Honesty in Car ads
Once…just once…I’d like to see an honest, no bullshit car ad. I want someone, not a celebrity sitting in the back seat reminiscing about how they got into music and how great the stereo is, but some average schmuck who works at the manufacturer, without gimmicks like little kids and special effects and crashes and ripped-off pop tunes, just say “Hey, I’m Joe Schmuckatelli from CarCo. We make the new Deathtrap LX. We think it’s a well-made driving machine that will suit all your family’s transportation needs and provide a cost-effective value for your hard-earned dollar. Thank you.”
That’s not asking much, is it? I don’t think so. Instead, you have to be a fucking detective worthy of an episode of CSI and a translator from the CIA to wade through the car-ad doublespeak and disclaimers. I used to sell cars, many moons ago…so I’ve had to deal with it from both sides of the equation.
Gas mileage—Look, assholes, be honest. Why can’t you come up with a car bigger than a bread box that doesn’t eat gas like a fat man at the Golden Corral buffet? Last night I saw an ad for the “new” 2008 Ford Escape, and now things have gotten so bad that they’re phrasing the estimated mileage as “up to 28mpg”. I guess that really means is “On a full tank of gas, with no passengers or cargo, with a standard transmission, windows up, no A/C, on the highway with the cruise set at 70 mph, freshly washed & waxed against wind resistance, on a sunny day and with a slight breeze behind you, you might see 28 mpg. Otherwise, count on about 23, max.”
It is my firm belief that the car companies are in cahoots with the oil companies, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken 30 years for hybrids to show up, ethanol would be more available, more cars in big crowded cities would run on compressed natural gas, and SUV’s wouldn’t get 50 feet to the gallon. I’ve figured out that any foreign-made SUV seems only to be available with full-time 4WD, which eats gas a much higher rate than selectively going from 2WD to 4WD in inclement weather. This is so that gas-guzzling American fuel-whore SUV’s look no better than the, say, Japanese or Korean imports. Be honest, guys….Big Awl leans on you to make cars eat their products.
Starting at……pricing. This is all just a scam. Telling me that “Three V-dubs start under 17 thousand” just tells me that the BASELINE barebones models start at $16,999 and just go up from there. People, the prices they give you are simply there to get your asses in the door. Because in REALLLLY tiny lettering on TV, blowing by so fast you can’t really see it, is a disclaimer that says “Pricing on Model X. Model Y as shown, $$$$$”. So they get away with telling you that they start at $15,995.00, when the one they show in the commercial is $23,475.00. That delicious price they tease you with is for a base model vehicle with a standard stick shift, seldom more than an AM/FM radio, plastic hubcaps, seats covered with burlap, and regular rollup windows & manual door locks. If you want an automatic, a spoiler, a sunroof, nice seats, power locks and windows, a cd player, and shiny wheels, well, you just doubled the price.
Must Take From Dealer Stock means just that….you’re stuck choosing from whatever homie has left on the lot. This explains why people get great deals on cars that are Urine Green or Crayon Orange. Everyone else came in, saw them, and said no. So they did a dealer swap or a special order and paid boo-coo more.
My favorite crap is the asshole disclaimer that says “Professional Driver on a Closed Course. Do Not Attempt”. Well, no shit, genius. Most of us don’t do skids and donuts in the desert or jump their cars through rings of fire. It really irks me to see that disclaimer in an ad where the car is doing nothing more than sedately driving through a neighborhood or running along a quiet country road. You mean to tell me that my car shouldn’t do what I’m buying it to do? I saw that disclaimer on a Hummer ad that showed like 5 of them driving side by side in about 2 inches of snow. Granted, I seldom drive in formation with others, but if I’m gonna drop 50 grand on an overpriced Tonka Toy Penis Extender, it better be able to run through more than a light dusting of snow. I was especially irked when the Ford Edge commercial showing the vehicle driving along roof edges above the city ran the disclaimer “Do not attempt. Cars can not drive on roofs”. I hope like hell that this was done tongue-in-cheek.
Crossover Vehicles? WTF? This is the newest term to get tossed out. I guess when SUV sales started to tank when gas prices started to rise, they invented a new term for Oversized Soccer Mom Grocery-Getter and Yuppie Transport. How many people who claim to need an SUV actually ever take it off the road? Face it…you needed a station wagon or a mini-van but you wanted to look cool so you opted for a 10-ton monolith that has a higher payment than your mortgage.
Special rates for qualified buyers----yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve set the bar so high on the credit check that the Pope couldn’t qualify for the 0% financing. Just cut the bullshit Special Interest Rate crap and admit that we’re all stuck paying more than you’re advertising.
As with anything, you need to be able to read between the lines, because none of them will tell you the absolute truth unless forced to.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Be The End of Our Species
I recently got back in touch with a friend from high school whom I’ve only seen once in the past 20 years, and that was briefly at our ten-year reunion. She and her husband, another classmate of mine, live a fairly simple, unfettered life in rural Vermont. She was worried that I’d poke fun at her “crunchy” lifestyle of tofu & veggies, but the more I think about it, Anne and Greg & their two kids will probably still be nibbling granola well after the rest of us are nibbling dirt. Why? Preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup, dummy.
The way I look at it, the last generation of healthy Americans was the generation that fought WW2. They grew up on farm-fresh perishable foods and stuff that didn’t have artificial colors and sweeteners. They canned and smoked their own foods. They got meat at the butcher shop and produce at the farmer’s markets. The milk didn’t have artificial growth hormones and came fresh to your door.
