MichaelLortz.com/JordiScrubbings.com

(Originally posted on ScalpEm.com)

As you are probably well aware, “National Signing Day” is this Wednesday. That is the day colleges nationwide find out which current high school football players will join their program in the fall.

Everyone has their opinions on National Signing Day. Many don’t like it. Others think it is a great day to celebrate the future of their favorite programs. Others talk about it out of necessity. Although I personally don’t follow National Signing Day, I don’t pass judgment. In the big picture, people who celebrate the signing of 17-year old super prospects aren’t half as creepy as the people who rate, rank, and write about teen beauty pageants. That’s my 2 cents.

Anyway, when the year’s hype surrounding Signing Day started to surface (check out all my alliteration!), I thought to myself, “What if military recruiting was followed as closely as college recruiting?”

(Yes, this coming from the same person who thought there should be a National Job Draft after every college semester ends.)

Think of the possibilities:

We could create a “National Military Signing Day”, one day where recruits around the country pick their service, their job, and sign on the dotted line. All the recruiting, cajoling, convincing, and selling Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard recruiters do all year-round would pay off on one day.

The military would eat this up. It would be great for public relations. It would put the armed services in the spotlight and better portray them as “cool” alternatives to enrolling in college. Their recruiters could also get a bit of recognition for the work they do, receiving accolades for the amount of 3, 4, or 5-star recruits they bring in.

Not only would the military benefit, but the media would have a field day. The news outlets could report some of the better signings and the Military Channel could dedicate an entire day to the event. It would create a whole new field of analysts and experts.

Imagine the possibilities for insight:

“Well, John Doe is considering an eight-year Army Intelligence deal or the six-year Navy Nuclear Program. With his 129 IQ and incredibly high test scores, he would be a boon for both services. I know both sent in increased recruiting support, to include a visit from Army Retired General Tommy Franks.”

“Jimmy won three Golden Gloves and was on the high school football team. With the Army looking hard for infantry this year, he would be a great pick up. Unless the Marines swoop in with a better last minute offer.”

I bet there would even be websites dedicated to following potential recruits.

Best of all, it would allow us to nationally recognize all of those who are about to put their lives on the line for us. And I’m sure every one would agree that would be a good thing.

I was lucky enough to be caught at a Subway in South Tampa when the President’s motorcade drove by. One viewer said there were 38 motorcycles.

If the sound was better, you could hear the lady at the end say something to the effect of “Why do they need such a big escort for one man?”

I thought that was pretty funny.

This is sort of a follow-up post to one I wrote a few weeks ago on the growing amount of to-do lists I have in my apartment.

One of the guilt trips I often face is that I don’t think I clean my place frequently enough. When I was growing up, my mother would clean the whole house every Sunday. Like Mr. Clean meets the Tasmanian Devil, she would whip through four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, and kitchen like she was on a mission from God. A mission to annihilate all dust, dirt, and dog hair from the face of the planet Earth, or at least her house. Sure, I’d help her out at times, by vacuuming my own room and maybe even cleaning my bathroom, but that just meant she had time to juggle a load of laundry or two while cleaning.

Since I’ve been in my own place, sans roommate, since 2003, I’ve assumed the role of chief, cook, and apartment cleaner. Although being chief of my place is simple enough, the other two roles have been a work in progress. While I am slowly but surely cultivating my culinary competence, my cleaning capability still has much to be desired. At least by the standards my mother instilled in me.

(Good thing she is scared of heights and I live on the third floor of my complex!)

So in order to make myself feel less guilty for not scrubbing the bejesus out my apartment every weekend, I’ve convinced myself I don’t have to. First of all, it is only me in the place. How dirty can I possibly make the carpet in a room in rarely go in? Why clean a tub I never use? And why clean when I can go out?

Now I’m not saying my apartment is nasty. Far, far, far from it. I like to think on the average bachelor scale, I’m in the middle, leaning toward the above-average percentile. Not quite the epitome of order and neatliness, but far from your average frat house or male-dominate college apartment (seriously, I have a friend whose college apartment had a bag of another dude’s hair nailed to the ceiling, a sink full of dirty pots and pans, and the crusted remnants of a thrown chocolate cake smeared on his living room wall).

