donkey poster by a solid five feet. **** No one else did though and my parents eventually figured out what was going on. It was never discussed with me, but I fear that my mother and father thought they had a seven-year-old idiot that wasn't smart enough to cheat.

And then came the time to open presents.

Is there anything worse for a kid that wants nothing less than to be the center of attention than opening everyone's presentsa in front of them? Seven-year-old boys all play with the same toys and there wasn't a kid in this world that didn't envy the toys that were given away at other people's birthday parties.

There was a fine line between being gracious for the gifts bestowed upon the angry volcano and waving the gifts in front of my friends' (and Stevie's) face.

I hated having to toe that line.

I hated having to celebrate that which I have no control over.

I hated and continue to hate putting myself at the center of attention.

I hated and continue to hate any function that summons Stevie to my house on a weekend.

And I hated celebrating anything that Stevie was just as talented as me at accomplishing.

And nothing that Stevie can do as well as everyone else should ever be celebrated.

Ever.

[This blog is dedicated to Stevie Grey, wherever he may be.]

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* So, by my calculations, means (and I want you to double-check my math) Stuart should have 11 chins by now. Which is such a horrible image that I almost ceased writing this blog in order to Google Stuart's name in hopes of finding a current picture of him to check if this calculation came true.

** On second thought, that's not true. Members of the opposite gender were never invited to birthday parties until junior high or high school.
Or if you were me, girls weren't invited until your twenty-third birthday and didn't actually accept the invitation until your twenty-fifth.

*** For what it's worth, this was the last birthday party I had for fourteen years. I had a sixth birthday, a seventh and a surprise party thrown in my honor for turning twenty-one. And although it was a lovely sentiment, I rebelled from my 21st birthday by not having a single beer and making everyone go out to see 'Shrek'.

**** In hindsight, I suppose I could have insisted that my mom just use a less threadbare handkerchief, but I was barely seven-years-old; there was only so far as my cleverness was going to take me.