That's What He Said- Chapter 12

Alright people, here is Chapter 12 of my memoir. It's hard to believe, but we are at least halfway done (I'm not sure how many more chapters I'm going to write, but this chapter takes us to the mid way point chronologically). Please let me know what you think so far. Any thoughts, comments, favorite lines, constructive criticisms, etc. are greatly appreciated.

If you have no idea what this is, then click here, scroll to the bottom, and catch up.

Chapter 12

Every Monday I emailed my column to The Mirror’s Gmail account at about 5 p.m. I attached a Word Document and also included the text within the body of the email. I figured I would make it as easy as possible for whoever was responsible for transferring the column from my email to the paper. Without fail, two days later my work would appear slightly edited both online and in print. On this particular Monday, for the first time all year, I also included a short message.

I asked that my column (the one word) be printed in the top left corner of the space allotted and for the rest to remain blank. I thought it would look hysterical if my one word answer stood side by side with Jackie’s 400 word column. Sadly, this did not come to fruition. The Mirror’s staff ultimately decided to put our columns in conversation bubbles in order to avoid the empty space, but let’s just say that it took a lot for that to happen.

Within an hour after I sent the aforementioned email I got a phone call from Steph. At first she seemed like she was in good spirits about what I had sent in. She even admitted that she laughed when she first saw it. Despite the initial tacit approval Steph eventually boldly stated that I would have to write a full length response. I think that as the editor she started freaking out about the white space and figured it was time to put her foot down. I did my best to defend my position by arguing that not only was I polite enough to let Jackie pick the topic, but I also adequately answered the prompt. She quickly got angry and told me that if I wanted to continue writing the He Said column every week then I would have to expand my article to roughly 400 words by 4 o’clock the next day.

If Steph didn’t have the authority to strip me of my column there is no way that I would have caved and written a full length response, but I had become infatuated with my role with the paper and I didn’t want to lose it. That said, I still wasn’t going to back down without a fight, so before I went to bed that night I sat down to meet her demands, so to speak. It was then that I remembered that Jackie had edited the page where our columns appeared the week before. I knew this because her name, preceded by the words “Edited by”, was printed on the top left corner of the page where our columns appeared. I asked her about it and she said that she just wanted to get some experience in editing so that she could put it on her resume, but I saw it as an opportunity to make a point.

My expanded column looked like this:

Can Guys and Girls Ever Just Be Friends?

In a word, no. Despite my best efforts to get only that word, “no” printed with nothing but remaining white space, The Mirror’s editorial staff of all women who all think that I am ‘friends’ with them would not budge. It is a simple question and I provided a simple answer. This half-hearted attempt to lengthen what would have been a perfect response will only harm my point.

Despite initially laughing, my editors called my one word submission a cop out. Really? A cop out would been if I glorified women and spoke about how great it is to be “friends” with them. What I did was not a cop out. It was a humorous, thought provoking response to an easy question. Guys would have understood completely and girls would have been left wondering why it only took one word to answer what on the surface seems like a complex issue. Sure there would have been that small contingent that would have just written me off as a jerk, but they are entitled to their opinion just like I am.

One member of the editorial staff wanted to know the rationale behind the response. She had an idea of what it meant, but she wasn’t sure, so let me explain.

Believe it or not, just the word “no” would have spoken volumes. If it was printed the way it should have been it would have illustrated the stark contrast in the way that males and females think. A simple one word response by a male juxtaposed with a lengthy, well thought out, 400 word female opinion would have shown that guys are much simpler than girls.

It also would have demonstrated the way that men and women deal with relational issues. Men think logically while women tend to reason in a more complex manner. Perhaps it even would have served as a reminder in the back of a girl’s mind the next time she was in an argument with a guy. At least every guy would have hoped so.

The fact remains. Guys and girls cannot just be friends. A girl might think she is friends with a guy, but more often than not that guy just wants to get in her pants (or her roommate’s).

Speaking of people that I am not friends with, last week’s page was edited by Jackie? What? Would it not only be fair to let me edit this week? If so, my one word response would have proudly stood surrounded by blank white space that my editors are so afraid of.

I was pissed that Steph wouldn’t print my one word response, so I waited until 3:59 to send my expanded column in. In the back of my mind I was hoping that if I waited long enough they would be forced to just print my original column.

Coincidentally my sports talk radio show aired on Tuesdays from 4-6 that semester (afternoon drive- what up?), so I was in the studio at the time that Steph and her fellow editors got my revised copy. If you’ll remember the radio station was tucked underneath a staircase on the ground floor of the Barone Campus Ceneter and right next door to The Mirror’s office. With me in the studio that day were two of my regular guests; Glancy and another friend from my floor freshman year named John Z.

John Z not only lived with my freshman year radio co-host Robby, but he also went to high school with him in Westchester, New York. He was about six feet tall and had cropped black hair and a mulatto like complexion. He’s of Italian descent, but was one of those kids that easily could have passed for just about any ethnicity imaginable. Black, Italian, Hawaiian, Mexican, Samoan. You name it. This may have contributed to his remarkable ability to become friends with virtually every clique in our class. He shared my passion for sports and became one of my closest friends after graduation. He also played on a state championship basketball team in high school and wasn’t shy about bringing it up even though he rode the bench.

During our first segment I couldn’t help but notice a female peering in through the glass wall of the studio for an extended period of time. After asking my guests what could only have been an incredibly intelligent sports question about the week that was I looked over and who did I see but Steph. She was staring a hole through me with an unprecedented conviction. I swear, I’ve never seen someone look so angry in my life. Naturally both of her middle fingers were prominently extended and she held her statuesque form for nearly 10 seconds before storming back to The Mirror’s office confident that she had sufficiently said, “Fuck you,” without having actually said it.

I wouldn’t say I was stunned. I guess I was more alarmed if anything. I honestly didn’t think that my 400 word retort, if you will, would upset her so much. Quite frankly¹ I was amused by the entire charade. I quickly tossed to a commercial break (not that anyone was really listening) and tried to regroup.

In the break Glancy and John Z couldn’t figure out what just happened. They were just laughing uncontrollably. I assume that they must have just thought it was some random girl who hated my guts for all of the things I had previously written. Either way, I told them that it was my editor and that I would explain the rest on the air.

Once we came back from commercial² Glancy and John Z quickly recapped how a girl had just come by the studio, given me the evil eye, and flipped me the double bird. After explaining how I was basically told that I would have to go along with whatever topic Jackie picked for our columns that week I proceeded to offer the prompt to the both of them.

“What was her topic?” Glancy asked eagerly.

“Her topic was this,” I said, “Can guys and girls ever just be friends?

Almost immediately, “No,” said Glancy.

John Z without missing a beat, “Nooo way!”

Point proven I thought. We then went on to discuss how none of us were actually friends with any girls³. Basically there were girls that we wanted to sleep with and girls that we thought could help us sleep with their friends.

I did not speak to Steph or any of my other female editors for the rest of the week, so I guess they just decided that it wasn’t worth it to have one of their writers openly criticize them in their own paper. And thus the conversation bubble idea was put in place.



Naturally I considered this to be a victory for my methodology. It didn’t hurt that I got nothing but enthusiastic praise in the comments section of the online publication. One former editor of the paper even dropped the Shakespeare line, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

Although I was riding high I suddenly came to a sad realization. The first semester of my senior year was essentially over. Jackie and I only had one more column to write before Winter Break. Naturally we saw it as an obvious opportunity to write about Christmas. After all, Fairfield is a Jesuit institution.

With such a broad topic I resorted back to an old writing habit of mine; rhyming couplets. In high school I took a class called Current Affairs/Public Speaking (which we affectionately called CAPS) and about 90% of my speeches were written in rhyming couplets. I don’t know if I thought I was good at it or what (I definitely wasn’t), but for some reason the notion just intrigued me. I can say that even though I wrote in rhyming couplets I had no aspirations of becoming a rapper. It had been four years since I had constructed anything in this tried and true form, but it was like riding a bike. Looking back I cringe at how awful some of the lines and rhymes are, but I also see a few that are mildly impressive.