But here is my dilemma: I live in a nearly 1000sq ft apartment. If I were to clean the whole thing, wall-to-wall, top-to-bottom, inside and out, how long would that take? Three hours? Six? Maybe 12? I have psychological hang-up due the potential time commitment.

What I need to do is find my Effective Cleanliness Range (ECR) and then plan my cleaning accordingly. For example, if it takes 5 hours to do 1000sq ft, that’s 200sq ft per hour. That’s my ECR.

Since I can’t change my ECR without reducing the quality of the clean (can’t do that!), maybe I could change the time spent cleaning. I could clean an hour a day, perhaps after work in the evening. But I know that won’t happen. If I was disciplined enough to do something for an hour a day after work, I would be at the gym working out – something I haven’t been dedicated to in the last year.

So here is another thought: what if I moved to a smaller apartment? Using the same ECR (200sqft/hr), I could obviously clean a smaller apartment faster. Something to think about.

Another thing to think about is the fact that one day I hope to buy my own house, condo, or townhome. Again assuming it is just me and I don’t have any roommates, and my Russian mail order bride has not yet arrived, what is the breaking point at which my ECR would be insufficient to clean the whole place in a week? That would be my Maximum Effective Cleanliness Range (MECR).

Since I’m at work for 40 hours a week and asleep for roughly 42 hours a week (6×7), that leaves 86 hours to get my clean on. Add in the “getting ready for work” time (10 hours a week), the driving to and from work (another 10), and the time needed for food in and food out (10 hours a week)  and I’m down to 56 hours.

If I kept up my ECR of 200sq ft per hour, my MECR could feasibly be 11,000sq feet before cleaning overwhelmed my need to eat, sleep, or work. That is one big house. Of course, keeping that house at level of cleanliness would completely eliminate my ability to get my boogie on.

And we can’t have that.

You know, instead of moving, maybe I should stay where I’m at, stop writing, stop figuring out inane formulas, and actually start vacuuming. Especially on Sundays.

My mom would prefer it that way.

(Like many artists, writers, and creative geniuses, I have tons of unpublished material filling up binders, boxes, folders, and file cabinets. These vary from ideas to notions to poems to half-written stories. Every once in a while, I’m going to dust one off and publish it here. This was a story I wrote for a school writing class. Back then, I excelled in self-depreciating prose. And yes, it is vague and I removed names to protect the innocent. Hey, I don’t want to get sued or anything.)

There she was.  The kind of girl a guy like me had no chance with.  I knew my place.  I was neither my high school’s star quarterback nor its ace pitcher.  I was more along the lines of the guy who got sand kicked in his face by some muscular guy when at the beach.  As a matter of fact, I avoided the beach.  I stopped going there after I had gotten so burnt I couldn’t sleep for a week.  But that’s beside the point.

How did a social simpleton like me get so lucky as to sit in front of a girl as beautiful as her?  I shouldn’t lie, the teacher sat us in alphabetical order and her last name began with the late before mine.  But who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth?  Here was my chance to be the man.  To be the type of guy other guys look at and ask, “How did a guy like that get with a girl like that?”

Let me take a moment to describe this young goddess.  She was tall, not eight feet tall or anything, but taller than the average 17-year old girl.  She had long blond hair and beautiful blue eyes.  She was on the school cheerleading squad but seemed not to share the stuck up attitude of her squad mates.  She was near perfect.

It took me about two weeks to muster up enough courage to say hi to her.  Surprisingly, she said hi back.  Slowly but surely I started talking to her more and more.  Our class was often broken up into groups, and we would always work together.  Not only was she beautiful, but I found out she was also very intelligent.

She and I started becoming pretty good friends as the semester progressed.  One day that continues to stand out in my memory was when she showed me her newly acquired belly button ring.  Being it was 1994 and several years before Britney Spears or Shania Twain brought fame to the midriff, her stomach was one of the sexiest things I had ever seen.  I felt so privileged.  Maybe she liked me.

