Author: Ross Gariepy

Watching Sports on Tape Delay: a Stressful and Chaotic Practice

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Being able to listen to the Red Sox radio broadcast on WEEI through my iPhone is one of my favorite things about modern technology.  With the MLB.tv subscription, I can actually watch the Red Sox games on any of my devices, or if I happen to be in a situation where I can’t look at a screen, like when I’m driving, I can still listen to the game live.  So even though I was faced with the daunting task of driving the six hours back to San Francisco from LA by myself on Tuesday afternoon, I was excited that three of those hours would be spent listening to the Sox/Royals game. With the converter I use that plays audio from my iPhone over the car’s speakers, I was set.  A 16oz Red Bull, some beef jerky, a full sleeve of Sour Cream -n- Onion Pringles and the Red Sox game on my car radio… where’s the downside?

The downside was that I basically had to keep my hand on the radio’s volume knob for three hours in case WEEI wanted to interrupt the broadcast to update its listeners on the Celtics playoff game.  Over the course of the baseball game, I think WEEI did this four times.  Luckily I was ready each time and avoided hearing the score of the Celtics by immediately turning the volume down.  Other than almost hearing the score accidentally a few times, the other problem was that I had to dedicate one of my hands to the volume the whole time.  I was already one hand short because I kept getting my entire right arm stuck inside the Pringles container.  So I was basically driving up the 101 at 80 miles per hour steering with my knee.

The reason I had to censor the score updates is because I had the Celtics game taping on my DVR back at home.  Knowing I’d be in the car at the same time the C’s were trying to close out Atlanta, I wanted to avoid any exposure to the score so I could watch it later Tuesday night.  On top of the radio situation, I also had to avoid all text messages, phone calls and the urge to scroll through Twitter while driving.

While this was far from my first time doing the tape delay of a live sporting event, it really got me thinking.  Is it worth it to temporarily cut yourself off from the entire outside world because you want to watch a previously-played game as if it’s happening live?  Are some games acceptable to do this for while others are not?  Are you allowed to strangle someone if they happen to mention the score of the exact game you’re trying to avoid hearing about?  It’s a dangerous game we play when we try to create an alternate reality where a sporting event is “live” only when we’re ready for it to be live.

Like I said, I’ve been dealing with this conundrum for years.  Living in California makes it even more relevant because during the week, most games played by my Boston teams begin by 4 or 4:30, and unfortunately getting out of work early isn’t always an option.  So you do the whole song and dance of taping the game and telling all your coworkers that if they check on the score and happen to mention it to you, they’ll never see their families again.  And generally that works because people don’t want their loved ones to die, and because it’s just one hour or so that you have to avoid all spoilers for.

But what about those weekend days when a game starts at 1pm, but there’s just no way you can watch it until 7 or 8 that night?  How hard is it to avoid a spoiler in that situation?  On that kind of day, it’s not like you can sit in a dark cave shut off from the rest of the world until you’re ready to watch the game.  If that was the case, you’d be watching the game live.  No, on that weekend day you’re inevitably in a situation where you have to go for a hike with your girlfriend; or go apartment hunting because you decided on a whim to move 400 miles away.  So you’re out in the real world where all sorts of idiots can screw up the game for you. You somehow have to avoid the game being ruined by people who are around you as well as accidentally seeing the score on TV or hearing it on the radio.  It’s stressful to the point where you’re not even remotely enjoying whatever that other activity is that you got sucked into.  And then the person that made you participate in it gets pissed off because you’re ruining everyone’s day…and suddenly she wishes you had just stayed home and watched the game live.  (Hint: ruin enough of her Sunday hikes and brunches and she’ll never ask you to miss a game again)

There’s one other problem with this practice of taping the games.  This past Tuesday night I was taping the Celtics game to watch it by myself when I got home, but many times a group of us will decide to avoid seeing the score of a game, and we’ll all get together later in the night and watch the taped version.  So in theory you have three or four people who are all on the same page, having shut themselves off from all communication about the result of this game.  But then you start watching, and suddenly one of the guys is on his iPad screwing around. You warn him that if he sees the final score online, he better not say anything.  He doesn’t say anything, but the next thing you know the Celtics are down by seven points with three minutes left, and this guy is putting his shoes on and getting ready to leave.  Gee, I wonder if maybe you already know the Celtics’ comeback fell short if you’re walking out the door in silence as the game is still happening on my TV?  If you have that friend who really can’t commit to avoiding the result, just stop inviting him over for these delayed viewings because his body language will ruin the outcome for you every time.  It’s similar to when you tell your friend not to mention the score because you have it taped at home, and then he says, “ahh, I’ll save you some time, they got crushed tonight.”  He thinks he’s doing you a favor, but what he doesn’t know is that now you’re planning to get back at him by ruining something he really cares about, like his upcoming wedding.

My final take is that you cannot do the tape delay thing for the biggest games…The Super Bowl, The NCAA football and basketball championships, any championship games really.  These games are important enough that you should be watching live.  And you can’t do it everyday for regular season baseball, basketball or hockey games.  That’s just obnoxious to be avoiding the outcome of a game every single day. And you can’t do it for football on Sundays because then you miss the RedZone Channel and following your fantasy team live as the games are happening.  So really, the only appropriate time to watch games on tape delay is for early-round playoff games in all of the major sports.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go setup Game 6 of the Celtics/Hawks series to tape later tonight.

Creepy Recruiting Emails: Why Wasn’t I Wooed Like This Before my Retirement?

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Might be a light beginning of the week in terms of blog posts due to playing 36 holes of golf on Monday and taking a quick trip to LA on Tuesday to hopefully lock up an apartment.  But there was one thing I wanted to pass along before the mini-hiatus.

Even though I’ve retired from the “sales game,” I’m constantly getting emails and LinkedIn messages from recruiters…an obnoxious amount, actually.  Generally it’s the typical email that states my credentials on LinkedIn make me look suited for a position at a “rapidly growing pre-IPO technology company.”  Generic “let us know if you’re interested or you think anyone in your network would be interested” type emails.  I ignore them all.  That is, I ignored them all until a recruiter went rogue and sent an email that seemed more like he was propositioning me for a midday sexcapade than trying to convince me to work for his company.

This guy actually sent two emails.  The first one said, “Blah Blah Blah, you’d be great for this position, and I’m jealous you went to BU.  I LOVVEEEEEEE BOSTON.”  I ignored it.

Then two days later I got an email where the subject said “Mulesoft positions…” and the body of the email was simply, “you would be great for a few, so call me, maybe?”  And at the bottom of this email was an embedded YouTube Video: it was the video to the song “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen.

At first I actually started laughing at this guy for sending me a clip of such an obscure song, but then I did some investigating and it turns out this song is quite popular (50 million youtube views, who knew?).  I was impressed because this email actually got me to pay attention, which is obviously the guy’s goal, even if it was in a creepy way.  And now I’m wondering if I should play along for a bit and see how much he’s willing to woo me.  Will he take me to dinner?  Hire a mariachi band to serenade us while he pushes the meatball to my side of the plate with his nose? Buy me flowers?  Call me a cab after I spend the night at his house?  Just wondering how far this courting process might go if he’s already sending me love songs via email.

Anyone else ever gotten similarly disturbing recruiting emails?

Adventures in Relocating: Why? Why Now? and other FAQ’s

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

I’ll try to tackle just a few of the basic questions you might have about my plan to relocate to LA.  For this specific post, let’s just address the broad questions that everyone seems to have.  Some of you have probably already heard a bunch of these answers, but keep reading anyway.  It’s not like you have something better to do with your time.

1). Why LA?

Whenever I get this question, it’s accompanied by a disgusted look on the asker’s face.  What that person is really asking is, “Why would you move to a city that’s best known for its traffic problems and the fake, superficial, self-centered bastards who live there?”  Good question.  And those who know me well could also add in, “Why are you moving to a city you’ve never even been to?”  Again, great question.  The answer is because I want to be a writer in the entertainment industry.  Look, if my passion in life was to be a woodworker in Santa’s workshop, I’d be moving to the North Pole.  And if my passion was taffy-making, I’d be on my way to York Beach, Maine.  If those are your passions, you need to be in the places where you’ll have the best chance to get your foot in the door (as a side note, being a woodworker for Santa and being a taffy maker were my 2 passions up until the age of 16).  With entertainment, LA is where I need to be.