The Mirror on December 19th, 2007:

Christmas

After 11 months of waiting, the Christmas season is finally here,
So it’s time to be nice to the people we can’t stand all year.
We tell teachers how much we’ve learned and the strides that we’ve made,
All in the hopes that they’ll give us a better grade,

After all it’s finals week and most of us are stressed,
But our grades need to leave our parents impressed.
Because based on what they believe,
Will influence the kinds of gifts we’ll receive.

Buying gifts for our parents and siblings might be the worst,
It’s definitely an area where I’m not well versed,
This year I’m going to keep it as simple as I can,
So buying them all Fairfield t-shirts is my plan.

College students, though, are easy to please,
Here’s the short list, just booze and trees,
We long for other things, but those are the essentials,
Although we’d also like an internship to boost our credentials

We have no money so we are forced to beg,
We have to pay for Spring Break, bills, and the next keg,
Hopefully Santa will bring us other things like new clothes,
As well as DVD’s of our favorite TV shows,

Like I said there are things we want and others we need,
And here’s a quick want list that in getting I hope to succeed.
What I really want is some rum in my eggnog,
Or maybe a Lexington Steele⁴ sized hog,

I could also use a new suit so that I look dapper,
As well as a fresh 12 pack of those golden wrappers,
Maybe some muscles so I look like a hunk,
Or another semester in the bottom bunk⁵.

The holiday season is a time to unwind,
A much needed break from the daily grind,
We go to parties to celebrate our time away from it all,
But make a stumbling attempt to make it to the bar for last call,

Over break you’ll get sick of seeing your mother,
So make sure you get to see your significant other,
And when you get her underneath that mistletoe,
Drop your pants as far as they can go,

Although we have been having lots of fun,
We now realize that half of the school year is done,
For us seniors we have one semester left and our degrees to get,
So let’s live it up and make it the best one yet.


1 Trademark. Stephen A. Smith^↩

2 We ran some standard PSAs, but I also made a few commercials of my own. Most featured clips from previous shows, but one contained play-by-play highlights from a guard on the women’s basketball team and was set to the song “Got My Mind Set On You” by George Harrison. This is easily the creepiest thing that I’ve ever done. By the way, she was definitely cute, but almost certainly a lesbian.^↩

3 Ironically, Jackie and I remained very close friends for years after college. That was until I starting posting these chapters on the internet.^↩

4 An African American pornstar known for his enormous genitalia. By the way, I can’t handle black guys nailing white chicks in my porn. Does that make me a racist? I sure hope not. If it’s any consolation I routinely fall in love with black strippers.^↩

5 Tim and I shared a bunk bed in out tiny bedroom. I had the bottom bunk for the first semester and then we switched for the second semester. Needless to say, but I played a lot of road games in the Spring.^↩

Jungle Fever

This past August I was at a birthday celebration for friend of the blog Kyle Korver and a few us had an intriguing conversation about who the hottest black woman on the planet is. I found it to be an intriguing discussion because there was no clear cut answer. Hell, there wasn’t even a consensus group of nominees. People were throwing out names that I’d never heard of. Even when they said, “You know that girl from that (tv show/commercial/music video)?” I couldn’t picture some of them.

Five months later I still think it’s a fascinating issue. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not in touch with the African-American community, but I think it’s safe to say that we, as a society, have come a long way in the past 20 years. We have a strong willed black woman as our first lady in Michelle Obama, we had a black woman as our secretary of state in Condoleezza Rice, and Oprah is arguably one of the most influential women in the country. That said, where is the next Halle Berry? I bet most people would have trouble naming another black actress. Where’s the next Tyra Banks or Naomi Campbell? Are there really no black super models anymore? Also, there are a few famous black musicians, but none are icons like Janet Jackson, are they?

So as we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day I think it’s only appropriate to ask who the hottest black chick on the planet is?

Here's my Top 10

Honorable mention- Jennifer Hudson



The other day I saw her on some fitness show (I wasn’t watching it, but it was on of the 12 TVs in a studio) and she looked gooood. That said, I know that she used to be fat and I don’t think I can get past it.


10.) Alicia Keys



She is definitely more talented than hot, but her golden pipes make her a whole lot more appealing.


9.) Gabrielle Union



Even though I believe it’s confirmed that she has herpes (thanks to Dwyane Wade), she’s still a babe.


8.) Zoe Saldana



If there was ever a case of someone who is not photogenic, but is strikingly attractive in movies it’s Zoe Saldana. Trust me, she's hot.


7.) Meagan Good



She’s on the new season of Californication and she looks just like her surname suggests. She'll probably be #5 on this list by the end of the season.


6.) Nicki Minaj



As weird as she may seem she’s still got a pretty face and a fat ass.


5.) Rihanna



She just exudes sex. I don’t think that there’s any doubt that she’s an absolute freak in bed.


4.) Selita Ebanks



For those of you that don’t know her, Selita Ebanks is a former Victoria’s Secret model who was formerly engaged to Nick Cannon (aka Mr. Mariah Carey).


3.) Beyonce



She’d probably be #1 if she didn’t just pop out a kid (after all she made the final four of my bracket back in March). I think she’s easily the most attainable black woman alive. She’s just not currently the hottest.


2.) Ciara



I probably have her rated higher than most would, but I think she’s amazing. She’s also, hands down, the best female dancer (not in the stripper kind of way) in the world.


1.) Nicole Sherzinger



She’s not even really black (she’s Hawaiian, Filipino, and Russian), but she looks black and she’s stupid hot so I’m counting it. Seriously, can you argue with this?

That's What He Said- Chapter 2

In case you don't check The Shampoo Effect frequently (I don't update it frequently, so I can't really blame you), I've decided to tackle the challenge of writing a book. Because I'm not creative enough to conjure up multi-faceted characters, a cohesive plot, or a narrative arc from scratch I've decided to write a memoir on a topic that I've covered too many numerous times already on this blog: my exploits as a writer during my senior year in college. I plan to unveil one chapter every month until I'm finished.

Last month I unveiled Chapter 1, which you can find here.

And now, without further ado, here's...


Chapter 2

As soon as I found out that I was selected to be the “He Said” I immediately wanted to know who my partner in relational banter would be. I had heard some rumblings about which females had applied for the “She Said” position and was largely ambivalent about them, but as it turned out, the girl that The Mirror selected just so happened to be the girl that I was hooking up with at the time. Heyyyo. She was a tall, attractive, dark-skinned Italian girl with brown eyes and jet black hair from northern New Jersey named Jackie.

Jackie and I got to know each other during our sophomore year because she was hooking up with my good friend Matty K. She was flirtatious by nature and my buddy had capitalized on it. I even went with him to a party at her house in the summer before our junior year. Shortly after this trip, Matty K and I vowed to never step foot in the state of New Jersey again. It wasn’t Jackie’s fault. We had a good time at her party¹. New Jersey is just the worst place ever to drive. There are parkways that turn into expressways that turn into turnpikes that turn back into parkways. On our drive back to Matty K’s house in Westchester, NY we pulled off at an exit in Mahwah, NJ because we saw a sign for a Wendy’s. We followed the exit ramp and continued on for a mile seeing nothing remotely close to a Wendy’s before we were suddenly on another parkway. Fucking Mahwah.

Jackie, the Italian that she is, was abroad in Italy for the first semester of our junior year, but rekindled the old flame with Matty K one night in early February. I know this, of course, because Matty K was one of my two roommates junior year.

My other roommate that year, believe it or not, was not Tim. This was simply due to logistics and not because of a fight, rift, or anything of that nature (sorry Aunt Eileen). When the time came to select housing for junior year Tim was flirting with the idea of going abroad for a semester and because of a financial hiccup on the home front I had applied to be an RA. Low and behold Tim’s grades were not sufficient enough for him to even be eligible to go abroad and I was apparently not what the Residence Association was looking for in an RA. Unfortunately by this point, two different groups of our friends were in need of one more guy each to secure five man townhouses. It was either that or we stayed together for a third year in the dorms so Tim and I decided to go where the action was and live apart for a year.

