Some notes on football. Sorry, ladies.

I. THE NFL AFTER WEEK 2: BALANCE IS NOT ALWAYS THE BEST THING

Like most professional sports in America, for several years the National Football League has been striving for parity, which is to say, balanced competition between teams. This is done by tinkering with contract policies, salary caps, and all the other financial minutae about which I happily lack a firm understanding. Suffice it to say that by hook or by ladder (get it?), the NFL wants all its games/teams to be consistently competitive, thus leaving the door equally open for teams/markets of all sizes, from Dallas down to Jacksonville, to win a championship. And judging from what I saw in 2008 (more on that in just a moment), and what I've seen so far in 2009, I dare say the NFL has pretty much gotten its wish. We still have a few dominant teams and our bottom-feeders, sure, but generally, the league has become more balanced. This is a good thing, right?... I used to think so, but too often these days I find myself wondering if this balance has come about at the expense of quality football. In other words, it seems there is a ton of mediocrity in the NFL, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing, even if it is more balanced.

Consider the evidence. In 2008, the NFC's representative in the Super Bowl came down to a contest between a team that finished 9-7 in a piss poor division (The Arizona Cardinals from the NFC West), and a 9-6-1 team who tied the freakin' Bengals and only made the playoffs because of a fluke miracle upset by the Raiders in the final week of the season (The Philadelphia Eagles). I'm a die hard Eagles fan, and so it's tough to admit, but neither of these teams were all that good in 2008. Arizona beat up on weak competition, still merely limped into the playoffs, and rode one player (Fitzgerald) to a conference title, and the Eagles, well, the Eagles took advantage of an inexperienced Vikings team and the suddenly befuddled New York Giants after losing their star receiver, Plaxico Burress, to get to the conference title game. Neither team really consistently exhibited good, sound, quality football last season. So while that conference title game was back and forth, high scoring, competitive, and mostly entertaining, it kinda looked pathetic next to the Cowboys/Giants/Redskins/49ers games of the late 80's and early 90's. Either the '08 Cards or '08 Eagles would have gotten absolutely ass-raped against any of these erstwhile powerhouses. It just makes me think that, generally, teams are able to win/compete these days despite putting a sub-par product out on the field. And that doesn't make me happy.

And look at what we have this year. Looking around the entire league, how many teams would you consider to be "scary," as in "I really don't want my team to have to face that team." I count three, and only three: the Baltimore Ravens, the New York Giants, and the New Orleans Saints. That's it. Two teams with no-doubt-about-it awesome defenses (despite each looking somewhat vulnerable in week 2), and one with an equally terrifying offense. Everyone else? - ehh, bring it on. The Patriots are exponentially softer than they were a few years ago, same goes for Indy, the Steelers don't score enough points and I've yet to figure out how that fucking team has won twice in the past four years, Dallas chokes, Philly chokes, Favre sucks, the Pack just got humbled at home by the friggin' Bungles, Panthers stink, the Falcons aren't there yet, the Cardinals are overrated, so are the Chargers, the Dolphins were a flash in the pan, yadda yadda yadda... Nobody's really that good. So what we're left with is a bunch of tight-fisted affairs that are not that exciting because, to quote legendary dodgeball coach and five-time ADAA all-star Patches O'Houlihan, "It's like watchin' a bunch of retards trying to fuck a door knob out there!"

I find myself longing for the old days when you had nearly indestructible teams regularly stomping the competition, which inevitably made it even more gratifying when they were taken out. To use my favorite team as an example again, I bet everyone who's been watching Philly football for the last 15 years or more remembers with much more delight the game where we stuffed Emmitt Smith and the mighty Cowboys on 4th and 1 TWICE to secure the victory than they do our playoff win over Minnesota last year. I bet the regular season game when we beat Dallas by picking off Aikman in the end zone and watching as Troy Vincent ran it all the way back to the house resonates with you more warmly than when we smacked around the G-men in the playoffs last year. And this is regular season vs. playoffs I'm talkin 'bout here! It should be the other way around. But it isn't! And you know why? - because when we beat Dallas, we were knocking off the best. That was David vs Goliath stuff. We had to be awesome, almost perfect to win those games, and so when it happened, it was genuinely unbelieveable. It's more memorable that way. I think a league dynamic like that is more fun; when you have a healthy crop of awesome teams, and then everyone striving to be this year's Cinderella so to take a run at the big boys. It's better than watching the 7-8 Chargers play for their division's championship (insert dry-heaving sound here) like they did in 2008. Uuuugh.

