fritzthebootlegger

2 weeks ago, I took the U12 girls team which I coach to a tournament. The temperatures were in the mid-high 90’s, my girls played ferociously (most of them hadn’t practiced together until that very week), and we finished with a 1-1-1 record.  Unfortunately, in our 4-team bracket, we were 3rd place.  The 2nd place team (who walked away with 2nd place trophies) was also 1-1-1 (we tied them), but their win was by a higher score.

But what will make that weekend memorable for me were some of the things which I heard (or overheard) throughout the weekend:

1. “Dad, we were at the playground and we saw a guy carrying a gun,” my daughter said to me.  “What?  Are you sure it was a gun?  Any chance it was a cop?” I asked her.  “No, he was dressed normal,” she replied.  At that point, one of my player’s dad, who was standing nearby, said (in all seriousness), “Oh, you don’t have to be a copy to carry, you can get a carry permit.  I have one.”  Thus my biggest concern was not that my daughter thought she saw a guy carrying on a playground at a sports complex, but the dad of one of my players was defending it.
2. “Can you score on a corner kick?” Player 1 (on one team) asked Player 2 (who was on the other team).  “Sure, haven’t you ever seen Bend it like Beckham?” replied Player 2.  What made this conversation amusing was that it was held between two opposing players (who were both Select players, not Rec) while on the field.  It turned into a movie discussion group.  And considering this was a Select game, you’d think the one girl would know that it was possible to score on a corner.  Also, it’s been a couple years since I’ve seen the movie, but the famous scenes in it involved penalty kicks, not corners, I thought.
3. “Dad, ball me!”  This was said by a kid to his dad.  The kid needed a ball with which to warm up.  Dad had all the balls.  So the boy asked his dad to perform a vital task at that moment:  to ball him.  Of course, channeling Beavis and Butthead the way I do, I had to hold in a laugh until I was ten feet away.  And this reminds me, I need to teach my girls the meaning of the phrase “Dad, little help,” as the always appropriate way to ask someone to kick a ball back to you.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tanorexia&defid=833039

Tanorexia (n): A disease like anorexia, no matter how tan a person is they never think they are tan enough.

I have a Circle K near me.  Or did…they were bought by some other fuel chain and renamed, but it’ll always be the Circle K (I feel sorry for anyone trying to find my house that is told to “turn left at the Circle K”).

One of the regular employees is a very nice, but very weird man with probable mental issues.  He had brain surgery.  I know this because every time I see him (about every month when I gas up there, or buy ice or propane), he manages to work into the conversation that he had brain surgery.  Thus it was on Saturday morning when I went there to buy 2 bags of ice (for a soccer tournament in which I was coaching).

Me:  Hi, I’d like 2 bags of ice.

Guy:  Hummuna mumbla somethinga mumbla hummuna.

Me:  Excuse me?

Guy:  Hummuna mumbla somethinga mumbla hummuna.

Me:  Umm…come again?

Guy:  Hummuna mumbla somethinga mumbla hummuna.

Me:  *Blank stare*

Guy:  Oh, sorry!  I was speaking Spanish and didn’t realize it.  I do that every now and then, go back and forth between English and Spanish, on account of my brain surgery.  I had brain surgery and I do things like that every now and then.

Me:  *Uncomfortable smile*

Guy:  So are you doing alright today?

Me:  Uh…huhhh.

Guy:  Good.  That’ll be $5.08.

Me:  *Hands crazy guy $20*

Guy:  Alright, out of $20…hey, do you know what year Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue?

Me:   What?

Guy:  What year did Columbus sail the Ocean Blue?

Me:  Uhhh…..Fourteen….Ninety…Two.

Guy:  Very good!  $14.92 is your change, here you go and have a great day!

Me:  Thanks!  *got the hell out of there quickly*

Here’s the really crazy part….when he was mumbling to me, I was absolutely positive he was NOT speaking Spanish.  I know enough Spanish that I know when it’s being spoken around me, and he was not speaking Spanish.  He was speaking some crazy language, like speaking in tongues.  He almost sounded like Robert De Niro at the end of “Cape Fear,” when he was going under water and speaking in tongues.

As anyone who’s ever read more than 2 or 3 entries here knows, I can sometimes be a tad obsessed with vanity plates. This is primarily because I am an avid people watcher, and while seeing a person in the mall can often reveal nothing about their character, seeing their vanity plate reveals so much more. You might find that the driver has a keen sense of humor, or the driver lacks any creativity or originality, while others reveal the driver to be a flaming douchenozzle. And still others make you think, “I want to meet this driver just so I can find out why they chose this particular plate.”

Such was the case on my way home from work on Wednesday night, and I was following this vehicle:

The question is not, “what kind of person is this,” but rather, “WTF is an Oz Bra?” Is it a brassiere worn by an Australian woman? Is it a response to a question in Hawaii? “Where you want to surf next, bra?” “Oz, bra!”