Each townhouse had a dishwasher-less kitchen, a carpeted living room, and a half bathroom on the ground level, two bedrooms (one with 2 beds the other with 3) separated by a bathroom with a shower upstairs, and a cement basement. Fairfield even ponied up a round wooden kitchen table, four chairs, a sturdy, industrial couch with synthetic padding, and a rectangular wooden piece of furniture that could only be used as a TV stand. My four roommates all played varsity baseball and I lived in the triple with Matty K and a kid named Dylan who hailed from a wealthy, country town nearby.

Matty K was about 6’3 with dark brown hair that he flipped up in the front, sideburns bordering on mutton chops, a large backside, and a pointed Italian schnozzle. He was an athletic computer geek (oxymoron, I know) who loved his mother’s cooking about as much as he loved baseball. He was more skinny than fat, but he loved to eat. In fact, most freshmen had a meal plan at the cafeteria that allowed them to eat 12 times per week (buffet style) and Matty K was the only kid I knew that upgraded to the 19 meals a week plan.

Dylan had short, black hair and was equally tall and well versed in Italian cuisine as Matty K. In fact, the two of them often shopped at an Italian deli and then cooked what seemed like gourmet dinners together. He had a more rounded schnozz that was perhaps his most distinguishable feature. By that I mean that if you had one look at a picture of his dad you’d know that they were father-son based solely on their olfactory organs. Dylan, who like Matty K was a pitcher for the baseball team, was a wild card in that he seemed to have a new passion every month. One month he’d be convinced that he was going to be a Navy Seal. Then the next he would be training for the Tour de France. He owned a few flannel shirts and liked to hit the bottle hard.



The cement basements in the townhouses were supposed to be for storage, but were primarily used for recreational activity. The townhouses were on campus and thus monitored by Public Safety, so everybody partied in the basements because of volume control. My roommates and I combined our inclination for sports with our understanding that this cement fortress would be our arena for parties and laid down green astro turf on day one. One of our most memorable endeavors was an 80's party. Aside from playing nothing but the freshest 80's jams, I wore a 1988 Whitesnake concert tour T-shirt that I found (bought) at the Salvation Army. Unfortunately the basement party scene ended when a friend from freshman year (one of the kids that got into drugs) had a run in with the Fairfield Fire Department after he left a lit ‘cigarette’ in his townhouse basement. This prompted Fairfield to lock everyone’s basement for the foreseeable future.

Even though we were no longer roommates I ended up seeing Tim more than I saw some of my house mates. He got me a job refereeing and eventually supervising intramural games on campus. It was an easy job that enabled me to get to know a significant portion of the Fairfield student body. Once I became a supervisor I was afforded the privilege of swiping in and out of work with my student ID. Admittedly, the other eight supervisors and I used this power a bit liberally. For example, I spent countless hours down in the Recreation Complex essentially getting paid to play basketball. We often joked that we were technically professional athletes because we got paid to play. Although we were basically stealing money from Fairfield, we actually did a fantastic job with the intramural program in the two years that I was involved. We posted standings, kept stats, composed team power rankings, had All-Star games, and gave out post season awards. Our efforts earned us rave reviews from our bosses, their bosses, and from students.

In early April, I was at a small gathering in Tim’s townhouse, while my roommates were elsewhere, presumably partying. Tim and his roommates had been able to break the pad lock on their basement door in such a way that it wasn’t entirely noticeable without close inspection. To this day, I still don’t know how they did it. I always just imagined that they were high watching an episode of MacGyver and used a toothpick, cardboard box, and 3 feet of rope to get it done. Either way, there were about 15 of us down in the basement that night doing what college kids did back then. A few kids were blasting Phish songs from an iTunes playlist, a few kids were playing Guitar Hero in between hits, and a few others, including me, were circled around the beer pong table either socially drinking or trying to toss ping pong balls into red solo cups half filled with cheap beer.

That particular night my beer pong partner was Jackie. She was wearing a navy blue New York Yankees player t-shirt, a jean skirt, and for some reason her dark black hair had a few reddish strands in it as if she was in some sort of experimental stage in her life². We were winning game after game and casually flirting the entire time. Each made shot turned into another excuse to up the scale of physical contact. Eventually the beer pong dwindled down, but the flirting had intensified. Jackie and I made our way upstairs and a playful water fight turned into a full-fledged make out on the bed of one of Tim’s roommates.

I figured the drunken hookup was just a onetime thing so I didn’t tell Matty K about it even though, according to guy code, he still had “dibs”³ because of his prior encounters with her. I knew he wouldn’t care, but I again avoided telling him even when Jackie and I began to hook up on a semi-consistent basis. However, like most college hookups, things never got serious.

That summer at home in Syracuse, NY I worked a bunch of odd jobs just to scrap together enough cash to get by with during my senior year. I wasn’t too worried about my financial situation because I knew that I would have a weekly check coming from the Department of Recreation once I got back to school. One week I worked for a friend’s dad and cleaned out an old auto parts store that had suffered from fire damage, another week I worked a basketball camp at my high school, and for about a month I worked in a pipe factory.

Things were no different from any previous summer. I played golf at a par-3 course about twice a week⁴, basketball every Tuesday, and softball every Friday. My friends and I saw the same people at graduation parties, smoked cigars and hookahs, and went to the local watering holes every weekend. However that summer is the last time I remember feeling free of any sense of pressure or responsibility. Unfortunately this feeling did not register until the following year when summer turned into a stress-filled job hunt during a down economy.

I quit my pipe laying job in the middle of July to give myself a week off before I went on vacation in New Hampshire. Boredom naturally set in half way through the week, but it was quickly supplanted by excitement when I started to think of my senior year. I was going to be the sports director of my campus radio station, an intramural supervisor, and the writer of the “He Said” column. My role as the sports director of the radio station provided me with a weekly two-hour block to host my own sports talk show, so I started thinking of ideas for the show, commercials I could create, and whom I could have as guests.

These creative juices steam rolled into thinking about what I would write in my first “He Said” column. I figured that the first topic would just be a standard welcome back, so I spent an hour or so writing and fine tuning a prospective column with that topic in mind. Since it was my first article that would be read by the entire student body I knew that I had to come out with guns blazing. I wanted this first article to be a statement of what was to come. After a few minor edits, I was satisfied with my first rough draft and went into vacation mode.

That week of vacation was as relaxing and serene as usual. I laid out on a beach and tried to convince my white, Irish/Polish skin to darken without turning as red as a stop sign first, read On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and had some brewskis overlooking a lake. During the week Tim and I talked a great deal about our excitement for our senior year. We were going to be living together in a tiny beach house right on the water of Long Island Sound with two of the “Musketeers” from freshman year. My excitement for senior year was such that I asked Tim’s dad, my Uncle Jim, if I could move in with them for the month of August and work for his company. I thought that living in his house would be like the preamble to my senior year because of its proximity to Fairfield. Uncle Jim obliged, but I ended up only working for his industrial supplies company for a few days in August because Tim and I spent the majority of our days painting the house of his Aunt and Uncle, who I knew from vacationing in New Hampshire.

Living in Uncle Jim and Aunt Mimi’s basement that month was great. I went out with Tim and all of his friends from high school that I had gotten to know over the past three years, played a lot of golf, and made some cold, hard cash. We scrapped, sanded, primed, and painted with power jams blasting on the radio everyday from 10-6 and seemingly always had dinner waiting for us when we got home. Toward the end of the month we were finishing up the house and getting all of our things ready for school virtually at the same time. I set up an internship to be a sports writer for the major newspaper in Stamford, CT while up on a ladder and Tim made contact with a guy to buy a TV for our beach house. I went home for a few days late in August to get the rest of my things and to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday, but made it back to Tim’s house for one last night in my basement bedroom.

Finally the day after Labor Day arrived and we moved into our quaint, poorly insulated, beach house. Don’t ask me why, but most of the beach houses that were rented annually by college seniors had names. I don’t know how or when it started, but I guess it was just easier to say, “I’m going to a party at The Dugout,” instead of telling someone what the address was. Our house was painted hunter green, but its name was “The Pink Box.”