I never took advantage of my in-class friendship with my new cheerleader friend.  I didn’t talk to her outside of class and even though I knew where she worked, I never paid her a visit.  I was too scared.  Finally, I had the notion to ask her for her number.

If it took me two weeks to say hello to her, it must have taken a month for me to get enough courage to ask her for her number.  After we took our last test of the semester, but before the week of our final exam, I waited for her outside of class.  I talked to her all the way to her locker.  I was so nervous.  Then I said it, “Hey, I was wondering if you would be interested in talking to me away from school?”

“Sure,” she said, “let me give you my number.”

What followed was possibly the happiest moment of my teenage, high school years.  I, by no means the most popular person in my high school, had a popular, beautiful, cheerleader’s number.  It was a victory for non-studs everywhere.

Even with my complete inexperience with girls, I knew I could not call her that night, or even the next day.  I did, however, bring my yearbook to our last class.  She signed it, writing, “I am glad I got to know you.  You are really sweet and made class a little bit better.  As good as it could have possibly been.  Have fun this summer and next year.  Maybe I’ll see you.  Stay as sweet as you are now.  Love, X.”

(Ed. Of course, she didn’t sign it “X”, as that would be weird. She put her real name thankfully.)

A few nights later I decided to call.  Again nervousness seized my body.  I could barely push the numbers on the phone.  I completed her number and waited for her to answer.  One ring, two rings, three- my nervousness was increasing exponentially- four, five rings.  Finally, a machine picked up.  It was not her voice.  It wasn’t even a family member’s voice.  It was a message for a company I had never heard of.  I was crushed.

I never did see my beautiful cheerleader friend again and although I have had my share of rejections (and successes) in the years since, few girls have put me on such an emotional roller coaster.  She is responsible for both the best and worst day of my high school years.

The bitch.

(Like many artists, writers, and creative geniuses, I have tons of unpublished material filling up binders, boxes, folders, and file cabinets. These vary from ideas to notions to poems to half-written stories. Every once in a while, I’m going to dust one off and publish it here. Here is a poem about the name “Jordi Scrubbings”.)

I created my alias in January 1999.

Jordi from that little French baby

who appeared on MTV in the early 90s.

Scrubbings from Dick Scrubbings,

a guy my friend Chris played in a talk-show we made.

Jordi became a character in a home movie as well.

Flash vs. The Aliens: The Earlier Adventures of Flash Hercules (coming soon)

Together Jordi and Flash (again played by Chris)

worked for ANUS

(the Alien Neutralizing Underground Society).

Protecting the world from the Hartoonians and ANAL

(the Anti-Neutralizing Alien League)

and their attempt at planetary takeover.

Now Jordi is my online persona.

An instant message screen name

and a From label on outgoing emails.

Most of my friends know its me,

but Amazon, Yahoo, Google, and the world have no clue.

The other day Jordi talked a little trash

to my 15-year old cousin.

He had no clue who it was

and called me a faggot.

I told him if he knew who he was talking to

he wouldn’t have said that.

Then I told him to tell his mom I said hi.

Way back in the day, when I could have had it my way, before I did marches, I worked for the golden arches.

That’s right, my first job was flipping burgers and slinging McMuffins at Mickey D’s. I did that gig during my senior year of high school before I decided to be all I could be.

Outside of the fact that I sometimes got food for free, working at McDonald’s pretty much stunk. Although I didn’t mind coming home smelling like onions and mustard a few times a week, and finally making more than my parents’ allowance was a good thing, my beef (get it? ha ha) was that I was never on a consistent schedule. Depending on the manager, sometimes I worked 25 hours a week, sometimes four. Good thing I didn’t need much cash, because I couldn’t even afford to pay attention.

Even though it has been nearly 15 years since I was in the food business, it might be time to reacquaint myself with some culinary skills. According to an article on the Telegraph.co.uk website, Italian scientists are primed and ready to do some genetic manipulating and bring back an ancient species of cattle called the Auroch that “weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder”.