If you still don't believe me, go to a bar that shows every game next Sunday, and watch as much as you can without getting bored/sick (not counting your home team's game, of course). You won't last long. If you come across Miami, Washington, St Louis, Seattle, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Kansas City, Denver, Tennessee, Jacksonville, Cleveland, or Cincinnatti, you'll likely quickly opt to go outside and watch the grass grow instead, because its just as exciting. And often times, the teams I left out can be boring as shit, too.

The NFL needs to be more like Major League Baseball. The big leagues are so great because we have villains like the Red Sox and Yankees - the indestructible empires that always pose a major threat. That's why its always such a big deal when they get beaten. (Quick side note: The Mets should be like this also with all the money they throw around. However, this is not the case. To Mets fans, this is because they are so riddled with injuries. To everyone else with half a brain, it's because of injuries and because they suck big floppy donkey dick. Ok, back to football). The NFL on the other hand, though clinging to the Patriots and Steelers I guess, doesn't have that. The NFL has like 29 Seattle Mariners, and 3 Detroit Tigers teams. Overwhelmingly homogenous and mediocre, with a few barely superior exceptions. Bleh.

One last note: The wildcat offense is fucking stupid. Period.

Alright, this one was short and sweet. More to come soon.

DJ

Bambi vs Michael Myers, The Case of the Fourth Toe, and the Show You Need to Watch

Hello everybody, and welcome back. I'm in a good mood today, which is always nice, but it's especially fitting today seeing as it has been maybe a little too long since I blogged about things that are a bit more...ummm, light, tame, flippant, easy, etc. ('You're so proud of yourself for using the word 'flippant' aren't you...' Maybe a little. It's a solid SAT word after all). So with that in mind, I'm 'bout to get seriously unserious with you. And off we go...

I. THE FUNNIEST SHOW NOBODY IS WATCHING

Like many people, when I'm exhausted after a long day of work followed by a few hours of pseudo meat-headism at the gym, sometimes there's nothing I want to do more than sit my tired ass on the couch and laugh at stupid shit on television. This time of year, however, when all the quality weekly sitcoms and such are still on hiatus and the major networks are just content to churn out regurgitated reality shows (There were TWO reality shows this summer featuring Terrell Owens! In one of them he was the ripped obnoxious guy. In the other he was the ripped obnoxious guy), the pickins' are slim for a guy without any premium channels. I mean, there's only so much "Baseball Tonight" you can watch before you start hearing Tim Kurkjian's nasally wine and seeing Peter Gammons' teeth - it looks like a small bomb went off underneath someone's yellow, wooden deck inside his mouth, I swear - in your sleep. So, naturally, I quite often turn to the OnDemand menu. And recently, I uncovered an absolute gem.

The show is called "Tosh.O," and it can be found by selecting TV Entertainment - Comedy Central - Tosh.O. Basically, it's kinda like that show on "E!" called "The Soup" (formerly "Talk Soup" for those of us who still remember Greg Kinnear's humble beginnings), except that it deals exclusively with internet videos, typically popular YouTube videos and such. Also, the host of the show, Daniel Tosh (hence the show's goofy name), is a hell of a lot funnier than anyone I've ever seen on the "E!" channel. He's quick, sarcastic, clever, etc. - all the things you would typically want and expect from a stand-up comedian, which is exactly what Mr. Tosh is when he's not hosting the show. But more than anything else, he makes the show great because he's fearless when it comes to pushing the envelope. He's not scared or hesitant to go after anyone or anything at all, which endears him to me in much the same fashion as Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of "South Park"). Everything and everyone is fair game for parody/mocking, just like in South Park, and I like that. For example, he just recently showed a clip of a girl skate-boarding down a hill, only to eventually lose her footing and suffer a wicked face-plant on the asphalt below. After the clip finished and the audience went "Ooohhhhh!," he stood there with a big old smile on his face and said, "Awww, don't worry. You can still make a name for yourself and have a busted face. Just ask Julia Stiles." As the crowd reacted to that, he just smiled in a way that suggested "That's right, I did just say that." And again, I'm grateful for this.