2). What makes you think you can succeed in the entertainment industry?

Well, you’re reading this blog right now, aren’t you?  Also, I think I’m a natural born storyteller.  I remember being picked for the role of “narrator” when my fifth grade class performed Aladdin…though in hindsight that might have been because when I tried out for the role of Aladdin, I kept getting a boner every time Princess Jasmine talked to me. And I also remember a priest at Church telling me I should be a lector (I think that means someone who reads the Bible stories during Mass) because I had storytelling talent…thinking back to that now, there’s a 100% chance he was just saying that so I’d let him take a closer look at what Princess Jasmine did not want to look at.

(Side Note: Have you seen the shit that gets made into TV shows or movies these days?  C’mon, this is gonna be a piece of cake.)

3). What specifically do you want to do in entertainment?

Writing scripts for porn seems to be my calling, but I’m wide open to any type of writing that’s considered entertainment.  No, really it’s all about comedy writing for me.  Right now that makes me think script writing for TV or movies, as well as sketch comedy…think SNL, the late night talk shows, Daily Show, etc.  But if someone wanted to pay me to write quasi-funny blog posts, that would be cool too.

4). OK, script writing.  Do you have any experience whatsoever doing that?

Depends on your definition of the word “experience.”  If experience to you means writing a couple of TV scripts more than two years ago, and then doing nothing more since, then yes, I have a TON of experience.  I also took an online class two years ago through the Gotham Writers’ Workshop that tried to teach me how to write a funny TV script.  I even got a group of friends together to do a table reading of my script.  I realized the script was no good when my drunk buddy drawing fake abs on himself with a marker got bigger laughs than any part of my story.  So no, I don’t have a ton of experience writing and completing scripts, but man, if you could only see my Google Docs account with all of my brilliant ideas…

5). Why not continue writing in your free time in San Francisco so you can keep a full time job?

That would make sense, wouldn’t it?  Rather than go to LA with no job and no experience, maybe I should have waited until I could complete a few more scripts in my free time.  The problem is I’m just not wired that way.  I can’t stare at a computer screen for 45-50 hours a week at my job and then come home and write until I go to bed.  The reason I was able to complete two scripts in 2010 is because I was unemployed during that time.  In the two years since then while having a full time job, I’ve written no scripts.  I’ve launched three different blogs with varying degrees of failure, but I really haven’t put enough time into writing.  I actually just counted the number of books on my bookshelf where screenwriting is the primary topic…I have 18 of them.  It’s time to stop reading books, stop writing down the next great idea, and just write.  Write until enough people tell me I’m horrible or until I’m on the verge of homelessness.

6). When did you know you were going to make this move?

I think it all began when I was about 12 years old and tried to watch the movie Fantasia.  I thought, “You gotta be fucking kidding me…a whole movie with Mickey Mouse and no sound?  This isn’t entertainment.  I need to fix this industry.”

More recently I’m pretty sure I knew during those unemployed days of 2010 that I eventually had to give this a try.  I would have done it right then, but I was out of money after screwing around for four months in Europe and Australia.  But if you’re asking when did I specifically know that I would be making this move in June 2012, then I’d have to say it came on November 3rd, 2011.  I know it was that date because it says so in my diary.  And that was the day I had jury duty.  I remember sitting in that courtroom praying that I’d get picked to be on the jury for a six-day trial so I wouldn’t have to go to work.  That’s when it all came together. Why would I stay at a job that makes me want to be at jury duty instead of working?  After that it was simply a matter of calculating how many more months I’d need to work to save up the right amount of money for my journey.

7). Is there anything you wouldn’t do to break into the industry?

Blowjobs.  Handjobs, yes; blowjobs, no.

Well that’s all the time we have today.  I hope you all learned something, and I’ll be back with more next week.

Adventures in Relocating: How Adults Do It

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
This is exactly how I plan to move my things on June 1st

When I relocated from Boston to San Francisco with my brother in October 2005, I didn’t blog much about the moving preparations.  As a matter of fact, I wrote only one blog post about the move before the move actually happened.  Somehow it reveals absolutely nothing about the route we were taking, the transportation to get to the new destination, packing up all my belongings, saying bye to friends and family, tying up random loose ends, or what my plan was once I arrived in SF.

This is probably because I was five months removed from college graduation with no possessions, no money and no plan.  Back then it was basically one brief conversation between my brother and I where we decided we were moving, followed by putting all of my clothes into a large duffel bag the night before we left.  If I had been a committed blogger back then, I would have written about the amazing going away pub crawl my friends in Boston threw for me…a night that must have been good since it ended with me puking in the urinal of the White Horse Tavern and trying to escape the wrath of the bouncers.  I would have mentioned how one day before we were set to leave, my brother tried to fix something in the car we were driving out to California only to inadvertently short out the radio.  And when we told my Dad we might have to delay the trip by a few days to get the radio fixed, he basically threw his car keys at us and insisted we drive his car out West. In retrospect, what should I make of the fact that my Dad wanted us gone so badly that he literally gave away his car to ensure we wouldn’t linger? I also would have written that my brother’s friends threw him a great going away party in Fitchburg, but the only problem is that it occurred the night before we were leaving…and he got HAMMERED.  This led to a great moment where I had to wake him up at 9am the next day to tell him we had to get going, only to have him look at me like he was hearing of this “moving west” plan for the first time.  To say he was hungover and unprepared would be insulting to hungover and unprepared people.  He woke up, found a duffel bag and started shoveling clothes into it.  That’s the full story of him packing to move his entire life 3,000 miles away.  I would have finished my blog post back then with a note on how I had to smoke a five-pack of Phillies Blunt cigars to stay awake at times when I was driving (did I mention I had no money? Five cigars for $2.50 was me splurging at the time).

But even if I had been writing all that down while we were moving, I still wouldn’t have had much to say about the preparations.  For example, I never thought twice about mail that would keep getting sent to my old addresses in Boston and Fitchburg back then because there wasn’t any.  I didn’t really care to have the bank’s letters that said “stop trying to withdraw money, you have none,” forwarded to my new address in San Francisco.  Actually, I didn’t even have a new address in SF.  I was sleeping on my oldest brother’s couch until further notice.  That’s another thing I didn’t have to do in 2005…look for a place to live prior to moving.

So here’s my goal over the next few weeks: to unleash a new series of blog posts that will educate you on the successes and failures of my move to LA.  The title of each of these posts will begin with “adventures in relocating” so if you really don’t want to read these, you’ll know which ones to ignore right away.  And for those of you saying, “LA?  What the fuck is he doing moving to LA?” Well, I’ll have a post coming up soon with answers to all the questions you could ever ask.

For anyone who has relocated as an adult, you probably realize that things were a little more difficult than my experience seven years ago. You deal with tying up loose ends in one place while establishing yourself in another place.  And my move to LA is coinciding with me being jobless, which means I’m not going to spend money on having professional movers pack up my shit and deliver it to my new apartment. And I’m not going to pay for the cleaners to come to my current apartment to help me get my security deposit back.  There’s a lot more “do it yourselfness” going on here.

But I expected a lot of work, and that’s why my last day at my job was April 27th.  I’m moving on June 1st so I wanted the entire month of May to take care of all these things; big things like finding an apartment in LA and renting the right Uhaul truck, and little things like using leftover gift cards to places that only exist in San Francisco before I leave.

But then I went and booked a trip back to Boston from May 21st through May 30th.  Why did I plan a trip that takes me away from everything I have to do for the final 10 days leading up to the move?  I can justify a piece of the trip because I’m going to a wedding in Boston over Memorial Day weekend, but the extended 10-day trip?  That was probably dumb of me.  Soon I’ll be panicking because there’s less than three weeks before I have to be 100% ready for this move.  There are also a couple days where I know I won’t be productive: May 7th when me & the brothers have a final golf outing together, May 12th when we celebrate the going away of me and Julie in Golden Gate Park, and May 20th when we party one more time in a way that’s only possible in San Francisco….Bay2Breakers.