That’s a lot of burgers.

(P.S. Oddly, for whatever reason, the Nazis also tried to bring back the Auroch back in the 1930s.)

(P.P.S. If the farts of regular-sized cows are supposed to be bad for the environment, wouldn’t Auroch farts be worse? Wouldn’t their farts be larger and more powerful? Is the payoff of more plentiful burgers and steaks worth destroying the environment?)

(P.P.P.S. I say yes.)

I’m late on this, I’ll admit. While other blogs had their “best of” lists out just after Christmas, I waited to see if Santa Claus would bring me the music I wanted. Sure enough, two of the top five were Christmas presents. One, however, I just bought a week ago and because I hadn’t done this list yet, I figured I would throw it in at number 10.

And so, without further ado, here is the Jordi Scrubbings’ Top Ten Albums of 2009.

By the way, here are numbers 11-20:

• Enter the 37th Chamber – El Michels Affair
• The Devil You Know – Heaven and Hell
• Wu-Tang Meets Indie Culture Vol 2 – Enter the Dubstep
• Everyday Demons – The Answer
• Street Sweeper Social Club
• Blackout 2! – Method Man and Redman
• Let’s Do It Again – Leela James
• Escape 2 Mars – Gift of Gab
• Lipstick on the Mirror – Pop Evil
• Dearest Darlin’ – Jenni Muldaur

Last week, the folks over at the absolutely brilliant Wezen-Ball wrote one of the greatest sports blog posts of all-time. In what could only be called a genius notion, they decided to cull through 20 years of Charlie Brown baseball comic strips and see what stats they could find. According to Larry Granillo, the author of the post,

Granted, they aren’t going to be pretty, but someone should find the answer to the questions: how many games did Charlie Brown’s team lose? how many did they win? how many times did Charlie Brown get knocked over by a line-drive? and so on…

And that he did. In Part 1, Granillo looked at every game from 1951 to 1960. Let’s just say the numbers aren’t good.

In Part 2, Granillo examines the Peanuts gang’s diamond exploits from 1961 to 1970. Charlie Brown and company get slightly better in their second decade, but not by much.

Admittedly, Granillo’s examination of Charlie Brown’s baseball stats may be overkill for some. Some might say analysis like that sucks the fun out of a light-hearted comic strip about and made for kids.

But like I said, I think it’s genius.

The Wezen-Ball – Charlie Brown post reminded me of another absolutely brilliant post on a baseball playing cartoon character. Back in 2006, Derek Zumsteg of the blog U.S.S. Mariner dissected the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon “Baseball Bugs“. Zumsteg, a noted baseball analyst, broke down Bugs’ performance on the field so thoroughly, he even calculated where and when Bugs uses super-rabbit skills. When describing Bugs’ ability to not only throw a pitch, but to race behind home plate and catch it, Zumsteg writes,

Therefore, he throws the pitch in the air at about 44mph and possibly quite slightly towards home. In the time the toss gives him behind the plate, he begins to chatter. In his three seconds of yelling, he’s able to cause the ball to accelerate extremely fast. We can estimate the speed of the ball given the force applied to Bugs while catching it. If, as seems reasonable, we figure he weighs 80lbs, the force to throw him directly into the backstop and do significant structural damage to that backstop can be estimated (“Estimation of pitch speed through re-creation of secondary observations using weighted mannequin and riot suppresion weapons,” Zumsteg, 2004). We are able to figure that the pitch was traveling at least 150mph and possibly much faster.

Needless to say, Zumsteg’s post is not for those who like to keep their humor and science separate.

Although Zumsteg’s and Granillo’s posts share similar subjects, they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Granillo wrote about 20 years of games in sweeping generalities littered with assumptions, Zumsteg had one game with a final score and recorded footage of performances, processes, and methodologies. Despite their differences, as a fan of baseball and of cartoons, I think they are two of the best sports blogs ever written.

(This post is similar but opposite to my post a few weeks ago on The Effect of the New Economy on Foreign Baseball Players. Whereas that one discussed teams changing their budgets and how it is effecting the acquisition of baseball players, this post will talk about my fantasy of leaving America to compete in a professional athletic organization.)

