This week’s agenda for me is simple: Pack up my entire life in as few boxes as possible, and clean the apartment to the best of my abilities so I can get my security deposit back.  If I lived by myself, this might be easier as I could make all decisions without consulting anyone else.  But I live with other people, and specifically my brother and I share a decent amount of the items in this apartment.  He’s at work all day so it’s tough to know what shared things he wants and what shared things I should have.  Clearly I’m going to take whatever I want and pack it up before he can object, but before I do that, I thought it would be fun to share these items with my readers in case anyone wants to make an argument for why I should or shouldn’t take some of these things.

First, of course, let’s discuss sports-related items:

My Dad got both of the following Boston sports-related memorabilia for all three of us brothers for Christmas gifts a while back:

A couple notes: Yes, the football is technically an Indianapolis Colts football.  But what’s important is that it’s signed by Adam Vinatieri.  I wish it was a Patriots football, of course.  But Vinatieri is a four-time Super Bowl Champ and future Hall of Famer.  While I don’t believe in curses, I do think the poster is pretty cool mainly because of the picture of Jason Varitek dry humping Keith Foulke when the Sox cliched in ’04. But if I’m allowed to choose between the two, I’m taking the football.  It’s probably worth some money compared to the poster, and as an unemployed sack of shit, I might need that money sooner than expected. You might be wondering, “what about the third brother?  Why doesn’t he get one of these treasures?”  Because he has the third thing that my Dad sent us…a Tom Brady autographed, practice-worn helmet….inside a plexiglass case!  Yes, this is clearly the best of the three gifts.  No, there’s not a legitimate reason why he gets the helmet instead of me or the other brother.

It’s times like these that I’m jealous of guys who live in apartments or houses that are larger than one bedroom and can have a room dedicated to all things sports.  I’m already battling with the girlfriend to allow some other Boston sports paraphernalia in the new apartment as well as my two favorite posters: a Jack Daniel’s one and a picture from the movie Blow.  I think I can get away with something that fits on a shelf or in a bookcase, but not another poster.  My plan is to steal the Brady helmet, but when that ultimately fails, I’ll graciously welcome the Vinatieri ball into my new home.

 

Next up is something my Mom got me and my brother for Christmas this past year.  Sure, it’s not as sexy of a gift as sports items signed by Boston legends, but look how practical this thing is for everyday use:

An air flosser!  Believe it or not, neither my brother nor I have been to a dentist in the nearly seven years we’ve been living in San Francisco. Relax, it’s not as gross as you think.  Whenever we go back to Boston, my Mom gets us into her dental office for a cleaning.  Besides the dental hygienist saying I have the world’s most beautiful teeth, she also frequently comments on my lack of flossing.  I guess when the hygienist starts flossing for you and your mouth looks like you just finished the 11th round of a boxing match, it’s pretty obvious that flossing doesn’t happen on the regular.  Mom tried to take the hard work out of flossing by getting this air flosser for us six months ago.  Sure, the box hasn’t been opened yet, but now that I can’t even pretend to get a dentist in LA (dental insurance is not in my budget), maybe it’s time to start using it.  I don’t think there will be any objection from my brother if I want to keep this item when we move.

 

I realize DVDs are almost completely obsolete at this point.  Or maybe more correctly I should say owning DVDs is obsolete.  With Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu+, illegal downloads, and other services I’m probably not familiar with, there’s really no point in buying a physical CD with a movie on it ever again.  But should we be keeping the DVDs we already own?

Our current collection has roughly 90 movies or TV shows in it, and I’d guess I don’t even watch one movie from those every two months.  So are these artifacts just going to take up space and collect dust?  Do we keep some of our favorites?  I guess we can easily separate out whose is whose, but what about the ones that seem to have snuck into our apartment and have no owner?  Specifically these gems that I found in our DVD case…

How these two atrocious movies got into our collection, I have no idea. But I’m going to be the nice guy and not fight my brother on it if he wants to keep them.  I’ll get over it.

 

Finally, no conversation around dividing our possessions would be complete without the most controversial item in our apartment:

Just the Egyptian fertility god Min hanging out with his erection on our mantel.  No big deal.

Wikipedia tells me that Min is the god of male sexual potency and orgiastic rites.  And believe it or not, this is another gift from Dad…this time a souvenir from his trip to Egypt.  Is it weird that my Dad would want to make sure we were having plenty of orgies in our apartment by giving us this statue?  Who cares?  What’s important is that it worked!

Since my brother is moving into an apartment that is far more likely to have orgies going on anyway, I think I’ll take my buddy Min down to LA with me.