Then after WW2 when technologies changed, came the "miracles" of modern science, like TV dinners and sugary snacks and preservatives. The chemicals and shit everywhere were gobbled up by the Baby Boomers, who are the parents of my generation. My generation of kids, who were born in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I'm convinced our DNA was subtly altered by those chemicals, as well as all the drugs our parents took. I know I grew up on sugar-frosted everything, with chemicals and preservatives and unpronounceable words on the ingredient list, and USDA-approved artificial colors that don’t occur in nature. Now take a look at our kids…
As a school-aged student, I’d only vaguely heard the term “ADD” and I was in my early 20’s before I’d ever heard of Ritalin. Our DNA has changed enough to where the children spawned by my generation have so many chemical imbalances that they get diagnosed with an alphabet of syndromes and disorders before they make it past third grade. My generation grew up eating Twinkies, which have a shelf life longer than that of most nuclear waste. You could bury a Twinkie in the ground and dig it up 5 years from now, and it’ll still be edible. You can’t kill a Twinkie. They’re the Rasputin of snack foods. Whereas our parents’ generation smoked pot and dropped acid, and sometimes did heroin, my generation added cocaine, crack, paint huffing, Ecstasy, and crystal meth to the mix. I’m surprised our kids don’t have tentacles and scales. I’m beginning to think that Ritalin is part of the school lunch program these days, since so many kids are on it. But hell, Ritalin is just the Gateway Drug now. We’re building up immunity to it. Throw in Adderal, Clonadine, Tenex, Strattera, and Concerta to the stew. It’s shocking how many kids today need all these chemicals to correct imbalances in the genetic code.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) will be the death of the human race. I defy you to go an entire week without eating or drinking something without HFCS as an ingredient. It’s damn near impossible anymore. When something is “sugar-free”, it usually means that instead of refined & processed white sugar, it’s instead loaded with enough HFCS to embalm a corpse, or some other even more insidious sweetening agent, like Aspartame or Splenda or some other chemically-enhanced concoction. Studies are showing that HFCS has a negative effect on metabolism and is a contributor to the pandemic obesity in the western world. Take a minute and walk over to your fridge. Start reading the labels and I guarantee you’ll find HFCS in more than you thought. I work at a dairy, and in a span of less than 45 seconds I found 3 products with HFCS in them in my storage cooler, and that was before I opened the ice cream cooler. There’s ketchup, BBQ sauce, pretty much every soda on the market, Thomas’ English Muffins, 9 outta 10 breakfast cereals, Miracle Whip, many cough syrups, all those Lunchables we stuff in our kids’ lunchboxes, Ocean Spray Cranberry drinks, even Wonderbread; all have HFCS as ingredients somewhere. The mesquite marinade I used at dinner had it listed as the first ingredient.
When I was a kid in the 70’s they pulled Saccharin off the shelves as a sweetener because it caused cancer, and yanked the drug Thalidomide, which was supposed to help with morning sickness but instead caused massive birth defects like missing limbs. The FDA approved both products and then had to recant, so who’s to say what the latest round of government-sanctioned yummies will do? The chemicals very well may be harmless when alone flying solo, but what happens when they all start to combine? Exposure to multiple layers of chemicals can cause myriad issues.
I read a book a few years ago that was written by Michael Donnelly, a former USAF fighter pilot who was suffering from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He thought that his ALS, which cripples the nervous system, was brought about by exposure to multiple chemicals while in the first Gulf War. Prior to deployment, he was exposed to pesticides on his base as they sprayed for mosquitoes, then the military had him take pills that were anti-malarials and others that guarded supposedly against chemical-warfare agents, plus he had to fly through clouds of burning oil smoke. That smoke was chock full of burning petroleum residues, and who knows if there were various chemical weapons burning into the air too? If you think Gulf War Syndrome isn’t real, then why is the rate of birth defects, miscarriages, and other unexplainable health maladies so high in Gulf War veterans? In his book, Donnelly stated that the rate of ALS amongst Gulf War vets was 37 times the national average. Major Donnelly died in 2005 from his disease.
Oh yeah, our DNA is changing as a result of preservatives and chemical exposure and shitty lifestyle choices. Won’t it be ironic when intelligent life from some other galaxy lands on Earth and finds that humans went extinct as a result of the wondrous crap they created to prolong their lives? Oh well, at least they’ll have Twinkies to eat.
A word from our sponsors
Before I start really uploading lots of stuff here, I want to state that I've been sorta stockpiling these things. I started writing what I called "rants" a couple years ago; every few weeks or so I'd come up with something to write, and just held onto them with no outlet for my scribbles. Then I started to occasionally post them up as blogs on MySpace, and I started to get some very positive feedback from my friends.
A few weeks ago, my buddy Chris said I was wasting my time just letting a few people read what I had to say through MySpaceand that I needed to branch out. Earlier this week I asked my friends to read my stuff and then tell their friends to read it too, and the response was even better. After some great feedback from Wil Whalen (www.wherethereswil.blogspot.com) in Portland, Maine, I opted to go global.
I'll be uploading all my older stuff here as well, so some of what you read might seem a bit dated at first.
The rest, as they say, shall be history.
A few weeks ago, my buddy Chris said I was wasting my time just letting a few people read what I had to say through MySpaceand that I needed to branch out. Earlier this week I asked my friends to read my stuff and then tell their friends to read it too, and the response was even better. After some great feedback from Wil Whalen (www.wherethereswil.blogspot.com) in Portland, Maine, I opted to go global.
I'll be uploading all my older stuff here as well, so some of what you read might seem a bit dated at first.
The rest, as they say, shall be history.
Why does hockey get such a bad rap?
Anyone who’s known me for more than 11 seconds knows I’m a hockey fan. It’s the only sport I follow. While everyone else was talking Final Four in NCAA basketball, I was thinking Frozen Four. When people talk about home openers in the fall, they mean football….and I’m thinking the third Saturday in October when the Stingrays first home game is played. Other people wonder who the starting pitcher will be at the All-Star Game…and I wonder who the starting goalie is. Never mind who has the pole position in this Sunday’s NASCAR race; it’s the Stanley Cup Playoffs, man! There’s hockey to be watched.
Hockey is a beautiful, elegant game, fast and exciting. To watch a 2-on-1 breakaway speeding down the ice with crisp passes, a deke around the defenseman, and a perfectly aimed wrister over the keeper’s shoulder, it’s fluid poetry. It’s also at times a tough and almost brutal sport, and this is probably where it gets its bad reputation. No other sport allows participants to engage in fisticuffs, albeit penalized fisticuffs. You’re going to sit a 5-minute span in the penalty box, but no one’s going to go apeshit over it. Hockey fights are an accepted part of the game, seldom really injure anyone, and once they’re over, it seldom leaves any lasting animosity. Yes, there have been a couple of unfortunate incidents over the past couple years, notably the Bertuzzi incident and a couple others, but overall the violence in hockey is very controlled and gentlemanly. Hockey fights don’t spill into the crowds the way basketball brawls do. Hockey fights seldom involve more than two players; basketbrawls involve 8-12, not including fans, and baseball brawls usually drag an entire dugout onto the field. We won’t even get into the whole melee at the Carolina-Clemson football game…..
Yes, there’s some hard body-checking against the boards, but the hits are no worse than the poundings players give and receive in football. There are occasionally incidental injuries like broken facial bones from a puck or errant high stick, but acidental injuries happen in all sports. I watched Moises Alou’s leg spontaneously break as he was running to first base a few years ago and when the Red Sox were winning the World Series, pitcher Curt Schilling had visible blood pooling in his sock from a ruptured tendon. And nobody called for an end to football after Lawrence Taylor inadvertently broke Joe Theismann’s leg and ended his career.
Off the ice, by & large hockey players are involved in far fewer legal woes than their counterparts in other sports. I can’t recall the last time a hockey player was involved in a drive-by shooting like the one that killed a Denver Broncos player around January. While some can easily point a finger at Dany Heatley’s tragic and stupid accident that killed teammate Dan Snyder, Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock was found to have been drunk and talking on his cell phone when he crashed his SUV into a parked tow truck and killed himself last week. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and had marijuana in the vehicle too.