Some other examples quickly before I move on:

- "You career is in worse shape than Kelly Clarkson's ass."

- (While showing picture of man passed out drunk, apparently spooning with a horse) "Well, looks like Sarah Jessica Parker is cheating on Matthew Broderick again." (Crowd roars)... "What, its because she looks like a HORSE!"

- (following video of dolphin coming up out of a pool and trying to hump its trainer) "Afterwards, the dolphin tossed the man's seafood salad....More like hepatitis C-world (get it?)."

- "If I hear that Jamie Foxx song, 'Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol' one more time, I'm going to intentionally drive my car into an elementary school."

This is all tip-of-the-iceberg stuff though, folks. I won't give more examples because the humor really does come more from his snappy delivery than anything else, and unfortuantely, I cannot duplicate that here. Still, the show just keeps getting better and better. But, if you want to check it out, I suggest doing it now as there are only a few limited-time episodes available, and it'll be a little while before the show returns to air (it just finished its first run of 10 episodes). And if I haven't sold you yet, let me share with you some other bits to be seen on the show: Asians doing Christopher Walken impressions, white girls doing Bill Cosby impressions, rating videos/pictures to determine if they're gay, viewers sending in both "clip of the week" and "prank of the week" videos (which are particularly hilarious), short comedy videos sent in by celebrities like David Koechner, Tommy Chong, Jack McBrayer (Kenneth the page from 30 Rock), Harland Williams, and others, and much, much more. Here's a link to the website. Waste no more time, people! It's worth it: http://www.comedycentral.com/tosh.0/

II. THE POOR, POOR NEXT TO LAST TOE

During a fantastically lazy day this past weekend that involved little more than waking, peeing, eating, laying down, reading a book, and drinking sangria - a phenomenal agenda in my opinion - I found myself at one point - while laying on a couch reading - noticing a dull, repetitive, swishing noise. I didn't even realize I was the cause of it at the time. So, curious, I stopped reading for a second, brought the book down just under my nose so I could peer over top of it with the sneaky, squinting, and furtive eyes of a detective and still catch the pleasant scent of the freshly printed pages in my nostrils, and I saw that my feet were rubbing against each other. "Oh, how 'bout that! My feet are making that noise!," I thought to myself with a smile and a quick snort.

Now, rapt in the newfound wonder that were my own two feet, I began to think about your typical foot/toe conversations. ('Okay, this is ridiculous. But since you were drinking sangria, I'll let it slide.' Thank you). For example, whenever on the subject of feet, everyone always seems to ask, "Is your second toe longer than your big toe?" It's a fair and somewhat interesting questions I guess, and one to which I'm always happy to answer "same exact size..." But, whenever someone admits that yes, the second toe is longer, that's always followed by two things: 1) that person removing his or her footwear to show you, and 2) someone asking "Isn't there a name for that?" First, it's called Morton's Toe, and yes, it bothers me that I don't know who Morton is or was, nor do I know just how freakishly gigantic his second toe must have been to warrant such entitlement. Honestly, I don't think it's fair that just because he had such a big...('You're about to digress. Focus.' Right, sorry)... Then, when this person's bare foot is exposed, if the conversation continues, it will do so via the following remarks, which again, are two-fold: 1) "Can you move your middle toe by itself?," and 2) "Oh my God, look how small your pinky toe is!"...