Or perhaps it is a brassiere specially designed for Australia and all of its deadly flora and fauna. Imagine a bra that can repel green ants and redback spiders. Or a bra that creates a forcefield around the wearer that makes one impervious to the bites from taipans or death adders. Or a bra that drives box jellyfish from the shore, or can’t be punctured by the teeth of a crocodile.

Maybe it’s a specialty line of bras from Elle “The Body” MacPherson that hides aging lines. Or maybe something Phil Mickelson wears when he plays in the Australian golf open. Maybe an Oz Bra is what helped Nicole Kidman pretend to love Tom Cruise for several years.

As you can see, many a question has been generated by something so simple as a 5 letter vanity plate. He undoubtedly has people scratching their heads all the time. I personally would get a vanity plate, but I would crack under the pressure of trying to find something that would not make someone think I was an incredible feminine hygiene product.

My older daughter, Thing 1, by starting 6th Grade, is now in Middle School, and is about to embark on a right of passage that kids her age all over the country have been doing for generations.  It’s something I myself did when I was her age, and her reaching this point in life fills me with nostalgia.

Covering text books.

Now that she’s in Middle School, and has assigned text books, she is of course responsible for their long-term care over the next 9 months, and every school system across the country has kids at this same age take their books home and cover them.  This ensures the cover of the book has that nice bright sheen to it for years, which is important when you’re researching the capitals of Czechoslovakia and the USSR.

When I was this age, the standard was to use cut-up brown paper grocery bags, measured to fit, held together with tape, and would often last until the second to last month of school.  In the interim, the book cover would get covered with doodles of all sorts.  Favorite book quotes, favorite rock lyrics (I think anyone who looked at my books would have seen a strong belief in the ideal of not getting fooled again), names of girls, and of course the subject of the book (History for the boys, and History with a little bubble heart over the i for the girls).  The extremely hopeless would buy store-bought book covers (usually covered in pictures of Strawberry Shortcake and other girly images).  Well, the hopeless and those who had no older siblings to teach them how to cover a textbook (I had 2 older brothers, so I became an expert quickly).  Basically, if you were cool, you had the brown paper cover.  If not, you had store-bought.  Every September, when we would go back to school, our parents would set aside a bunch of paper grocery sacks from the store and the dining room table would become a slaughterhouse of cut up brown paper, like some craft project gone seriously wrong.

Flash forward 27 years, and now it’s Thing 1’s turn.  Her teachers have informed her that her books will have to get covered.  Personally, I was excited over the prospect to teach Thing 1 the same skill my brothers taught me decades ago, and that I taught to my younger brother.  It was a this point though that it was pointed out to me that this product is available in stores:  Book Sox.  Socks for books.  Stretchy fabric covers that slip over the books and held in place with some sort of elastic, I guess.  As the website says, “no measuring, no cutting, no taping.”  What the hell fun is that???  If we’ve lost the ability to cover our own textbooks, what will we lose next?  The ability to defend our own borders?

This of course brings up the big question…..since Thing 1 is our oldest, we have no idea if other kids actually buy these, or if they’re only purchased by the insanely hopeless like in my day.  If we cover her books in brown paper bags from Kroger, will Thing 1 be elevated to the ranks of “cool kids”?  Or will she be forever labeled as a “poor kid”?  If we buy the Book Sox, will she be seen as some helpless geek that can’t figure out how to cover a book?  Or will she be at the same level as someone wearing a Twilight t-shirt from Hot Topic?  These are the things we need to know to avoid getting our daughter branded as something negative.

I figured Middle School would be easy for Thing 1, since I knew which mistakes to avoid.  Unfortunately, after so much time has passed, they probably changed the rules, and the mistakes are completely different than the ones I made.  Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair.

OK, men:  Let’s say it’s about 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  *checks thermometer*  Yup, 95 degrees.  Not quite “Hotter than the hinges of Hell,” but certainly in the “hot as balls” category.

And let’s say you’re with your wife/girlfriend/baby mama in a car, with two kids in the car seats in the back, and the lady is driving.

Let’s say you need gas, and pull into a gas station.

Do you:

A:  Get out and pump the gas?

Or,

B:  Let the woman get out and pump the gas?

While I recognize that in this modern society, women are just as capable of pumping gas as men, isn’t it a little bit of a dick move to sit in an air-conditioned car with the kids while the fairer sex gets out and gets her hands dirty from gasoline and germs pumping gas?

Or should I just simply count my blessings that she was kind of hot and exotic-looking in a Mediterranean sort of way, and gave me something to look at while I pumped gas into my own car?

Discuss……

I’m in Wisconsin on vacation.

It’s 11PM CDT.  I heard wolves howling outside, from the west.

I then heard an answering call from wolves, howling outside, from the east.

It’s safe to say I will not be getting much sleep tonight.

(Thank God wolves lack opposable thumbs and the ability to open door handles)

(They do lack opposable thumbs, correct?)

On the way home from work yesterday, I turned right onto a 4 lane highway.  There were no cars in the right lane, several in the left, so chancing it, I turned onto the shoulder, sped up to highway speed, and merged into the right lane of traffic.