It’s May 3rd.  I have 15 open days to find an apartment, pack up everything and move.  Something tells me I can’t get away with shoving all my belongings in a duffel bag and sleeping on someone’s couch this time around.

Reviewing Three New TV Shows: The Bitch in Apt 23, Girls, Veep

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Apparently female-led TV shows are all the rage these days.  When the new TV schedule launched last fall, people were praising all the shows that suddenly focused on women.  There are three shows in particular that women seem to have gravitated towards, but the only problem is that they are all differing levels of horrible.  There’s Whitney (Colossal Disaster), 2 Broke Girls (Regular-sized Disaster), and New Girl (Whatever one step below a disaster is).

I know what you’re thinking…how do I know so much about these “TV shows for women,” right?  Well, on my most unlucky nights, I’m sometimes forced to watch TV with women.  Unfortunately they don’t pick to watch the same NHL Network highlights over and over.  They pick the three shows mentioned above.  Whitney is so horrible that on one episode, you could actually hear boo’s coming from the automated laugh track.  2 Broke Girls is possibly the least funny sitcom anyone’s ever created.  And the only redeeming quality of New Girl is the hotness of its lead actress, Zooey Deschanel.  But even that isn’t enough to give the show any staying power in my mind.

I take most of my cues on what new shows to watch from Entertainment Weekly.  The magazine reminds you of every new show coming out on a weekly basis, and they make solid recommendations most of the time.  But I was naturally a little skeptical when I saw three more female-led shows hitting the TV within a couple weeks of each other.  EW gave all three solid reviews so I thought I’d try them all out and report back on my experience.

Here are my reviews and rankings of the three new shows in question:

3. Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 (Three episodes aired, Wednesdays at 9:30pm on ABC)

Terrible name.  Terrible show.

This sitcom is about June, a 26-year-old woman whose job as a mortgage broker transfers her from Indiana to New York.  The opening episode jams the theme of “naive midwesterner in a big, scary city” down our throats.  June’s life plan is to be married with a steady job by 26, have two kids by 30, blah blah blah…  All of that goes to shit when her office and apartment are seized by the feds because her boss is accused of embezzling money.  From there her life spirals out of control when she catches her fiance cheating on her with her new roommate, Chloe.

Chloe is the “bitch” from the title.  She’s apparently a con artist that does whatever necessary to drive her roommates crazy (walk around naked, have loud parties on a Tuesday night, go to the bathroom while her roommate is in the bath tub).  These roommates inevitably get fed up and leave, and Chloe gets to keep their rent money and security deposit.

This premise seems halfway decent if the show was centered around Chloe and a revolving door of roommates, but instead it seems like June is the center of this show.  That’s unfortunate because it means we’re in for 10 more episodes of her bouncing back and forth between, “I’m 26 and my life plan isn’t on track anymore, poor me,” and, “You’re right, why do I care about my life plan so much?  Let’s be spontaneous.”

After watching all three episodes, I can confidently tell you not to bother with it.  The plots are horrible and all over the place; the characters haven’t been developed very well; the funny parts that are supposed to be centered around the outrageous Chloe and her antics fall more than flat (as an example, in episode 2, the “humor” was centered around Chloe calling her dad “Scott” and treating him like a friend instead of a dad).  And somehow, these two women who were ready to rip each other’s throats out in episode one are suddenly chummy and happy to coexist in episodes two and three.  It’s also beyond unbelievable that June would stay in this apartment with the stuff Chloe puts her through.

Best minor character: James Van Der Beek…played by James Van Der Beek.  I’d watch a show based purely on this guy looking for acting jobs, but unfortunately Don’t Trust the B only gives us three minutes of him per episode.

Status on my DVR: Cancelled effective immediately

2. Girls (Three episodes aired, Sundays at 10:30pm on HBO)

Go ahead.  Laugh at me for thinking I might enjoy a show titled “Girls.”  But I like HBO original programming, and I usually give most of their new shows a try.  I understood the premise to be, “young adult trying to find her niche in life struggles to get by in a recession-era New York City.”  I thought it would be a show that all young adults could relate to as they try to find their place in the world.  I was hoping for universal themes and plots.  Unfortunately, after three episodes, it seems like this is a show for women only.  Here are some of the main topics and issues the characters have dealt with so far:

-Unwanted pregnancy and the subsequent abortion

-Getting your period when you think you’re pregnant

-Getting tested for STD’s because the guy who you have sex with regularly may or may not always use a condom, and may or may not be sleeping with other women

-Being a virgin at the age of 20-something

And for the most part, these things weren’t dealt with in a humorous way.  I could maybe get on board with that.  It’s a particularly heavy show, and while it’s extremely well done, I just don’t think it’s for me (call me immature, but I really do need some laughs with my daily dose of abortion, periods, and STDs).  The reason I haven’t ditched the show entirely is because I’m amazed by Lena Dunham (not in a “she’s hot” kind of way like Zooey).  She plays the lead character, Hannah, but also is the creator/executive producer of the show, and she writes and directs the episodes too.  That’s pretty friggen amazing for a 25-year-old.

Best line so far: “There is seriously nothing flakier in this world than not showing up to your own abortion.”  See, now that’s abortion with a humorous twist!  If only more of the show could be that funny.

Status on my DVR: Not cancelled yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

1). Veep (Two episodes aired, Sundays at 10pm on HBO)

Brilliant.  The idea to create a show focused on the Vice President of the United States isn’t brilliant itself.  But the combination of the genre (comedy), the tone (hapless satire with just the right amount of subtlety) and the lead actress (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) make it extremely promising.

You could almost describe Veep as “Parks and Recreation in the White House.”  It has the politician who means well but tends to put her foot in her mouth far too often. And it has her surrounding staff of misfits who can simultaneously get her out of a jam while creating a whole new problem.  If you like Parks and Rec, The Office or Arrested Development, give this show a chance and I promise you won’t regret it.

Best Minor Character: Speaking of Arrested Development, Tony Hale, who plays Buster on that show, is cast as Gary, the VP’s body man.  I have no idea what a body man really does, but it apparently includes taking a “sneeze bullet” for the VP.  And while we’re talking about the minor characters, I have a feeling that if you watch Veep, you’ll enjoy the VP’s staff more than the VP herself.  They are all amazing in their own way.

Best line so far: “Did the President call? No?”  It’s a running question from the VP to her receptionist, and you have to watch to appreciate it.

Status on my DVR: Taping all episodes, on the rise as one of my favorite comedies.

A Thorough Examination of Bird Poop Being Good Luck

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
This kid looks like he's in for a really lucky day

When it comes to things that are traditionally thought of as good luck, I tend to think about a rabbit’s foot, or a horseshoe, or maybe a lady bug.

Apparently I’m supposed to think of a bird’s feces landing on my head as good luck too.  Somehow it’s universally known that getting pooped on by a bird is good luck.

Is it though?

It seems like people say this every time a bird-pooping-on-man situation occurs, and yet I wonder if these people ever follow up to see if the poopee did indeed have good luck after.

Let’s see if we can dispel this myth once and for all through some serious investigation.

I actually know three people who have been pooped on by a bird in the last 10 days (one of them is me).  That number alone is startling.  The first incident was at a wedding I attended in D.C. two weekends ago. Between the ceremony and reception, we were enjoying a cocktail hour outside when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a steaming white dump fall from the sky.  Some poor guy got it all over his head and his nice suit. Of course the fact that his body and clothes got poop on them has to be considered bad luck.  If the myth of “bird poop equals good luck” is going to hold up, the poopee needs particularly awesome luck after this initial bout of bad luck, right?  Jump ahead four hours in the night, and this guy gets kicked out of the wedding reception by his own fiancee because she caught him dancing too provocatively with another woman.  The only way I can imagine bird poop being a good luck charm for this guy is if he was looking to get out of his engagement and this provided the perfect spark for that fight.  Otherwise, that is some shitty luck right there.