I have always had a fascination with being an American-born athlete in a foreign country. Back in 2007, when I was writing for the YAYSports basketball site, I wondered if I had what it takes to play basketball in Iceland. Then, on TheSeriousTip.com in 2008, I wrote about Chris Jefferies, a former Washington University of St. Louis basketball player who was playing ball in Argentina.

Maybe if I made it on a foreign basketball team, I could ball with some of the FSU hoops players I used to watch live when I was in school, guys like Jason Rich and Isaiah Swann, both of whom are playing in Israel, or Nigel “Big Jelly” Dixon, who is hooping it up in South Korea. How cool would be to live the life of professional basketball vagabond Paul Shirley, whose book “Can I Keep My Jersey?” has been recommended to me on numerous occasions (one of these days I will read it, I promise).

(By the way, a post I wrote on Nigel Dixon’s career up to 2007 was one of my more popular early posts. What can I say? The people loved the Big Jelly.)

Not only am I not the world’s best hoopster (hoopist? hoopineer?), but according to a recent report on ESPN’s True Hoop blog, it may be tough to pay the bills while playing international basketball. Apparently, several former NBA players, to include Damon Jones, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, and Travis Best, have openly stated that they haven’t been financially compensated on a regular basis.

This experience has become a fairly common one for NBA players who have been lured to Europe with lucrative contracts. Nenad Krstic and Jannero Pargo were among the players who returned to the NBA last season after not receiving payments from their European clubs.

Since I have bills to pay, basketball might not be the best way to fulfill my international athletic dreams. Not getting paid is not my thing.

What about other sports?

Even though my tryout with the Atlanta Braves back in 2001 didn’t go as planned, I still think I have a shot at being a professional baseball player. According to baseball-links.com, there are leagues in 38 nations. Remember Brandon Fraser in The Scout or Tom Selleck in Mr. Baseball? That could be me. I could be the next Tuffy Rhodes.

(Ironic tidbit about Rhodes: although he hit 477 home runs and is an all-time superstar in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league, he is probably best known in the states for hitting only three. On his amazing opening day in 1994, off the Mets’ Dwight Gooden, Rhodes hit three homers, setting a record as the only Major League Baseball player to hit three HRs in his first three at-bats of the season. Unfortunately, he hit only 10 more in his six years in the bigs.)

Of course, if the international baseball thing doesn’t pay out – after all, if stateside teams aren’t exactly opening the coffers for a 32-year old lefty pitcher who couldn’t hit 70mph on the radar gun nine years ago, why should I expect an international team to? – I could try another venture.  As Jack Black showed in the classic cinematic masterpiece Nacho Libre, pro wrestling is quite the phenomenon outside of the US. According to the almighty Wiki, there are dozens of organizations in faraway lands such as Japan, Bolivia, Mexico, Australia, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand.

Unfortunately, despite my pro wrestling fandom and “involvement” as a self-proclaimed superfan, I have no clue what to do in the ring. As a matter of fact, I have been in the ring a grand total of one time. A few years ago, when my curiosity into professional wrestling was slowly surfacing, I took up an invite to visit a couple of pro wrestlers during a training session. After they were done throwing each other around and exchanging grapples, they invited me into the ring.  Not only did I climb into the ring awkwardly, but everything I did was goofy. Needless to say, I got out before I got hurt.

You know, maybe I should reconsider this international athlete idea. Maybe I need to find something a little less physically demanding.

Do they play skeeball in other countries? I do like skeeball.

It’s been a good fortnight. First, I was linked to on ESPN.com regarding my post on the NRA and pro sports. Then, Rays Index.com linked to my post comparing their web traffic to MetsBlog.com. Now an article I wrote on the use of Social Media in the Pro Wrestling business was published on the website Online World of Wrestling. It is the number one google search result for “indy wrestling social media” and the number five search result for “pro wrestling social media”.

Check it out: “Indy Wrestlers: Social Media & Self-Promotion“.