Never - EVER - does anyone make any kind of mention whatsoever of the second smallest toe. It never happens. And I guess it's understandable. I mean, if you had to lose a toe, that would probably be the one you'd pick by process of elimination. Consider this: You'd want the little guy to remain if not for the cuteness factor than at least to serve as a balancing bookend, albeit a small one, to your foot. You're not hackin' off the big guy for similar reasons and because I'm guessing it would hurt the most. The second toe isn't coming off either because, if it's longer than the big toe, then it's an excellent conversation piece, and even if it isn't the longest, it still feels like second in command of the metatarsal army, or the metatarmy ('Just checking. You just made up the word metatarmy, right?' Right), and you never want to sacrifice such a high ranking officer when there are clearly less important, grunt toes to be had (aka "foot" soldiers! Ha! Puns are fun!). So you're down to two remaining toes - the middle toe and the next to smallest toe. I say you're always going to keep the middle toe in tact because of the remaining two toes, it's the bigger one, and for some reason I bet people would instinctively equate that to being more important. Also, if you chop off the middle toe, your foot suddenly looks a lot like a pair of tongs, whereas if you chop off the next to smallest toe, you just look like you lost a toe, no big deal. See? You know I'm right, you're always going with the next to smallest toe if you have to lose one, despite what you've seen in "The Big Lebowski."

A few more points here to emphasize our unfortunate but inevitable ignorance of the next to smallest toe. To me, it sucks that it's the only one without a fuckin' name. You got the big toe, morton's toe, middle toe, and pinky toe. What the hell do you call the fourth one - fourth toe? That's lame. There's nothing! I've had to write "next to smallest toe" or "second smallest toe" quite a few times in this blog already, and it has seriously saddened me each time. It deserves a fuckin name just like the rest of them, and I suggest "ring toe." It makes sense because if you were to equate your toes and fingers, the big toe would go with the thumb, pointer finger to the morton, middle to middle, pinky to pinky, and ring to ring. So there you have it, "ring toe." I like it.

Moving on to my final, tragic point on the subject, remember that little game your mom used to play with your feet when you were a small child? You know, the one that starts with "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home..." etc? Yeah, continue that in your head and see what happens to the poor little old ring toe. I'll wait.....................Right?!? "This little piggy got none!" That's what happens to it! The other toes either go to market, stay home and chill, eat some fuckin roast beef, or at least cry so about it so it's doing something. But the ring toe? Nope. Nothing. Just hangs out, doesn't get any food, and doesn't do anything about it. That's bullshit. And I'm about to fix it with my own version of the song, keeping the same order starting with big toe and working our way down. It goes like this:

"The big toe piggy went to market. The morton toe piggy stayed home. The middle toe piggy went to the fridge where he was planning to eat all the roast beef without sharing, but the ring toe piggy was on to the middle toe piggy's game, so he stabbed and murdered the middle toe piggy, ate all the roast beef, and then had sex with all the other piggies' mothers, and he forced the pinky toe piggy to watch."

There, much better I think. I feel better, anyway. Thanks for sitting through that. Moving on.

III. LONELINESS: THE DISNEY APPROACH VS. THE GRUESOME APPROACH

The range of shows/movies to which I'm drawn is almost boundless. As long as it's not a gawwwwd-awful teeny-bopper movie like "Hanna Montana" or an infidelity-laced psychological torture flick that makes me despise all women for months like "Unfaithful," chances are at some point or another I'll sit through it. Hell, I once watched "Starship Troopers," "The First Wives Club," and "Lilo and Stitch" all within a 36 hour period, with probably an episode or two of "Everybody Loves Raymond" in between ('You sure you like girls?...' Yes. Maybe. I think...). And so, it should really come as no surprise that I recently pondered the common themes present in some classic, animated children's movies as well as in some gruesome, cover-your-eyes adult thrillers. And the resulting thoughts I found interesting enough to share...

Actually, there's really only one theme I'm going to be dealing with: loss of a mother (I would have specified this idea in the title of this little section of the blog, but I thought it sounded too creepy...). While it's not quite as prevalent anymore I don't think, I always found it curious how some of Walt Disney's classics like "Dumbo" and "Bambi" wasted no time in presenting the protagonist with the most trying of circumstances: finding happiness/purpose/direction at a very young age without the benefit of a mother. They even go so far as to shoot Bambi's mother in the first, what, two fuckin' minutes of that movie? ('Before you go any further - you're a mama's boy, aren't you...' Absolutely). Well, however long it takes, I say that's pretty fucked up. And actually, that's not the example that resonates most with me at all. No no, the one that made me want to kill myself as a small child was "The Land Before Time," when the innocent little brontosaurus Littlefoot loses his mama - which is bad enough! - then thinks he found her again when he sees a large shadow on the side of a rock, but ultimately realizes as he runs over to the rock as the shadow gets smaller and smaller that it's only his own... Ya know, I don't remember a whole lot from 1988, but I remember that scene, and I remember thinking to myself, "Ok, well, clearly mom's gonna die soon. Time to game plan. I hate my life." Worse, after Littlefoot's mom dies, he's left with nothing, save for the companionship of a bitchy little female triceratops named Ducky and a hapless pteradactyl who can't fly named Petrie. So then I thought to myself, "Alright, so after mom dies I'll have two friends. One will have cooties, and the other will be retarded. Time to game plan..."

