the extra point

"no fucking way am i going out there to watch them kick an extra point. coach, i repsect the hell out of you, but i'm not doing it. there's nothing that can convince me to go back out there in front of those people, those cameras, those refs, and the entire football watching world just so they can kick a meaningless point over my head. it's not happening." - that's what i would've said if i was a member of the green bay packers last night when they were looking for 11 guys to put out on the field so they could finish the game with the extra point play.

the extra point itself was meaningless. the clock for the game expired and there was nothing that was gonna change the fact that the packers were robbed, screwed, and gonna lose a game that they should've won. the packers left the field. this shit was over. victims of a crime, it was time to hit the locker room and lick their wounds away from the cameras and away from those fucking replacement refs.

the packers should be given points in classiness. they did end up sending 11 guys out onto the field cuz technically the game can't end till an extra point is kicked. the seahawks already scored the winning touchdown as time expired. all this extra point would do is rub the burn in a little deeper, as coaches, players, and maybe the loudest home crowd in the nfl celebrated what could be the biggest bad call in nfl history.

seahawks gloated in the aftermath. didn't they know the rules? they knew what happened here. why didn't they just take what the refs gave them and run home as fast as they could? nobody wanted to hear about how hard they played or how well they executed or how well deserved this victory was. everyone knew the packers got screwed. it was on live tv.

and minutes later, after the initial pandemonium died down, 11 green bay packers ran out onto the field to stand in a formation and watch the seahawks kick a meaningless extra point through the uprights. they could've refused and protested and never showed up on that field. what would anyone have done? they would've been forced to end the game and give the victory to the seahawks and wrap it up.

i don't know what drove anyone on the packers to do the "right thing." but that was some classy shit. and through all the pandemonium and discussion and media blitzkrieg, i don't think it should be overlooked that after taking one of the worst robberies in all of nfl history, the packers came back out and finished the game cuz that's just what you do. that's fucking class. that's what i'm gonna remember the most.

i don't care what you think (a stand up comedy tale)

i did a set last night at the weekly open mic i co-host on sunday nights. i told a joke about women complaining about men catcalling and how i wish women would catcall me. i'd write the joke here but the 'stand up to print' conversion never works out well....so i guess you'll just have to catch me tell jokes somewhere at some point in the future if you're really that interested. the joke is not what's important at this moment... just the subject matter.

about 30 minutes after my set, i'm talking to a friend who's sitting next to a dude who's sorta a friend... i guess... maybe more of an acquaintance. and he's there with his lady friend. i make no assumptions about their relationship... all i know for sure is she's a lady and she's his friend. the acquaintance turns to me and says, "me and her have been talking about your set for the past 20 minutes. maybe you can help us out with something."

i'm already shuddering inside. it's almost always a sucky experience anytime anyone wants to talk in depth about my material. but me, trying to be a nice dude, i say, "ok." so he's telling me how where she comes from, it's a compliment for men to catcall women (i never caught the specifics of where she was from... and that's for a few reasons.... we're in a bar with live music and the music's loud. i'm half paying attention to the music and already half looking for a way out of this conversation. so specifics are missed). he goes on to say that women go out of their way to look good so they can get this kind of public attention. and apparently i'm ridiculing the whole process and i should rethink the whole thing through.

she apparently couldn't talk directly to me. he'd say stuff and every now and then she'd butt in, sorta talk low in his direction, and then he'd repeat whatever she was interjecting with. but the point, in brief, is that i shouldn't assume that all women hate being catcalled and hounded by dudes in public. um, okay, lesson learned... i guess. with my new lesson learned, i took the first awkward silence that came up as a chance to book. i ran to another friend a few seats down and talked about something.... anything... i can't even remember what... it was just important for me to get out of there.

all i'm trying to say here is that i don't really care what you think about my comedy. i'll take advice on how to make a joke better or if a joke just outright sucks. what i will not put up for discussion is the idea behind the joke. if i had been interested in a fair discussion last night (i wasn't), i would've spoke my piece and it probably would've went something like this:

look, i get that there's two sides to every coin and that a lot of jokes are based on broad assumptions and because of this i will always encounter the exceptions who are opposed to my views. that shit comes with the territory. but i gotta tell you, i don't know where your lady friend happens to be from, but i don't dig her philosophy. and i don't know if she can just simply blame it on where she came from. but hey, what do i know? stupid me, for being raised by a strong woman whom i have the honor to call mom who ingrained into me the idea that women deserve to be treated with respect and shouldn't be treated as objects. i was taught to have manners and that those manners don't just go away at the first sight of ass and titties. where i come from, that kind of behavior is ugly, moronic, and sad. but hey, to each their own.

