Mar 12

Bugs Bunny’s hardcore title match

By Jordi Scrubbings Cartoons, Memories, Pro Wrestling, Uncategorized No Comments »

I recently bought my second Looney Tunes box set packed to the brim with 60 more cartoon classics.

I busted it open last weekend and have been watching a cartoon a day, usually in the morning when I eat my Cap’n Crunch. It’s my way of making every morning an old-fashioned Saturday morning. Back when it was cool to wake up early, sit in front of the TV, munch on Crunch Berries, and watch cartoons.

Those were the days.

Before responsibilities. Before bills. Before work. Before The Man.

Anyway, today’s cartoon was appropriately fitting after my last post.

Bugs Bunny in Bunny Hugged:

Do you think Bugs Bunny could beat the Iron Sheik?

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Mar 02

WWE’s Tiffany, the Rays, Canada, Roger Ebert, and words that inspired me

By Jordi Scrubbings Afro-Squad, Baseball, Links, Memories, Philosophical, Pro Wrestling, Tampa Bay Rays 2 Comments »

While I type away furiously on a 1,000 word epic two years in the making, I wanted to post a few links pertinent to the site.

Over on YouTube, the SnowMan of Wrestling911.com posted a video of the day I met WWE Diva Tiffany.

(By the way, did you know Tiffany was a vegan? She made PETA’s list of Sexiest Vegetarians of 2009. Personally, I don’t think I could date a woman who didn’t like BBQ, even it meant ruining my chances with Kaley Cuoco, Natalie Portman, and Carrie Underwood. Sorry, ladies.)

In other news, RaysIndex pointed out that Rays pitcher James Shields is sporting the ‘fro these days. In honor of James’s admission into the ‘Squad, we shall have a ceremony with chips, dip, punch, and pie.

(Hard to believe the South Park Movie is over 10 years old. Wow. It’s like the Canadians have really rehab’ed their image. From being the birthplace of Terrance and Phillip to hosting the Olympics. I’m proud of them. And it’s good to know they have forgiven America for invading their capital city of Toronto.)

Oh, and if you want to read something actually well-written, swing on by Deadspin.com and read Will Leitch’s post on film critic Roger Ebert. It’s about a young writer and his idol.

Leitch’s story reminds me of a similar, albeit much shorter, tale from my own early writing days. When I was in college, and just starting to understand how to write, I emailed columnist Leonard Pitts in response to an article he wrote about the mother of Emmitt Till, a young black man whose death was a key point in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. I thought Pitts’s article was so well done I had to ask him how I could write like that and how maybe one day I could have my own general interest column.

Although I think his assistant sent a canned response, Mr. Pitts’s advice was some of the best I ever received – actually, it may have been the only advice I ever received on the art of writing. Anyway, here is what he wrote:

As for advice…practice your craft.  Then practice it some more.  After
you’re done with that, take a little more time and practice. This is the
only sure route to learning your craft.

There is, in other words, no trick, secret, or magic formula that will make
you good.  Unfortunately for them, most writers are very good at finding
excuses not to write.  This is because writing is not enjoyable.  As some
sage once put it: “Writing is not fun.  Having written is.”

So what is required of the would-be writer is that he or she first develop
the discipline to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and
start putting words down on the screen.  You will be awful at first, then a
little better.  In time, perhaps, you will become good.  And sometime after
that, assuming you possess the basic gifts for it, you will become great.

Time not spent writing should be spent reading.  Read constantly and
promiscuously.  Read writers whose work you admire and try to figure out how
they do what they do and what it is in their work that makes it achieve
whatever effect it does.  Read writers whose work you dislike and try to
figure out what they’re doing wrong so that you can avoid making the same
mistakes.

Also: It’s important to invest in the tools of your craft.  In making an
investment, you prove – to others and, more importantly, to yourself – that
you are serious about this thing.  To that end, you need a workspace -
doesn’t have to be fancy, but it ought to be yours and accessible to you on
a regular basis.  You need a word processor or computer; a good dictionary,
an almanac, a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and a thesaurus.
You need a copy of Writer’s Market, which is a directory of magazine
publishers.  It lists the kind of material they’re looking for, the contact
persons and the prices they pay.  Also, get yourself a subscription to
Writer’s Digest; it’s a monthly magazine that deals with the craft of
writing, but also the business of it.  The magazine provides a great crash
course for young writers.

Finally, assuming you have any cash left over, you might want to pick up a
copy of Stephen King’s On Writing.  It’s a memoir of the craft that I found
inspirational and instructive.

I still haven’t picked up that Stephen King book yet. I might want to do that.

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Feb 17

Verbosely Voluptuous or Voluptuously Verbose

By Jordi Scrubbings Memories No Comments »

I don’t know why, but this incident popped into my head a few weeks ago, and I thought it would make a good story here.