It was almost shed-like in size, but it was right on the water and in a good location (a little over a half mile to the bar). Upon entering “The Pink Box” the bathroom was to your immediate left. The parameters were pretty tight, especially in the shower, but we made due. To your immediate right was the first bedroom. It was roughly half the size of our freshman year dorm rooms as evidenced by the fact that it was adorned with a bunk bed because there wasn’t enough room to put both of the beds on the floor. Just past the doorway to the bedroom was a wooden ladder attached to the wall that led to a small loft intended for storage. Even though you couldn’t even stand up in the loft we still festooned the area with blankets and pillows just in the hopes of luring a female or two up there for some late night activities.⁵

If you took one step past the ladder to the loft you would have found yourself in the middle of the kitchen that we hardly used. It had a boomerang shaped counter that edged out to create the sense that the hallway continued on to the living area. The living area spanned the full width of the house and half of the length. We put a rectangular, plastic table up against the wall on the left close to where the back door resided and two couches, a coffee table, and our new TV on the right hand side. Also on the right hand side, tucked against the near wall, was a door that led into the 2nd bedroom, which was under the loft and to the right of the kitchen. Its dimensions were almost the exact same size as the first, but Tim and I lived in it, so we called it the big room.

Out the back door was an 8x20 foot enclosed porch where we placed our beer pong table and kegerator (colllllegggge). Outside the back door of the porch was a raised cement patio that overlooked a beach of roughly 20 yards and the water.

Our roommates, two of the aforementioned “Musketeers,” were Greg and Max. Greg was from a nearby suburb and had been an RA during our sophomore and junior years, but was ready to be re-released into the wild our senior year. He was a good-looking kid that got with so many girls our freshman year that he earned the nickname “The Hound Dog.” Max was the son of Argentinean immigrants that settled in Long Island. He was a short, dark-skinned, soccer loving kid whose chest protruded like a gymnast after sticking a landing. He was also fluent in Spanish and studied abroad in Spain for the first semester of our junior year before living in Tim’s townhouse in the spring.

The first week of senior year was everything I thought it would be. Partying with my friends that I hadn’t seen for months while on a beach in warm weather was awesome. Throw in the fact that girls were still tanned and desperately trying to soak up every natural wave of sunlight that they could and life was pretty good. The only downside was seeing way too many of my fellow male classmates shirtless.

On the first day of classes I got an email from a girl in my grade named Steph, who identified herself as the editor in chief of The Mirror. In the email that she sent to both Jackie and me, she explained both who she was and what our roles with the newspaper would be. She told us that each article was to be about 400 words, that our deadline was 6 p.m. every Monday, that our first topic, just as I suspected, should be a welcome back piece, and that we were responsible for thinking of and agreeing on a topic each week from there on out. This last piece of news was like music to my ears. I always assumed that the editors chose the topics. My excitement for my new role grew even more knowing that I had virtually free reign over my column. The only person standing in my way of writing what I wanted to write was Jackie and I knew that she would be on board with many of my ideas.

For the next few days, I shared the prospective column that I had written back in July with some of my friends from home and at school to gauge their reactions. Basically I was trying to develop an inner circle of advisers to consult during the year. People that could read my work and offer both constructive criticism as well as new ideas from which to springboard.

The general consensus from my potential advisers was that the column needed little improvement so I sent it in that Monday.

The Mirror on September 12th, 2007:

Welcome Back

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd welcome back everybody!⁶ Summer is over and the new year is finally upon us. The 9-5 work is no more and now it’s time to do work on the females of the class of ‘11. (Does that look scary to anyone else?) My advanced scout, a.k.a. my friend who had to take summer classes at Fairfield in order to qualify for medical school⁷, has informed me that we have some real blue chippers in the incoming class to replace the overworked class of ‘07 that was past their prime anyway.

Speaking of girls being in their prime, I know we all went to a bunch of graduation parties this summer in which we had to endure awkward conversations with the same parents weekend after weekend. Like I needed a weekly reminder that I only had one more year of college left. Okay so back to the girls. Did anyone else catch themselves thinking about how attractive the high school girls suddenly became? Out of nowhere your friend Joey’s little sister developed (think about it) into a nice little prospect. It was like that time period in high school when girls started getting their braces off and you decided it was socially acceptable to begin talking to them. But the girl who just got her braces off was your age, the smokeshow little sister is about 16. There are laws against that.

For the record, every male on campus thinks they are going to tap into the freshmen class of women, but few are as successful as they think No one really knows what women want and nobody really cares that much either. We just want them. Plain and simple. In order to leave your mark on/in the freshmen girls you must first follow these guidelines. First and foremost, no v-cards. You don’t want a stage 5 clinger to deal with all year. You want a girl who knows the ropes, but not like Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby who I still do not believe is a female. Too much experience can cost you too though. Leave the Grand Canyon for the sightseers. Also, don’t worry if a girl has a boyfriend from home. There is nothing alcohol and being “such a great listener” can’t solve. Lastly, exhibit absolutely no morals. I’m sure that won’t be too hard. Just get in, get out and go on your way. Good luck guys.


1- I mean, her older brother and his friends knew every word to “Juicy” by Notorious B.I.G. Of course, in no way was it shocking or impressive for 8 white kids to know those lyrics. In fact, Kyle Korver was also in attendance that day (either that or I saw him the next day) and ever since we have texted each other every time we’ve seen a white kid rap the lyrics to this song. Coincidentally I got a text from him 2 weeks ago that said, “At a wedding in Albany –You’ll never believe it BUT…These kids know Juicy.”

2- It was a Robinson Cano t-shirt with the #22 on the back. Cano would give up the #22 to Roger Clemens the following year and decide to wear #24 instead. That said, how I remember these details about Jackie’s outfit I don’t really know. There are no pictures to confirm, but I’m 100% certain that my memory is accurate. I can’t figure out if my remembering is impressive, just completely random, somehow significant, creepy, or what. I’ll let Jackie decide I guess.

3- I’m actually surprised that someone other than Dylan had dibs on a girl back in the Spring of 2007. Even though he had a girlfriend at the time he still somehow claimed to have dibs on upwards of 25 girls.

4- I got my second hole in one that summer and it happened exactly one year to the day as my first. July 4th (Clearly I love America.)

5- Check and check.

6- Chris “Mad Dog” Russo used to begin every edition of the incredibly popular New York sports talk radio show “Mike and the Mad Dog” on WFAN by saying, “Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd good afternoon everybody!”

7- Matty K

These Kids Aren't Alright

As many of you know I consider myself to be something of a television connoisseur. I DVR more shows than you would imagine. Every once in a while though a television product will slip through the cracks of my screening process and I’ll be left in the dark when it becomes a hot button topic in the pop culture media. Case in point- I’ve never watched an episode of Lost or The Sopranos and most people consider those to be 2 of the best shows of all time. This happened again recently when I noticed a lot of buzz around the AMC show Breaking Bad. I knew the premise of the show- a high school chemistry teacher starts making crystal meth, but I never got around to watching it even though the actors (Bryan Cranston (perhaps best known as Tim Whatley from Seinfeld) and Aaron Paul) racked up Emmy awards year after year. A few months ago my friend Kyle Korver strongly encouraged me to get into the show. He said, “If you’re not watching Breaking Bad you’re missing out,” and he was right. So in the past two weeks I’ve run through the first 3 seasons on Netflix. The season 4 finale aired on AMC a few weeks back so I still have some catching up to do.

I’m not blown away by the show, but there’s no debating its entertainment value. I’d probably give it a 7 out of 10 or 3.7 out of 5 (Netflix subscribers, assuming there are any anymore, know that the rating system is out of 5). It is interesting on some level that shows involving a particular drug are so critically acclaimed. Think about it. Showtime’s Weeds was about marijuana, HBO’s The Wire was about cocaine (at least Season One was- the only one I’ve seen), and AMC’s Breaking Bad is about crystal meth. How many heroin, shrooms, and LSD scripts do you think are out there?

Breaking Bad committed a folly that I see all too often in television series. They cast an annoying child that serves virtually no purpose other than to keep the mother and father of the child in contact with each other. I get why shows do it, but I don’t understand why so many of these children need to be so fucking annoying.

If there was an Emmy for annoying kid in a television series these would be my nominees.