While Florida Panthers goalie Ed Belfour and teammate Ville Peltonen did get arrested last month following some shenanigans at a club, more than fifty NFL players have been arrested since 2006, including multiple arrests for several players. Tennessee’s Pacman Jones has been arrested five times and been questioned by police five other times since being drafted in 2005. One pending felony charge involves inciting a melee at a Vegas titty bar that led to a triple shooting. Tank Johnson’s felony weapons charges forced the Bears to get a judge to authorize his travel to Miami to play in the Super Bowl this year. Johnson was released from jail Mother's Day morning at 7AM after serving 60 days of a 120-day sentence for his charges. San Diego’s Steve Foley was shot 3 times by a cop after a high speed chase involving his second DUI in 5 months. But hockey players are Neanderthals?
Please….Neanderthals? While some could easily make the case that most pro football and basketball players have a college education (that’s spelled Phys Ed major), let’s not overlook the current crop of hockey players. Just looking at recent rosters for my local team, there are graduates of such esteemed institutions as Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Northeastern, Boston College, and one player who has a degree in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Not exactly the knuckle-dragging social scene.
It’s a travesty that a sport with such a long and storied history gets less television exposure than poker, which is NOT a sport despite being shown on ESPN, or wrestling, which falls between comedic soap opera and choreographed gymnastics. It’s a travesty that these athletes get paid FAR less than their peers in the other three major North American sports. I’m not saying that a marquee player like Rod Brind’Amour should get a bloated paycheck like Alex Rodriguez gets, but Brindy’s $4,000.000.00 million dollar paycheck this year is a bit small compared to A-Rod’s $ 22,708,525.00 . The Boston Red Sox have a median payroll this season of $3,591,667.00, and the Boston Bruins? Try $925,000.00. Basketball is no better. Where Kobe Bryant pulled in $17,718, 750.00 this season with the Lakers, across town with the Kings his opposite number Rob Blake made $6,000,000.00.
Yeah, it’s a shame that hockey gets such a bad rap. A lot of people are missing out on a great game.
(NOTE: Special thanks to USA Today for the salary info)
Hockey is a beautiful, elegant game, fast and exciting. To watch a 2-on-1 breakaway speeding down the ice with crisp passes, a deke around the defenseman, and a perfectly aimed wrister over the keeper’s shoulder, it’s fluid poetry. It’s also at times a tough and almost brutal sport, and this is probably where it gets its bad reputation. No other sport allows participants to engage in fisticuffs, albeit penalized fisticuffs. You’re going to sit a 5-minute span in the penalty box, but no one’s going to go apeshit over it. Hockey fights are an accepted part of the game, seldom really injure anyone, and once they’re over, it seldom leaves any lasting animosity. Yes, there have been a couple of unfortunate incidents over the past couple years, notably the Bertuzzi incident and a couple others, but overall the violence in hockey is very controlled and gentlemanly. Hockey fights don’t spill into the crowds the way basketball brawls do. Hockey fights seldom involve more than two players; basketbrawls involve 8-12, not including fans, and baseball brawls usually drag an entire dugout onto the field. We won’t even get into the whole melee at the Carolina-Clemson football game…..
Yes, there’s some hard body-checking against the boards, but the hits are no worse than the poundings players give and receive in football. There are occasionally incidental injuries like broken facial bones from a puck or errant high stick, but acidental injuries happen in all sports. I watched Moises Alou’s leg spontaneously break as he was running to first base a few years ago and when the Red Sox were winning the World Series, pitcher Curt Schilling had visible blood pooling in his sock from a ruptured tendon. And nobody called for an end to football after Lawrence Taylor inadvertently broke Joe Theismann’s leg and ended his career.
Off the ice, by & large hockey players are involved in far fewer legal woes than their counterparts in other sports. I can’t recall the last time a hockey player was involved in a drive-by shooting like the one that killed a Denver Broncos player around January. While some can easily point a finger at Dany Heatley’s tragic and stupid accident that killed teammate Dan Snyder, Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock was found to have been drunk and talking on his cell phone when he crashed his SUV into a parked tow truck and killed himself last week. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and had marijuana in the vehicle too.
While Florida Panthers goalie Ed Belfour and teammate Ville Peltonen did get arrested last month following some shenanigans at a club, more than fifty NFL players have been arrested since 2006, including multiple arrests for several players. Tennessee’s Pacman Jones has been arrested five times and been questioned by police five other times since being drafted in 2005. One pending felony charge involves inciting a melee at a Vegas titty bar that led to a triple shooting. Tank Johnson’s felony weapons charges forced the Bears to get a judge to authorize his travel to Miami to play in the Super Bowl this year. Johnson was released from jail Mother's Day morning at 7AM after serving 60 days of a 120-day sentence for his charges. San Diego’s Steve Foley was shot 3 times by a cop after a high speed chase involving his second DUI in 5 months. But hockey players are Neanderthals?
Please….Neanderthals? While some could easily make the case that most pro football and basketball players have a college education (that’s spelled Phys Ed major), let’s not overlook the current crop of hockey players. Just looking at recent rosters for my local team, there are graduates of such esteemed institutions as Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Northeastern, Boston College, and one player who has a degree in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Not exactly the knuckle-dragging social scene.
It’s a travesty that a sport with such a long and storied history gets less television exposure than poker, which is NOT a sport despite being shown on ESPN, or wrestling, which falls between comedic soap opera and choreographed gymnastics. It’s a travesty that these athletes get paid FAR less than their peers in the other three major North American sports. I’m not saying that a marquee player like Rod Brind’Amour should get a bloated paycheck like Alex Rodriguez gets, but Brindy’s $4,000.000.00 million dollar paycheck this year is a bit small compared to A-Rod’s $ 22,708,525.00 . The Boston Red Sox have a median payroll this season of $3,591,667.00, and the Boston Bruins? Try $925,000.00. Basketball is no better. Where Kobe Bryant pulled in $17,718, 750.00 this season with the Lakers, across town with the Kings his opposite number Rob Blake made $6,000,000.00.
Yeah, it’s a shame that hockey gets such a bad rap. A lot of people are missing out on a great game.
(NOTE: Special thanks to USA Today for the salary info)
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Ah, Barbaro...we hardly knew ye.....
Sometimes I start a blog with all intention of finishing it quickly and posting it in a timely manner, especially when I’m commenting on a current newsworthy topic. But, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and this blog is a few months late once again.
Ahhhh, Barbaro, we hardly knew ye……
Recently, the American Sheeple were saddened by the euthanizing of beloved Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro. To hear the newsies say it, the entire nation as a whole mourns the January 29th death of a beloved sporting icon, a courageous fighter who finally succumbed to his traumatic injuries.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? It’s all about money.