FREE SPEECH is VoluptuousWay, way, way back when I was in high school, before Tampa, before Florida State, before the Army, before the dark times, and before the Empire, I was a bit awkward. Although most people would say that is true of everyone at that age, I was teenage awkward beyond teenage awkward. I was 6′0-plus and rail thin, with a surfer haircut and a White Sox hat. I could quote Ol’ Dirty Bastard lyrics and Star Wars trivia, and then tell you what former Met third baseman Howard Johnson’s batting average was in 1989 (.287).

(Nowadays many of these traits are admirable and add to a person’s charm, but back then they were just geeky. Except for the surfer cut and the Sox hat, those are still bad choices.)

Adding to my many high school era personality quirks and fashion fas pauxs were also a few unfortunate flubs. In ninth grade, for example, I got in a fight and was hit in the mouth with a t-square drafting tool. I needed ten stitches after spitting blood all over my teacher’s desk. That was not fun.

On the more humorous side, my proclivity for gaffs was raised to another level during a 12th grade English class. One day, for a reason I do not remember, the student sitting in front of me in English class was perusing a dictionary and looking up words that start with “V”.

To this day, I am not sure why, but this kid was one of the smartest in the school and now, according to his Facebook page, has his Ph.D, so who am I to question early academic inquiry.

After asking the young genius what he was doing, we started comparing our knowledge of multi-syllabic “v-words”, to include the word “voluptuous” – meaning, among other things, “suggesting sensual pleasure by fullness and beauty of form“. A few minutes later, as we continued talking “V”s, he dared me to call our sometimes long-winded teacher “verbose” – meaning “given to wordiness“. Probably not the smartest thing to call a teacher, but I took up the dare.

Unfortunately, when I finally did get the teacher’s attention, the synapses and neurons I had misfiring in my teenage brain that day didn’t quite get the words right. Instead of telling the teacher he was very verbose, I told him he was very voluptuous.

Oops.

I’ll never forget his response. Without missing a beat, he looked at me, put his hands on his hips, struck a faux Marilyn Monroe pose, and said “Thank you.”

Realizing my blunder, I stuttered, “I-I-I meant verbose.”

“Are you saying I talk too much?”, he asked.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I tried to explain the whole dictionary, smart kid, and letter “V” situation. I’m not quite sure I succeeded before the bell rang to change classrooms. Saved by the bell.

Although I was initially embarrassed, I was able to laugh off my “voluptuous” blunder. I was even bold enough to give the same teacher the same pseudo-compliment on my final day as a high school student. On graduation day, as I was walking across the graduation stage, high school diploma in hand, I saw my English teacher waiting at the bottom of the stage steps congratulating every student for their effort. When it came my turn, I shook his hand and without missing a beat, said “Looking very voluptuous today. Oops, I mean verbose.”

He looked at me and laughed.

He probably thought I was a little weird.

Glad I outgrew that perception.

(Picture acquired from the blog Poetency & Apoetasy.)

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Feb 10

My time on wire and Lil Wayne’s preferential dental delay

By Jordi Scrubbings Health, Hip-Hop, Legal, Memories No Comments »

thedentistI don’t know how true this is, but according to the Weekly World News (and confirmed on MSNBC), rap uber-star Lil Wayne is having his prison sentence delayed until after he gets “necessary dental treatment”.

What, did the gold in his mouth turn his gums green?

More moons ago than I would like to count, I had quite a bit of dental work done. I had braces, an array of retainers, my wisdom teeth and four others removed, and then braces again. For lack of a better term, my teenage years were a trial in orthodontics.

Even right before I left for the Army, I was, as we say around the way, “on wire”. I remember the day we told my orthodontist that the braces had to go. He was not a happy camper. He had plans for me. Plans that included additional oral surgery (the recommended surgeon told us he wanted to break my jaw in four pieces and then reassemble it!)  and two more rounds of braces. This at a cost of well over 15,000 dollars.

Of course, before we resigned from his orthopedic adventure, he and his cabal warned me. They warned me that if not in a few years, then definitely when I was in my 20s the back of my jaw would start clicking against itself. Then it would be painful to eat. Then, who knows, maybe my jaw would fall off.

Not only did their premonition not come true when I was in the Army, but 11 years later, my jaw is still fine. No clicking. No clacking. No grinding. No pain.

Hear that, Lil Wayne? I didn’t delay my commitments. I took my chances.

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Jan 26

What is the maximum effective cleanliness range of a bachelor?

By Jordi Scrubbings Family, Memories, Musings No Comments »

bachelors-dirty-room-02This 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.

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Jan 24

The Cheerleader’s Number

By Jordi Scrubbings Memories 13 Comments »

(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.)

yunioshi4qtThere 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.

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Jan 22

Jordi’s Auroch Burgers Coming Soon

By Jordi Scrubbings Business, Food, Memories No Comments »

Auroch fighting WolvesWay 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.)