The second occurrence came last weekend when I left work early to go enjoy a nice day at the park.  I had a perfect plan that included drinking a six-pack and laughing at the ridiculous hipsters in the park, but I didn’t plan for the bird poop that splattered on my shirt right before I got there. I had no way to change my shirt for the next three hours so I enjoyed my beers with a nice white stain on me.  And there was really nothing lucky about my night…had dinner, got drunk, went to a karaoke bar.  Maybe you can consider it lucky that I didn’t get hit by a car while sprinting across Market Street for a late night cookie dough purchase from the grocery store.  I think we can consider my luck neutral during the post-pooping hours.

And finally, the third incident in question.  The pooping occurred only two days after my situation, and this person was actually at a race track betting on horses when it happened.  If ever the “getting pooped on is good luck” theory was going to be validated, it was this girl in this situation.  And what exactly happened?  Nothing good.  She didn’t win any money, and I found out that this particular bird had such a large bowel movement that it actually splattered on three or four people. Sounds like awesome luck, right?  Once again, no particularly good luck for any of these people in the days following all this.

There are only two other times in my past where I can remember being part of a bird poop situation.  It happened to me when I was in line to pay for a ticket to the Boston Aquarium my senior year of college.  But I think I had eaten some interesting mushrooms earlier that day so I don’t remember much more about it.  I probably spent three hours in the aquarium walking around with shit all over me, not a care in the world. The other memory is by far my favorite bird pooping moment of all time. It must have been 20 years ago when my family was in York Beach, Maine, for a summer vacation.  My brothers and I were on a morning walk along the beach with my grandfather.  One of the brothers thought it would be funny to throw his sandal at a couple of seagulls.  You know, fire a warning shot across their noses or something.  Well wouldn’t you know…the seagull he came closest to hitting took off into the air, swooped right over us, and dropped the ultimate revenge shit right on my brother’s head.  I’ve never had more respect for an animal than I did for that bird.  And of course this was terrible luck.  Now my brother had to go into a freezing ocean at 8AM to wash off his poop-encrusted hair.

I think we can officially consider this myth dispelled.  But you’ve gotta wonder, where did this ridiculous notion of good luck come from?  I scoured the web, and there appears to be a lack of information on this topic.  Here were my two favorite theories that I found:

1). “It’s considered good luck because you’re lucky that horses can’t fly.”  It’s a thinking man’s joke…go ahead and take your time to figure it out.

2). “It’s considered good luck because the odds of it happening to you are like one in a billion, which is more rare than winning the lottery.  So statistically if you’re able to get bird poop on you, then you should be able to win the lottery.”  Where do I begin with this ridiculous thought? Oh, how about the fact that I know three people who have been shit on in the past 10 days?  Or what about the odds of being struck by lightning or being in a plane crash?  Those are statistically far-fetched too.  I guess if one of those things happens to you it’s going to be your lucky day?

What does everyone else think?  Any good “bird pooped on me and then I had awesome luck” stories?

Who wants to feel a whole lot smarter today?

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Just go ahead and read through these directions that I hijacked from a friend’s email.  You’ll feel a lot better about your intelligence level.

If the image is too small to read, click on it to enlarge

Call me sexist.  I don’t care.  This email would only ever exist between two women.  If one of my male friends ever asked me for this level of detail on directions, I would tell him he doesn’t deserve to visit the Academy of Sciences, and I would refuse to help.

Anyway, the only real reason for posting this is to point out that this was an email sent to a fully capable 29-year-old woman.  Not a six-year-old; not a mentally challenged person; not a caveman that was just recently unfrozen for the first time in 10,000 years.  A 29-year-old woman with an iPhone, which comes with a nice little GPS device.  You’d think the link to the google maps directions or even just the address of the place would suffice.  My favorite is, “Reverse directions for the way home.”  Good reminder.

Stunning.  Happy Friday.

Perfectly good excuses for leaving work early (Supplement to my previous post)

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

So by now you’ve read my blog post titled, “How to avoid working while giving off the impression that you’re working.”  If you haven’t, I suggest you check it out here.

But you might be saying to yourself, “Well that’s some great advice if I actually want to sit through a full day of work at the office, but what if I just can’t stand being at work?  How do I leave early without having to take paid time off or sick time?”

I’m glad you asked because I’ve got that covered too.  I’ve used all of these throughout my career.  Just don’t be an idiot and overuse them.  The best situation is when you’re constantly getting a new boss so you can reuse these plays without fear of being caught.  I’ve now had four different bosses in 22 months at my current job.

1). You left your car in a parking spot that turns into a tow zone at 4pm: During my second week at this current job, I was sitting at my desk around 3:30 waiting for the day to end when all of the sudden panic set in.  I never moved my car off a street that turns into a tow zone at 4pm (due to traffic coming into the city for the Giants games).  If I didn’t make it home in 30 minutes, I’d be looking at a minimum of $350 in towing fees.  I ran over to my boss, told him what was up, and he said, “Go take care of it.  See you tomorrow.”  Forty-five seconds later as I was in the elevator, I realized I had actually moved my car earlier that morning.  It didn’t matter…I had inadvertently created a great excuse to leave work.  I’ve used that two more times since that day.

2). The maintenance guy is doing some work in your apartment and things have gone missing before when he was there: As soon as you tell your boss that your maintenance guy is a potential criminal, you’ll be immediately excused from work so you can go protect your possessions while he fixes up your apartment.  No questions asked.  And this is one you can reuse sparingly even with the same boss.  Washer/dryer isn’t working…roof is leaking…rat infestation…plenty of different reasons your maintenance guy could be making multiple calls to your apartment.

3). There’s an important package being delivered to your apartment that you have to sign for: This one is weaker than the first two, but in a pinch it can work.  If you can get your boss to understand exactly why it’s so important, even better.  I’ve tried this one before, but I don’t suggest using it: “My mom sent an Easter package and if I don’t get the Cadbury Mini-Eggs in the fridge right away, they won’t be the perfect amount of cold when I try to eat them later.”

4). You have to pick up your brother/girlfriend/cousin at the airport: For some reason, picking someone up from the airport works well, even though everyone knows that person is perfectly capable of taking a cab or public transportation up to the city.  When I first moved to San Francisco, I used this one every other week, and my boss just assumed that all of my relatives were coming to visit me in my new city.  Just don’t say you have to go pick up your friend.  Family members and significant others work; friends for some reason do not.

5). Find out your boss’s interests and work off of them: I’ve had a boss who was a big time skier.  All I ever had to do during the winter is tell him on a Friday morning that I was leaving early that afternoon to drive up to Tahoe.  He was perfectly fine with it because he understands how awful it is to leave for Tahoe after a full day of work.  He was even a little jealous and would tell me fun skiing stories whenever I told him I was taking off early.  I’ve also had bosses who were huge Boston sports fans.  Sometimes before I could even ask, he’d beat me to the punch by asking if I was heading home early to catch the Celtics playoff game or the Patriots Monday night game.  Absolutely I’m planning to leave early for that.  I’ve never had a woman boss, but I bet I would have gone with, “I’m leaving early to see the new Sex And the City Movie,” if it would have gotten me out early.

How to avoid working while giving off the impression that you’re working

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

With my career as a salesperson winding down, I’d like to offer up some advice for any young professionals out there who aspire to be like me.  And by “be like me,” I mean learning to slack off so well that you can avoid working during an entire eight-hour work day without anyone sensing that you aren’t actually working.

This advice is not for someone who’s planning to leave their job and has already given their two-week notice…once you’ve done that, you can be obvious about your lack of production.  For instance, I just spent the last 90 minutes re-watching all of the best hockey fights from last weekend’s NHL playoff games.  I watched them at my desk, on my big monitor with a minimum of 15 people in view of my screen.  No one cares at this point because they know my last day of work is April 27th.

I can only offer advice in the form of my current role, which is a sales rep for a technology company.  The majority of my day is supposed to be spent either on the phone talking to clients or composing and sending brilliant emails to clients.  The beauty of this job is that I’m supposed to have a lot of meetings over the phone with clients where it’s completely normal to be in a conference room, thus getting me far away from bosses and management types who can monitor what I’m really doing.  It’s also the type of job where there aren’t set tasks to complete each day, so no one can call me out for not doing those routine tasks that other occupations have.

