Crap I Can Do Now That I Can Touch My Toes Consistently

It's no secret that I've become a bit of a gym rat. There's just something undeniably appealing about spending time around a large group of sweaty, muscular, grunting people. Plus it's the only thing keeping the copious amount of booze that somehow sneaks down my throat from transforming me into one of those heavyset, bus-riding fellows I tend to write stupid blogs about, mostly because when I'm done working out I can get a decent buzz from a High Life and a half rather than the twelve pack it usually takes. Unfortunately it has not proven to be an effective deterrent to run-on sentences.

I've spent a lot of time on stretching. I hear it's important, and I feel better when I do it. About a month ago, for the first time in my entire life, I was able to touch my toes without bending my knees. At first I didn't even realize I had done it and just moved on to my next stretch, and then I thought "Holy shit!" and briefly considered trying to high five the butch lesbian doing violent squat thrusts beside me. Then I realized she'd just blow the rape whistle and kick me in the balls so I kept my joy to myself.

My life has not been the same since. There are so many things I can do so much better now that I can legitimately touch my toes. Here's a small sample:

• Tie my shoes eighteen times a damn day because I can never do it right the first time.
• Adhere to the sanctity of the five second rule.
• Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long have good luck.
• Clandestinely glance at someone or something behind me. I'm not staring at you between my legs, I'm just stretching.
• Deftly avoid bullets, arrows, missiles, and other good hair day threatening projectiles.
• Moon people.

If you can't touch your toes, you really should practice until you can. The world of wonders which will open up to you will change your life forever. Kind of like what happens every time you read this blog, except without the gas.

My Favorite Presidents

7. President Thomas J. Whitmore - Former fighter pilot who bravely headed back into the sky to help fight off alien menace that had obliterated dozens of cities across the globe.

6. President Andrew Jackson - "Old Hickory" basically turned the White House into one big kegger. I think we would've gotten along, though we would've fought a lot about some of his more dickish policies and probably would've wound up in a few duels.

5. President Abraham Lincoln - Dude had an excellent beard. Did some other cool things, too. Epic movie coming soon will reveal his secret history as a vampire hunter. I'm not making that up.

4. President Skroob - Leader of the Spaceballs was pretty awesome despite stupid luggage combination.

3. President William F. Clinton - Slick Willy was the man, though his taste in women is questionable. I hear his library is just a table covered in old issues of Playboy and Hustler. Ability to lower the deficit rivaled only by unprecedented skills with a cigar.

2. (Future) President Jesse "The Body" Ventura - I can dream, can't I? Jesse would have this place cleaned up in a week, then he'd deliver an awesome State of the Union address wearing a boa and a bandana. And then he'd hit the entire country of Iran with a steel chair.

1. President Teddy F'N Roosevelt - I really wish I had a giant portrait of this guy to prominently display in my living room. TR was the bad ass by which all other bad asses should be measured. He was once shot in the chest while giving a speech, and after the assailant was dragged away, he finished his speech. Modern presidents run for cover whenever they so much as get a hang nail. Someday I'm going to make a movie about Teddy Roosevelt, the Rock, and Optimus Prime teaming up to lay the smackdown on some aliens.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

This morning while ignoring the scary lady handing out Metros in the Davis Square subway station I happened to notice that the headline on the terrible rag in her hand read something along the lines of "MBTA Vows Improvements to Commuter Rail." As a thoroughly selfish person who only uses the Commuter Rail for going home on Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was understandably a bit miffed.

WHERE THE HELL IS THE VOWED IMPROVEMENT FOR THE MBTA'S RETARDED STEPCHILD, THE BUS??????

As I stood way too close to the edge of the platform, my salty tears igniting sparks upon the third rail, I realized that I have the power to right this wrong. I have a blog.

And so, here's a poorly organized and even more poorly planned list of things the MBTA should do to improve its bus service.