But I'm getting way off point already. I mean, I do see the idea here. It's good to let kids see their favorite characters learning on their own, making friends, becoming independent, growing up happy, etc. and realizing that they could never cling to their mothers all the time. I'm not sure they had to have the mothers die, but still, I get it, I think.....(MINI SPOILERS COMING) but then I started watching the show "Dexter," and I saw Rob Zombie's sort-of re-creation of "Halloween 2." And the resulting irony I found morbidly hilarious. As you may have guessed, in both of these examples, the main character loses his mother as a small child, and consequently loses. his. fucking. mind. So much so that they both - Dexter Morgan and Michael Myers - become serial killers who, in one way or another, mask their identities. Michael Myers does so by sporting the classic white face mask, and Dexter spends most of his days admittedly pretending to be a normal, law-abiding citizen - not to mention employee of the Miami police force.

Of course, in both of these cases, it's not quite as cut and dry as mom's death = lifelong rampage. There are more involved backstories and such. As it turns out, Dexter is just helplessly obsessed with blood, and his mom's death via chainsaw - which took place right in front of him, and is an awesome way to kill someone - while significant, certanly isn't the only factor in determining who he grew up to be. Also, Dexter abides by a code whereby he only kills those who deserve to die, so for all his homicidal proclivities, he does still have a sense of civility/chivalry about him. And in Michael Myers' case, he was a fuckin' nutcase even before his mom died, as evidenced by the fact that he absolutely butchered all his family members (plus, he fuckin' de-STROYS his one sister's boyfriend with an aluminum bat - awesome) as a kid except for his mother and his baby sister. Still, in this latest installment of the slasher franchise, we come to discover that all this time, it's been delusional visions of Michael's mother that compels him to return home and murder his remaining sister...

Still, I think the dichotomy between what we're shown as children and what we see as adults regarding what happens to people/characters when their mothers are taken from them is still pretty valid/thick, and as I mentioned before, hilarious. It almost makes the kids' movies, though well-intentioned, seem naive, doesn't it? Like the filmmakers, in their respectable effort to teach kids a valuable lesson about life, think that the prospect of killing off the mama is a tame enough medium for kids to handle? I mean, didn't they realize that this idea could seriously psychologically crush a kid? I don't know, it just seems weird to me; as if they're saying, "Hey kids, if mom dies, don't worry! You can just forget about/let it go when you make friends with a rabbit or a skunk or a tricertatops or other elephants!" Because to me, the more accurate thought here is also the more terrifying one that you see in Dexter and Michael Myers; as if the filmmakes are saying, "You wanna know how fucked up you can get if you have to deal with mom dying? Take a look at this shit." Just seems funny to me. Seriously funny. And clearly the folks over at Disney should get on the ball and make amends for these egregious errors of the past, and they should do so by presenting children with the consequences that are only as truthful and brutal as the idea of losing your mother in the first place, and make an animated movie featuring the classic characters involving someone losing a parent, then dealing with it by slaughtering all the others. I suggest Donald Duck play the bloodthirsty psychopath, stalking his victims in the dark while quietly whistling the melody to the famous "M-I-C....K-E-Y M- O U - S E" song. Tell me that wouldn't be creepy and awesome.... Just a thought.

Alrighty then. Nuffsynuff for now. Thanks for droppin' in. Until next time, go hug your mother.