Regardless of your job, I’m certain there are helpful hints in this post for everyone.

Let’s dive in:

It all starts with the entrance, the desk visit and meal one

Rather than a normal entrance to start your workday where you go directly to your desk and turn on your computer, enter the building while talking on your cell phone.  It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to…pick a friend or family member you’ve been meaning to catch up with and give them a call right before you get to your office.  You can easily convince your boss and coworkers you’re on the phone with a client, and that allows you to go directly into a conference room and continue to catch up with your friend.  You may even earn bonus points because you got an early start on calling your clients for the day.  Time Wasted: 20 Minutes

After you’ve ended that phone call, you’ll want to go to your desk and turn your computer on.  But don’t you dare sit down just yet.  Turning your computer on lets the office know you’re here and ready to work.  But before you sit down, I encourage you to visit each of your coworkers at their desks and recap what you did the previous night.  Be sure to ask them what they did too.  If you find you have nothing in common with these coworkers, and you’re struggling to start a discussion, feel free to use some very generic work speak.  Simply saying, “Can’t wait for the weekend,” will trigger a chain reaction of small talk and pleasantries.  Your coworker will respond with, “I know, this week is going by sooo slowly.”  And then you can ask, “what are you up to this weekend?”  And you can expect him to respond with, “Not much, probably just laying low, taking it easy.”  And suddenly you’re in a five to ten-minute exchange that has no substance to it whatsoever.  And just to give off the scent that you’re doing work, go ahead and ask them how work’s going, what big deals they’re working on, etc.  You don’t have to actually listen to them, but at least any managers who walk by will hear work-talk happening.  Let’s assume you do the desk visit with six different coworkers.  Time Wasted: 30 minutes

After you’ve visited with a minimum of six coworkers, it’s time to finally sit down at your desk.  Go ahead and open up your email and a web browser.  Log into whatever applications you normally use for work.  I promise that part will be the hardest work you do all day.  As soon as those applications are open, get up and go to your office’s kitchen.  It’s time for breakfast (one of three meals you’ll eat today).  Sure, you know exactly what breakfast options your office has, and you know what you want to eat.  But spend some time looking through all of the cabinets as if you haven’t decided yet.  Once you’ve spent at least five minutes deciding that you’ll eat the same cereal that you’ve eaten for 300 straight days, go back to your desk with it.  The beauty of eating meals at your desk during work is that no one expects you to do work while eating.  It’s an unwritten rule that if you eat at your desk, you’re allowed to surf the web, listen to music or do whatever you want.  Just as long as you make it look like you’re only taking a quick break.  This is the time where you catch up on emails…not work emails, personal emails.  It’s also a great time to check the previous day’s fantasy baseball results.  Time Wasted: 35 Minutes

The art of the coffee break, the fake call and the computer reboot

Let’s say your day started at 9am.  All of the sudden it’s 10:25am and you haven’t done an ounce of work.  The nice thing is that you’ve been sitting at your desk the last 30 minutes (eating breakfast and not working, but still) so it’s OK for you to get up again.  This time we’re going for coffee.  I don’t drink coffee, but you can bet your ass that I go for the walk with my coworkers whenever they get coffee.  You need to go for coffee at least two times a day because this is a perfectly acceptable excuse to not be working.  Coffee equals energy.  Energy equals motivation.  Motivation equals a productive worker.  No one minds the constant coffee break taker.  And if you’re like me and don’t drink coffee, just ask the barista for an empty cup so it looks like you’re returning to the office with your motivation-in-a-cup.  Time Wasted = 20 Minutes (multiplied by 2 coffee runs) = 40 Minutes

Now that you’re back at your desk with coffee, your boss probably expects you to work.  After all, it’s almost 11am and you haven’t done any.  For the next hour or so, we’re not going to avoid work like before, we’re going to do fake work.  If you aren’t in sales, you’ll need to come up with your own variation of this method.  If you are in sales, this next bit of advice works great.

The first method is to put your headset on, dial up your own cell phone number, and then sit there in silence.  Sales people have a lot of phone meetings where they are mostly listening while much smarter people talk over their heads.  Your boss will not be suspicious at all as long as the headset is on and the green light on the phone’s console is showing that you’re on a call.  During this time you can click around different pages on your computer to make it seem like you’re keeping up with the conversation.  Every now and then, write a fake note in your notebook for good measure.  This also saves you from getting sucked into real work because when your boss inevitably comes over to ask you to do something, he’ll see you’re on a customer call and leave you alone.

In an ideal world, you have a friend who hates his job as much as you do.  And at some point, you’re going to need to act as if you’re actually participating in phone calls.  Instead of calling a customer, you should call this friend, and both of you will pretend to be on a work-related call.  Let’s say the friend happens to be an estimator for a landscaping company, and you’re a sales rep, the conversation might go like this:

-Sales Rep: “So if you wanna buy 10 licenses of our software, I can probably get you a small discount.”

-Estimator: “No, that cedar didn’t work well on our last project, let’s go with a stronger wood this time.”

-Sales Rep: “Are you sure you only wanna start with five licenses?  I can’t give you a discount for such a small volume.”

-Estimator: “OK great, so 3000 cubic yards of birch at 14 dollars per cubic yard, sounds good.”

-Sales Rep: “well, it is what it is.”

It doesn’t matter that this conversation makes absolutely no sense!

And by the way, bonus points for using “it is what it is.”  People will get off to you saying this.  Business people like this phrase more than they like sex.  The same goes for “at the end of the day.”

I suggest doing the silent call to your cell phone for 30 minutes followed immediately by the fake customer call with your friend for 30 minutes.  Time Wasted = 60 Minutes

The final thing you’ll want to do before lunch is a computer reboot.  I love technology.  I love it because it’s a built-in excuse for my lack of production.  And everyone has had computer issues so they totally understand when you have to waste 10 minutes shutting down and restarting the damn thing.  I encourage you to reboot your computer twice a day.  Be careful not to oversell how awful your computer is though.  That could encourage your boss to ask the IT department to get you a new one.  A new computer is fast and reliable, and your boss will expect the same from you.  Also please don’t start the process of rebooting your computer and then leave for lunch.  Only an idiot would do that.  Sit at your desk for the entire reboot process (play a game on your phone or something while you wait), and then once it’s done, reopen those applications you’re supposed to be using.  Then get up and head to lunch.  Time Wasted = 10 Minutes (multiplied by 2 reboots) = 20 Minutes

**It is now lunchtime.  In my experience, if you’re trying to give off the impression that you’re a hard worker, eating lunch at your desk is the way to go.  And it actually works in your favor because you can take a lot longer of a lunch at your desk and still look productive compared to taking a long lunch at a restaurant while your desk is empty.  And here’s the real beauty of it all: you eat your lunch in two separate sittings.  For instance, I often get the world’s largest salad for lunch, and I’ll eat the first half of it at my desk from 12:00 – 12:45, and then I’ll eat the second half from 3:00 – 3:45.  And just like that I take a 90-minute lunch break, but it doesn’t seem like that to any of my coworkers.  In this day and age of people pretending “lots of smaller meals” is a healthy eating schedule, you might even be applauded for eating more frequently.  Time Wasted = 45 Minutes (multiplied by 2 lunches) = 90 Minutes

Afternoon errands and stressing out in a conference room

In my experience, being away from your desk in short spurts is much more discreet than being gone for one prolonged period of time.  As a matter of fact, I’ve taken as many as five short breaks in one afternoon at work.  This means when you have errands to do during the day, you split them up into different trips.  Need to pick up dry cleaning?  Grab a pack of gum?  Deposit your roommates’ rent checks?  That’s potentially four separate breaks from work right there.  Why four?  Well if you’re like me and you have two roommates that give you a check for rent every month, you don’t deposit both checks at once.  That’s two separate ATM trips during your day.  Get creative; I’m sure you can find a way to do four errands per day.  Time Wasted = 10 Minutes (multiplied by 4 breaks) = 40 Minutes

Now it’s time for fake work again.  This time we’re going to the conference room again.  It goes without saying that you should bring everything with you to that conference room that you’d normally use if you were actually doing work.  It also should be obvious that your computer screen faces away from the door or any windows.  For the next 60 minutes, you’re staring at your screen with a look that says “my brain is working overtime trying to put this presentation together.”  What you’re really doing is reading up to get an edge on fantasy baseball, replying to personal emails that have accumulated over your busy day, and Gchatting with anyone willing to entertain you for this hour.  Time Wasted = 60 Minutes

The water and urination cycle, and other bathroom stuff

It’s tough to assign a set amount of time for this next piece, but let’s try.

