europe

No Basketball, No Hockey, No Problem! Everything You Wanted To Know About Euro 2012

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Editor’s Note: The following post was written by infrequent blog contributor Neil “Nkilla” Gariepy.  As the WBFF Blog expands its reach, I’ll need to have more guest bloggers to keep up with my readers’ demands.  Believe it or not, this blog has been accessed by people in more than 30 countries, so a post on an international soccer competition isn’t that ridiculous.  And since Neil is the only person I know who gives a shit about this thing, I figured I’d let him write til his heart’s content.  Here we go.

When Rmurdera (pronounced are-mur-dare-a) wrote his summer TV preview the other day, I responded that he does not need sitcoms and dramas to make it to football season because it’s going to be a great sports summer with the Euro and the Olympics happening. His response: “Can you explain to me why I should care about the Euro?” Sure, Rmurdera, let me give it a shot.

What is the Euro?
This is an easy question to answer. Every four years the countries of Europe hold a soccer tournament to determine who has the best team in Europe. It’s just like the World Cup, but only for Europe.

Why should I care?
There are people who know much more about soccer than I do who are adamant that the Euro is a better soccer competition than the World Cup. Their argument is that the World Cup only allows 11 European teams to participate (out of 32 total teams), but there are more than 11 European teams in the top 32 in the world. They conclude that since the Euro has 16 European teams it is a better collection of talent than the World Cup. I am not sure I agree with this perspective, but I can see where they are coming from. Other than Brazil and Argentina, the only other countries that really have a legitimate chance to win the World Cup every four years come from Europe. Occasionally another South American team will have solid back-to-back World Cups and you may get a Japan or South Korea making some noise every once and a while, but really it is the two South American juggernauts and all of Europe that have the true legitimate chances in the World Cup.

Let me try and explain that last part a little better for this blog’s target audience. Let’s say there was a competition for the hottest woman in the world. Let’s say that competition was between 12 women. Based on pure hotness, you would probably end up with 10 Americans (Munn, Perry, Wilde, Lawrence, Stone, Fox, Lively, Johansson, Hathaway, Biel), 1 Russian (Kunis), and 1 Israeli (Refaeli). That is your top lineup for a “12 hottest women on the planet” competition. Now let’s say the competition committee decides more countries need to be included to truly be able to name the hottest woman on the planet, so only half the field can be Americans. Now you have a tournament where you have to pull out four of the Americans listed above and replace them with Misses Nigeria, South Korea, Uruguay and Egypt. Sure these women are probably beautiful, but could they really beat Jessica Biel if she was allowed in the tournament? Probably not. So those who argue the Euro is a better competition than the World Cup are the same that would argue that the “almost all American hottest woman on the planet” competition is better than the one with Miss Egypt.

Another reason you should care: There is some general animosity between almost all the countries in Europe. I think if you go back far enough you can find a war between any two European countries. Everybody hates the Germans for obvious reasons. The Czech Republic and Croatia hate their old Eastern Bloc “allies” Russia and Ukraine. Neighboring countries tend to have some extra hatred for each other: England-France, England-Ireland, Spain-Portugal, Germany-Holland. Everybody hates the Italians because they are traditionally the biggest collection of floppers. And so on. The heightened and natural dislike between some of these countries raises the competition level.

When and Where Can I Watch These Matches?
All games are on ESPN. Even better, all games are on ESPN3. Since they are in Europe, the matches will take place during “work hours” US time. What better way to make the work day go by quicker than watching four hours of soccer on your computer. There will be two matches a day during the group round through June 19th. For the quarterfinals you will have one match each day June 21-24. Semifinals are June 27 & 28, and then the final is on July 1st. If Rmurdera gets more than three readers on this post, he might let me do a quick update every few days letting everyone know which upcoming matches are important and why.

Who should I root for?
At this point you’re probably thinking, “OK, this makes sense, a highly competitive sports tournament, I’ll give this a try. But for some reason they are not letting the USA participate, even though we constantly bail them out of wars and financial crises. Who should I root for?” Let me give you a couple of options:

Heritage: Most of us have some European heritage in our family. Decide which of your great-grandparents you like the best and root for their home country.

Food: There are several varieties of food native to European countries. Pick your favorite and then root for that team. You like pizza and pasta – Italy is your team. Baguette and cheese person – go France! Tapas people are going to want to jump on the Spanish bandwagon. You are not much of an eater, you just like to drink – well you sound like an Ireland supporter. Oh, you meant hard alcohol – Russia it is. Chips, pretzels, doritos, ice cream bars, and frozen pizza is more your speed – Holland all the way!

National Anthems: Finally, you can look at the words to some of these countries’ national anthems to see if the lyrics inspire you. If you like green beaches, then you will want to cheer for Denmark (“A lovely land is ours, with beaches green about her”). You want a country that aggressively shows their hatred of other nations in their national anthem? Then you my friend are a Poland supporter (I am not going to paste the whole thing here, but let’s just say Poland calls out both Italy and France in their anthem). Feeling arrogant, then root for Portugal (their anthem alludes to how they are the greatest people and could conquer the world if they want. I guess to the Portuguese “world” = “a little sliver of land Spain let us have on their beach”). And then there is this from Ukraine:

Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom,

Luck will still smile on us brother-Ukrainians.

Our enemies will die, as the dew does in the sunshine,

and we, too, brothers, we’ll live happily in our land.

We’ll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom

I’m ordering Ukrainian flags and jerseys as fast as I can.

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.

WBFF is taking over the world and becoming a corporate rebel at the same time

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
Looks like the orange team is winning this game of Risk

When gauging the success of a blog, there are only two metrics any blogger really cares about, and one of them is “world dominance.”  While the risk board above isn’t completely color-coded just yet, it’s only a matter of time.  First America, then Canada, then my favorite countries from across the pond, the UK, France and the Netherlands (only my favorite because they show up on this map) and finally to the far reaches of the earth, Australia and New Zealand.  This has all happened in only two months.  Simply amazing.  I don’t really understand why Mexico and South America haven’t jumped on board yet, but screw ’em.  We’ll all be laughing at them months from now when they’re trying to catch up on my award-winning Valentine’s Day blog and Lent blog.  My ultimate goal is to have Antarctica show up on this map.  I’ve learned from Frozen Planet that no one lives on Antarctica, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask a scientist to travel there and get the WBFF blog up on his iPhone, is it?

The other metric that bloggers like me care about is “the corporate IT blocking rate.”  Over the life of this blog, I’ve heard stories about people trying to access it only to see some corporate bullshit message about denying entry to the site due to internal IT policy.  Only now do I finally have proof that this has been happening  (see picture below).  And I couldn’t be prouder of myself.  This blog prides itself on being racy, risque and not-safe-for-work, and I’m glad we’re doing a good job with that…actually, I can’t imagine what sort of content in this blog is causing IT departments to block it.  Is it the threats of buying part of the Cadbury company so I can make mini-eggs year round?  Is it taking a poll on what people would do if they won the Mega Millions that’s making them squirm?  It’s probably the one mention of vaginal mesh implants…I knew that would come back to haunt me.  Either way, I’m just proud that my “little engine that could” blog is even hitting the radar of an IT department.

Like I already said, that’s how I know I’ve made it to the Big Leagues.  Keep on spreading the WBFF goodness, loyal readers, and I’ll keep making you piss yourselves with delight.