DJ

For Matters of the Heart, Consult Batman

Earlier this year, just before the flowers bloomed and birds chirped, while the weather was still just cold and stinging enough to be symbolic, my romantic relationship withered and croaked ('This is how you're starting your blog? Ummm, yup). That... was not a fun day. In fact, it hasn't been a fun six months. But, not to worry, I'm not here today to vent my pent up frustrations or talk about how much the whole situation sucked; that would, in my estimation, make for an almost unfathomably lame and unentertaining read. No no, instead, it's just that over the past half calendar year I've unwittingly become more than just passingly familiar with a peculiarly haunting conundrum: how best to move forward/objectively accept the notion that there really are "other fish in the sea" at a time when I couldn't help but view everything with bitterly subjective eyes, and it's lead to some interesting thoughts. To give you a better idea, during those first few post-relationship months of March and April, I spent such a great deal of quality Deej-time with this very problem that if it somehow were able to personify itself and become a woman, we would have been having regular sex, she'd be calling me twice a day, and we probably would have had the "So what do you think about anal?" conversation... Kidding. No I'm not. But you get the idea. This concern was incessant; it was always with me. It went to bed with me, it stared back at me in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I could taste it in my morning coffee, it sent me a bunch of "lil' green patch" plants on facebook, the whole bit. It just wouldn't leave, and so I did not know what to do because I could not seem to formulate any consistently workable and soothing answers.

Naturally, at numerous points along the way, I thought maybe I'd find these answers - or at least the seeds of them - in the counsel of family and friends. And in bizarre way, I did, but not so much in what their messages were but more in how they said them, or their wording ('Leave it to you to discern deep meaning from diction.' But of course, would you expect anything less from me?). To illustrate, when I would confide in people, I would - with remarkable frequency - get responses that sounded something like this: "You shouldn't be like this. You're 26. You're young. You should be happy. You should be having fun." Of course, these serious conversations would typically be lengthy and cluttered with confusing and sad detail, but there's no need to share all that. What's important/relevant here are the main ideas/summaries, which I just paraphrased. And they are good messages. They're valid. They're probably correct.....But they fuckin' bothered me. The wording bothered me. Particularly, that one redundant phrase - "should be"- ate at me because it sets a ridiculous/idealistic benchmark. If everything was "as it should be," then there would be zero problems, and when it comes to dating/relationships/finding someone to care about, stumbling upon an absolute eutopia just isn't in the fucking cards. It's unrealistic. It's impossible. It doesn't work that way. And if you disagree with me and think that your relationship is seriously "perfect," then you're either high or you're Angelina Jolie...


And so it was, for a while, the messages and bits of advice I received from others, while genuinely appreciated as I was feeling atypically vulnerable, ultimately pissed me off moreso than they aided me. Shit, I get mad enough as it is whenever I can't figure out a friggin' sudoku puzzle, so when all this was happening and I felt I was drifting farther and farther away from a comfortable solution to legitimately difficult problem instead of progressing toward one, my frustration became quite amplified - internally, at least. Ironically, this filled my mind to such an extent that I could have sworn my temples continually and visibly pounded outward so to make extra physical space in my head for all of the bullshit minutae floating around in there. But that's when it happened. Right as I was almost at the psychological breaking point, I had something that's not nearly dramatic enough to be considered an epiphany, but was still a pretty helpful realization nonetheless. I don't know the word for it, so I'll make one up by employing one of my favorite rules of the Spanish language: epiphanita. Yes, a tiny epiphany, an epiphanita ('Wow, you're such a homosexualita.' Yeah, well, what can ya do...). And the fact that it happened at this point I dont' feel is very shocking, for I'd be willing to bet that, just as people have been known to sometimes summon extraordinary amounts of strength in moments of extraordinary peril, your mind forces itself to operate on a higher plane of reason right when it seems you're about to lose it completely. In other words, desperation, while certainly unenviable, is a powerful condition.