Yes, he was a fast, beautiful, graceful animal. He won the Kentucky Derby and was poised to possibly win the entire Triple Crown. And more so, he was going to make a number of people ungodly filthy rich. Once he was injured on May 20th 2006, that gravy train derailed. If he had recovered, Barbaro would have been worth about 30 million dollars. That’s prize money up front, and stud fees for the rest of his natural life. Thoroughbreds, unlike other animals, cannot be bred through artificial insemination; the rules to their particular sport dictate that only natural mating may produce a thoroughbred horse. So, run a few times in a circle, get paid to screw the rest of your life….30 million bucks worth? Hey, not a bad deal. Even Ron Jeremy envies that deal.
Of course, there was insurance. LOTS of insurance. There was not only death coverage, but stud insurance too in case he was incapacitated and could no longer mount a mare to breed. So, the owners still got paid; just not as much as had he lived. But I’m willing to bet they were pulling his weasel every day he was in that vet office, freezing his skeet to sell…he might not have sired any immediate thoroughbred offspring but how many spurious fuckers are out there willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for black-market underground breeding stock?
He spent several months in lavish doctors’ care at a recovery facility in Pennsylvania, with thousands of people showing their love by shipping him crates of apples and carrots as treats. Are you fucking kidding me? Spending scads of money to ship perishable produce to a horse…a fucking horse, people……a horse who was already getting better medical care than 90% of Americans. And these are the same people who wouldn’t even think to send a leftover packet of Arby’s horseradish sauce to starving people in Darfur, but they send apples to a 30-million-dollar jumped-up pack animal.
In a sinister coincidence, Barbaro’s jockey at the time of his accident, Edgar Prado, was riding the British-owned horse Funfair at the 2005 Breeder’s Cup a year before the Barbaro incident. At the start of the race, Funfair broke a hind leg in much the same way Barbaro did, and it was so badly torn up that the horse was killed right on the track. How many more millions of rich hoity-toity dollars must be lost before this man is stopped?
Ahhhh, Barbaro, we hardly knew ye……
Recently, the American Sheeple were saddened by the euthanizing of beloved Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro. To hear the newsies say it, the entire nation as a whole mourns the January 29th death of a beloved sporting icon, a courageous fighter who finally succumbed to his traumatic injuries.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? It’s all about money.
Yes, he was a fast, beautiful, graceful animal. He won the Kentucky Derby and was poised to possibly win the entire Triple Crown. And more so, he was going to make a number of people ungodly filthy rich. Once he was injured on May 20th 2006, that gravy train derailed. If he had recovered, Barbaro would have been worth about 30 million dollars. That’s prize money up front, and stud fees for the rest of his natural life. Thoroughbreds, unlike other animals, cannot be bred through artificial insemination; the rules to their particular sport dictate that only natural mating may produce a thoroughbred horse. So, run a few times in a circle, get paid to screw the rest of your life….30 million bucks worth? Hey, not a bad deal. Even Ron Jeremy envies that deal.
Of course, there was insurance. LOTS of insurance. There was not only death coverage, but stud insurance too in case he was incapacitated and could no longer mount a mare to breed. So, the owners still got paid; just not as much as had he lived. But I’m willing to bet they were pulling his weasel every day he was in that vet office, freezing his skeet to sell…he might not have sired any immediate thoroughbred offspring but how many spurious fuckers are out there willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for black-market underground breeding stock?
He spent several months in lavish doctors’ care at a recovery facility in Pennsylvania, with thousands of people showing their love by shipping him crates of apples and carrots as treats. Are you fucking kidding me? Spending scads of money to ship perishable produce to a horse…a fucking horse, people……a horse who was already getting better medical care than 90% of Americans. And these are the same people who wouldn’t even think to send a leftover packet of Arby’s horseradish sauce to starving people in Darfur, but they send apples to a 30-million-dollar jumped-up pack animal.
In a sinister coincidence, Barbaro’s jockey at the time of his accident, Edgar Prado, was riding the British-owned horse Funfair at the 2005 Breeder’s Cup a year before the Barbaro incident. At the start of the race, Funfair broke a hind leg in much the same way Barbaro did, and it was so badly torn up that the horse was killed right on the track. How many more millions of rich hoity-toity dollars must be lost before this man is stopped?
Last Fans Standing, Part One
Written in April 2005 after the Rays’ season ended with a playoff loss to the Everblades at home…...
The game was over, and there was no joy in Mudville so to speak. It was a hard-fought game that ended a hard-fought season. It was a season that saw rookie players shine and rise to professional challenges, and a season that saw adversity befall the team in the form of injuries, suspensions, and sometimes-frantic lineup changes. A season somewhat overshadowed by the player lockout at the NHL level, but sweetened somewhat by seeing some NHL players playing in the ECHL. This year’s Stingrays team showcased rookie talent that will be the future of the Washington Capitals, as well as showing that the old dog veterans still had teeth.
I only missed one game this year that I can recall, and that was due to a wedding. One of my friends left me phone messages on my cell throughout that game to keep me posted on our win. The previous year I only missed four or five games, but this year I became a serious die-hard fanatic. My jersey is covered with autographs from two years’ worth of Rays, and a few stray former players as well. I finally traveled to Florence and Charlotte for some away games too this season, supporting the team on the road. I became a bit of a spectacle in many games shaking my ample tush on the JumboTron. Marty Clapton came to call it my “Mojo Dance”. It was great fun to joke around and chat with the team after the games, whether celebrating a victory or supporting them after a loss.
Of course, I’m not alone in my exploits, by no means. There’s a group of about 20 of us who hang out after the games, win or lose. Some of us get together and listen to road games on the radio and make a party of it. We’ve become great friends because of hockey games. My own fiancée, who had never been to more than a single game in her life before we met, sports an autographed game-worn jersey complete with a few players’ buttons, and knows the rules well enough to catch a lot of the calls that the refs miss. We even got engaged at a Stingrays game. Our home is a shrine to hockey, with bobble heads, MacFarlane figures, souvenir pucks, posters, a helmet from Pee Dee’s last-ever game, official Fitzy water bottles, and a couple of game-played Rays’ sticks decorating the place. With no NHL on TV to watch, we watched both the ECHL and AHL all-star games on TV, and I was reduced to sometimes watching NHL games from last year on ESPN Classic just to get a fix. You know you’re a puck-head when you’ll watch a repeat of a year-old game, knowing full well how it ends, because you need to feed your Hockey Jones. On the plus side, I got to see Jeremy Stevenson playing for the Predators against the Red Wings that way.
Being a fan means more than clapping when the team scores. It also means making sure the team knows they have support even as their run for the Kelly Cup, and the season as a whole, abruptly ends. As soon as the game ended, I was shocked to see the number of people who just stood up and left without looking back. My own group of compatriots stood around for a few minutes before we, too, left to stand by the parking lot to say goodbye to the players. To us it was important that the last view of us that the players had was a good one. It would have been nigh on criminal for their last view of us for the season to be our backs as we dejectedly tromped out of the stadium. No one deserves that, especially after a season like this, a season where they made the playoffs for the twelfth consecutive year. They deserved to leave with heads held high, with the smiles and handshakes of the fans to usher them into the off-season.