of all the things to grab on to in my set, this is the one that sent you and your lady friend into a lively 20 minute conversation? in the same set i also talked about rights for gay people, abortion, the homeless, and beer. and the joke about catcalls is the one that got you talking, the one you couldn't let slide, the one you had to stop me for and talk my ear off when i'm just trying to enjoy a beverage and some live music?

this is comedy. you're not gonna agree with everything i say. so if you don't agree, keep that shit to yourself. i'm not telling you to shut up, what i'm telling you is that your words will be wasted on me cuz i don't care. catcalling is stupid and that's why i mock it and there's nothing no one from any far away place can say to convince me otherwise. it's a joke. either laugh or don't, like it or tell me it sucks. i can deal with that. "hey josh, your catcalling joke sucks." awesome, that only took you five seconds.

what i should've told you last night is nobody gives a fuck what you think. oh, and this is an open mic.... if you gotta get that shit off your chest so bad, sign up on the list and have at it. write a joke, tell a joke, and then come talk to me after. until then... shut the fuck up. thank you.

these commercials will be interrupted by football

i love me some football. but every sunday when i sit down to watch a game or two, it ends up feeling more like i'm watching a marathon of commercials that is occasionally interrupted by clips of live football. i'm constantly being told to buy cars and drink beer and take pills to help my fading erection. fox is selling me iphones while cbs is telling me that something from samsung is cheaper AND better. a lot of these commercials are tailor made to be geared towards football fans. there's a lot of commercials that include fans wearing jerseys or even actual football players telling me what to spend my money on.

at the end of the day, i've memorized commercial scripts almost as well as i've memorized the names and numbers of players who do awesome things on the football field. i walk away with a few highlights stuck in my head... those awesome plays that are bound to make sportscenter's top 10 this week. but those highlights are swimming around in my head with commercial jingles that i can't stop singing to myself.

i don't like commercials on tv at all. i think the whole thing stinks. i pay a company for the right to watch this stuff in my home. stop trying to sell me stuff. someone's already making money off of me. why are those same people who are making money off of me selling time to other companies so they can try and berate me into buying stuff in the comfort of my own home? it bothers me that the nfl makes all this money at the expense of me, who apparently has nothing better to do on any given sunday than to commit 3-4 hours to each game i decide to watch.

just today i heard a certain commentator state that high ranking members of the nfl are starting to complain about the replacement refs they have and how long it's taking them to make decisions.... because that is adding time to the game and all of the sudden the addition of unnecessary time being added to the time frame of a football game is a crime. wanna shorten the actual time it takes to watch a game from beginning to end? i have a great idea. maybe one less ford commercial. enough. not only will i not be buying a ford pick up truck, but i now dislike dennis leary more than ever cuz i have to hear his voice over and over and over and over and over.

i'm sure advertising works. i'm sure there's ridiculous studies that have proven the effectiveness of advertising.  i'm probably the exception. i see the same product over and over and it makes me wanna buy anything but that product. fuck you coca cola, i'll stay away from your products out of spite. you already own a good chunk of my time on sunday, that's all you're getting out of me.

and i won't get over this. people should be pissed about this. advertisements are robbing us of our time. we're being played by the same people we pay for the pleasure to be entertained. it goes beyond tv and football games. they show us commercials at movies theaters. it costs me $12 to get inside and $5 if i want a soda (never coca cola of course). then i have to sit through honda commercials just to get to the trailers. it's bullshit. we live in a world where advertising keeps finding more avenues to get into our lives.

all i ever wanted to do was enjoy the game. this is my time... my time to chill and relax and i choose to spend it by watching a sport i'm a fan of. it sucks that my time has been sold to corporations behind my back so they can scream at me to go out and buy their shit in the comfort of my own home.

and if your counter argument is that the nfl needs to make money somehow, give me a break. coach and player salaries are inflated. they sell tickets and merchandise and that stuff is never cheap. at this point, i'd be happy if they just scaled back the amount of commercials. all these commercials that are shown during nfl games, and the way it's rubbed in our face during games (logos, logos everywhere) is nothing more than a result of their unnecessary greed.

dating the president

there's something about election season that makes me think about dating. for months we find ourselves being swooned by candidates who tell us why we should choose them to be our president. it's like once every four years we're suddenly sexy as fuck to all these politicians who wanna get in our pants. and it's always flattering to hear people of stature tour the country, give speeches, and battle each other just to receive some of our affection.

