Monday, September 24, 2007

Shattering taboos, one pair at a time

I just got some new underwear this weekend, and I must say, I am completely pleased. I have been wearing underwear for a while now, and I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it. (Although, occasionally I do make mistakes. Once, more recently than I'd like to admit, I put my boxers on backwards. The urinal was completely off limits that day.) There are times that I'd like to mention things about underwear, but for whatever reason, underwear is pretty sexualized. I think that's a bit extreme. It'd be like saying that a guy who climbs Mount Everest once is a big time mountain climber. I've spent a lot of time with science, I want to see some repeatability, killer.

I would probably say that for the average person, underwear's day to day role is much less sexual than the media would lead us to believe. I'm pretty sure it's mostly so you keep sweat and stuff off your real clothes. And to let you have a chance to wear something that has dollar signs on it. (Sadly, I don't actually have money boxers. I wish I did.)

I might have underwear questions. And they might not be sexual in nature. Like, for example, what's the deal with the hybrid boxer-briefs? There is no way that they seem competitive with the full-on boxer shorts. Also, are the people who are wearing briefs later in life just afraid to try something new? How many people try boxers, but decide they hate freedom and go back? I want statistics on that. But this isn't polite conversation. Even though asking something like, "Do my cutoffs go with this blazer?" might be a little less controversial.

This is to say nothing about the feminine sorts of underwear. But they seem even more sexualized. Bras, for example. There are some girls who probably could get on without them, but they still insist on it. Is that because of social pressure? An excess of pride? A safeguard against turning into a human thermometer? You can't ask that question out loud.

And I think that's bunk. I would like to know what sorts of personal decisions go into electing between boy shorts and panties for girls. Is it similar to the issues weighed for boxers and briefs with guys? Or is it usually a sexualized decision? How often to girls top and bottom underwears match? That doesn't even come up with us! (Actually, I guess I only speak for those of us who are not transvestites.)

I think the biggest question is about the boxer-briefs. The more I think about it, it seems like the worst of both worlds. And is it really necessary to put those douchey looking underwear models on the cover of every underwear package? I know what it's supposed to look like.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Wow, he's fat and he sucks (No, I'm not talking about Michael Moore)

I don't really like to talk about sports much, but I dislike Notre Dame just enough to pile on a little. This school decided that they should cut Ty Willingham loose after three years (the general rule of thumb for a college coach is four) and built Charlie Weis a giant treasure chest full of money and fried chicken, and it turns out that he's just not that good of a coach.

For those of you not so sports inclined, it would be like if a major movie studio that nobody likes, like Universal or Fox, decided in 1992 to invest a ten year contract in Kevin Costner. That's right after Robin Hood and Dances with Wolves, which made him gigantic, after he had a string of big movies with things like No Way Out, Field of Dreams and Bull Durham. At first it would look pretty good, because Tin Cup was fun, JFK was big and so was The Bodyguard. After that, though, people started noticing that he's not a terribly talented guy. He has a very Keanuish approach to line delivery (which reminds me -- I finally saw the third Matrix and it was awful. I would have rather watched a movie about a school full of monkeys competing in track and field) and is getting old, so you're not even going to get the women in their early thirties going to see movies he's in because he's in them. People in their early forties don't go out as much to the movies.

On top of being not talented, he started making movies like Waterworld and the Postman and 3000 Miles to Graceland. Not exactly the Untouchables, there Kevin. Then again, he had Sean Connery and Robert DeNiro in that movie with him, so it wouldn't be hard to pretend you can act a little around them.

So, Notre Dame is stuck with Charlie Weis and he just made Waterworld. Ty Willingham at least looks like he's improving, rather than claiming to be somebody who could outscheme anybody and literally being last in total offense. Kevin Costner wasn't that big of a bastard. His offense hasn't scored a touchdown yet. It's been three weeks! Is there anything funnier than laughing at arrogant people getting their comeuppance? I submit that there is not.

Monday, September 10, 2007

It's not quite a love poem, but they are tubers, after all

Sometimes when I perform an activity that I had not done for a long time, I am reminded at how wonderful that experience was and get angry with myself for not doing it more often. Watching Wayne's World is one of them. I love Wayne's World; both the movies and the SNL sketch. But I can't remember the last time I watched any of them.

I made mashed potatoes with dinner tonight. They were glorious. I don't know why I don't eat them multiple times a day. I don't know why this was the first time I've done it since I moved to Augusta. I hate myself a little for not eating them more. You know how sometimes you eat an entire five pound bag of fun size Snickers bars and then, bloated and hurting inside, wonder why you did that? It's like that, except the complete opposite. I want to invite them to my wedding. (For food, although making mashed potatoes a groomsman is not completely out of the question.)

I am now going to make short list of Chuck Norris style quotations expressing my opinions of mashed potatoes.
  • They should give heroin addicts mashed potatoes instead of methadone, that would eliminate drug addictions everywhere.
  • If Blowpop made a mashed potato flavored lollipop, we'd still be hearing about them.
  • At football games, they should sell mashed potato hats like they sell beer hats. I would buy two.
  • In Soviet Russia, potatoes mash you!
  • I am going to start dipping instant mashed potatoes, when the real thing is unattainable.
  • When I die, I hope it's a mob hit where I am fitted with cement shoes and thrown into a vat of butter mashed potatoes to sleep with the chives.
  • The Egyptians should have built the pyramids out of mashed potatoes.
  • In the future, instead of butter I will top my mashed potatoes with mashed potatoes.
Let me know if you have any others to add.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

He's probably a three monther

I'm sure you've probably heard somebody say, "She's a twenty-footer," meaning this hypothetical she looks rather attractive from any distance, so long as it's greater than twenty feet. Thirty feet, for example. I personally don't like this scale, because it kind of breaks down for good looking people, the kind of people at whom one would actually enjoy looking. What do you say when you meet someone who is actually hot? She's a one incher? Do we get into microscopic scales? I hope not, because the only way that could be lamer would be to say, "She's a 9.314159."

A friend of mine proposed using poker hands to describe the relative attractivity of girls, but it didn't really catch on, unfortunately. The beauty of this system is that two pair may sound low, but you typically bet on a two pair. There's a very high ceiling; like the girl in your class might be really hot, and so you could say she's a full house. And that's almost a no lose situation. I think someone like Maria Sharapova would be somewhere like four of a kind. How many straight flushes have you seen in real life? One maybe? See how perfect a system this was?

Anyway, Fred Thompson just announced that he's running for president. I give him about three months before he blends into the noise. This looked like a really compelling group of candidates early in the election. But now that we get to spend time with them, they all look horribly, horribly flawed. We are already within the time range for like all of them. Except Thompson. We'll see how long that goes.

All right, if I'm going to bring up these scales, I think I owe you a picture, possibly to illustrate. Keeping with the tennis theme, I present a possible new tennis crush, Ana Ivanovic, who is at worst, a king high flush.
This makes me a little bit uncomfortable, though, because this is the first celebrity crush who is younger than me. I'm feeling old. But I have a blog, and that makes me hip, right?