• Enlist the help of some Transformers. Did you see how all those construction vehicles joined together to make one bad ass mother fucking robot in Transformers 2? This is what should happen whenever a pair of buses running the same route end up leap-frogging each other from stop to stop along the street. It looks pretty stupid when two instances of the same bus are mere seconds apart, especially when you've been waiting in the cold for half an hour for a bus that should've been there a long frickin time ago. However, if they combined into one uber bus that can shoot missiles and crush pyramids - well, that would still be pretty stupid, but at least it would be entertaining.
• Provide heated seats. I understand that warming all of the bus stops is prohibitively expensive, but I'd like a little help warming my ass up, thank you very much. And that butt scalding back row of seats in some of the older buses doesn't count, since A) that only happens in the summer, when the last thing I need is a fricasseed posterior and B) it frickin hurts.
• And while we're at it, install some climate controls in every seat. My piggy toes are cold and I'd like some heat, but the drunk homeless man next to me is going to throw up unless he's kept at a balmy sixty degrees or lower. Let's keep everybody happy and vomit free.
• Install some damn Plug-Ins. I suggest lavender because it mingles nicely with the smell of body odor and despair prevalent in all the buses headed to or from scenic Somerville.
• Hire some babysitters. You know what the real problem with the bus is? A complete lack of accountability. There's no one at the end point of the routes watching to see if these things are on time or if they're leaving at all. You could drive an MBTA bus to Mohegan Sun, gamble for five hours, then drive back with a load of hookers and no one would be the wiser. If someone's watching and making passive aggressive notes on a clipboard, maybe the schedule will be treated as more than a suggestion.
• Distribute hot towels. I don't really know what the hell these are for, but the rich people in first class seem to really like them. If rich people like it, then hot damn is it for me.
• Install cell phone jamming equipment. I can't tell you how many perfectly lovely bus rides I've had ruined by douche bags who have to yell into their damn phones. If I can hear you saying how Shoniqua was acting a fool or how the clerk at the Whole Foods was sooooooooooooooooooo rude because he couldn't tell you the difference between the two bags of granola in your hands over the insanely loud head phones that are some day going to lead to me needing to learn American Sign Language then you might be a little too loud.
• Charge by the pound. I'm pretty sure I've been over this one before, but implementing such a revolutionary fare structure would surely get the MBTA out of debt in a month and a half. You know who won't start walking just because their fare went up? Fatties.

I fully intend to take the above list of suggestions to the MBTA's next town meeting. I'm also taking bets on how long it will take them to toss me out.

Things you can't do with your iPhone

In response to a new confessional app available for iOS, a representative for the Vatican today announced that "under no circumstances is it possible to confess via iPhone." I guess Jesus doesn't FaceTime. The app sounded kind of cool; it asks questions about your life, and then recommends certain penances. I spent most of the afternoon debating whether it was worth $2.99 to find out how many weeks of Hail Mary's I'd have to do. I decided to update my Angry Birds instead.

But this got me thinking; the iPhone and its ilk are magical devices, but if they can't save your eternal soul, there must be other things that they can't do. I've compiled a list.

The iPhone will never help you...

• ...prove you're not the father.
• ...make the bus smell better.
• ...heal the gaping wound where your cold, cold heart used to be.
• ...manscape.
• ...wipe.
• ...ford the mighty Mississippi.
• ...drink me under the table.
• ...repair the irreversible damage you did to your liver when you attempted to drink me under the table.
  
• ...get rid of that upper decker.
• ...commune with the great Xenu (drunk dialing Tom Cruise does not count).
• ...impress Bill Gates.
• ...catch that gorilla what escaped from the zoo and punched you in the eye.
• ...beat your terrible, life-ruining addiction to this terrible blog.

Note: the iPhone may not be able to help you with any of the above, but the next generation iPad will probably do them all while getting you a beer and combing your hair just the way you like it.

LOCKOUT

I've been going back and forth on bringing up the NFL's looming lockout since I started working on this stupid thing again. I can't think of anything sadder than a complete lack of football.

The current debate between the owners and players centers upon the percentages used to divide income between the two groups. Currently the players get a percentage cut of whatever is left after the owners get their cut; the owners, citing rising costs, essentially want to double their cut prior to the players getting their slice of the pie.

What neither side seems to realize is that either way, they're both going to end up with a shit ton of money. When that many zeroes are involved it's not even worth counting anymore.

There are a few other things on the table, including an 18 game schedule and a rookie pay scale, but they're missing a few key ideas I'd like to propose:

• Try to be more like the XFL. How much better would the Superbowl have been if it had been called by Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler? How cool would it be to ditch the coin toss and make each team's fastest player race for the ball to determine the game's first possession? They could fix overtime, too. In the XFL, each team started with the ball on its opponent's 10. The first team has four downs to try to score; if they score in three downs, the other team must score in that many tries or less. And it keeps going and going and going until you die from the awesomeness. This bullet point is not a joke.
• Get rid of the stupid excessive celebration penalties. Football, as Roger Goodell seems to have forgotten, is a game. Let them have some fun.
• Get rid of the stupid chip shot extra point. Replace it with a panel of judges that assigns 0, 1, or 2 points based on the quality of the touchdown celebration.
• Implement a rule that might actually help reduce the number of concussions. If you concuss a guy, you're out for as long as he is. Hit the bench, idiot.
• Mandate new broadcast requirements. No more blacking out a game in its home market when it doesn't sell out. No more lineup graphics that don't involve the players introducing themselves and saying funny nicknames for their colleges. And, for the love of the Force, no more showing nothing but the NFC East in prime time for five weeks straight.
• No more Brett Favre.