Most offices have a water-filling device, and you often receive a work-issued water bottle to use as your regular drinking vessel.  When you need to refill your bottle, don’t walk directly to the water filler, do a lap around the office first.  And actually, don’t use that 20-ounce water bottle.  Use the smallest cup or mug you can find.  This will instantly double or triple the number of trips you make to refill water throughout the day.  And I encourage you to drink as much as humanly possible.  The amount of refills and water drank will directly correlate to the number of times you use the bathroom.  Every little bit helps.  Also, I work in an office with 29 floors.  I’ve made it a habit to never use the bathroom on my floor.  My preference is the 17th floor for some unknown reason.  Between the constant refills and urination breaks, you’re wasting some serious time, probably.  Time Wasted = 20 Minutes

One final note on the bathroom: please don’t do #2 at your home unless it’s an emergency.  That is some valuable minutes you could be sitting in the bathroom at work, playing Scramble with Friends on your iPhone.  And if you eat like my previous blog described, you might get the opportunity to do two #2’s during your workday.  Time Wasted = 15 Minutes (possibly multiplied by 2, but let’s just leave it at one for now)

The final hour

The day is coming to an end, but we’re not out of the woods just yet.  We’ve got 50 more minutes to waste.  Well how about that…you desk just happens to be dirty and disorganized.  No time like the present for a thorough cleaning.  Don’t cut corners either….get those sanitary wipes and scrub your desk, find a bunch of papers to put through the shredder, take one of those air dusters to all of the crevices in your keyboard and rearrange all of the items on your desk.  Just like taking a coffee break is perceived as a productivity enhancer, so too will cleaning up your desk.  Time Wasted = 30 Minutes

And finally, remember how we started our day by visiting all of our favorite coworkers and recapping the previous night or weekend?  Now it’s time to revisit them to say goodbye and ask them what they’re up to tonight.  It’s perfectly OK to ask them the same questions as before.  Just as long as it wastes at least five minutes per conversation.  Time Wasted = 30 Minutes

Holy Moly, not only did we cover the entire eight-hour day without working, but we actually just clocked 10 minutes of overtime.  If you follow this blueprint, you might be viewed as an overachiever, and I can almost promise you a promotion will quickly follow.

Choosing Your Meals for Your Last Day Alive

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Traveling back to San Francisco from D.C. on Monday, I probably could have predicted that I wouldn’t be eating healthy at any point during the day.  Breakfast was going to be happening in the airport, and then I’d probably be too tired and lazy to go to the grocery store for lunch or dinner.  The day screamed “greasy takeout food,” but I definitely couldn’t have predicted just how amazingly gross my food intake would be.

Breakfast was a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich from Five Guys…with a burger patty added to it.  Amazingly there were about 25 other people at this restaurant in Dulles Airport ordering the same thing at 6AM.  That was washed down with a Diet Coke.  By the way, if you’re reading this and have never been to a Five Guys, stop reading right now and get to one.  It is definitely the best “fast food” burger you’ll ever eat.

Lunch was a Super Burrito at Pancho Villa in San Francisco.  Super meaning it had the works on it…cheese, sour cream, whipped cream, bacon fat, chocolate sauce and more.

And then finally for dinner, it was cheesesteak time at Phat Philly.  This wasn’t a normal cheesesteak situation though.  My friend had a groupon-like deal at this restaurant where our meal included a 12-inch cheesesteak each, an order of waffle fries topped with bacon and cheese wiz to split, one beer each and of course a dessert for each of us.

I joked shortly after that if I found out I only had one day to live, my meal choices for that final day wouldn’t be much different than what I consumed on Monday.  And it got me thinking…if you really did have only one day left to live, what would you choose to eat on that last day?

For me it would be the three meals I ate on Monday, but I’d add a fourth meal that would be a porterhouse steak with mac-and-cheese as the side.  And I would end my life with dessert in the form of as much ice cream as I could possibly eat.

Rather than put up a poll asking readers to vote on what their final day of meals would consist of, I’d like to see if we can get people adding comments to this post with their opinion.  I’ll be honest, the comment levels on this blog are pretty weak…maybe with the proper guidance you will all finally add some value to my already valuable blog posts.

I’ll be checking on the incoming comments while relieving my body of all that food from yesterday…just hope my iPad is charged up enough for me to spend all those hours in the bathroom.

The Ultimate Debate: Sharing meals with our other at restaurants

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Those of you who are longtime WBFF readers will faintly remember a blogger who worked for me and wrote blog posts infrequently.  His name was friedchips; it was a terrible name.  He’s fine…just in case you were wondering if he died or something.

But since he can’t seem to come up with a blog idea on his own, I tried to give him a nudge by emailing him with some questions.  I told him to give me as long of an explanation as he wanted, provide examples, throw out crazy theories, whatever.

The questions were: Do you find yourself splitting two entrees with your girlfriend sometimes when you go out to dinner?  Is it every time?  Do you like it?  How does she react if you decide one day that you want to eat the entire meal that you personally ordered, no sharing?

A total softball question that he should have crushed.

His response was: “I’m into splitting entrees.  We usually split everything.  Occasionally I don’t want to and I just say so and we don’t.”

Oh.

I guess I was hoping he’d spawn this great debate that sheds light on the inherent differences between men and women.  He’d eloquently contrast man’s instinct to eat a 32oz ribeye and half-pound of potatoes by himself with woman’s instinct to share a few plates, one of which is always a salad.  And not a normal salad either.  One that has to include apples and walnuts and some lame dressing.

It seems a woman's ideal dinner looks like this
But this aligns better with a man's preference to demolish a meal on his own

I bet you think this blog is heading in the direction of me complaining about my girlfriend constantly wanting to split meals at restaurants.  But I actually couldn’t be happier with the fact that she always wants to split two entrees when we go out.  It’s a brilliant idea assuming two things: your girlfriend has your same exact taste and preferences for food as you, and on the rare occasion where you want to order something for yourself and not share it, she can be cool with that.

It goes against my instincts to always say yes to sharing, and part of me feels like I’m losing control over my life, but why wouldn’t you want to sample multiple things from a good restaurant?  The salad continues to be a deal breaker because for the most part I don’t consider it a full meal.

So I turn to you, dear blog readers, to help answer the age-old question: to share your meal or not to share your meal?  (Women should weigh in on this too…maybe it’s the guy that always wants to share in certain relationships)

Biggest Dilemma of 2012: Should I pay to see the Red Sox or not?

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

I’m facing a big dilemma with the Red Sox this year.  I’ll be back in Boston at the end of May, right in time for their home stand against the Rays and the Tigers.  And the tough decision I have to make is whether to buy a ticket to see them or not.  As soon as I write those words, I want to chop off my fingers because this is absolute blasphemy.  How could I possibly be in Boston for nine days and NOT go to Fenway at least once?  If this was any other year, I’d be getting tickets for two or three games, with the distinct possibility that I’d get kicked out of at least one of them.

And I’ve got a pretty nice streak going where I’ve been to Fenway at least once a year since 1998.  Why would I want to screw that up?  Well, I don’t.  And I probably won’t end the streak, but for the first time in many years I’m not saying to myself, “I’m going to Fenway this year no matter what it costs.”

I’m the same guy that went to 25 games a year in college, spending all of my money (at least the portion that wasn’t going to alcohol and Slim Jims) on tickets.  The day I moved into the BU dorm freshman year, I shooed my parents off before my mom could even get her third tear out because I needed to go scalp a ticket to Pedro vs the Yankees that afternoon.  I’ve slept on a sidewalk outside Fenway for a chance to get tickets to a Sox/Yankees game.  I’d categorize myself as a devoted fan.