And so it went, the players trickling out in threes and fours, some with girlfriends in tow, others with wives, kids, moms, aunts, siblings, or old friends. Somehow in the mix, we managed to say bye to just about everyone. And before we knew it, all our friends had gone home, the parking lot was pretty much empty and quiet, and only a couple players were left to come out.
After 18 years in professional hockey, Ed Courtenay had played his last game. Ed came out to his car surrounded by his wife & kids, and I was glad we stayed to talk to him and his family. After a career that spanned a full 50% of his lifetime, it seemed fitting for Ed to have at least two last fans there waiting to see him off. It just wouldn’t seem right to have him come out to an empty lot.
And then a final figure in the distance…
Wracked with pain from back spasms, Mike Jickling was the final player to leave the Coliseum that night. He actually apologized to us for making us wait for so long. But again, it wouldn’t be right for him to come out to an empty lot either and we told him as much. See, that’s the joy of hockey at the ECHL level. You get to talk to the players and interact with them, and really feel a part of the action. The players are so accessible, and for the most part genuinely friendly and happy to have that fan interaction. If you want an autograph or a picture, you simply hang out after the game, without having to fend off a couple hundred people or waiting for naught as a player runs off at top speed to his limo surrounded by his handlers. I’ve gotten to casually chat with professional athletes who play a sport I love, and they know who I am and recognize me, taking time to talk for a few minutes before heading off into their private lives. It’s a 2-way street of mutual respect. Matt Reid even called my fiancée’s son in Arizona on his birthday after a game. That was class act all the way.
And then, it was over. Just the two of us in an empty parking lot. It was just after 11:30, and we had an hour-long drive home still to go. The season was well and truly over, and we held on to it for as long as we could. We held onto it about 90 minutes longer than the other people in the stadium did, and somehow that made us feel good. We were there at the pre-season exhibition game at the Ice Palace, and here we were the final ones to go. We were among the First Fans Standing, and we were indeed the Last Fans Standing.
The game was over, and there was no joy in Mudville so to speak. It was a hard-fought game that ended a hard-fought season. It was a season that saw rookie players shine and rise to professional challenges, and a season that saw adversity befall the team in the form of injuries, suspensions, and sometimes-frantic lineup changes. A season somewhat overshadowed by the player lockout at the NHL level, but sweetened somewhat by seeing some NHL players playing in the ECHL. This year’s Stingrays team showcased rookie talent that will be the future of the Washington Capitals, as well as showing that the old dog veterans still had teeth.
I only missed one game this year that I can recall, and that was due to a wedding. One of my friends left me phone messages on my cell throughout that game to keep me posted on our win. The previous year I only missed four or five games, but this year I became a serious die-hard fanatic. My jersey is covered with autographs from two years’ worth of Rays, and a few stray former players as well. I finally traveled to Florence and Charlotte for some away games too this season, supporting the team on the road. I became a bit of a spectacle in many games shaking my ample tush on the JumboTron. Marty Clapton came to call it my “Mojo Dance”. It was great fun to joke around and chat with the team after the games, whether celebrating a victory or supporting them after a loss.
Of course, I’m not alone in my exploits, by no means. There’s a group of about 20 of us who hang out after the games, win or lose. Some of us get together and listen to road games on the radio and make a party of it. We’ve become great friends because of hockey games. My own fiancée, who had never been to more than a single game in her life before we met, sports an autographed game-worn jersey complete with a few players’ buttons, and knows the rules well enough to catch a lot of the calls that the refs miss. We even got engaged at a Stingrays game. Our home is a shrine to hockey, with bobble heads, MacFarlane figures, souvenir pucks, posters, a helmet from Pee Dee’s last-ever game, official Fitzy water bottles, and a couple of game-played Rays’ sticks decorating the place. With no NHL on TV to watch, we watched both the ECHL and AHL all-star games on TV, and I was reduced to sometimes watching NHL games from last year on ESPN Classic just to get a fix. You know you’re a puck-head when you’ll watch a repeat of a year-old game, knowing full well how it ends, because you need to feed your Hockey Jones. On the plus side, I got to see Jeremy Stevenson playing for the Predators against the Red Wings that way.
Being a fan means more than clapping when the team scores. It also means making sure the team knows they have support even as their run for the Kelly Cup, and the season as a whole, abruptly ends. As soon as the game ended, I was shocked to see the number of people who just stood up and left without looking back. My own group of compatriots stood around for a few minutes before we, too, left to stand by the parking lot to say goodbye to the players. To us it was important that the last view of us that the players had was a good one. It would have been nigh on criminal for their last view of us for the season to be our backs as we dejectedly tromped out of the stadium. No one deserves that, especially after a season like this, a season where they made the playoffs for the twelfth consecutive year. They deserved to leave with heads held high, with the smiles and handshakes of the fans to usher them into the off-season.
And so it went, the players trickling out in threes and fours, some with girlfriends in tow, others with wives, kids, moms, aunts, siblings, or old friends. Somehow in the mix, we managed to say bye to just about everyone. And before we knew it, all our friends had gone home, the parking lot was pretty much empty and quiet, and only a couple players were left to come out.
After 18 years in professional hockey, Ed Courtenay had played his last game. Ed came out to his car surrounded by his wife & kids, and I was glad we stayed to talk to him and his family. After a career that spanned a full 50% of his lifetime, it seemed fitting for Ed to have at least two last fans there waiting to see him off. It just wouldn’t seem right to have him come out to an empty lot.
And then a final figure in the distance…
Wracked with pain from back spasms, Mike Jickling was the final player to leave the Coliseum that night. He actually apologized to us for making us wait for so long. But again, it wouldn’t be right for him to come out to an empty lot either and we told him as much. See, that’s the joy of hockey at the ECHL level. You get to talk to the players and interact with them, and really feel a part of the action. The players are so accessible, and for the most part genuinely friendly and happy to have that fan interaction. If you want an autograph or a picture, you simply hang out after the game, without having to fend off a couple hundred people or waiting for naught as a player runs off at top speed to his limo surrounded by his handlers. I’ve gotten to casually chat with professional athletes who play a sport I love, and they know who I am and recognize me, taking time to talk for a few minutes before heading off into their private lives. It’s a 2-way street of mutual respect. Matt Reid even called my fiancée’s son in Arizona on his birthday after a game. That was class act all the way.