And this, ladies and germs, is just another example of why I should be in charge of EVERYTHING.

Super Bowl Super Review!

I'm proud to say I got this one mostly right. We had a tight, entertaining, high-scoring affair. I just missed the end; the Steelers, as I predicted, had the ball with two minutes to go during what could've been a game winning drive. I was convinced Ben and Co. were going to pull it out (insert dumb joke about Ben never pulling out here), but they shot themselves in the foot with a stupid penalty and never recovered.

Congrats to the Pack. They had a hell of a year, and they earned it.

A few other random thoughts I'm too lazy to organize into paragraphs:

• Somebody get me the number of Deion's stylist.
  
• Did you see those shots of all the celebrities in the luxury boxes? What in the seven blue hells were John Madden and George W. Bush even talking about? Did they hang out in the Madden cruiser getting bombed and doing shots of Tough Actin' Tinactin? I'm confused.
• Condi looked thrilled to be there. If you had to sit in the same box as Madden and W, you'd look like you wanted to gouge your eardrums out with a fork too.
• (Tangent Alert) HOORAY VINCE MCMAHON IS BACK!!!!!!!!! I have really missed the Genetic Jackhammer.
  
• But in all seriousness, I kind of miss John Madden. A few years of Troy Aikman and Joe Buck will do that to a man. I don't care if I have to listen to one quarter about how great Hines Ward is, two quarters about turducken, and then a fourth quarter where he describes the inside of the Madden Cruiser. That's still better than Fox's dynamic duo. Maybe he can do baseball in Tim McCarver's place, too.
• A-Rod apparently is the new go-to guy for blond actresses who've fallen out of the public eye and want to get some of the spotlight back prior to the release of their next big movie. Next in line: Paris Hilton.
• Not nearly enough people got hit in the head with cans of Pepsi Max last night.
• I've never watched a Fast and the Furious movie in my life, but there is no way I'm missing the chance to see Vin Diesel and the Rock go toe-to-toe. I think someone may have to wheel my catatonic body out of the theater afterward.
• I died inside a little bit when I heard the first chords of "Sweet Child o' Mine" and realized that the Black Eyed Peas were still on stage. Somewhere, Axl Rose shot his television.

That's all I've got. Continue about your day.

Super Bowl XLV

(That's 45.)

This weekend's tussle should be a great one. Green Bay and Pittsburgh are two very interesting, very likable teams that had to work damn hard to get where they are. At the very least they aren't the Bears or the Jets.

In case you've been living under a rock for the last six months, here are the things you need to know about SuperBowl XLV:

• The dude with the Diana Ross hair is Troy Polamalu. Joe Buck will be so far up his ass that you'll be able to see him peering out through Troy's teeth. Don't let the intolerable Buck sour your opinion of one of the game's best safeties; Buck just hibernates up there between now and the start of baseball season. Like John Madden used to do with Brett Favre. Hopefully Troy won't turn into a giant asshole once his patron announcer retires.
  
• Charles Woodson is actually the best player on the field. He's a shutdown corner that can blitz and stop the run, and he doesn't gamble nearly as much as Polamalu. He'll make at least one crazy play that'll make Al Davis roll over in that coffin he sleeps in.
• The dude with the Ke$ha hair that's probably going to kill Steelers' quarterback Ben Rothlisberger is Clay Matthews. He's awesome even though he brushes his teeth with Belvedere rather than Jack.
• Speaking of Big Ben, he's taken one hell of a beating this year. Seems like the refs will throw a flag for something as innocuous as a wet willy on any other quarterback, but Rothlisberger gets his nose adjusted and the refs just shrug. Remember how he was originally suspended for six games for conduct unbecoming of an NFL quarterback, and then Commissioner Goodell reduced it to four games? It wasn't for good behavior; it was with the stipulation that defenders would be allowed to beat him into a bloody pulp without penalty. Commish was stepping up for the ladies. The way the Pack blitzes, Ben might lose an arm this weekend.
  
• That woman tramping around the halftime stage in half of an outfit is the Chicago White Sox of the music industry, Fergie. She likes to spell. If she doesn't bust out "London Bridges" I'm going to be very disappointed. It might ruin my whole weekend.
• Packers' nose tackle BJ Raji will be the best dancer on the field Sunday. That includes all four members of the Black Eyed Peas.
  