The problem is that the Red Sox are off to a “blazing” 1-5 start, and they have another 39 games to play before I’m in Boston.  Do I want to buy tickets now to see a team that might be 5-40 by that time?  Can anyone promise me that injuries won’t ravage the starting rotation and I won’t be forced to watch Kyle Weiland implode in a four-inning spot start?  (Oh, Weiland isn’t on the Sox anymore?  Bummer, really gonna miss that “I just shat myself” look he has whenever he pitches to major league hitters)

At this point in my life, no magical comeback in sports could surprise me, not in a single game and not over the course of the season.  So even if the Sox started 1-20 in a typical season, I wouldn’t panic or count them out.  But this isn’t a typical season because of last year.  Even though it’s only 1-5, it is not out of line for Sox fans to be panicking a little.  If any team needed to get off to a fast start in 2012, it was these guys.

It’s not that I question the team’s talent or personnel.  And it’s not that  injuries are already a problem (which they are).  It’s that I can’t trust this team because all the key players were involved in last year’s mess.  And anyone not involved in the 2011 meltdown is new to the team, and it’ll take a while to see if we can trust them. Two guys who we always knew were giving 100% effort are gone in Varitek and Wakefield.  We have no clue on a yearly basis what Beckett, the shortstop position or the entire outfield (healthy and unhealthy guys) will bring to the table.  The entire team keeps calling the bullpen a “work in progress,” and they’re trotting guys out of the pen nightly who I’ve never heard of….Justin Thomas?  And we are all extremely uneasy with the manager situation.  I also don’t know anything about the General Manager, and I no longer feel like I know the owners.  It’s like the entire team/fan relationship is starting from scratch.

This is our first impression of the newly non-reliable Red Sox.  And as soon as we shook their hand, they shoved us to the ground and ripped a nasty fart all over us.  It’s not irreparable, but it stinks.

Am I going to shell out the $30 for a crappy bleacher seat and another $60 for eight beers during the game?  Of course I am.  I might even talk myself into seeing two games.  But if the Bruins or Celtics have a playoff game on that same day, I might gladly hand over my Red Sox tickets and watch the two teams that I know and trust.

Road Trip LA: apartment hunting, celebrity staring contests, mind-boggling traffic

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

So I spent the weekend in LA looking for apartments and doing a general tour of the city.  It seemed like a good idea considering I’m moving to LA on June 1st and have only been there twice.  The first time I was there, it was for a total of 10 hours.  Five of those hours were spent inside a bar, and the other five were spent inside the Staples Center watching Game 5 of the Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals.  The second time I actually stayed over night, but all the waking hours I was there were spent in a parking lot competing in a grilled cheese cooking competition.  Safe to say this trip was needed to actually learn a little bit about the city.

Here are some random thoughts, observations and lessons learned from the weekend:

-It dawned on me that many of my friends and most of my family have probably never been to LA, or at least haven’t spent any significant time in that city.  I called my mom on Sunday to update her about apartment hunting, and I told her there were a few apartments we didn’t even bother going into because just driving around the neighborhood convinced us we would never live in that particular area.  When I told her this, I could hear the overwhelming concern for my safety in her voice as she responded, “Oh good, that’s great.  Yeah, don’t even think of living in those places.”  It seems a little backwards that your mom would be rooting for you not to find an apartment, but that’s the way it goes.  And then I realized that when my mom pictures LA, this is what she sees:

-A word of advice if you’re in LA and your girlfriend is convinced she sees a celebrity: don’t tell her she’s wrong, even if you’re 100% sure it’s not who she thinks it is.  This will save you from the embarrassment of your girlfriend having a 15-minute staring contest with that celebrity as she tries to convince you that it’s her.  We were at a comedy show on Sunday night and moments before the show started, a few people walked in and took the remaining seats.  My girlfriend immediately says, “That’s Mandy Moore.”  My instinct is to laugh because there’s no way Mandy Moore is coming to this no-name comedy show.  My girlfriend says it’s gotta be Mandy because she’s looking back at us, knowing we’ve figured it out.  I was convinced this random girl was just uncomfortable with the fact that two strangers were staring at her.  For the rest of the show, I made jokes about Fake Mandy, and nearly had my girlfriend convinced that it probably wasn’t her.  When the show ended, of course we had to stand around right outside the entrance to wait for Maybe-Mandy, and when she walked out and I heard another couple behind me say, “Yep, that’s her,” I knew I was screwed.  Turns out Mandy Moore likes free comedy shows on Easter Sunday.  Now my girlfriend will be checking Mandy’s twitter posts for the next 10 days to see if she mentions the “girl that was staring at her nonstop at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade show.”  I also realize anytime we see Mandy Moore on TV for the rest of our lives, I will get the whole, “remember when you couldn’t spot Mandy Moore from 30 feet away” treatment.

-I’m sure LA didn’t invent this, but it was the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it so LA’s getting the credit.  We found a wine bar on Saturday night where you purchase a credit card-like device, load money onto it and insert it into a machine that automatically pours tastings of different wines into your glass.  Each tasting costs $1.50-$4.00 depending on the wine, and you load $15, $20 or $50 onto your card.  The four of us that went to this place blew through $60 before we each got a full glass for another $9-12 each.  If it had been a normal bar, we probably would have spent a total of $40.  Great idea for the bar; great unique experience for the alcoholics patrons.

These devices make it even easier to spend $50 on wine over a 20-minute period

-The strangest thing that happened on the trip: when we were walking to the car on Sunday night after the comedy show, a passerby asked us if we wanted to buy a Taser.  I brushed it off as a random guy asking us a very random question, but the girlfriend immediately went into minor-panic mode.  “Why does he think we need a Taser?  Is this area dangerous?  How far away is the car?”  Luckily I was able to do an ocular scan of the area, assessed it as clear to pass, and we moved on without a problem.

-If there’s one common criticism that I heard about LA before this trip, I think you can all guess what it was: the traffic.  After spending a long weekend down there–a weekend that included Easter where you’d expect less traffic on Sunday–I can tell you that the traffic is absurd, outrageous, disastrous and mind-boggling.  In fairness, I currently spend an average of seven minutes in my car per week so any amount of traffic or being stuck in a car seems awful to me.  On this trip, we spent nine hours in the car on Friday (driving from SF to LA and driving around the city once we got there), seven hours in the car on Saturday (apartment hunting), another nine hours driving around on Sunday (apartment hunting and site seeing), and finally 11 more hours on Monday (a few hours driving around in the morning and then a sanity-testing eight hour drive back to SF).  Never has it seemed so important to make sure my new apartment is going to be walking distance to where I work.

-The drive from LA back to SF was just crazy.  And if being stuck in traffic for eight hours isn’t enough, I had to endure the maddening signs on route 5 that count down how many miles away  San Francisco is.  I don’t mind these signs every now and then when I’m driving, but I swear to god that freeway has a sign every six miles.  “San Francisco 282 miles…San Francisco 276 miles…San Francisco 270 miles…San Francisco, you’re six miles closer than the last time you saw this sign.”  It’s enough to make someone go on a killing spree.  Who is it helping that you taunt us with mile markers every few miles for 300 miles??

-I don’t know if anyone else does this, but in order to pass the time on this drive, I started creating fake rivalries with other drivers.  So my girlfriend was rightfully confused as she’s on the computer, doing some work, and she hears me going, “Haha, not this time white Toyota, get back in line behind me.”  I tried to convince her that there were three other cars near me and all of us were having a friendly competition to pass the time.  I was only able to convince her that I had lost my mind.

So there you go…my first trip to LA caused me to lose my mind.  June 1st can’t get here quick enough.

Trendy Tops Literally Killed My Friend

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

You’ll wanna watch the first minute of this video at the very least for context purposes.

OK, fine.  The title of this post should read: Trendy Tops Figuratively Killed My “Friend.”

My “friend” is very upset with this product because if it catches on, he’ll no longer be able to pull his favorite move: the peek-a-boo panties (the commercial’s words, not mine).  Men will no longer be able to get a good look at how fat a woman’s stomach truly is when she reaches up to grab the family size bag of Maui Onion chips at the grocery store.  My “friend” can’t believe he won’t be able to judge a woman by the style of underwear he sees her wearing when she bends down to put on her shoes.  My “friend” hates the advancement of technology because of moments like this.