Walter Jr. in Breaking Bad



I can get past the cerebral palsy and the crutches, but the slurred speech, decision to go by Flynn, and stupid website gets to me.


Shane in Weeds



I only watched the first three seasons of this show and what put me over the edge was this little twerp driving a truck/Winnebago (I forget) at the age of 8 and his insistence to move from Southern California to Pittsburgh.


Becca in Californication



She’s ugly, talks in the most annoying voice ever, dresses in all black, is in a shitty punk band, and goes from one extreme mood to the other. I hate her. She is an example of a disgusting child spawned from good looking parents. It also happens the other way where two unattractive people create a gorgeous child.


Sally in Mad Men



She thinks that her baby brother is the ghost of her grandfather plus she smokes a cigarette, drives a car, sees a shrink and finger blasts herself at age 8. Her 2nd grade teacher is a smokeshow though. If this was real life she'd grow up and become a whore.


Astor in Dexter



She’s as irritating as any 14 year old minor character could be. She’s always whining about something, asking Dexter why he hates her, and getting drunk with her random friend.


I don't think there's any doubt that Becca would take home the hardware. She sucks.

Top 26

This Saturday is my cousin who will not be named's 26th birthday (we are getting oldddd). In honor of that I have compiled the following 26 stories, facts, inside jokes, etc. that I can share. I'm sure he could think of 26 funnier ones, but these are the first ones that I came up with.

1.) My cousin and I took a class together called Argument & Advocacy (Public Speaking) during our sophomore year of college. At the end of class one day our teacher strongly emphasized that we read over Chapter 8 in our book as homework. He was basically implying that we were going to have a pop quiz our next class. My cousin and I immediately blurted out things like, “I’m calling your bluff. You’re all talk,” and, “No way there’s a quiz. Kealey (our professor) doesn’t have it in him.”

Well sure enough to start our next class there was a pop quiz. Naturally neither my cousin nor I had read Chapter 8 because who writes a text book on public speaking anyway? The quiz only had 5 questions and they were all multiple choice. Shortly after we completed the quiz our professor gave us some nonsense assignment to complete in groups. While we were working he was grading the quizzes.

About 10 minutes into working on whatever assignment we were given I heard our professor say, “You gotta be kidding me, Tim. I basically told you that there was going to be a quiz.”

My cousin responded, “They were all curveballs!”

Some Asian kid in the back of the room, “Tim’s a fastball hitter.”

Tim got a 0 on the quiz. I got a 20.


2.) After our freshman year in college my cousin and our cousin Kate came to the city of hopes and dreams to visit me for a few days. We were on our way to a house party and stopped at a gas station to pick up some brews because I saw a large sign that said 18 packs of Bud Light were on sale for $15. I walked in, picked up an 18 pack and placed it on the counter. I was only 19 at the time, but I had my brother’s ID which had always worked for me. After the cashier checked the ID he said, “That’ll be $28.49”

In my head I thought, “Really? The sign right there says $15,” but I gladly forked over the cash because I wasn’t about to challenge him seeing that I was only 19.


3.) While playing beer pong against our housemates during our senior year of college my cousin was delaying the game because he was texting his little heart away. At one point our housemate Max said, “Texting Tim, come on dude. Let’s go.” Five minutes later when Tim was texting again our other housemate Greg said, “Let’s go Texas.” We all stopped and said, “What’d you say?” Instead of just owning up to his mistake Greg went with it and said, “Texas Tim. Let’s go.”

Whenever we see my cousin texting, which is about 23 hours a day, Max and I are sure to call him Texas.


4.) Songs that will all but guarantee to get my cousin out of bed in the morning

Go Cubs Go

The Italian National Anthem (Techno)

Brown Eyed Girl by Jimmy Buffet

Beast of Burden by The Rolling Stones

Bang On The Drum All Day by Todd Rundgren


5.) a.) During our junior year of college our buddy Glancy had 4 tickets to a Jets/Patriots game, so he decided to take my cousin, Pete (who you should remember from this post), and I. Another one of our friends, named Jack, took it upon himself to come with us even though he didn’t have a ticket. He figured that he’d just buy one once we got up there. If you told Jack you were having a great time anywhere he'd find a way to show up.

We left on a Saturday and went to Boston College to meet up with some friends there. On the ride up, Glancy was driving, Jack was in the passenger seat, and Pete, my cousin, and me were in the back seat. We were big time college dudes at that point so we crushed an entire 30 rack during the drive.

I don’t remember exactly at what point we began asking Glancy to pull over so that we could urinate, but for the sake of the story let’s just say it was after our first beer (it probably was). We must have asked him about 585736848 times and we could tell that he was getting mad, but we really had to pee, so we kept asking. Finally Glancy pulled over on the side of the road on the Mass Pike where a little opening of grass was and Pete, my cousin, and me piled out of his Jeep. As we finished draining our dragons a police car pulled over to the side of the road and onto the grass area where we were.

The cop asked us what we were doing and the genius that I am, keep in mind that I was hammered, said, “Sorry officer, I had to make a phone call.”

“It takes three of you to make a phone call?”

We didn’t know what to say, but God bless his soul he just told us to get out of there.

b.) While at BC we stayed in houses across the street from each other. My cousin and I in one house. Glancy and Pete in another. Where Jack slept I’m not entirely sure, but when it was time to go to Foxboro for the Jets/Pats game he was in Glancy’s jeep with Pete. My cousin and I were definitely still asleep though. Glancy must have called us about 12 times each. Finally we answered and told him that we’d be right out.

10 minutes later we were basically ready to walk out the door and Glancy yelled, “Let’s go assholes!” He was standing in the street and could see us moving about the house.

My cousin and I were still a little hamboned from the night before, so we began chanting, “Let’s go ass-holes, da, da, da da da, Let’s go ass-holes, da, da, da da da.”

c.) A week or two after the trip to Boston my cousin and I overheard Jack telling someone about our ride up. He said, “Petey had about 14 brews, the Stan Man had 12, Birdie (my cousin) had 17, I had 13, and Glance had 7 and he was driving!” In case you aren’t good at math, that’s 63 beers.

For the rest of the year and even sometimes to this day whenever someone asks how many beers we’ve had (who asks that anymore?) we will say that a bunch of us split a 30 rack and then say how many everyone had and blow the numbers way out of proportion.


6.) My cousin and I are really into sports and over the years we’ve watched sporting events with a plethora of people who don’t know that much. This isn’t a big deal by any means, but the worst thing ever is when someone attempts to make sports conversation and they have no clue what they’re talking about.

Our housemate Greg was the king of this. He’d always start out a comment with, “You know that guy on the Giants…..uhhh running back…”

My cousin or I would then say, “Brandon Jacobs?” And before we could finish saying Jacobs Greg would say, “YUP, Brandon Jacobs…that guy is good.”

My cousin and I concluded that he had no idea who he was talking about half of the time and that if we had said any other name, like Tom Jones, he’d say, “YUP, Tom Jones. It was on the tip of my tongue.”


7.) This one is similar in a way. Our RA freshmen year was a goofy kid named Murph. To sum him up quickly- he always wore cargo shorts, even in the winter. During our second semester my cousin and I were convinced that he had no idea what our names were even though we’d been saying hi to him on the path all year.

My cousin astutely pointed out that everytime he said hi to Murph on the path he’d always respond with, “Hey, what’s up man?” It’s like he was programmed to only say that. My cousin concluded that even if you said, “Hey Murph, what’s your favorite color?” he’d respond with, “Hey, what’s up man?”


8.) So the Asian kid from Argument and Advocacy class turned out to be a pretty cool dude whose last name was Burke. So naturally my cousin and I began calling every Asian person we saw “Burke” because, of course, they all look the same.

If we walked into a bar and an Asian kid was in sight my cousin would say, “You didn’t tell me that we were meeting Burke here.” If we walked past an Asian kid on campus I’d say, “Dude, why didn’t you say hi to Burke?” It was basically a running joke for years.


(Actually Burke)

During our Senior year we flew out to South Bend, Indiana for the BC/Notre Dame football game. One night we were there (I can’t remember if it was before or after the game) we decided to swing by the bookstore to stock up on some Irish gear. As we left the bookstore to walk back to where we were staying I noticed an Asian kid sitting on a bench so I nudged my cousin and said, “Aren’t you gonna say hi to Burke?” Sure enough, 750 miles away from Fairfield, it actually was Burke, who had graduated by that point.