And then, it was over. Just the two of us in an empty parking lot. It was just after 11:30, and we had an hour-long drive home still to go. The season was well and truly over, and we held on to it for as long as we could. We held onto it about 90 minutes longer than the other people in the stadium did, and somehow that made us feel good. We were there at the pre-season exhibition game at the Ice Palace, and here we were the final ones to go. We were among the First Fans Standing, and we were indeed the Last Fans Standing.
Last Fans Standing, Part 2
Well….still another hockey season has ended in the Lowcountry. This time the ending was even more bittersweet than in years past. This year, for the first time in the 14 year history of the team, the South Carolina Stingrays did not make the playoffs. To add insult to injury, we only missed the playoffs by one point in the standings. But to really rub salt in the wound and twist the knife a bit, the team that made the playoffs ahead of us was just knocked out last night by being swept in a best-of-three first round series. Way to go, Augusta…
In the ECHL you get to develop a rapport with most of the players because they’re so accessible after the games and make so many community appearances. It’s common practice for us and many of our friends to hang out for an hour or so after the games and talk with the players and get to know them not just as players but as regular guys. And as a general rule, the guys are usually very willing to talk for 5 or 10 minutes with the fans, especially the die-hard fans and the kids. The guys are always especially good to the kids.
This year though, it seemed that the team was even more close to the fans than before. Maybe it’s because we got to know some of the girlfriends and spouses, or sent gifts to a new baby in Moscow, or talked at length with players’ parents in from out of town. It could be the miracle of MySpace, too; I know that by seasons’ end I had about 8 current and former Stingrays on my friends list and emailed some of the guys regularly. I turned a couple of them on to the joys of German gluhwein on a chilly night, and am still trying to translate the last name of one player from Ukrainian into English; it’s become a sort of running joke with us.
It was a little bittersweet to see this years’ team walking away out to the parking lot. There are a few guys who will likely progress within the Capitals’ organization to slots in the AHL. While I hate to see good players go away from the Rays, at the same time it’s great to see them go to bigger & better things. Invariably there will be guys who sign with other teams or even other leagues both here and overseas. Some of the guys seemed genuinely sad to say goodbye and sincere when they said they’d keep in touch. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to say I’m friends with professional athletes. It’s a great feeling to be recognized by people that I pay to see.
Once again it was the same cluster of die-hards out there in the cold night air saying goodbye. There were a few new faces, which is always great, and there was the comforting comradeship of friends that we’ve known from seasons past. However, once again and all too soon it was over and we all made our separate ways to our cars and headed out into the night. We all plan to get together like once a month in the off-season to hang out & imbibe of a few adult libations, but there will be a few that I won’t see for another six months.
Yeah, hockey season in the Lowcountry is over, but on the bright side I’ve already started the countdown till the puck drops on the 07-08 season. See you in October at the rink!
In the ECHL you get to develop a rapport with most of the players because they’re so accessible after the games and make so many community appearances. It’s common practice for us and many of our friends to hang out for an hour or so after the games and talk with the players and get to know them not just as players but as regular guys. And as a general rule, the guys are usually very willing to talk for 5 or 10 minutes with the fans, especially the die-hard fans and the kids. The guys are always especially good to the kids.
This year though, it seemed that the team was even more close to the fans than before. Maybe it’s because we got to know some of the girlfriends and spouses, or sent gifts to a new baby in Moscow, or talked at length with players’ parents in from out of town. It could be the miracle of MySpace, too; I know that by seasons’ end I had about 8 current and former Stingrays on my friends list and emailed some of the guys regularly. I turned a couple of them on to the joys of German gluhwein on a chilly night, and am still trying to translate the last name of one player from Ukrainian into English; it’s become a sort of running joke with us.
It was a little bittersweet to see this years’ team walking away out to the parking lot. There are a few guys who will likely progress within the Capitals’ organization to slots in the AHL. While I hate to see good players go away from the Rays, at the same time it’s great to see them go to bigger & better things. Invariably there will be guys who sign with other teams or even other leagues both here and overseas. Some of the guys seemed genuinely sad to say goodbye and sincere when they said they’d keep in touch. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to say I’m friends with professional athletes. It’s a great feeling to be recognized by people that I pay to see.
Once again it was the same cluster of die-hards out there in the cold night air saying goodbye. There were a few new faces, which is always great, and there was the comforting comradeship of friends that we’ve known from seasons past. However, once again and all too soon it was over and we all made our separate ways to our cars and headed out into the night. We all plan to get together like once a month in the off-season to hang out & imbibe of a few adult libations, but there will be a few that I won’t see for another six months.
Yeah, hockey season in the Lowcountry is over, but on the bright side I’ve already started the countdown till the puck drops on the 07-08 season. See you in October at the rink!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Crossing the Thin Blue Line
Last week, while enroute to Savannah, Dougherty County police officer Jeremiah Fenn, aged 25, took his eyes off the road for a second to look at his cruiser’s on-board computer screen. In that second, he rear-ended a rental trailer being towed on Interstate 16. The resulting crash killed 33-year old Milton Wilcox and seriously injured his father. Ironically, Officer Fenn was driving to participate in a safe-driving campaign.
While tragic, this incident doesn’t exactly surprise me. Every day I watch as my local municipal, county, and state constabularies drive about town breaking all manner of traffic safety laws, all the while not only expecting you and I to obey the laws unerringly but also to pay the price for failure to do so.
Roughly 90% of the time I drive past a cop, he or she has a cell phone up to their ear busily yapping away on what ostensibly must be personal affairs, since the officer has that wonderful radio and computer uplink system in the car with which to handle official police business. Roughly 90% of the time I see a police officer make a turn or a lane change, their state-of-the-art police cruiser mysteriously lacks turn signals. And as a rule, our law enforcement personnel drive well above the posted speed limits and will mercilessly tailgate you if unable to immediately blow past you.
And the shining example of New Jersey Governor Corzine's state trooper driver doing over 90 mph (and Corzine not wearing a seatbelt) when they crashed all over the Jersey Turnpike.....yeah, that's setting a great example.
So much for leading by example. The unspoken rule is do as I say, not as I do, for I am the law and therefore above the law. This behavior also extends past the on-duty time and extends to their personal driving too. Many officers take their cruisers home and use them to run errands and take the kids to soccer practice and hit Wal-Mart for toilet paper. It’s common knowledge that apartment complexes and smaller housing developments clamor for cops to live there so that the take-home cruisers will act as some sort of miraculous crime deterrent. Some complexes even give discounted rents as an incentive, which to me smacks of a kickback and conflict of interest. But for those who drive their own private vehicles, there exists a sort of Get Out Of Jail Free Card system that a cop can use to identify their vehicles to others of the community so that they can speed and do as they please at will without fear of retribution or consequence. This system consists of specialized Law Enforcement license plates and the omnipresent Thin Blue Line stickers. The stickers are a black rectangle with a royal blue stripe in the center, and occasionally they appear as a front plate too in states that have only a mandated rear plate. In South Carolina, officers can get a thin blue line sticker in the shape of the ubiquitous palmetto tree. How very clever.