much like i've experienced in dating, in the beginning, politicians put on the charm. they make sure to always look and act their best for us. they tell us what we wanna hear... sometimes they even bend truths or straight out lie, knowing that it'll better their chances of getting us to give them a pull of the lever on election day.

and in return, we usually fall hard for them in the beginning. if you happen to be someone who's planning to vote, you're usually passionately behind the person you're choosing. they can do no harm in your eyes and anyone else who would want to compete with them is hopeless and unaware of how incomparable they are.

and if you're not voting, you're just weird. get out and vote. you can't live the rest of your life without reaching out and getting to know your leaders. but i get it, you've been burned. some politician somewhere in the past broke your heart and you'll never trust another politician ever again. but you can't judge all candidates based on what one asshole did to you in the past. you have to move on and keep trying and hoping that somewhere out there is the right political choice for you. never give up.

much like most brand new relationships, on a president's first term, we find ourselves filled with such hope. it's a fresh start. this time things are gonna work out. this time our lives will be better and more complete. in the most simplest of terms, this time around we will be more happy and less sad because this time around we found the one..... this is the one who will take care of us and ensure a better future for us all.

as time rolls on, we become jaded. we've set the bar too high. we start to nag and say that the president isn't doing enough or that he's fucking everything up. why doesn't he care about me anymore? what happened to the candidate that told me everything was gonna get better and that he'd be there for me through thick and through thin.

before you know it, you're thinking about seeing other candidates. about three years into it you begin to find a group of candidates who tell you that they can treat you better than he does. give them a chance. they point out all the president's faults and all the ways he treats you bad. they fight one another for a chance to be the next in line.

and then we vote again. it's almost like we dump the president and then he tries to convince us why we should take him back. he tells us that he knows he fucked up but that there were good times and that he can do better if we'd just give him one more shot.

at the same time, a fresh faced charmer is telling you to forget that man. look at all he's done to you. come get with this. i'm the future you're looking for. i can give you the things you need. don't let him sucker you into another chance. he'll only let you down like he did the first time. you owe it to yourself to move on and start something new with someone who knows how to treat a voter.

more times than not, it seems we take the president back. sure, he's got his flaws, but now that he's more aware of them, this time around he'll be better to us. he's not perfect, but nobody is. we've grown so close to him, now's not the time to throw him to the curb and start all over. it's so much work to get to know somebody from square one again. it'll be easier and more comforting this way (sometimes we do vote for the fresh faced charmer. when that happens, you know the previous president fucked up bad).

and after another four years of growing closer, the president will end up leaving us. he'll dump us and we'll know with all certainty, that this time it's really over. we'll be stuck with all the baggage that comes with an eight year relationship and he'll fly off into the sunset into his bright new future without us. and then, a few months down the line, he'll have the nerve to come out of nowhere and try to pawn us off to one of his buddies. typical politician.

now i think i understand why some people refuse to vote. me, i'm a hopeless romantic, so i'll keep voting no matter how many times i get burned.

the misadventures of smoking pot

i used to be a pothead. i used to love smoking pot. now, i don't smoke at all. i officially called it quits at age 28. but even for years before that (6-7 if i had to guess), my pot smoking habit dwindled and became smaller and smaller as i noticed i just wasn't enjoying the high like i used to.

i remember when i first started smoking pot. that shit was fun. it was dangerous too... not the pot itself... just the act of smoking it. i lived at home with my parents. so i had to hide it from them. i did most of my smoking outdoors so i had to hide it from cops. i had to hide it from friends' parents. it was like an unspoken pact. we're all gonna smoke a shit load of this stuff together and in unison pretend that we never touch the stuff in front of parents, teachers, and other authority figures.

and that was fun for years. just having to find pot was an adventure. when i first started smoking, it was the era of beepers and payphones. no one had a cell. we had to page dealers and wait for callbacks and use numerical codes. we had to walk far distances to meet up with dealers. sometimes dealers lived with their parents and we had to put on an act like we weren't there to make a weed transaction. sometimes dealers were hanging out somewhere far away. i didn't know a lot of dealers. if one of them happened to be far away... like a bus trip or something... it was time to make a bus trip. shit wasn't easy. but looking back, it was always an adventure.