9.) Perhaps our favorite Seinfeld line of all time is when Jerry says, “He’s eating onions, he’s spotting dimes. I don’t know what the hell’s going on?” We routinely find this line used in popular culture and send it to one another.

For example, I sent him this from a Bill Simmons column a few years back.

"19. N.Y. Giants
The G-Men remind me of the classic "Seinfeld" episode in which George loses his glasses and bites into an onion that he thought was an apple, but somehow notices a dime on the floor from 25 feet away and picks it up, leading to this exchange in Jerry's apartment after George keeps claiming to have seen Jerry's cousin kissing his girlfriend:
-- ELAINE: "He couldn't tell an apple from an onion and he's your eyewitness?"
-- GEORGE (still eating the onion): "I saw them making out, you can believe it!"
-- JERRY (snapping): "I don't know what to believe! You're eating onions, you're spotting dimes, I don't know what the hell is going on!"


10.) Speaking of the New York Football Giants back in 2007 my cousin pointed out how Eli Manning never throws a spiral. I don't know if it's the wind or what, but he throws wounded ducks every Sunday. Pay attention the next time you watch the G-men play.

For futher proof, my cousin sent me this shortly after the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2008.

"Eli on Letterman -

Letterman went through the final drive with him and then asked about the touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress that gave them the 17-14 lead with 35 seconds left...

"It really looked so easy, and it was so beautiful," Letterman said.

"A spiral," Manning replied. "That's rare for me."


11.) Speaking of Eli, my cousin also lives in Hoboken, NJ. He claims to find “the greatest bar ever” about 49 times a year. He then tells me that he’s going to take me there the next time I’m down there. I’ll always ask where it is in relation to his apartment and without fail he’ll say, “It’s a block away.”


12.) My cousin and I both interned at a Sports Marketing firm called Octagon during our senior year of college. Every once and a while Octagon would provide the staff with food. Pizza, subs, etc. There was another intern there named Manny that ate like a garbage disposal. My cousin and I were flabbergasted at how much food this kid could shovel down his mouth. It was amazing.

If I texted my cousin right now and asked what he thinks Manny from Octagon had for lunch he’d reply with something like this, “A stack of ribs, a six foot sub, a triple cheeseburger with grilled cheese as the buns, 18 cookies, and a fudge sundae.”


13.) One night in college after getting home from the bar a group of us decided to go to Wendy’s for some late night slop. I was the first to order and I said, “I’ll have the first 8 things on the dollar menu.” My cousin lost it. He didn’t think that there was any way that I could eat all of that food, but I housed it Manny from Octagon style.

Speaking of fast food, my cousin physically can not order food from a drive thru and take it to his house, apartment, dorm, etc. to eat it. He doesn’t have the patience, so he eats it right away even if he’s driving.


14.) During our junior year my cousin and I were playing the drinking game called hockey with a small group of people in my townhouse. Not too long after our friend Jack joined the game, but he had never played before. We explained that whoever gets shot at gets to spin the quarter and then has to call someone’s name to take a shot at whoever’s beer bottle that they choose. If you don't know how to play it's very easy. Trust me.

Either way, the whole notion of calling someone’s name didn’t exactly register with Jack. Seemingly everytime he’d spin the quarter we’d all be anxiously waiting for him to call a name. Almost everytime we’d have to remind him and he’d inevitable panic and say, “Dahhh…..ahhhh….Birdie (my cousin).” Then there were the handful of times where he’d remember the rules and spin the quarter and quickly and very matter of factly say, “Birdie.”

I kid you not, we played for an hour or two and Jack called my cousin every single time he spun the quarter. Now whenever my cousin or I am flustered we will just say, “Dahh…ahh…Birdie.”


15.) During our senior year of college my cousin and I took an environmental ethics class because it only met once a week and we heard it was an easy A. Our teacher was an old man who had an odd way of describing someone or something that was confused or disoriented. He’d say, “He doesn’t know if he’s pitching or catching,” but he had no clue about the homosexual reference that he was making. I swear, this guy must have said it 3 times a week.


16.) During our freshmen year of college my cousin and I went up to a Syracuse/UCONN football game in Hartford, CT. As fate would have it our tickets were in the middle of the UCONN student section and I was wearing my “Real Men Wear Orange” t-shirt and sticking out like a sore thumb. I was also completely rocked which didn’t help things when the student section showered me with “ASS-HOLE!” chants. Don’t ask me why, but at halftime we decided to meet up with our aunt and uncle who were at the game. Within 15 seconds of the conversation my aunt said, “Dan, you have a few today, or what?”

The best part of the game was the UCONN chant when their team got to the goal line. The band would play a little ditty and then the students would chant, “Stick it in, stick it in, stick it in.” Even though I can’t stand UCONN I thought that was hysterical.




17.) A little more than a year ago my cousin and I were at our friend Mikey’s house for Kyle Korver’s 24th birthday. We somehow got to talking to Mikey’s dad late in the night. Early in the conversation I asked what Mikey’s dad did and he rattled off a few letters very matter of factly, but I didn’t comprehend him so I said, “I’m sorry, where?” He rattled off the same letters (I heard something like “BFG”), but he said it with such conviction that I said, “Oh, of course,” and the conversation carried on. 45 minutes later my cousin said, “I know you mentioned it earlier, but I didn’t catch it, where do you work?” Again, Mikey’s dad said what sounded like a few letters jumbled together. My cousin said, “I’m sorry, what’d you say?” Mikey’s dad repeated the same letters that still sounded like jibberish to my cousin and I and my cousin said, “Oh, of course” and the conversation continued.

Later that night my cousin asked me if I had any clue where Mikey’s dad worked and I laughed and told him that I had no idea, but that I noticed he did the same exact thing I had done.

A few months later we got the courage to ask Kyle Korver where Mikey’s dad works and his response…UPS. I still call bullshit because it sounded like “GHW” or “FHQ”.


18.) My cousin and I have long been fascinated by poop. In fact, in our freshmen year dorm I had a poster of all of the different kinds of poop that one could have; however one was missing. The just maker. This poop occurs when you feel the rumble in your stomach and you know that a mental ticker has been set off. That thing is counting down, so you better get to a toilet as soon as possible before it goes off. Reaching the toilet just as the poop stats erupting out of your rear end is what we like to call a just maker.

Now a few weekends ago my cousin and I were in Stamford for Kyle Korver’s 25th birthday. The following morning I was driving my cousin back to his car at the Fairfield train station. After housing a bacon, egg, and cheese from the Country Cow Deli we took a little campus tour during which my cousin felt the urge. I quickly sped to where there used to be 15 minute parking, but it had been transformed into a random patch of grass. Instead I looped around and parked in the parking lot outside the campus center. I made it in plenty of time for my cousin, so it doesn’t exactly qualify as a just maker, but I unleashed the fury as well. He thought it was hysterical that I was just like, "Yeah I can squeeze one out too."

The following weekend I was in NYC and I had parked my car at the Fairfield train station. Once I got back to it the next morning I felt the urge and dumped in the same toilet in the campus center that I had dumped in almost exactly one week earlier.


19.) Before my cousin met his beautiful girlfriend the old joke that our housemate Greg started was that if you put blonde hair on a pumpkin my cousin would hook up with it. My cousin soon began to refer to blonde girls that were borderline good looking as pump-i-kans.


20.) During our freshmen year of college I co-hosted a radio show with our friend Robby. We mainly played rock music, but we discussed current events from time to time as well. In February of 2005, Temple men’s basketball coach John Chaney admitted to sending in “a goon” to play rough and rack up fouls in a game against St. Joseph’s. That week on our radio show Tim called in from our dorm room and said that he was calling from the WVOF (our station’s call letters) chopper. He made helicopter sounds and pretending that he was zeroing in on John Chaney’s goon.

For the rest of the year, every time he called in it was from the WVOF chopper.