Wrestlemania: So big of a challenge it takes two bloggers to cover it

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
Sheamus makes other Irish people look Spanish

For the second consecutive year, I watched Wrestlemania at my brother’s house with a small group: three guys, two girls.  Now you may think legendary blogging skills run in my family, and I wouldn’t blame you for that.  But they don’t.  So when the aforementioned brother suggested we do a joint blog about the event, I was slightly hesitant.  But ultimately I agreed.  Throughout the telecast of Wrestlemania, I could see him taking quick notes when something interesting or funny happened.  I thought to myself, “This is great…he’s gonna send me a nice short recap of the events and we can combine notes for a fantastic blog post.”

Unfortunately what I received from him on Monday was a 2,050 word stream of consciousness brain dump.  It’s like, jeez, my blog is already unpopular enough…I don’t need to further alienate my readers by posting thousands of words on a subject no one wants to read about.  Part of me wanted to post his exact words and just watch the tumbleweed take over.  But that would be irresponsible.  Instead I’ve spent my precious time combing through this bullshit trying to make it a workable blog.

The following is a recap of our Wrestlemania viewing.  It is told from the perspective of my brother, but you can bet your ass all of the funny parts were written by me.  Enjoy…

In March of 2011, Rmurdera and I heard that one of our favorite WWE personalities from our childhood (where childhood is equal to age 18 and up), The Rock, was making a comeback at Wrestlemania 27. We gathered a few close friends (the middle brother, my wife, Rmurdera’s girlfriend) to watch the proceedings. After four hours of fake wrestling, we decided it was probably our last Wrestlemania until one of us had an eight-year-old that was into wrestling.

Fast forward to this past Sunday.  The exact same crew, thoroughly embarrassed to be doing so, gathered again to give Wrestlemania another shot.  It must thrill the girls that when no real sports are happening on a Sunday, we’d rather watch fake sports than spend the day with them.  Rmuderera and myself decided to keep a running diary of the events so that in March 2013 we can quickly remember why we quit Wrestlemania the previous years, and I could save myself $65.  Here is what transpired over four hours of fake wrestling (where “wrestling” = 30 minutes of actual wrestling and 3 hours & 30 minutes of posing, strutting and pumping up the crowd):

Match One: Sheamus vs Daniel Bryant – Heavyweight Championship

It might seem like Heavyweight represents the most prestigious championship you can get, but it’s not.  It’s the second best.  Let me explain it in terms you’ll clearly understand.  If wrestling was European soccer, the Heavyweight Championship would be equivalent to the Europa League, as opposed to the Champions League which would be equivalent to the WWE Championship.

More relevant than who won the match is how insanely ghost white Sheamus’ body is.  Think Casper the Ghost & Powder’s love child.  I think one member of our viewing party put it nicely when she asked “Did he get a reverse spray tan?”

Match Two: Kane vs Randy Orton – Grudge Match

Don’t ask for clarification on a grudge match.  The WWE requires all wrestling matches have a gimmicky name, even if there is no gimmick.

At least Kane’s entrance gets the girls excited for the first time tonight.  His long hair is a comfortable topic that they can spend hours on.  It’s unanimous that Kane’s long greasy hair is embarrassing enough that he chooses to wear a mask at all times.  He was also voted “grossest wrestler” by two people who have probably seen a total of six wrestlers in their lifetime.

**Before we start the next match, I have my “this is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever watched on TV” moment when three grown men spend five minutes smashing plates of crab legs while wearing sock puppets.**

Match Three: Cody Rhodes vs The Big Show – Intercontinental Championship

Sorry, I don’t have a confusing soccer analogy to explain the significance of this championship to you.  But I will give you the tale of the tape and let you decide who should win this match:

Cody Rhodes: 6 feet 2 inches, 215lbs, 5 championships

Big Show: 7 feet, 441lbs, 17 championships

Though I know wrestling is fake, and I should be prepared for any amount of ridiculous things to happen, I do appreciate that sometimes they allow the outcome to be the obvious one.  Like an actual giant beating a guy who wouldn’t stand out physically in a group of sixth graders.

*Through 45 minutes, the highlight of the night is the ad for the official Wrestlemania chair.  I can promise the WWE that four orders have been placed from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Match Four: Maria Menounos and some woman vs Two other women – Diva Match

This is the obligatory women’s match where one of them has to be a non-wrestler C-list celebrity who learns one wrestling move to showcase but otherwise stands on the sidelines.  Maria Menounos has apparently jumped to C-list level recently.  The only memorable moment came when Maria pulled out the traditional wrestling move of rubbing her ass all over a lady’s face.  Unfortunately the lady’s face was caked with makeup, and Maria ended up with a big brownish-colored makeup stain on her ass.  This set us up nicely for a quick maturity test.  When one of us called her “Poop Stain Maria” and the rest of us burst into laughter, we knew we had failed.

Match Five: Undertaker vs HHH (read as: triple H) – Hell in a Cell Match, End of an Era Match

They really outgimmicked themselves this time.  This match could have stood alone without gimmick because the two wrestlers involved are WWE icons.  Two of the best of this generation facing off in a ring should be good enough.  But we get a Hell in a Cell Match, a cute name for a cage match.  We get the End of an Era storyline, Undertaker rumored to be retiring after this match no matter what.  There’s Undertaker putting his 19-0 Wrestlemania record on the line.  And we even have a guest referree: Shawn Michaels, who is apparently best friends with HHH.  That alone brings the legitimacy of this match into question.  Add to it the fact that Undertaker is the one who ended Shawn Michaels’ wrestling career….see how easy it is to get sucked into the soap opera story lines?

The Undertaker wins the match, but I’d rather talk about the fans.  If there’s one thing I know about wrestling fans, it’s that they are level-headed.  They’re not ones to exaggerate or overreact.  So when I check twitter after this match and see people tweeting things like, “I just stood up and clapped in my living room, most amazing match ever,” or, “tonight might be the most important night in sports history,” I realize I must be watching something special, even if I can’t see it myself.

**To waste time in between matches, we all give serious thought to what style of uniform you’d wear to wrestle in (a full spandex suit, the one-piece overall spandex, or the Andre the Giant single shoulder strap look).  If you don’t immediately choose Andre the Giant, Rmurdera doesn’t want you reading his blog anymore.

Match 6: CM Punk vs Chris Jericho – WWE Title

Things we learn during this match:

-The “CM” in CM Punk stands for Cookie Master because as the man himself puts it, “I was a fat little kid that always ate cookies.” (Rmurdera wanted to chime in on this one: “So?  You don’t see me calling myself CME Murdera do you?  The “CME” stands for Cadbury Mini-Eggs because I’m a fat adult that always eats mini-eggs.”)

-Andy Garcia is the type of celebrity that sits front row at a wrestling event

-CM Punk is straight edge

-He can have caffeine

-But he can’t have casual sex

-My brother thinks this means he’s only allowed to have sex with a Tuxedo on

Match 7: The Rock vs John Cena – No Gimmick!

Oh, I see.  The gimmick is that we have to sit through P Diddy introducing some band who then plays music for six minutes before the wrestlers are actually announced.  The girls’ wish doesn’t come true when it turns out P Diddy is not at Wrestlemania to introduce Adele, but his appearance legitimizes the entire event in their minds.

While wrestling fans have to constantly endure the lengthy introductions and long, slow walks to the ring by the wrestlers, The Rock has taken this to a new level.  Apparently he thinks the longer it takes him to enter, the more time his face will be the main thing we see on TV.  And maybe seeing his face will condition us to want to go see Tooth Fairy 2: The Girl Who Extracted Her Own Wisdom Teeth.

It’s not important who won the match; it’s just important that this travesty of a sporting event is over.  Two years in a row now I’ve said I’m not ordering this event again.  But I’ll let one of the guys from “the most important wrestling match in the history of the world” decide my fate.  If Undertaker comes back to defend his 20-0 record, I’ll pay to see it.  Maybe Rmurdera & I will even pay to attend the event live (Editor’s note: trust me, we won’t).