then there was the actual act of smoking it. the biggest challenge was finding a place, usually outdoors, to do it. every now and then we knew someone cool or old enough who smoked pot openly at their place, but most of the time it was an outdoors adventure. this lead to me having knowledge of every cool place in north bergen... every park and odd back alley, train tracks and cliffs, and under that bridge where all those homeless people lived.

sometimes we'd try and play it off and walk down the street and keep it moving. to my memory, this actually had a 100% success rate. i've never been busted for smoking pot while walking down a street somewhere. it's funny to look back on that and think how the most obvious, non private way was probably the most effective.

then there were cars. we'd roll in crews. sometimes there'd be 2-3 cars all hiding out somewhere that we'd think was safe. hotboxing was always fun. we'd roll the windows up and keep them up till the smoking was finished and we were all suffocating in a thick cloud of marijuana smoke. and then, usually when the driver had enough, the windows would get rolled down, we'd air out, and then be on our way.... most likely to get munchies.

and munchies were awesome. we'd roll to diners or convenience store parking lots and just rot. it's almost as if that was the main event. we'd all get stoned out of  our minds and then find some place to sit and chill for hours. and i can't complain. i grew up around great scenery. we were always close to the hudson river and the new york city skyline. there was always something cool or stupid to do.... like steal golf balls from the driving range or race around town.

one time we were racing on kennedy blvd. there were two cars.... joe's and lucas's. we just finished hotboxing. we're doing 70 down kennedy and all of the sudden we hear and see cop sirens coming up behind us to pull over joe's car (the car i happened to be in). we pulled the car over into a quick chek parking lot where a crew of cops started to give us the business. the car reeked of pot. we were doomed. they searched the car and they searched us all... one by one they went through all our shit while the rest of us sat on a curb and watched. the cops made fun of us the whole time. finally, when they found about a dimebag's worth of pot, they turned to the line of us sitting on the curb and one cop says, "ok, who's is this?"

and in maybe the most clutch moment, my friend chet says, "mine." he didn't have to do it. i don't even think it was his, i think it was shared among us all. but he took the blame and if anyone else felt like me, we just sat and watched and felt awful that our friend was gonna take the fall for five of us. the cop asked chet to put his hands out. he then took the pot and threw it in chet's hands. he looked him straight in the eyes and said....

"eat it. eat the weed."

and chet, outdoing his own clutchness, didn't say a word. in one swift moment he lifted the weed to his mouth and ate it. the cops said we were lucky they were so nice, told us to stop fucking around and then they left (interesting side note, my other friend lucas, peeled off in his car just as the cops were about done with us. he broke a snapple bottle with his car as he did it. so it seemed really dramatic. the cops hopped into their two cars and pulled him over about three blocks away. he received several tickets. poor bastard got it worst than anyone that night).

but that was then. as time went on, people started to move out and get apartments. everyone got cell phones. getting pot became easy. smoking it was even easier. soon we weren't on the run from the law anymore. nothing was dangerous. we weren't exploring new ground or having ridiculous late night conversations in random parking lots. all of the sudden we were ordering pizzas and watching tv. and all of the sudden pot got boring.

and it makes me wonder if i was ever in it for the pot in the first place. looking back, seems like i was in it for an adventure.... for the right to say i'm having a really good time. i look back, and even though it wasn't perfect (cuz it wasn't... there were long waits that went no where, nights that we never found pot at all, times when we got bad shit, winters when we froze our asses off... i've had money stolen from me on a few occasions), when i wrap the whole thing up into one major experience, it was fucking awesome and fun and i'm so glad i got to live through it.

now, i don't miss pot. i don't miss being high. what i do miss is walking and driving around aimlessly. i miss having to come up with creative ways to pass the time. i miss the lack of responsibilities that allowed us all so much time to go out and be young, adventurous, and more times than not, stupid. i cherish the memories. that was some good shit. and because of that, i might never have a bad word to say about pot.

don't touch me (volume 1)

i included (volume 1) in the title cuz i can see myself writing many posts titled, 'don't touch me.' it's a topic i can go on and on about.

but today's version is about massages... not all massages, but more specifically the massages they give us at work on a yearly basis. every october at my job is "customer service appreciation month." and our job does a bunch of cool shit for us. there's lots of free food, prizes... this year there's even a halloween party that will include awesome things like booze and karaoke. one of the many things they give away are massages. they bring a company in, have 'em set up shop in a conference room and raffle away massage spots. not everyone's a winner so they're sorta a coveted thing around the office.