21.) One day during junior or senior year of college a bunch of people were playing pick up basketball at the Rec Plex. I was waiting to play in the next game while my cousin was already playing. He made two layups that he easily could have dunked and I called him out for it.

“Can you not dunk anymore or something? If I could dunk I’d do it every chance I got.”

So sure enough in the following game his team was beating mine 10-8 and he was on a fast break with me chasing him. He went up presumably to finish the game with a dunk to shut me up and I basically tackled him. He fell to the ground, his nose started bleeding, etc.

Let the record show that this was probably only my 2nd most vicious fast break takedown. Number 1 was on a girl, but that’s a story for another time and another place.


22.) Last year in Chicago a bunch of us were in a bar right outside Wrigley Field that has batting cages in it. After a particularly poor round our buddy Ty starting laying into my cousin (I think he swung and missed on all 10 balls he saw), but my cousin quickly retorted with, "Whatever dude. I can still dunk a basketball."


(Clearly I had no trouble in the cages, but then again I can't dunk)


23.) The year before in Chicago Glancy took us to some place for a roast beef sandwich. Apparently it was something that we had to have. My cousin and I showed up in the second cab, so by the time we got there 4 or 5 guys were already eating. Glancy took it upon himself to order for us and the people making our sandwiches literally placed them in a pan of grease and then put them on a tray for us. My cousin and I proceeded to make jokes about how we wanted our grease sandwiches without the roast beef next time, etc. Glancy said, "You guys are such assholes," and my cousin and I instinctively starting chanting, "Let's go ass-holes, da, da, da da da!"




24.) My cousin and I formed an air band at some point during our senior year of college. He was the ax man, I was the lead singer, and a kid 2 years younger than us was the drummer. Our go to songs, if I remember correctly, were U2- Pride and Joan Jett- I Love Rock and Roll. We only rocked out once or twice, but a year or two after we graduated we each wrote about 5-6 times on our “drummer’s” Facebook wall about getting the band back together.




25.) I've shared this story before, but it's one of my favorites. In February of our senior year my cousin and I went to a Knicks game with his girlfriend and her roommate. My cousin's girlfriend's roommate got us the tickets through her dad and she gladly dropped his credit card for food, beer, etc. The next day my cousin tracked down her father's email address and sent him a message thanking him for the tickets, etc. The email he got back read, "STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!"


26.) During our freshman year of college there was a kid who would randomly dump on our floor's bathroom. My cousin and I dubbed him the phantom shitter and assumed that he must be hooking up with a girl who lived on the other side of the dorm.

I tell you this only because the year after we graduated a bunch of us went out in Stamford and slept at some girl's apartment. When everyone woke up the next morning there was poop chilling in the toilet. The girls obviously tried to pin it on the guys, but when all of the guys were alone at the Stamford train station no one came clean. This, of course, means that a girl was the phantom shitter that night.

Read On

Rarely do I give reading advice or flat out recommend books (I’m not Oprah), but today is your lucky day. Recently I was asked what the best book I have ever read is by my cousin and friend of the blog Kate. To be quite honest, I didn’t know what to say. Although I arrogantly boycotted summer reading in high school I’ve actually read quite a few books in my day. True fans of the blog will know that I am part of a two person book club with my buddy Kyle Korver, who it should be known recently asked to have his name changed to JJ Barea. I wouldn’t say that I’m “well read” (I assume you’ve all heard this term), but I’m better read (not sure if this works) than most people my age despite taking a 10 year hiatus from reading books written by women. How I was unable to answer what seems like such a simple question baffled me.

As I took time to reflect (a grand total of about 10 minutes when I realized that it was the last day in June and I only had a few more hours to post something in order to maintain my 4 posts a month strategy), I realized that I don’t even have any rhyme or reason to how I select books to read. FYI- My cousin Kate reads books that are in the process of becoming movies or TV shows because 1.) If they are making a movie about it the book must be halfway decent and 2.) Books like this (Twilight, My Sister’s Keeper, and The Hunger Games which has been adapted to Game of Thrones on HBO to name a few) often become very popular and if she’s read the book she has a good understanding of why, what the plot is, etc. I usually just browse the Social Sciences or Cultural Studies sections online or at my local Barnes & Noble and hope something catches my eye. When that well runs dry (doesn’t take much) I get into specific genres. I’ll read humor books for a few months, then classics for a few months, followed by a bunch of stunt non-fiction books for a few months.

I also essentially only read before I go to sleep, so I don’t exactly speed through books unless they are absolutely riveting. And unlike movies I no longer feel compelled to plow through an entire book if it doesn’t keep me interested (I’m looking at you Catch-22). So basically I have limited time to read and I occasionally stop reading books altogether. Maybe this was why I couldn’t easily think of the best book I’ve ever read? Or maybe my strict screening process should have led me to an answer more quickly?

Either way, I took the time to craft a list of the top 12 books that I’ve ever read, or so I think. Why 12? Well if I ever do start a book club (0 chance this ever happens) I’d need to at least be able to pick a book for each month of the year. Because that’s how many I thought of.

(in no particular order)

Freakonomics (2005) by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner



I’m pretty sure there have been about 736363 adaptations and re-releases, but I read the original back in 2006 and it was right up my alley. The authors use data to present ideas that seem counterintuitive. For example, more children die each year from backyard pools than having guns in the home, but parents freeeakkk out about guns in the house. Also there’s an entire chapter on the economics of drug dealing which is simply fascinating.


Moneyball (2003) by Michael Lewis



There have been plenty of great baseball books written, but I’m fairly certain that this one is the best. Now it doesn’t deal with the history or prestige of America’s pastime. Rather it looks at how a small market team, the Oakland Athletics, used advanced metrics to compete against teams that had payrolls 5 times the size of theirs. This book is so influential that I just read, I believe in the ESPN book, that business school students at a well renowned university are required to read it. Fun fact- the book is being made into a movie with Brad Pitt playing the lead role of A’s GM Billy Beane.


Prisoner of Trebekistan (2006) by Bob Harris



Obviously this one is for fans of Jeopardy! The book follows the author’s experience with America’s favorite game show from his days as a child to his days as a contestant (they brought him back for many, many tournaments). My favorite part was how he explained how he studied for his first appearance and that he basically just hoped he got the Daily Doubles and bet big because they are relatively easy.


On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac



I really enjoyed On the Road for a few reasons. First, Kerouac wrote it in 3 weeks. It’s hardly edited at all. He just wrote. He was able to do this because it’s largely autobiographical (the names were changed). I also love it because he really captures the spirit of the this growing faction of young Americans that set the stage for the 60s counter culture. They called themselves the Beat generation, or the Lost generation, and were basically a group of incredibly intelligent people who rejected the status quo of society and decided to do want they wanted to do, almost in an epicurean/hedonistic way.


The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) by Alexandre Dumas



Clearly one of my favorites from my classics stage. This novel is one of the best revenge stories ever told. It’s really long, but it’s entertaining all the way through because the suspense of the revenge continues to mount. I lost a lot of sleep reading this book well into the night. I think I’d argue that this book is the greatest thing that has ever come out of the country of France.


Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006) by Chuck Klosterman



I’ve written about this book for 3 months straight now. It’s a collection of Klosterman’s previous articles, so you can open it up to the middle of the book and not miss anything (similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw- more on him in a minute), and he has a bunch of interesting hypothetical questions mixed in in-between chapters. Just read it already.


The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) by Malcolm Gladwell



Gladwell’s writing is very easy to read and at the same time fascinating. The way he sees the world is uncanny. In this particular social science work (my favorite of his) he explains why and how trends, disasters, etc. happen. My favorite point made in the book is the strategy implemented to reduce the crime rate in NYC in the early 90’s ; The Broken Windows Theory. Basically what it means is that if there are broken windows in a building the likelihood of more being broken is high, but if there are no windows broken the less likely someone is to break the first one. The police force implemented this theory by removing all of the graffiti from their subway cars and in their subway stations. Also instead of letting small crimes go, the NYPD cracked down on small crimes like turnbuckle hopping at the subway and ended up catching many people who had outstanding warrants for more serious crimes.