I soon found myself pacing a minivan in the left lane.  In the front passenger seat I could see a young girl, maybe 10 years old or so.  She had her right arm on the sill of the open window, and her head was resting on it.  Looking more closely, I could see that she didn’t look well at all.  She had what looked like a handkerchief in one of her hands, a white handkerchief or towelette, flapping in the wind at 60 mph.  She looked up a little, and I could see the sunken eyes of someone clearly suffering from a stomach bug, which led me to believe that she was taking preventative measures to ensure if she had to yammy*, she did not do so inside the van.

It was then that I looked at the side of the van.  In a splatter pattern all across the right side of the van, starting near the passenger window and radiating out, were chunks of vomit, as though someone leaned out the window of the van at 60 mph and hurled, splashing the entire side of the van.

Seeing as how this poor girl looked like she had to yammy once more, and seeing as how I was right next to them, I did the only sensible thing.  I slowed down, allowed that van to get ahead, plus the car right behind, and I pulled in behind that second car (since I had to make a left turn just up the road).  This way, chunks would not be blown at my car.

Hopefully since then, that poor kid has recovered.  Being sick is no fun.  Being sick on summer vacation is even less fun.  Being sick in a moving vehicle where your choices are to ruin the day of all of the passengers and driver, or ruining the day of the car next to you, is really miserable.

*Yammy:  (v)  The act of yammying, according to Zoso.  Yammy being a synonym for hurling.

I’m in sales.  Industrial sales.  Chances are, if you’re reading this, the electricity operating your computer was supplied by a power plant with some of my parts in it.  80% of my sales are done right here in Georgia, but I have a few customers to whom I occasionally need to pay visits to.  One in Colorado, one in Wisconsin, and one in Houston.  Last week, it was Houston’s turn.

Let me just start by saying that of all the cities to which I’ve ever traveled, Houston is my least favorite (and I once visited Buffalo New York in January!).  It’s hot, sticky, crowded, and worst of all, while claiming to be part of “The South,” the state is completely devoid of sweet tea.  For that reason alone, Houston sucks.  There is nothing worse than going into a restaurant for lunch on a hot day and being told unsweetened tea is the only option.

So, it was with much reservation that I got up at 4:30AM last Thursday, shaved and showered, and left the house by 5:45AM so that I could drop my car off at the off-airport parking and be at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport by 7-ish for my 8:45 flight.  Traffic was light.  That’s the last thing that went well until about 5PM that day.  I flew through the security lines only to be subjected to the group scolding by the TSA worker, yelling at us like 5 year olds about how there should be nothing in our pockets, not even our boarding passes.  I’m reasonably certain if I jumped the line, this particular woman would not have had the physical stamina to chase me for a distance of more than 2-3 floor tiles.

Apparently, my laptop has been infected with malware which my various protections aren’t quite able to eradicate (which stopped being a priority when the boss decided I was due for a new laptop).  One side-effect of this malware was that it disabled my internet browsers, so I was unable to get online and work (and by work, I mean “write about all the funny/gross/sexy people at the airport waiting for flights), so I couldn’t even pass the time doing something productive.  I could at least see emails on my Blackberry, but that wasn’t so great as one of them was an announcement that an acquaintance of mine passed away (he was 67 and had massive organ failures).

My 8:45 flight was late, because the plane I would be flying on was late coming in from wherever that plane was coming in from, so it was pushed back to 9:15.  I kind of wish Delta had decided to put in a different plane, because the one we were on turned out to be an MD-88.  If you’re not familiar with that model, imagine having about as much elbow room as a coffin.  The legroom wasn’t too bad, but I spent the entire 2 hour flight wedged in against the woman next to me (I had the window).  The armrest was up, and she kind of spilled over the middle (I should have arranged a DMZ like my younger brother and I had when traveling by car as kids….anyone crosses the middle, they are fair game for getting punched).  She wasn’t fat…she was just big, like a basketball player.  Pushing 6′ tall with hips wider than mine.  Not only that, there was little cushion left to the seat.  It was hard enough that I had this metal bar pushing up against my coccyx the entire flight.  That was a brief experience in how it feels to be pregnant, I think.

As this is obviously a long entry, I will break this up into at least one more part.  Stay tuned tomorrow for:

• Bladder Control Issues
• Airsickness Bags
• Houston
• Smoking Laptops
• Unsweetened Iced Tea
• Expense Account Meals
• Customer Service
• Salesmanship

I will admit, this entry does lack the charm of an androgynous meth addict on a bicycle (who, technically, is probably not a commuter as androgynous meth addicts on bicycles are probably not commuting to a job).  But what this entry does have is a symbol of the wasteful spending of corporate dollars on advertising campaigns that do nothing more than make the driver of such vehicles look like a douchebag, and in turn making your product look like an energy drink for douchebags.

In addition, I would love it if this can flew off the back of the car, hitting mine, thus enabling me to sue Red Bull for a lot of money.

I think it’s also safe to say this driver can forget about getting 37 mpg.