so every year this comes around and every year they ask everyone who wants a massage and every year i say i'm not interested. and every year people react like i'm crazy. and maybe i am. but i'm just not into it. the whole thing's awkward. i know cuz the very first year i was there, i did sign up for a massage. and what they do is, they send you into a conference room, four people at a time, and you receive these 15 minute massages.... obviously over the clothes... it's not the kinda massage you get at the spa or whatever.

that's just the set up. the awkwardness comes in the details.

you never know who you're gonna be in the massage room with. it could be your boss or that cretin you can't stand or maybe even your office crush. there's no control over that (i have limited control over that, to be explained in just a minute). and even if all other three people in the room with me are awesome, it's still weird to sit around and receive massages at the same time in a conference room during work hours.

beyond that, you walk in and they have aroma candles lit and mellow music playing. the whole thing's kinda a cheese fest. your dealing with some masseuse who's just had their hands on a plethora of your coworkers. i know it's not exactly a germ exchange like drinking out of the same bottle, but last i checked, there are no barriers for cooties and the cootie shot is an urban myth that was debunked sometime in 1998.

but it makes me wonder if the masseuses are sizing us up. when they go to lunch, do they talk about their least favorite person they had to lay their hands on today? what if the whole time they're taking stock of everyone and comparing them and either fucking, marrying, or killing them in their imaginations. cuz that's what i'd do.

and it's just 15 minutes. like i said, this isn't even a real massage. okay, i'm weird with all sorts of forms of strangers touching me. but even if i was into strangers touching me, i'm pretty sure these 15 minute sessions are the fast food of massages. wow, 15 minutes. thanks for loosening me up just a little bit.... now i'm gonna go back to work and get tense again.

and you gotta see some people and the shit eating grin they rock after the massage. makes me think a lot of people at my job are not getting touched by other people a lot. and i always get the, "you don't know what you're missing" routine. and there's usually only two types of people who say that to me:

type 1- people with inactive sex lives.

type 2- people who are married. which leads me to believe their marriages are miserable if a 15 minute assembly line massage classifies as "feeling great."

anyways... to bring this sucker home.... i work in the department that schedules everything. so i have to schedule the massages. and anytime there's call outs, i get asked if i wanna take the empty slot. i never do. and  i know it's just people at my job being nice to me but seriously everyone, i just don't like strangers touching me. it's not up for debate. it's been this way for 32 years and a 15 minute massage in the conference room isn't going to change that.

looking for a punchline in libya

this stuff going on in libya and these protests going on at u.s. embassies around the world is pretty serious stuff. this is tough subject matter. it's the kind of shit that doesn't illicit belly laughs or guffaws. when people converse with one another about the whole thing, there's never going to be a whole lot of smiling going on. no matter how you dice this thing, it's a bummer.

and that sucks. i suck in these moments. this is when i wanna come up with something that will crack you the fuck up. something that will make you laugh and forget all the awful shit for a moment. or maybe even illicit the kinda laughter that makes you wonder why anyone anywhere takes anything so serious that it escalates and becomes a body count on the scroll of our 24/7 news networks.

i wanna find the punchline. but it's hard to even figure out where to begin. there's a movie mocking a god and people are fucking pissed. people tend to get enraged when you mock their god. doesn't really matter what god they believe in. people take that shit serious. it literally is a matter of life or death. and i don't know what's sadder.... that we mock each other's gods, that people get enraged at the mocking of their gods, or that we have all these fucking gods hanging around in the first place.

somewhere down the line, waaaaay in the future they'll look back at us and laugh. there's the punchline. look at these idiots. 2012 and they're killing one another over imaginary friends. at some point humans will evolve past the idea of gods. when that does happen, gods will become as passe of a concept as a flat earth, another issue that got some people in trouble. there was a point in history where you couldn't say the earth was round. that was some heretic shit. imagine that. seems ridiculous, right?

exactly! one day the shit we do will be exposed as ridiculous. and if that's the case, it means that it's always been ridiculous. we shouldn't have to wait for the demise of many generations to come to the realization that this whole fucking thing is absurd. it's ridiculous right here, right now, in this moment. we've become so caught up in who's wrong and who's right that no one seems to realize that we're all wrong... waaaaaay fucking wrong. and we look foolish and we should be ashamed of ourselves and your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren are gonna have something to guffaw about then. having no real emotional attachment to us, they'll rip through us like a page in a history book, mock us, and hope they guess the right answers on a multiple choice exam.

this whole thing seems so huge and so serious and so unsolvable. but all it'll ever evolve into is a question on a multiple choice exam. so let's cut the shit already.