The Kite Runner (2003) by Khaled Hosseini



I’m usually no fan of fiction, but I completely forgot that this book was not a true story until after I was done with it. The writing is incredibly poignant and emotional. I was literally fighting back tears at some points. I will leave it at that. Big thanks to friend of the blog Jaclyn for imploring me to read this incredible book over a year ago.


The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky



I’ll be honest, the first time I tried to read this book I read the first 60 pages and couldn’t get any further. There are a lot of Russian names and it’s hard to figure out who’s who and what’s going on. A year or two later I picked it up and read it from cover to cover. My oldest brother told me that it was one of the best books that he’s ever read and it didn’t disappoint. The book centers around ethics, morals, and faith. In fact, the book has one chapter that’s often regarded as the best proof that God does not exist as well as another chapter that’s often regarded as the best proof that God does exist.


The Happiness Project (2010) by Gretchen Rubin



I’ve written about this book plenty, but in case you are unfamiliar with it this woman spent a year of her life (yes, it’s a stunt non-fiction book) trying to become happier. It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy before it’s just that she thought she could be happier. Each month she focused on a different area of her life (cleaned out her old stuff, got in touch with old friends, worked out more, worked more, etc.) and became a better version of herself. I thought it was very refreshing to know that a re-dedication could make just about anyone feel a whole lot better about themselves.


Tuesday’s with Morrie (1997) by Mitch Albom



I’ve always liked Mitch Albom because I’ve watched him for years on The Sports Reporters on Sunday mornings. The book centers around Albom’s relationship with one of his former college professors who is dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). The two re-connect after a long hiatus and tackle all of life’s most important questions.


Poop Culture (2007) by Dave Praeger



The first words I ever wrote on this blog were “poop is the great equalizer” and that was gleaned from a story from this book. I’m not kidding when I say that this book was very interesting. It gave a brief history of poop (not too expansive where it was boring) and showed how it’s looked at by modern society.

The (Rotten) Fruits of my Labor

I live in West Hartford, which is pretty much the middle of nowhere Connecticut. The best way to describe its location is "in-between Boston and New York City". In fact, most of the people who grew up in this area feel as if the equidistance between the two major cities gives them the right to pick and choose the sports teams that they like. You have New York Jets fans who also like the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots fans who also root for the New York Rangers, etc. Quite frankly I find the whole notion despicable. You can't have it both ways. You need to pick one city and root for its teams. I mean, hell, Boston and New York are rivals in just about every sport.

I tell you this because, as a West Hartford resident, I have taken this liberty, but in a way that only marginally deals with sports. As many of you know I received my highest form of education at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT, which is closer to New York than Boston, but a lot of kids from the surrounding Boston area go there. As a senior (junior? I'm not really sure. I'm getting old) in college many of my classmates began reading a Boston based website called barstoolsports.com. Despite the almost unbearable slant to Boston's professional sports teams it was a great website because of its largely male humor, pictures of hot chicks, relevant sports talk, gambling advice, etc.

In fact, the website became increasingly popular when one of our female classmates was featured as the bartender/model of the month. There was an interview, a bunch of racy pictures, and a video of the photo shoot set to the tune of the John Fogerty classic "Center Field" (I dare you to find a male from the Fairfield class of '08 that hears that song and doesn't think about this girl).

Quick sidenote- God bless Google for making those links so easy to find.

Not so quick sidenote- During my freshman year my buddy Robby and I co-hosted the best radio show in WVOF history. The station was located on the bottom floor of the campus center and right outside of it was a lounge area with chairs, couches, etc. Whatever was said on the radio was sent out not only on the airwaves, but also through a speaker directly outside the station (in the lounge area), but the volume was usually turned all the way down because people did their homework in this lounge area.

Well during one now infamous show this girl that was the bartender/model of the month for barstoolsports.com was sitting in a chair right outside the radio station and if memory serves she was looking particularly seductive. Sitting with her were two other complete smokehouses that were also in our grade. I forget how it happened exactly, but Robby or I must have briefly stumbled while trying to express some groundbreaking thought and when we were called on it (probably by Kyle Korver, who routinely sat in as our guest for hours at a time) we said something to the effect of how it was hard to focus when there were three incredibly hot girls sitting outside of the radio station (I probably should have mentioned this already, but the wall separating the station and the lounge area was made of glass). This (justified) excuse soon led to a little back and forth about how hot these girls were. As this was going on the future bartender/model of the month casually put her pen in her mouth, like most people do when they are trying to think of something. Well because radio is not a visual medium I, being the great broadcaster that I was, described the act by saying, "Oh my God...she just put her pen in her mouth. Her pen is now in her mouth."

Evidently the sound on the speakers wasn't turned all the way down that day because about 7 seconds after I made that comment (we broadcasted on delay in case anyone swore, etc.) all three girls turned and looked through the glass at Robby, Kyle Korver, and I. We quickly threw to our next song, but the awkwardness/embarassment level was at an all time high.

So a few years ago the barstoolsports empire expanded to New York and I have read both sites routinely ever since with the justification that I live directly in-between both cities. It has since expanded to Philadelphia and a site aimed at kids currently in college, but I don't read those.

Well this past Wednesday Barstool posted the following article that was written in the Fairfield student newspaper (The Mirror- which is a terrible way of signifying that the articles printed are a reflection of the student body as a whole. It should be noted that Fairfield annually ranks in the top five of “Most Homogenous Student Bodies” in all of those college review books because the student body is 88% white).

Barstool Sports.

Guys (dare I say gentlemen?) of Fairfield, please don’t tell me that your lives are so devoid of entertainment that you have to resort to staring at women whom you will never get anywhere near. And ladies, if you’ve just had a fight with your best friend, or you didn’t get that job you wanted, or you are feeling upset and/or suicidal and/or less than downright chipper in any way, DO NOT CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE. Let’s make a website that makes women exploit themselves on the Internet so that guys can ogle for hours in front of the computer screen over strategically posed women and so girls can feel thoroughly insignificant despite their perfectly beautiful appearances. Yay! By the way, the tagline for Barstool Sports: “By the common man, for the common man.” How about, “By the desperate, unloved man, for the brainless, idiotic, male-chauvinistic, equally desperate and unloved man?” Yeah, I think that works. Of course, a few more profanities come to mind, but I don’t necessarily think they’re Stag-approved.

Naturally the Barstool writers ripped the girl that wrote this article to shreds, but I was none to pleased to see the article coming from my alma mater in the first place (someone tweeted me the link and someone else posted it on my Facebook wall). Seeing it caused me to feel slightly guilty because I know that I am least partially responsible for transforming Fairfield into a breeding ground for feminist idealogues.

As many of you know I wrote a gender driven weekly column for The Mirror as a senior at Fairfield. The roots of my egomaniacal, pompous, male chauvinist writing style trace back to this role (they actually can be traced a little further back, but who really cares that much?) My, for lack of a better term, incendiary writing caused a minor uproar on campus virtually from the get go. Shortly thereafter a class on feminist idealogy (I just threw up in my mouth as I typed that) devoted entire classes to dissecting my column. They even wrote an editorial to address the "hate speech" that they claimed I had used. I was asked and gladly attended a class on Race, Gender, and Ethics with my female editor to defend my column. As the weeks went on Facebook groups formed, letters to the editor came pouring in, and a new female group on campus, called "The Vagina Warriors" (I wish I was making this up), was formed.

The year after I graduated, as I was told by my former News Writing teacher, a new clause was added to the student handbook to address "hate speech". According to her, this was a direct result of my column. Probably because my shoes were too big to fill (that's just my ego talking) some twat took over my column and was neither funny nor controversial. The next year, though, a kid re-ignited the spark that I had lit and actually forced the administration to do away with the column altogether. A few females claimed sexual harassment (thanks to that new clause in the handbook) and after a little back and forth between the administration that was that. Quite frankly I thought this kid was writing specifically to stir up controversy (whereas I was writing to make guys laugh and my writing just so happened to incite females) and that he wasn't a good writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the uproar he caused far outweighed whatever I did back in '07-'08.

To deny that this recent feminist outcry is at least partially a byproduct of what I unintentionally started is simply inaccurate. It pains me to know that this army of femi-nazis is now part of my legacy (if you could even call it that).