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Dec 22

A Metal Tribute to the Darkest Day of the Year

By Jordi Scrubbings Memories, Metal, Music 1 Comment »

Once again, as it happens every year, the Winter Solstice was upon us. And with the Winter Solstice comes darkness. Deep, foreboding, unforgiving darkness that swallows the very soul of the Earth.

Monday was the night of the nocturnal. When those who despise the light run longest. And in honor of these creatures, it is time to make another trip into the Encyclopaedia Metallum – the most comprehensive  online encyclopedia of heavy metal bands on the Web.

During my first journey into the Encyclopaedia back in early 2007, I found such great bands as Carnivorous Vagina, Nembrionic Hammerdeath, Abwhore, Godwaffle, and the amazingly named Grandma’s Vomit. This time, in celebration of the solstice, I will look only in the most black, deepest, darkest corners of the Encyclopaedia Metallum and see what I can find.

I begin my journey with German death/black/grindcore band Lifelong Virginity. I get the feeling these guys were probably going for a religious themed name, but I bet they got picked on a lot with this name. Who would want to be in a band named after the fact that you are not scoring? Could a name be any more groupie repelling? Had they named it something more dominant, such as Penis Hammer, they might have had a better chance with the ladies. But with a name like Lifelong Virginity, no matter how popular they get (or got, as they broke up in 2003), they were doomed to be a reflection of their band.

cult of feyNext is the Cult of Fey, a melodic death medal band from the hinterland of Germany. For some reason, I was fully expecting the Cult of Fey to be a parody band or a tribute to Tina Fey, but alas they are indeed real. Unfortunately, their myspace page is in German, so I have no idea who they are or what they are all about. But I am confident they don’t care about Tina at all. No 30 Rock for them.

As many can attest, metal musicians love naming their bands after illnesses, maladies, diseases, and feelings of general pain and suffering. Yet the Finnish melodic black metal band Dehydrated takes that idea to an unreachable level. We’ve all been thirsty, and it sucks.

Last, but certainly not least, we have the Finnish Black/Death metal band Dodge of Death. There isn’t much on these guys on Encyclopaedia Metallum and only pieces of their old website are available through the Wayback Machine. From what I can ascertain, they released a demo in 2003 and then vanished. The demo was ok, from the translation I received from this review.

I must admit, the reason I like the name Dodge of Death is because it reminds me of my first car, a beat-up, piece of crap 1987 Dodge Omni.  To be perfectly honest, back in my early years,  I wasn’t the best driver around. People would often joke that I should have kept life insurance forms in my glove compartment. Even though the Omni was a small car, I still jumped curbs, tried to race Camaros, and even attempted to drive through flooded streets after a major hurricane. Had I thought of the name Dodge of Death, it would have been a perfect fit.

omni

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Dec 01

The Four Foot Friends

By Jordi Scrubbings Memories, School, Television No Comments »

Giant_MidgetWay back in my college days, I took several communications classes. Most of these were good-to-know type stuff – studies on media, advertising, and the like. One, however, was just plain terrible. This course was by far the worst class I took in my five years at Florida State. It’s only saving grace was the fact that more than 75% of the class was in a sorority. Of course, that made it all worth while.

Also in this class was a guy my roommate and I called “Pilot Guy”. Pilot Guy was unknown until one day, towards the end of the term, the professor called on him to answer a question. Unfortunately for the professor, Pilot Guy was fully engaged in furiously writing in his notebook. When asked what he was writing, Pilot Guy answered with “a pilot for a tv show”. During class. Hence the name “Pilot Guy”.

Anyway, I bring up Pilot Guy because I have a great idea for my own TV show. Well, not my TV show – that will be revealed at a later date – but a TV show based on my idea.

I call it “The Four Foot Friends” and it stars a man over 7′1 and little person (male or female) who is 3′5 or shorter (for reference Verne Troyer is 2′8, so I don’t think I am asking the impossible).

(Why “The Four Foot Friends”? Because there is at least four feet of height difference between them.)

My idea is to cast these heightly highlighted people in different roles, sort of like Paris Hilton’s “A Simple Life”. Imagine watching a giant and a midget (or dwarf) run a convenience store, work at an oil change place, manage a retirement home, perform in a dance troupe, or maybe even go door-to-door as vacuum cleaner salesmen (do they still have those?).

Or we could have them as the sole contestants in an “Amazing Race” type show, where they alone have to travel from one place to another by working as a team. I think it would be interesting to see two people, both with height-created advantages and difficulties, working together for one common cause.

I know it might not be much of an idea; I am not that much of a TV viewer. But I think it is time to take reality shows to the next level. People are getting bored of watching “common folks” on reality shows. It is time to challenge convention and put on some of the more interesting people in our society. The way I see it, after we exhaust the different folks among us, the next step is robots, programmed to respond randomly to key events. Imagine a show where a robot stays mild-mannered for 23 minutes only to explode at the end of the show when someone says hello.

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