In years past, many folks would donate to various police charities just to get a badge-shaped window sticker in hopes that any cops stopping them for a violation would be swayed into letting them go. This same attitude applies to the use of L.E. license plates and TBL stickers. It’s an Old Boy network at the very simplest level; only in the police world it’s called Professional Courtesy. I say, old chap, you wouldn’t give a ticket to a fellow badge that’s “on the job”, would you? That wouldn’t be sporting cricket…On Easter Sunday I had my doors blown off by a giant SUV with North Carolina L.E. tags who was doing about 50 in a 35. By the time we made it to a 50 mph zone, he was doing nearly 65, and only used his turn signals 50% of the time as he weaved in and out of traffic. He then pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a hotel. So this whole attitude of speeding and only following the rules when convenient trickles over into personal time as well as professional time.
As a former law-enforcement professional myself, it saddens me to see this sort of flaunting behavior. And as a CDL-licensed driver who is constantly being lectured to about safe driving and following the rules, I find it especially galling to think that I could be ticketed by people who by far break more laws daily than I could ever dream of.
While tragic, this incident doesn’t exactly surprise me. Every day I watch as my local municipal, county, and state constabularies drive about town breaking all manner of traffic safety laws, all the while not only expecting you and I to obey the laws unerringly but also to pay the price for failure to do so.
Roughly 90% of the time I drive past a cop, he or she has a cell phone up to their ear busily yapping away on what ostensibly must be personal affairs, since the officer has that wonderful radio and computer uplink system in the car with which to handle official police business. Roughly 90% of the time I see a police officer make a turn or a lane change, their state-of-the-art police cruiser mysteriously lacks turn signals. And as a rule, our law enforcement personnel drive well above the posted speed limits and will mercilessly tailgate you if unable to immediately blow past you.
And the shining example of New Jersey Governor Corzine's state trooper driver doing over 90 mph (and Corzine not wearing a seatbelt) when they crashed all over the Jersey Turnpike.....yeah, that's setting a great example.
So much for leading by example. The unspoken rule is do as I say, not as I do, for I am the law and therefore above the law. This behavior also extends past the on-duty time and extends to their personal driving too. Many officers take their cruisers home and use them to run errands and take the kids to soccer practice and hit Wal-Mart for toilet paper. It’s common knowledge that apartment complexes and smaller housing developments clamor for cops to live there so that the take-home cruisers will act as some sort of miraculous crime deterrent. Some complexes even give discounted rents as an incentive, which to me smacks of a kickback and conflict of interest. But for those who drive their own private vehicles, there exists a sort of Get Out Of Jail Free Card system that a cop can use to identify their vehicles to others of the community so that they can speed and do as they please at will without fear of retribution or consequence. This system consists of specialized Law Enforcement license plates and the omnipresent Thin Blue Line stickers. The stickers are a black rectangle with a royal blue stripe in the center, and occasionally they appear as a front plate too in states that have only a mandated rear plate. In South Carolina, officers can get a thin blue line sticker in the shape of the ubiquitous palmetto tree. How very clever.
In years past, many folks would donate to various police charities just to get a badge-shaped window sticker in hopes that any cops stopping them for a violation would be swayed into letting them go. This same attitude applies to the use of L.E. license plates and TBL stickers. It’s an Old Boy network at the very simplest level; only in the police world it’s called Professional Courtesy. I say, old chap, you wouldn’t give a ticket to a fellow badge that’s “on the job”, would you? That wouldn’t be sporting cricket…On Easter Sunday I had my doors blown off by a giant SUV with North Carolina L.E. tags who was doing about 50 in a 35. By the time we made it to a 50 mph zone, he was doing nearly 65, and only used his turn signals 50% of the time as he weaved in and out of traffic. He then pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a hotel. So this whole attitude of speeding and only following the rules when convenient trickles over into personal time as well as professional time.
As a former law-enforcement professional myself, it saddens me to see this sort of flaunting behavior. And as a CDL-licensed driver who is constantly being lectured to about safe driving and following the rules, I find it especially galling to think that I could be ticketed by people who by far break more laws daily than I could ever dream of.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Simple Pleasures
Simple pleasures, not to be confused with Guilty Pleasures, are those little things in life that make you happy while you’re still dressed (usually) and without having to feel bad or go to Confession. Think upon it to yourselves and ponder what simple, almost innocuous bits of daily mundane life make you smile like an idiot. For some it’s the small of a newborn baby. For some it’s smell of fresh bread baking. But for me, these are the things that tantalize all my senses:
TASTE:
1. Melty butter dripping off a hot Maine lobster tail. Holy crap…heaven on a fork.
2. Deep dark chocolate, and I don’t mean a cheap-ass Wonka bar. I’m talking at least 70% cocoa DARK chocolate, bitter and rich, melting slowly on your tongue and driving straight to your taste buds and into your brain.
3. The first mouthful of a cold beer on a scalding hot day.
4. The sensual decadence of REAL vanilla ice cream.
5. That first sip of hot coffee on a cold day.
SMELL:
1. Fresh cut grass. I dunno why, but it’s one of those summer smells that always makes me smile. It almost smells cool & wet.
2. Cold salt air at the coast. It smells especially good in New England, but sometimes here in South Carolina you can get a whiff of it. I’m not sure if the seaweed is a part of the aroma or not.
3. Wood smoke, especially on a cool day. It just makes me think of a cozy fire, or a campfire in the woods.
4. Sizzling meat on a BBQ grill, mixed with a little BBQ sauce. The smell that invokes instant drool and makes you want to hop the neighbor’s fence & bum a meal.
5. Fresh lemons & peaches. Sure, I look a little weird leaning over a bushel at the store but damn it smells good.
6. Citronella candles. Yeah, I’m a weirdo.
TOUCH:
1. Sliding into fresh cold sheets on a warm night and swishing all about like you’re making snow angels in bed.
2. As much as I HATE to be barefoot, I really like the feeling of warm beach sand on my toes.
3. Lingering decadently in a scalding hot shower, as hot as I can stand it without causing physical damage to my skin.
SIGHT:
1. A full moon over the ocean.
2. Shooting stars
3. A starry sky out away from the city lights. Like way out in the willywags where there’s nothing but dark sky & bright stars.
4. A bright red sunset. Especially if it turns the whole sky orange and pink and red.
5. Watching my dog curl up like a pretzel and sleep.
SOUNDS:
1. Waves crashing on rocks, or really just the surf in general. Puts me to sleep just thinking about it.
2. Bagpipes. There’s nothing like it on earth.
3. The purring of a happy cat. People would purr if they could.
4. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. ‘Nuff said.
5. And no matter how any THOUSANDS of times I hear it, I love to hear Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode. It’s my favorite song of all time.