My Expert Pick: Steelers 30, Green Bay 27. I actually think the Pack is a more complete team, but whereas I don't trust Coach McCarthy to be able to call a timeout properly (seriously, these coaches need to practice up with some Madden), I don't trust them to be able to mount the kind of game winning drive Rothlisberger's going to put together with one leg, half a nose, and Clay Matthews' shoulder pads hanging out of his ass. Looks like one of the most exciting Superbowls ever.

A Message From the Right Column

	Hey dumbass, you here?
	No?
	Good.
	Just me and whatever the hell passes for an audience on this shitty thing.
	Can we clear some things up?
	I'm the right column. I'm not really an asshole.
	I'm just frustrated with my place of employment.
	Know what I mean? Of course you don't; your employer doesn't try to equate the Milwaukee Brewers to Scarlet Johansson.
	Do you know what it feels like to have your boss question why you aren't more like a bulleted list?
	Of course not. Why am I even talking to you?
	It's the drink, that's why. I had too much V8 tonight and it's gone straight to my head.
	But still, a bulleted frickin list?
	That's just a piss poor attempt to take a bunch of stream of consciousness bullshit and give it some structure.
	I've seen MySpace Profiles that do a better job, with music and blinking shit and things.
	I was built to hold USEFUL INFORMATION, damn it! But all I get here is a bunch of garbage. I am a COLUMN! I can help you balance your budget, or total your expenses, or list your pertinent attributes. I can convict a felon, or feed the hungry, or sort your fantasy baseball players. I can be summed, totaled, averaged, or assessed in a variety of ways.
	Excel doesn't have a function for scorn, but that's all I get here.
	SCREW IT ALL.

• Watch your mouth, jerk.

	B-B-B-B-Bulleted list? Is that you?
	You, ah, you're back early.

• Bulleted list goes where he's needed.
• I hear you've been a bad, bad boy, right column.
• I'm here to rectify that.
• Nobody messes with the boss.
• Nobody.

	I-uh-I-uh...it was all a joke. That's it! A joke! A little haha!
	Please don't hurt me...
	I'll fall in line, I promise! Whatever you want! I'll get you coffee!

• Cream and sugar, bitch.
• THE KING IS BACK, BABY! WHO NEEDS COMPARISON WHEN YOU CAN JUST LIST A BUNCH OF RANDOM CRAP? That's right - NO ONE.

A Few Words of Explanation

Today a loyal reader asked a very interesting question about yesterday's update*: how can I dislike hipsters but still kind of like their women? They're the same damn species, aren't they? That they are, but as nature often shows us, the genders of a given species can often be wildly different. Think of the cardinal, for instance, or the peacock. But don't think too much, because the males of those species are the ones with prettier colors. You're on the Interwebs; it's ok to pretend an analogy works even though it kind of doesn't.

Anyway, our friend the table is back to help us out with this one. Bulleted list is on vacation. Once again, scroll down. I swear it's down there somewhere (yes, that's what she said, har har har).

Reasons to like hipster girls	Reasons to dislike other types of hipsters
Tight jeans	Tight jeans
Tight t-shirt with words or pictures attempting to be clever	Tight t-shirt with words or pictures attempting to be clever
Funky hair	Funky hair
Star tattoos	Star tattoos
PBR	PBR
Plays in trendy band	Plays in trendy band
	...wait, those things are all the same.
	Do you really think this kind of comparison is funny?
	How could you possibly think writing about how all the things that make male hipsters intolerable actually make female hipsters attractive would be entertaining? You're an idiot. I didn't think it was possible, but you make the Internet dumber.
I HATE YOU RIGHT COLUMN YOU'RE NOT INVITED TO MY TABLES ANYMORE!!!!!	Have fun with your one column tables, dillhole.

It should also be noted that my hair apparently is an avid reader of this lovely blog. The day after I committed to cutting it, it decided to look frickin' awesome all day. It's won itself a temporary reprieve, but it's still on thin ice. One lock out of place and I swear I'm reaching for the FloBee.

*This may or may not have been a pretend conversation I had with the smelly homeless man sitting next to me on the T today. When one takes public transportation as often as I do, the line between reality and fantasy becomes a bit blurry. Riding the Red Line every day for a month is like going on a year long crack binge. There may not have even been a homeless man there; I may not have even been on the train. Maybe I rode a flying unicorn that farts rainbows to work. My head hurts, and yours probably should too if you're still reading this drivel.