But I digress. What I realized was, of course, something almost ridiculously simple, but that's also not surprising considering my annoying tendency to immediately overcomplicate things. Specifically, it dawned on me that instead of ignoring the idea of an idealistic new relationship since its unattainable, I should embrace the very unattainability of it. In other words, maybe the best way to deal with demons is to have them on display, to wear them externally, etc. instead of trying to mask them in the blind hope that they'll go away when I find something ideal/perfect, because there's no way that could ever happen. I mean, the possibility of going down this unfortunate road (some people call it "heart break") is a terrifying one, but I learned that often times, the best (and often only) way of overcoming fears is to confront them, to immerse yourself in them, to almost wear them ('I smell a nerdy allusion coming...' That's right you do!...) And it is in THIS concept that we can learn a little sumptin' sumptin' from none other than Batman! That's right, the dark knight himself employed this very principle in a way. He overcame his fear of bats by surrounding himself with them. He became simultaneously fear-less and fear-some by simply dealing with his shit head-on, despite how agonizing the prospect initially seemed.


This isn't to say that Bruce Wayne and I are exactly similar here; he has the additional motive of wanting to learn how to strike fear into the hearts/souls of Gotham evildoers, whereas I just want to make sure that I have nothing to hide, and that there's nothing I can't handle, especially considering that statistically speaking, I probably will have to suffer heart break again at some point... And also, Batman is awesome, and so any real-life applications his character represents are certainly worth my time to consider. Maybe I should give myself a tangible reminder of this whole idea by wearing a big black cape everywhere I go from now on. That would be practical, I'd be making a fashion statement, and in case I get drunk and fall asleep outside, I'll always have a blanket. It makes sense, right? No? Okay fine...


It's ironic too, isn't it? - that I remind myself to embrace the reality of everything I had been trying to ignore/rid myself of by thinking of a sort-of escapist, comic book superhero ('Wait, you do know that..." Yes, I know, Batman's not REALLY a superhero because he has no super powers. Shut up)? But whatever, it seems to be working for me. Hell, maybe that irony is actually why it's working for me; I know that escapism/ignorance, while enticing, is not the answer, but perhaps plucking one of escapist fiction's foremost icons and for use in representing a more real, mature answer allowed me to more comfortably and calmly accept what I had to do. Does that makes sense? I honestly don't even know; I'm just firing away very stream-of-consciousness style right now...

Don't get me wrong, I don't outwardly publicize all that's bothering me all the time, especially when it comes to new women in my life (and there IS one of those, as a matter of fact), because that would be psychotic, and it would have caused her to run for the hills. Plus, acting psychotic is a woman's job, right? Right ('Typical..' Yes, but true!). But still, could you imagine a first date like that - "So, I thought we could try so-and-so restaurant. By the way I got my heart broken earlier and I'm terrified and I hope that never happens down the road with me and you, but I felt like I should mention it right now at the start..." Yikes. That's not what I mean by wearing my problems outwardly. I just mean that I won't hide it. I will talk about it if it comes up. I will not bottle it up or shy away from it. I'll prepare myself for its recurrence if I ever get to that stage of a relationship again. Because there is no such thing as eutopia. Everyone has a past. Everyone has baggage, even guys. And sometimes, ours can weigh just as much your run-of-the-mill crazy and irrational woman's, and any guy who denies that I say is a damn coward. In situations like these, you can either be tough and durable like Batman, or dishonest, deceitful, cowardly, indecisive, etc. like, ummmmm, Brett Favre. Ha! And personally, I'd rather be Batman with his square jaw than Brett Favre with his stupid grey beard, wouldn't you?...


In summation, banking on the ideal is a fool's errand, so I say be proud of your scars. Showcase them. Talk about them if questioned/warranted, even if it feels awkward. It's better to be honest. You'll feel better/purged in the long run, I can almost guarantee that. I'm glad I learned that. I'm a better person for admitting that it still hurts. It doesn't matter that it's been half a year. If it still hurts, it still hurts. That's the reality. Its better that I admit it, and its better that people can know if they want. It's weird how it all works out that way. It's weird how what would typically be touchy issues/conversational no-no's aren't really that bad once you let them out of your mouth. It's comforting, and it goes a long way towards not only moving on yourself, but letting someone else in as well as it makes it easier for he/she to really "get to know you," as they say. If I'm not doing a good enough job being clear here, allow me to put it to ya this way: I still miss Alexis every single day, and I still really wish that everything worked out differently. Yet, all that being said, I can't really think of anything I want to do right now more than finish this sentence so I can go be with Jenn....And on that note...



Thanks for droppin' in. 'Til next time playaz,



DJ