TASTE:
1. Melty butter dripping off a hot Maine lobster tail. Holy crap…heaven on a fork.
2. Deep dark chocolate, and I don’t mean a cheap-ass Wonka bar. I’m talking at least 70% cocoa DARK chocolate, bitter and rich, melting slowly on your tongue and driving straight to your taste buds and into your brain.
3. The first mouthful of a cold beer on a scalding hot day.
4. The sensual decadence of REAL vanilla ice cream.
5. That first sip of hot coffee on a cold day.
SMELL:
1. Fresh cut grass. I dunno why, but it’s one of those summer smells that always makes me smile. It almost smells cool & wet.
2. Cold salt air at the coast. It smells especially good in New England, but sometimes here in South Carolina you can get a whiff of it. I’m not sure if the seaweed is a part of the aroma or not.
3. Wood smoke, especially on a cool day. It just makes me think of a cozy fire, or a campfire in the woods.
4. Sizzling meat on a BBQ grill, mixed with a little BBQ sauce. The smell that invokes instant drool and makes you want to hop the neighbor’s fence & bum a meal.
5. Fresh lemons & peaches. Sure, I look a little weird leaning over a bushel at the store but damn it smells good.
6. Citronella candles. Yeah, I’m a weirdo.
TOUCH:
1. Sliding into fresh cold sheets on a warm night and swishing all about like you’re making snow angels in bed.
2. As much as I HATE to be barefoot, I really like the feeling of warm beach sand on my toes.
3. Lingering decadently in a scalding hot shower, as hot as I can stand it without causing physical damage to my skin.
SIGHT:
1. A full moon over the ocean.
2. Shooting stars
3. A starry sky out away from the city lights. Like way out in the willywags where there’s nothing but dark sky & bright stars.
4. A bright red sunset. Especially if it turns the whole sky orange and pink and red.
5. Watching my dog curl up like a pretzel and sleep.
SOUNDS:
1. Waves crashing on rocks, or really just the surf in general. Puts me to sleep just thinking about it.
2. Bagpipes. There’s nothing like it on earth.
3. The purring of a happy cat. People would purr if they could.
4. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. ‘Nuff said.
5. And no matter how any THOUSANDS of times I hear it, I love to hear Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode. It’s my favorite song of all time.
Hot For Teacher
It seems that every 6-8 weeks or so there’s a news article or story on TV about a young, fairly attractive female teacher caught having sex with some teen boy student. Occasionally it becomes a huge spectacle, like the Mary Kay Letourneau fiasco, but often it just gets a headline or two and goes away until the next scandal hits the airwaves. Actually, I think her story got more attention than others because not only did she get knocked up by the kid, she defied her parole & probation and kept on making the beast with two backs with him and got knocked up again, I do believe. I say believe, since I didn’t follow the story quite as closely as Lifetime and Oxygen did.
Recently here in SC we had a married, 29 year old cheerleading coach busted for not only banging a male student but also for taking her cheerleaders to hotels to screw National Guard soldiers, one of whom the coach was also banging. The most surreal aspect of this particular case is that no criminal charges could be filed against the adults since the students involved were 16, which here in SC means they were over the age of consent. As far as the state is concerned it was consensual sex.
A couple weeks ago a tragic story broke about a husband who shot and killed the 18 year old former student of his wife as the kid sat in his car in front of their house. Details were unavailable as to whether the wife was actually having a relationship with the kid or if he was just infatuated and doing the stalker thing, but her husband found out about their friendship and abruptly ventilated this kid’s cranium in broad daylight after calling 911.
So what’s in the water lately to cause this rash of 20-something teachers to snap and start shagging an otherwise “innocent” teen boy? And furthermore, where the fuck were these teachers when I was in school? I know that there was a serious lack of hot young teachers at Traip Academy in the mid-80’s. And when I was a soldier, there was certainly no one providing us with nubile virgin cheerleaders for morale-boosting recreational bang sessions.
So far it seems that if you dig into the stories, you’ll find a sinister common thread at the heart of the matter. It’s not the seduction during detention. It’s not clandestine meetings in motels. It’s not even dirty emails and camera-phone snapshots. This insidious parallel is that the authorities are always getting tipped off by another male student who obviously wasn’t scoring any poonanny from the teacher. And the old adage of, “If I ain’t getting any, no one else can either…” is especially brutal when it comes to sexual rivalries among teenaged males of the species. Plus, the average high-schooler can’t keep their mouth shut either. He gets his salad tossed by his English teacher, blabs to all his buddies to look cool, and the group geek, who’s tired of beating off into a gym sock to the Sears catalog, rats his buddy out to even the score. The cops swarm in like a Mossad raid on Martin Bormann’s house, and the tabloids go apeshit for a week.
Oh yeah. You can always count on your buddies to cock-block you in your moment of weakness. It’s the American Way…..
Recently here in SC we had a married, 29 year old cheerleading coach busted for not only banging a male student but also for taking her cheerleaders to hotels to screw National Guard soldiers, one of whom the coach was also banging. The most surreal aspect of this particular case is that no criminal charges could be filed against the adults since the students involved were 16, which here in SC means they were over the age of consent. As far as the state is concerned it was consensual sex.
A couple weeks ago a tragic story broke about a husband who shot and killed the 18 year old former student of his wife as the kid sat in his car in front of their house. Details were unavailable as to whether the wife was actually having a relationship with the kid or if he was just infatuated and doing the stalker thing, but her husband found out about their friendship and abruptly ventilated this kid’s cranium in broad daylight after calling 911.
So what’s in the water lately to cause this rash of 20-something teachers to snap and start shagging an otherwise “innocent” teen boy? And furthermore, where the fuck were these teachers when I was in school? I know that there was a serious lack of hot young teachers at Traip Academy in the mid-80’s. And when I was a soldier, there was certainly no one providing us with nubile virgin cheerleaders for morale-boosting recreational bang sessions.
So far it seems that if you dig into the stories, you’ll find a sinister common thread at the heart of the matter. It’s not the seduction during detention. It’s not clandestine meetings in motels. It’s not even dirty emails and camera-phone snapshots. This insidious parallel is that the authorities are always getting tipped off by another male student who obviously wasn’t scoring any poonanny from the teacher. And the old adage of, “If I ain’t getting any, no one else can either…” is especially brutal when it comes to sexual rivalries among teenaged males of the species. Plus, the average high-schooler can’t keep their mouth shut either. He gets his salad tossed by his English teacher, blabs to all his buddies to look cool, and the group geek, who’s tired of beating off into a gym sock to the Sears catalog, rats his buddy out to even the score. The cops swarm in like a Mossad raid on Martin Bormann’s house, and the tabloids go apeshit for a week.
Oh yeah. You can always count on your buddies to cock-block you in your moment of weakness. It’s the American Way…..
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